Just Humans Being...

                           It's a sign there are big changes afoot, when a company like Lonely Planet acknowledges that veganism is here. Although we are not into buying stuff anymore, we do have a passion for books...especially travel books! We have collected many travel guides over the years and we continue to use our French ones even though they are probably over 20 years old now. We bought our first Lonely Planet Publication in 1991... Europe On A Shoestring ! We found it to be a great resource, using it frequently to do research when planning trips, as well as taking it with us.  We love nothing more than sitting with maps and travel books, dreaming and planning our next or future adventures and always try to find whatever information we can about places to eat, so when we heard about a new vegan travel guide - we had to check it out. Click here for a preview of The Vegan Trav...

Day 7 of  World Vegan Month and our last night in France for this year, so we decided to treat ourselves to a vegan pizza.... With onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, artichokes, olives and potatoes. We are now staying near to Roscoff in Brittany and will be taking the ferry to Plymouth tomorrow.  The pizza came from a pizza emporter in St Pol de Leon, a few minutes from where we are staying - another lovely place...and the owners lit the wood burner before our arrival, which we were thrilled with, as it feels so much colder up here...but at least the cabin is toasty! We will take some photos of the place tomorrow in the light. It's always a joy to be back in Brittany, having spent a winter here some years ago - we know it very well and love it's uniqueness. Visiting the monument for the Breton Resistance Fighters. Love Kay and Sime xx

Day 6 of  World Vegan Month. We've been out all day exploring the Golfe du Morbihan...which is lovely and on return, we wanted to make something quick. As we had a few carrots and lentils, we decided to make a quick version of our lentil soup. It turned out a bit thin, but was tasty, warm and perfect with the crusty bread we had picked up. The place we are staying in has a blender, so we were able to whizz it up. We used 4 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, 4 carrots, 1 potato and approximately 2 tablespoons of red lentils (we would normally use more, but it was all we had). We boiled/simmered the lentils, added the potato and fried the rest of the veg with soy sauce and also added cumin, smoked paprika and black pepper. We whizzed it all up with some soya milk too and unfortunately this was the only photo we took, just after we put the soup back in the pan to warm through... Here is a more reliable recipe from a post some years ago...you can add fresh cori...

We have travelled from the Auvergne, through the Loire and are now on the south east edge of Brittany in a lovely space. Finding places with kitchens is always important, as we like to cook! Tonight's dinner was fresh organic broccoli from the Biocoop, which we steamed for 5 minutes, then fried with 5 cloves of garlic and 1 red onion in soy sauce with dried basil and black pepper. We also added a tin of mixed beans and sweetcorn and finished with the juice of half a lemon. We served it with last night's leftover tabbouleh and a mixed salad. It's always good to have an opportunity to cook when travelling and it doesn't have to be difficult or long-winded. This place is perfect and it's obvious that the owners are enthusiastic cooks themselves, as the kitchen is well-equipped!  Another nice space to be!  This is Day 5 of World Vegan Month. Love Kay and Sime xx

We were travelling from the Auvergne to the Loire Valley and had a plan to visit the Biocoop in Saumur to buy supplies for dinner, but as usual we got distracted - stopping off and taking different interesting routes and consequently arrived too late. We had a few things to eat, but not really enough. On our journey, we had the spinach and spirulina cuppa soups, some peanuts and bananas. Then we felt a need to "carb up" and had just 15 minutes to fly around the supermarket and make our purchases. We bought tabbouleh, carrot salad, salad leaves, cornichons, baguette and as Sime was craving potatoes - we bought some very cheap tinned spuds! We already had this vegetable and basil chutney... And houmous from our last Biocoop visit. For desert we found these soya red berry yogurts. Day 4 World Vegan Month. Our feast while on the road...More tomorrow! Love Kay and Sime xx

The light is terrible in this kitchen at night, but here is our Day 2 food post for World Vegan Month. We've made a Bolognese with haricot beans and veggies and served with a green salad. Here is a previous post for the recipe: Our Bean Bolognese Recipe Enjoy! Love Kay and Sime xx

We have set ourselves the challenge again to share posts of our food every day during November for World Vegan Month. As we are eating leftovers tonight from last night's stew, we thought we would show you our rather bland looking, but delicious lunch... Rice with miso and sea vegetable soup thrown in! We always have some sachets of miso soup or paste in our picnic basket for a quick snack and they are great for when we are travelling. If we're on the road, we can usually fill our flask with hot water for the day, although there are not many French hotels with kettles in the bedrooms - we usually ask the staff on reception or if we're having breakfast, just fill our flask then. We've not managed to find a French alternative that we are happy with, so we usually make sure we have plenty for our trip...Clearspring is our favourite. Happy World Vegan Day! Love Kay and Sime xx

We often get shocked at how much folks are willing to pay for vacations. Even if we become billionaires...no don't laugh, you never know...we will no doubt continue to travel simply.  We love camping for starters, so we can't imagine not doing it and then there's a real joy in bargain hunting hotels and holiday accommodation. We tend to camp if we can do more than 3 nights and the weather's nice. If it's not so good, then we usually look at self-catering accommodation and easily find great places. When we're on the road we tend to find cheap motels for overnight stays and book a few hours before arrival to save money. These can be anything from a motel chain to a more fancy pants country hotel...on our last trip to France we found ourselves staying in the grounds of a vineyard in Burgundy and it was lovely!  A lot of small hotels open up to business travellers out of season and when they still have rooms available, they reduce their prices and ...