Wet.

These things are wet:

Smoky Split Pea and Butterbean chowder.

Just a few ingredients - sliced Charlotte potatoes, sliced carrots, sliced celery, onion flakes, pre-soaked split peas and butterbeans - simmered with soya milk and vegetable stock and seasoned with black pepper, chipotle chili powder, liquid smoke, smoked paprika, thyme, rosemary and basil. Served with home-baked bread and marmite.
Hot chocolate made with cocoa, carob, cinnamon, malt extract and soya milk - soooo goood!!!
The rainy, blustery Bathgate weather!

These things are juicy:

Corn-on-the-cob grilled with a glaze of reggae-reggae sauce thinned with water, before being buttered with vegan marg and served-up with a big, juicy salad!
A big juicy salad of baby spinach leaves, baby plum tomatoes, celery, cucumber, grated carrot, new potato, brown lentils and cured red onion smothered in delicious,, moreish raw vegan ranch dressing. This recipe is from the sunny raw vegan kitchen and is absolutely lip-smackingly good! The boy licked the spatula clean after I'd finished blending it and as I'd pre-soaked the macadamia nuts, it was really rich and creamy!
Green woodruff jelly made-up with the juice from a can of pineapple chunks (that's one of those thrifty tips I picked up from my mum as a child to make jelly juicier!). Yummers!

And sadly, this thing is rubbish.

We don't normally buy vegan cream cheese apart from special occasions as it's prohibitively expensive for what it is, but Toffuti never lets us down - two steps away from Philadelphia in taste and texture it is just lovely. I really, really wanted to like this spread, not least because it was half the price of the cheese we normally get and stocked in our local Tesco - a first!! Also, we buy Pure soya margarine and find it good for general butter-substitution and baking - creamy, good fat content, good flavour. Pure soya spread, however, tastes like a bad homemade uncheese - beany, with an unpleasant sweetness which is explained by one look at the ingredients list - the third largest ingredient is dried glucose syrup!!! Why??

HOW much sugar?!

This would make a good base for a cream cheese frosting, but that's about it. This vegan isn't for turning. I'll save up and slather tofutti garlic and herbs cheese on my toasted bagel at Christmas, while pointedly walking past the Pure cheese spread in the supermarket - with an air of quiet disappointment - the rest of the time.