It’s a difficult balance to find, and even the best hand soaps out there have issues.

For the past year I’ve been using Ecover to keep my muts clean at home. Sadly, with winter came chapped, dry skin and few natural oils left on my hand; my Ecover soap, sadly, not doing me any favours. Cracked, bleeding knuckles became the norm.

Not cool.

A few days ago I stumbled upon a new soap, made by Organic Surge who proclaim on the front of their o-so-special soaps that they’re soft on sensitive skin.

I snatched a bottle and span it round in my hands: “We’re against animal testing” it said.

A quick cringe, as that can sometimes mean “we don’t like animal testing, so we make our parent company do it instead“, as, I believe, was the case in the very beginning of Tom’s of Maine.

I got home after having bought a bottle and jumped on the internets. Thankfully, their clear FAQ section details that they do not test on animals, nor are any of their ingredients tested on animals.

That’s an extra 10 points for them, right then and there.

So I went for a tinkle, realised I hadn’t brought it up, opened the bathroom door with my elbows and fetched it, and then tried it out.

I want to be EXTREMELY EMPHATIC ABOUT ITS AWESOMENESS, but I’m worried that you won’t believe me.

Because Organic Surge’s hand soap?

Oh. Em. Gee.

EVERY other soap I’ve ever used leaves my hands clean but, hmm, a little stripped. Even so-called “sensitive skin” soaps usually chap me a teensy bit, often having Sodium Laurel Sulphate or Sodium Laureth Sulphate in it, which can be a bit of a catch-all cleanser.

Great if your skin is, y’know, not vulnerable to EVERYSINGLECHANGEINTHEATMOSPHERE.

If, however, you have more, ahem, delicate skin? It’s a different story.

And that’s why I am counting my stars or blessings or whatever, because this stuff? It’s good. REAL good.

I finished washing my hands, gave them a good dry-down with a towel and checked for dryness.

There was none. Absolutely none.

Considering that the back of my hands had gotten that teeny-tiny flaky skin thing when your skin is dry, and then the little-finger knuckle’s skin had split made me shocked.

Real shocked.

Because not only had my skin suddenly become soft like a baby’s rear, but the cracks on the knuckle had sealed right up, forming a teensy crust.

Kinda disgusting, I know, but the fact that this soap had banished my dry and splitting skin in one wash… well, I think that’s the testimont to all-natural products.

I did mention that Organic Surge products are free from parabens, sodium lauryl/laureth sulphate, chemical irritants, artificial fragrances, synthetic colourants and chemical alcohol, didn’t I?

Well I should have. Because my gawd, it’s making a difference.

If you’ve ever suffered from a case of dry-skin-itis, or happen to be plagued by having the back of your hands feel all rough, I’d seriously recommend Organic Surge’s hand soaps.

This review is based upon their Bergamot soap, but I find it VERY hard to believe the other fragrence would be much different.

You have my unconditional vote on this: a very effective, high-quality product in a very competitive market.

I’m sold.

Organic Surge hand soap gets a rare full marks here:

10 Out Of 10 Stars

Hence, why so many people, omnis and vegetarians, find cheese to be such a central part of their lives.

And that’s why so many vegans find they have cravings for cheese randomly, after months or even years into being vegan.

As always, in our modern world getting ones vegan muts on an alternative to non-vegan foods is pretty darned easy.

Enter Cheezly by Redwood Foods.

Warning, the Redwood website is quite strange and may freeze your browser (like it did to mine!).

I’ll be honest, when I first thought about eating non-vegan cheese I didn’t have the highest expectations. And honestly? Those medium expectations were just about fulfilled.

The reality is that “cheeze” (vegan cheese), will always be a false product. No matter how I try to clothe it, I can’t help but remember that what I’m eating is something processed. Here’s the low-down:

Cons… D:

• The cheese taste isn’t massively strong, and there isn’t any cheese smell to pick up on when you’re preparing it. As such, your senses aren’t hugely tricked.
• When it ‘melts’ it turns into a hunk of gunk. It doesn’t look all that appealing, there isn’t any difference in colour among the melted cheeze and there’s NO way it’s gonna get stretchy.
• If you leave it in a non-airtight container (ie. in your fridge uncovered), it will turn pink in a few days. Disconcerting? You betcha.
• If you cook cheezly in the oven (say, on a pizza), you’ll find the cheeze either disintegrated into the tomato-sauce base or dried-out and browned on the top. Not fantastic, for sure.
• There is a fair amount of saturated fat in most of the Cheezly range, so best it be more of a one-off than a regular to your refrigerador.

Pros!

• Cheezly doesn’t have any cholesterol, trans fat, artificial colours, artificial preservatives, wheat, gluten, genetically-modified ingredients or casein. In a lot of soy products like vegan cheeze and tofu, the original soya can have been genetically-modified. For people like me who outright protest the genetic-modification of plants, this is FANTASTIC.
• Cheezly comes in a wheel, not in plastic slices, so you can do whatever you like with it, which is nice.
• Its consistency when preparing is JUST like cheese. If you grate it too hard it’ll start to crumble a little; if you keep it in your hand for 20 seconds it’ll start to melt a tiny bit.
• All of Redwood’s products are verified by the vegetarian and vegan society, which is a very trust-inducing label.
• The calories in the Cheezly range? AT LEAST HALF that of normal cheeze. That means you can have double!

Ultimately, Cheezly cheeze by Redwood is just about what you should expect: a fake cheese that acts like a fake cheese. If you’re DYING for the taste of cheese then it could very well be an adequate solution, but there’s real doubt in my mind that it’ll ever become a regular for my belly.

I give Cheezly a fair but firm 6.5/10 Stars.

Between devouring hummus and chomping on carrots, there soon comes a point where you long for pizza. And creamy pasta. And, at times, something a little more ‘meaty’.

It’s not that we have any real desire to eat animals or their products; it’s the texture, the taste, the associations.

Now, of course, in this “day and age” finding vegan alternatives to “normal” foods is an easy task for us veganos. But what happens when you want to make something a little more complex and curious, like Black-Bean Burgers, Tofu Florentine or Green-Tea Icecream Sandwiches?

Lucky for us, we have books like Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and, my most favourite, Veganomicon.

Now, before I go anywhere, I’ve got to admit to you that I’ve not tried a huge amount of recipes yet.

That’s not to say that the recipes are necessarily long, cumbersome or difficult to produce. Rather, I’m lazy.

What I CAN say is that every. single. recipe. I’ve tried so far has come out FANTASTICALLY.

Like, you know when you recipes and see the pictures and are all like “Yeah, but they had 10 people on hand to help them make it and had all the perfect ingredients and no doubt cooked 3 of the same things and then took a picture”? Well, that’s what I am… with all recipe books, no matter what.

So imagine my SUPREME delight when, on my 6th recipe, even with a couple of Matt-style substitutions (as in, “I prefer the taste of this more even though it won’t go with the recipe”), the food survived!

Time and time again the recipes have come out on top — so much so that my own meat-inhaling dad decided that he wanted some of my ‘funny vegan stuff’. True story.

The fact is that Veganomicon is the most elaborate vegan cookbooks I have ever encountered in my time as a vegan (coming up to 3 years around April). Whilst I wouldn’t necessarily call it ‘exhaustive’, there are easily enough recipes in there to be cooked and adapted to last, quite literally, almost a lifetime.

On the same fantastic vein, if you have any specific deitary requirements such as a soy allergy, gluten intolerance, dislike for fat, or if you only have access to a Plain Jane supermarket, every recipe is counter-marked against if it’s soy-free or can be made under 45 mins. Nifty or what?

Naturally, I have a few grips with any cookbook — Veganomicon is no different.

My biggest gripe had to be the curious style of recipe categorization. Instead of listing the recipes in typical “Breakfast”, “Lunch”, “Dinner” or “Sunday Afternoon Food”, “Finger Food”, “Hearty Meals” format, they instead went for the main ingredient of the dish as the categories. For some people that might be well and good, for me it’s a little bit of an inconvenience. I enjoy being able to use a cookbook in the same way I would use a shop window: to browse what catches my interests. Unfortunately, with Veganomicon, that liberty is somewhat lacking.

Likewise, because Veganomicon is a US-written book, all of its measurements are in cups and ounces. As I currently live in the UK I find it somewhat difficult to judge how much of what I need to put in as I don’t have a set of measuring cups (as they aren’t standard kitchen equipment over here). Consequently, sometimes I ‘eyeball’ how much of an ingredient I need or use mugs to measure. Albeit every recipe has come out beautifully so far, I can’t help but feel a little precarious just chucking in ingredients without knowing how much I’m using.

Overall Veganomicon is a fantastic cookbook which, despite my little gripes, I would warmly recommend to any vegan peeps who don’t already have this sacred tome of vegan deliciousness. It’s expansive, comes with lots of little tips (along with a how-to guide on cooking vegetables and a section on low-fat cooking) and contains a fantastic range of recipes that are so good you would wonder why you ever ate meat in the first place!

I award Veganomicon a vegany 8.5 stars out of 10!

I mean, after all, the stuff we use has to be both free from animal products and not-tested animals! What type of vegan would settle for anything less? :]

And let’s not forget the fact that finding vegan shampoo without a bazillion crazy ingredients is like finding an un-awesome recipe in Vegan With A Vegnence (thanks Isa!). It’s very hard to find.
Luckily for us vegans, we have Green People.

If you didn’t know, Green People is bodycare product company that specializes in organic, chemical-free formulas. The company started initially by a mother who wanted to treat her daughter’s excema, and soon found that her daughter’s problems were being caused by the harsh chemicals found in the bodycare products she was using on her daughter.

What started as something tiny has blossomed into something fantastic. Heck, just check their mile-long testimonial page!

So, as I’m sure you can expect, because of how much I’m singing the praises of Green People, I’ve naturally tried a selection of their products. Namely of which a few of their haircare products (including deoderants).

Now, let me preface everything by saying that Green People products aren’t cheap. In fact, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find yourself bodycare products in your supermarket that cost more than theirs.

Yet in this case cost most certainly equals quality. And, for once, quantity.

As far as I can tell from my testing, every Green People haircare product is highly concentrated, and indeed they even label on the back of each bottle that it’ll last generally last up to 3 times as long as your regular shampoo. This is most certainly true.

If you consider the fact that Green People donates 10% of its profits to charity, has products which are almost always fully organic, products which are never tested on animals and gives full disclosure on its ingredients list, you can start to see why their prices are a little steeper than that of other green bodycare companies.

So why should you shop with Green People?

• They are an extremely ethical company which devotes 10% of its profits to charity.
• Most of its products are organic or mostly organic.
• Their products are never tested on animals and a high majority are approved by the Vegan Society.
• None of them contain harsh chemicals in, true to their brand, and they list every ingredient they use (perfect for people like me with sensitive skin).
• Very few of their ingredients are synthetic. In fact, to a large degree you’ll notice that the ingredients tend to be essential oils and naturally-derived agents.
• Most of their products are highly concentrated, meaning that they’ll last easily 3 times as long as your average bottle of shampoo (a 200ml Green People bottle = approx. 600/700ml of normal shampoo).
• All of their packaging is either recycled, reused or biodegradable.

However, some points to take into consideration:

• Because of how concentrated the products are, and that they use mostly organic ingredients, the prices are a little higher than most.
• Their products can lather quite extensively (I personally love this), and so if you’ve only got 2 minutes to shower, they aren’t going to quickly strip your hair like most conventional shampoos (though they will do their job with a good shampoo massage and leaving it for a couple of mins).
• Because they are sensitive, if you are prone to dandruff build-up or more than gentle sweating, you might want to get their more intensive products, as their ’sensitive’ range of products really are for very sensitive conditions.

Overall, I love Green People. They’re a company with a solid ethical foundation and I’m always impressed by their products living up to the claims they make.

If you’re a conscious consumer, this company is the one for you.

I happily give Green People:

I don’t really like tofu all that much.

Sure, it can be okay if you do it nicely, and it can go with some things. But usually? It suffers from blandular fever, and before I know it, I’ve got two slices of bread with one big slab of moderately tasteless blah in the middle.

I’m sure you can imagine: not nice!

When I was out getting the old grocerios the other day, I noticed in the vegan/vegetarian section of my local supermarket that they had this new type of tofu from my favourite EVER tofu-product makers, Taifun!

This new tofu product? Their wonderful ‘smoked sesame and almond tofu‘, pictured to the right.

Obviously, I just had to try it out. And I’ll be honest here, I had my reservations. I’ve tried tofu products like these before, and really? They usually suck. Big time.

So, with trepidation, I put Taifun’s magic tofu to the test and tried a basic ‘fry and sandwich’. I was impressed. Here’s what I found:

Pros

• The flavour was perfect, and didn’t overpower (or randomly disappear mid-chew) me whatsoever, unlike a lot of other meat analogue products.
• It’s organic, so I feel a lot better for putting it into my belly.
• The company is independent, so buying it from them also made me feel pretty good about myself.
• Even though it’s made of tofu, I couldn’t detect much of the usual ‘tofu’ consistency, which was nice.
• As it’s smoked, there’s a certain ‘meat’ sense about the whole thing, which makes it great for a heartier sandwich
• Their smoked sesame and almond tofu only has 8 ingredients, discounting water. And I can find all but one in a supermarket if I wanted to.
• Per 100g there are only 185 calories (and 18.8g of protein)! For something with sesame seeds and almonds in, I’m very much impressed. Albeit the fat content is a little high (10.7g of fat per 100g), I know that this fat is NOT trans or saturated fat.

Cons

• Albeit the product was nice, but getting it out felt a bit nasty as some liquid ‘residue’ is left in the packet. A couple of times (because I had to, uhm, retest it… ;D ) this liquid spilled on the floor and needed quick cleaning up.
• Because of this water content, frying it can become a nightmare. I mean, when did you last put oil and water in a pan and enjoy it? Trust me. Not fun for a perhaps more inexperienced-with-spitting-fat cook.
• I can’t remember the exact price, but I remember that it was easily above a couple of pounds. The one listed here (my favourite online wholefood retailer) sells it at £2.99. That’s not exactly cheap for 200 grams of tofu.

Ultimately, I really, really enjoyed Taifun’s delicious tofu product, and I’ll easily be going back for more. Though the price is a little steep, I think it’s well deserved as the product itself is high quality, tastes delicous and works perfectly in a sandwich on a crisp winter’s day.

I’m the type of person who experiences the world through the ears.  And the nose, too.  But for the sake of this review, the ears.  I’m sure you can imagine my delight, therefore, when several days ago I stumbled upon the album, ‘Music of the Spheres’ by Mike Oldfield.

“But Matt, how does this relate to veganism?” I hear you asking.

Well, in truth, the link is actually quite tiny.  In fact, so tiny, that the only way it relates to veganism is that I’m a veganism and I’ve rapidly come to adore this album.

Originally, I was somewhat skittish about the whole affair.  Before even clicking the ‘play’ button, the album name ‘Music of the Spheres’ conjures up Jewish Mysticism (I’m sure Kabbalah is that one with the spheres of existence) and Holst’s Planet Suite.

Hence, I assumed that it was going to be either some crazy new-age funk.  Admittedly, I am the type of person to like new-age funk, but I was still a touch skittish.  Something with such an ostentatious, determined title like ‘Music of the Spheres’ was going to have to wow me to be decent.  Can you guess what I’m about to say?

In a very, very stilling way, the music is divine.  No doubt, the reason why the word ‘Sphere’ is used.  There is a certain sense of perfection sweeping through the entire ensemble.

When I first went about investigating the music, I decided on the obviously most logical action and started playing number 6.  I then promptly flicked my attention off to something else as it wafted over my ears.  I then checked Windows Media Player to find that I was on the last song.

It was in that moment that I fell in love with Mike Oldfield’s creation.

Each piece is woven into the next and previous track.  They each carry their own character, yet just like a family, they each contain a part of the other. Unlike so many albums today, the entire feature consists of a story-like progression, each new song adding an extra layer to the entire feel of the music.  Yet this is easily only one of the minor reasons why I’ve become totally enamored with his work.

Most important to me is that ‘Music of the Spheres’ is progressive classical music.  To me, it feels more like had Jazz and Classical music joined together.  Yet, altogether, the music contains a distinctly Holiday Season theme; the track ‘Aurora’ featuring sporadic chimes for a female choir.

Interestingly, without doubt each piece could be taken from the album and placed within a moviefilm production without any hiccups.  Indeed, each piece has a distinct fine-tuned feel to it, adding to the restrained-yet-dynamic ambiance of the album.

The songs themselves brush from Latin names (‘Animus’) to Grecian titles (for example, ‘Emperyean’) and into more English titles (‘Prophecy’).

Overall, the atmosphere of ‘Music of the Spheres’ is macro-cosmic.  That is to say, the songs seem to inflect a poised feeling of universal harmony and peace.

Likewise, ultimately my favourite track from the entire set would have to be, surprising to me, the opening song ‘Harbinger’.   Frequently, I find the opening song of an album to be the most dry and difficult to enjoy.  Harbinger, contrastingly, captivated my hearing and, as I listen to it again now, I can’t help but have images conjure in my mind.  Of Arabian deserts, solar systems and equally sweeping views.

I did some research on this album and found that ‘Music of the Spheres’ is actually a philosophical concept credited to have been created by Socrates as the idea that applying mathematics to the movement of the planets in the solar system could match up to music.