Grain and Goodness - vegan love at first bite

Buried in my Northumberland post is a mention of Grain and Goodness, a vegan bakery with a stand in the Tynemouth market. At the time of writing I had only tried the chili sausage roll and I told you it was delicious. Oh, yeah, so delicious! That same day I also bought a spinach and artichoke turnover, a lentil and spinach roulade, and a vegan scotch egg. In the course of the next couple of days I had them all. It's now a week later, so off I trotted to the market to find the stand again.

This week I got to meet the genius behind this stand, a lovely fellow named Chris.

Chris and I had a nice chat and I told him that if he ever moved to Seattle he would find an appreciative audience. He said he had actually considered moving there at one point. Chris makes a wide variety of items, both sweet and savory.

The roulade and the turnover I had last week were very good but, for me, the standouts were the chili sausage roll and the scotch egg. For those unfamiliar with it, a traditional scotch egg is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated with breadcrumbs and deep fried or baked. In Chris' vegan version yellow-tinted tofu stands in for the egg, and the sausage is vegan.

The sausage is sublime with a hint of fennel and the breaded coating is wonderfully crisp.

The sausage rolls come in many different flavors and I'm sure they're all delicious, but one taste of the chili sausage roll last week had me hooked. Just look at the chili jam oozing out. Yum! I should mention that his pastry is light and flaky, too.

I didn't try any of his sweets last week so I bought a sampling to try and (reluctantly) share. I've never heard of a cornflake tart, but found it was surprisingly good - Bruce loved it. It has a lovely sticky apricot jam that holds the whole thing together.

There was a flapjack which, I need to explain to my American friends, has nothing to do with pancakes. It's a bar made with oats, butter, brown sugar and golden syrup. Chris' version contains lots of lovely seeds and dried fruit and isn't overly sweet. It would make a great grab-and-go breakfast.

These flapjacks come in lots of varieties, too. I got a chocolate covered one in lime and chili flavor.

And just because, I also got a white chocolate raspberry cookie, which was delicious.

As I sampled all of these goodies I kept wishing he had franchises all over England. Then again, if he did, I'd be the size of a house in no time.