A few of my favourite survey sites

Being a single mum I’ve been using survey sites for almost 10 years now. And while they will never make me rich, the extra money here and there definitely comes in useful! My favourite one by miles at the moment is Prolific Academic . The surveys are quick and interesting, usually personality studies rather than the usual market research studies, and pay up to £2.50 or more per study. they also have a low cash-out threshold of £5 via Paypal, and the payment requests are usually processed within 5 days. A processing fee is taken from Paypal payments under £20. The only disadvantage I find is that emails alerting you of open studies are usually very few and far between, if you log into your account to check for surveys you will find them much more frequently.

I also like YouGov as they have never screened me out of a survey. It can get very annoying to waste 5-10 minutes answering questions just to be told you don’t fit the required demographic. Surveys usually pay 50-100 points each, the cash out threshold is high at £50 though so it does take a long time to reach, but is a nice amount to have when it does land in your bank! I have also won a £250 prize in one of their Oracle survey draws, so I can vouch for the fact that real people do indeed win.

Another  good one is Crowdology , they have a low payment limit of £4 by Paypal and the payments come through almost immediately.

Power of Opnions have very short (2-3  minute) surveys, the minimum payout is £10 but they take a small fee for Paypal payments, you can get around this by ordering vouchers from places like Marks and Spencer and Amazon.

There are many other reputable survey sites that I use, alongside GPT (Get-Paid_To) and mystery shopping sites. Expect a blog covering some of these in the near future!

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Spotted in Tesco – Violife vegan cheese!

I’ve been doing Veganuary for the past three years. And every year it seems to be getting easier and easier to find a range of decent vegan food in mainstream shops. I was really pleasantly surprised to find Violife cheese slices in my local Tesco, although I had never tried it before it looked much nicer than the usual dairy-and-taste free cheese lumps that they used to offer. Also being soya-free and based on coconut oil I was intrigued!

 

The initial taste of the uncooked slice was not particularly great, not much taste and rather rubbery. However when grilled it has a much different flavour, very much like burger cheese slices with quite a convincing cheesy taste. It is usually craving melted cheese that sends me back to vegetarianism but this time I think I am going to be able to carry it on for a while longer thanks to products like this! It’s a little more expensive than regular cheese at £2.50 for 200g, but I think definitely worth it to make this!

“Cheesy” potato and broccoli bake

Oh the weather outside is frightful….. so tonight I’m making a vegan twist on one of my favourites. Inspired by grabbing a tub of Free & Easy dairy free cheese flavour sauce mix in Holland and Barratt earlier!

Although you can make the sauce with water  I decided to use Alpro soya milk to give it a creamier taste as suggested on the tub. Making the sauce itself is very similar to  making regular cheese sauce, heating it up in a pan and stirring like crazy until it thickens up. And be  warned, when it does thicken, it really THICKENS! So much I had to make a second lot to add to my bake, as the initial 300mls wasn’t nearly enough to cover my veggies!

As I was pouring it over the potatoes and broccoli I had a sneaky taste of the sauce and was impressed by the actual cheese flavour! Although it did leave quite a sweet aftertaste, which I’m not sure whether to blame on the sauce mix or the Alpro…..

After 10 minutes in the oven it had obviously thickened up even more. The final taste test was not bad at all, the thick consistency made it very like comfort food, the cheese flavour was not quite strong enough for me, it would probably be a very good bechemel sauce substitute, however I still found it really nice! Would definitely make this again…

 

Breakfast muffins for dinner

A few weeks ago, a branch of Leon opened up near work. Every morning I see the poster for their egg, mushroom and spinach muffins and think just how good they look. Tonight I made my own vegan version, replacing the egg with silken tofu scrambled with a bit of turmeric for colour (and taste!). Even better than the original?

 

Weekend playlist #2 – Midwest time!

So in celebration of 1. Dillinger Four annoucing their first UK show in over 6 years and 2. Managing to score a ticket for said show,  tonights playlist is Midwestern themed – enjoy!

Oh my gosh – look what I found in Asda today!

Taste test to follow!

RIP Alan Rickman

 

So sad.

Soy, avo and pepper tacos

 

I’m still in the experimental stage of vegan cooking – I think I got this one very right though!

Soak a couple of handfuls of soya chunks in boiling water for 15 minutes until they are soft. Drain them off and fry them up in reggae reggae sauce (or BBQ will be an acceptable substitute)

Add sliced pickles, avocado and chiquito peppers on a soft taco and enjoy. So good I had to eat 3…

Weekend playlist no.1

It’s Saturday! It’s 9pm! It must be time forrrrrr… alcohol and Spotify!

Spicy bean burger time

My first attempt at home made bean burgers went pretty well I think. Half a can of butter beans, half a can of kidney beans and a teaspoon of curry sauce (and a lot of hard work mashing) turned into this..

 

 

I will never get used to that feeling of squishing food in my hands to make burger patties though, even if it is only beans and seasoning…ewww!