Children have good instincts

February 1, 2016

Ilana Kadonoff

Meet Ilana Kadonoff, owner of the Canadian vegan company Sweets From The Earth.

She says:

“It all began with a rabbit.

Yes, the cute fluffy little animal is in a way responsible for Sweets From The Earth. It was the mid-70s, and my dad went out hunting with a neighbor. The next day, the neighbor came over with rabbit stew, and as a 7 year-old animal lover, I was horrified. It was then I declared myself a vegetarian. I began fending for myself in the kitchen amongst my meat-eating family, and learned to love cooking and then…baking.

My passion for food meant that years later when I adopted a vegan lifestyle, I didn’t think for an instant of giving up my love of luscious, decadent desserts. Instead, I decided to learn the craft and science of baking in pastry school, and soon enough discovered that no animals or animal by-products need be used in the making of sweet delicious things. I began whipping up the kind of scrumptious cookies, cakes and treats that dessert lovers everywhere dream about, and in 2002, Sweets From The Earth was born.

Today, Sweets From The Earth makes a full line of original recipe, egg and dairy-free baked goods, which are made all the more delectable by using only the best all natural, 100% plant-based, GMO-free ingredients.
Bonus: You don’t have to be vegan or have dietary restrictions to love these desserts – any old sweet tooth will do. They’re a healthier alternative to your run-of-the-mill baked goods, and you’ll never miss what’s missing from them!

And where is all this yumminess created? In two separate facilities: One dedicated dairy, egg, peanut and nut-free, the other dairy, egg wheat and gluten-free.”

This is a great story of a child trusting their natural good instincts and not being swayed by grown-ups – she reminds me a little of Luke Walker for whom it also began with a rabbit 😀

And look at these for a happy ending:

gluten-free, fair trade, espresso cheese cake

gluten free flourless cashew cookies

nut-free vanilla cupcake

And those are just a little taster. Get over to Sweets From The Earth and see what else they’ve got!

Purezza pizza!

January 25, 2016

By Miranda's Vegan Comics

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Yesterday I went with a friend to visit Purezza, the UK’s only plant-based pizzeria! All their food is vegan, organic and environmentally friendly. I had a brilliant time there! The food was delicious! I was blown away by the fantastic selection to choose from – I can’t wait to go back and try all the pizzas. I had the Marinara pizza, which is tomato sauce, with garlic, oregano and basil, while my friend had the Margherita pizza, which is tomato sauce with cheese and basil. They were absolutely gorgeous!! Phenomenal flavours.

Purezza vegan plant based pizza delicious and wonderful for everyone!

Here you can see the starters and specials – I was very tempted by the garlic bread, I definitely want to get some of that next time! I’d also like to try the Hoisin pizza, and the Nacho pizza!

Here they are! I was so excited by the arrival of my pizza that I forgot to take a picture of it before I started eating! This is the Marinara:

And this is the Margherita:

Here is a slice of mine – it’s really perfect pizza, so thin and soft and crunchy all at the same time.

Once we had finished our pizzas we could not resist the dessert menu! I was just so thrilled by the selection! I was very tempted by the Apple Pie Calzone, the Chocolate Brownie and the Cheesecake, especially as they all come with a scoop of ice cream! But when we came to order, the waiter recommended the Chocolate Calzone, so I had that!

And I was very glad that I did! The Chocolate Calzone is heavenly! It’s a folded pizza with Italian chocolate spread, walnuts and pistachios!!! And I chose to have it with chocolate ice cream. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s a work of art! And it tastes so good too!

It was delicious! I recommend it to you all.

As soon as I got home I wanted to go back. I can’t wait to go back and try everything else on the menu! I hope you can visit them too, and see how wonderful it all is! The staff were really friendly and helpful, checking on us a few times to see that everything was great. The music was lovely too.

Look what I’ve found!

January 22, 2016

By Miranda's Vegan Comics

Check out this website! It’s choc full of recipes and information 😀

New Fully Raw Kristina Book!

January 7, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Commercial Break

October 2, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We interrupt this story for a commercial break!

Moo Free Organic Milk Chocolate Alternative!

This chocolate is delicious, organic, scrumptious, fair trade, delectable, vegan and absolutely yummy!

Find a stockist near you:

http://www.moofreechocolates.com/

Edmund’s Lunch was a peculiar lunch, so everybody said

September 23, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Edmund’s Lunch is available as a little paperback which includes the recipe for his delicious vegan, gluten-free lunch.

It is also one of the stories in the collection Why are you a vegan? and other wacky verse for kids (not including the recipe)

Vegan Children

September 21, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

The ‘Pretend you’re not vegan’ game

September 21, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We Love Potatoes

June 30, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We love potatoes!

Steamed, baked, crispy roasted,

Oven chipped or mashed and toasted,

Now that we have grown our own

In muddy plot, quite overgrown,

We get excited, dig deep down

And pull our food out of the ground.

Story Time # 5: Oliver’s Vegetables

June 17, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Being Resourceful

June 3, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

It got to that time of week again – the day before food shopping. The cupboards were looking quite bare and Miranda and I were feeling very peckish. We’d finished off the last flapjack the day before and there were no munchies left in the house. There must be something I could make, I said to myself, but what? I had no flour left.

But I was determined.

What I did have was some rolled oats, some sugar, some olive oil, some cocoa and some sultanas.

*And this is what I did:

Weighed out 8 ounces of rolled oats and put them through the food processor to make a rough oat flour. Put the flour in a bowl, added 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 ounce of cocoa, a generous load of sultanas and 4 ounces of sugar, and mixed it all together thoroughly. Then I added 4 fluid ounces (120 ml) of olive oil and 5 tablespoons of water to the dry mixture and combined to form a very moist cookie mixture. I put heaped teaspoons of this onto lined baking sheets and baked at 180°c for 20 minutes.

Oh wow!

These are amazing!

Even better than when I make them with spelt.

So quick. So easy.

So beautifully crisp on the outside, moist on the inside, chocolatey, delicious, fair trade, organic,

vegan,

and gluten free 😀

* Adapted from the chocolate chip cookie recipe in the brilliant Unqualified Education

Pendennis Castle

June 2, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I never got around to telling you about our visit to Pendennis Castle when we went to Cornwall last year. I have mixed feelings about castles. On the one hand I love the feeling of history, picturing how people used to live at the time the castle was built. I feel amazed at the architecture and how such big, strong, heavy, impressively crafted structures got built in the days before motor vehicles and cranes.

On the other hand I recoil at the violence they remind me of – the dungeons, the canons, the holes in walls for shooting arrows through and holes above the gates for pouring boiling oil through.

But at Pendennis Castle at least there is one thing I’m not in two minds about – the cake!

Here there was not just one, but two different types of vegan cake! The lemon cake you see above and the flapjack pictured below. I eat a lot of flapjacks and I can honestly tell you that this was the best I’ve ever eaten!

Of course we told the cook how much we loved it and how pleased we were that there were vegan options on the menu and the lovely lady said that they always make sure there is something for every dietary requirement and she invited us to return to the cafe for lunch as she was making a delicious vegan soup.

Hurrah for English Heritage! Very well done 😀

Oh, and the views are pretty nice too 😉

Dairy anyone? No thanks.

May 25, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Story Time #4: Why are you a vegan?

April 14, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Healthy School Lunches – we can make it happen!

April 13, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

This webinar is a great resource for people who want to persuade their local schools, councillors and MP to introduce healthy, plant-based meal options onto the school menu 🙂

Yule Log mark 1

December 19, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I want to make a yule log for Christmas day so I thought I’d better practise. I found a vegan recipe and really helpful instructions at Vegan Good Things but, being both lazy and impatient, I decided to try to make a simpler version. I am very grateful to Leinana at Vegan Good Things for the how to part of the recipe and you should check out her post as she explains it much better than I will 🙂

So, I adapted the raspberry buns recipe from Well Fed … like so:

(Oh, first I preheated the electric fan oven to 190°c)

7 oz organic spelt

1 oz organic fair trade cocoa

3 tsp of organic baking powder

1 tsp of organic fair trade vanilla essence

150 ml – ish of organic Agave nectar

4 tablespoons of organic olive oil

enough organic oat milk (you can use any plant milk or even water) to make the mixture quite wet

Can anyone spot my mistake? Look at the photo above. Well, I didn’t realise what I’d done until I looked at the photo when I came to write this post. Have you spotted it? …….

Yes, I used corn flour instead of baking powder! Well the packaging is exactly the same, apart from the big black letters that spell CORN FLOUR!!!!

Ok, so I mixed all those ingredients together and poured the mixture onto the tin. Oh, I forgot to tell you – first prepare a flat tin by covering it with parchment paper smeared with margarine. See, I told you Leinana explains it better than me.

Then I smoothed it over with the back of a spoon so that it filled the tin.

Like so. And bunged it in the oven for 10 minutes. While it was cooking, I laid a clean tea towel on the work surface and covered that with another sheet of parchment paper.

Dusted the paper with organic icing sugar. When the ten minutes was up, I took the cake out of the oven.

And tipped it over onto the dusted paper. You have to do it real quick. I was a bit too cautious and it cracked at one end.

Nevermind. Then I quickly peeled the parchment paper off the top and, using the tea towel, rolled up the cake. Again, Leinana explains it better, pop over to her place.

Then I put it to one side to cool. Next the icing, and again I kept it simple. Just vegan margarine, icing sugar, cocoa, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and a little drop of hot water from the kettle.

I don’t measure, just wing it and then adjust to taste. I did of course sieve the icing sugar and cocoa to get rid of all the lumps so I’m not irredeemably lazy 😉

When I was happy with it I put it in the fridge. The next challenge was to distract myself so that I wouldn’t try to ice the cake before it was fully cool. And it was taking a long time to cool. Too long. I gave in in the end – well, it was cold on top 😀

And when I unrolled it, it broke into strips. I continued undeterred. Each strip was still curvy so I hoped it would work.

I pasted generous amounts of icing over top of all the bits and then, using the parchment paper, rolled it back up.

Not bad considering. It did slide a bit – it was too warm and the icing was melting a bit but, nevermind. I put it on a plate and covered it in more icing which helped hold it together.

Then I dragged a fork over it to make bark grooves

Then sieved some ‘snow’ over it

et voilà

Then chill.

And the verdict? Despite being made with corn flour instead of baking powder, the cake itself is very nice. The icing makes the log a bit too sweet and sickly for me, although husband and daughter didn’t think so 🙂 , so I think for my next attempt I will use a raw recipe for the icing – that way the whole thing will be sugar free!

I’ll let you know how that turns out on Christmas Eve 😀

Christmas Giveaway!

December 16, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Miranda and I are delighted to be able to give away a new copy of the brilliant Well Fed Not an Animal Dead

Remember I recommended it a few weeks ago? (See here ) Well, I ordered a couple of copies for Christmas presents and got a free one thrown in. So, I would like to give it away to one of you lovely people.

Now, if you don’t already have a copy of this book, you’re going to want one – it’s full of brilliant recipes and vegan lifestyle advice and information – so go on, enter this prize draw!

🙂

All you have to do is comment on this post, telling me you want to enter. We will put the names of all the entrants in a box and pick one out on Saturday, so you’ve got until Friday the 19th of December 23:59 GMT (2014 of course 😉 ) to enter.

This is open to anyone, anywhere. Good luck! 😀

Babs goes nuts!

October 8, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Here’s some we did yesterday:

First preheat your oven to 200°C if it’s a fan oven (higher if not), or 400°F or gas mark 6.

Then rinse the chestnuts, trim off the stem, and cut a cross in the outer skin. If you don’t slit the skin they will explode in the oven.

Get a grown-up to help you with this because it’s quite fiddly and needs a sharp knife. We don’t want any fingers getting sliced!

When you’ve done that you can put your nuts on a baking tray or dish …

We only collected a few yesterday because we’d never tried them before and didn’t want to waste too many if we didn’t like them. Of course you may deduce now that we did like them!

Bung them in the oven and roast them until the skin peels open which should take around half an hour.

While they are warm, peel off the outer brown skin and the inner paler skin …

And you’ll be left with a beautiful, soft, creamy-coloured nut which is absolutely delicious:

Yum!

Happy foraging

Live Right, Shine Bright

October 7, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We are not fully raw; we still enjoy cooked potatoes, and lentils; we have rolled oats for breakfast; we eat tofu. But we do include as much raw as we can in our diet and it makes us feel great. Energised. I love juicing fruits and greens and making them into ice pops. I love frozen bananas instead of shop-bought ice cream. I love raw, and semi-raw cakes and treats which contain no sugar or added sweetener, and no gluten, are actually good for me, and yet make me feel indulgent as they are superior in taste and feel-good factor to traditional sugar-laden sweets. I am excited about all the new things I have learned this year about raw foods and how good they make me feel and I am grateful to so many people who have shared their experiences so that I can learn more.

One of these people is Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram, better known as FullyRawKristina

This lady is a positive inspiration, and though many of us may not be in a position to live as she does – such large quantities organic fresh produce are very expensive – we can each do as much as we can within our own means and feel better for it. For example, I have found that when I tried to be fully raw I got too skinny and simply wasn’t eating enough. Now that I compromise by adding cooked potatoes and lentils, for example, to my raw fruit and veggies, I feel great, am back to my normal weight and still getting a very nutritious diet. I love this video because Kristina encourages us to look at her example, and take from it what works for us. It’s all about experimenting until we get it right and being our own best, our own happiest, in our own way.

Wild and Fruity

August 15, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Remember the No Bake Blueberry Flapjacks? Well, I didn’t have any blueberries so I decided to improvise with something wild – the blackberries are ready!

So many blackberries and we only needed a few so we left plenty for others 🙂

And we saw plenty of others enjoying them.

I did sustain a nasty bramble injury – ouch!

But we got what we needed 😉

*****

No-Bake Sugar-Free Apple and Blackberry Flapjacks

You’ll need:

4 small apples, peeled and chopped.

Washed, freshly-picked blackberries

Fresh dates, pitted and soaked for 1 hour.

I didn’t measure how many blackberries I had but you can tell from how they look on the plate (it’s a small sandwich plate). The dates weighed 200g before they were pitted and soaked.

Put the apples and blackberries into your food processor together and whiz for a few seconds until well blended.

Then add the dates and thoroughly blend it all together.

Transfer the delicious jammy mixture into a bowl – then lick the spoon – mm mmm 😉

Mix in enough rolled oats to make a stiff mixture

and then transfer to a square tin. Flatten down so that it’s smooth and even. Put in fridge.

Get some lovely vegan organic fair trade chocolate.

Melt it.

Cover your flapjacks.

Put them back into the fridge to set. Done!

These are good! And just so you know what that means coming from me I’ll be honest and say that I don’t normally like blackberries. I so want to like all berries – I love the look and smell of all of them, I love picking them, but blueberries are the only berries I like the taste of. I have previously not even been able to enjoy apple and blackberry pie or crumble with sugar on. Just don’t like ’em.

Until now. These flapjacks are yum. Wholesome, beautiful, wild fruit and I love ’em.

This is quite a momentous occasion for me. I hope you like them too 🙂

Luke Walker and the Hypothetical Question

August 8, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Two days later …

Lunch like Edmund’s

July 22, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Remember Edmund’s Lunch?

Fancy a choc-ice?

June 27, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I used to love these

Many years ago I used to love these – choc-ices and Wall’s Feasts – but I hadn’t given them a thought for ages until my friend passed on a brilliant idea she got from The Raw Chocolate Company. I realise now that this is not a new idea, but it’s a good one so here it is:

Get a couple of ripe bananas,

some cashews, or whatever nuts you fancy,

and some raw chocolate.

Plus you’ll need some lolly sticks or chop sticks or similar.

Soak the nuts overnight or at least for a few hours, then rinse them and spread them out to dry on a clean tea towel for an hour or so. When they’re a bit dryer you can put them through a food processor so that they’re finely chopped.

Melt the chocolate.

Carefully peel the bananas and chop them in half. Then lay them on a sheet of eco-friendly parchment paper and stick your lolly stick in them like so.

Carefully peel the bananas and chop them in half. Then lay them on a sheet of eco-friendly parchment paper and stick lolly sticks into them like so.

By the way, if you don’t have any chocolate or nuts you can just freeze the bananas at this stage and you’ll have a delicious ‘ice-cream’ lolly as it is.

However, if do you want the choc-ice, continue as follows:

Put the melted chocolate and the chopped nuts on separate plates;

First roll a banana in the melted chocolate,

then roll a banana in the melted chocolate,

and then in the nuts.

And pretty soon you should have a plate of nutty choc-ices to be. Put them in the freezer for a couple of hours or more.

Et voila! Simply scrumptious nutty banana choc-ices! Perfectly healthy – have as many as you like – and absolutely delicious!

You may be vegan, you may be raw, but you’ll never miss out on choc-ices again!

😉

Celebrate The Loving Hut and life in general

June 10, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

The Loving Hut in Brighton celebrated its 4th anniversary at the weekend and we were there!

Before the festivities got under way, some people competed in a show of strength and stamina. Who will be the last left standing?

Then there were only 2 …

And we have a winner!!!!

Then came the Lion Dance (a form of traditional dance in Chinese and other Asian countries, in which performers mimic a lion’s movements in a lion costume – so says Wikipedia.) There were 2 teams – from Brighton, in red, and from Crawley (including some of the Loving Hut staff) in white.

And of course, in spite of the fact that we are now raw most of the time, how could we not enter into the spirit of things? We had Loving Hut Burger and chips, chik’n burger and chips and Peking style with rice. Yum!

Fantastic food! Fantastic place! Fantastic people!

Loving Hut Brighton, life-affirming vegan cafe, – Long May You Continue 🙂

Oh, and as we set off for home, sadly sooner than we would have liked, we couldn’t help noticing some of the participants of the Brighton Naked Bike Ride, celebrating life in their own way. (Look away now if you’re bashful)

Raw Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

June 9, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Indulge yourself

Believe it or not – this is a health food! Here’s how:

You’ll need 1 cup of organic raw Brazil nuts, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed:

200g or so of pitted organic fresh dates:

3 tablespoons of organic raw cacao nibs:

1 tablespoon of organic raw carob powder (or cacao):

2 teaspoons of organic vanilla extract:

And 50g of organic fair trade raw chocolate:

1. Bung the dates into the food processor and chop/mix into a gooey, pastey consistency. Transfer to mixing bowl.

2. Now put the nuts into the food processor and finely chop into tiny bits. Add to the dates in the bowl.

3. Add cacao nibs, carob powder and vanilla to the bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork.

4. Plonk the whole mixture back into the food processor and process again so that your thick, sticky, soft, heavy mixture is thoroughly and smoothly combined. (My food processor – which is just an attachment of my hand blender – is very small so I did my mixture in two halves).

5. Now pile up your cookie mixture onto a smooth worktop and spoon out enough to make one cookie, press it flat on top with a knife and cut out your cookie. Slide a knife under the cookie and put it on a plate. Cut out all your cookies like this. I made 10 thick cookies out of this mixture, with a bit left over for tasting.

6. Then cover them in melted chocolate:

7. Then chill:

8. Indulge in your health food

Don’t forget, the Brazil nuts in these are packed with selenium, an essential trace mineral which is a powerful antioxidant that combats the damage that free radicals cause in the body, and it can improve cardiovascular health and fight cancer as well. It also plays a role in thyroid health, assisting with the metabolism of iodine and the production of critical thyroid hormones.

Just google it or see here for more info 🙂

So go on – get this health food down you!

Chocolate Intermission

May 27, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We found some more! Delicious and healthy organic raw vegan chocolate by Raw Living

I chose the Hi Crunch with scrummy goji berries and hemp seeds in, and Miranda chose the White Magic fudge bar. We were both happy with our selections.

And the thing that made me especially happy to find these guys is that there was NO PLASTIC WRAPPING! NONE!!! Just like they used to be in the olden days, these treats were harmlessly wrapped in foil and paper. Well done Raw Living, we are very impressed.

So why not check out Raw Living website and see what you fancy 🙂

Can it get any better than this????

May 23, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Raw. Vegan. Organic. Ethically traded. Conscious Chocolate.

This is heavenly. So virtuous, yet so indulgent. So delicious, yet so satisfying – ie you don’t need to eat the whole bar at once, you can savour it and make it last.

And so many flavours to choose from (this isn’t all they’ve got by the way – look here) – I had to order a few to see what my favourite is …. and I’ve decided that it’s ….

… the orange! Definitely! Gorgeous! The plain is perfect for melting onto my flapjacks, but for eating on its own, the orange is definitely me favourite … although –

the mint is fantastic. Just one piece of this after a meal makes the perfect after dinner mint. Oh yes, it’s the mint, the mint is my favourite, I’m certain … but then, the goji and coconut, mm mmm, that’s gorgeous too, I love the berries mixed with the chocolate and the coconut, the different textures and flavours that go so well together. And what about the cheeky cherry? Cherries and chocolate, how could that not be a winner? Oh, I don’t know …

No, it has to be this one! The Nutty One – how could anything rival chocolate nuts? I’ve always loved nutty chocolate, it’s an old favourite, since forever. But then, the other flavours are new to me, and equally delicious so I shouldn’t give priority to ‘old favourites’ ….

There’s only one thing for it – I have to declare that I cannot choose a favourite! Where Conscious Chocolate is concerned, variety is definitely the spice of life and I will continue to indulge in them all.

I highly recommend you do the same! 🙂

EAT ORGANIC

May 18, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

“You are what you eat” No 2

May 16, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Raw Chocolate Nut Truffles

May 14, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

You’ll need:

1 cup of organic raw almonds (soaked over night; thoroughly rinsed, then spread on a clean tea towel to dry for a couple of hours)
200g pitted fresh dates (soaked for 2 to 3 hours)
1 tablespoon of raw cacao or carob powder
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
Some sultanas
60g of raw melted chocolate

1. In a food processor/chopper/mixer process the dates and then transfer them to a mixing bowl.

2. Then process the almonds until finely chopped and add to the dates in your bowl.

3. Add the cacao/carob, vanilla, as many sultanas as you fancy, and the melted chocolate and mix with a spoon until thoroughly combined.

4. Then return the mixture (a bit at a time if necessary) to your food processor and process together briefly until you have the right truffle consistency.

5. Finally, with a teaspoon spoon little truffles onto a plate and decorate with walnuts (if you like)

Will keep in the fridge for a few days.

It’s as simple as that!

Absolutely scrummy! 🙂

Lentil Burger with mushrooms and leeks

May 11, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

If a husband does not want

To eat his food all raw

It’s nice to give him a surprise

So he smiles even more.

***

To this end I made for mine,

A gluten-free bread roll,

Lentil burger with mushrooms and leeks,

To put into his cake-hole!

Loving the Loving Hut

May 8, 2014

By Miranda's Vegan Comics

Loving Hut, The Level, Brighton, UK

You know we love the Loving Hut,

We’ve told you all before,

There really is no bad there,

We just want more and more.

Loving Hut Londýnská

Loving Hut San Francisco

Loving Hut, Edgware, UK

Loving Hut, Jogjakarta, Indonesia

Loving Hut Honolulu, South King St

Loving Hut, Paris

LovingHutExpress, Vancouver

Loving Hut Seoul, South Korea

Loving Hut, Guangfu Taiwan

Loving-Hut-Vegan Milpitas-CA

Find out here if there’s one near you 🙂

No-Bake Blueberry Chocolate Flapjacks

April 30, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

These are absolutely as good as they look! I think they’re my best invention yet!

Want some? This is what you’ll need:

200g of fresh dates (pits removed and soaked for 2 to 3 hours)

200g of organic fresh dates (pits removed and soaked for 2 to 3 hours)

125g of organic fresh blueberries

organic raw cacao nibs (optional)

organic jumbo oats

vegan organic fair trade chocolate – raw if you’ve got it

1. Drain and rinse your soaked dates and chop them in your food processor, or by hand, until they’re well mushed up and combined. Transfer them into a large mixing bowl.

2. Add your fresh blueberries and mix well.

3. Add as many cacao nibs as you want and mix well.

4. Put the whole lot back into the food processor and chop/mix it into a smooth, wet, really quite runny, mixture.

5. Return it to the mixing bowl and add oats. Keep adding oats and mixing until you have a stiff flapjack mixture. Then put the lot into a flat tin, lined with non-toxic parchment paper, and press it with the back of a spoon so that it fills the tin and is uniformly flat and smooth.

6. Put your flapjacks in the fridge while you melt your chocolate. Put some very hot water into a large bowl; break your chocolate into small pieces and put them in a small bowl; put the small bowl to float in the hot water; don’t get water in the chocolate. Your chocolate will melt quite quickly – keep an eye on it 🙂

7. Then remove your tin of flapjack mixture from the fridge and cover in melted chocolate. Chill and cut into squares when set.

8. Enjoy your gorgeous flapjacks 🙂

I know you will 😉

When I was a young child …

April 25, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

When I was a young child

An omnivore diet I ate.

I wasn’t very adventurous,

The same few things appeared on my plate.

I liked to eat egg, chips and beans,

Or sometimes sausage and mash.

Occasionally I’d have fish fingers and peas,

Or maybe corned beef hash.

***

I didn’t like many vegetables,

Only peas, baked beans and carrots.

No one could make me eat my greens,

I’d never even heard of shallots.

***

My range of fruit went as far as apples,

Bananas, an orange at Christmas.

I preferred to eat biscuits and cakes and bread,

Peanuts and crisps, not citrus.

***

When I went veggie I ate lots more eggs

And cheese instead of the flesh foods.

Fat and more fat, cholesterol and fat,

But rarely increased the plant foods.

***

Now that I’m vegan, when they say to me,

“My goodness, what do you eat?”

I take a deep breath as I smile to myself

And happily repeat:

“I eat lettuce and spinach and onions and leeks,

Mushrooms and cabbage and beetroot;

Tomatoes and chard and purslane and sprouts,

Alfalfa and clover and bean shoots.”

“I eat mangos and apricots, pineapples and pears,

Almonds, sultanas and cashews;

Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries,

Dates, prunes, avocados.”

My diet today is the most varied it’s been

Ever before in my lifetime.

High nutrition I get from my living food,

Not to mention the taste which is sublime!

Raw Vegan Chocolate Mousse Cake

Raw vegan chocolate cake with ganache frosting

raw-vegan-pizza-recipe skinnylimitsdotcom

Raw vegan pizza from skinnylimits.com

Raw vegan lasagne

Don’t miss out!

April 15, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I’ve said it before

And I’ll say it again

You don’t miss out

When you’re raw vegan!

Recipes adapted from Basic Formula for Nut Burgers and Basic Formula for Candy, page 147 of 12 Steps to Raw Foods by Victoria Boutenko

Raw Chocolate Cake at Infinity Foods Cafe

April 14, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

It was calling to me

Like it had called me before,

But that’s ok,

’cause it was totally raw!

Infinity Foods Cafe, Brighton

Saturday April 12th

April 12, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

It’s National Licorice Day!

Here’s something for ya! Click the pic for the recipe.

Raw Carrot Cake

April 7, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

In celebration of …. life!

This is my modest version of Fully Raw Kristina’s Birthday Carrot Cake

I didn’t have all the ingredients on her list, nor the equipment (Vitamix and food processor) so I made do with what I had and made my own version. Making raw recipes is a great idea for children to be able to do on their own or with little supervision because there’s no hot oven to worry about and, in the case of using these manual tools, there’s no sharp blades either.

Hand-crank BL30 manual juicer with different screens and hand-crank whisk.

For the base:

2 cups of carrot juice pulp

1 and a half cups of sultanas

Half a cup of medjool dates

Half a tablespoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

For the icing:

1 and a half cups of raw cashews (soaked for 3 hours -or overnight- in the fridge)

Half a cup of filtered water

Half a cup of medjool dates

1 tablespoon of fresh pineapple juice

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Now, if you have a blender and a food processor, you can follow Kristina’s instructions, but if, like me, you’re making do without, here’s how I suggest you continue 😉 :

First put the carrots through the juicer and collect the pulp. Put 2 cups full of pulp into a mixing bowl.

Then take the juicer apart, rinse it and put it back together, replacing the holey screen with the smooth one. Put the sultanas, followed by the dates (after you’ve cut out the pits) through the juicer. These come out as a stiff, sticky rope of fruity goodness.

Add the mushed sultanas and dates to the carrot pulp and mix well. Your food processor is your arm and a large fork. Really get stuck in and combine that stuff! It’s not easy – I had to sit down! – but think how much you will have earned that cake when you’ve finished! 🙂

Then add the cinnamon and vanilla and mix well. When you’ve got a moist mixture with all the ingredients and flavours well-combined you’re ready to mould it into a cake shape.

Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit the removable bottom of your cake tin. Then cut a rectangular piece to line the sides of the tin. Spoon your mixture into the lined tin and press it down so that it fills the bottom evenly. Place the tin in the freezer for an hour to help the cake set in this shape. While it’s setting, wash up your juicer and bowl and everything so that you can use it all again to make the icing.

Put a little fresh pineapple or lemon if you’ve got it, through the juicer (using the holey screen) and put aside 1 tablespoon of juice. Then change to the smooth screen and put your soaked cashews through the juicer (after draining and rinsing with fresh filtered water). Put the mushed cashews into your mixing bowl.

Put your pitted dates through and add the resultant sticky rope to the cashews. Mix well -and again this is going to require some effort – with a fork. Add half a cup of filtered water, plus 1 tablespoon of the juice you made and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. Mix it all well with your fork. You will notice it’s not as smooth as Kristina’s but as long as you’ve got all the flavours well combined it will taste just as delicious. To make it as smooth as possible I also gave it a good whisk with my hand-crank whisk.

Put this mixture into the fridge and wait until your cake has been in the freezer for a full hour.

Now, this is the exciting bit where you see all your hard work come together:

Take your tin out of the freezer and carefully push the base of your tin up to remove the cake. Slide the paper off the base of the tin and onto a plate. Your cake should now be standing proudly, unsupported, on your plate.

Take your soft nutty icing out of the fridge and cover your cake. Add decorative nuts or fruits if you like.

And that’s it! 😀

Slice it carefully, and then remove each slice with a pie-slice (triangular thing) if you’ve got it, and share it with lucky family and friends. Keep what’s left, if any, in the fridge.

This is delicious and incredibly sweet – though my family says “absolutely not too sweet!”

And I can now confirm that it tastes even better on day 2, and sooooo good on day 3. After that it was all gone 😉

Marigold Marigold

April 5, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Marigold Marigold

Calendula Officinalis,

I planted you for bees,

But for me you have uses.

In salad for food

Or poultice for sting

I welcome the positive

Stuff that you bring 🙂

Spinach

April 4, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

There’s little spinach

Growing here.

It’s so exciting,

This time of year!

Sc-raw-umptious!

April 1, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

A cake is a cake

That you could make

And it’s unhealthy

Make no mistake

Unless it’s a cake

That you don’t bake

Made from fruits and nuts still raw!

My first attempt at making raw cake and it’s deeelicious if I do say so myself 😉

*************

Having just finished reading 12 Steps to Raw Foods by Victoria Boutenko, I couldn’t wait to have a go at making raw cake. At the back of the book are some really useful recipes which are designed to be adapted to suit your own tastes so, using the Generic Cake Recipe, I had a go.

For the chocolate base I combined 1 cup of ground walnuts, 1 tablespoon of flax oil, 1 tablespoon of agave nectar, and half a cup of cocoa (that should have been raw carob powder but I don’t have any of that yet).

This made a stiff, damp mixture which I formed into a cake shape on the plate.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of fruit (banana in this case), half a cup of ground cashews, and half a cup of fresh coconut. I put all these through my manual juicer (using the smooth screen) so that they were all ground and mushed, and then I mixed them together with a fork.

Then I spooned the topping onto the base and put it in the fridge to chill. So easy.

Now I’m off to have another piece! 🙂

How about a strawberry one?

For the strawberry version I just omitted the cocoa from the base and added a teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of mushed strawberries, half a cup of ground cashews, (both of these were put through the manual juicer as above) and 1 tablespoon of agave nectar.

And voila:

Green Smoothie Magic

March 28, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

This looks fun!

I am a big fan of the Boutenko family, having 3 of their books already, (and currently enjoying 12 Steps to Raw Foods) so when I discovered that Victoria has also made a few books for children, I just had to share.

In Green Smoothie Magic, beautifully illustrated by Katya Korobkina, Victoria tells a delightful story about a six year old boy who learns about the magic of greens.

Green Smoothie Magic is available from the Raw Family website and on Amazon where you can look inside 🙂

Vegan Food

March 18, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Vegan food hot

Vegan food cold

Vegan food never gets

Nine days old.

Some like it hot

Some like it cold,

It’s just too good to leave until

It’s nine days old.

Make some sugar-free jam – you know you want to!

March 2, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

If you want jam but not sugar (nor other added sweetener either) then this is the recipe for you!

In the inventor’s own words “This recipe for strawberry jam does take some time to make in the absence of sugar or a natural sweetener, but the end result is pure strawberry goodness. It is definitely sweet enough and has an amazing buttery smooth and creamy consistency. I guarantee that if you like fresh strawberries, you will love this recipe.”

So go on, pop over to this website – Living Healthy with Chocolate dot com – and give it a go!

I know I’m going to! 🙂

Old MacDonald had a farm …

February 8, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had no animals,

E-I-E-I-O

With a crop field here and a crop field there,

Here a crop, there a crop,

Everywhere a lot of crops.

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

****

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he grew some peas,

E-I-E-I-O

With snow peas here and chick peas there,

Yellow peas, maple peas,

Lovely green organic peas.

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

****

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he grew some beans,

E-I-E-I-O

With mung beans here and navy beans there,

Black beans, pinto beans,

Kidney beans and runner beans.

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

****

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he grew some greens,

E-I-E-I-O

With lettuces here and cabbages there,

Collard greens, spinach leaves,

Kale and chard and mustard greens.

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

****

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he grew good food,

E-I-E-I-O

With no animal slaves and no chemicals sprayed,

Healthy veg in healthy soil,

Bees and hedgerows thrived withal.

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

Put it on your veggie burger!

January 18, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Chips

March 23, 2013

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I AM VEGAN

Strawberries

March 15, 2013

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I AM VEGAN

5 Reasons Strawberries Are Good For You

1. They are high in antioxidants. They’re rated the fourth highest in antioxidants out of all the fruits, only to be beaten by blackberries, cranberries and raspberries. Antioxidants play a role in keeping our cardiovascular system in tip top shape

2. They’re a great source of vitamin C, which plays a large part in keeping our immune system strong and healthy. Vitamin C can also help fight stress.

3. Strawberries contain magnesium, a mineral that helps our body produce energy and maintain strong bones and healthy teeth.

4. Because they contain potassium, strawberries can help your muscles and nerves function properly, lower your risk of high blood pressure and can help your body maintain healthy electrolyte levels.

5. Given their high antioxidant and anti inflammatory benefits, strawberries are considered a cancer-fighting food.

Oooh, can’t wait til summer – bring on the strawberries! 🙂