*
Quick! Vego is selling slightly out-of-date Vego Crisp (chocolate-covered rice crispies) for 70% off! And 50% off Vego Chocolate spread which will be out of date in a couple of weeks.
I just had to share this with you because that’s the kind of person I am so Get yours now while stocks last!
Now excuse me while I make a start on Miranda’s box of 60 Vego Crisp bars which just arrived today. Hey, don’t judge me – I’ll share my 60 bars with her when they arrive. Honest ❤
If you haven’t already you’ve got to try Prodigy chocolates! There is no bad here. They are delicious – my favourites are the coconut one and the peanut butter one – they are recommended on the Food Empowerment Project‘s ethical chocolate list and they are PLASTIC-FREE!!!!
Nuf said, right? Help the planet, help the animals (yes, of course they’re vegan), help the cocoa growers, and help yourself! You won’t regret it 😀
So what are you waiting for?! Get yourself a Taster Box, or a Family Bundle, or Value Bundle, or a big box of chocolate biscuits or …. you get the idea with that: there’s a lot to choose from 😀
Oh, I almost forgot – they don’t contain refined sugar either!
Make the world a better place with plastic-free chocolate ❤
ps We’re not getting anything for this you know, so you can trust us. We say it because we mean it 🙂
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – making funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan-friendly children’s books since 2012.
If you haven’t tried Vego you are missing out!
It is chocolatey deliciousness at its most exquisite. It’s vegan, organic and fair trade: pure guilt-free indulgence.
You should be able to find them at a health food store near you but if you can’t, pop over to the VeganKind Supermarket to mail-order them 😀
As well as the whole hazelnut vegan mylk chocolate bar (pictured), Vego make a dark chocolate nuts and berries bar, a white chocolate bar, a chocolate spread, and chocolate nougat pralines. It’s all absolutely heavenly and, the best part – the company is totally vegan owned and vegan run. So you know when you spend money on Vego, it’ll only be used for good things 😀
So go on – do as Reflecto Girl does: have a Vego! 😀
The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular continues from yesterday:
In an effort to reproduce the events of the dream as faithfully as possible, the princess had notice of a public meeting announced as soon as she got home. Then, as in the dream, she asked the people what she could do for them. When they asked for cheaper food and cotton she wrote it all down in her blue book and told them she would do her best. She then returned to the castle and summoned the duke.
However, unlike the dream, when the Duke of Aequitas arrived he brought with him a basket of fruit.
“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing, “please accept this gift from the people of Calidum Terram, with their compliments and best wishes for your twelve month reign.”
The princess smiled and indicated that should place the basket on the table.
“Thank you,” she smiled, “let’s talk trade.”
The princess argued with the duke, just as she’d dreamt, and Aequitas impressively stood his ground. He showed her the king’s decree and she dismissed him. Lady Beatrice, meanwhile, having resumed her miniature stature, was observing to ensure everything went to plan. The wizard could be anywhere, watching, waiting for an opportunity. He wasn’t stupid. He was not stupid.
Suddenly the old fairy was struck by that frightening realisation – “He is not stupid. He’ll know that that fruit is not natural – it doesn’t smell! He’s not going to fall for it!”
By now the princess was slumped over the table complaining about her inability to give the people what they want. And Venustus was climbing in through the window.
Lady Beatrice had to do something!
There was only one thing she could do. She closed her eyes and spoke so quietly that even the mouse couldn’t hear:
“Power of the elements, I call on thee,
From air, earth and water, come forth, help me.
On fruits in the basket, I beg you bestow,
The scents they would have when in nature they grow.”
At the same time the princess was listening to Venustus’s claim that he could get her a better deal.
“I don’t know,” she said, reaching for an apple, “my people are used to top quality produce. I want it cheaper but not if it’s substandard.” She took a bite and smiled at him. “Seriously,” she added, “your stuff can’t be as good as this. Go ahead – try some, then you’ll know what I mean.”
Venustus returned her smile and, with the sweet, mouthwatering smell of fresh fruit in his nostrils, carelessly took a cherry. As soon as it touched his tongue the princess spat out her apple and spoke swiftly:
“sutsunev sutsunev sutsunev”
The wizard’s eyes widened; his sharp intake of breath made him start choking on the cherry; then came a crash of thunder; and he was gone.
“We did it!” The princess was jubilant.
“You were brilliant,” Lady Beatrice told her as the duke returned to the room, “but remember, no one else can know about this. As far as the rest of the world knows – Venustus was never here. There’ll be no public recognition.”
“That’s ok,” the princess smiled, “it’s enough just to know we set things right. Thank you, both of you.”
The following morning, Princess Primrose told her people that she wouldn’t be able to get them cheaper food and fabrics after all.
“I have discovered,” she explained, “that we are already paying a fair price for those goods. The only way for us to get them cheaper would be to cheat the growers out of their hard-earned money; to reduce their quality of life in order to improve ours. And that’s just not right.”
There were some nods of agreement and some grumbles of discontent.
“I thought you would put your own people first,” someone shouted.
“As one young lady said yesterday, my people already have everything they need. They work hard for it, and they don’t have much left over, but they are not short of any essential. Do not the people who grow your food deserve this much? Fair is only fair if it’s fair for everyone.”
The crowd began to disperse and the princess smiled as she noticed Grandfather, still alive, talking cheerfully to one of his neighbours. There were a few disgruntled faces but the princess, understanding her father’s advice now, was not disheartened. As she walked away she overheard a snippet of conversation:
“What is she wearing?! I don’t like her hair.”
“That’s okay,” she said to herself, “I like it.”
And they all lived happily ever after. For the most part 🙂
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Have a great weekend! 😀
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vegan, vegan children, vegan children’s story, vegan fairy tale, illustration, watercolour, fairy tale, children’s story, vegetarian, veggie kids, fair trade
The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular continues:
“But the owl didn’t know his name. Or how to find him. I searched for many years without luck and eventually settled here. And if your mother hadn’t asked me to protect you from yourself; if I hadn’t psychically perused this kingdom’s archives; I may never have discovered his name. Now we not only know that, we also know where he’ll be if you re-enact the beginning of the dream.”
The princess was excited at the prospect of defeating the wizard. “But how will we get him to eat his magic potion?” she asked.
Lady B was excited too. “We know that Venustus takes advantage of the naïve and vulnerable. Now, two months ago King Arnot died, leaving his unworldly son, Albro, in charge. I wouldn’t be surprised if that kingdom is already in receipt of potion-doused produce.”
There was no time to lose. The princess was well known so she dressed in disguise. Then, while she rode to young King Albro’s territory, Lady Beatrice informed the duke of their plan – he would need to be in on it.
Once over the border, Princess Primrose searched for the market place. She needed to make sure that they were indeed selling ‘magic’ produce.
Before long she found the market. Some stalls were piled high with colourful, irregular-shaped, delicious-smelling produce. Others displayed equally enticing goods but they were all uniform in shape, colour and size. And the smell … there was no smell. The unnatural food was cheap and selling fast.
Princess Primrose smiled at the stall holder. “This is just what I need,” she said.
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Ooh, will Lady Beatrice’s plan work? Will they be able to defeat the wizard?
Find out on tomorrow 😀
Unless you don’t want to wait, in which case you can read it now 😀
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vegan, vegan children, vegan children’s story, vegan fairy tale, illustration, watercolour, fairy tale, children’s story, vegetarian, veggie kids, fair trade
The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular continues:
At that moment Princess Primrose sat up in bed. Lady Beatrice was sitting close by, smiling.
“Did you have a bad dream my dear?” she asked.
The princess was dazed. “A dream? It was just a dream? I imagined it all?” she reached for her blue book.
“Well,” said the old lady, “yes, and no.”
“It’s hard to take in, I know, but as you can see from your book, this is your first morning in charge of the kingdom. None of what you dreamt about has happened yet.”
The princess was bewildered. She looked at her last blue book entry and realised that her mother’s friend’s explanation was the only one possible. Relief began to wash over her. Then she tensed.
“Yet?” she asked nervously.
Lady Beatrice explained. “The queen was very concerned about leaving you in charge, given your inexperience and eagerness to please. So I simulated, in your dream, what would happen if you proceeded as she expected. But the monks’ memory rhyme, the fire-damaged arrest record, and Gertrude’s book, all really do exist in the archives. Venustus is horribly real. He just hasn’t come here yet.”
The princess was confused. “But how did you simulate my dream? How did you know what would happen?”
Lady Beatrice hesitated before answering. “Your mother is the only other person who knows this. I hope I can trust your discretion.” The princess nodded and she went on, “I am a fairy, the last of my kind here because the others were long ago poisoned by an evil wizard.”
“Fairies can take any size. When I was a young girl, one thousand years ago, I was as small as a dragonfly. We helped with pollination and feasted on flowers and fruit. It was a beautiful, enchanting, wild life. Then I fell in love with a sailor, assumed human size and travelled the world with him. Being human, he aged much faster than I, and when he passed away I returned home.”
“My exquisite ancestral home had become a contaminated wasteland. Hardly anyone was living there any more so it was difficult to find out what had happened but eventually an old owl, who had been watching me for some time, took pity on me. He described a situation very similar to that depicted in Gertrude’s book, which led to the death of all the pollinating insects and fairies, and the exodus of many other species.”
“Possessed of the knowledge of all of his ancestors, the owl was able to give me some hope. He said that when such a wizard was vanquished, all their evil was undone. But, he said, there was only one way to do it: the wizard must be tricked into tasting his own potion and, while he is doing so, his name must be repeated to him, three times, backwards. Then the world would be as if he had never been born.”
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Story continues tomorrow, but if you don’t want to wait you can read it here now 😀
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vegan, vegan children, vegan children’s story, vegan fairy tale, illustration, watercolour, fairy tale, children’s story, vegetarian, veggie kids, fair trade
The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular continues from last week:
They pleaded with Venustus to let them have the potion on credit, promising to pay him out of the profits from the sale of their produce. Then he tells them that he will sell their produce – as they agreed in the contract they signed – and take his cut before passing to them whatever’s left!
What contract? they said, and he shows them the paper with their signatures on it – the contract had been added above their names.
My goodness girl, there were many there at that moment who could have throttled him but, as the first man lunged, Venustus smiled and said, “Perhaps we can make a deal.”
He ummed and ahhed for a few moments before adding, “Give me your children in return for as much potion as you need,” and while they still reeled from shock he said, “If you starve, they starve. With me they’ll live.”
I swear on my life Gertrude, that’s what he said! Well, according to Elsie, there was no holding people back after that. Many of them flew at the wizard in their desperation at the thought of losing their children, and their anger at having been so cruelly tricked. But Venustus didn’t flinch. He smiled smugly as a glow of light surrounded his body and every strike just bounced off it. He was untouchable.
What could they do? It was too late in the season to sow the seeds from last year which, by next year, would be too old. They had to do as the wizard told them. All children over ten years old were taken to a cocoa farm where they worked from sun up to sun down; slept in windowless sheds; and ate a very poor diet. They were beaten if they didn’t work fast enough.
And Venustus just got richer.
And as if that wasn’t enough for these poor people to cope with, they started to get sick. After eating produce grown from the magic seeds, fed with the magic potions, this normally healthy community began to develop illnesses they’d never seen before. Contamination by magic potions killed the fish in the rivers and the insects of the air and soil. Birds and animals died or moved away. Everything stank.
“Oh stop! Stop!” The princess snatched the book from the duke’s hand and slammed it down. “I can’t listen to any more! It’s horrible! This is the price of our cheap food! This is why my people are sick!” She dropped to the floor, full of remorse, and just sobbed.
“It’s all my fault. I wish I’d listened to you. I wish I’d listened to my father.”
The story continues tomorrow.
Or you can read it here now 🙂
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vegan, vegan children, vegan children’s story, vegan fairy tale, illustration, watercolour, fairy tale, children’s story, vegetarian, veggie kids, fair trade
After giving up refined sugar I got hooked on these things. They are an absolutely delicious, feel-good treat (Pulsin is on the ethical chocolate list) which is almost guilt-free. Almost. Unfortunately they’re wrapped in plastic. So, to avoid that, I decided to make my own – and they are equally yummy, if I do say so myself 😀
I ordered my supplies from the Zero Waste Club – a wonderful new company from whom you can order all sorts of healthy staples without plastic wrapping. The following is my first attempt and it made a lot of bars. In future I’ll halve these measurements 🙂
Ingredients:
First soak the dates and the cashews in water (separately) in the fridge for a couple of hours to soften. Afterwards, drain and rinse the cashews in a colander.
I don’t have a food processor (I used to have one but it broke and I refuse to buy another one which will also break at some point and add more plastic to landfill) so I used my beloved manual juicer to process these ingredients. This is a simple, hand-crank machine made of stainless steel which I believe will last me a life time. I highly recommend it 😀 (BL-30 Manual Stainless Steel Wheat Grass and Vegetable Juicer)
2. Process the softened cashews into mush and add them to the bowl with the dates.
3. Mix the stiff mixture of dates and cashews until thoroughly combined.
4. Process the raisins into mush and mix them into the mixture.
5. Add the cocoa and the cacao nibs and mix until everything is fully combined into a lovely chocolatey mixture.
6. If you don’t want to add the oats, you’re finished so you can spread the mixture into a tin or onto a plate or container. It is delicious now but you won’t be able to pick it up with your fingers to eat it, like a shop-bought bar. You’ll need a plate and a fork coz it’s mushy. So, I added a few oats to stiffen it up. Just add a few at a time and mix them in until you’ve got the consistency you want.
7. When the mixture is the right consistency, spread it onto a lined cookie sheet (I lined it with eco-friendly grease proof paper from If You Care) Flatten it with the back of a wet spoon.
8. Then cut it into bars and chill in the fridge. Easy 😀 
Yum 😀
Little Miss Greylag
Sat on a beanbag
Eating her mint Moo Free.
Along came a rabbit
Who tried hard to grab it
So Miss Greylag went straight home for tea.
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nursery rhymes, vegan nursery rhymes, vegan chocolate, vegan, organic, fair trade, Moo Free Chocolate
This time it’s from good ole Plamil – and they’re shouting from the rooftops about its plastic-freeness 😀
Of course we wouldn’t be recommending it if it wasn’t also vegan, organic and fair trade, but it is, so we are 😀
We also wouldn’t be recommending it if it wasn’t absolutely scrummy. And it is 🙂 so we are!
Mmmmmm, this won’t last long 😉
Get some from your local health food shop now 😀
Here is a scrummy Easter Egg which ticks all the right boxes:
VEGAN
ORGANIC
FAIR TRADE
And it’s not wrapped in plastic!!! 😀
Just a cardboard box with a delicious, foil-wrapped, chocolate egg inside. Remember when they were all like that? Not so long ago.
It just goes to show, there’s no need to contaminate the planet, milk a cow or enslave a child to enjoy a yummy Easter egg 😀
Get over to Holland & Barrett for yours! 😀
Yum 😀
Update 23.11.21:
You can now buy Vego hazelnut chocolate bars (yum yum yum) in compostable wrappers:
And Plamil Cocoa Bites – chocolate chunks (yummy yummy) in paper bags:
Sweet Treats
Doing without plastic doesn’t have to mean doing without.
Let’s get our priorities straight and start with chocolate 😀
The chocolates pictured above tick all the right boxes:
1. They’re vegan
2. They’re fair trade (included on the ethical chocolate list)
3. They’re organic
and
4. They’re not wrapped in plastic 😀
In fact, as far as we can tell, there is only one downside to these particular chocolates – they don’t last long! 😉
Vivani is new to us and we’re so glad we found them. Their chocolate is absolutely gorgeous – I’ve eaten a lot of chocolate over the years and I think I can confidently say that this is the best ever! My favourite is the White Nougat Crisp, no, the Mandel Orange Rice Choc, no no, it’s the Crispy Corn Flakes Rice Choc …. no, I can’t choose between them, their entire vegan range is completely amazing (be aware that sadly not all their products are vegan, but a lot of them are). Check out their whole range here 🙂
The Ombars are gorgeous too – especially for those who like their chocolate rich and dark and nutritious, coz it’s raw 🙂 Everything is wonderfully vegan and look what they say about their packaging:
“Like you, we believe in recycling. So we wrap our bars in recyclable aluminium foil and paper, and ship them in fully-recyclable cardboard. Did you know our button bags are fully compostable? Just throw them in your compost bin with vegetable peelings – within a few weeks the bag will have completely broken down and returned to nature.” (see their FAQs)
We got all these treats from our local Health Food Shop, and we’ve seen Ombars in Waitrose, but if you can’t find them near you, you can buy Ombars online here and Vivani lists their worldwide stockists here 🙂 And of course you can probably find them on Amazon 😉
Ask whoever mails them to you not to use plastic wrapping 😮
***
If you want more than just chocolate in your plastic-free sweet treat artillery, you can make cakes and biscuits yourself. Vegan recipes use oil instead of margarine, which can be bought organic in glass bottles; flour comes in paper bags, and sugar … well, I have in recent years felt compelled to buy sugar in plastic bags because I wanted organic fair trade. However, in prioritising plastic avoidance, I have discovered that I can buy paper-wrapped sugar that is pretty ethical 🙂 I had mistakenly believed that all white sugar had been whitened with bone-char. However, it seems that’s just cane sugar, not sugar beet. Sugar from sugar beet is vegan!
Silver Spoon proudly state their commitment to eco-friendliness on their packets:
“Sustainability is nothing new to us – we’ve been working on it for 30 years. Our sugar beet is homegrown and our bags are recyclable, made with paper from certified forests. We send nothing to landfill and our excess production energy helps to power British homes.”
They work directly with 1200 British farmers in East Anglia who grow the beets which are then transported just a short distance to the factory in Bury St Edmunds (also in East Anglia 😀 )
Not bad eh?
So far so plastic-free good.
Click for PLASTIC AVOIDANCE parts three, four, five , six and seven
We have for many years tried to keep our plastic consumption to a minimum but have found it very difficult when also trying to incorporate other ethics into our shopping habits. For example – it’s pretty easy to buy loose, unpackaged fruit and vegetables if you take your own bags to the market with you, but if you want organic produce, it’s usually wrapped in plastic.
We always recycled it of course but we know that a plastic food container, because of its low melting point, cannot be recycled into another plastic food container. It can really only be downcycled into things like plastic lumber which cannot be recycled again. Glass, paper and tin cans on the other hand, can be recycled ad infinitum. Bottles will become bottles again and again; drinks cans and baked beans tins will become cans and tins again and again; paper can be recycled again and again, and eventually composted.
So, even though we were recycling, we felt very bad about the plastic in our bins. Add to that the worry that maybe the plastic being collected by the council recycling lorry wasn’t even being recycled and … well, let me explain:
I had an email a couple of weeks ago from Avaaz campaigning group saying that studies had shown that most (about 80%) of the plastic in the ocean gyres was coming from rivers in Asia and Africa. Finding it very hard to believe that people in Asia and Africa consume more plastic than people in Europe and America, I was reminded of an email conversation I’d had with someone at Waitrose supermarket. They told me that there was no facility to recycle their plastic bags in this country so they sent them to Asia for recycling.
Well – if Waitrose does it, you can bet a lot of other companies do it too, maybe even councils? And if the UK sends plastic to Asia for recycling, you can bet other countries do too. If the same is happening in Africa that would explain why 80% of the plastic in the oceans arrives there from those continents. The plastic that I diligently put out for recycling might be ending up in the ocean!
It’s all speculation but it makes a lot of sense and the only way I can be sure that I’m not part of the problem is to take control of it myself.
We now realise that the good done for the Earth in growing organic, is compromised if they wrap the organic produce in plastic. Plastic not only litters and pollutes when it’s disposed of, the very production of it is toxic since it is (usually) made from oil.
So we’re not going to pay in to that any more.
We have to prioritise plastic avoidance and hopefully these ethical companies will respond with ethical packaging. In the meantime, we’ll show you our plastic avoidance tactics.
Starting tomorrow 😀
See all our Plastic Avoidance Tactics here
We interrupt this story to bring you a commercial for something very yummy:
Find them at your local health food shop, or if you’re lucky they might have them in the Free From section of your supermarket 🙂 Of course there’s always Amazon, or any number of alternative online shops you can find them in 😀
They’re absolutely delicious and very crunchy, but if you prefer your cookies moist, just dunk them in your tea 😀
Mmm, I think it’s time for a little smackerel of something 😉
Now, these cookies look very healthy, but they don’t taste it 😉
Of course there is fat and sugar in the chocolate, but the truth is there’s only a couple of specks of chocolate in each cookie, so how can that hurt really? If you’re being ever so strict you could leave the chocolate out and I’m sure the cookies would still be lovely, but since Miranda found a bar of Moo Free in the cupboard that we didn’t know we had, we decided we wouldn’t be 😉
To make these nutritious treats, this is what you’ll need:
Preheat the oven to 180°C
Mash the bananas with a fork in a mixing bowl and then add the sultanas (or raisins or other dried fruit) and the chocolate cut into little chips. Mix it all together well.
Put the oats into a food processor and mill them into a rough flour, then add it to the mixing bowl (or you can add the oats without making them into flour) and thoroughly combine with the other ingredients. Add a little water, if needed, a tablespoon at a time, and mix it in to make a nice, moist cookie mixture.
Then put heaped teaspoons of mixture onto a lined baking tray and flatten them with the back of a wet spoon.
Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they are as golden as you like them,
keep an eye on them and rotate the tray if necessary 🙂
And there you have it: delicious and nutritious – they tick all the right boxes!
They’re a lot yummier than they look I promise you 😀
iChoc: the great taste of a clean conscience 😀
Peanut butter, chocolate chip, oat cookies – vegan, gluten-free, organic and fair trade: What more could you want? 😀
I just felt peckish so I raided the cupboard for ingredients and found what I needed:
These are so quick and easy 😀
Weigh out 8 ounces of oats and put them through the food processor to turn them into flour.
Put the oat flour in your mixing bowl and add 4 ounces of sugar. Mix well.
Then break up about 60 grams of chocolate (I used Moo Free) and put it into the food processor with about 3 heaped spoons full of peanut butter, I think (it’s up to you how much you use, I can’t actually remember exactly how much I added this time 🙂 ).
Whiz the peanut butter and chocolate around with the ‘S’ blade for a few seconds until the chocolate is in little chips and beautifully combined with the soft peanut butter. Of course you can do all this by hand, it’ll just take a little longer 🙂
By the way, the peanut butter is unsalted with nothing added – it’s nothing but organic roasted peanuts.
Leave the peanut butter and chocolate to one side while you add about 100 ml of sunflower oil and 5 tablespoons of water to the flour and sugar in the bowl and mix well.
Then add the peanut butter and chocolate chips and mix it in until you have your moist cookie mixture.
This is an oily mixture so you shouldn’t need to grease the baking trays but I lined them with eco-friendly greaseproof paper which is optional.
Put heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto your baking trays and then flatten them with the back of a wet spoon. This recipe makes about 24 cookies.
Bake for 20 minutes at 180°c (in a pre-heated fan oven).
Remove and put on a rack to cool.
Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Ooh, these are good!
Enjoy them with a cup of tea 😀
Congratulations Vegan Mammy 😀
a copy of The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular will be on its way to you as soon as I have your address (tell me privately using contact form on About page).
The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular is available on Amazon, and you can read it here on the Fairy Tales page 😀
This week we are giving away a copy of The Princess Who Liked To Be Popular which is a fairy tale about a princess who, when her parents go on holiday and she is left in charge of the kingdom, makes the mistake of trying to increase her popularity by giving the people whatever they ask for.
You can find the story on our Fairy Tales page, and the paperback is available on Amazon, but if you’d like to win a free copy just comment on this post to be entered into the draw.
We will draw a winner from the hat on Friday.
Good Luck 😀
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!
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:
Vegan noun
Oxford Dictionary definition: person who does not eat animals or animal products.
Our definition: To be vegan means to try to do no harm to all animals, including humans, and the planet on which everyone depends. This means a vegan will do their best to avoid all animal products in their food, clothes and possessions. They will choose only fair trade and organic whenever possible, and will reduce, reuse and recycle to protect the world and its inhabitants from plastic pollution. They will also avoid any activity or practice which exploits or abuses animals, such as visiting a zoo or buying animal-tested toiletries.
Just try to do no harm. Easy 😀
Click here for the V page and here for the rest of the dictionary.
Have a lovely weekend 😀
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
I’m working on the Cs now and was delighted to find that the first word which needed redefining was Cake:
Oxford Dictionary definition: Mixture of flour, butter, eggs, sugar etc. baked in the oven.
Our definition: There is absolutely no need of eggs and butter when making a cake. There are so many delicious vegan, and even raw vegan, cake recipes – some very sophisticated and complicated and some, my favourites, needing nothing more than flour, sugar (or other natural sweetener such as agave), vegetable oil and water. And I do not exaggerate when I say that they taste better than any cake I tasted in my pre-vegan days. But you don’t need to take my word for it, look at oatielover’s chocolate cake and Lisa’s vanilla layer cake or any of the thousands of vegan cake recipes out there – there’s something for everyone. All this typing’s making me peckish, please excuse me a moment while I grab one of the blueberry muffins I made earlier 😉
And talking of Blueberry Muffins – this is how I made them:
I mixed together 8 ounces of organic spelt, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 4 ounces of organic sugar, 4 tablespoons of organic vegetable oil, and about 150 ml of water. Then, when that was all combined into a smooth mixture I added a load of rinsed organic blueberries and mixed those in well. I then generously filled 6 large paper cake cases with the mixture and baked them in a muffin pan at 180°c (fan oven) for half an hour. Easy as pie! Or rather, cake!
Icing is optional but highly recommended 🙂
Don’t fancy blueberries? What about a butterfly cake?
Same recipe, minus the blueberries. When they’re cold, scoop out the top of the cake, fill the hole with icing, cut the cut-out bit in half and stick it in the icing to look like wings.
Anything omnivores can do, vegans can do better! Stick that in your cake-hole Oxford Dictionary!
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 😀
On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me
A little organic pear tree
On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Eight packs of crayons
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Nine unshelled walnuts
Eight packs of crayons
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Ten mince pies warming
Nine unshelled walnuts
Eight packs of crayons
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Eleven reels of cotton
Ten mince pies warming
Nine unshelled walnuts
Eight packs of crayons
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Twelve toys for cuddling
Eleven reels of cotton
Ten mince pies warming
Nine unshelled walnuts
Eight packs of crayons
Seven chocolate buttons
Six Christmas crackers
Five compost bins
Four gaming boards
Three corn pens
Two purple gloves
And a little organic pear tree
****
Click on the pics for links to websites selling ethical, fair trade, organic, vegan Christmas gifts.
I used to make crispy cakes which were absolutely scrumptious but really not good for my health because of all the syrup in the recipe. So I thought, I wonder if I can make these gorgeous treats healthier by leaving out the syrup and substituting dates. Turns out – you can! I am therefore very excited to share with you my recipe for yummy, scrummy, chocolatey, nutritious crispy cakes.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Gluten-free, sugar-free, organic corn flakes; nothing-added organic peanut butter; pitted dates, soaked over-night; and chocolate (this one does have sugar in it admittedly, but you could use organic raw sugar-free chocolate instead if you prefer, I just didn’t have any today)
First get your chocolate melting in a little pot over some hot water.
Drain the water off your soggy dates and bung them in the food processor. Process them to a smooth, moist consistency and place them in a mixing bowl like so:
Then add a couple of generous tablespoons of peanut butter:
Combine thoroughly with a fork and then add your melted chocolate and mix that in too:
When that’s all well combined, it’s time to mix in the corn flakes. Add a few at a time and keep adding them until you can’t mix any more in (ie until the mixture is too dry to add more):
When I’d added all the cornflakes my mixture could take, I tasted it and felt it could do with a little more sweetness. So I added sultanas. You suit yourself:
When you’re satisfied with your mixture, spoon it into some paper cake cases :
And chill until ….. you want to eat them:
Done!
Yum!
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 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;
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!
😉
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!
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! 🙂
Today I ate a bar of chocolate,
Vegan organic fair trade.
For taste, enjoyment and ethics it
Put other bars in the shade.
***
My chocolate went down so smoothly with
A piping hot cup of tea,
Vegan organic and fair trade too,
Happy indulgence for me.
***
Bananas we eat
And oranges sweet,
Are vegan organic fair trade.
***
On porridge we add
Sugar, just a tad,
That’s vegan organic fair trade.
***
The coffee and cocoa
And fruit that we can’t grow,
All vegan organic fair trade.
***
Vegan organic fair trade.
Vegan organic fair trade.
Just make up your mind
To keep purchases kind,
Buy vegan organic fair trade.
Well, that didn’t last long – not surprisingly
I wouldn’t count on it Ted!
I will not eat no choccy that was made by child slaves,
I will not eat no choccy made wiv milk that’s stole from calves,
I will not eat no choccy filled wiv sugar white from bones,
I only eat the good stuff – organic, fair trade, vegan ones!
🙂
Shirley was captured in the wild in 1953 when she was 5 years old. She performed for twenty-four years with the Carson and Barnes Circus, then lived at the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo for another twenty-two years.
Her back right leg was broken thirty years ago when she was attacked by a fellow circus elephant. She is missing a large section of her right ear as result of a fire which not only injured her ear but also left several scars on her back, side and feet.
But, in 1999, at age 51 Shirley was able to retire to the Elephant Sanctuary, Tennessee – HURRAH!
And look at her now 🙂
July 6, 1999
Shirley and Tarra liked each other right from the start! Shirley showed Tarra all her injuries that she received when attacked by another elephant at the circus. Tarra sympathetically inspected each injury and the two elephants caressed each other with their trunks. Fruits and vegetables awaited Shirley when she entered the Sanctuary Barn. Cabbages, oranges, watermelon, squash… all sorts of yummy food to show Shirley how much we already loved her! Tarra squashed the watermelon, then helped herself to much of it.
July 22, 2013
Shirley’s 65th birthday party was a BLAST! Shirley has given us every reason to believe to that we will be celebrating her birthday for many years to come.
Gorgeous 😀
7 year-olds Thomas and Elliot model their new Violet’s Vegan Comics T-shirts.
Want to join our exclusive club and get your picture on here? Of course you do! (Cunning disguises provided!)
It’s easy – just download any picture you like from this site and send it to an ethical custom T-shirt company who will put it on a fair trade organic cotton T-shirt for you.
And then send us a photo of you wearing it 🙂
Violet's Vegan Comics 