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 😉
Make your own compost 🙂
Save all your raw fruit and vegetable peelings, apple cores, tea bags, soapnut shells, etc etc
and take them outside to your compost bin (any container will do but make sure it’s got drainage holes in the bottom)
Toss your ‘green waste’ in there, (ie raw fruit & veg waste)
but also add some ‘brown waste’ (such as brown paper, black and white printed paper like newspapers or old paperback pages (no colour print), dead leaves) every so often otherwise you’ll end up with a wet soggy, stinky mess.  You want about 2 parts ‘green’ to 1 part ‘brown’ according to the science 🙂
Then eventually it will rot down to something moist and earthy, just teaming with baby earthworms (I don’t know where they came from) and ready to host your new plants.  Don’t ask me how long this took, I didn’t time it, but it was probably about a year.  We just eventually thought it looked composty and tipped it out of the bin and there you have it.  Click here if you want advice from experts 😀
Now you can pot it …
… sow some seeds in it, …
… and in a few days (this is less than 2 weeks later) your old vegetables will be providing you with new vegetables 🙂
I’d better thin these 😉
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vegan, vegetarian, recycling, home-grown, plant-food, plant-based, health, gardening, growing
Search for the following food items and draw a line through them – they might be forwards, backwards, vertical, upside down or diagonal.  And you don’t have to print it out if you don’t want to – just click on the pic, then right click and save it to your computer, then open it in ‘paint’, or whatever picture editing program you’ve got, and you can draw the lines on there 🙂
APPLE Â Â POMEGRANATE Â Â DATES Â Â FIGS Â Â LENTILS Â Â TOFU Â Â BEANS
POTATOES Â Â SPINACH Â Â KALE Â Â SQUASH Â Â PORRIDGE Â Â PEAR Â Â OATS
CABBAGE Â Â LETTUCE Â Â TOMATO Â Â PEAS Â Â APRICOT Â Â PLUM Â Â LEEK
BROCCOLI Â Â CUCUMBER Â Â CAVOLO NERO Â Â CHERRY Â Â ORANGE Â Â RAISINS
PARSNIP Â Â TURNIP Â Â WALNUTS Â Â BANANA Â Â CARROT Â Â ONION Â Â GARLIC
PEPPERS Â Â CASHEWS Â Â GRAPES
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 🙂
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). Â 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. Â Flatten down so that it’s smooth and even. Â Put in fridge.
Get some lovely vegan organic fair trade chocolate.
Melt it.
Cover your flapjacks.
Put them back into the fridge to set. Â Done!
These are good! Â And just so you know what that means coming from me I’ll be honest and say that I don’t normally like blackberries. Â 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. Â I have previously not even been able to enjoy apple and blackberry pie or crumble with sugar on. Â Just don’t like ’em.
Until now. Â These flapjacks are yum. Â Wholesome, beautiful, wild fruit and I love ’em.
This is quite a momentous occasion for me.  I hope you like them too 🙂
Indulge yourself
Believe it or not – this is a health food! Â 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. Â Bung the dates into the food processor and chop/mix into a gooey, pastey consistency. Transfer to mixing bowl.
2. Â Now put the nuts into the food processor and finely chop into tiny bits. Â Add to the dates in the bowl.
3. Â Add cacao nibs, carob powder and vanilla to the bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork.
4. Â 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. Â (My food processor – which is just an attachment of my hand blender – is very small so I did my mixture in two halves).
5. Â 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. Â Slide a knife under the cookie and put it on a plate. Â Cut out all your cookies like this. Â I made 10 thick cookies out of this mixture, with a bit left over for tasting.
6. Â Then cover them in melted chocolate:
7. Â 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!
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 🙂
These are absolutely as good as they look! Â I think they’re my best invention yet!
Want some? Â This is what you’ll need:
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. Â Drain and rinse your soaked dates and chop them in your food processor, or by hand, until they’re well mushed up and combined. Â Transfer them into a large mixing bowl.
2. Â Add your fresh blueberries and mix well.
3. Â Add as many cacao nibs as you want and mix well.
4. Â 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. Â Then remove your tin of flapjack mixture from the fridge and cover in melted chocolate. Â Chill and cut into squares when set.
8.  Enjoy your gorgeous flapjacks 🙂
I know you will 😉
Violet's Vegan Comics 