Cheep, chirp, tweet, caw,
These sounds we make, and more.
Quack, squawk, gobble, cuckoo,
We’re saying something worthwhile, twit twoo.
****
If you don’t follow, if you don’t know,
What we’re saying or why we crow,
That doesn’t mean there is no reason
For our calls and conversation.
The gamekeeper walks, shotgun in hand,
A frown on his face, he litters the land
With barrels and bags of game bird feed,
With cages and wire, and bodies that bleed.
****
The bodies of animals killed by his gun
Are hung on the tree, one by one.
With hardness of heart, and misery of soul,
The gamekeeper’s is a grotesque role.
****
Day after day, and year after year
He does his job with no guilt and no fear.
What he doesn’t know is that someone is watching
And when the storm comes … his clock will stop ticking.
****
Land Rover won’t start, the engine’s kaput,
The storm closes in as he trudges on foot.
He strides for the castle, to find some shelter,
He’s whipped by debris as the wind rises higher.
****
It’s darker now as the rain lashes down.
The ravens watch the sinister clown.
He’s soaked and he’s angry, he yells at the sky,
And the lightening yells back “And now you must die!”
“Dear Giovanni wouldn’t eat a bird.”
“He wouldn’t eat a bird?”
“No, haven’t you heard?
Lovely Giovanni wouldn’t eat a bird,
Because he loves them dearly.”
****
“Dear Giovanni wouldn’t cook a bird.
He wouldn’t cook a bird
In his restaurant, take my word!
Kind-hearted Giovanni, beloved restauranteur,
Wouldn’t cook a bird, no sir!”
****
“Giovanni has a motto,
I don’t know if you’ve heard it,
He says ‘Don’t hurt friends,
Or friends of friends,
Because none of them deserve it.'”
****
I had fun painting this cityscape and the name for the restaurant, Giovanni’s, just popped into my head. Then, because I wanted to make a post in keeping with this week’s theme – birds – I wrote a quirky poem to go with it. Then I thought – wouldn’t it be great if there really was a vegan restaurant called Giovanni’s? So I googled and, guess what – there is! What are the chances???
Giovanni’s Pizza Grill, 100% Vegan Organic Restaurant, Rock City Rd and Tinker St, Woodstock, NY 12498, United States
The Margherita
The Benedetta
Poppy’s Potato Croquettes
“meatballs” (made with whole grains and seeds) covered in a flavourful tomato sauce with onions
Sausage with peppers and onions
Fantastic tantalising pictures pinched from The V Word.
Click here to read the full restaurant review. Ooh, I wish I lived near Woodstock right now 😉
Thanks Rhea 🙂
STOP PRESS:
Since posting this, Rhea has been in touch (see comments below) and she, in turn, told Giovanni who also dropped us a line (see comments again). Anyway, I thought you might be interested in Giovanni’s fascinating story about how he became a vegan chef which is revealed in his interview with Green Door Magazine, so click here
Hey boy! Pay attention to me when I’m talkin’ to ya!
What, I say what’s the big idea? Don’t stand there gawkin’ sister!
Nice girl, but more mixed up than a feather in a whirlwind!
Pay attention to me boy! I’m not just talkin’ to hear my head roar! Get down, I say get down to Raystede and support the good work they’re doin’! Any of this sinkin’ in???
It seemed appropriate to leave this one ’til now because inevitably people will start thinking ahead to Christmas once September gets here. And really, Big Blue Sky is a pre-Christmas story as opposed to a Christmas story because, since people tend to order their turkeys early, if they’re buying direct from the farmer, it would be good if they read this beforehand.
Anyway, if you fancy a copy for yourself or someone else, why not enter the Goodreads Giveaway?
Good luck 🙂
When Emily was 8 and Eve was 5, Emily said one day, while we were eating tea,
“Eve uses words that even I don’t know.”
And Eve replied, “Yes, like tonsillitis.”
Emily said, “No, I mean real words, not made up ones.”
My husband and I smiled at each other and assured Emily that tonsillitis was a real word.
“Yes, it’s a dinosaur.” Eve agreed.
Once when we were on holiday, Eve was only a baby and Emily must have been about 4 years old, we were in a public toilets, washing our hands, when another lady came in.
Emily said to her, with genuine interest, “Are you a vegetarian?”
The lady replied, “No, I’m afraid not.”
Emily thought for a moment and then said, “Nanny ate fish once but she didn’t mean it.”
My children were brought up vegetarian from birth but when they were very young I didn’t make a fuss about gelatine in sweets that were given to them by other people. However, one day when they were choosing some sweets at the corner shop after school, I decided to explain to them what gelatine was after they’d both chosen sweets containing it. Emily, who was 7 years old then, immediately returned the sweets to the shelf and chose some without gelatine.
I turned to Eve, who was only 4, and asked her “Do you want to change yours or are you not old enough to understand?”
She looked thoughtfully at her sweets and then at me and said,
“I don’t think I’m old enough to understand.”
Thus she made the difficult decision to quit gelatine another day 😉
There was a time, long long ago
When they thought the world was flat.
They worried if they sailed the seas
They’d fall off the end of that.
In centuries past, in primitive times,
They demonized herbal healers.
They’d label such gifted folk a witch.
Fear and ignorance led to murders.
1908, the Siberian tundra
Was struck by a freak fireball.
Theories abound, though no cause has been found.
Was it meteorite or black-hole?
10,000 crop circles in various forms
Have appeared since ’72
Caused by UFOs, wind or rabbits or hoax?
Who knows who knows? Do you?
And now here we are, Twenty-Fourteen,
A much more enlightened era.
The experts tell us as the ice starts to melt,
That we should try to live more greener.
Thoughtful, conscientious, sensible types
Recycle their plastic and drive less.
They walk or take the bus to work;
Use low wattage bulbs; try to redress.
But in 06 The United Nations
Found that animal farming’s the trouble,
Causing land degradation and water pollution,
Gas with high global warming potential.
The experts gathered and consulted and planned
What to do to solve the problem
Of global warming, pollution, disease
Caused by human animal-consumption.
“Urgent action is required,” they said,
“To remedy the situation.”
We need cows that don’t fart, recyclable manure,
And more efficient irrigation!
“Thank goodness for experts!” the populace cries,
“What would we do without them?
When scientists develop unflatulent cows
That will solve the global warming problem.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier,” a schoolboy asked
“To solve that long list of crises
By giving up meat and dairy and leather
And planting more veggies and fruit trees?”
“The experts would tell us,” his teacher replied,
“If there was anything we could do in a hurry.
There’s no need to resort to radical extremes,
Just recycle what you can and don’t worry.”
****
Click here to look at the report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Be aware, you might do a double take when you read that their proposed solutions to the problem are as indicated in the poem. See Remedies including “Improving animals’ diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions”
The Goodreads Giveaway of Where are you going Deidra? has begun!
For a chance to win a signed copy of this paperback click here
😀
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 🙂
****
If you’d like to go for walks in your area, the following are some sites that could point you in the right direction:
and here you’ll find more information about why walking is good for your health:
and here is detailed information about getting enough vitamin D
Goodreads is such fun! I’m really starting to get into it and have just entered several giveaways for new books. I will go back when I’ve finished here – there’s so much to choose from and since it’s free to enter, I might as well have a go 🙂
And while I’m on the subject, our third giveaway is now underway. I intended for it to begin yesterday but I have just discovered that it actually went on at the same time as Edmund’s Lunch, a week ago.
As I write this the Vegan Nursery Rhymes giveaway has 369 entrants; the Edmund’s Lunch giveaway, which started a week later, has 317 entrants; and “I’m not dinner!” has 343 entrants so far 🙂
So if you want it – get in the game!
Pop over to Goodreads and enter.
Click here for “I’m not dinner!”
Click here for Edmund’s Lunch
And/or click here for Vegan Nursery Rhymes
Go on – you deserve it – it’s free! 😉
Two days later …
Why don’t you see what types of wild flowers are in your area?
It would help if you had a field guide like this one, which you could probably borrow from your local library or, if you’re lucky, you might be able to get one cheap at a charity shop.
****
Pictures by Miranda, Words by Violet 🙂
The Edmund’s Lunch paperback giveaway is now live on Goodreads, so if you want it, get over there and enter!
Good luck 🙂
On the advice of the lovely Heena of The Reading Bud, we have joined Goodreads and that has led us to the fun of giveaways!
Goodreads provides authors with the opportunity of promoting newly published work by offering the chance to win a free copy to members who enter a prize draw. Of course we couldn’t wait to join in so we have listed our 5 new paperbacks, one by one, for a giveaway.
First up is Vegan Nursery Rhymes. It’s easy to sign up with Goodreads if you’re not already a member and then, if you would like to try to win a free copy of the book, signed by Miranda and myself 😉 , you can enter here
The closing date for entries is 26th of August.
I’ll keep you posted each time a new giveaway listing of our books goes up and also when the closing date is approaching.
Good luck 😀
We are very excited to tell you that we have now published some of our stories in paperback!
In addition to “I’m not dinner!” and Where are you going Deidra?, we have also published Edmund’s Lunch and Vegan Nursery Rhymes, and Big Blue Sky (A Christmas Story) will be available, as a Kindle book and a paperback, in a matter of hours.
Pop over to our page on Amazon – it’s all there 😉
Take a look at Old Red in The English Family Anderson and have a go at making a model bus just like it 🙂
You’ll need:
some cardboard, a pencil, a rubber, a pen, some paint, some scissors, a ruler and some sticky tape.
First measure out the shape of the bus. Using a cereal box made it easy because I could use the side as the roof (so it already had neat folds). The front needs to be the same width as the roof; make the length at least twice the width of the bus. Mine came out a bit short but you can make yours as long as you’ve got room for on your cardboard.
Once you’ve got the two sides, roof and front measured out you can draw in the details. My bus is open at the back because I want to be able to furnish the inside later, but if you’ve got a long enough piece of card you can draw a back too (see the video at the bottom for how it should all be laid out).
When you’ve got it all mapped out, go over all the good lines in pen.
Then rub out all the untidy planning lines you don’t want anymore.
Then paint it 🙂
When it’s dry, cut it out:
Now you’ve just got to fold it and stick it. If you’ve used a box like I have, you should already have good tidy creases between the sides and roof, but you’ll need to score a neat crease where the front folds to meet the other side. Carefully place a ruler on the wrong side (inside) of the bus, along the line where you want to fold it, and score a line with your scissors.
NB: If you want to furnish the inside of the bus then take a look at this before you stick it together. Then put a piece of tape on the top and side edge of the front of the bus (again on the wrong side)
Then you can fold it and stick it to the top and other side of the bus.
It’s a bit fiddly but you’ll get there 🙂
And there you have it!
I got this idea from Dylan Bryan.
Watch him do it (especially look out for his mum interrupting) I love this video* 🙂
* sadly, Dylan’s video is now deleted from youtube 😦
If you want to furnish your bus, go to Part 2 🙂
Yesterday we took a train ride to the seaside!
Just leaving the station…
Through the fields we go!
Over the hills…
Have a little sit down…
Can you see Reflecto Girl?
Flying high above the houses! 😀
And even more houses…
Rows and rows of houses. And a crane in the distance!
Stopped in a station to collect more passengers…
Here we are!
And here we are in Brighton Station. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. 😀
It’s time you met the beautiful birds of Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare! Raystede rescues and re-homes chickens. They have a lovely big garden to live in filled with places to play and have fun or rest and relax. As well as chickens they have two magnificent turkeys who inspire awe wherever they go.
What are you looking at?
Come closer. I want to see what it tastes like.
Maybe you could take a picture of me looking to the right? I think my left side is my better side. What do you think? Don’t I have beautiful eyes?
If you just come a little bit closer… that’s great.
Are you still here? I thought you’d be gone by now.
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!
😉
Look at this can, and picture if you can
What it would do to Peter Rabbit’s paw.
It’s as sharp as a knife, it would cut like a knife,
And cause bad infection for sure.
This is how it goes, when someone just throws
Their drink can on the ground.
Inevitably it must, succumb to the rust,
Get dangerously jagged and unsound.
Now think of this, just think of this –
What if Mrs Tiggywinkle walked over?
What if she trod, right over the sod
Where this can was hidden in the clover?
Or Tabitha Twitchit, perhaps Mrs Twitchit,
Might be walking her youngsters to school.
Moppet and Mittens, and Tom, her kittens
Could, on this can, cut their feet cruel.
“Oh I wish,” they would say, at the end of the day,
“That the can had never been left there.”
Their feet would sting, as infection set in,
“But humans who litter just don’t care.”
At Raystede they rescue, rehome and provide sanctuary for more than 1500 animals each year. It is free to visit almost every day of the year and very important to their work is their educational service, used by schools in East Sussex and beyond. They also offer guidance to all ages on caring for animals.
They say: “Our Sanctuary, with its sizeable lakes, offers a safe haven for visiting waterfowl as well as for our chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese. We also offer a lifelong home for goats, horses, ponies and donkeys which are no longer wanted.”
This little person is named Sweetpea, and she is sooo friendly and gorgeous! You can see in the background the fields in which the goats can go to play.
Sweetpea again, what an adorable face!
This is Toffee! Isn’t he a splendid gentleman? Here he is standing in front of the stables and next to the climbing frame.
Toffee again – here he is trying to reach for a piece of paper I am holding. I love his beard!
Reach! Now he’s going for my camera.
Mmm! Tasty. He has a lovely soft tongue, he licked my fingers.
Hello there! Rocky is 7 years old. He likes people and scratching.
This is Lettie – she is taller than the other goats, so she can stand on her hind legs and eat off of the trees. Isn’t she so delightfully pretty?
Lettie again, having a good back-rub on the side of the stable
Snowdrop having a good scratch
This is where the goats live and spend a lot of their time.
POSTSCRIPT:
Sadly, while they do a lot of good for some animals, Raystede sells meat, fish, eggs and dairy in their cafe, thus paying for a lot of animal suffering and encouraging their supporters to do the same. A two year campaign of letter writing and a petition asking them to make their cafe vegan has received no response from those in charge who seem to think they are not answerable for the betrayal of their founder’s mission to make the world a better place for ALL animals.
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)
We thought we’d keep a record of where we’d left a calling card.
See if you can spot the cards and work out where we went last Monday – and since this is the first go at this game, we’ve made it easy 😉
The pictures are numbered 1 to 6. By which picture did you first know where we were and what we were doing? And in which pictures did you spot our cards? 😀
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 🙂
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! 🙂
You’ll need:
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! 🙂
New business cards we have at last,
“Hurrah! Hurrah!” we say,
We just can’t wait to slip them in books
Or otherwise give them away!
Eco-printed with vegetable oil based inks on recycled paper by A Local Printer
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 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 🙂
Click the pic
Vegan Nursery Rhymes is now available on Kindle!
Six popular nursery rhymes have been veganised, colourfully illustrated and made into a tiny little kindle book.
So cute 🙂
Why don’t you pop over to Amazon and take a look?
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 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 😉
Violet's Vegan Comics 