Donations for disaster relief in Japan.

  It has been so sad reading about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We have given a donation through the Red Cross www.redcross.org.uk  and also to Humane Society International at www.hsi.org . Everyone knows about the important work carried out by the Red Cross; we also wanted to support Humane Society International who are working with Japanese animal welfare organisations and other international animal welfare organisations to help the animals caught up in the disaster.

   We have been planning a trip with the children to the ancient Roman settlement of Verulamium, a.k.a St Albans, to visit the Roman theatre, the hypocaust, and the Roman museum. We wanted to take a Roman meal to eat so we've been researching Roman foods. Grapes, figs, olives and nuts are no problem, and I've made a spelt loaf shaped like an Imperial eagle- apparently the Romans like funny-shaped bread!
    Unfortunately the snack of choice in ancient Rome seemed to consist mainly of rotting fish, so we had to dig a bit deeper for more inspiration!
   We thought that houmous might feature in ancient Roman cuisine but apparently there is no evidence that the dish is particularly ancient- it just seems old, somehow, doesn't it?
   I read that Romans ate sourdough bread. I've always wanted to make sourdough bread; a friend gave me some sourdough starter a year or so ago but it died. Another friend trusted me with some of her starter and I've had it for about  ten days now and everything seems to be going ok!
   I've been looking on the internet for information about the use and maintenance of sourdough starter and it all begins to seem a bit surreal- people seem to write about their starter as tho' it is an animal, giving tips on 'how to feed your pet': twice a day if it lives in your kitchen, apparently, some people even giving theirs occasional  little treats of sugar. And then, after all that feeding and nurturing and monitoring and anxious hovering, you're encouraged to divide 'your pet' into two, use half to make dough and eat it!
   Anyway, I did all that- it was probably made easier to do because I hadn't had it long and wasn't yet bonded with my starter! So now we have some Roman style spelt sourdough bread ready for our trip. We tried it and it definitely had that lovely sourdough slight tanginess, so although it didn't rise that much I was pleased with my first attempt at sourdough.
 I have given my starter some more flour and water to eat and then, after some time to let its food go down, I popped it in the fridge; it's sleeping in its Swedish Glace tub at the moment and seems fine..


 

Vegans deserve Pancakes too!

   We had pancakes for breakfast today- vegan pancakes are really easy to make. For years they used to be a bit hit-or-miss for us, they just never seemed that reliable. But I've worked on my own recipe and now  we have great pancakes every week. We make them on an iron griddle which is a healthy option as it means that we get trace amounts of iron from the griddle when we cook.
     If you want your pancakes to taste the way they used to, you know, before..then all you need to do is come and see us at veganation.co.uk as soon as we're open- we'll tell you when- and we'll fix you up with what you need.. No, of course I don't mean EGGS! Just come and check out our shop and find the mystery ingredient!!
  
 

Pizza with Nori..mmm!

   A slightly dull start to the day today as no jackdaws to remove from our house- no, I didn't mean that- only joking!
  We had a friend over and had one of our favourite meals-pizza!
  It takes about an hour from starting the dough to getting the pizza out of the oven. That includes making the dough, making the bases, making the tomato sauce, slicing mushrooms and olives, slicing or grating dairy -free cheese, spreading the tomato sauce, sprinkling the mushrooms, olives, capers and herbs, and cooking for just under ten minutes.
   It doesn't take more than a few minutes more to increase the quantities and make three or four extra pizzas that can be frozen to be a really quick meal for another day, so it's well worth doing.
  On some of the pizzas we put one of our favourite toppings-nori! This seaweed, also known as laver, is often used as a wrap for sushi but adds a lovely taste of the sea to other dishes when crumbled into soups or stews or salads or sprinkled on noodles or pizza and it's also lovely straight out of the packet as a snack.
   Nori contains high proportions of iodine and carotene and is also a good source of iron and calcium, potassium, magnesium and iron. The good news is that we'll be selling nori in our shop veganation.co.uk , opening soon. Enjoy your nori, but keep a mirror handy because it can stick to your teeth!!!

Oh no- not another jackdaw!!

  Well, if ever a week was trying to tell us to have birdproof cowls on our chimneys it was this one..

  We have had three (yes, really!) jackdaws stuck inside our chimney this week. 

  The first one was on Monday, through Tuesday. It was slithering about in a full-height chimney which terminated at the bottom in a wood burning stove. We kept hearing jackdaws calling excitedly, and, rather pitifully, several times saw a group of jackdaws peering down the chimney pot calling. 

  We could hear it gradually making its way down the chimney throughout Monday. As it got lower, twice I put one of those things up the chimney that look like feather dusters but aren't- I have a pink leopard print one with an extending handle that I got for Christmas- at last, an opportunity to use it!! I was trying to gently dislodge it so we could catch it- we'd lined the fireplace with cushions and bubble wrap for a soft landing.

   Twice as the bird slithered further and further down the chimney, I managed to grab it by putting my arm up the chimney, but each time it got away from me and scrabbled back up the chimney. 

  We spoke to the RSPCA, hoping that they might have some chimney sweeping brushes that they could gently put up the chimney to help get the jackdaw out the top. They didn't seem at all sure that they possessed such things (they only cost about £30.00 from Amazon..), and because of their triage system we weren't actually able to talk to the local inspector to find out. 

  We spoke to a local chimney sweep who quoted £80.00 to come and sweep the chimney- and get the bird out in the process. It seemed a lot of money, as we didn't actually want our chimney swept, so, instead we went and  bought 48 feet of  plastic piping (why did we think our house was so tall?) and fastened the pieces together with duck tape, and attached some more of those things that aren't feather dusters, so that the end of the piping would be soft.

  By the time we were ready to put the pipe up the chimney, we hadn't heard anything for a while, not since a bout of very intense scrabbling and wingflapping, so we half wondered if the jackdaw had got itself out the top of the chimney.

  By the time the pipe waved cheerily out the top of the chimney pot we realised that the jackdaw was gone. It had cost us over £50.00 in piping and duct tape and fluffy dusters, but it was worth it to know that the jackdaw was safely out because by the second day we were getting a bit worried about it having been without food and, especially, water for so long.

    Yesterday morning something woke me at 6.30. I lay there hearing strange scratching noises accompanied by loud jackdaw calls again. I went outside and looked up at the roof and, once again. there were jackdaws clustered on one of the chimney pots looking down and chattering and calling excitedly. 

  This was potentially much worse because the chimney it was inside was one that led to a bedroom fireplace which was bricked up and plastered over. We went back to the DIY barn in the town a few miles away, and bought a chisel- and then came back and started removing plaster until we had uncovered one brick in the chimney breast. Over two hours later, we were through and had a fist-sized hole in our chimney breast- but oddly, although we had heard scrabbling and rustling from the jackdaw throughout, it didn't seem to be responding to us breaking through into the chimney. When we realised that rubble that we were breaking off was appearing in the fireplace in the living room it dawned on us that we'd just bashed a hole in the wrong side of the chimney!

  The chimney was divided into two internally, with half leading from the woodburning stove in the living room (the one that the jackdaw was in on Tuesday), while the other half lead to the sealed off bedroom fireplace. Today's jackdaw was, of course, stuck in the sealed up chimney, and we'd just broken through into the wrong side of our chimney, which was why the bird wasn't reacting to that at all- it couldn't see us, as it was in the other half of the chimney. D'oh!

   So, at 4 o' clock in the afternoon we started scraping plaster off another patch on the right hand side of the chimney breast, this time! This was much harder because the brick was much harder and less crumbly than the other side, but an hour and a half later we were through. 

  The chimney was absolutely full of twigs from old nests- the pile was two or three feet deep, which explained why the jackdaw had sounded so high up as we were working. We had to pull out all the twigs  which we found a bit nerve-wracking because we were terrified that we'd find ourselves hauling out dead birds in amongst the twigs..I'm very comfortable handling birds- we've had a lot of rescued birds over the years- but I wasn't comfortable at the thought of encountering a dead one in amongst the twigs.

   As the pile of twigs in our bin bag grew bigger and the pile in the chimney grew smaller we could hear the jackdaw slithering towards us until it was standing on the floor of the fireplace just inside the hole we'd made.

   It took a few minutes for me to get a good enough hold of it to be able to gently ease it through the hole with its wings held close to its side and by then it had a very firm hold of my finger with its beak. It was slightly painful, but I've been bitten by crows and jackdaws don't really even register on the scale!

  The jackdaw did look slightly the worse for wear as it had scraped the edge of it's wing; birds have higher blood pressure than ours, I believe, and they do bleed quite heavily. It also had obviously got some grit or soot in its eyes (we had too, by then!), and was blinking and sliding its eye membranes across. We also noticed that in the time it had been in the chimney it had worn its nails right down. 

  We had been working as hard as we could to get it out of the chimney before dusk; it looked a bit stressed but otherwise all right, so we bathed its eyes quickly, gave it a drink, cleaned up its wound and gave it some homeopathic Arnica 30c. Then we took it outside and as it started really struggling, obviously wanting to go, we released it. We watched it circle round and fly away across the fields, all feeling a bit tired but very proud.

  THEN I woke up this morning, and as I woke and heard excited jackdaws calling I just knew that we had yet another jackdaw to deal with. As I went into the room where we had been working yesterday I saw a jackdaw standing inside the chimney and peering out into the room through the hole we'd made yesterday.

  When I went over, it disappeared back inside the chimney and managed to scramble up a way. I gently dislodged it and it landed on my hand; after a small amount of very gentle tussling in a very confined space, i managed to ease it out as I pulled my hand out again, cupped round the bird. It landed beside me, I picked it up, had a quick look at it, gave it some Arnica and popped it out through the window.

  We have a lot of experience with birds; we used to work in an animal shelter and have looked after lots of rescued birds, and for years we had rescued, non-releasable jackdaws and crows living with us. They are amazing, beautiful birds, and we still miss them.
  The children have been absolutely fascinated by the jackdaw they saw yesterday; it's made a big impression on them, and now they are all not-so-secretly hoping that another falls down the chimney- not that they would wish one to be hurt- they just want to get a close look at another jackdaw!  The children really, really love animals and being around them but we really believe in animals being wild and free, if at all possible, so we don't go to zoos.  I'd like to think, though,  that we didn't have to wait until an animal falls down our chimney before we get a chance to be around some other animals! We have a tour of a local animal shelter arranged in the next few days, so that should be interesting.

    Homeopathic Arnica has traditionally been used for many, many kinds of shock and physical trauma; it's really a remedy that everyone could usefully carry around with them because you just never know when you might need it, or come across someone else who needs it.
   We are fully-qualified, experienced homeopathic practitioners and we will be selling a range of vegan homeopathic remedies through our shop at  veganation.co.uk with some useful information about homeopathy, so if you are interested, you know what to do!
    After all, sometimes it's not just Santa who comes down the chimney..

    

  

  

Vegan Fried Eggs!

 We needed a quick meal this week, so after doing a bit of research on the net we decided to make vegan fried eggs. I don't know what they would have tasted like to someone who'd eaten an egg within 20 years but they tasted great to us! They were made of pressed and drained tofu, sliced and fried in margarine, until golden and crispy around the edges- this seemed to be an idea which has been around for a few years but we'd never tried it before. It really worked well, and looked a bit freaky sticking out of a sandwich- had to keep reminding ourselves that it really was tofu!
 We didn't go as far as some people apparently do, cutting the tofu into rounds, thin at the edges etc etc but we did make some yellowish gooey stuff to go on top of the tofu in the sandwich- we had a secret ingredient which we will be selling in our shop within the next couple of weeks, so if you want a really, really delicious but slightly eery vegan experience then please visit our shop  at veganation.co.uk  to buy what you need!

We've started a blog!

Hi!
 We've started a blog!
 We are a vegan family who are setting up an online vegan shop called VegaNation at veganation.co.uk . We will start off fairly small but plan to sell delicious vegan treats, dairy free chocolate, vegan gifts, crueltyfree  bodycare products, homeopathic remedies and some of our favourite vegan-interest books, ranging from Benjamin Zephaniah  to Peter Singer.
  We are doing this because we want to earn a living, obviously, and also because we want to raise some money for Hillside Animal Sanctuary. Hillside, in Norfolk, are currently looking after over 1000 animals, including over 300 horses.
  Two years ago we headed a campaign to save a young Highland steer called Fergus from imminent slaughter because he was no longer wanted at the country park in Cambridgeshire where he lived with his herd. At the eleventh hour his life was spared and, very luckily for Fergus, he was offered a home at the wonderful vegan-run Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Frettenham, Norfolk, where he has lived ever since, with his Highland
friends Pete, Buttercup, Candyfloss and Blondie.
  We were already supporters of Hillside, but ever since then have wanted to do more to help them- they stepped in and offered Fergus a home when he needed one, and we are so grateful for that. Fergus is a very large animal (we are so proud of him- he's by far the biggest animal we've ever saved!!) and he costs a lot to feed and care for- approximately £60.00 per week!
  Now we are setting up our shop and we are going to use our business to tell more people about Hillside- there is a link to Hillside on our website at hillside.org.uk and we have decided to give to Hillside with every purchase made.
  We also want to show what great food vegans eat! We plan to share some of our favourite recipes, and then  you can visit our shop at  veganation.co.uk  to buy some of the ingredients to try the recipes and that will be great for us and for Fergus!
   I guess that'll do for now!