Bloody Butcher Sweetcorn and Bull's Blood Beet!

 We've been spending hours out in the gardening, working in our vegetable patch; everything seems to be disappointingly slow this year so we are having to be very patient!
 We have always had a penchant for unusually coloured vegetables - I think it's because we're easily bored- and this year have surpassed ourselves with multi-coloured chard, red beet leaves, blue radishes, blue, red and purple potatoes, blue and also red sweetcorn and tomatoes in yellow, white, chocolate brown and black!!
 The first Bull's Blood Beet and Bloody Butcher Sweetcorn are now through which is good news especially as Sweetcorn generally grows pretty fast. I'd never heard of either of these before- I'm sure I'd have remembered the names!
  It's been nice to get out into the gardening and check the vegetables, do the watering, plant yet more tomatoes (we're going to need some more tomato recipes!!) etc as we're in the middle of setting up our online shop veganation.co.uk. Today we were listing products on the website (quite exciting!) and also working on the design for the symbol of our business. We have done a lino cut of Highland Cattle which we are trying to incorporate into a sort of flag design to represent a vegan nation, reflecting the name of the business. The Highland Cows are there to represent Fergus the rescued Highland who now lives at Hillside Animal sanctuary and is the inspiration behind our decision to raise money and awareness for Hillside through our online shop. The link to our shop isn't working today but if you'd like to have a look at the wonderful work of Hillside Animal Sanctuary then please look them up at hillside.org.uk.
 
 

Shopping for our shop!

  We've been really busy over the last few weeks, getting ready to open our online vegan shop Veganation; we've been researching stock and making difficult decisions- yes to marshmallows but no to fudge- that kind of thing! 

  These days you can buy a lot more vegan products in supermarkets although not all in the same supermarket so it's always been a case of having to go to one shop for one product such as vegan parmesan and another for vegan mayo and a third to get egg replacer.  And some products can't be bought locally at all; for us it's yeastflakes, black salt,egg replacer, liquid smoke, braised tofu and gluten flour.

  So, we'd like to be able to plug those gaps in vegan shopping baskets, but at this point it's difficult to know whether the things that we have difficulty getting hold of ourselves are the same across the board, as we live fairly rurally and aren't near an independent health food shop at all. 

 So, the idea now is to start off small and hope we get plenty of positive feedback and information about what vegan products people would most like to buy. 

  We will be stocking all our own favourites such as Organica Couverture Chocolate and Organica White Chocolate which is really our reward for being good vegans even tho' we missed milk chocolate SOO much!!

  Our shop will definitely be open within a month now- and this time I really mean it, so please pay us a visit and remember that if you buy something you will be helping to support hillside.org.uk , a vegan-run animal shelter providing permanent sanctuary to over 1000 rescued farm animals.