Oh, you are so missing out if you don't go vegan!

 We had Broccoli Pasta Arrabiata today;one of our favourites- it is so brightly coloured with the chopped tomatoes and red pepper and the broccoli. It started life as a Jane Sen recipe (her recipes are brilliant, subtle and always beautiful to look at- we stock one of her recipe books in our shop VegaNation at www.veganation.co.uk ), but we've made lots of changes to it, so I'm not sure whose it is now..!
  Here it is, anyway:

10 tbsp olive oil
16 cloves garlic
1/2 mild chili pepper
1 tsp black pepper
grated zest of a lemon and a lime.

Heat oil in  large pan and throw in all of the above, Sizzle and stir until garlic goes brown, but don't let it burn. Do this FIRST.

450-ish g broccoli, cut into florets- steam, or roast, or boil if you want to- more colour and goodness if you steam it.
500g pasta- cook and drain

1 ripe sweet tomato, finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp (or to taste) soy sauce

Quickly stir in all of the above to the pasta and serve.

Yesterday, we had stuffed marrow, using an organic marrow that a friend had grown in her garden and given us. I stuffed half of it with a mixture of vegan cheese, breadcrumbs, a few vegan bacon bits and seasoning,and the other half I did with some of the same mixture to which I then added mushrooms and loads of garlic. I remember stuffed marrow when I was a child as being quite dry, but I made this quite moist and, after setting the marrows in a roasting dish containing water to keep them moist, I cooked them with the stuffing in for about 25 minutes and they were both lovely. I'm not sure how photogenic they turned out, as I've not seen the pics yet, but they tasted really good!

  I spent this afternoon listing some more books in our second hand book section in our shop, including some of Jeffrey Masson's marvellous books about animal emotions; he writes about animals so well- he became vegan while writing 'The Pig who Sang to the Moon' about the emotional lives of farmed animals- and it just underlines how very wrong and cruel it is to enslave animals, steal and kill their children, drink their breastmilk and then kill them too, when their capacity to suffer, something that we've all really KNOWN all along, is so clearly and compellingly documented here. If you want to have a browse through our brilliant collection of animal-friendly second hand books, please visit us at www.veganation.co.uk .