There are NO Winners in the Weekly Shopping List War!

  As I write this we are in the middle of the weekly war of attrition known as 'Planning Next Week's Meals'.. The tension is heightened by the fact that Vegan MoFo starts tomorrow so we want to use the opportunity to flex our vegan cooking muscles a little but given the various constraints in place, I'm not sure that's going to be possible.!
  We HATE HATE HATE planning the meals for next week- it always takes us absolutely ages, and ruffles a lot of feathers because no-one gets exactly what they want! Ideally, in choosing a meal we would select a dish that all five of us like, but at last count there were actually only FOURTEEN of those- I say 'only' fourteen but I'm really not sure whether that is a big number or a small number- what is the 'usual' number? What is YOUR number?  Fourteen is the number of meals enjoyed by 'Pony', our child with the most limited range of 'likes'; so that's where the crunch always comes: if we want everyone to be eating the same food then we really need to eat one of 'The Fourteen', but, unfortunately, even though we all officially like these meals, everyone except Pony is heartily sick of them, by now. This means that every week is a mixture of items from The Fourteen; a couple of completely new dishes, always with another meal for the children in case they don't like the new meal; and some meals that some of us like but not others, so we always have to cook another meal alongside it for the 'non-believers'.
   We have a recipe folder with all our recipes in, classified using a star system- five stars means that it's one of The Fourteen- all five of us eat it , two stars means we never bother to cook it as it's too depressing having three people refusing to eat it! It's not entirely logical, as it's obviously no more trouble to cook for two and also prepare a backup meal for three than cooking for three and doing a 'backup' meal for two, but we just never do cook meals that are down to only two stars- so that's a no for lovely Jambalaya, fragrant Indian Spiced Rice, Isa's amazing Tofu Benny and surprisingly lovely Asian Baked Tofu..sigh.
  So, there is quite a lot of stress associated with making those choices- meals are vetoed, and other meals then vetoed in counter-moves which can only be seen as retaliatory e.g. if you won't let me have African Sweet Potato Stew then I'll make sure that you, in turn, don't get to have Broccoli Pasta Arabiata..! Alliances are formed, pushing for Mediterranean Pasta Salad, fiercely opposed by the champions of Tomato and Pinenut Linguine; the Linguine dish is denounced as being too expensive for the budget this week because of the exorbitant cost of pinenuts, but the Linguine-ites point out that we are going out immediately after lunch on the day on which we plan to have the meal in question, so shouldn't really plan a meal which, if not eaten carefully, will stain the children's clothes..
  Sometimes, we think we are safe with something and then it suddenly turns out that something else has dropped off the list of Pony's likes; rhubarb crumble one week, all flavours and makes of  soya dessert another week- sometimes it's a total ambush as it's something which she has happily eaten a few days previously, so it can be really frustrating at times.
  This year, we decided that we'd do Vegan MoFo- the month-long vegan blogging event and we're going to be giving the low down about what this family of passionate abolitionist vegans really eats! We've never documented our own eating habits before like this so we will be as keen as the rest of you to learn just how many times we were actually able to all enjoy the same food- and how many times we resorted to beans on toast or potato waffles!
  This is not meant to be a downbeat or negative MoFo blog.. Obviously if you are vegan, you can't just resort to an omelette or scrambled egg (or, apparently, scrambled tofu, as of this week...(sigh)), but this 100% isn't about us wishing to do that.. we eat great food, we love cooking delicious vegan meals and finding, adapting and creating new recipes and we're just going to be doing our best to search for more of those elusive * * * * * meals!!

Games That Vegan Kids Play!

  At VegaNation this week, we have been very moved by the efforts of lots of good, caring people in the U.S.who are working very hard to get animals out of shelters with very high kill rates. We have contributed to several ChipIn funds to sponsor pups so that they can be rescued from the shelters where they are in imminent danger of being destroyed, and then we have been waiting anxiously for news of the pups, waiting for someone to volunteer to collect them, and foster or adopt them. These dogs are at shelters in the U.S where they will be killed just to make room for fresh intake. They are sweet, friendly, eminently adoptable dogs (really virtually any animal is adoptable- you just have to find the right home for them) who have just had the misfortune to be dumped in a shelter whose policy is to kill them rather than to find homes for them, even tho' the work of all these good people working hard to save them shows that there are good loving homes out there.
   Benji, a lovely black sheepdog in Bulgaria who needed an operation on the savaged stump of his leg, is one of the dogs to whose ChipIn funds we donated, and we were very relieved to learn that Harvey and Haley, two sweet pups we donated for will not now be killed this week but will be starting their new lives this weekend!
  We try not to expose our children to too much scary and upsetting information- they are very young and care very much about animals, so we don't want them to be distressed; it's easy enough for adults to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of animal suffering. The children know that we've been donating to help dogs in shelters in the U.S. and they know that the dogs are in danger but they're hazy on the details. They don't know about the gas chambers, or the dog in a U.S. shelter that was given a supposedly lethal injection and then taken to the dump WHILE STILL ALIVE (later apparently given more 'medicine' and finished off), or the dog that was given a lethal injection and then put into the freezer while he was alive- this one was given a second chance. They don't know about the dog killed NINE minutes after entering a shelter (not likely to find a loving new home in THAT time, was he?) or all the cats killed on entry for no other reason than because they were BLACK. They don't know about the dogs who are killed because they guard their food; food which in many cases is the first meal they've had in days. Or all the thousands of cats killed simply because they are older or shy or feral.

   But they do know about compassionate caring animal shelters because our family volunteers to spend time with the cats at a wonderful shelter called Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk ); they do know about feral cats- there are lots at Feline Care, and they know about spaying and neutering.. and fleas!
   Ourr children are very impressionable and, sooner or later, anything with which we are involved shows up in their games. Today, they have been playing 'Animal Rescue': there are vets and quad bikes and land rovers and cat baskets and feeding bottles all over the living room floor. I keep hearing stirring tales about puppies with sore paws rescued from 'bad' shelters and taken to safety, a cat flown in a plane to a new home (www.pilotsnpaws.org)  and ''a cat with only one eye which has been rescued and taken to a rescue centre where she has been de-flea-ed (sp?) and spayed and 'de-feralled' and then found a lovely new home!''.
  All the vet dolls are busily involved, although some of them keep sneaking off and reappearing with increasingly wild and wacky hairstyles; supervet Dandelion Blogstar's latest hairstyle is my favourite: she has a unusual 'messy up-do' secured with a safety pin and with what might appear to be a bone running through it, Pebbles Flintstones-style, but is, apparently, ''a syringe so that if she finds a little kitten that needs a feed she can give it a feed, and then put the syringe back in her hair''! Great idea- we should all do that!
  If you have any money left after donating to Marion County puppies' ChipIn funds, and Pilots N Paws (you MUST watch some of their videos!), then please visit VegaNation, our 100% vegan shop, www.veganation.co.uk - we have marshmallows!

We're Signing Up for Vegan MoFo 2011!

  We're feeling daunted but excited about signing up for vegan MoFo 2011. Inspired by  NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Vegan MoFo is a month devoted to blogging about vegan food. There has been much discussion at VegaNation about what our theme should be. We love to try new vegan recipes and love looking through recipe books and the internet for new recipes; we've found a lot of ideas on VegWeb and Food.com, but, and it's a big but, one of our children has quite a narrow range of meals that she likes and often doesn't like new foods that we try, so there is often quite a gap between the food we'd LIKE to eat and the food we actually DO eat! So, rather than writing a high-falutin'  blog about vegan aspirational bliss, we think that what we'll actually be writing about will be what this particular vegan family REALLY eats! That means we  have to slightly curb our vegan spirit of adventure, but that's simply a reflection of what happens in daily life; we always have to have a 'safe' option for those whose tastes don't extend as far as Jambalaya, Tofu Bennie, or Broccoli in Sweet Garlic Sauce. So, we're thinking that for MoFo we will aim to try an agreed number of new foods each week and see what we all think of them, and for the rest of the week, we will be playing it safe..
  For this purpose, our children will need to have slightly more of a presence in the blog than usual so they have decided to assume dedicated 'MoFo names', so we will be blogging about the gastronomical adventures through the month of October, of those discerning vegan foodies Fin, Pony and Mouse! We hope you enjoy reading our MoFo blog and counting the number of times we resort to Potato Waffles..!!
  On a completely different subject, one of our lovely customers through Twitter sent us a photo of her dog Dewey excitedly examining the parcel she received from our shop VegaNation  (www.veganation.co.uk) this morning and she was happy to let us share it- cute!

VegaNation Works Outing

  Before I say anything else I would like to express my horror and outrage about the execution late last night (after a THREE HOUR delay) of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia, USA. It is sad and terrible that, in this day and age, there are still countries which use the death penalty, and even worse, when, as in this case, there seems to be some doubt as to the safety of the conviction. We are supporters of Reprieve www.reprieve.org.uk which supports the human rights of prisoners on death row.

 We went to a drumming workshop today, lead by one of the Home Ed dads. A couple of  people had Djembe-type drums made of wood and rawhide but the other children were banging on an interesting selection of pots, pans, upturned buckets and plastic lunchboxes! It was an excellent session- I love it when you get the chance to learn from someone who is sharing a passion of theirs; enthusiasm is so infectious.
   We had to rush off and do our weekly shop after, and in order to save time (as we had our 10 week old kittens shut in one room while we were out) we did our shopping in a completely different shop from usual.
  I asked one member of staff if they had a list of which of their wines were vegan. She didn't know so she referred me to a more senior member of staff. When I politely asked him the same question, he answered me quite forcefully ''I have absolutely NO idea- I have no idea if there even IS such a thing as vegan wine!''. The fact that I seemed to be asking for a list of vegan wines, didn't apparently lend any credence to the idea that such a substance might actually exist... er ok...BUDGENS!!
  So, we didn't get any wine today, but since we do occasionally like to have a drink to chill out after the children are (finally!) asleep in the evening, we bought some Brothers Toffee Apple Cider, which we haven't tried before. Our excitement about it (we LOVE trying new vegan things!) was only slightly tempered by meeting our raw vegan friend at the checkout, with our bottles of cider and (cringe) a pack of sliced white bread on top of all our other shopping.
  We've never pretended to be raw vegans- although always happy to eat vegetables  raw, we like cooked food, but, having said that, I guess, no-one actually wants to give their raw friends the impression that they subsist entirely on alcohol, and ready-sliced white bread..

  While entirely in your rights to buy whatever you want, and it really is no-one's business but your own, you can't help wanting to explain that you always bake all your own bread normally (which I do!) and only EVER buy sliced white when you fry up tofu to make vegan 'fried eggs' etc etc etc
  The sequel to that was that we had promised the children chips so we were loitering outside the chip shop, waiting for it to open, when our raw friend appeared again, clearly now mentally adding 'chips'to the list.. Actually, her children wanted chips so she ended up buying some too!
   On the way back we had to stop for a woodpigeon which didn't look quite right as it stood by the side of the road. I got out and sprinted back up road, as several more people roared past the bird. We always refer to these people as 'heart surgeons' as we assume that they are all rushing to operating theatres to perform live-saving surgery and thus are too important and in too much of a hurry to stop for a mere bird.. Anyway, as I got to within 50 yards or so the bird flew across the road. It still looked a bit sluggish to me, but it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to catch the bird, so I went back to the car and we came home.
  When we got back, there was an email from our newly vegan friend Jan asking for guidance as to what we think about faux fur. I haven't yet answered her, but I'm wondering what YOU think?? Tweet us @VegaNation1 and let us know what you think!
  If you mostly eat healthily but would be embarassed to meet your lovely raw vegan friend at the checkout, then there is a solution- buy online!! We have an adorable little 100% vegan shop VegaNation www.veganation.co.uk, so stop by and stock up!!

Things to do at Feline Care!

   Yes, folks, it's yet another post about Feline Care! I've already written about taking my children to the cat shelter (www.felinecare.org.uk) to do Maths in with the older cats to give them some company. It's been really working well for us and the cats are clearly enjoying it. Today, we also did some work in with the Siameses (probably got a home to go to very soon- the best news!) and we all really enjoyed ourselves.

  Molly Farrar, the lovely vegan manager of Feline Care likes what we've been doing so much that she asked if she could use our photos from sessions in her next newsletter to try and inspire more people to think of activities that they could do with the cats.
  Now, I know how much you American and Canadian vegans care, but I guess it's not realistic to expect you to come over to the U.K. fora  morning's knitting at Feline Care- so, if you'd like to help in another way you could maybe make a donation to the 'Save Feline Care', to help the shelter buy their property and transform the shelter into a charity in its own right.

   So, today we did Maths, Knitting and French Knitting- and, yes, we really did make the Knitting Nancy out of an empty Pringles box and some old Swedish Glace ice cream sticks- we vegans are noted for our ingenuity and resourcefulness...
  If you think that vegans who go and knit with cats sound like your kind of people then you can show your support (and say hello!) by visiting VegaNation, at www.veganation.co.uk.

Save Feline Care!

  The wonderful cat shelter that Veganation (www.veganation.co.uk) visits is under threat of closure! Feline Care, near Thetford in Norfolk, has until the end of the month to raise £70,000  Their Sussex-based parent charity wants to close the shelter, so Molly Farrar and her team of volunteer helpers and friends have been throwing themselves into fundraising in order to raise the money to buy the shelter and set up Feline Care as a charity in its own right.

  This is not one of those emergency charity appeals where a charity appeals for help out of a crisis and you respond, whilst secretly fearing that you are just delaying the inevitable; this is a very well-organised and well-run sanctuary for cats, where manager Molly manages to wring every last drop out of every pound whilst doing her very best for all her 140+ charges. This appeal is to permanently secure the future of a very caring but also very efficiently-run shelter. All Molly's cats are very well cared for, living in settled groups in rooms with outdoor spaces, with many of the 'harder to home' cats and ferals living loose on the three and a half acre property, and spending the day dozing in the many armchairs dotted about, giving the shelter a lovely peaceful air.
  Feline Care provides a valuable service in Norfolk, with a particularly good record in helping and rehoming nervous and 'hard-to-home' cats, so the loss of the shelter would be felt all over the county, not least by the feral colonies with which Feline Care have been involved, and on which Molly continues to keep an eye.
   Please, if you can, donate to help save this excellent shelter at www.felinecare.org.uk ; the cats say Thank You! 

''Oh Poor Little Smokey, Who Wouldn't Want You?''

  This was the song that our seven year old was singing to 17 year old Smokey as she hugged him at the cat shelter today. We home educate, and a few months ago I had the inspired idea of combining a visit to Feline Care, the wonderful Norfolk cat shelter, with Maths! So, every couple of weeks, we pack up a load of maths books and head over to Feline Care, near Thetford.
  Feline Care is a model cat shelter: the cats are beautifully looked after, and instead of living in individual runs, they are in groups in separate rooms, many of which have access to their own large outdoor enclosure with furniture, climbing frames and scratching posts. The cats even have underfloor heating, and since we live in a very cold house, we are REALLY looking forward to spending time at Feline Care this winter!!
  We offered to donate homeopathic advice and remedies for one of the cats at Feline Care who has had a bad skin condition, so one of the reasons that we go to Feline Care is to see how she is doing (off steroids and MUCH happier!), and also check on Harry the Turkey whose severe limp has improved dramatically since we gave him some homeopathic first aid.

  We always spend a lot of time in the rooms that Molly, the lovely vegan manager, keeps for the older cats. She has a lovely big room for the older cats, with access to a large sheltered outdoor space. The room has a bookcase full of books solely devoted to cats to encourage cat lovers visiting the shelter to sit down for a few minutes with a book and spend some time with the lovely older cats- brilliant! There is also a shelf of cat related bric-a-brac to buy; every time we visit, our four year old spends his pocket money on another cat ornament! He now has a white china cat ornament, a cat vase with a slightly chipped ear (into which he puts a new flower from the garden every day!), a wooden cat, an ornamental pair of china tabby cats and today, when the shelf was a little low on cats he bought a pottery dog!
  The room is so calm and peaceful and that's where we often do maths and spend time with Smokey. I may have mentioned Smokey once or twice before in this blog, but it's because we are all very anxious for lovely Smokey to find a home as soon as possible. It's just a sad fact of life that older cats do tend to be a bit overlooked in shelters, and they really shouldn't be as they really are an asset to any home.
  Smokey is 17 or 18 years, and although he is very fit and well, and perfectly active it just seems sad to us that a cat of that age should be without a home and having to compete for a home of his own with younger, perhaps more playful cats. Smokey would probably fit well into almost any home: he is gentle and laid back, affectionate and kind and when any other cats have shown any aggression towards him (yes, Meg and Tabitha, we are looking at you!) he just turned and walked off, which obviously bodes well for any future introductions!

   There are some lovely cats at Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk ): lovely, gentle white Harry; beautiful black Angel, shy pretty, black Marmite and their friends all need loving permanent homes, but if you have a corner of your house, and your heart, into which you could squeeze a lovely kind 17 year old cat (now very well educated!), please consider offering a home and a lap to beautiful Smokey.

Peanut Butter is Vegan but Wool isn't!

 We've been emailing Jan,  our newly-vegan friend, with daily Vegan Top Tips, and also fielding questions and providing information when needed. Jan doesn't really drink but when she asked about wine we were able to reassure her that there ARE vegan wines available, as well as various other kinds of alcohol. Different vintages vary, as do different batches,so while it may not say on the label whether or not a bottle of wine is vegan, supermarkets generally have a vegan wine list that is up to date. For some reason Waitrose wouldn't give us a copy of theirs, but we are allowed to LOOK AT IT sometimes!

  More good news for Jan: peanut butter is vegan! She seemed slightly surprised, maybe because of the word 'butter' in the name.? I really think that Veganism is going to be much easier than Jan thought now that she knows that she can eat bread and pasta..and now peanut butter- what else do you need?!

  Jan was asking about wool yesterday and I had to tell her that wool is definitely not vegan, which she seemed fine about. 

  Many people don't understand why we don't wear wool because we're vegan, but an ethical vegan is somebody who rejects the use and exploitation of animals, and therefore, as far as is possible, the use of any animal products for any reason.

  Farmed sheep suffer in many ways, and it is worth pointing out, in any case, that wool is often a slaughterhouse product: taken from the skin of the slaughtered sheep. It is also an obvious truth that sheep that are used throughout their lives for wool (and lamb) production, are all ultimately killed for meat.

  Jan's most recent email arrived this evening headed, as the others have been, ''Question of the Day'. The email was telling us how well her first vegan day at work had gone, after a couple of days off, and, in fact, the only question in the email was ''Why didn't I do this years ago???''

  If you too want to be part of the Vegan Nation, please stop by and shop at www.veganation.co.uk- we have vegan marshmallows!!

Why Vegans don't wear Leather- and Vegetarians Shouldn't..

  I was vegetarian for 10 years before I became vegan and throughout that time I wore leather shoes, and didn't think too much about it. I became vegetarian when I was a child because I loved animals and didn't want to be responsible for their suffering and painful deaths, and for 10 years I felt as tho' I was doing all that I could do to help animals. Like many people who give up eating meat for reasons of compassion, I imagined that animals were killed purely for meat and that leather was merely a by product, and therefore, I guess, there seemed no particularly compelling reason to stop wearing leather shoes.
  I remember a couple of years before I became vegan I was criticised for wearing leather by a particularly argumentative meat eater. I remember repeatedly saying to him 'Well, at least I'm doing SOMETHING to help save animals- what are you doing?'- and that, I think, is the problem with vegetarianism: it gives you complacency: if you are a vegetarian you feel that you are doing something good for animals, and you feel somehow 'above' criticism, especially from meat eaters. I am truly not saying that unkindly; I know that most vegetarians, like me, adopted their diets with the very best of intentions; I'm just saying that, if you are doing it because you want to help the suffering and torment of animals, then you need to do more!
  I am going to talk about dairy, wool etc another time, but today I am talking about leather! 
  These are the reasons why you should not wear leather:
1. Firstly, leather is NOT a by product of the meat industry. The skin of the cow which dies horribly in a slaughterhouse, is an important commodity in its own right, being worth up to 15% of the total value of the whole carcase, so clearly the cow is being killed for her skin as well as her flesh, cartilage, hooves etc.
  The aggregate value of world leather production is £28 billion, according to the Vegan Society, which is actually higher than that of meat production, so without leather 'underwriting' the cost of meat, meat would clearly be significantly more expensive, and, one imagines, demand would decrease, so buying leather, is actually, supporting the meat industry. 
   2. A significant amount of 'raw hide' comes from developing countries where there may be no animal welfare laws or no enforcement of welfare laws- the conditions in unregulated slaughterhouses in India and China are truly horrifying. 
  3. The tanning industry is an environmental disaster: over 250 different chemicals are used in the tanning process, only 15%  of which are retained in the finished leather, the other 85% has to be dealt with as waste. Toxic substances used include arsenic, chromium and cyanide.
4. An extremely high input of water is needed for processing skins into leather: unbelievably 8000 litres of water are needed to produce just ONE pair of leather shoes. Actually, that could be a very conservative estimate: one cow skin will produce 18 pairs of leather shoes, and if you then include the water used to rear the cow, in the slaughterhouse, and to process her skin into leather, then each pair of shoes is then responsible for the use of over 1.4 MILLION litres of water. 
  It's worth remembering that because of the difficulties of dealing with all the toxic waste in developed countries with stringent regulations about waste disposal, much of the tanning and processing is outsourced to developing countries with fewer, or unenforced, regulations about toxic waste disposal. This has implications for the workers in the tanning and processing industries as well as of the local populations, particularly as many of the substances used are known carcinogens.
  5. I can't really see why, knowing all this, anyone would WANT to buy a pair of leather shoes. If this doesn't convince you, please just remember that the leather in a pair of shoes was actually present in an actual slaughterhouse, on the body of a terrified animal, as they cried out in terror, and struggled and fought to live: their life just as precious and valuable to them as your own. 

  if you wear leather shoes, then your shoes were present and were part of the reason, when that truly unique being, a thinking, feeling, loving being, as capable of joy, sadness and fear as you are yourself; the only one exactly like it that ever lived; somebody's child, possibly somebody's mother, lost their fight to live, and died in fear, squalor, and terrible pain. 
  And it is very possible that the skin, for your leather shoes, was removed before the animal was actually dead.


  We think that matters; that's why we don't wear leather. We are vegans because we think we should stop eating, wearing, experimenting on, and USING animals for ANYTHING! If you are not vegan, please go vegan. 
  Please support our vegan lifestyle by buying from our shop VegaNation at www.veganation.co.uk. Thank you very much.

Answers to Vegan Quiz!

  As vegans who do their research will know: Walkers Salt and Vinegar crisps were vegan for about 30 years but are vegan no longer as they now contain milk; Twiglets Original Variety are vegan and Original Ready Salted Pringles are vegan (and say 'vegan friendly' on the side) and used to belong to Proctor and Gamble, but now, I believe, they are owned by the company that owns Kettle  Chips (this may be wrong- nobody tells me anything!), so probably Ok to eat them again now..
  If reading about food has made you feel hungry, we have lots of delicious treats and sweets, and other vegan delights at out adorable 100% shop VegaNation (www.veganation.co.uk) If you are looking for a snack that you KNOW is vegan, it's always best to buy from vegans!

Visit from a Vegan of 3 Days!

  Our good friend Jan came over today, after three days of veganism, and  I made a batch of vegan doughnuts for the occasion- I have an amazing recipe that I veganized, and one of these days I'm going to get one of the 5 ml syringes that we always keep in the cupboard for feeding baby birds, hedgehogs etc and try injecting jam inside some doughnuts, just for fun.
  We were really excited to see her- we had planned to get together anyway today, we'd arranged it ages ago, but not imagined that we'd be having a vegan strategy meeting today! Jan has obviously been doing loads of research and planning since we last heard from her and has gone through all her cupboards (which turned out to be satisfyingly low on animal by products, anyway!) and checked out the places where she likes to eat out, go out for coffee, planned what she will do for snacks, and so on.

  We are determined to be the best vegan buddies that we can be- we are happy to answer any and all questions about veganism, we have been vegan so long now that it's absolutely second nature to us to be reading the ingredients on everything and we pretty much know everything that's in everything by now (go on- ask me if Salt and Vinegar Walker's crisps are vegan now? or Twiglets? Or plain Pringles?), so we can give Jan a lot of shortcuts, point her to good websites (like..ahem..our totally, gorgeously, righteously 100% vegan shop VegaNation at www.veganation.co.uk ), coffee shops that serve soya milk etc etc

  We printed off all our favourite recipes (Broccoli in Sweet Garlic Sauce, African Sweet Potato Stew, Tomato and Pinenut Linguine, Mediterranean Pasta Salad, Jambalaya), I gave Jan my copy of the Animal Free Shopper (since I now know everything there is to know about veganism..) and, in fact we sold Jan some stuff from our shop.
  I don't think we applied any high pressure sales techniques (we didn't, did we, Jan?), but we did want to show Jan some of the lovely things available to vegans so we couldn't help it if when she was leaving she couldn't bear to part with them!


 

Vegetarian to Vegan

  We had an email from our good friend Jan, who went to visit Hillside Animal Sanctuary (hillside.org.uk) at the weekend with a friend, and, both decided to turn from vegetarian to vegan! Jan is very sensitive to reading about cruelty to animals in  so she was wary about reading distressing material at Hillside and was determined to try and focus as much as possible on the animals. For me, reading the Vegan Society's leaflet on the dairy industry,'Milk Marketing Fraud' was what turned me vegan- I had always loved and cared about animals and thought that by being vegetarian I was doing something good and kind for animals,but when I read that leaflet, I had no answers, no defense against it- becoming vegan immediately was the only  response that my sister and I could reasonably make, so that was what we did, twenty three years ago. For Jan, it was the sight of a very protective mother cow looking after and feeding her calf, and knowing the torment undergone by most cows that did it and she resolved to become vegan. She emailed yesterday evening, just completing her second full day as a vegan, saying how excited she is about her new lifestyle, and asking lots of questions such as whether 'lactose free' means a product is vegan, where to get vegan pasta, and whether bread is 'okay'.

  The good news, for aspiring vegans everywhere, is that basically all dried pasta in the supermarket (but not necessarily noodles!), unless labelled as egg pasta, is likely to be vegan; most bread is vegan, altho', annoyingly, 'lactose free' does not necessarily mean that something is vegan, as it simply means that it is free of milk sugar but it may still contain eggs or even other dairy ingredients such as casein which is a milk protein.
   I am full of admiration for Jan- she has launched herself enthusiastically into her new way of life without even knowing whether she will be able to eat pasta or even bread!

 
 

Loose Dogs and No Giants Killed: Vegan Day Out!

 We don't really want to go anywhere at the moment, not only because the new VegaNation kittens are so, so cute, but if we go out we need to shut them in a pen, to make sure they stay safe, so it's quite a wrench to leave the house  just now. We went out today because we were going to a home ed event: a performance by a professional storyteller organised by one of the mothers in our home ed group.
  We probably spent too long sitting on the couch watching the kittens wrestling and knocking each other about, as we'd decided that we didn't want to arrive early (!), so we were already running slightly behind when our Satnav guided us to and then abandoned us outside a school, of all places.

  We'd more or less decided that since the event was now starting and we hadn't even located it yet, that we'd go home if we hadn't found it within a few minutes..We got out of the car and were looking about the place for inspiration when  our day suddenly turned into what is known at VegaNation as a Vegan Day Out when we saw a black and white  Border Collie come flying  across the road and galloped away from us through a hedge. We immediately jumped out of the car and gave chase as there was no-one with the dog. Our camera isn't working (how can that be- we have kittens!) so I've had to find some clip art to represent us haring after the dog! We eventually caught the dog and found a man looking for her, initially so out of breath that he was completely unable to speak, who scuttled home with her ('scuttled' because he had forgotten to bring her lead, so had to walk along bent over holding her collar..) after he'd given us directions to the community centre we were looking for. When we got there the storyteller had failed to materialise, much to the chagrin of the organiser, but luckily one of the other mothers stepped into the breach and told stories to some of the children instead. One of the stories was Jack and the Bean Stalk and, since a certain level of audience participation was invited, in spite of the vote going against her, our seven year old managed to get the story teller to do an alternative ending to the story, in which the giant is not killed but simply climbs back up the beanstalk again!

A Vegan is Born!

 We were so excited today to get an email from one of our good friends who has decided to become vegan! She is a very caring person, having been involved professionally in caring for animals and humans, she rescues animals whenever she finds one that needs help, and she's been vegetarian for many years now. When we met her just over five years ago, and we told her that we were vegan she told us that she was vegetarian, and was interested in the idea of being vegan but wasn't sure that it would fit into her daily life that well as she was on the road a lot.

This is beautiful Fergus!!

   Our friend became a supporter of Hillside Animal Sanctuary through us (I think we sent her a card we bought from them), and she was almost as excited as us when our family headed a campaign to save Fergus, a Highland Bull, from imminent slaughter two years ago, and he went to live at Hillside Animal Sanctuary (hillside.org.uk) where we visit him on open days- last time we went we took him some purple carrots that we grew in our garden! Our friend had heard all about Hillside and really wanted to go- and on Sunday she made it to Hillside at last!
   She emailed us in the evening after she got back from her visit, saying that her visit had been amazing, surpassing her expectations, and that she had especially loved the cows and the pigs (and Fergus, of course!), and that she was now thinking of becoming vegan.

  Today she emailed saying that she'd thrown her Flora margarine in the bin and bought some vegan Pure margarine and was now vegan! We've been really impressed with the way Kylie and Claire from animal rights campaigning charity Viva support new vegans on Twitter, and we are determined to be our friend's vegan support team- we are seeing her this week and she has asked for lots of tips about recipe books, vegan substitions etc. She said that she'd had a walk around the supermarket and was encouraged to see lots of things marked Vegan, and of course, she can buy lots of lovely snacks, chocolate, egg replacer and even (gasp!) marshmallows,  from VegaNation, our lovely 100% vegan shop (www.veganation.co.uk ), from which we are happy to give support and advice to new vegans!
   We are so proud of our friend and happy that the world now has one more much needed vegan!

The Vegan Marshmallows have Arrived!

 Oh wow- the vegan marshmallows have arrived! Lynda, the lovely vegan woman who makes them had sent us a packet for free, so the children, who had been begging to be allowed to have some, were absolutely thrilled.
  The marshmallows are really lovely; they have a slightly less rubbery texture than the 'other' kind, which is because the texture is created using only lovely vegan ingredients, since we prefer our sweets made without boiled up calves' hooves, bones, cartilage, connective tissue and skin (''hide-trimmings''?).
  We love VegaNation, our darling little vegan shop (www.veganation.co.uk) and now we have bought it something really special- if you too prefer your sweets without slaughterhouse products then do visit and buy some VegaNation marshmallows- sweets for the vegan nation!
  We hadn't eaten marshmallows since we were 13 because that's when we became vegetarian (then vegan 10 years later), so when we bought some marshies from the U.S. a few years ago, it had been a LONG  wait!!
  I'm so glad our children were born in the Age of the Vegan Marshmallow!

New VegaNation Kittens!

  We are supposed to be writing product listings today for our gorgeous little 100% vegan shop VegaNation  (find us at www.veganation.co.uk) as we have some lovely new bubble baths we're keen to tell people about, but we're not getting anything done today as we have KITTENS to play with!!
  They are our lovely Twitter kittens, who we adopted the day before yesterday, after seeing a link from the local, very hard working branch of the RSPCA.

Lovely Smokey helps with a maths lesson at Feline Care!

  As a national organisation, I have to say that I am not a huge fan of the RSPCA- I am vehemently opposed, for example, to their Freedom Foods policy, which, as far as I'm concerned, is tantamount to getting into bed with the meat-and-dairy industries. I was very upset, also, when I discovered that animals such as cows and sheep which have been rescued by the RSPCA in extreme cruelty and neglect cases, are later sold for meat.        When we wrote to the RSPCA head office, questioning this awful policy, we received a letter 'explaining' that the RSPCA doesn't have the resources to keep these larger animals and that the money gained by selling them for meat was needed to help recoup some of the money spent on the original cruelty prosecution. Hmm..is it just me, or does anyone else find that as perverse and horrifying as I do? If you know the level of cruelty and neglect that seems to go on at some of the RSPCA's so-called Freedom Farms (brought to light by the investigations of Hillside Animal Sanctuary), then you can only imagine the suffering of some of the animals on whose behalf the RSPCA does decide to pursue prosecution. And then, on successful completion of prosecution, even when cruelty and neglect towards an animal has been proven, the animal is then sold to undergo the terror and torture of the abattoir.
  However, on a local level, the RSPCA volunteers do an amazing job, and help thousands of animals every year and had stepped in to try and find these kittens a home.
   We already have 4 cats and weren't looking for any more cats and we also have a sort of  'If none of us are married by the time we're 30' arrangement with gorgeous 18 year old Smokey from Feline Care. He makes us sad because although he his very handsome, with a lovely shiny coat, and a lovely, friendly personality, he is probably only still at Feline Care because he of his age. There must be a home that would suit Smokey better than ours, so if you think that you could give Smokey a lap of his own, please contact Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk) and arrange a visit. Please ignore the place in Smokey's listing which says that he has found a home- Molly, the manager at Feline Care has been very busy trying to raise £70,000 by the end of September, so may not have had a chance to work on her website! Smokey found a home a few months ago, but, very sadly, was returned through no fault of his own, and is definitely available for rehoming.

  We read in the listing that the female kitten was deaf and so might suit an indoor home and that they would prefer a home with her brother, but would separate them. We really hadn't planned on getting any more cats, with the possible exception of Smokey, but we adopted a beautiful deaf cat from a shelter earlier this year as we felt that we could keep him safe as our garden is enclosed and we felt sad at the thought of the deaf kitten having to live indoors because she is deaf, so we offered her a home, and her brother too, as it seemed a pity to separate them. So, Nelly and Noah have joined our family, and we all love them already. The local RSPCA re-homing co-ordinator had got the idea that Nelly was partially sighted, so when we went to pick her up we thought that we were getting a kitten who was deaf and also blind in one eye. Very happily, although Nelly is indeed deaf she seems to be able to see perfectly well, she simply has odd coloured eyes, one blue and one green! She and Noah haven't cried at all since they arrived the evening before last; they have each other and are very close so they are happy and so are we.

Who walks past sick and injured animals?

   VegaNation was at a homeopathic conference near King's Cross in London yesterday. During the morning break, we found a sick pigeon in the nearby park. The bird looked dreadful, apathetic, skeletal and weak, and yet everybody else was walking straight past her.

  The middle of a conference, on a rare visit to London, when you don't know anyone, is not the best circumstances under which to find a sick animal. The situation reminded us very much of one of our favourite children's book by Bob Graham 'How to Heal a Broken Wing', in which a little boy and his mother are in London and find a pigeon that needs help. They are completely unprepared,and end up bringing the bird home in the mother's handbag. If you want to take a look at this lovely book, we sell it in VegaNation, our 100% vegan shop at www.veganation.co.uk.
  The bird looked as though she was dying, so we gave her some homeopathic Arnica and water, and put her somewhere quiet, where she would not be disturbed. Throughout the day, she was given more water and Arnica, and meanwhile, we appealed on Twitter for some local help for the bird, but no-one could help. We felt strongly that the bird was probably not going to survive (although the Arnica had stopped the slight nasal bleeding immediately), but at the end of the day she was still alive.
  It just didn't seem right to leave her there under a hedge or something, where a dog might get her, so there was nothing else for it but to empty the conference 'goody bag' and pop her in that, and bring her on the two hour journey home on the train, and then in the car.
  She was still alive when she got home, but seemed slightly chilled, so we made her a hot water bottle, and wrapped it up so it wouldn't be too hot,then tucked it in beside her in a cat basket. We gave her more drops of water and Arnica, and she seemed to be swallowing fairly well although she was weak. We could find no visible injuries and she didn't seem to have any of the dreadful yeasty, fungal throat growths that can incapacitate and then starve a pigeon or dove, so we really didn't know what was wrong with her.
  Racing pigeons are often handed in to animal shelters and vet surgeries, because they are so driven to fly home that they often seem to fly beyond the limits of their own endurance, flying without stopping to eat or drink, until they are weak and exhausted and ill, but this bird was not a racing pigeon.
  In the end, when we went to check the bird again, an hour after we'd last given her a little water, we found that she'd gently slipped away.
  We were very sad and so were the children, especially our youngest who was absolutely distraught, but we'd done everything we could to help her.
  We'll never know what was actually wrong with her; what had brought her so low, or at what point she became too sick to feed herself and began to starve. I wonder whether she could have been saved if someone  had picked her up a few days earlier and I'll always wonder how many thousands of people had walked past her in that park before someone finally took pity on her and brought her sixty miles home to die.

We Take Feline Care over the £40,000 mark!

 Yesterday, we spent the day at Feline Care, the lovely vegan run cat shelter near Thetford. They are doing an amazing job with their fund raising- their goal is to raise £70,000 by the end of this month,  so that they can buy the shelter premises from their sister charity and secure the future of Feline Care as a charity in its own right.

Pretty Smudge learns his numbers!

  Feline Care is a very special place, which provides shelter and sanctuary for over 140 cats, some of whom have heartbreaking stories and need particularly special homes.
  The good news is that we made another donation while we were there and when Molly (Farrar, who runs Feline Care) took the cheque and then picked up her clipboard to add the donation to her running total, she told us that our donation had taken the total over £40,000! Modesty forbids me to say how much of that £40,000 was from the cheque I just wrote, (but there was a 4 and a 0 in it!), but Feline Care really needs people to put their hands in their pockets and give all they can to help get the total to £70,000 by October.
  The less good news is that wonderful Smokey, the mathematical cat, still hasn't found a home. Smokey is 17 or 18, and although he is in wonderful condition, and is a fit active cat, with a lovely shiny coat, he needs to find his very own lap to sit on as soon as possible.

Smokey needs his very own lap!

  It's a sad fact that older cats tend to get passed over at shelters in favour of younger, more playful cats and kittens, but older cats are WONDERFUL! We adopted a 20 year old cat a couple of years ago, and it was one of the most rewarding things we've ever done. Smokey found a new home a few months ago but, heartbreakingly, was returned through no fault of his own, and now, he's back in the shelter, happy, but slightly bored. He is a lovely friendly cat, very calm and unflappable, and gets along well with other cats, and when we go to do a maths session in the older cats' room (sounds crazy, but we home educate and it works for us!) he always climbs straight into a lap to help. Please if you or anyone you know thinks that they could give beautiful Smokey a loving retirement home with lots of cuddles, please contact Feline Care through their website at www.felinecare.org.uk .

Cute Pic of Latest Rescue!

 I'm supposed to be listing more vegan goodies, including some lovely vegan bubblebaths, on the website of our 100% vegan shop VegaNation, but just thought I'd share this cute picture from late last night. Just going to bed, when one of the VegaNation cats came in carrying a little creature. As I raced towards her, she dropped it, and then as the little creature bolted towards the couch, she pounced and so did I. The creature, which turned out to be a vole, made it under the couch, so at 1 a.m. we realised we were going to have to try to extricate it because we couldn't keep the cats out of the room because it's a through room.
  We tipped the couch up quickly and spotted the vole (almost immediately, in amongst all the toys, pens, pencils etc), and picked her up. She was looking ok, a bit damp, but when we her into a plastic tank to get a proper look, she seemed unharmed. In our experience, voles need to be released back into the wild as soon as possible, so we gave her a homeopathic Arnica, after which she looked brighter still, and released her in a safe spot, safe from cats.
  If you would like to use your vegan pound to support a 100% vegan business, then visit us at www.veganation.co.uk .