New Batch of Humane Mouse Traps- and Look What We Caught!

  We got a new batch of humane mouse traps today for our shop www.veganation.co.uk . These humane traps are just brilliant- they are transparent so you can see whether there is a mouse in it; they have ventilation holes so that an occupant doesn't get too hot and bothered. The end of the trap comes off so that it is easy to release a mouse from the trap.

  If you set one of these humane traps please, please do check them every couple of hours! 

Shhh...more shopping for our lovely shop!

 We have bought something really brilliant for our lovely vegan shop (nothing's too good for it!) which everyone is going to be very excited about when it comes. It's a secret at the moment, but if you'd like to know what it is then come and visit us (with your wallets!) next week  www.veganation.co.uk and you can have some!

  We have just begun to eat the round and straight courgettes from the garden, and have been enjoying our wonderful rainbow family of radishes (although-eek! Some of them are really HOT!!)


  The sweetcorn plants seem to be growing well and we are starting to get some little beans from the dwarf and runner bean plants. The children love being able to harvest things and eat things straight from the garden. The raspberries are finished, and so are the cherries and apricots, but now we have the wild strawberries, and the first blackberries and plums and greengages. The Blue Danube potato plants have turned out to have the most beautiful mauve flowers, very profuse and last for ages- worth growing for the flowers alone even if we weren't going to get purple potatoes as well!

Gorgeous Bath Products and a tiny rescued Snail

 We were looking through catalogues today, choosing which of the beautiful bodycare products and gift-y things to buy for our shop- it was so hard to decide because they are all so lovely, stunningly packaged and all vegan. We like buying things for our shop- we love it so much and it's nice to make it feel appreciated!!!

  It wasn't all shopping, tho'- I also rescued, from being trodden on, absolutely the tiniest snail in the world; it was so small and young that its shell was transparent- very interesting actually, because I've never really known before how snails fit inside their shells- I mean how high up inside their spiral shells their bodies actually go!

 Anyway, back to the pampering products!  If we've whetted your appetite for exotically scented, cruelty free bodycare, stop by and visit us at our vegan shop www.veganation.co.uk - the new range will be with us soon- I promise to tell you first!

Hooray for the 'Vegan Pirates'!

 We got an email from Paul Watson this evening, thanking all at VegaNation for donating to the fund for the release of Sea Shepherd ship 'Steve Irwin'.  Paul, you're absolutely welcome! We didn't, of course, donate the entire £500,000 (!)  but we did our bit, and as Paul said in his email to all who donated, we should take great pride in the  important difference our gift made.

 The Steve Irwin is now setting off to do what Sea Shepherd does best- save whales. Sea Shepherd have had to dip into their own reserves to get the ship released so if you can help by donating any more please go to www.seashepherd.org and hit that orange DONATE button!
  If you'd like to shop at a shop which really cares please visit us at www.veganation.co.uk !

Vegan Doughnuts- we vegans are denied nothing!!

We had friends over yesterday and I had made doughnuts for the occasion. I found a recipe but had to make loads of changes including the removal of two eggs (ugh!) from the recipe, and they were really, really delicious. I might try injecting some jam into some of them- we always have a few syringes knocking around from feeding baby animals and waifs and strays. Actually, on the whole, I think doughnuts without jam are better- don't like that lap full of jam you get if you bite into the wrong place- but it might be fun to try it.
  Our friends are veggie and have taken to vegan baking like ducks to water! They arrived yesterday with lovely sugar biscuits, and make positively the best vegan banana muffins that the world has ever seen!
  If you would also like to make PERFECT doughnuts then here's the recipe:

 2 tsp dry quick yeast
60 ml warm water
350 ml warm soya milk
100g sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
1 tsp salt
70g margarine which is suitable for baking
approx 700g plain flour- try a little less first, add more if necessary
2 tbsp flax seeds, also known as linseed.
4 tbsp water to whizz up with the flaxseeds- it should become gelatinous and all the seeds broken up
1 litre veg oil for deep frying

1. Sprinkle the yeast in the warm water and let stand for a few minutes. You don't really have to do this, but I always start like that.
2. In a big bowl, mix up yeast and water, soya milk, sugar, salt, margarine, and flax seeds whizzed up in the  4 tbsp water. Knead until smooth and stretchy.
3. Turn out onto a floured work surface and roll out gently until it's about 3/4 inch thick. Cut with a cookie cutter into round shapes, and leave to rise and double in size for about an hour.
4. Heat oil in a big saucepan- it's hot enough when a little piece of dough dropped in will sizzle. Drop the doughnuts gently in, cooking about 6 at a time. Turn doughnuts over as soon as one side is golden and then cook until second size is golden too. Remove from the oil and drain on a cooling rack. Roll the doughnuts in sugar and serve.
  Depending on the size of the cookie cutter you use, this recipe should make between 35 and 40 doughnuts.
                                      YOU'RE WELCOME!!

We sell linseed for your doughnuts in our lovely shop VegaNation at www.veganation.co.uk so, you're just one baby step away from  making delicious doughnuts like ours!

NB A vegan friend of mine, years ago, when asked, rather challengingly, why he didn't eat eggs (since doing so 'didn't kill the hens, did it?') replied, disgustedly, that he didn't actually eat anything that comes out of hen's bottoms!!
 It's very odd, tho', isn't it, the idea that if you don't want animals such as hens killed for your own food, you might not mind them being enslaved and exploited, then killed cruelly for others to eat..

Home made 'Hunny' for a Grounded Bumblebee.

 I found a bee on our garden path this morning. It didn't seem to want to move, and we wondered if it might just be exhausted from the very hot dry weather we've been having as it looked in good condition, clean and fluffy with no visible mites on it or ragged edges to its wings, so it didn't look particularly old or run down.

  Apparently, grounded bees found in the middle of summer are most likely to be males who have either got cold (not today) or been so busy patrolling that they have forgotten to feed themselves.

We decided to get him something to eat and see if that helped. I fetched a bottle lid full of home made vegan lavender 'hunny' (made by me from boiled parsley and sugar and lavender flowers) and stood the bee on some cardboard so he could reach- and he loved it! He drank and drank, and seemed more alert and walked about a bit but still didn't fly off.

 We gave him some homeopathic  Arnica, (you can buy Arnica as well as a lovely honey substitute called 'Sweet Freedom' in our shop at www.veganation.co.uk ) dissolved in water, to drink and after that he seemed much livelier and started vibrating his wings but he still didn't take off. In the end, he stayed all morning and into the afternoon; we gave him another drink of 'hunny' and then another dose of Arnica and he became very animated again and looked much more energetic. We had to go and do other things, so we left him in a safe place and kept coming back to check on him. In the middle of the afternoon we went to check and he'd left.

By the way, lots of people ask us why we don't eat honey- oh, so many reasons! We are vegans and we don't want bees to be exploited just so that we can have something nice to spread on our toast.  Honeybees work SOO hard for their honey- it takes a honeybee an average of 150 trips for one teaspoon of honey, and apparently, to gather a pound of honey, bees have to fly a distance equal to more than twice around the world, about 55,000 miles- it just seems so wrong to take advantage of all that hard work which the bees are doing for the benefit of their hive and take their honey,especially when there are so many alternatives including agave syrup, Sweet Freedom, date syrup, maple syrup and golden syrup as well as the option of making your own as I did!

 The other reason that we don't eat honey is that honey is actually bee vomit and we don't eat vomit! You can gussy it up and call it regurgitation if you like but we're still not eating it!

We just donated to Sea Shepherd to help get the 'Steve Irwin' back

 Our family just donated to the fund to help get back Sea Shepherd's ship 'Steve Irwin'. Our children are asking lots of very excited questions about the 800 apparently illegally netted tuna which were released by Sea Shepherd divers- so good to think of them once again wild and free. Awed by the bravery of Sea Shepherd crew. Please donate what you can to help- there are only 30 days before the ship can be permanently impounded and sold by the British authorities and the balance held pending the outcome of a court case. Sea Shepherd WANT to go to court- they maintain that the Maltese tuna fishing ship was poaching and they want to have the opportunity to expose their illegal activities in court. In the meantime,though, they need their ship back, so they can go on saving lives- 863 whales this year alone! To help, please go to www.seashepherd.org and give what you can as soon as you can!