Delicious Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes Part 2🥘

A few months ago, almost exactly 3 months ago, I wrote about Delicious Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes and I only mentioned 5 recipes, and so here I am with part 2. Like I mentioned in part 1, these recipes are not using ready-made substitutes like Quorn, instead it will be how to make your own meat substitutes, maybe using vegetables or something (I’m going to include tofu though). So, here are a few recipes!

• Vegan Foie (Faux) Gras. We had this for a starter on New Year's Eve, and got it from the Bish Bash Bosh! cookbook by Henry Firth and Ian Theasby (and you can read the recipe online here). It was so good, made of lentils, nuts, herbs and mushrooms in a spread. It is amazing, and better than the actual Foie Gras, especially since it’s not got animal cruelty in it.

• Tofu Sandwiches. You can take this any way, but actually it’s meant to be a substitute to fish finger sandwiches, and once again it’s from the Bish Bash Bosh! cookbook. If you follow the recipe in the cookbook (or here), you’ll have a sandwich that looks like this: slice of bread, ketchup (optional), tartar sauce, tofu fingers, mushy peas, slice of bread. It was delicious! And you can make vegan tartar sauce and mushy peas from recipes in the book. 

• Squash Lasagna. This is from One Pot, Pan, Planet which I’ve mentioned a few times in my posts. It has squash and lentils (and, of course, all the normal stuff like tomato sauce and mozzarella - or vegan-style mozzarella - and pasta). You can make it vegan with vegan mozzarella. 

• Vegan Meatballs. We got these from SO VEGAN and they come in a tomato sauce (passata) and are very nice because of the smoked paprika. The meatballs are made of black beans, walnuts, oats and spices. We had it over couscous and it’s nice to have some crusty bread to go with it. I would definitely recommend it. 

• Pulled Jackfruit Sandwiches (Burgers). These are a substitute for pulled pork, and I really liked it but jackfruit is not the most popular thing in my family because of the texture and the taste. However, it’s crazy how much the jackfruit looks like actual pulled pork. Once again this is from Bish Bash Bosh!, and you can see the recipe online here In the sandwich you can have the jackfruit and slaw made of red cabbage, and lettuce. 

As you can see 3 out of 5 of these recipes are from Bish Bash Bosh!, so I think it would be a good investment to buy the cookbook (or look at the website). 

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you are able to make some of these recipes, and I hope you like them! See you next Sunday.

Violet

xxx

Litter Picking!🚯

Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog about plogging, which you can read here. Basically, plogging is litter picking but it sounds better😁. It is a mixture of 'picking up litter' and jogging, if that makes sense, however you don't have to be running to do it!

Anyway, just this morning I went litter picking. There were four of us and we got three full bin bags of rubbish - one of which was full of cans and bottles. We just walked about our neighbourhood and we found it funny because we were expecting there to be a lot of rubbish however someone must have gone and picked up a lot of it. But, we did go more into the bushes and under leaves and found more there. 

The good things about litter picking are: you make a better lifestyle for natural ecosystems, you make places look nicer and reduce the amount of litter going into the oceans or hurting animals. Do you know how many animals pick up plastic thinking it's food and feed it to their young? A study was done, where 401 birds were found (who died after getting caught in fishing nets etc.) and dissected and every single one had swallowed plastic. Checking 112 birds for plastic fragments, she found eight-ten pieces on average in 98% of juveniles and 60% of adults. One bird had 202 pieces in it! 202! But do you know what's interesting? Around 96% of the plastics they found were actually recyclable. You can read the whole article, where I got these statistics from, here.

Another thing to do is, for a little extra effort, separate the things you pick up into recyclable things and non-recyclable things. To just do an extra thing - the cherry on top. 

Thank you so much for reading this post! It's really easy to pick up litter and put it in the bin when you go on walks, but make sure you wear gloves or wash your hands thoroughly when you're finished!

See you next Sunday!

Violet

         xxx

The Environmental R's Part 2! 🤓

Last week I wrote a blog about the environmental R's, and I told you about Refuse, Rethink, Replace, Reuse. I'm going to tell you about another few today😁.

1. Repair. This is quite self-explanatory but anyway, it's just saying: could you fix it before you throw away? You can really expand the 'shelf-life' of anything by fixing it and making the most out of it. Of course, there's many people who would not be able to fix something😅, so you could always give it to someone who can fix it themselves and either keep it, or give it back to you. You only need to pass it on when you have nothing left to do with it.
2. #
   To Recycle really fits in with all of the R's I think. It's a very important one, because it could mean: throwing something away in the right way, or buying something made of recycled materials, or having something at home and making it into something else - like turning old clothes into wash rags, or different types of clothes! I mention this a lot, but it's important: make sure you don't buy something just because it says it's recyclable, and don't just recycle it because it says you can. Check with your council to see if you're allowed to recycle it. 
3. I think ending with Review fits well, so that's what I'm doing. You could spend your time keeping track of what you buy and how much you throw away, or see how many products you buy are bad for the environment, and try buying things that will do less/no harm. It's basically just rounding up whatever you do in your life that's environmentally friendly, no matter how much or little there is, and seeing what you do well and what you could improve on. It sounds like school, like getting feedback on a piece of writing you did in English, but it's not boring. 

There are quite a few more, like Re-purpose or Re-gift or Re-home but they sort of all connect and cross-over with each other. And you really don't need to worry because adding all of these into your lifestyle is really easy, you only need to do small changes and once you get into the habit, it's straightforward.  

Thank you so much for reading this post. I hope you liked it, and you can take things from it🙂. See you next Sunday!

Violet

         xxx

The Environmental R's! 🤓

The 3 Rs I've known for a while are Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. However there are actually a lot more, for example: Rethink, Refuse, Repair, Replace, Review... and probably a load more that anyone can think of! It may seem a bit obvious but, besides helping the environment, the one thing they all have in common is: re-. They all start with the prefix re-, which means 'again' or 'again and again'. And that is how they are helping the environment. I'm going to go into each one into a bit of detail (or most of them). 

1. I'm going to start with Refuse. This is an important one (they're all important, but still😁) because it basically means to stop yourself buying or taking things that will have a bad impact. For example, if a barista asks you if you want a straw with your drink, or you buy take-away that ask if you want plastic cutlery, you should - politely - refuse. You may have your own reusable straw or bamboo cutlery that you carry around with you, and it will reduce the waste. Of course, cafes nowadays are not allowed to sell plastic straws anymore, however this doesn't just apply to straws 😄.
2. To Rethink is to make sure you're not buying something just because it says it's recyclable. Yes, it's good that it's recyclable, however depending on your local council and binmen, you may not be able to recycle that material, like soft plastics or bottle caps. It's the same with 'biodegradable' or 'compostable'. If you put something in your recycling bin that your council doesn't recycle, you could be doing more harm than good.
3. Next, I'm going to do Replace. The easiest thing, in my opinion, to replace is soap bottles to soap bars. There are so many choices and almost all of them are good for the environment (the ones that aren't are individually-wrapped in plastic). You could replace basically anything to something environmentally friendly, something as small as cling-film to reusable food-wraps - that I wrote about in this post - or as big as an electric car (but that's a big step, and there are some disadvantages to them). 
4. There are loads of things you can buy to Reuse. You can buy reusable coffee cups, water bottles, straws, portable cutlery, shopping bags. All of which could last a lifetime, or almost as long! This ties in with refuse, because you are able to use your reusable things instead of using single use plastic. You could find shops that have refill stations; where you bring your own container and fill it with food (nuts or seeds etc) or other products (shampoo, cleaning products etc). This helps because you're not buying things wrapped in something you'll throw away, and you can take your container back and refill it when you're finished.

I've missed a few of them, like Recycle, but I didn't do that one because that one's talked about non-stop and yes, it's a good way to help, however it's not the only way. I'll probably do a part two another tme to talk about all the other ones too. 

But anyway, thanks for reading! I hope your 2022 is going well, and see you next Sunday!

Violet

         xxx

Happy New Year! 🎆

Somehow, it's already 2022! It's weird to think that I started this blog at the end of 2019. Last year I wrote about New Year's Resolutions and I thought I'd add on to that this year. 

Last year over 582,000 people took part in Veganuary, and I'm sure a lot more people did it unofficially. You can read loads of statistics from last year's Veganuary on this website. Also, I mention this quite a lot - if you think going vegan for an entire month is hard, then you don't have to. You'll make a big difference by cutting meat out of your diet for even just one day a week. This will lower your carbon footprint, and if everyone did meat free Mondays (lowering meat consumption to by 15%) it would have the same impact as saving 348 miles driven in a car. 

Other environment-related New Year's resolutions are: 

• Making sure you don't drive when you could walk/cycle (or take public transport, but that can sometimes be expensive). You could set yourself a goal where if where you're going is under one or two miles, or something like that, then you should walk/cycle. It gives you exercise, it lowers emissions and you could appreciate your surroundings more. I understand that if you live in a certain place, perhaps where it rains a lot, it's sometimes hard to persuade yourself to walk when you would get soaked. On the way to school, I usually walk however when it rains very, very hard then I'll get a lift. It's good to pick other people up if you're taking the car because then there are less cars on the road.
• Read more books to inform you about the environment. You could look in your library or charity shop to find something that'll tell you information. Make sure it was published recently because there will probably be a lot of different facts and figures from different years. I want to read more non-fiction books, and reading ones about the environment will definitely help.
• Take part in Earth Day, which is Friday 22nd April each year.  Last year there were loads of events to help. There's also Earth Hour on Sunday 26th March where you turn off all the lights and appliances in your house, and my family took part in it too. I wrote about it here.

Thank you so much for reading. Hopefully 2022 will be a good year. I hope you had a good Christmas and Happy New Year! See you next Sunday.

Violet

         xxx