Chocolate Ice-Cream Cake!!!Okay I have HEAPS to blog about but my Dad is going to kick me off the computer any minute now so I'm just going to get you guys drooling with a scrumptious raw vegan treat I made for Christmas yesterday. Sorry if all that dribble damages your keyboard, lol!
Mmmm, yummy yummy in my tummy!
Can you see all our Christmas table decorations in the background?
Hope everyone's Christmas was magical!
A Quick Hello and a MemeHi guys, I've been absent because I've been back in South Australia catching up with family and friends for the past two weeks. For the last 5 days I've been doing work experience at Monarto Zoo, the largest open plain zoo in Australasia. I'm totally not a fan of zoos usually and even though this zoo is very large I don't ultimately agree with it. But I had to do work experience somewhere and I found this a better option than an intensive piggery, lol! I had an incredible time and will post photos soon.
For now, a meme I found at 'Walking the Vegan Line.'
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Paper.. we tend to use the same paper for at least 2 or 3 Christmases, carefully recycling it.
2. Real or artificial tree? Well, we used to have a real one. I looooooved going out and choosing it, watching as Dad cut it down, getting it home hanging out of the back of the car with me hanging on. The smell in the house was amazing, I just adored everything about it. Sadly my parents have decided to go back to plastic since we've moved :-(
3. When do you put up the tree? Where we used to live was a little town called Lobethal, every year there was a big festival called the Lights of Lobethal that started on a Sunday night around the 12th of December or so. We always put up the tree that weekend.
4. When do you take it down? New Years Day
5. Do you like eggnog? I have never had it. But, what with being raw vegan and all, I'd go with no.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Possibly my bike? Too hard, there's too many.
7. Do you have a nativity scene? Definitely not
8. Hardest person to buy for? Grandparents
9. Easiest person to buy for? My friend Alycia
10. Worst Christmas present you ever got? Geez I don't know.
11. Mail or email Christmas cards? I like to give them out by hand, personally.
12. Favorite Christmas movie? A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL!! The Dickens classic, done by the Muppet gang. I love it and my parents bought the DVD for me a couple of years ago. I watch it every single year!
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? When I see something that looks good for a particular person.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Well I gave away a soap for someone's birthday recently, I can't remember whether it was a Christmas or birthday pressie though.
15. Favorite thing to eat on Christmas? Strawberries. Wouldn't be christmas without them!
16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Both.
17. Favorite Christmas song? I had never thought about it. I don't know!
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Well, never travel actually on holiday or anything. I've always had Christmas morning at home; we used to rotate between Christmas lunch at our house, my auntie's and my Grandma's, then go to my Nanna's on boxing day. Now that we live on the other side of the country... it'll be a day at home. I would like to volunteer at an animal shelter too, I think it'd be hard to get volunteers on Christmas day.
19. Can you name all of Santa's Reindeer? No
20. Angel or star on top of tree? It's a fairy. My Nanna used to tell me it was a fairy that went away to see Father Christmas and tell him whether I'd been good or not.
21. Open presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning, with my parents anyway. We take turns to open pressies. At my Nanna's I have a special crown that my Grandad made when I was about 2 years old, I wear that and hand out all the presents to everyone.
22. Most annoying thing this time of year? Just how materialistic everyone gets.
23. Do you decorate your tree in any theme or color? Mum tried it a few times but I always came along and put other things on, lol!
24. What do you leave for Santa? My main concern was always just leaving carrots for the reindeer!
25. Shopping? I love to buy handmade things at markets; but my favourite option is buying through aid organisations like Oxfam. What you do is buy a card that says "on your behalf, a ... (eg mosquito net, bars of soap, well for a village etc) has been purchased. Awesome!
26. Do you decorate outside for Christmas or just inside (or at all?) Everywhere! As we used to live in Lobethal with the Lights festival, decorating the outside of the house was very important and it still is.
27. Favorite Christmas cookie? I've never eaten cookies at Christmas.
28. Do you own Christmassy clothing or jewelry? When I was little I always had ear-rings with bells dangling from them, but not anymore.
29. Do you believe in Santa? No and if I was going to have kids (which I'm not but anyway...) I would never tell them he exists. I just don't agree with the whole lying thing anymore. Not that I have any issues with anyone who does though!! :-)
Have a great weekend everyone!
A Sandwich. (aka, things I wouldn't normally eat!)
No, it's not a
cooked sandwich. But you didn't even consider that it would be, did you? No, this sandwich is made using the
Black Sesame Sunflower Bread from my new raw recipe book, 'Ani's Raw food Kitchen' by Ani Phyo. The reason this is something that I wouldn't normally eat is that it had lots of seeds in it (though I omitted the sunflower seeds, as well as the garlic and added lots of tomato) and it is a lot of dehydrated stuff to have in one meal. Oh and also there was avocado on the sandwich, so it was pretty bad food combining with the seeds + avo. But I felt like eating it! The recipe appealed to me as soon as I got the book, and doubly so because I had almost a full jar of black tahini sitting in the fridge that I didn't know how to use because the flavour is so strong and bitter. I bought it about a year ago when the concept of pre-prepared raw food really excited me, which it no longer does... so this was a great opportunity to use it. Because I used the tahini rather than actual black sesame seeds, as the recipe calls for, the bitter flavour was spread throughout the whole bread not isolated. But it wasn't too strong and overall the bread was really nice!
It was also super fun to pick it up and eat like a sandwich! It held together really well and had a very 'bread-y' consistency, in my opinion! I has chopped lettuce, tomato, snow pea sprouts and avocado on there, by the way. For anyone transitioning to raw food looking for something that really resembles cooked bread, I highly recommend this! And I think I may even make it again, sometime next year probably. I wonder how long black tahini lasts in the fridge...lol!
Have a rawsome day everyone!
Unfoodie ThingsWell, Vegan MoFo (that's MOnth of FOod, for the uninitiated) is now officially over. I didn't come even close to posting every day but I think I posted more this month than I have in the whole last 3 months combined, so I'm happy. And I fully intend to keep it up!
However, since it is no longer the month of food, I don't mind doing a post devoted entirely to something not food... the newest beautiful addition to my rattie family. I was looking after 2 female and two male rats and trying to rehome them because their previous owner moved to Canada. One of the females, who I've named Cherimoya, was rescued by the previous owner 8 months ago and recently had a stroke, so she walks with her head on a permanent slant and has really bad balance but she is honestly probably the sweetest rat I've ever known. She just has the most gorgeous personality. And the cutest lil face, as you can see!
Anyway, my wonderful Mum agreed to let me keep her since I'm so very in love with her and for about 5 days everything was happy and lovely. Then, late last Thursday night, I was putting some food in her cage and picked her up for a cuddle only to find myself with blood all over my hands. She was bleeding copiously from her reproductive tract, which is definitely NOT normal in rats, so I was obviously extremely worried and upset. First thing Friday morning I managed to get in at the specialised rodent vet (only one in Perth!) and my suspicion was confirmed that she probably had ovarian cancer. She received a cortisone injection, to stop the bleeding, because it is impossible to operate while an animal is loosing blood like that. She came home Friday and I was feeding her watered down green smoothie through a syringe, and I continued getting up throughout the night to keep her fluids up.
Amazingly, she made it through the night and I got her back into the vet Saturday morning to have a hysterectomy. I watched the surgery (yes, it is horrible - their breathing is so slow, after every breath you're just waiting for the next one, hoping it comes) and I got to see the awful thing inside her. There was a growth the length of one of her legs (about 3 cm) and the width of my little finger just hanging off the side of one of her ovaries! It was just a big, black/blue blood clot basically, so thankfully not a malignant cancer (phew!) It took her a long time to wake up from the anaesthesia, which was made worse by her stroke, and in fact she was still a bit wobbly for a few days but amazingly she made it through! The big challenge now was, could she re-generate all the blood she lost, but fast forward a week to now and she is pretty much back to her happy, beautiful self with the exception of the big gash down her belly.
Okay, I'll come back soon with food photos, I promise!
