I have not blogged for a while due to too many other things needing my attention.  Such as my little cherub’s birthday.

Today was glorious and I had a near perfect start to the day.  I woke up when I was ready to wake up (instead of when the alarm told me to), we only had fun on our agenda and both of my children were at home.

I did spend the first couple of hours alone in the veggie patch.  I had a lot of seedlings to plant out and to keep me company I had Gary Yourofsky.

Not literally!  Gary is a vegan activist and a superb orator.  I was listening to his speech on You Tube called’ The greatest Speech You Will Ever Hear’.  I highly recommend it to anyone.  He talks with great passion about why you should be vegan: for animals, for your own health and for the planet.  I admire his oratory skills and passion.  There is a section of the speech where he shows a graphic short film of life in slaughterhouses.  It made me cry.  If you eat animals, you should watch it, particularly if you eat cheap mass produced meat.  You should know where it comes from.  There is a warning in the speech when he is going to show the slaughterhouse film so you can skip it if you want to hear his speech but can’t face the film.

If you want to hear a great speaker, explaining why being vegan is such  good idea, you can find his speech here but do be aware it contains a graphic film.

I was very busy out in the veggie patch. I planted some green beans and lots of spinach in to the bed with the purple beans, broad beans and mange tout. Loads of rocket in the bed with the mizuna and celery.I had already planted out the courgette plants earlier in the week.
By the time I came in the sun was shining brightly and we all had a fruit salad for breakfast.  Nothing more was needed but ripe, sweet fruit.Our garden was looking fantastic.  We have lots of rhodedendrons and azaleas so the garden is always stunning in May.
I seem to be too busy, always rushing about.  Recently I have been on several long car journeys with Lara and Harvey and we whizz through cute little towns and villages, with never enough time to stop and look at them.  So today’s agenda was to drive to one, park, walk around and find a bite to eat.  We chose Ticehurst. So many cute little cottages near the centre. I am always amazed at how many churches we have in this country and how old they are. This one is 14th Century !!!!  It is incredible that such a building was constructed in such a small village so long ago.
Ticehurst also had an interesting range of shops but they were all closed. Luckily the pub wasn’t closed so we went inside.  This is The Bell. It was a warm enough to sit outside so we did, in their pretty garden.  This part of the garden leads to the little rooms you can rent out and stay in.  This is the path to the ‘Honeymoon’ room. Last night’s visitors were leaving when we arrived and they all said it was a wonderful place to stay.  This is a fire pit in the evening which would be really good fun to sit around.
Back under the archway was where we sat for lunch. As usual, no vegan options so I had vegetables; new potatoes, broccoli, fries and a salad.  Unfortunately I didn’t ask for no butter so I failed to have a vegan lunch.  I did manage to resist dessert and just had a coffee.

This evening Lucy came round for supper which was lovely as I haven’t seen her for ages.  We had a green salad.  These greens came from the garden; mizuna, broad bean tops and baby swiss chard leaves and I added some spinach too.

I bought these wraps from Waitrose yesterday.   I have not tried this brand before but I liked the look of them because they are organic and because they only have a short list of real ingredients.  The amount of non food items in a standard wrap is dreadful.I spread the wrap with humous, lined up the raw veggies in the centre, rolled it up like a sausage, placed them on a baking tray and baked them in the oven on 200° C for 10 minutes.  Really quick and easy to prepare and really tasty.  I served them cut in to half but you could also make pinwheels out of them by slicing them thinly. We had baked potatoes.  I par boiled the potatoes for 10 minutes, drained them and then coated them in a little olive oil, thyme, paprika and garlic and baked them in the oven on 200°C for half an hour so they crisped up.

Instead of a salad dressing I made guacamole with an avocado, lime juice and a chopped tomato.  A simple supper but a tasty one.

Enjoyed with a glass of Prosecco.

I really enjoyed my day, I hope you did too.