We recently moved into a new house and the backyard was a mess so I conned my Dad into coming to visit and bringing his tools and technical know-how to turn it into something more productive.We made a mini veggie garden and a cat enclosure – how cute! It’s a tiny house so not a lot of space to work with. If it was ours we would rip up the decking in a second but at least I got to play in the dirt for a while so I was pretty happy!

We spent a lovely day together making garden beds in the sun and then we needed to eat. Now I’m from the country – we had cows, goats and a lamb when we were little and my parents gave them names like “Chops” and “Sausage”. By the age of 12 I was off red meat and by 16 I was off meat altogether. I was a vegetarian for about 6 years, then a (kind of) meat eater for 3 and now a vegan! So my parents have had to adapt to my changing diets but this year they are struggling. “What exactly can a “raw vegan” eat?” I had something to prove!

So I pulled out the sun dried tomato burgers that were a hit with Dee and served them with some salad, avocado and tomato guacamole and some garlic and chives cashew cheese from Botanical Cuisine. My Dad loved it! I wasn’t so sure about my Mum but more on that in a minute.

(burger mix so good even the cat is considering raw veganism…)

Then for dessert we pulled out a jar of Tiramisu-ish (also from Botanical Cuisine – yes we are obsessed!!) and they polished off a jar between them. “I can’t believe how many delicious things you can make with nuts” exclaimed my Dad. The next morning breakfast was fruit salad with coconut yoghurt and hemp seeds and I even got them to try coconut water (another success!)

(yum!)

All in all everyone was happy and off they went back to their house a few hours away. The next day my Mum sent a photo via text. She’d been to the health shop and was showing me a massive bag of hemp seeds, valerian tea, coconut flour and buckwheat…perhaps we had an impact?!