vegan twix bars:
Take rich tea fingers, spread dulce de soya on them, pour over melted chocolate and stick in the freezer a few minutes.

Also today I've shelled the last of the hazelnuts we brought back from France and covered them in chocolate. Actually I'm still feeling twinges of the food poisoning I had all week.


ZINE REVIEWS
Lets (sic) Just Pretend?! 4 - This one is distro'd by Ricochet Ricochet and I picked it up at that Women's Zine Fest awhile ago. Very attractive 8(ish) x 8 zine with a pretty mixture of typed and handwritten/drawn. The issue was a mixture of interesting and annoying. Kate interviews Edd from Last Hours zine, The Cut Ups, Raise the White Flag, The Fire Still Burns, Against Me!, Routine Check and Comeback Kid. She doesn't call the Against Me! dude on being a sellout or anything. Actually, this zine is unselfconsciously neutral about what often is politicised in the hardcore scene eg. questions of commercialism in music and religion. This is judging by the range of stuff reviewed, the sorts of labels the bands are on (eg Victory in the case of Comeback Kid), and the Christianity of some members of that band which is referred to in the same way that someone's home town might be. I didn't know most of the bands, but the interviews were interesting because Kate is really well-informed and asks good questions. One section of the zine consists of the 'babyrant' section - basically the opinion/column bits. Some of the rants were surprisingly half-baked including that old chestnut about what will happen to all the animals if we all go vegan? - not a relevant question/argument since no society is going vegan overnight. I'm being a unfair, I'm sure since she's probably just not had much life experience, but anyway it surprised me. She does write at one point though that sometimes she doesn't even believe what she's written. There are loads of zine reviews, which is always a bonus, as well as the previously mentioned music reviews. It's 51 pages in all, and particularly recommended to anyone who like the bands interviewed.
Contact the editor here: letsjustpretenditskate@hotmail.co.uk or http://www.myspace.com/letsjustpretendfanzine 

Here's more stuff from that zine fest at the Women's Library
Chronicles of a Cheating Heart 5- elrestodemivida's new one looks exactly like her previous ones, and this is a bit of a problem for a distributor since at first glance anyone would assume they have read it before. In number 5 she gives us some info on the experience of bulemia as well as the link to her upcoming comp zine - http://uk.geocities.com/fearsome_hunger_zine. Kitty also reviews a poetry open mike night in Liverpool, defines her idea of feminism, talks about her current mental, emotional & physical health problems, gets angry about celebrity cokeheads who claim to be bipolar and she slags off straightedgers in the meantime for some reason. Alli in all, it seems Kitty is having a particularly difficult time at the moment. A quick read for someone in the mood for someone else's angst.

Up Yours - Got this one from Ricochet Ricochet! Distro. UY is a little square zine with a fluffy inverted triangle on the cover evidently symbolysing a vagina. The minizine starts off with 'names for your vagina' including 'fuzzpock' and 'hoohoo' which were new to me. Later on are two pages with names for periods. Every page has some odd and cutey type-written vag-related thing on it including Britney's vag shot. If you don't mind that it takes about 2 minutes to read the whole thing, it's worth it for the silly fun. My favourite bit:
<i>protect ur vage with a rape alarm or something sharp you only get one vagina and it WONT grow back</i>

The Tea & Sympathy Postal Network 4 - Also from RR! Distro, this is a v. mini zine that comes in a little brown envelope and individually numbered. The folded up piece of yellow A3 inside also contains a teabag (organic blackberry). This is a mad collage of drawings, scrap images, written and printed words about tea, how to dress when working at a school, what she eats at school for snacks, the emotional meanings of her music collection and various other interesting & well-written bits.

Get Bent (zine, cd & badge) - From RR! natch. Fun queer music from the likes of Gertrude and a fun board game about setting up a queer cafe to play with before getting into the zine itself which is a good size and printed in dark pink on beige paper - v. elegant.

Other updates:
- Yesterday was spent in Clacton during a gale, so my hair is full of sand
- I just watched Battle of Algiers for the first time
- I can't login to my ftp to edit my site dammit
- Great news has come via the Greenwich Cyclists email: teh ebil Thames Gateway motorway Bridge has been scrapped after intervention from the likes of the London Cycling Campaign and the Greens..
- Today I baked a scone recipe found in the internets and they turned out much better than the previous recipe I tried so here it is:

Blueberry Scones
    •    1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
    •    3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
    •    1/2 tsp. baking soda
    •    2 tsp. baking powder
    •    Dash of salt
    •    3/4 cup sugar
    •    1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine, softened
    •    2 Tbsp. lemon juice
    •    1/2 cup soy milk or rice milk
    •    1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (be sure to thaw them if frozen)
    •    Preheat the oven to 400°F and grease a cookie sheet lightly with margarine or oil.
    •    In a large bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
    •    Add the sugar, margarine, lemon juice, and soy milk or rice milk and mix until just combined.
    •    Stir in the berries and gently mix. Do not overmix!
    •    Drop the dough in 6 or 7 circular clumps on the cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.

The Zine Wiki is rather exciting, so I've wanked myself up there with entries for Synthesis and for myself. Hopefully, Tard Nation zine will end up on there and I can find out at long last whatever happened to it. Actually, I might put an entry myself and see if it gets added to.

I've also joined those crazy folks at the Vegan Freak Forums. This morning I made the banana walnut pancakes from the PostPunk Kitchen - another excellent one from Isa, yum! We had them with maple syrup/homeade blackberry jam.

Today I made these ( cookies )

Here is the recipe I'm using this year which is adapted from one in 'The Garden of Vegan' cookbook.

Powdered egg replacer to equal 2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup soya milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour ( used a mixture of wheat & maize )
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp margarine

Combine in blender for 20 seconds. Leave in refridgerator for at least 30 minutes. With a spatula or fork wrapped in kitchen roll, spread a very small amount of oil or margarine onto a non-stick pan. The pan should be hot enough that the oil beads. Pour 2-3 tbsp of the batter onto the pan. Cook until almost dry on top and lighly browned on the edges. Loosen the edges with a thin spatula and flip the crepe over. Cook for another 15 seconds.

Eat with sugar & lemon juice, melted chocolate, maple syrup, peaches....

Here is a new vegan brownie recipe ganked from a vegan sxe kid in Canada called XJFXEDGEX
X-posted: everywhere...

( right this way... )