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The enslavement of bees

September 3, 2008 2 Comments Filed Under: Uncategorized

Evening shift at the café: a mouse saunters across the dining room floor. A customer notices and complains. Most restaurants in London have mice. Trouble is when you have a militant animal rights restaurant…you can’t set traps, put down poison…you can’t kill the mice! You can’t even, in good conscience, kill cockroaches. That’s speciesism.

Veganism and anarchy go together because neither believe in hierarchy. That is the root meaning of anarchy…Ancient Greek ἀναρχία (anarchía) < ἀν- (an-, “not”), + ἀρχός (archos, “ruler, authority”). It does not mean, at least in the political sense, chaos. Vegans do not believe in a hierarchy of species, with humans at the top and insects at the bottom. They do not exploit animals for what they produce either...so they do not eat dairy but neither do they eat honey (full explanation here). Even more extreme are fruitarians, who will only eat fruit that falls naturally from the plant. There is a movement called Great ape personhood to include apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans) in the category of people. 
So we spent hours placing plastic bowls with tasty morcels in strategic places, hoping that the mouse would somehow jump into the bowl which would enable us to deposit it outside. As I implied earlier, this mouse was very relaxed around us. Would stroll around. Do the mice know it’s a vegan restaurant?
Dvd, the waitress, at this suggestion, pronounced enigmatically: “Mice have nerves nearer to their brains than we do.” They talked about getting in a cat. “So it’s allright if another animal kills it, but not us?” I asked. 

Just seen, a company called Vegan Karma make these…

This is a pre-monkey, only found in the Old World. Isn’t it wierd looking? Like Golum in Lord of the Rings.

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  1. Ben Emlyn-Jones

    September 3, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    The Findhorn Foundation (http://www.findhorn.org/index.php) has designed a humane mousetrap that can be made cheaply at home. All you need is a mouse cage a plastic tube and a few other household bits and pieces. I saw the prototype in 2005 when I visited the community.

    I wonder if our rodent friends might return the favour by breeding a species of flea that doesn't carry bubonic plague!… Only fair I'd say!

    Reply
  2. marmitelover@mac.com

    September 22, 2008 at 9:24 am

    Apparently they don't work very well, the humane traps. Or they only work if you remove all the food around which is obviously rather difficult in a restaurant.

    Reply

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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msmarmitelover

Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam. Rose Appl Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam.  Rose Apple Blossom Tarts

Serves 8

Equipment: 
Microwave
Cupcake or muffin tin

I use a red-skinned apple to make these, to get a hint of blush at the edges of the ‘petals’.

Ingredients:
4 Pink Lady or Royal Gala apples, cored, cut into quarters, sliced thinly into half moons
1 lemon, squeezed
1 pack all butter readymade puff pastry 320g, on a roll, cut into 8 strips about 6 cms long
100g of melted butter
1/2 jar of rose jam
1 or 2 tbsp cinnamon or cardamom, ground 
Pinch maldon salt
2 or 3 tbsp icing sugar

Instructions

Prepare a bowl of acidulated water (cold water with lemon juice) to prevent browning.
Core the apples, and cut them in quarters. Slice thinly into half-moons (a mandolin is useful for this). 
Put them into a large bowl of cold water with the lemon.
Microwave the bowl of sliced apples for 5 minutes until soft enough to bend slightly but not cook them.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Roll out the puff pastry. Divide into 8 sections by cutting the roll into quarters then halving each quarter. You will end up with 8 approximately 6cm strips.
Brush the strip with melted butter then paint with a layer of rose jam. You can then dust with either ground cinnamon or cardamom.
Lay the apple slices along the top of the pastry strip, overlapping them. Fold up the bottom half of the pastry strip to make an pleat with the skin side of the apple half moon poking over the top.
Roll up the folded pastry strips until they look like a rose made of apple at the top
Place ‘rose’ side up, in a buttered cupcake tin
Repeat until all are done and bake for 20 -30 minutes.
Using a tea strainer or small sieve, sprinkle with icing sugar.
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