It's a topsy turvy world..

I write this from my desk in Geneva. I am sitting at a desk with a computer. I am wearing shoes (ish) trousers (ish) and a shirt, freshly ironed i might add. Looking to my left i see Graham, he is sitting at his desk, but it's not his beauty that steals my attention. Through the window, there is the gardens of the Palais de Nations, it was bequeathed to the UN by a wealthy sod back in the day when wealthy sods existed and did things like that. It is a well manicured green space, it used to be open to the public for them to roam free and visit the library, now it's not so open. Since 2001 and the government conspiracy to .. oh hold on, wrong blog.. Anyway, since then, it's been closed tighter than Merkel's purse strings.
Above the greenery fly some raptors, i believe they are black kites, so i have been reliably informed, very big and graceful. The lake is a dominating feature today due to the clouds, it's always a beautiful colour, even on a cloudy day. It's blues and greens look  like the coast of Gozo. Behind the lake rise hills, behind the hills rise mountains, and behind them all lies Mont Blanc, as the name suggests, there is snow it's peaks all year round, and it's quite a sight.
If office work was this, sitting here, looking at inspiring videos on vimeo, or catching up on films, tv series and stand up that i have been meaning to watch for months, then i could do this. But barely.
Each morning i have to sit on the window sill, take off my shoes and socks and soak up the sun, i have come to realise i am solar-powered.
My life has been very changeable of late. I waltz to the music of life alone once more..
I have jumped ship from the meat eaters to the vegan ship, it's a lovely ship and i will try hard not to convert you....I am trying hard also not to be self-righteous..
I do however feel amazing. I drink super greens before each meal (chlorellla/spirulina/barleygrass/wheatgrass), I have a smoothie for breakfast each morning, and salads with various pulses and beans the rest of the day. I snack on nuts, and i have stopped eating sugar.
I don't feel like i have had to give up anything. The things that i used to eat, just don't appeal to me anymore, the thought of having coffee, alcohol, cheese, doesn't do anything for me. It's a strange situation.. until you try it, you can't understand. You just don't understand *runs into the corner crying*.
I have 8 days left here, which i will spend swimming in the river, which is lovely. Running, which makes me fell good. Eating, which i still love. Exploring all that Geneva has to offer, which is exciting.
Everything is a blessing. Just sometimes they are in disguise..

The teachings of Mr Saucy Squirrel

This post today is high-tech on the down-low. The low-down on the upcycle. Use, abuse, and reuse.

Cycle, recycle, upcycle, unicycle. Nuts roll. Nuts rule.

In the last month, the two in the bush (craft) as the proverbial saying goes, weren't worth the one in the hand. So I quit. Much to the disbelief of all working there, just plain quit it.
I have spent the last few months learning a bit of carpentry, making things out of pallets, the first of my objets d'art was a blanket chest/coffee table for my sister/brother-in-law.

Next, I began finding pallets everywhere so I carried on, for some inspiration, check out www.instructables.com. Feeling inspired but without more customers, I had to find a space and fit something into it, so I made a shelving unit to put my books on, and an Adirondack chair for my parents' patio.

With my Kindle it make sit easy not to read real books, but after the few months of reading the Kindle, the initial novelty has worn off, and i am happily balancing the both. The Kindle and an amazing site called http://www.gutenberg.org/ has introduced me to books, i've never thought of reading, currrently on my Kindle is the Scarlet Pimpernel, Madame Bovary, and the Allan Quartermain series...
Today having to look after my little brother who was 'ill', I decided to have a nice freshly made coffee. Obviously a coffee needs something sweet, so just as the coffee is bubbling, out come freshly baked dark chocolate and almond cookies.
Orders now being taken for cookies and chairs... bookshelves and biscuits...

two in the bush(craft)

Who needs a gas stove, ovens, work tops and hoods?
Give me the woods anyday of the week.
Mr Saucy Squirrel returns to his home in the woods, this time the Cotswolds is his temporary abode, and cooking for bushcradt survival school is his new vocation.
The Bushcraft Company is a fairly new bushcraft skill school. They do courses from Archery to Blowpipes, from tree climbing to spear throwing..
This last week saw the Cotswolds holding the field cook 'training', training in inverted commas as it seemed to be 15 people playing in the woods.
My favourite part of the course was the pit oven. We had a haunch of venison, chopped up into man-sized chunks, marinated in rosemary and garlic, and wrapped in foil. Some igneous rocks were put in a huge fire for a few hours, meanwhile a 1 foot square pit was dug. The pit was then lined with the hot hot rocks, and the venison was put on top, covered again with hot stones, and finally smothered in a bit of earth.
Fast forward two hours, and we were scraping away the dirt, pulling out the still warm rocks, and lovely steaming chunks of juicy venison. After resting for 20 mins, we tucked in, hot, juicy, tender and meaty, this was truly one of the loveliest meals i've ever eaten.
Smoking. I have to say, I enjoyed it. Rotten oak logs, smoking the parnassed rainbow trout, hanging off a fresh hazel line-sounds a little pompous, but there's nothing wrong with some pomp now and again.
After a few hours smoking (and cooking) the trout were ready, cooled and kept till morning, we made some lovely kedgeree, with our own smoked fish. Having said this, Team Beta smoked their trout using implements of the modern age, and their trout, was a lovely yellow smoked fish. But i still liked our primitive methods, using just the implements of the woods.
Armed with knife and axe, the squirrel is heading back to the woods...

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Well January came and went, in a whirl of italian delicacies.. sunny wintry days should always begin with a cherry jam filled brioche and a coffee... they should always include some porky deliciousness of prosciutto, pate and of course my all time favourite-porchetta..
I enjoyed some lovely cheeses, all the pecorinos, from fresh, just out of the sheep, to the wizened old crumbly cave stored lumps enfused with a flavour and stench to rival an old bishop.
Road trips were a plenty, calling in some old haunts, and some new ones. Montepulciano was a lovely hill top village and the day was beautiful, the wine and cheese tasting was plentiful, and there were more leather boots than you can shake a stick at.

After a lovely month in Florence, I travelled back and spent 36 hours in london. I visited the Hunterian museum (a walk from Covent Gdn) which was one of the strangest collection of articles i've ever seen. It cannot be explained, it must be seen to be believed.
I also visited the Natural History Museum, for the first time. I saw a dinosaur and a blue whale and a wooly mammoth and and and....
I was startled and amazed by the big mammal/dinosaur skeletons. but i couldn't help thinking about what the chops/bacon/sausages/fillet would be like from many of the animals.. I think vegan Paul is lost forever...
On returning to the UK, i had a job interview in Oxford for a bushcraft company, and i had to do a short presentation. I talked about the relationship between food and farming, meat and death.
The more awareness people have of the relationship between meat and death, the more open the state of animal welfare will be. The more open the nature of animal welfare is, the better quality meat we will all be able to enjoy, and the more small specialised farmers will be able to viably sustain themselves.

On the subject of meat. I tasted possibly the nicest sausage i've eaten recently. It was from a butcher in WK, and it was pork and black pudding, it had the lovely twang of black pudding, but with the lovely soft texture of a good sausage. I recommend it highly!
Finally, away from the subject of meat, my cake of the month has to be the raspberry and white chocolate blondie at Sweetpea in WK. If you are unlucky enough to live somewhere other than WK, then i suggest you make the trip, from Meols, London or Nepal. It's worth it.

Where is the turkey crown?

Christmas is a time for families, for seeing old friends, eating cake for breakfast and every combination of turkey possible. This Christmas was no exception. Old friends and families were seen and enjoyed, new faces growing older by the day, standing, walking, talking. Christmas cake was scoffed and then subsequently rationed, left with armed snowmen guarding their snow-capped paradise. (Several attempted raids left the snowmen in a precarious state with a significant loss of land..)

December saw me buying a new motorbike, despite not having my license yet, and learning how to fix it, with the very capable help of Tony. December also saw me working at the Farmer’s in Frankby, the food is tasty for what it is, but it lacks the x-factor that will keep it busy through the winter. I’ve had a few ideas for the menu, but the one that seems to be taking shape is the 5 mile menu. With a map on the top of the menu, you can see exactly where you food came from, and it will all be from within the 5 mile radius. This idea connects with me on many levels, first I think it is an amazing thing to be able to eat what is grown in the locality, second it supports local businesses, and thirdly it improves local resilience. Buy from a supermarket or chain shop, you are pouring into a bucket with holes in, buy locally, from people, money stays with the local economy and can go round again, this is local resilience.  Every time we buy anything, we are making a decision, we are making a vote, we are saying yes to cheap imported meat with little care for the animals welfare, or we are saying yes to local, to hand reared, to real farmers, to people looking after the welfare of the animals we will eat.

Ok, enough ranting. A last quick note about the pork box, the Gloucestershire Old Spot piggles, though. For £65 we got 7 packs of delicious sausages, 3 packs of loin steak pairs, 3 maple cured streaky bacon, and 2 back bacon, we also got a shoulder joint, a rolled pork belly, and the biggest rolled leg joint a burly man could comfortably hold. (www.fordmillfarm.co.uk)

Mr Saucy is enjoying the delights of Italy, more food induced posts to come…