Roselle, your heart for life and land is so sweet! I think (and hope) that serializing your recipes here on Substack would be a great idea - it seems like there would be a very interested audience who would be grateful for vegan recipes, which are still pretty limited in the scope of things. I wonder if there might be a hybrid approach, in which you share the important message of your book in more traditional published format, while providing some recipe teasers and then referring readers to your online materials for full-photography-recipes? Best wishes finding the right path forward for this project, I know it's close to your heart and important to share!
Dear Sydney, you are always such a support. Thank you. And – you know what? That might just be a BRILLIANT solution!
A few people have emailed me to say they'd be interested; and I could actually create the background info bit myself, with DTP and some editorial knowledge (I mean I have both), and offer it as a pamphlet.
A big thank you hug for such inspiration! (And my photos are kind of OK for the web; not your quality, obv; but OK.)
Yay, I'm glad to hear it might be a good idea for you, sounds like you definitely have the right tools & skill set to make it work! It's very kind of you about the photos - I actually don't shoot much inside because the lighting is so difficult. We have deep eaves shading our windows, which is fine for life but tough for photography! If you have nice kitchen windows or some other good lighting setup, your food photos will be just lovely - I see people make great food images with their phones all the time, but it's definitely all about the light :) Anyway, your excitement is contagious, I'm looking forward to this for you!
Roselle, I agree with you that veganism is the way forward for all the reasons you state. I’m almost a vegan but I admit that I do eat eggs from organic free range chickens. I wish I could keep chickens because they are so lovely but I have nowhere to put them. Chickens are one animal you never need to kill.
When I lived in Italy I borrowed a broody hen and gave her a clutch of eggs to hatch. She produced a brood of the most beautiful, wild chickens and two cocks, all of whom flew into our nut tree to roost every night. When we went away our chickens looked after themselves, going down to the forest to look for food. Finding the eggs was always a challenge because our chickens hid them in obscure places.
I too had a veg patch and produced all our vegetables organically, channelling water from a nearby spring and making enormous compost heaps. I now have an alottment in Stroud- England.
Lovely to hear from you, Angela - and thank you. So glad you are broadly in agreement.
Ah - not at all surprised to hear you live in Stroud. I have various friends who have lived there, and used to travel up there a bit when I worked with the poet Jay Ramsay on courses we led together.
I occasionally eat eggs, I confess. I also used to keep free range bantams who, like yours, used to roost in the trees. I loved them and their characterful ways. However, by removing their eggs we are still in effect requiring that they lay almost all year round as opposed to a couple of clutches, and some say that a) it hurst to lay an egg, and b) it strips calcium from their bones.
It's a hard one, isn't it? I don't manage 100% of the time, and in France it's harder than in the UK: Stroud, like Totnes (our nearest town until last year) offers so much to a vegan, whereas here they barely understand what it means (tbh many people don't anyway, I guess, French or British).
Thanks for this Roselle. Lovely to know what you're up to in the West. Self publishing has come a long way in recent years so it would be quite simple to produce a good quality hardback recipe book. You'd just need a designer to help you with page layout. The rest is easy.
Thank you for reading and your thoughtful comment.
With Arts Council England funding I did self-publish a book many years ago – I had a designer and a cover designer and the result was beautiful (Writing the Bright Moment, towards the bottom): https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/
But I had a ready audience for that from my many years of running creative/reflective/psychospiritual writing courses. I think what puts me off now, apart from the cost, is distribution, since I'm not known as a chef! And coming to terms with the fact that my publisher who was interested in it has had to dissolve that particular imprint. A lottery!
But it might be worth investigating again, nonetheless. I'll think on. Have you had any experience of self-publishing? Maybe the cost has come down these days.
Meantime I'm enjoying both your book (reading it slowly; savouring its beauty) and your posts here.
Thanks Roselle. The main thing now with self publishing is that digital printing is very high standard, even for hardback, which was not the case even 5 years ago. And you can print on demand, which means no up-front cost. Books take a few days to produce, so you could potentially take orders without holding stock. Unit cost is much higher than if you did a large print run though, so your profit is less and it would not be worth having a distributor. You would need to sell directly, not via bookshops.
This is such a powerful and important letter Roselle and I love your passionate words even if the subject content is heartbreaking.
I think, no I know, you are 100% correct. If all of us, worldwide, made an effort to a create climatic harmony, even with small gestures every day, the difference would help but barely, In a world that seems too often nonchalant or worse non believers it is an almost impossible task. Almost 60% of the worlds carbon emissions come from just four countries, four countries that are on the whole oblivious/turning a blind eye (I’m sure I don’t need to name them) or simply don’t have the educative or financial capabilities to change even a small percentage of this figure, it is a huge fight we have on our hands.
But every little DOES help. Which is why we who care and know and shed tears too often in sadness at the news and hope and pray for a greener and healthier future for this beautiful planet and her inhabitants, do what we do, daily and religiously! And will continue to do so...
I wish I could give you helpful advice on your book dilemma, if I lived next door to you I would nip over with my camera every time you wanted a photo and take all that was necessary gratuit! As for how to proceed though this is out of my sphere of expertise, however, I will say this - if you don’t try, you’ll never know and if you have no joy publishing in a traditional manner, there are always alternatives. Here being one of them...
What a lovely, and kind, response, Susie - and if we lived next door to each other I'm sure we'd spend a fair bit of time tramping through this wonderful land and nattering, as i think we share many perspectives!
I'm so glad to read your words, here and on your own site.
Am reflecting quietly on my way forward.
May your week too be gentle - solstice blessings to you and yours.
Roselle, thank you for your wise words. All of them!
I for one would be happy to become a paid subscriber in order to receive the occasional recipe from you. It can be easy sometimes to keep cooking up the same meals over again. The effort of dragging out a cookery book and searching the pages for a recipe that catches the eye can seem like a bit too much effort. It would be great to have meal ideas drop into my Substack from time to time!
On another note, I lost one of my Hebridean ewes, Ruby, earlier this week. She was 13 years old and we rescued her from the fate of being someone’s dinner when she was only 6 months old. We watched her grow from a weak lamb into a funny and feisty ewe, even our old Collie, Floss, was terrified of her. She was one of the family. She trusted me to care for her, on her terms, yet I know she appreciated how I spent those nights with her, and hand fed her, during those last few days of her life. That I could possibly have any valid reason to deprive her of any minute of those 13 years is unthinkable.
Chris, what a lovely message. Thank you. I do think about rescue animals – I have vegan friends who run a (vegan) café-bookshop in the Forest who have rescue hens, and another friend in the UK with all sort of rescue animals, mainly sheep. We could set aside a little land here for them and still rewild/reforest a reasonable area.
I love what you say about Ruby. You are a star. And we do that for our animals. And I'm so sorry you have lost her. What a life she had with you though.
OK, recipes in inboxes, photos and all, might be a way forward. I think the early part of the book is important, though, but much less immediately engaging. I'll reflect on what you say.
Roselle, your heart for life and land is so sweet! I think (and hope) that serializing your recipes here on Substack would be a great idea - it seems like there would be a very interested audience who would be grateful for vegan recipes, which are still pretty limited in the scope of things. I wonder if there might be a hybrid approach, in which you share the important message of your book in more traditional published format, while providing some recipe teasers and then referring readers to your online materials for full-photography-recipes? Best wishes finding the right path forward for this project, I know it's close to your heart and important to share!
Dear Sydney, you are always such a support. Thank you. And – you know what? That might just be a BRILLIANT solution!
A few people have emailed me to say they'd be interested; and I could actually create the background info bit myself, with DTP and some editorial knowledge (I mean I have both), and offer it as a pamphlet.
A big thank you hug for such inspiration! (And my photos are kind of OK for the web; not your quality, obv; but OK.)
Yay, I'm glad to hear it might be a good idea for you, sounds like you definitely have the right tools & skill set to make it work! It's very kind of you about the photos - I actually don't shoot much inside because the lighting is so difficult. We have deep eaves shading our windows, which is fine for life but tough for photography! If you have nice kitchen windows or some other good lighting setup, your food photos will be just lovely - I see people make great food images with their phones all the time, but it's definitely all about the light :) Anyway, your excitement is contagious, I'm looking forward to this for you!
Roselle, I agree with you that veganism is the way forward for all the reasons you state. I’m almost a vegan but I admit that I do eat eggs from organic free range chickens. I wish I could keep chickens because they are so lovely but I have nowhere to put them. Chickens are one animal you never need to kill.
When I lived in Italy I borrowed a broody hen and gave her a clutch of eggs to hatch. She produced a brood of the most beautiful, wild chickens and two cocks, all of whom flew into our nut tree to roost every night. When we went away our chickens looked after themselves, going down to the forest to look for food. Finding the eggs was always a challenge because our chickens hid them in obscure places.
I too had a veg patch and produced all our vegetables organically, channelling water from a nearby spring and making enormous compost heaps. I now have an alottment in Stroud- England.
Lovely to hear from you, Angela - and thank you. So glad you are broadly in agreement.
Ah - not at all surprised to hear you live in Stroud. I have various friends who have lived there, and used to travel up there a bit when I worked with the poet Jay Ramsay on courses we led together.
I occasionally eat eggs, I confess. I also used to keep free range bantams who, like yours, used to roost in the trees. I loved them and their characterful ways. However, by removing their eggs we are still in effect requiring that they lay almost all year round as opposed to a couple of clutches, and some say that a) it hurst to lay an egg, and b) it strips calcium from their bones.
It's a hard one, isn't it? I don't manage 100% of the time, and in France it's harder than in the UK: Stroud, like Totnes (our nearest town until last year) offers so much to a vegan, whereas here they barely understand what it means (tbh many people don't anyway, I guess, French or British).
Solstice blessings to you!
Solstice blessings to you too.
I must admit I don’t think my wild chickens were laying any eggs they didn’t want to lay. They were a law unto themselves.
Thanks for this Roselle. Lovely to know what you're up to in the West. Self publishing has come a long way in recent years so it would be quite simple to produce a good quality hardback recipe book. You'd just need a designer to help you with page layout. The rest is easy.
Hello James
Thank you for reading and your thoughtful comment.
With Arts Council England funding I did self-publish a book many years ago – I had a designer and a cover designer and the result was beautiful (Writing the Bright Moment, towards the bottom): https://roselle-angwin.co.uk/books/
But I had a ready audience for that from my many years of running creative/reflective/psychospiritual writing courses. I think what puts me off now, apart from the cost, is distribution, since I'm not known as a chef! And coming to terms with the fact that my publisher who was interested in it has had to dissolve that particular imprint. A lottery!
But it might be worth investigating again, nonetheless. I'll think on. Have you had any experience of self-publishing? Maybe the cost has come down these days.
Meantime I'm enjoying both your book (reading it slowly; savouring its beauty) and your posts here.
Thanks Roselle. The main thing now with self publishing is that digital printing is very high standard, even for hardback, which was not the case even 5 years ago. And you can print on demand, which means no up-front cost. Books take a few days to produce, so you could potentially take orders without holding stock. Unit cost is much higher than if you did a large print run though, so your profit is less and it would not be worth having a distributor. You would need to sell directly, not via bookshops.
Ah that's really helpful, James. Thank you so much.
Solstice blessings, etc.
This is such a powerful and important letter Roselle and I love your passionate words even if the subject content is heartbreaking.
I think, no I know, you are 100% correct. If all of us, worldwide, made an effort to a create climatic harmony, even with small gestures every day, the difference would help but barely, In a world that seems too often nonchalant or worse non believers it is an almost impossible task. Almost 60% of the worlds carbon emissions come from just four countries, four countries that are on the whole oblivious/turning a blind eye (I’m sure I don’t need to name them) or simply don’t have the educative or financial capabilities to change even a small percentage of this figure, it is a huge fight we have on our hands.
But every little DOES help. Which is why we who care and know and shed tears too often in sadness at the news and hope and pray for a greener and healthier future for this beautiful planet and her inhabitants, do what we do, daily and religiously! And will continue to do so...
I wish I could give you helpful advice on your book dilemma, if I lived next door to you I would nip over with my camera every time you wanted a photo and take all that was necessary gratuit! As for how to proceed though this is out of my sphere of expertise, however, I will say this - if you don’t try, you’ll never know and if you have no joy publishing in a traditional manner, there are always alternatives. Here being one of them...
I hope the week is kind to you x
What a lovely, and kind, response, Susie - and if we lived next door to each other I'm sure we'd spend a fair bit of time tramping through this wonderful land and nattering, as i think we share many perspectives!
I'm so glad to read your words, here and on your own site.
Am reflecting quietly on my way forward.
May your week too be gentle - solstice blessings to you and yours.
I don’t doubt we’d do much nattering and wandering together either Roselle... a wonderful thought for the future perhaps, I hope..! X
Roselle, thank you for your wise words. All of them!
I for one would be happy to become a paid subscriber in order to receive the occasional recipe from you. It can be easy sometimes to keep cooking up the same meals over again. The effort of dragging out a cookery book and searching the pages for a recipe that catches the eye can seem like a bit too much effort. It would be great to have meal ideas drop into my Substack from time to time!
On another note, I lost one of my Hebridean ewes, Ruby, earlier this week. She was 13 years old and we rescued her from the fate of being someone’s dinner when she was only 6 months old. We watched her grow from a weak lamb into a funny and feisty ewe, even our old Collie, Floss, was terrified of her. She was one of the family. She trusted me to care for her, on her terms, yet I know she appreciated how I spent those nights with her, and hand fed her, during those last few days of her life. That I could possibly have any valid reason to deprive her of any minute of those 13 years is unthinkable.
Chris, what a lovely message. Thank you. I do think about rescue animals – I have vegan friends who run a (vegan) café-bookshop in the Forest who have rescue hens, and another friend in the UK with all sort of rescue animals, mainly sheep. We could set aside a little land here for them and still rewild/reforest a reasonable area.
I love what you say about Ruby. You are a star. And we do that for our animals. And I'm so sorry you have lost her. What a life she had with you though.
OK, recipes in inboxes, photos and all, might be a way forward. I think the early part of the book is important, though, but much less immediately engaging. I'll reflect on what you say.
Solstice blessings to you.