words & photos: Sophie McKeand In all honesty the most difficult thing I find about being a vegetarian who is mostly vegan these days is those times when my brain just won’t function and I can’t think of anything to make that sounds remotely interesting (unless of course it’ll take five hours which I do not have) with the veggies I have left in the fridge/cupboard. A big part of slow living for us is creating less waste and not…
Photos: Andy GarsideWords: Sophie McKeand Hudson’s Garden was a lovely place to visit recently. Our friend Pauline and her pack of huskies are now homebaking and I enjoyed learning the art of folding love into doggie snacks by making them from scratch. Our hounds are not lesser beings, they are as deserving of a good diet as we are, so I loved the chance to learn more about this. The key ingredient in this recipe is a helping of dried…
Photos: Andy GarsideWords: Sophie McKeand This week I’ve been working with Pete from Culture Colony on a film about my work for Arts Council Wales Creative Wales. He knows north west Wales so well and found some amazing locations. Here’s a sneak peek of some of the locations and what we were up to. It’s been wonderful reconnecting with this beautiful land of my birth in this way. [rl_gallery id=”1756″]…
Words & image: Sophie McKeand We greeted the children of gods with operatic indifference.Having already slaved to make the world right for some time we promised the earth (as if she were ours to gift) & set them to work in call centres & factories & department stores & endless cafe chains & when they finally began to show promise we stacked debt onto shoulders already bowed with overwrought expectation shackled their imagination to the sum total of our experience then…
We are travelling more quickly than usual at the moment. As I do this final edit, a heatwave has pushed temperatures to well over 35ºC in central France, which in turn has hurried us north. We have learned to position the van so that the sun shines on the driver’s side where there are no windows and the walls are super-insulated, which also means I can sit on my trusty step in the shade. Today we’re parked under a giant…
words & photos: Andy Garside While travelling north towards Calais we stopped off for a lovely couple of days at this beautiful lake in central France. Located 25km north of Limoges it’s the second largest lake in the Limousin region. We’d not visited here for over ten years and it’s become a lot more developed and equipped for tourists now… water park, bike trails, wake boarding, way marked trails… but it’s still such a beautiful place and covers such a…
I have to be honest with you from the start and admit that slow cooking and eating didn’t come naturally to me. It’s why I’m working so hard to fold it into my everyday life. Over time I’ve mastered the art of slow food, of taking my time to create simple, delicious meals from seasonal produce – but still sometimes I crave fast-food. Not Macdonalds or KFC – I’ll well past those days, but still sometimes I just want to…
Words: Sophie McKeand | Photography: Andy Garside The recipes in these OUTSIDER chapters are all created with Slow Food in mind. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of slow food since being part of Cittaslow (an international Slow Town movement) some years ago when we lived in yr Wyddgrug, north Wales. Here’s a quick quote from the Slow Food International website: Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions,…
Words & photography: Sophie McKeand I no longer experience time. Perhaps it is time that experiences me. Travelling is changing me at an almost atomic level. Slowly, I metamorphose into the water cycle, learning to precipitate, to tumble along as a river then gush out into the sea. There is a place in which time no longer exists, just the vast expanse of the ocean – a flat blue line in all directions. I dive down through dimensions. It is…
by Sophie McKeand control: when I see you in dreams / your grief is a moon harrying oceans / on black nights I am weather patterns stuttering across the sky / it is exhausting to be shifting in this way // I can no longer be the rivers of your tears / can no longer be the dam or funnel you towards beauty // I have built endless canopies as shelter from this lunar gaze / still, interference weeps like…