Just Humans Being...

Tonight's dinner has been leftover Haricot Bean Bolognese which Sime added tofu and borlotti beans to make it go further, he fried the tofu in soy sauce and we served with rice, which we always cook with turmeric (yes we do eat a lot of rice!) and green salad. The Bolognese also has lots of garlic, onions, mushrooms, red pepper and courgette. Tomorrow we are off on the road again, so it we will show you what foods we pick up and eat on our travels! Love Kay and Sime xx

Today is Day 3 of World Vegan Month. We hope you will watch the video and if you are not vegan - perhaps you will consider a change. The Vegan Society have lots of information to help you make a start on How To Go Vegan And we are always more than happy to help. Please DO IT!!! Love Kay and Sime xx

Religion is still a big thing in rural France, especially in the Auvergne. We've seen it all before - the volcanic rocks with virgin Mary statues towering over communities, the altars and crosses just outside villages. The views from the statues are amazing, so always worth a climb.  Friday (All Saint's Day) was a day of families gathering. Everywhere was quiet and we took the opportunity to explore. Saint-Pierre church at Novacelles is a lovely little building. With a warm and cosy atmosphere. Day of the Dead is all about honouring our deceased loved ones, so we lit candles. Our Lupe died just days before we came away on our trip. Our beautiful companion of 14 years. We are still hurting and know when we arrive home next week we will miss him dearly. We continue to wish him a goodnight every night, as we do Fleaby (our other old boy) when we're away from home.  Lupe is buried just outside our bedroom window, under

The light is terrible in this kitchen at night, but here is our Day 2 food post for World Vegan Month. We've made a Bolognese with haricot beans and veggies and served with a green salad. Here is a previous post for the recipe: Our Bean Bolognese Recipe Enjoy! Love Kay and Sime xx

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts." ~ Rachel Carson ~ Isn't it beautiful how nature has a desire to cover up abandoned human junk? All our stuff lying around roadsides, in driveways, gardens and waste ground slowly being absorbed by nature. We find it fascinating and although it's sad to see so much discarded stuff around, we love how nature always fights back. Luckily, we both share similar views as to what we consider to be beautiful because otherwise, we probably wouldn't have our little house. It needs lots of TLC and was so overgrown when we first saw it - as it was again this visit, but we both absolutely love it and don't see it like others do...our new neighbours think we are crazy to have bought the house, although it's more the size which makes them laugh rather than the condition.  We think it's rather sad that so many folks don't

We have set ourselves the challenge again to share posts of our food every day during November for World Vegan Month. As we are eating leftovers tonight from last night's stew, we thought we would show you our rather bland looking, but delicious lunch... Rice with miso and sea vegetable soup thrown in! We always have some sachets of miso soup or paste in our picnic basket for a quick snack and they are great for when we are travelling. If we're on the road, we can usually fill our flask with hot water for the day, although there are not many French hotels with kettles in the bedrooms - we usually ask the staff on reception or if we're having breakfast, just fill our flask then. We've not managed to find a French alternative that we are happy with, so we usually make sure we have plenty for our trip...Clearspring is our favourite. Happy World Vegan Day! Love Kay and Sime xx

We often get shocked at how much folks are willing to pay for vacations. Even if we become billionaires...no don't laugh, you never know...we will no doubt continue to travel simply.  We love camping for starters, so we can't imagine not doing it and then there's a real joy in bargain hunting hotels and holiday accommodation. We tend to camp if we can do more than 3 nights and the weather's nice. If it's not so good, then we usually look at self-catering accommodation and easily find great places. When we're on the road we tend to find cheap motels for overnight stays and book a few hours before arrival to save money. These can be anything from a motel chain to a more fancy pants country hotel...on our last trip to France we found ourselves staying in the grounds of a vineyard in Burgundy and it was lovely!  A lot of small hotels open up to business travellers out of season and when they still have rooms available, they reduce their prices and

Halloween and All Saint's Day (La Toussaint) is a big event here in France and it has been for a long time, probably as big as in North America. We remember being in Paris with our kidlets many years ago over Halloween and seeing lots of decorated places and kids dressed up, which we didn't really see much of in the UK at the time. Our hotel overlooked one of the city's large cemeteries and on November 1st, we woke up to an incredible sight - the cemetery was absolutely buzzing with people bearing flowers and gifts...it was fascinating for us all to see and experience.    At the moment, we are house and kitty sitting in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region of France and there is much activity in the cemetery of this rural village this week, as families honour their dead loved ones. Today has been a quiet day for us, we are happy to stay away from the Halloween celebrations and instead just enjoy the peace of this lovely house, cuddle lots of kitties, feast and relax.

As lots of you will be aware...we eat porridge every day. When we go away, we take all our ingredients, pan and utensils so we can continue to eat it on the road. We have recently introduced various hosts to the benefits of eating a daily bowl of what we call superfood porridge and have gone through the recipe with them, but we did promise to make a video too, so here it is! It's funny, but we still get contacted by old blog followers and B&B guests from years ago asking us for a reminder of the recipe.  Simon made it back then and would beautifully hand write the recipe out for anyone who requested it. One guest wrote to say after using Simon's recipe for years, she went and knocked a cup of coffee over it and could no longer read it, so this spurred us on to create a copy on our laptop and now we just press a couple of buttons and off it goes attached to an email (yes, we realise this technology has been around for a while, but still - it's a cool id

All you need is the plan, the road map and the courage to press on to your destination. ~ Earl Nightingale ~  We are pretty sure that we have covered this subject before... We absolutely love road trips and they start as soon as we close the door at home. We focus on the journey, rather than the destination. Sometimes the journey turns out to be completely different than we expected, but it never matters. What is important to us is that we enjoy it. Being on the road lights us both up - the amazing places we come across and the people we meet, the new friends and connections we make - it's all wonderful.  Even when we set out to explore a place only to discover that we have been there before, which seems to happen a lot lately...Hahaha!!! It makes us sad that most people are so keen to get to their destination as quickly as possible, they miss out on so much. Folks who drive long hours don't seem to think of their journey as part of their trip

"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly."  ~ Bertrand Russell~ Buying our French house was a dream come true for us and something we have talked and blogged about a lot since we started out with Just Humans Being. We stopped buying trivial stuff years ago and instead focused on what we really wanted...A tiny house in France and a decent energy efficient car to travel in.  Our plan finally materialised last year and it fills us with joy that we made this happen. We intend to "creep and go" with regards to furniture and any decorating, as most of you know - we rarely rush into anything! On our recent visit, we bought a second hand table and chairs from a wonderful resource centre - La Ressourcerie du Pont in Le Vigan. We had visited twice before on previous trips to the Cevennes, but never found what we wanted, but it felt very important for us to support the centre, as t

We need to understand that all species are related to each other, all of us have evolved together. The sun heats the soil, the soil feeds the trees, the trees feed the birds, the rain feeds the trees. All beings nourish each other. This is ecology. ~Satish Kumar~

All civilisations are impermanent and must come to an end one day. But if we continue on our current course, there's no doubt that our civilisation will be destroyed sooner than we think. The Earth may need millions of years to heal, to retrieve her balance and restore her beauty. She will be able to recover, but we humans and many other species will disappear, until the Earth can generate conditions to bring us forth again in new forms. Once we can accept the impermanence of our civilization with peace, we will be liberated from our fear. Only then will we have the strength, awakening and love we need to bring us together. Cherishing our precious Earth–falling in love with the Earth–is not an obligation. It is a matter of personal and collective happiness and survival. ~ Thich Nhat Hahn ~ Here is a link to the full article: We Need a Revolution; It Starts with Falling in Love with Earth Now is the time to be thinking about the way you live your life.  To