There are two easy recipes in Bird: El inglés volando. In fact, there’s quite a lot of food in the book. Yummy! If you look carefully, most of it is vegan. Let’s look into these vegetarian birds.

From the very beginning, it was clear in my mind that I wanted to include at least one recipe. When my sister and I were little girls, we had very positive experiences related to this.

One day, my sister came back home from school and said: “Mummy, the teacher has said that we have to make a sponge cake. See the recipe on this page.” That was her homework.

Since we didn’t have an oven, we went to my auntie’s. She was delighted to give the little cook a hand. Once all the ingredients had been mixed, she asked for help with the oven and… When she saw the result, she felt it was magic! She was in awe. She had put some things together and something beautiful and delicious had come out of the oven. Wow!

Nowadays, she’s a keen cook. (This is her YouTube channel: click).

I have never been too enthusiastic about kitchens myself, but I manage. I used to be a rather weak child, never really willing to eat due to some health problems. I got better and I started to get interested in cooking maybe thanks to our Sesame Street encyclopaedia, at least in part. There were nice looking recipes any child was able to make. Funny enough, the food depicted was mostly vegetarian.

The first recipe in the book.

Can you remember the Mad Cow Disease? It was a bombshell in 2001. That, together with something related to the chickens in Belgium, made me change some of my eating habits. On the other hand, I am well aware of other people’s choices because of different circumstances. A good friend of mine has only recently been diagnosed with lactose intolerance. Now she has to read labels carefully, but she feels fine! And there are gluten intolerants, and people allergic to so many things… We’re all different!

The second recipe.

Anyway, I really wanted an easy breezy approach to food in Bird. And listen carefully, there’s a key word: Substitution.

If you don’t want milk in your diet, simply use almond milk. Or soy milk or rice milk or any one you like. Of course the results of your recipes will be different. That’s because the ingredients are different. But! Some changes will be for the better. I didn’t use to be a big fan of regular chocolate ice-cream, but I’ve tried a vegan one (love you Booja Booja!) which drives me crazy. In fact, it’s raw vegan. Amazing.

Now that I think, I’m not sure whether this sort of product is easy or difficult to get just anywhere… I buy it at Red Verde in Seville (Spain).

(Ok, I’ve checked and there are alternatives in large supermarket chains).

Hey, don’t worry; the ingredients I’ve used for my recipes are just ordinary ones.

So, what about our veggie birds?

✮        No, they do not count as food themselves.

✮        No, the dragon does not finally eat Prince Charming in the modal verbs section.

✮        No, Gary doesn’t count as food either.

✮        Yes, the little worm is going to be the dinner of the little owls.

(I knew that owls eat mice, but I didn’t know much more about their likes and dislikes. I’ve learned that they eat snakes, rabbits, fish… But when they are baby owls, they are brought worms and insects).

✮        No, the crab doesn’t count either (Oh, come on! Are you really so hungry?).

And what about manners at the table? Manners matter. The bird on the first page of modal verbs… For goodness sake! What a disaster!

If it’s not self-evident to you, and you don’t want to hear all the stuff about anthropology, blah blah, social conventions, blah blah, cultural construction blah blah blah… just check what’s nice and what’s not when you’re at the table. There are dozens of sites talking about this. Sit up straight, mouth closed, no elbows… No need to grab your fork and knife like that: The food in your plate is already dead.

Finally, the lady with the basket full of vegetables in the passive voice section.

This is a totally different story. She doesn’t mean to eat all that. She’s… going to throw some things at the actors in the theatre.

(What?!)

Yup, people used to do that when they didn’t like the show, or the show announced for the following day. I bet actors really tried their best. Incidentally, the building in that cartoon is the original Globe Theatre. Can you imagine yourself there throwing leeks at the Globe?

It seems I should better visit the aforementioned pages about manners myself.

✮        No, vegetarian people’s moral standards are not higher than those of the rest of the people.