Stinging nettle soup anyone?

Hello hello!

MeganandTraffy

Thanks so much for letting me join the regular GHBs. It was great being a guest blogger but now I feel like I’m truly  one of the gang.

First up I have to come clean and confess that I write under two different names – Megan Rix and Ruth Symes (I am tempted to write under more names if I can come up with more stories but will let you know when/if that happens).

As Megan Rix I write stories about dogs – 4 so far: One memoir about the two puppies I helped to train as Helper Dogs before getting Traffy (in the pic with me) called The Puppy that Came for Christmas and Stayed Forever, and three books set in WW2 about heroic dogs. I posted about the latest book last month ‘The Bomber Dog.’ All these books are heavily inspired by my own dogs (Traffy and Bella dancing on the beach below) who I find endlessly funny and lovely and entertaining.

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As Ruth Symes I’ve recently been writing books about a witchling called Bella Donna and her cat called Pegatha. There’s 6 of these books and the latest one is called Bella Bewitched. I’ll be blogging about it here on Halloween – can’t wait!!!

Pegatha in the Bella Donna books is inspired by the cat who lives over the road that I often look after. He’s really friendly and as soon as I let myself in he comes racing down the stairs and over to me for a cuddle and a tummy-rub. If he’s very excited he’ll jump through his cat-flap run round the garden and then come bouncing back in through the cat-flap. I can almost hear him say ‘Ta-da!”  My neighbours are always apologetic when they ask me if I’ll look after him but I love doing so – he’s a brilliant story cat.

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As part of my research for the Bella Donna books I’ve been trying some different nature inspired foods recently including stinging nettle soup – which was surprisingly yummy and not stingy at all. There’s lots of recipes like this one for it on the internet http://www.the-veg-life.com/tag/stinging-nettle-soup/

And that’s it from me till next month – see you soon! 🙂