This Saturday 4th December is known as Small Business Saturday. It’s a grass-roots, non-political, non-commercial campaign that encourages people to support small businesses in their communities. Though the campaign usually culminates with one specific date, the intention behind the campaign is to have longer-lasting effects and encourage shoppers to be more aware of the benefits of supporting small businesses all year round. Small Business Saturday 2021 marks the ninth year of the event in the UK, and the campaign has grown significantly each year. In 2020, £1.1 billion was spent with small businesses across the day. The first Small Business Saturday took place in 2010 in the United States, and was an initiative introduced by American Express on the first...
The tradition of Thanksgiving dinner often has been associated in popular culture with New England (6 states within the US). New England Puritans proclaimed days of thanksgiving to commemorate many specific events. On December 11, 1621 Edward Winslow of the Plimoth Plantation wrote a letter in hopes of attracting more colonists. In it, he described a three-day feast shared by the Plymouth settlers and the local Wampanoag tribe. The Governor sent out four men who provided a variety of food, sufficient to feed the colony for a week, while Massasoit's hunters killed five deer. In the 19th century, this event became associated with the idea of a Thanksgiving feast. Even though there were no Turkeys associated with thanksgiving at the...
With Christmas fast approaching, we’ve been super busy here at Mon Dessert putting together the perfect dessert tins for the gifting season. But why do we give gifts at christmas? And how has the custom of gift-giving changed over the years? We know that the winter solstice, around 21st / 22nd December, was an important time during the Neolithic period. At this time people gathered together at sites like Stonehenge for feasting and gift exchanging to commemorate the end of the year and the beginning of the next. In pre-Roman times there was also a tradition of giving gifts in the New Year. At the beginning of each year the Druids gave out sprigs of their sacred plant mistletoe...
Desserts would have been a luxury during World War II after the introduction of rationing but the government wanted life to appear normal to its people and so wanted to provide them with a way to still be able to enjoy sweet treats. It produced a collection of dessert recipes that each family could use with rationed ingredients. Ingredients such as sugar were rare and so the government encouraged the use of honey, which was not imported and could be found throughout most of the UK, as well as many other commodities found in nature such as blackberries, wild strawberries etc. That’s why one of our favorite remembrance day traditions is being able to bake for friends and family and...
Being vegan or flexitarian doesn’t need to be a regimented thing. Even cutting down on the number of animal products we consume makes a difference to our health and to the environment. By becoming vegan or reducing other animal products for most of the week, when we go back to eating a regular diet we automatically become more mindful about what we are consuming. So what benefits does this type of mindful eating have on us? 1 – Reduced Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Research has found that vegetarian type diets are better for reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes than “diabetes-friendly” diets. This is expected to carry over to flexitarian diets too. 2 – Better for the Environment...
