THE VEGAN NEWS
THE VEGAN NEWS
OCTOBER
1997
In This Month's Issue:
- Recipes
- This Month's Article - Iceland for Vegans
- Vegan Product Review
- In The Veganic Garden
- Book Review
- The Wildlife Database
Recipe of the Month
Pauline's Tofu Stir-Fry with Noodles
Ingredients
- 125g Blue Dragon, pre-steamed, Mie nest noodles
- 200g firm tofu - cut into half inch cubes
- 25g mushrooms - thinly sliced
- 25g frozen peas
- 25g frozen sweetcorn
- 25g mung bean sprouts
- 100-150g mange-tout peas and baby sweetcorn
- 2 medium carrots - cut into thin strips
- 1 small onion - finely chopped
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- For the Marinade:
- 1 tbsp tamari
- 2 tbsp fresh orange juice
- 1 chopped garlic clove
Method
To serve:
- Mix the marinade ingredients together in a bowl. Add the tofu cubes and leave to marinate for several hours in the fridge.
- Bring a fairly large pan of water to the boil. This will be used for cooking the noodles.
- Drain the tofu cubes, reserving the marinade liquid and place them in the wok. Stir-fry the cubes in the olive oil, turning frequently, until all the cubes are golden brown. This takes about ten minutes.
- Put the noodles into the pan of boiling water and cook for about ten minutes, until tender, but still firm.
- While the noodles are cooking, add the rest of the stir-fry vegetables (except for the bean sprouts) to the wok and pour in the reserved marinade liquid. Stir-fry for 5 minutes.
- Finally, add the beansprouts and cook the vegetables for a further five minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender and heated through.
Drain the noodles and divide them between two plates. Put the stir fried vegetables on top of the noodles and sprinkle with tamari sauce.Recipe Serves 2
Note: If you are unable to obtain any of the above vegetables, then simply increase the amounts of the vegetables that you do have, or use a replacement vegetable e.g. broccoli instead of mange-tout.
October Product Review
Clearspring Organic Japanese Tamari Soya Sauce
This rich tasting, wheat-free, tamari sauce is made from organically grown soya beans, using a 500 year old Japanese recipe. It is matured in cedarwood kegs over two summers and is a very useful seasoning for many savoury dishes. Try it sprinkled on top of stir-fries, use it in marinades, or mix it into savoury sandwich fillings. You will find this product in some health food shops. This product contains salt.
What's Happening in the Veganic Garden This Month?
Harvesting
This month, llift and store crops such as beetroot, potatoes, turnips and carrots. Also, pick any remaining runner beans and if using nets to grow your beans, then it is better to take them down in order to prevent hedgehogs from becoming entangled in them, in the colder weather. Other crops that may be harvested in October include: autumn leeks, Brussels sprouts and some varieties of cabbages, cauliflowers, apples, pears and plums.
Tidying Up
October is a good month to tidy up the veganic garden before the cold weather arrives. Clear the land of any crops that have now finished and if you have any compost left, then place it on the surface of the cleared beds, but do not dig it in. If you want to start using veganic gardening methods next year, or simply wish to extend your present veganic vegetable plot, then autumn is a good time of year to start making any new raised beds. The easiest way to do this is simply to cover the ground with a thick mulch such as: old natural carpet; thick cardboard, or a thick layer of newpapers and to leave the mulch in place until the spring. More details of how to make raised beds can be found in the January Issue.October is also the time to collect any leaves that have fallen off garden trees and to recycle them by converting them into leafmould. Incidentally, if you made some leafmould last autumn, then take a look at it now, as you may be able to use it to make some comfrey potting compost. If it looks well rotted with a fine crumbly texture, then place alternate (3-4 ") layers of leafmould and chopped comfrey leaves in a black polythene sack. Punch some air holes into the sack and leave it in sheltered place until the spring. The potting compost is ready for use when the comfrey leaves have rotted down and virtually disappeared. (Leave the leafmould for a further year if it is not yet ready to be used in this way.) If you do not have any comfrey plants in your garden, then it may be worth growing your own plants next year. Comfrey is not only useful as a replacement for peat in potting compost, but can also be used as a liquid feed for tomatoes and peppers, as a mulch, or as an activator for the compost heap.
Seed Sowing
A bit late in the year to be sowing most types of seeds, but at the end of September, I made a sowing of some Field Beans (Vicia faba) in my tomato patch. Field beans are usually sown for animal fodder, but they can also be sown to produce a nitrogen rich green manure crop. (More details about this in next month's issue.) Field beans are winter hardy and can be sown in the autumn between September and November. They are good nitrogen fixers. Field bean seeds can be obtained from the Organic Gardening Catalogue.
Planting
Plant out spring cabbage plants (e.g. Offenham or Flower of spring) and new fruit bushes this month. It is also the right time of year for planting bulbs.
In the Wildlife Garden
This year, towards the end of the summer, I had several interesting sightings of wildlife in my garden. Firstly, in my herb garden, where I have a variety of Marjoram (Origanum vulgare variegatum) I noticed that, in August, there were often 8-9 colourful, tortoiseshell butterflies feeding on this one plant, at once. It was lovely to watch them feeding outside my kitchen window. On another occasion, a baby greenfinch flew onto my trough of green peppers and went to sleep, enabling me to take some good close-up photos of it! And, this year, frogs have been spotted hopping about in my tomato and cucumber beds on several occasions. August and September also attracted many large dragonflies into my garden. On some occasions, I counted as many as 10-12 at once. One large, turquoise and green dragonfly even flew into the house whilst I was working on the Vegan News - another excellent photo opportunity, that I was unable to resist! Unfortunately, I must also report the sighting of an unwelcome garden visitor, an extremely large variety of orange/brown slug. This, I removed from the veganic garden promptly!Sadly, with the approach of the cooler weather, most of these creatures have now disappeared, leaving the garden looking rather empty. However, there are still quite a few Red Admiral butterflies coming into the garden, probably enticed in by the ivy flowers and the rotting greengages! They seem to like to sunbathe on my garden table.
Review of 1997 crops
The weather, this year, has again been rather unpredictable. After suggesting that you all prepare for another drought, it poured down here, in Southern England, for the earlier part of the summer! Then in August, when it would have been nice to have some rain to water swelling crops, it was of course very dry. However, my onions appear to have benefited from these rather peculiar weather conditions and this year I had a very good crop of large onions. This climate pattern did not, however, suit the runner beans which rapidly became tough, stringy and inedible - although, some later flowering beans, were a little bit better. So, next year I am going to try the white-flowered variety 'Desiree', which is supposed to be stringless and does better in drier conditions.I, once again, obtained a good crop of tomatoes. And, mild weather at the start of September, allowed me to leave them outside for longer this year and so the resulting crop should last well into the autumn. The June pea crop was also very successful and the new strawberry bed , planted up in April, although rather slow to get going at first, started to produce flowers in August. By the end of August I was able to pick the first strawberries and they continued to crop well into September. The crop should be even better next year, as by then, the strawberry plants should have become well established and should have sent out new runners.
The sweetcorn crop, unfortunately, was very poor this year. Next year I may try a different variety, or may try to grow Florence fennel, instead. All my salad crops did quite well apart from the Saladini which refused to germinate in the cool, wet, conditions in June. (In other years I have had very good yields from my Saladini patch.) The beetroot crop is rather late this year, probably because of dry conditions in August. Never-the-less the crop still looks good and will be harvested towards the end of October and either stored for the winter, or pickled. Unfortunately, the Broccoli was savaged by caterpillars! But, this crop never does terribly well in my garden soil and I will probably not plant any next year. The Spring cabbage, available from early May until July, produced a reasonable crop again this year.
Well, I have mentioned my most obvious successes and failures. The remaining crops: peppers, cucumbers etc. gave moderate yields. The pumpkin seeds, unfortunately, did not germinate very well: I planted six and produced two plants. One plant produced two pumpkins, the other grew to an enormous size, rampaged around the garden, but unfortunately seemed unable to reproduce properly and all of the small pumpkins it produced dropped off! Rather disappointing, but I will have another go with pumpkins next year.
Winter Crops
My crops of parsley, winter radish, Chinese cabbage, rocket, land cress, 'Imperial Winter' and 'Winter Density' lettuces and broad leafed prickly spinach are now all well established in the veganic garden.
October Book Review
Salads for Small Gardens. By Joy Larkcom (Hamlyn)
A useful little reference book that will help you produce an all-year-round supply of fresh salad crops in your garden. The book has sections on: dealing with pests and diseases; soil fertility; composting; mulching; crop protection (using frames, cloches and poly tunnels) and the use of edible flowers, wild plants and herbs in salads.
Detailed information is given on the many types of salad plants and salad vegetables that can be grown in gardens, including the many varieties of lettuces, endives, chicory, cress, tomatoes, radishes and onions. The book also has quite a lot of information on many of the Japanese vegetables that I wrote about in last month's issue of the Vegan News. On page 80 there is a very good 'recipe' for comfrey compost which can be used instead of ordinary potting compost.
I ordered my copy of this book from the public library.