THE VEGAN NEWS
SUMMER 2004
Vegan News is written and edited by P M Lloyd.
Please e-mail your contributions to: paulinelloyd1@btinternet.com
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In This Issue:
Okra
Source: Based on a
recipe in The Curry Club Indian Vegetarian Cookbook by
Pat Chapman (Piatkus, 1990).
Ingredients
- 350g okra
- 25g chopped onion
- 1
garlic clove, chopped
- 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
- 1/4 tsp. chilli powder
- 1/4 tsp. turmeric
Method
- Place the onion, garlic and spices into a pan (or wok) and
add enough water to prevent burning. Cook until soft.
- In the meantime, wash and cut the stalks off the okra.
Chop the flesh into 2cm lengths and add the okra to the
pan when the onion is soft. Cover with a lid and cook for a
further 5-10 minutes, until tender, adding more water if
necessary.
Serves 4
This dish goes well with dry spiced potato (recipe p. 78, Vegan
Taste of India). Alternatively, it can be eaten
with rice, or with an Indian bread such as naan bread.
Okra (also known as gumbo, or ladies' fingers) is a
small, green vegetable that resembles a ridged chilli pepper. Look
out for it in your local vegetable market, or in an Asian store.
It can be quite expensive, so consider growing your own. Okra
seeds are best planted about 10 days after the last frost and pods can
usually be harvested about 50-56 days later. Pods should be
picked at least every other day in order to keep up production. Spare
pods can be harvested, blanched and frozen. Harvest the pods
young, ideally when they are 5-7cm in length. Try the UK varieties
'Clemson Spineless', which is available from Thompson and Morgan, or
'Louisiana Green', available from The Organic
Gardening Catalogue. 'Pure Luck' is a shorter
growing, but nevertheless prolific variety that copes well with the
British climate. 'Pure Luck' seeds can be purchased from Tamar Organics (Tel:
01822 834887). Incidentally, okra is a good source of both
soluble (2.9g/100g) and insoluble fibre (4.4g/100g).
Easy Carob Mousse
Ingredients
- Half a 250g block of firm tofu, cut into chunks
- 1
banana, peeled and sliced
- 1
heaped tbs. carob powder
- 100-120ml water
- Flaked almonds (optional)
Method
- Place the tofu, banana, water and carob powder into a
blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into serving dishes and
decorate with flaked almonds. Yummy!
Serves 1-2
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Animal Aid's Jojoba, Orange and Rosemary Conditioning Shampoo
Belonging to Animal Aid's Purple Monkey cosmetic
range, this rich, creamy shampoo contains essential oils of
rosemary and orange and has a mild and pleasant orange
smell. It lathers up well, leaving the hair clean, shiny and
manageable. It also seems to give my hair more body and bounce.
Suitable for all hair types, this two in one product is excellent value
at £3.00 (+ postage) for a 200ml bottle.
Containing essential oil of peppermint and
extracts of calendula, comfrey and aloe vera, this animal-free mint
foot lotion is lightly-perfumed and is ideal for soothing and
refreshing tired and aching feet at the end of a hard day, or after a
long walk. It's also fairly moisturising and should help to
keep your feet soft and supple. Price £3.50 (+ postage)
for a 200ml bottle.
Animal Aid's Sea Spray Shampoo
This gentle shampoo is also from Animal Aid's Purple Monkey range
of products. It contains seaweed extract (Fucus vesiculosus) and
is suitable for all hair types. It lathers up well and has a mild and
refreshing smell. Price £3.00 (+ postage) for 200ml.
Other products available from Animal Aid include:
Telephone: 01732 364546 to order any of these products.
Alternatively, you can order online.
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Summer Sowing and Planting Schedule
- June: Plant out young tomato
plants from early to mid June after all danger of frost has passed.Continue to make sowings of runner beans, French beans,
lettuce, beetroot, swedes, carrots and pumpkin seeds and sow sunflower
seeds in situ for a fine autumn display. Make sowings of winter
cabbages in trays of seed compost. June is also a good month for
planting out young celery plants - plant them out when they are about
15cm high. If you intend to have a go
at growing your own okra this year, then send off for your seeds
straight away! Soak the okra seeds and plant them in a warm, sunny spot
when there is no longer any frost danger.
- July and August: Plant young leeks out in
mid-July, or when they are pencil thick. Remember to make
sowings of perpetual spinach, in July and August to be sure of a good
supply of this nutritious green vegetable for autumn and winter use.
Winter radishes can also be sown towards the end of July or in
early August. Try sowing varieties such as 'Belrosa' and 'Black Spanish
Round' or one of the daikon varieties. Make another sowing of
parsley in August for winter use, either in an outside bed, or in
containers for indoor use. Start to plant out young winter brassicas
(e.g. kale, winter cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli etc.) in July and
make some sowings of spring cabbage in trays of seed compost for later
planting. Stop tomato plants when
4-5 trusses have formed and feed and water plants regularly
with comfrey solution and/or a seaweed solution such as
SM3. You should also stop runner beans when they have reached the top
of their supports. Onions can be lifted when the
tops have died down and stored when they are dry. Garlic
should also be lifted as soon as the tops have turned yellow.
Crops Available this Summer:
- June: Broad beans, peas, new
potatoes, lettuce, spinach, asparagus (until mid-June), broccoli,
spring cabbage, spring onion, radish, gooseberry, rhubarb,
strawberry.
- July: Globe artichoke, broad beans,
French beans, runner beans, beetroot, carrots, cucumber, lettuce,
marrow, peas, potatoes, radish, spinach, black and red currants,
gooseberry, raspberry and strawberry.
- August: As for July
above, plus sweet
corn, onion, cherry, pear and plum.
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Pond Update
Some of you may remember that in the spring of
2001, I created a small pond in my veganic garden, using a
recycled baby bath? This pond (illustrated
right) was gradually colonised by wildlife. You can read more about
what lives in my pond in the Autumn
2002 issue. I'm afraid it's looking rather overgrown in
this photograph. This is because the frogs don't like me tidying
it up and so I
usually wait until they are hibernating.
I am pleased to report that my frogs decided to spawn in the pond for
the first time this spring. A great dollop of frogspawn appeared in
late March and by mid-April there were lots of tadpoles swimming around
in the water. So hopefully, I will soon have a lot more
frogs hopping around my garden. Incidentally, I would just like
to mention that in February I saw the most beautiful fox drinking from
this pond in broad daylight!
Some frog facts: Frogs are amphibians with
long powerful hind legs that are used for jumping and swimming.
They are cold blooded creatures and hibernate from mid-October to
late February, often in the mud at the bottom of lakes and ponds.
Female frogs are slightly bigger than the males and they also tend to
be somewhat lighter in colour. Adult frogs live mainly on land, in
damp, shady situations in order to keep their skins moist. Look out for
them in damp meadows, woodlands and fields
as well as in gardens. Frogs breed when they are around two to four
years old (which is probably why mine took so long to spawn). They
lay their eggs in water, between March and April, with a single female
frog producing up to 4,000 eggs! It is thought that adult frogs like to
spawn in water containing glycollic acid, which is produced by certain
algae. The eggs, which look like a huge mass of jelly floating on the
water, eventually hatch into tadpoles. The tadpoles gradually
develop,
lose their tails and take on the adult form. Adult frogs feed
entirely
on land. They eat insects, worms (and veganic gardeners take note!)
slugs.
Do your best to encourage these useful little creatures to live and
breed in your garden. Provide them with a pond. It
doesn't necessarily need to be a very big pond. And don't feel that
you can't have a pond, if you don't have a garden. Simply create one
in a suitable container on your patio or balcony, instead. You
can then either just wait and see what naturally colonises your pond.
Or else you can speed things up a little by collecting and adding some
pond or canal water and/or some mud to your new pond.
Meet Freddy, or maybe it's Fredrica?
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In the Wildlife Garden
Many of our wildflowers and commonly grown garden plants are
beneficial to animals and can be used to attract wildlife into your
garden. Here, I will cover another three plants that are especially
attractive to wildlife. Details of other suitable plants
are given in earlier issues and these
are now listed in The
Wildflower Index.
Reaching up to 90cm in height, this evergreen
plant has violet or purple scented flowers from July until September.
Lavender will provide nectar for many types of butterflies, but seems
to be especially popular with white butterflies. 
It's also very popular with bees (including
bumble bees) and birds such as tits, chaffinches and goldfinches will
eat its seeds and use it for nesting material. Lavender grows best in a
well-drained soil in a sunny position. Plant it in a sunny border, or
in a container. Alternatively, use it to make an attractive,
low-growing hedge, perhaps surrounding your herb area. Lavender
flowers smell lovely and can be dried and sewn into muslin sachets etc.
This low-growing plant can form a
dense, creeping mat once it is well established. It has
loose clusters of between two and seven bright, yellow flowers and
dense, black seed pods, which look very like a bird's foot, hence its
name. Bird's foot trefoil is listed in John Chamber's Wild Flower
Gardening, as being an outstanding butterfly nectar plant and wood
whites and blue butterflies seem to be especially attracted to it.
However, the plant's main use is as a larval food
plant, it being especially popular with the caterpillars of blue
butterflies and with those of the five and the six spot burnet moths. The
plant's seeds are often eaten by
seed-eating birds and its flowers are very popular with bumblebees.
Bird's foot trefoil will grow well in a sunny position,
for example in a rockery, or at the front of a wildflower border and
because it withstands trampling well, it can also be planted in a lawn
or by the side of a path.
Heather (Ling) is another excellent butterfly
nectar plant, which is also used as a
caterpillar food plant by the larvae of the silver-studded blue
butterfly and by various moth caterpillars. Bird's will eat its seeds
and bees adore its lovely purple-pink flowers. Plant heather in a
sunny position in an acid soil. It grows well in containers. Just
remember to clip the plants well after flowering each year
to prevent them from going 'woody'. Note: The flower's of Calluna
vulgaris are a deeper purple than those of this related heather
shown in the illustration (left).
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An excellent site and
a particularly good source of information for the those who are new to
veganism, or for anyone who is thinking of going vegan. You can
shop or become a member online.
Tempeh Information
This informative web site reveals everything there is to know
about tempeh. Learn how to make it from start to finish in your own
home, how to vary recipes, and how to create your own incubator.
Information on tempeh starter and troubleshooting are also covered.
Vegan World Order
An informative site concerned with vegan food. This
site offers a good selection of vegan recipes and lists many vegan
restaurants (mainly in the USA and Canada), its main aim being to:
'help vegans eat in a world that
doesn't meet their demands'. If you know of any good vegan
restaurants or recipes, then do submit them here. There's also a wide
range of vegan recipe books for sale.
Veggiepets.com
A vegetarian and vegan online pet food shop, selling
competitively priced veggie dog
and cat food throughout the UK. Incidentally, they're currently
evaluating two kinds of vegan cat food, which hopefully will be
available soon. Products offered include VegeCAT supplement, chews,
biscuits, treats and books. There's also plenty of useful tips
and other dog-and-cat related information. Online ordering, with goods
delivered promptly to your door.
New Balance
New Balance produces good quality running shoes and cross
trainers, many of which are suitable for vegans. Produced in
various widths, these shoes have the additional advantage of being made
in the UK. A small selection of New Balance's range of running
shoes is available by mail order from Ethical Wares.
However, you can view their whole product range at this
website and also track down your nearest
supplier. Incidentally, New Balance products can also
be purchased by mail order from Frontier's
online store.
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of Page
Summer
Book Reviews
Moon Over Water:
Meditation Made Clear with Techniques for Beginners and Initiates by
Jessica Macbeth (Gateway 1990).
This is a
fascinating book with plenty of easy-to-remember and straightforward
exercises for beginners, plus some more complicated and challenging
exercises that are suitable for people with previous experience. Moon
Over Water is written in a lively manner and you will probably soon
start to feel like you are setting off on a big adventure, which indeed
you are. The author leads you encouragingly along the path of self
discovery, revealing some of the many techniques that can be used to
produce inner peace and tranquility. At all times though,
you are the one who is reponsible and in
control and you're expected to devise your own exercise programme
from the many exercises on offer. There's also lots of interesting
background information, some simple relaxation techniques to use before
you start meditating and plenty of useful tips to help you overcome
common pitfalls like falling asleep on the job. The main meditation
techniques are summarised in a useful appendix. I think this must
be one of the best and most detailed books I have read on this subject.
Moon Over Water is available by mail order from The Bristol
Cancer Help Centre for £9.99 (plus £1.00
postage). You can order online from CanHelpNow, or by phoning
the 24 hour Orderline on 0117 980 9522. Alternatively, write to:
CanHelpNow, Grove House, Cornwallis Grove, Clifton, Bristol BS8 4PG.
All profits are donated to the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, an
organisation which provides support to carers, courses for health
professionals and residential self-help courses for people with cancer.
Ocean Surf
This sixty minute tape belongs to the Dan Gibson's Solitudes Nature
Sound Collection. It has no music on it - only the sounds of surf,
breaking waves and waves lapping onto rocks. It's very peaceful and
calming and is perfect for using as a focus for meditation.
Alternatively, it can be used as a background sound when
relaxing. In fact when it is playing it's ever so easy to
imagine that you are on a remote beach somewhere. However,
do make sure that you go to the loo before you settle down to listen to
it, if you are likely to be affected by the running water and gurgling
noises on it! I purchased my copy from Positively
Healthy in Epping High Street (Epping) for £8.49. Look
out for this cassette
in similar shops near you. Solitudes Ltd is a
Canadian company. A copy of their mail order catalogue can be obtained
from their website. It's also possible to purchase Ocean Surf (tape/CD)
online from the Solitudes
Store.
If you would like to find out more about meditation, then please refer
back to the meditation
article that was published in the Winter 2004 issue.
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Copyright © Pauline Lloyd 1996-2004
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