THE VEGAN NEWS
THE VEGAN NEWS
JUNE 1998
In This Month's Issue:
- Recipes
- This Month's Article - All About Seeds
- Vegan Product Review
- Vegan Raw Food Books
- In The Veganic Garden
- In the Wildlife Garden
- Vegan Websites
- Book Review
- The Wildlife Database
Recipe of the Month
This recipe is a slightly modified version of a recipe in Vegetarian Indian Cookery by Shehzed Husain.
Vegetable Balti
Ingredients
- 4 oz (120 g) black eye beans, cooked
- 8 baby potatoes, cut in half
- 1 carrot, peeled and sliced thickly
- 1 head of broccoli, broken into florets
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 chopped onion
- 1/2 tsp black onion seeds
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 2 sliced tomatoes
- 1 tsp of chilli powder - or to taste.
- 1 chopped green chilli
- 1 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
Method
Recipe Serves 3
- Cook the potatoes and carrots in boiling water, until just tender. Drain.
- Heat the oil, in a pan or wok and stir fry the onion, garlic and onion seeds for 2 mins.
- Add the chilli powder, sliced tomatoes, broccoli, beans and cooked potatoes and carrots to the pan.
- Continue to cook for about another 12 minutes, until the broccoli and onion are soft and the beans are heated through. Just before serving add the coriander and green chilli pepper to the pan and cook for a further 2 mins.
- Serve with rice (or naan) and a Indian pickle.
June Product Review
Tom's of Maine Natural Toothpaste.
Tom's of Maine Natural Deodorant.
I tested the unscented version which contains aloe, lichen and coriander (it does in fact have a slight smell). This deodorant has a gentle formula, is alcohol-free and prevents odour naturally by using lichen instead of artificial bactericides. And it seems to work well too, although of course the summer heat hasn't arrived properly yet and so I've only tested it when out jogging! I tried a push up solid-type of deodorant, but liquid roll-ons are also available. You can find out more about Tom's of Maine products on the Internet. (Information updated in March 2009 - Both of these products still seem to be available. Look out for them in your local health food shop. They can also be obtained by mail order from Big Green Smile and Only One World in the UK. )
Book Information
Anyone who wants to visit Northern Ireland or Edinburgh this summer may like to revisit last month's issue where I have added two further travel books to the list.And if it's too hot to cook this summer, then some of you may like to check out these raw food books which are all available from The Living and Raw Foods Website. (Information updated in March 2009: If you can't find any of these books at this web site, then try Amazon UK or visit your local library. However, you will find many more recently published books on this subject in the Book Shop at the above website.)
- Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Cookbook by Steve Meyerowitz. Price $14.20 .
Two hundred and fifty vegetarian recipes which use nuts, vegetables, seeds, grains and beans. The recipes are raw, flourless, dairyless, low temperature and low salt.
- Super Smoothies! By Candia Lea Cole. Price $10.10.
Over 60 dairy-free recipes, made mainly from uncooked foods.
- Not Milk... Nut Milks by Candia Lea Cole. Price $7.76.
Forty original dairy-free recipes, made almost entirely from uncooked foods. Book contains recipes for children and teens.
- The Garden of Eden Raw Fruit and Vegetable Recipes by Phyllis Avery. Price $10.95.
Over 160 raw-food recipes, including 44 main dishes, all made from fresh, raw produce.
- Dining in the Raw by Rita Romano. Price $13.96.
Rita Romano combines the techniques of macrobiotic, vegan, allergy-free and raw food disciplines. Over 700 recipes.
- Vibrant Living by James Levin MD and Natalie Cederquist. Price $13.56.
A good raw food recipe book which has recipes for juices, nut milks, smoothies, salad dressings, snacks, sauces/spreads, seed and nut cheeses, main entrees and desserts.In the UK, the Fresh Network stills supplies raw food books by mail order. Visit their website to see what is currently available.
What's Happening in the Veganic Garden This Month?
Sowing and Planting
Tomato plants can be planted outside sometime between the end of May and the middle of June, but do not put them outside until there is no longer any danger of frost. Tomatoes like to be planted in a sunny, sheltered position and if possible plenty of wood ash and leaf-mould should be added to the soil just before planting. Tomatoes should be planted about eighteen inches apart and staked and watered immediately after planting. About 2-3 weeks later, when the plants are well established, I usually put a compost mulch on top of the soil around each tomato. Tomatoes need to be watered regularly, especially when the fruits are forming. Comfrey solution makes an excellent feed for both tomatoes and peppers and can be purchased from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. You can also order comfrey plants and use them to make your own comfrey solution.Basil is a excellent companion plant for tomatoes and it is a good idea to sow a row of this extremely useful herb next to your tomatoes. At the end of May/beginning of June put indoor-raised runner bean plants outside (or sow seeds directly into the soil) and indoor-raised peppers can also be planted outside in a sunny bed in the south of England. However, further north, peppers should be grown on a sunny windowsill or in a green house, instead.
Sow pumpkin seeds early this month for an autumn crop of this highly nutritious vegetable and why not sow some sunflowers, too? Sunflower seed heads make excellent bird food or you can sprout the seeds and eat them yourself. If you have a small garden (or only a patio/balcony) there is now a dwarf variety of sunflower called Big Smile, available from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. However, if you have plenty of space, then you will get a better yield of seeds if you use one of the giant sunflower varieties such as Russian Mammoth.
In June, make sowings of spring cabbage, carrots and further sowings of lettuce, beetroot and salad onions. Little Marvel peas, sown in June, will give a good crop of peas in the autumn.
Other Jobs To Do In the Garden
You will probably need to protect your soft fruit this month. Strawberries and raspberries, particularly need to be protected from the birds. This year my second year strawberries started to flower early at the end of April and so I had to protect them from the birds with netting and also cover them with polythene at night to protect them from frost! Fruit can be protected with old net curtains or you can buy special nets from most garden centres. You will also find some more ideas about how to protect fruit in the May 1997 Issue.If the ground is dry, you will probably also need to do quite a lot of watering this month, particularly when cucumbers, courgettes etc. are starting to swell up.
Crop Picking
Peas, broad beans, lettuce, spring onions, spinach, radish, gooseberries, strawberries and rhubarb, are just some of the delicious, pesticide-free crops which should be available in the veganic garden in June.
In the Wildlife Garden
This Month - Mice!
The house mouse (Mus musculus) is widespread throughout the whole of the British Isles and is often found living in gardens as well as in houses. It is generally a brownish-grey in colour and can be up to 95 cm in body length, with a tail of about the same size. House mice nest indoors in buildings (usually under floorboards, in wall cavities, or in roof spaces) and their nests are made of soft materials e.g. paper or cloth. However, this species can also nest outdoors in hedgerow burrows, under stones or in hay stores and the nest is then built out of shredded grass. The house mouse breeds throughout the whole year providing food is abundant and there are usually 5-6 young produced in each litter. And that's an awful lot of mice, annually! House mice will eat most forms of human food and can also do a lot of damage by contaminating food with their urine and droppings. They particularly like eating cereals, but will also eat fruit, insects, cheese, plaster and soap.
You are also likely to see the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) in the veganic garden. The wood mouse is quite a large mouse (up to 110 mm) with big eyes and ears and is usually a yellowish-brown in colour. Like the house mouse, it is widespread throughout the whole of the British Isles and is mainly nocturnal. These mice make their nests out of grass and leaves and live either in underground tunnels, in tree roots, or under logs and stones. There are 4-7 young per litter and breeding again can occur throughout the whole year, if food is plentiful. Wood mice eat nuts - particularly hazels and acorns, fruit, buds and shoots, grass seed, rose hips, grain, berries, seedlings, snails, insects and earthworms.
In the veganic garden, you will sometimes find mice nesting inside your composter (personal experience!). Also be aware that mice are very fond of pea seeds and can do a lot of damage to your pea crop. In April, this year, I came across three dead mice in my garden which had obviously been killed by the neighbourhood cats. If you are having problems with mice in your garden (or in your house!) and would like to control them, without killing them, then look around for a 'live catch mouse trap'. These mouse traps catch the mice without harming them and enable you to release the mouse somewhere else without touching it.
Other Interesting Vegan Websites.
The Vegan Society (UK)
An excellent site with lots of useful information and a particularly good starting point for the new vegan. And you can now visit their online Shop.
Vegan.Com
At this site you can find out more about Erik Marcus. Be sure to visit the recipe section where you will find the famous cashew cheese recipe mentioned in his book Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating. (See this month's book review.)
The Living and Raw Foods Website
Forget about cooking this summer and find out all about raw plant-based diets! Visit the online bookstore, where you can save up to 30% on books. Here you will find books on juicing, sprouting and raw food vegan recipe books, plus many recipes and articles on raw food and fruitarian diets.
June Book Review
Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Marcus. (McBooks Press) Price $14.95.Prosperity kills! Almost 70% of Americans will die from a diet-related illness: heart disease now kills half of all Americans and a further quarter die from cancer. Yet death is not inevitable. In this clearly written book Erik Marcus explains how we can make a real difference to our own health and to the health of the planet, simply by adopting a plant-based, vegan diet.
The first part of the book takes an in depth look at the health advantages of the vegan diet. Marcus shows how by following a plant-based diet we can reduce our chances of dying from heart disease or cancer and explains why it is possible to eat more plant-based food and yet weigh less! You meet heart specialist, Dr. Dean Ornish and can read all about his 'Opening Your Heart Program' - a highly effective treatment against heart disease which relies on making dietary and lifestyle changes, rather than on taking drugs. The book then goes on to take a critical look at milk - the not so perfect food and this section ends with a very interesting chapter on mad cow's disease. Part Two takes an often horrifying look at factory farming and the conditions which have to be endured by many pigs, chickens and calves and then goes on to look at how animals are slaughtered. Finally in 'Beyond The Dinner Table' the book covers issues such as world hunger and cattle ranching and concludes with a personal account of why the author decided to go vegan.
Riveting! A fascinating book, which although published in the USA, contains much that will be of interest to vegans living in other prosperous areas of the world, too. A must for every vegan's bookshelf. And meat eaters, well they need to purchase a copy urgently!
March 2009 Update: This book still can be ordered from the Vegan.Com for around $11.53 (used copies also available).