THE VEGAN NEWS
THE VEGAN NEWS
MAY 1998
In This Month's Issue:
- Recipes
- This Month's Article - For Vegan Parents
- Vegan Product Review
- Vegan Travel Books
- In The Veganic Garden
- Vegan Websites
- Book Review
- The Wildlife Database
Recipe of the Month
Ingredients
Method
- 8 oz (225 g) roasted peanuts
- 8 oz (225 g) finely chopped dates
- 1 1/2 oz (45 g) hemp seeds
- Orange juice to mix
- Dry roast the peanuts, either in the oven for 20 minutes at Gas 4, or in a frying pan until they start to go slightly brown.
- Allow the nuts to cool and then grind them in a coffee grinder until smooth.
- Place all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix in enough orange juice so that the mixture can be pressed into a firm ball. Roll the mixture out until it is about 1/2 " thick and cut it into eight bars.
If you don't have a coffee grinder, then you may like to try out this recipe which uses ready-ground almonds. (These can usually be purchased from health stores and supermarkets.)
Ingredients
Method
Pauline's Sunflower Bars.
Ingredients:
Storage: These bars can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container in the fridge until needed. They should keep for about three days.
May Product ReviewMade by the Hemp Food Corporation, this tasty fruit and nut bar is made from peanuts, dates, raisins and hemp seeds. It has a nice soft texture with interesting, hard, crackly bits - the hemp seeds. These 50g bars are ideal for the kids' lunch boxes or for active people who need some extra energy e.g. walkers. Have a look for Hempower bars in your health food shop.
Sunita Grape Juice Halva with Sultanas
This sesame halva is delicious! It has a nice crumbly texture and unlike most halvas contains no added sugar, so it is more wholesome and nutritious. Made from ground sesame seeds, it's a good source of calcium and protein, too. Eat it with coffee or as a special treat - I had one for Easter this year! You will find this product in some healthfood shops.
In the south of England it is usually possible to put indoor-raised sweetcorn plants outside around mid-may, providing that the plants are protected at night. However, if you live in northern Britain, then the end of May would probably be a more suitable planting time. (Remember that sweetcorn needs a sunny, sheltered position in order to grow well.) If you want to save some money, then runner bean and sweetcorn seeds can be started off inside empty toilet rolls instead of using plant pots. This month plant out any indoor raised Brussels sprouts.
This Month - Bats!
Did you know that bats are great insect eaters and will eat many of your insect garden pests? In captivity, pregnant, female bats have been shown to eat up to 3 g of food per feeding session and that is quite a lot of insects! Bats eat a wide range of insects, including large beetles, spiders and moths and food is usually taken on the wing or picked off foliage, although some species of bats also feed over water or off the ground. In some parts of the world bats are also very important pollinators for certain plants.
Two groups of bats are found living in Britain: the Rhinolophid or horseshoe bats and the Vespertilionids. There are only two British horseshoe bats - the greater and the lesser horseshoe bat, but many types of vespertilionids live in the British Isles including: the pipistrelle, the brown long-eared bat, daubenton's bat, the whiskered bat, natterers's bat, brandt's bat, bechstein's bat, the serotine, the noctule, leisler's bat and the barbastelle. The pipestrelle is the commonest British bat and it is also the smallest, measuring only up to 4.5 cm in length with a 25 cm wingspan.
Bats are, in fact, the only mammals which are capable of true flight. They generally roost during the day and come out and fly around the evening, usually just as it is starting to get dark. In the daytime, they conceal themselves by roosting in buildings - usually in roofs, attics, cavity walls or in cellars, but they can also roost in caves, mines and in hollow trees or woodpecker holes. Female bats frequently live in large colonies throughout the breeding season (June-August) and male bats sometimes roost in small groups, too. During the winter months, when there is no longer any food available for them to eat, bats hibernate, often in large mixed-sex groups, although some species are solitary. The exact timing of hibernation varies between species, but usually occurs from mid-November/December to about March. (However, sometimes, in mild spells in winter, you will see bats flying around and these are usually pipistrelle bats.)
Bats navigate and find their food in the dark by using echo-location and their ears, and in some species, their facial skin are modified to enable them to do this. Some species of bats make a twittering sound, but others (e.g. the brown long-eared bat) are silent. Adult bats usually breed when they are between 2-4 years old, producing one litter a year which often consists of only a single baby. The young are helpless and naked and remain in the roost until they can fly: in about 3 weeks in the case of the pipistrelle bat. Some species of bats are capable of living for up to 30 years.
Be aware that bats are protected by law and that it is illegal to own, kill, injure or even handle a bat unless you have a special licence. However, if you do get a colony of bats living inside your house, then you are allowed to gently remove them! (Contact the Nature Conservancy Council for more information.)
If you want to attract bats into your garden, then some species will hibernate in bat boxes. The Organic Gardening Catalogue also supplies a special wildflower mixture called Bats in the Garden Mix, which is composed of nectar-rich plants and has many night-scented flowers which will attract the night-flying insects on which the bats feed. (This product can still be obtained from their 2009 catalogue.) One packet of this seed will cover 2 square metres and costs £2.98.(Price information updated in March 2009) Evening primroses have lovely yellow flowers which open in the evening and will attract moths, although I am not sure if these are the types of moths that the bats feed on!
Top of Page
Other Interesting Vegan Websites.
Simply Vegan by Debra Wasserman and Reed Mangels
Printed on recycled paper, Simply Vegan isn't just a cookbook, but a fairly comprehensive guide to vegan living. It contains sample menus, meal plans, nearly a hundred pages of easy vegan recipes and a seventy page vegan nutrition section which includes many useful scientific references.
All of the recipes are easy to prepare and quick to cook (most can be cooked in under 25 minutes) and they use mainly fresh ingredients with the addition of tinned or dried beans/chickpeas. Ingredients are measured in cups, but as most of the recipes are very simple anyway, I don't think that this shouldn't pose too much of a problem for people living outside the USA. I simply used a small (200 ml) cup as a measure and all the recipes I tested turned out well, although it is possible that this method may not work with the cake recipes, which I did not test. (Incidentally, if anyone wants to convert American oven temperatures to British ones, or need some information on converting liquid measurements, then they may find my conversion file useful.)
At the back of 'Simply Vegan' you will find a useful list of vegan mail order suppliers (USA) which includes suppliers of vegan food products, vitamins, cruelty-free cosmetics, household products and items of clothing.
Debra Wasserman has also written The Vegan Handbook and Conveniently Vegan.