THE
VEGAN NEWS
THE
VEGAN NEWS
MAY 1999
- Recipes
- This Month's Article - All About Bees and Their Products
- In The Wildlife Garden
- Vegan Product Review
- Worm Composting Report
- In The Veganic Garden
- Vegan Websites
- Book Review
- The Wildlife Database
Recipe of the MonthHome-Made Baked Beans
Ingredients
- 1 jar of cooked haricot beans*
- 4 medium tomatoes, skinned and chopped
- 1 small onion, peeled and chopped (optional)
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 1 tsp mixed herbs
- 1 tsp mustard (optional)
Method
- Empty the cooked haricot beans into a small pan. Add the tomato puree, herbs, chopped onion and mustard.
- Place the tomatoes in a heat-proof bowl and cover them with boiling water. Leave for a few minutes. Drain. Skin and chop.
- Liquidise the chopped tomatoes, adding some extra water if necessary, then pour the pureed tomatoes into the pan with the other ingredients. Mix well. (You will probably need to add some extra water - the beans should be well covered with liquid, especially if you are using the onion.)
- Cover the pan with a lid, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10-15 mins until the beans are well heated and the onion is soft. (If the beans start to dry out too much, lower the heat and add some extra water.)
Serve the beans on toast or on top of a baked potato. Sprinkle with Engevita yeast flakes for extra nutrition and flavour. Alternative flavourings (which can be used instead of the herbs and mustard) could include curry powder or ground cumin.
*Note: I cook batches of Suma organic haricot beans in my pressure cooker - they take about 10 mins in my model. I then store the cooked beans in jam jars in the freezer until required. However, don't forget to defrost the beans thoroughly before use.
In The Wildlife Garden
Butterflies in May
(Written by Lynn Fomison, the Reserves Officer for the Hampshire branch of Butterfly Conservation.)
This month you should still be seeing Small Tortoiseshells, Peacocks and Commas - all starting to look a little worse for wear now! Hopefully they will have mated and the females will have laid their eggs on nettles. Given warm southerly winds, the few Red Admirals that have spent the winter in hibernation will have been joined by migrants from the continent and these too will be breeding on nettles. Large and Small Whites are busy breeding on cabbages and Green-Veined Whites and Orange Tips on other members of the Crucifer family.
The Brimstone, our longest-lived British butterfly, is now nearing the end of its ten month lifespan. Brimstone caterpillars feed on both purging (Rhamnus cathartica) and alder buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula). (Note: purging buckthorn prefers alkaline soil and alder buckthorn acid soil.) They are shrubs of the hedgerow and wild places, but of course can be grown in the garden. Prune regularly to keep them small and to provide the younger twigs which Brimstones prefer. Buckthorn, when regularly coppiced, makes a neat, if unexciting shrub which carries inedible berries. But it is exciting to find the green Brimstone caterpillars on the leaves in June! So do encourage these lovely butterflies to come into your garden by planting a buckthorn.
Useful nectar sources in May include dandelions, forget-me-not, honesty, rosemary and apple and cherry blossom. This month, sow sweet williams, wallflowers and teasels to produce flowers for next year. And sow candytuft in the open, at weekly intervals, throughout May and June to produce a profusion of summer flowers. And a small reminder of the need to avoid peat-containing composts when sowing seeds: the extraction of peat has caused the destruction of butterflies' natural habitats in the wild.
May Product Review
This Month - Hemp Products:
February 2009 Update: These products are no longer available and have been removed.
Worm Composting ReportIn the autumn I published an article on worm composting and I mentioned that I was going to have a go at worm composting myself over the winter. However, I am sorry to have to report here, that I was not terribly successful in my endeavour! I encountered two main problems:
1. The worm composter had to be kept in my garden shed over the winter because I do not have enough room to keep a worm bin indoors. Yet despite the worm bin being well wrapped up in a piece of old carpet for insulation, on several occasions throughout the winter, I found that the surface of my worm composter had frozen solid! I don't know if the worms themselves were also frozen. It's possible that they may have been alright, in their bedding layer lower down, but I have come to the conclusion that my own shed - which lies in a frost pocket - is just too cold for worm composting in the winter.
2. The second difficulty related to drainage of the bin. The tap was deliberately fitted low down on the bin to ensure optimum drainage. However, because it was only just above the floor level, it was difficult to fit a container underneath the tap and the bin had to be moved outside in order for it to be drained properly. (Note: This problem could have been solved by standing the bin on something, but I did not have anything suitable.) As more and more food was added to the bin over the winter, the bin became so heavy that it was difficult to move. As a result it wasn't drained for several months, the compost became too wet and I think that quite a few of the worms drowned.
February 2009 Update: Because of difficulties like these it is now not considered ethical for vegans to make worm compost. Consequently, I am removing the worm composting article.
What's Happening in the Veganic Garden This Month?
Sowing and Planting Outside
There's usually a fair amount of work to be done in the garden in May. Weeds will start to grow more quickly and consequently you may need to hoe your beds regularly. You will also need to keep a careful lookout for the first pests - particularly blackfly which may suddenly invade your broad bean crop towards the middle of the month. (See the May 1998 issue for information on how to control blackfly.) If the weather is dry, then a fair amount of watering may be needed too. Flowering peas, particularly, need plenty of water, as do leafy crops - such as lettuce and spinach, if you don't want them to bolt.
May is the best month to sow many kinds of beans. This year I am going to try a new variety - 'Barlotta Lingua di Fuoco' - available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue. This bean has beautiful red-striped pods which can either be cooked and eaten whole, or else the beans can be removed from their pods and dried for use over the winter. 'Barlotta' is a climbing French bean, best grown up poles (or a fence) whereas the dwarf French bean 'Annabel', which I will also sow early this month, needs no support whatsoever. Annabel is a pencil-slim bean, delicious when cooked and eaten cold in salads. As French beans are often far more expensive to buy than runner beans, they are well worth growing in the veganic garden (Note: Annabel is no longer offered in the 2009 catalogue). 'Coquette' is another useful bean - a plump white bean which can be dried and used in soups and stews (Also no longer available in 2009). And last but not least, don't forget to sow your runner beans this month! 'Kelvedon Marvel' is a good variety to use, but if you don't have any poles (or a fence) to grow climbing beans, then try a dwarf variety of runner bean such as 'Hammond Dwarf Scarlet (no longer available in 2009, suggest try Hestia instead). All of the above varieties of beans and those mentioned below are available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue. (Information updated in March 2009: White Emergo or Czar are good runner bean varieties to try and both can be left to produce a crop of dried 'butter beans'. Cannellino could be grown instead of Coquette.The dwarf French bean, Canadian Wonder can be left to produce a dried red 'chilli' bean. )
Sweetcorn, courgettes, marrows and cucumbers are usually sown outside in May too. And early, indoor-raised Brussels sprout plants can also be put outside this month. (Mine are going to share a bed with my 'Feltham First' early peas.) The early, dwarf variety of sprout 'Peer Gynt' is ideal for the small garden, maturing from September to Christmas. (In 2009, this variety is no longer readily available.) A later sowing of peas, this month, will provide peas for autumn use - try the dwarf variety 'Little Marvel.' Continue to make sowings of lettuce, salad onions, beetroot, turnips, radishes and carrots.
Indoor Work
Sow kale, winter cabbage (e.g. 'January King,' 'Holland Late Winter'), sprouting broccoli and winter cauliflowers.
Crops Available This Month:
Asparagus, broad beans, spring cabbage, lettuce, rhubarb, spinach and salad onions.
Other Interesting Vegan Websites
The Vegan Society (UK)
An excellent site and a particularly good starting point for obtaining information, for the new or intending vegan. You can now visit their online Shop.
(Updated in February 2009: These sites have been removed as they were no longer available.)
May Book ReviewEasy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman (Thorsons 1998). Price £8.99.
'Easy Vegan Cooking' is the updated version of Leah Leneman's book '365 Plus One Vegan Recipes'(1993). It's slightly smaller and fatter in shape and has a delicious-looking slice of vegan chocolate cake on the front cover! However, apart from that it's almost identical to the original version, except that it costs £2.00 more. Another minor difference is that in the newer version, ingredients are measured in metric units, ounces and in cups, so that people in America can now use this book too. This is a nice recipe book. For more information, see my original book review which appeared in the October 1996 issue. I obtained my copy of 'Easy Vegan Cooking' from the public library, but it was still available from Amazon Books when I updated this section in February 2009.