THE VEGAN NEWS

October 1998

The Vegan News is written and edited by P M Lloyd. Please e-mail your contributions to the editor at: pauline@bury-rd.demon.co.uk or fill in the form provided.

[ Previous issue] [Next issue] [All issues]

In This Month's Issue:

Recipe of The Month

Chickpea and Apricot Pilaff

Ingredients

Method

  1. Fry the onion, garlic, carrot and potato in the oil until lightly browned. About 5-10 minutes.

  2. Add the rice, cinnamon and cumin and stir fry for 1 minute.

  3. Pour in the boiling water. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the chickpeas, parsley and apricots to the pan and cook for a further 10-15 minutes or until the rice is soft and the chickpeas are well heated. Stir frequently to prevent sticking.

    Note: This dish is nice served with a tomato salad and has always been my son's favourite dinner.

Recipe Serves 2-3

I think that I obtained this recipe from a woman's magazine, but I have been cooking this dish for so long that I can't remember exactly where it came from originally!

Top of Page

National Vegan Festival

The first National Vegan Festival was held in London on Sunday 13th September and was a great success. Conway Hall was soon packed with vegans of all descriptions, including babies and dogs and many people had obviously travelled a great distance so that they could attend this special day.

The doors officially opened at 10 am and organised events commenced around 10.20. Throughout the day, two lots of lectures often ran simultaneously, making it difficult for me to report fully on everything here. In the main hall, Friedenstern Howard started off the proceedings by speaking on the work carried out by Vegfam and on the vegan solution to human famine, whilst in the small hall Brian Warwick, a vegan herbalist, gave a talk on the degenerative effects of sugar and caffeine. Other speakers included: John Coleman who spoke about raw foodism, Andy Leung who gave an interesting talk on vegan nutrition, Peter Cox (author of 'Why You Don't Need Meat'), Toni Vernelli from PETA and Greg Jennings who spoke about saving the Hillgrove cats. At 1 pm there was a fashion show where glamorous models paraded around the stage wearing Hemp Collective clothes, or alternatively one could watch a wild salad demonstration in the small lecture room, instead. Later in the afternoon the children had a party and there was also a showing of one of Dr Michael Klaper's videos which was very informative and provided a welcome break from fighting through the crowds.

Throughout the festival it was also possible to purchase a wide variety of vegan products from the stalls in the main hall. Items for sale included hemp clothes, boots, cosmetics, cakes, books, sea vegetables, organically grown fruit and Plamil dairy-alternatives. Numerous, informative campaign and product leaflets could also be obtained from many of the stalls and delicious-looking vegan grub and hot beverages were provided by 'Daisy's Catering'.

I think that, on the whole, a good time was had by all. (Although a few of the dogs mentioned to me that they were sorry that more Vegecats hadn't attended!) Well done and thanks to all of the people who helped to organise this event. I am sure that many vegans are already looking forward to next year's festival.

Top of Page

October Product Review

This month I am going take a look at three products which all contain hemp oil:

Hemp Oil Soap

This delicately perfumed, oblong soap lathers up well and the hard edges soon soften up after only one or two uses, so that the soap feels smooth and is very pleasant to use. Hemp oil is mildly antiseptic and has excellent moisturising properties and although this soap is perhaps a little bit too expensive for everyday use at £1.25 for a 100 g bar, it would nevertheless make a nice special treat or a lovely present for a vegan friend. Also available in this range you will find hemp bran soap (for the same price) and four hemp shampoo soap bars (ideal for travelling) at £1.50, plus various other hemp products which are all suitable for vegans. You can purchase all of these products by mail order from: The Natural Collection (address in file) or you can order them by e-mail from: naturalcollection@ecotrade.co.uk. The hemp oil and hemp bran soap can also be purchased by mail order for £1.00 (plus postage) from: The Hemp Collective Ltd, Silverdale, Clyde Rd, Didsbury, Manchester. M20 2NJ. (Tel: 0161 445 5227or e-mail THCLtd@aol.com).

Elmer's Original Pure Hemp Oil

Made from organically grown hemp seeds, this cold-pressed hemp oil makes a good vegan alternative to cod liver oil. An excellent source of essential fatty acids, it contains Linolenic (Omega 3), Oleic (Omega 9), Linoleic (Omega 6) and Gamma-Linolenic (GLA) acids. Hemp oil has a nice nutty flavour and can be used in salad dressings and in many other recipes. Elmer's Original Pure Hemp Oil can be obtained, by mail order, direct from Naked Earth in Hull (Tel: 01482 229950 for more information). However, I obtained my 250 ml bottle of Elmer's Original by mail order for £6.99 (+p&p) from The Natural Collection in Bath. (Address in file.)

You may also be interested in 'Cooking With Hemp' - a small booklet of fourteen tasty hemp recipes. Recipes which are suitable for vegans include: hemp humus, hemp oil pesto, stew and dumplings, hemp roast, mushroom and onion gravy, baby new potatoes with hemp oil, hot and spicy hemp oil and the hempseed oil dressing. This recipe booklet can also be obtained from Naked Earth (Bio-D Co Ltd) but I paid 10 p for my copy in a branch of Traders Fair World Shop.

Hemp Body Lotion

I have been searching around for a vegan, hemp handcream for quite some time, but unfortunately nobody seems to produce one. (Incidentally, if any UK reader knows of such a hemp handcream, available by mail order, then do e-mail me!) Therefore when I came across this body lotion, sold by the Hemp Collective for £2.50, I decided to test it out as a handcream. And this mild smelling cream does moisturise the hands fairly well, but it's main problem as a handcream is that everytime you touch your eyes with your hand-creamed hands, it stings! (So, for this reason, it's probably not a good idea to use it on your face either.) It does, however, make a nice body lotion, ideal for use on any dry patches of skin. The Hemp Collective also sells many other hemp cosmetics and if you would like more information on their Vegan-Society-Approved products then write to: The Hemp Collective Ltd, Silverdale, Clyde Rd, Didsbury, Manchester. M20 2NJ. (Tel: 0161 445 5227) or e-mail: THCLtd@aol.com for a product list.

Top of Page

Your Comments!

This is an excellent site! In searching the web for vegan information I find that there is a lot in Britain. I grew up on a farm in the USA and now wish people could change their minds and see a betterment in world view. Thank you for this site and the encouragement it brings to a small faction here in the US.

Pat Chogue, New York, USA

Top of Page

What's Happening in the Veganic Garden This Month?


  1. 1998 Crop Review

    I hope that you have all had a successful gardening year. Despite a rather cool summer, down here in the south of England, I still managed to obtain a fairly good supply of fresh fruit and vegetables from my small garden plot which now consists of 7 raised beds.

    Crops which did particularly well this year included the lettuces which seemed to like the very wet spell early in the summer, the beetroot which obviously prefers cooler, damper conditions (I often wondered why beetroots grow so much bigger in Scotland!) and my second year strawberries which fruited well throughout the whole summer and were still fruiting in early September until it turned rather cold. When very ripe this variety of strawberry (Temptation F1) tastes lovely and it's well worth the effort of growing your own plants, if you have the time, as it's far cheaper than purchasing ready-grown plants. One packet of seeds (£2.10 from the Organic Gardening Catalogue) provided me with about 40 plants.

    Other crops which did well this year included the broad beans which flourished despite being attacked by black fly and a rust mould and I was able to freeze extra beans which lasted for most of the summer. And I also had a very good crop of land cress. This easy-to-grow crop adds a nice peppery zing to salads. I tested out the watercress which grew quite well in a bucket of moist soil, but unfortunately it was rapidly devoured by caterpillars. I will retest it again next year with the rest of the packet of seeds, but if I have a similar problem then I will grow only landcress in future as it doesn't require as much water. This year I also tried to grow some potatoes for the first time and was quite pleased with the results. The potatoes suffered a small amount of slug damage, but tasted lovely and next year I intend to grow a bigger crop as potatoes do not seem to require a lot of attention and are easily grown.

    Crops which were not so successful this year included my early peas which were rapidly eaten down to ground level by slugs and snails, although they made a miraculous recovery when their nibbled stems were covered with plastic bottles and finally gave a reasonable crop. A second sowing of later peas, however, was more successful and produced a good crop. My entire crop of runner beans was also gobbled up by hungry slugs and snails, this summer, although I did manage to grow a small tub of beans which provided me with a crop of very late beans, in September. My onions, for some reason, did not grow very large this year, but fortunately I had planted extra onion sets and so ended up with quite a large crop altogether. Incidentally, small onions are very good pickled or are ideal for use in this month's recipe - so don't throw them away!

    The tomatoes were a complete disaster and I think the cold, damp conditions in June had a lot to do with their failure to thrive. The plants grew very rapidly when planted outside and quickly became large, sturdy and healthy plants, but in early August their leaves suddenly started to shrivel up, the stems and tomatoes went brown and within days the crop was completely devasted and as I usually get an excellent crop of tomatoes this was quite a blow after all my hard work. (I think that the problem was probably caused by some form of wilt or rot.) The peppers also suffered in the cool conditions this summer and are running considerably late, only starting to fruit in early September. Fortunately some of them are in containers and can be brought indoors when it gets too frosty for them to be outside.

    And finally, as I write this, the kale is looking good, but then who knows - it only takes one very hungry caterpillar or one giant slug!

  2. October Gardening Jobs

    Plant out spring cabbages (e.g. Offenham) and winter lettuces (e.g. Winter Density, Imperial Winter) this month. Tidy up your raised beds as soon as crops have finished: do not leave piles of garden debris lying around as this will attract pests. Spare compost can be placed on the surface of your raised beds and if you have a good supply of autumn leaves then consider turning them into leafmould. Lift root crops such as beetroot and twist off the leaves. Beetroot can be stored in layers in boxes of dry soil, perhaps in a garden shed or alternatively small beetroots can be cooked and pickled for winter use. Tidy up runner beans as soon as they have finished cropping and don't forget to save some seeds for next year. And, if you need more information on how to make new raised beds or need to know about other jobs which can be done in the veganic garden in October, then visit The October 1997 Issue.

  3. Seed Sowing

    A bit late in the year to be sowing most types of seeds, but Field Beans (Vicia faba) can be sown to produce a nitrogen-rich green manure crop. Field beans are winter hardy and can be sown from September-November. Seeds can be obtained from the Organic Gardening Catalogue. A 112 g packet is enough to sow 60 sq ft and costs £1.08.

  4. Crops to Harvest This Month

    Sweetcorn, globe artichokes, beetroot, cabbage, possibly runner beans.

Do you have a veganic garden? If so, then why not e-mail in and let us all know how you got on in 1998?

Top of Page

Any Queries?

Some years ago my local Safeways stocked a delicious bread called 'Manna' (I think). It was very dense moist and almost sweet. It claimed to be cooked to a recipe several thousand years old and had a shelf life, in its bag unopened, of up to 3 months. Do you, or any of your readers, know where I can get hold of it now?

Brian Campbell, Reading, Berks.

I haven't come up with very much so far, Brian. Roger Swallow of the Manna Restaurant has found a supplier in Canada and it may be worth contacting them to see if they supply to anyone in the UK, near you. Their address is: Nature's Path Foods, Inc., 7453 Progress Way, Delta, B.C., V4G 1E8, Canada. Meanwhile, if any reader knows of a UK supplier of this bread, then perhaps they could e-mail the answer to me!

Also does anybody in the USA know of a mail order supplier of vegan vitamins? If so, then please could they e-mail the information to: Dwayne Mullins, of Seattle, WA, USA at: yoga@seanet.com

Top of Page

Vegan Organisation Review

If any vegan organisation would like to be reviewed in this section, then please email: pauline@bury-rd.demon.co.uk. The following organisations have been reviewed in earlier issues:

Other Interesting Vegan Websites

 The Vegan Society
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 or become a member.

College Vegan's Homepage
Starting college this autumn? Visit this site for recipes, suggestions about what to eat at college and links to other related sites.

International Vegetarian Union
A nice collection of vegetarian pages which are available in about 20 different languages. (If you would like to go straight to the English version click here.) This site has interesting articles on topics such as genetic engineering, BSE, vegetarian children and health/nutrition and an excellent collection of multilingual, vegan recipes collected from all over the world.

Manna Vegetarian Restaurant
More than a commercial restaurant site, this site has an interesting set of links and the 'resource' page has links to an expanding collection of articles.

The Village Bakery
A restaurant/bakeshop (in Melmerby, Cumbria) which offers an on-line mail order service. All of their organic products are suitable for vegetarians and many are also vegan, sometimes being made with fairly traded ingredients. So, if you are wondering where you can buy vegan mincepies or an xmas pudding, then try visiting this site.

BumbleBar
BumbleBar is a wholesome, organic, vegan, energy bar, made from peanuts, flax and sesame seeds and sweetened with brown rice syrup and cane juice. Find out more about it here! (USA)

Top of Page

October Book Review

Better Than Peanut Butter & Jelly by Wendy Muldawer & Marty Mattare. (McBooks Press.) $14.95.

Containing over 150 nutritious, sugar-free and low-fat recipes, this kid-tested vegetarian cookbook offers a good selection of quickly-cooked meals and is ideal for the busy vegetarian parent. I would say that about two-thirds of the recipes are vegan and as all the recipes are clearly coded at the top of each page, it's very easy to pick out the vegan-friendly recipes. This cookbook is full of wonderful ideas for healthy vegetarian breakfasts, soups, salads, main meals, packed lunches, snacks, desserts and children's party food and I'm sure that as well as being popular with vegan kids many of these recipes will also appeal to adult taste buds, too. A few of the recipes perhaps use rather too many cans for my liking, however, home-cooked beans (or fresh tomatoes) could easily be substituted in many of the recipes, if you're trying to reduce the amount of waste which ends up in your dustbin.

You can obtain a copy of this book from the McBooks Press website.

The Vegan Travel Guide (The Vegan Society)

This handy, pocket-sized book contains up-to-the minute information on vegan-friendly accomodation, pubs, winebars, restaurants, tea rooms and takeaways in the UK and Southern Ireland. Ideal for vegans, vegetarians or anybody who is dairy intolerant, places are listed alphabetically by county and the clear coding system makes it easy to identify, for example, which establishments cater well for children or provide easy access for the disabled. The final chapter deals with special interest holidays and covers all sorts of holidays - from retreats if you simply want to unwind, to more adventurous activity holidays involving climbing or cycling. At the back of the book you will also find some useful contact addresses and info on vegan events and vegan tour operators. Pack a copy of this book useful little book in your suitcase whenever you travel about and I'm sure that you'll find that it's well worth £4.95.

Available by mail order from the Vegan Society (UK).

Top of Page

Main Index

HTML written by P M Lloyd
Copyright © Pauline Lloyd 1998