Enewsletter
 |
Enewsletter • June 24, 2002 | ||
 |
 |
||
|
Announcements & NewsGreat News for Veg Advocates in Quebec!The new McVeggie will come on a whole-wheat bun! On the Canadian McDonald's site, they even note "During preparation, the McVeggie Burger may come in contact with meat and/or chicken products."
Mega Dairies in Central California [NPR Real Audio]"There are over 300 dairies ... milking an average of 1,200 cows each. Some dairies have upwards of 7,000 cows. By comparison, the average herd size in Wisconsin, which still calls itself 'The Dairy State,' is 80 cows. "This part of the central valley is about to overtake Los Angeles as the worst smog basin in the United States."
Correct Link to ARMEDIA ResponseWe apologize for the coding mistake in the prior Spam. Here is the correct link.
Ted Nugent's New Cookbook"'Kill It and Grill It,' coauthored by Nugent and his wife, Shemane Nugent, is probably the only cookbook you will read this year in which the instructions read: 'First step: Kill something!' "Needless to say, this is not a book for vegetarians. (Though Nugent writes in the first chapter, 'Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians – except for the occasional mountain lion steak.') "But Nugent also argues, to some degree persuasively, that if you are going to eat meat at all, getting the stuff yourself is better morally, ecologically and nutritionally than relying on a factory farm to provide it for you. (Though for a guy who touts the organic purity of his protein, he sure seems to rely heavily on such nutritionally suspect ingredients as Velveeta, Lipton onion soup, Accent seasonings and garlic salt in his recipes.) 'Freerange chicken aint [sic] free and that aint no range,' writes Nugent. 'Chickens are incarcerated; some are more feces-pecking, deathrow toxic than others.'"
Book Review: Vegan Cooking for Everyone by Leah Leneman(London: Thorsons, 2001) Reviewed by by Joanne Padgett Ever a skeptic when it comes to vegan recipes, I never try one without reading it carefully and applying the following tests: Is the author afraid of fat? (It tastes good, and it keeps you from getting hungry again in an hour [and is important, -ed].) Is the author afraid of salt? (It tastes good [and in the U.S., a source of iodine], and I can leave it out of the recipe myself if I want to.) Is the author afraid of fresh vegetables? (They taste good, and they’re worth the trouble.) The message here is that I want my food to TASTE GOOD. When I opened Vegan Cooking for Everyone to the first recipe I planned to try—Pasta, Broccoli, and Mushroom Casserole with Cashew & Pimento Cheese–I was reassured. First of all, what’s not to love in that name? I live in pimento cheese country, and I do remember how good it was. And surely everyone loves cashews. Not to prolong the suspense, it was delicious. All Leah Leneman’s recipes are delicious. Don’t worry about that. But there are other things you should know. The late Leah Leneman (this is a posthumously published collection of her best recipes) lived in Scotland, and her cooking therefore utilizes some techniques that Americans may be less used to—deep-frying for example. It had been years since I had deep-fried anything, but I hauled out my candy thermometer to make sure the oil for frying the Felafel Bites was exactly the right temperature. The right temperature, by the way, is the secret to deep-fat frying. Leneman specifies the temperature in some deep-frying recipes but not in others. I really made the Felafel Bites because I was convinced they weren’t going to work–whoever heard of grinding up raw, soaked garbanzo beans and then pressing them into balls and frying them? But they worked fine. I just don’t know that I would put the baking soda in next time–it made them a little muffiny. Maybe that’s another British thing. Also, I wouldn’t try to grind the beans in a blender, which I assume is what a liquidizer is. You don’t have to be an expert cook to use this book, but you should have some confidence. Leneman isn’t always exact about ingredients, and she doesn’t give you a lot of explanations. That doesn’t have to be a problem. I knew to use raw cashews in the pimento cheese recipe, although Leneman didn’t specify, because that’s what Joanne Stepaniak uses in her “cheeze” recipes. The other kind would probably have worked almost as well. But you will have to figure out whether to add a little more water to a dry-looking casserole, or a little more soymilk to the whole-wheat shortbread dough. And you won’t be told what size onion to chop, but that’s ok. You know how much onion you want. Some of these recipes are noted in their introductions as “quick,” and they are. Others can take a while. The Pasta, Broccoli, etc., etc., took me an hour and a half, moving fast. That to me is a party dish. These recipes seem reminiscent of more carefree times—there are no calorie counts or nutritional analyses, for example. I noticed a few anomalies—who thickens tomato sauce with flour any more? And I wouldn’t even try the tempeh hash in the American recipe section, which calls for flour and water. It’s probably good, just different. I liked the organization of this book—lots of entree chapters, each focusing on a major ingredient like nuts, tofu, pasta or sea vegetables (Leneman has some fascinating takes on “seafood” recipes, using sea vegetables, which I didn’t try). We vegans can usually adapt bread, vegetable, salad and even soup recipes, but we need entrees. We need DESSERTS, too, and there are chapter after chapter of those. I know what you’re thinking. Are we going to be able to find all these British ingredients? Maybe, maybe not. Something called “creamed coconut” pops up in some of the recipes. I learned from the Internet that it comes in chunks and you cut pieces off, as though it were margarine, and I don’t think we have it. Depending on where you live, you may be able to find yeast extract (Bovril), but I know we don’t have it down here in pimento cheese country. Anyway, there are not a lot of hard-to-find ingredients, and they give you an opportunity to make creative substitutions. And this book is creative. Most of the recipes are different from what I’m used to cooking. I didn’t really want to slice my raw green beans lengthwise (that can be messy, slow or dangerous, depending on how you do it), but I did it for the Green Bean and Almond Salad rather than buy the frozen French-cut ones. The result was a lovely and delicate salad that wouldn’t have been the same if made with whole beans. I wasn’t sure about putting 2 tablespoons of margarine into that salad either, but it no doubt contributed to the delicious, interesting flavor. (Buy some margarine before using this book. You’ll need it. There’s even an ice cream recipe that calls for margarine.) If you’re feeling confident and creative, try the Creamy Banana Risotto. Trust me, it’s good.
For the month of June:
|
|||
