Vital stand-bys

Do you have anything that you always keep in stock for days when you can't reach a shop or are too tired/short of time to make?
Here are mine:
- Packet mix for pizza base. (These turn out better than my own efforts from scratch)
- All-in bread mix (I've never had a good result, but when you're desperate...)
- Concentrated tomato paste (in tubes. The metal is golden inside and can be easily bent and sewn for craft projects!)

Christmas is Coming

Thank you for the invite to post on FUD, Simon. I have just enjoyed reading the previous posts, they've entertained, informed and provoked deep thought. I've heard about "you soak it...." but never bothered as I have a bit of food-information overload. Like you, I'd like to find out for myself/research more before accepting information from one source. It is on my list of things to think about. But my thoughts have been turning to Christmas. My Grandmother and her sister have recently become vegetarians, and this will be our first completely meat-free family Christmas which is something quite amazing for us to witness. I'm usually in charge of cooking the Christmas lunch, and I've been happy to cook the meat for everyone else in the past, this year I'm cooking nut roast for everyone.

As you mention, Simon, food choices aren't simple, we followed a vegan diet for a short while, but when faced with free food from Rick's work that would otherwise have been binned I found that I couldn't let it go to waste, plus I never got on with Soya products, food miles and taste really go against it, ultimately I concluded I'd much rather buy organic butter/cheese from a small shop (we have a nice co-operatively owned health food shop nearby) and have less of it. Ditto eggs.

It is much harder for me to define my choices to other people, having a label like "vegan" does make it easier in some respects I imagine. Each item I buy goes through a complicated selection process (shop I'm buying it from, animal/veg source, organic or not, additives, packaging, who made it etc....) that perhaps can't easily be second-guessed by others.

So I've deviated a little. Nut Roast.
I regularly make a nut roast with toasted hazelnuts, roasted buckwheat and grated parsnip as the main ingredients - I do bind it with egg - I never follow a recipe, I throw in what looks about right, but I'm making it this week and I'll take care to record what I do, and I'll post the recipe. Can I put in a request for anyone else's nut roast recipes?

Thoughts from the Abbey Kitchen

I've been staying in Glastonbury for a few days, with some dear friends who have a strong food ethic - local, organic, healthy, to say the very least. This is a very strong direction to approach food, but a different one to being vegan, and whilst there are a lot of overlaps, there's also some conflicts, or at least things to think about.

Dairy, and even meat, if local & ethical, are acceptable, and I can see that, and that works in health terms, too. It's a very contentious subject, but reading around there's a lot of evidence (and common sense/logic) that humans aren't set up for an entirely plant diet, and I'm willing to accept that. My reasoning has always been that I live ina city where everything is artificial, brought in and comes to me via a shelf in a shop, and in such circumstances I can apply other factors - we have the intelligence & opportunity (financial and otherwise) to apply compassion.

Meanwhile, some factors of the vegan diet don't fit in with that viewpoint - soya, for example. To be honest I've long been aware of this, and try not to rely on it, and will reduce consumption even more, balancing the food miles with the benefits of the food itself - perhaps I should limit my soya intake to fermented versions, and also look for more locally sourced soya (someone told me that Plamil use french soya?) or alternatives (oat or rice milk, although my previous experience of these hasn't been that positive).

I'm also aware that the very lable - 'vegan' means it's easy not to think about things individually. It seemed also rude to turn down honey when visiting Richard and Linda, who have just moved on to some land with a beautiful old orchard, and have bee hives, for example. It's easy to think 'that's not vegan' without thinking 'why do I choose not to eat it?'

Another interesting thing is other people's reactions to a vegan - their problem, not mine, but it's rare enough (although not that rare) to be alien, scary, a threat, even, as if it's a challenge to their own morality - which it isn't, and isn't intended to be. It's tedious when people immediately try to 'catch me out' in some way, in that proving I'm not vegan makes them feeling better, although it still seems strange in some way. I've also had people get angry with me as in some way they feel my presence is stopping them eating what they wanted to, assuming I'd in some way want to control what they did near me - not so, not at all. To be affected that would be to worry about what people think of me, and therein lies madness...

For the time being, though, I'm still in a city, I've been doing it (more or less) for twenty years. I never liked meat or eggs anyway, so any compromise would be minimal. Me being vegan won't change the world, either, in terms of the enonomic boycott, either, but I think it's still the best way to go, for me, now. If I lived in another time or place, if my food came through the kitchen above, it may wellbe different, who knows.

Potato pancakes & chickweed salad

A quick, tasty lunch that is really cheap to make.

Finely grate one large potato into a wet mush. It makes two handfuls! Squish out some of the wet starch, but leaving enough to bind. I like to finely chop half an onion into the mush and add pepper. Any variation is possible, using up a spare carrot, parsnip etc, adding spices, anything.

Heat a bit of oil, squash the mush into 1cm-ish pancakes and fry gently for a few minutes.

I like them with chickweed which is plentiful along towpaths. Full of vitamins A and C and available pretty much all year round (slightly tougher in winter but still good).

Chickweed

Drinking rainwater

Simon's mention of minerals made me think about my drinking habits ;-)
As some will know, I've recently got a rainwater harvesting system going on the boat. It's working really well so far, supplementing my fill-ups at BW points. What I didn't know was that if you're relying solely on rainwater, you have to remineralise it to get the various (she says vaguely) minerals that we need for good health. You'd think the stuff that falls from the sky was the most perfect drink but I guess that, in a natural state, man would drink from streams and rivers that flowed across rocks and through sediment. Even well water would have gone through this process.
I was talking to the friendly woman who works as a distributor of the 'candles' that are the filtering part of my purification system (British Berkfeld gravity filter). She told me her family have a lump of granite in their filter and hope for the best! I'd like to research it more even though I think I'm ok because my rainwater is mixed in with the stuff from the taps.

'you soak it overnight...'

I'm staying with friends in Somerset, it's always inspiring to stay with people who's approach to food (and plenty of other things) is thought out, informed. One major discussion has been about phytic acid, present in the husks of grains, and also pulses - it's reported than it combines with minerals and prevents the body absorbing them - calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, zinc - all useful trace elements, and ironically the most valued by a vegetarian/vegan who is less likely to be getting direct sources of them (at least calcium & iron) from milk & meat respectively. Soaking overnight clears most of this, which is basically a slight fermentation - for example breakfast has been porridge made from soaked jumbo oats, which has a slightly sour (but not unpleasant) taste from the soaking.

Phytic acid is also in soya, and I've read before about people avoiding unfermented soya products. Sally Fallon's book 'Nourishing Traditions' claims on the front to be 'The cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats' and talks about this, and also that older cultures always used these foods in a fermented state - sourdough bread, miso and more, and also that the proteins in gluten which are harder to digest (and presumably cause problems for many who avoid gluten) are also broken down in soaking/fermentation.

All interesting stuff; the scientist in me wants to find out more rather than just take it from one source, but certainly worth more thinking & reading. It's always difficult with these kind of things to estimate the effect/scale of the benefits/downsides of one course of action or another - neglibility may come into it, or a known, acceptable risk. The health effects of alcohol are well known, but we choose to poison ourselves, as it's fun doing so... ;-)

Should also mention (as this is notes for me as much as a point for discussion) we visited friends Linda & Richard who are doing up an old house nearby, and are currently living in the (very nicely converted) cowshed next door. Linda runs Impulse Foods, makers of fine Tempeh available near you. The 'you start by saking it overnight' line became something of a running joke, which of course I strung out for as long as possible. It's good to be in a place where good food is prioritised, and good as in ethics & health rather than just in the foodie way - lots of local, seasonal food. Food for thought, literally.

Nuttolene Fritters

An occasional pleasure is deep fat frying; chunky chips, obviously, and normally balls of sosmix, with diced onion & pepper mixed in. No sosmix in the house tonight (it's probablty full of GM soya anyway, I really need to do some research on that one), but I did have a tin of Nuttolene, which has now been changed to be even blander, which was possibly the point, and also ever slightly less likely like tinned meat.

In a subconcious war rememberance moment I tried to make fritters - the batter (wholemeal flour & soya milk, water) was possibly a little too thin, but they were - OK.

I was going to post this one as a bit of a failure, but as as all good scientists know, there's no such thing, only a negative result to an experiment. Anyway, I suspect Spam Fritters weren't any nicer... ;-)

No Potato

Right, so I am now a contributor on a food blog, I know this will bring great hilarity amongst my locals as my food is known to be a bit hit and miss, but at least I can try to shine here!

I haven't been able to find Becky's allotment for beetroot, so the borscht isn't on my list, but being allergic to potatoes I thought I would mention that

Parsnip
Turnip
Lentils
and Sweet Potato are excellent substitutes

The all contain less levels of starch than potatoes and make a delicious soup.

New Pans

Chiswick car boot sale neatly fulfilled it's purpose of passing on the junk of the middle classes, and I now own two Le Crueset cast iron pans. I've had a frying pan from them for about fifteen years, and it's served me well, so it's nice to replace two rather basic Ikea pans with these. They're hardly used yet (by me), but are nicely 'slow' compared to the thinner precursors; whilst taking longer to heat up, they stay warmer for longer, too.

they guy who sold them to me said he was getting rid of them as he'd just retiled his kitchen floor, and didn't want to crack it by dropping a pan; I think that's a recommendation, and certainly not a problem for my old concrete floor.

A question for others; I'm tempted to buy some kind of electric whisk or food processor to try to make soups properly, but I'd rather not; would a hand whisk do the same kind of job, albeit with more elbow grease involved?