Attention!: New Blog Site

This blog is now operating from another site. Please click this link:

www.veganfooddelivery.com

Viva la Revolution!

What is really going on in the Middle East? Waves of protestors throng in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt demanding a new government. Tunisia has fallen to revolution and protests for better living standards have filled the streets across the Arab world all the way to Yemen. The government of Lebanon has changed hands.  Jordon and Yemen has voted to increase the pay of civil servants and cut the price of commodities. Kuwait is throwing money at its citizens at the tune of $3500 each month and free food to buy off any unrest.

The ruling elite and their socialist monarchies are crumbling like sand castles as wave after wave of disinterested citizens spit on the seeds of doubt cast down on them by this hastily assembled gang of political pundits hired as its front line. Facebook and Twitter, google, web news, smart phones, laptops… it’s all too much for the old blood stuck in the rigidity of their posturing. Sides are taken, lines are drawn in the sand and history will be the judge as to on which side you stand. The whole world watches frightened of a reduction in the flow of oil from the region and the price of gasoline skyrocketing.

As Mubarak’s government thugs pelt demonstrators with Molotov cocktails from behind protective cover and both sides clash at the perimeter of this battleground, a thriving marketplace has begun to emerge. Free thinking human beings intent on their purpose and nailed to their principals are hunkering down for the long haul and the supplies lines are developing to support this. Food is coming in and so is the money to buy it.

Ungoverned people always find a way through free market principals where values of quality rise to the surface while cheaters and thugs are quickly identified and disabled with their lies of law and order exposed to the light of everyday interaction. Any organized violence is quickly dissolved under the watchful eye of community vigilance. The only kind of such organized violence too powerful for community resistance could only be government sponsored violence which could not exist if constitutionally prohibited as illegal initiatory force.

So, as we zoom into Tahrir Square with our imaginary remote controlled webcam-copter we can view people making music in drum circles, bartering with commercial goods brought in from stores, fast food, Egyptian flags… and traditional Egyptian fare like falafel, baklava, dates, figs, hummus, tabouli, kebabs can be found as vendors run it in fresh and hot. It is by no means, a feast or festival as there is still much opposition to the free flow of supplies by government police forces.

A typical finger food found in marketplaces in Egypt is the Kofta. This is a spiced ground beef that is molded around a skewer and then grilled in an open fire. It’s tasty, high protein and people buy it to eat it on the run. In this post I’ll replicate that idea by rendering it vegan. This recipe has all the great flavor and ethnic ambiance as the goat (or whatever) it is intended to resemble. So grill up some of these bad boys(recipe below) up and sit down to Aljazeera English Live, with a side of Tabouli (recipe below) and your downloaded and printed Egyptian flag (use photo included), which you have affixed to an extra kofta skewer,  and you’ll feel like you’re right here in Tahrir Square raising your fist of change with the great Egyptian people.

Vegan Kofta

6 oz             Gimme Lean Vegan Ground Beef (or Sausage)

2 Tbsp          Parsley, minced

2 Tbsp          onion, minced

1 tsp            black pepper

¼ tsp           sea salt

2 Tbsp          extra virgin olive oil ( with extra for basting)

Tabouli

2 cups         parsley leaves, washed

3 Tbsp         red onion, minced

¼ cup          cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

¼ cup          tomato, diced

½ cup          bulgar wheat, cooked

Juice            half a lemon or more to taste

¼ cup          extra virgin olive oil

To Taste       sea salt

Equipment

You will need a couple of wooden skewers, mixing bowls, a chef’s knife, food processor, rubber spatula, cutting board, grill or grill pan and a basting brush.

Kofta

Instructions

If you are using a grill pan then cut the skewers to fit the pan. Next, take the skewers and put them in a tall glass with warm water or lay them flat in a tray and pour warm water over them. Let them soak for several minutes while you are preparing the rest of this recipe.

Make the sausage first. Take half a package of Gimme Lean vegan sausage meat or ground beef (about 6 ounces) and put it in a mixing bowl. Wash the parsley well, you will need about two small bunches or one large for this recipe. Pull off the leaves from each stem, or if you don’t want to spend the time, use your chef’s knife to slice off the leafy portion of the stalk. Discard the stalk.

Take half a small onion and mince it on the cutting board. Now take a handful of the parsley and mince it together with the onion. The effect will be that the onion is minced finer and the parsley minced easier. Next, take minced combination and put it in the mixing bowl with the Gimme Lean. Add the salt, pepper and olive oil and mash this all together well. This is our Kofta mix.

Divide the kofta into four equal parts. Take one part in your hand and mold it over a skewer. Stretch and mold it until it is about an inch thick and six inches long on the skewer. Preheat the grill pan or char grill. Oil the grill surface and baste the kofta with the extra olive oil. Allow the kofta to make contact with the hot surface for several minutes before turning it to another position. Baste occasionally while grilling.

Koftas will be finished in 10-15 minutes. Serve hot with tabouli.

Tabouli

Instructions

Take half a cup of uncooked bulgar wheat and put it in a pot with a cup of water. Bring this to a boil and turn it off. Let it stand, covered for ten minutes or more.

Take the parsley that is washed and in the other mixing bowl and put this in the food processor with half the olive oil. Pulse this until well minced. Put this back in the bowl.

Mince up the vegetables and add them to the parsley in the mixing bowl. Add in half a cup of bulgar wheat (or more if you like it because you will have extra) then the rest of the olive oil, juice of lemon and salt to taste. Mix well and chill before serving.

 

                                                       Bon Appetite    (heiroglyphs below)
                                          


                                                                                 

Wild About Berries!

When I was a kid, between the ages of 5 and 12, my family owned a small cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin. The lake was quite large and our cabin was on a very desolate section with no other human dwellings for several miles around. We had quarter mile dirt road that led off the main road which was also dirt. This was rugged country, make no mistake. Once at the cabin we took boats to go everywhere around the lake including to do some limited grocery shopping.  Our boats were simple canoes and row boats with small outboard gasoline motors. Life on my summer vacation was basic to say the least.

We owned 48 acres surrounding the cabin and I would spend most days exploring this expanse, or boating to other areas to explore. Although fishing was a large part of our activities we also had a small vegetable garden and did a considerable amount of foraging for wild berries which my grandmother would dutifully turn into pies for the family desserts. My sisters and I would pick buckets of these berries when they were at their ripened peak and I would imagine bears gorging themselves in decadent delight out here in the middle of nowhere. It was at this time that I developed an appreciation for how Nature provided these treats way up here in the pine forests.

As an adult I learned that nearly everywhere you go on the planet, some small edible berries of one variety or another, chalk full of vitamins, anti-oxidants and phytochemicals grew on some tree, bush or ground cover. There were the familiar berries of the temperate zone, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries berries; those of the West and of the mountains like currants, rose hips and gogi berries; and berries of the tropics like the poha berries I would pick daily when I lived in Hawaii. These were the power packed survival substances nature provided to allow life to exist in the remotest parts of the world.

They were also the main source of vitamin C for primitive man before he had discovered agriculture, allowing him to venture out of the cradle of the equatorial tropics into harsher lands to the north and south. To think that these tiny substances once allowed mankind to roam the frigid lands on the glacial edge during the time of the ice ages is mind expanding. The hunting and fishing of animals sustained life but it was the berries that kept man healthy. Most people today know that life as a sailor out to sea for weeks on end must have a source of vitamin C on board to prevent scurvy. Many an explorer seeking new lands in the arctic regions died from this disease before starvation, accident or hypothermia ever had a chance to kill him. The nutrients contained in these small fruits are essential to human survival.

Today, one can readily find an assortment of berries in the produce isle or frozen case of your grocery and health food stores. Unfortunately, conventionally grown berries can contain high levels of pesticides so I advise consuming the organically grown berries. Frozen berries are a good buy as you usually get more for your money, almost no spoiled berries and they keep longer especially if you are planning to use them in a pie, tart or smoothie. Fresh berries are better to eat a handful now and then, which is what I normally do to adjust my system a couple to three times a day. The great thing about berries is that they can be eaten fresh like candy or become a part of something more elaborate.

Unlike succulent fresh or dried sweet fruit, berries are actually low in sugars with higher values of fiber and special nutritive compounds. The size and relative scarcity in nature models the optimum balance of these sorts of nutrients in the human body.  Too much juicy fruit is really not that good for us. Foods with high sugar contents create havoc in the body over the course of time and should be eaten sparingly. Unfortunately, I see piles upon piles of such fruit in the produce sections of grocery stores knowing full well that only a small percentage will ever actually be sold. That most of this bounty will go to waste because people just don’t consume that much, and nor should they.

The following is a great little recipe for the summer berry season. These little tarts make excellent individual desserts that everyone will appreciate.

Wild Berry Tart with Raspberry Sorbet

Sorbet

     ¼ cup                                              silken tofu

     ½ cup                                              cranberry raspberry juice

     1 tsp                                               raw sugar

     3 tsp                                               agar

     1 tsp                                               methycellulose powder*

     ¼ cup                                              frozen raspberries

Filling

    ½ cup                                              cranberry raspberry juice

    1 tsp                                                cornstarch

    ¼ cup                                              fresh blueberries

Crust

    ¼ cup                                              fresh blackberries

    ¼ cup                                              frozen raspberries

    4                                                     graham crackers

    3 Tbsp                                             margarine

    2 Tbsp                                             cold water

Directions

Make the sorbet and filling reduction sauce at the same time starting with separate sauce pots. In one pot add the cranberry/raspberry juice with the cornstarch and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and ‘evaporate’ the juice to half its original volume, remove from heat and cool down.

In the other pot add the juice and agar, bring to a boil and simmer for two minutes. Remove from heat and chill down in freezer until slushy. When sufficiently partially frozen (about 20 minutes later) transfer to a food processor. Add the other sorbet ingredients to the food processor and blend well. Scrape the mixture from the processor to a bowl and put bowl back in the freezer for another 20 minutes. After this time take the sorbet out of the freezer and blend again in the processor or mixer. Now the sorbet is light and aerated and ready to use. Store in the freezer until you are ready to serve it.

Next, add the crust ingredients to the food processor and pulse until crumbly. Remove this mixture and press a small ball of it into each tiny tart tin. Use another empty tin to shape the crust evenly inside the first tin.

Now take the fresh berries (also frozen raspberries) and mix them well with the cooled reduction sauce which is now a stiff syrup. Spoon some of the berry mixture into each tin with crust and bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from the oven and allow tarts to cool to room temperature.

When ready to serve, put the frozen sorbet into a pastry bag with a wide mouthed decorator tip and pipe a dollop of sorbet on each tart. Serve immediately. Recipe makes about 6 tarts.

*Methylcellulose powder is a natural product made from the cellulose of plants. It is optional here, what it does is make for a better finished product when whipping cold vegan substances that you want to become airy like eggwhites. Buy at http://www.willpowder.com/ 

There's Something Fishy about Fish Oil

So you think you might need fish oil. You’ve heard about the Omega-3 acids that your heart needs to prevent disease. Then you heard about the mysterious DHA in Omega-3 and how that is the key to the benefits. Most of you stopped there. You saw the lab coats, the reassuring doctor’s voice, the Pharmaceutical company’s good name. Well, that was good enough for you. After all, it couldn’t hurt… you don’t eat enough fish anyway… All perfectly logical, all wrong.

                                                                         
Don’t misunderstand me; human beings need Omega-3 oils in certain amounts for the proper electrical function of the brain. Our brain is mostly made up of fat, 60% by dry weight. Few people realize how important fat is to a healthy brain. And DHA, the most plentiful fatty acid in the brain, is crucial to brain function, from infancy to old age. DHA is essential in the health of your heart, nervous system, lungs, breasts, bowel and colon, skin, bones… it is seemingly everywhere. If it is so important, and if until recently we couldn’t get it from fish oil or algae, then how in the world have we managed to survive this long? And I guess heart disease no longer is a result of too much saturated fat, cholesterol or sugar in our diets that it was the lack of fish oil all along that made us sick.

The body manufactures the DHA that it needs to supplement lost DHA with plant oil substances like flax seed oil. Walnuts and soy as well as many natural edible plant substances contain alpha linolenic acid. All herbivorous land animals from squirrels and song birds to cows and elephants produce their own DHA from alpha linolenic acid in their food.

Proponents of fish oil supplements claim that the body has to work too hard to trying to manufacture enough DHA to feed the brain. Herbivorous animals have never lacked DHA because they don’t consume fish. Why should humans? Besides, studies are yet inconclusive as to the direct effects of consuming fish oil supplements and better brain function or that it, in some way, supplies the needed DHA in the body lost to wear and tear and oxidation.

DHA MOLECULE

There is, however, growing evidence that too much fish oil, and all that DHA, may be bad for you. The first and most obvious criticism is that fish, especially those higher up in the food chain and containing the highest concentrations of Omega-3 oils, also contain the highest concentrations of PCBs and Mercury. Most of the fish oil sold in neat little capsules come from anything left in the net to heads, tails and innards left over from the filleting and freezing of cod and haddock in the North Atlantic by giant trawler fishing factories.

As fish stock worldwide our rapidly being depleted by overfishing these giant juggernauts have no mercy in their efforts to scoop up and monetize anything and everything they can get their nets on. Seafood restaurant chains open and the government recommends eating more fish, or under the pressure of outside groups claiming the high rate of toxins in fish should prohibit their consumption, they switch to fish oil consumption over eating swordfish. These giant fish factories on the  ocean  use deeper net technology now to get the best ‘deep water’ fish for oil claiming its superiority when the reality is that the shallower waters are fished out.

The fish oil revolution is a conspiracy to keep these giant trawlers netting fish while the edible top feeders are depleted to nothing. It’s a trick to get you to buy the refuse, unused parts and unwanted kill from their gargantuan nets. They need you to keep doing what keeps them in business whether it is truly good for you and the environment or not.

If you want to add DHA or increase your Omega-3 oils in your diet if you are vegan then you should eat a variety of nuts, seeds and oils from the vegetable kingdom. You can obtain great ecologically friendly blue green algae veggie capsules or tablets for increased dosages if you feel that it is better for you. The fish whose oil is pushed got Omega-3 in their oil from the algae that moves up the foodchain in concentrated form. The same concentrations can be obtained now from natural farmed algae.

For those of you, myself included, who want to allow your body and mind to take advantage of the availability of better nutritive substances that what your diet can provide, I advise you to try the algae and leave the fish alone, they’ve got enough to worry about.

Winter Soup with Seitan

Here it is the dead of winter. The sun has begun to make his slow journey back to life but the days are still short and cold. Until our modern age of artificial environments humans depended as much on what they put in their bellies as what they wore on their backs. In winter, stews and soups were the norm as stores of root vegetable were relied on together with dried beans, grains and wild game until the next growing season. Today we eat anything grown or made anywhere in the world that makes into our local market. We live and work in heated or air conditioned environments and travel under the same conditions. Yet no one can deny, though, most of us crave a good hearty hot soup with plenty of vegetables in cold weather.

I thought I would write an article this week with a nice recipe for a seitan and vegetable soup that is both simple and top notch.  All the ingredients are easily obtainable in your local health food and grocery stores as you can see from the photograph. If you study the nutrient fact label I have included (look for it at the end of this article) you can see the high protein and high energy this soup provides.

Open a package seitan and put half of it on a cutting board. Seitan is a high protein faux meat made from whole wheat flour by an ancient method developed by Buddhist monks in China and Japan. It is in the dairy case of any health food store and located near the tofu. Coarsely chop the escarole and wash and roughly chop the escarole. Mince the garlic. Put each in a separate bowl or dish. Open the cans of beans and pour half of each can into the colander or strainer and rinse under cold water.

Heat a soup pot and add a tablespoon of oil. Stir in the seitan and turn heat down to low. Stir occasionally but slow seitan for about 10 minutes to dry out and then brown. Next add the onions and garlic and another teaspoon of the olive oil. Stir and cook this another three minutes then add the mushrooms, celery and spices. Stir cook on low another few minutes then stir in the escarole and increase the heat to medium. Cook a few more minutes until the escarole becomes wilted down to half its original volume or more.

Now add in the tomatoes, turn up the heat to high and bring to a boil. Next add in the vegetable stock, carrots, kidney and garbanzo beans, and green peas and bring this to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for ten minutes then add the macaroni and simmer for another 15 minutes. Recipe makes about six large servings.

Ingredients

          Two - 32 oz.                   Organic vegetable broth, Swanson

          One – 14.5 oz.                Organic diced tomatoes, Muir Glen

          1 cup                             Seitan, Westsoy

          ½ cup                            elbow macaroni

          ¾ cup                            kidney beans, canned rinsed

          ¾ cup                            garbanzo beans, canned rinsed

          1 small                           onion

          2 stalks                          celery

          4 oz.                              mushrooms

          2 medium                       carrots

          1 small head                   escarole

          3 cloves                         garlic

          ½ cup                            green peas

          2 Tbsp                           olive oil

          1 Tbsp                           oregano

          1 Tbsp                           thyme

          1 tsp                             cracked black pepper

          1-2 tsp                          sea salt

Nutrition Facts Serving Size      8 oz (227g)  Servings Per Container     about 15      Amount Per Serving   Calories  92    Calories From Fat  20                    % Daily Value Total Fat           2g                         3% Saturated Fat     0g                        1% Trans Fat            0g Polyunsaturated Fat 0g Monounsaturated Fat 1g Cholesterol  0mg                          0% Sodium 417mg                           17% Total Carbohydrates16g            5% Dietary Fiber      5g                     21% Sugars  4g Protein  9g Vitamin A   5%     Vitamin C       11% Calcium    6%       Iron                14% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000   calorie diet.

                                                           

I (Minerals) Sing The Body Electric

The universe is a pulsing expression of electromagnetism where matter dances to the frequencies of its nature and its relationships. One hundred and eighteen distinct players are in this game of existence, each with its own function and ‘personality’.  Everything in this universe is composed of varying degrees of all or some of these elements and it is these relationships that determine what ‘things’ are.

Each one of these 118 elements, or atoms, is composed of an electrically positive charged nucleus made up of protons and neutrons with negatively charged electrons in orbit around them. To get an idea of scale in this tiny world make the proton the size of an orange and the nearest electron would be the same distance away as the earth is from the sun. Like the analogy, this distance is a vacuum of space within every atom of everything. It is a space impenetrable except by nuclear forces and it is an active area where bosons, photons and other subatomic forces continuously interact with the electrons and protons in a kind of eternal micro Star Wars. More than 99% of every atom is this kind of space.

Things, including life, are made up of sharing agreements between elements where electrons are exchanged. This is called the chemical bond and it is how most everything we see and touch is held together. This chemical bond is really an electrical bond as electrons in the atom’s outer orbits are exchanged.  If not for this electrical exchange everything would simply fall into chaos. Chance electron exchanges between elements in our primordial past put our planet, and every other heavenly body together and those same forces first created the life that inhabited it.

The interesting thing about life is that, though its existence depends partially on chance chemical bonds, its existence depends completely on its ‘program’. With a program a living thing can direct its own construction and propagating its existence is no longer left up for chance.  It does this through a mechanism called DNA which has encoded a sequence of simple elemental combinations, called genes, that when activated create all the specialized cells that make up a living thing. The elements are supplied from the outside (universe) and organized by the DNA to share the right electrons with the right elements to create all the different molecules that make up a cell.

To create life all the right conditions must exist including both water and electricity. Life on earth originated in the primordial oceans where the conditions were right to bond by force the elements into the primitive molecules of life. That is why both plants and animals use the same minerals in the same proportions and pH as are present in the ocean. Once life got started, however, its DNA took over and caused the chemical bonds to sequence in such a way as to create a myriad of life forms which could replicate themselves.

When life left the oceans to live on land it took the sea with it inside. If you were to analyze the elements of sea water and compare those to human blood plasma the results would look nearly the same. If you were to compare human hemoglobin to plant chlorophyll that would also look similar. This chemical soup is what we, as living things, brought with us when we walked out of the sea or sprouted up on land. Maintaining and replacing these ingredients with those only found on land cuts us short in our body’s goal of optimum resonant functioning.

If we were making a signature soup that whose taste, appearance, texture, component nutritive parts and aroma were necessary in just the right proportions as prescribed by its recipe, what would happen if there was too much of one ingredient and not enough of another? Something would be off, and it probably would affect the quality of each of the five characteristics listed above. Do you not think that you too are a pot of soup? Think again.

When you make a pot of soup you have to use the right amount and proportion of ingredients if it is going to be what you intended it to be. The same is true when Mother Nature made your recipe. She expected to use all the ingredients in the recipe. Too much of one thing and not enough of another doesn’t work so well, and the soup can become a disaster.  Because this is a Soup du Jour it must be made every day, and made the same, so the ingredients must be on hand.

To make your own soup start with supplying yourself with the elements in their proper proportions. Essential minerals and trace minerals are all essential minerals. The fact that some are needed in minute quantities doesn’t detract from their vital importance in biological functions. Each organ in your body is controlled by a single element, or mineral and if you are in short supply this organ will degenerate into disease. Minerals activate vitamins and enzymes, whose affects are useless without this symbiosis. Some minerals must be taken with other minerals to be effective.  Taking mineral supplements in ionic suspension are most quickly and easily absorbed by your body.

Once the ocean is again flowing through your veins, the electricity comes back and you feel good again. Cells thrive with mini factories inside churning out special  molecules so it can live. Electrolytes create potentials that operate our body’s organs and electricity flows through this chemical soup animating our lives and producing conscious thought as it sparks from neuron to neuron in our brains. Remember this, water does not conduct electricity minerals do. It’s minerals in solution that operate our lives so make sure you have all you need for perfect health.