- Community Support Agriculture in Montreal
- Modern Meat
- Flavour of the month: Traditional Thyme
- Cooking Tip: Cooking Oils
- Site of the Month: Equiterre
- Recipe Update: Vegan Indian Recipes
- General News and Site Update
- An outbreak waiting to happen: Beef inspection failures let in a deadly microbe (April 9, 2001, page A01)
- They die 'piece by piece': In overtaxed plants, humane treatment of cattle is often a battle lost (April 10, 2001, page A01)
- Big Mac's big voice in meat plants (April 10, 2001, page A11)
- Daal Soup (Curried Lentil Soup)
- Pakora (Vegetable Fritters)
- Vegetable Curry
- Vegan Palek “Panir” (Spinach with tofu)
- Basmati Rice
- Amanda's Kitchen is looking for volunteers to help write articles for the web site, and to translate articles from English to French. If you're interested please e-mail amandaskitchen@yahoo.ca or consult the Writer's Guidelines.
- The winter univeristy semester is almost over and that means that Montreal's only vegan food co-operative, Le Frigo Vert, will soon be closing its doors for the summer. So drop by soon to stock up your vegan essentials.
- A link has been added in the Fuss about Fish section to an article titled "How 'Factory Fishing' Decimated Newfoundland Cod" from the Mar-Apr 2001 edition of e-magazine.
March/April 2001
In this issue:
Community
Supported Agriculture in Montreal
With its roots in Europe, community supported
agriculture (CSA) rapidly expanded to North America in the 1980s.
CSA encourages local farms to use sustainable agricultural practices and
encourages the community to get involved in local farms. It does
this by creating a direct link between the local farmer and the consumer
or community. The consumer benefits by having direct access to fresh,
local produce at an affordable price, and the farmer is guaranteed buyers
willing to pay a fair price for his crop.
So how does community supported agriculture work? The consumer chooses a local farm and agrees to buy a certain amount of the farm's harvest. The consumer then partly pays the farmer in advance for the produce, which is delivered weekly to his home or a local drop-off spot. The produce that is delivered will vary each week, according to the farmer's harvest, and will also vary from farm to farm. The consumer is now a partner in the farm's operation and is often invited and encouraged to spend time on the farm, either by helping out, particpating in harvest festivals, or just dropping by to say "hi" and see how the farm operates.
In the Montreal area, CSA is extremely well organised: Finding a farm to participate in is relatively easy. Equiterre, a non-profit organisation promoting ecological and socially-just initiatives, acts as a coordinator for a network of over 50 organic farms. Every year, Equiterre make available a list of farms actively seeking partners to anybody who is interested in participating. The list includes a description of the produce produced by each farm (types of fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy, meat etc...), dates for upcoming information meetings for each farm, as well as anticipated drop-off spots. All the consumer has to do is match their alimentary needs with a convenient drop-off and make contact with the appropriate farm.
Equiterre estimates that by buying directly from the farm, participants are not only supporting small, local, family farms but that they are also paying 10% to 50% less for their organic produce than they would have at the supermarket, and supporting sutainable agricultural practices. Not to mention the fact that you know exactly where your food is coming from! Farms in the Equiterre network are all certified organic, or they are in the process of obtaining their certification. This means that none of the farms use pesticides or synthetic fertilisers, and that they use sustainable farming methods.
A list of farms is available from the Equiterre internet site, under Community Supported Agriculture. It is also available by mail. You do not need to be a memder of Equiterre to participate in this program. Most farm meetings take place in April, and harvest baskets are generally delivered for about 20 weeks from June to October. The cost per basket varies from about $10/week for a simple single-person basket, to $38/week for a gourmet basket suitable for a family.
For more information contact:
Equiterre,
2177 rue Masson, suite 317,
Montreal, Qc, H2H 1B1
514-522-2000; 1-877-ASC-6656
e-mail
info@equiterre.qc.ca
www.equiterre.qc.ca
Modern
Meat
Based on a seven month
investigation, Modern
Meat is a two-part special report in the Washington
Post
Flavour
of the Month
Traditional Thyme
Native to the western Meditarreanean regions
and southern italy, this plant was introduced into other parts of
Europe, and is now cultivated extensively.
Thyme is believed to have been named from the Greek word for courage or bravery and during the middle ages thyme motifs were embroidered onto the scarves of jousting knights. It may also have come from a term meaning to fumigate. Thyme has strong antibacterial properties and sprigs of the herb was burned indoors during the plague to cleanse the air. Thyme's essential oil, thymol, was used as an antiseptic during World War I. Thyme tea is traditionally used for digestive complaints, and the herb's expectorrant properties are useful for coughs.
Planting thyme in the garden is said to attract fairies. It was also commonly planted at graves in Europe to console unhappy spirits. Sleeping with thyme under your pillow is said to improve your spirits.
In the kitchen, thyme is one of cooking's "fine herbs" and an essential part of the french bouquet garni. It's pleasing taste and aroma, coupled with its antibacterial properties, made it useful for flavouring and preserving sausages and other meats, and a very traditional ingredient in bread stuffings. Thyme is also a wonderful addition to herbed salad dressings, tomato sauces, vegetarian stews and dumplings. Persians enjoyed their thyme fresh and would often nibble on it from the garden.
Thyme grows in most sunny environments, but prefers well-drained banks and chalky or rocky soil. In Canada it is normally grown as an annual, but can sometimes be grown as a perennial. It is a bushy herb with several, many-branched, wooden stems, and strongly aromatic leaves. It grows between 30-40 cm. From early to mid-summer, lilac, tubular, lipped flowers grow in clusters at the tips of the branches. The aerial parts are harvested in mid to late summer. For tips on preserving your own freshly-picked coriander, visit Drying and Storing Herbs.
Cooking
Tip of the Month
Cooking oils.
A cooking oil is a cooking oil is a cooking
oil.... right? Well, no actually. There's a little more to the vast
array of cooking oils than just price. And what about those terms
cold-pressed, extra-virgin and superunsaturated? Do they really mean anything?
Well, yes, usually. And what about fat being bad for you: Should
I really be using oil at all? Well, yes... absolutly!
Figuring out the cooking oil world isn't exactly an easy task, but here's
a little primer to help you along.
Despite concerns about fat in the diet, fat actually plays a really important role in good health. Fat provides the means to transport fat-soluble vitamins, like A, D, E and K, to key areas of the body, thereby contributing to healthy bones, nerves, skin and mucuous membranes. So if you're limiting fat in your diet becuase you thought it was bad for you, think again! It's not the fat that's bad for you, but the type of fat that seems to be the problem. I won't get into details here, but saturated and trans-fatty acids seem to be the culprits associated with poor health. So stay away from the butters, margarines, pre-baked goods and lards and you should be doing great. On the other hand, look for fats labelled superunsaturated (like flax seed) or monounsaturated (like olive and canola oil). Polyunsaturated oils are also healthy choices.
In terms of cooking, fat acts like a flavour vehicle. Even small amounts seem to draw out the the flavour and aromas of a meal, and enhance the creamy mouth "feel" of each delicious morsel. Depending on the dish you're preparing, the recipe may call for a strongly-flavoured oil like olive or sesame, or a more meek oil like canola. Alternatively, it may be calling for an oil with a high flash-point for frying, like safflower, or be trying to add some extra nutrients to the dish, like flax-seed. Generally-speaking, if you're substituting an oil in a recipe, you should take a few moments to consider why the oils is being used and what an appropriate substitution might be.
Confused yet? Don't worry, here are a few guiding thoughts:
Full-flavoured fruity oils are good for most Italian and Coutry-style French fare, uncooked salad dressings, marinades, sauces and dips. Think garlic, tomatoes, herbs, pasta and hearty bread and try olive oil or the milder walnut oil. Flavour strength will be inversely proprotional to processing, so the less processed you oil, the more flavour you will enjoy: First-pressed, cold-pressed oils will result in the greatest flavour, extra virgin olive oil is always from the first pressing and is also the least acidic of the olive oils. Fine virgin and semi-virgin oils are a bit milder and still unrefined, havine been processed using a cold-press technique.
Dishes in the oriental style, cry out for toasted sesame oil or peanut oil mixed with a little soy sauce and ginger. Baking is often best with buttery corn oil, as are sauteed vegetables. Subtly nutty oils like walnut, hazelnut and grapeseed allow the flavour of delicate herbs to sizzle. But highly-flavoured foods like Indian, Thai and Carribean are probably best prepared with a less-competing oil, like canola.
And what about frying?. Well all oils are definately not created equal in this department either. Different molecular properties of oils mean that they each react differently to heat. Toasted sesame and flax seed oil should never be used for baking or frying. These are essentailly flavouring oils and will smoke and decompose at fairly low temperatures. Refined sesame, cold-pressed walnut and olive oils are all great for low temperature sauteeing. For higher temperatures, canola, corn and some olive oils are fine. Your best choices for deep-frying and high temperature stir frying are refined safflower and sunflower oils. Refined almond, avocado and cottonseed oil are also great if you can find and afford them, and canola oil is usually not a problem either.
As a general rule, I like to keep a few different
oils in my pantry. Safflower and canola for frying; corn oil for
baking; and walnut, olive, toasted sesame and flax for flavouring.
Flax oil should always be stored in the fridge. Happy cooking!
Site
of the Month
Equiterre: http://www.equiterre.qc.ca/
Équiterre is a not-for-profit
organization dedicated to promoting ecological, socially-just choices through
action, education and research from a standpoint that embraces social justice,
economic solidarity and the defence of the environment. They are
based on Montreal and run awareness campaigns for fair trade, community
supported agriculture, ecological transportation,and cooperative gardening/farming.
In the past couple of years they have grown from a small arm QPIRG to their
own self-entity, and are almost singly responsible for the growing collection
of restaurant and stores selling fairly-traded coffee in and around Montreal.
The year 2000 was filled with great achievements for Equiterre, including
front-page newspaper coverage, collaborations with personalities like DavidSuzuki
and José Bové, and a successful Community Supported Agriculture
conference attended by the Minister of Agriculture. The site is primarily
french, but most pages are availbale in English.
For those of you who missed the workshop on Vegan Indian Cooking earlier this month, here is a sampling of some of the recipes we made:
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Disclaimer: This newsletter and the Amanda's Kitchen web site are not prepared by a registered dietician, nurse, doctor or other medically-qualified individual. Any health and nutrition information provided by Amanda's Kitchen is designed to support, not replace, information provided by a registered dietician or healthcare provider. Where appropriate, Amanda's Kitchen has endeavoured to support information contained on the site and newsletter by providing references to source data and, where possible, specific HTML links.
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