vegetarian recipes anyone?

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Chola (a wet garbanzo curry)

Chop 1 med. Onion, put in frying pan in which you have preheated 3 tablespoons oil. When Onions start browning, then add Fresh ginger root, a thumbsize piece, sliced very thinly, and reduce heat to medium.

Fry onion mixture about 20 minutes total. While onions are frying, chop 1 medium tomato. And measure out: 1 teasp. Cumin seed 2 teasp. Ground coriander 1 teasp. Garam masala

Remove onions to a separate dish. Add a little more oil to the frying pan, when the oil is hot, put in the cumin seed only, and wait till it pops, then remove from heat momentarily, and add remaining spices to sizzle for a minute, then add tomato. Put back on heat, and cook on medium for about 5 minutes or until you have a nice orange color and the oil starts to separate out again.

Now add onions back to the spice mixture and add the chola (one canful garbanzo beans) which have been drained and rinsed. Cook all together for at least 3 minutes. The longer you cook it together, the better it tastes, try to cook it for at least 10 minutes. Add 2 cups water or as much water as you would like for the "gravy". (You can make this using dried garbanzo beans, just soak overnight to get them ready for this recipe).

This is great over rice, and/or eaten with chapatis. If you don't have or don't want to make chapatis, whole wheat tortillas heated in a frying pan and buttered make a fine substitute. Like lots of spicy recipes, this gets better overnight in the fridge. This is homestyle cooking, (spicy, but not hot!), if you like red pepper, add to your taste. Serve also with tamarind and/or fresh coconut chutney. Enjoy!

I will post more northern indian recipes here as I can get them typed up. I write them in a non-standard way, so that it is easier for people without any training in indian cooking to make them properly.

One note on vegetarian cooking: I have always recommended knowing more vegetarian recipes for the preparedness pantry, the reason being, it is easier to do without meat dishes if your vegetarian dishes are highly flavorful. In our western culture, it seems as though the most flavorful dishes are the meat dishes, with the vegetable side dishes being less spiced. It is not hard to convert to a vegetarian diet if you have lots of flavor in your meals. Be good to your health and to the environment, try to eat less meat!

Buying tip: Find your nearest east indian or middle eastern grocery store to buy the spices and chutneys. They are much cheaper there than those little bottles on the spice shelf at your regular grocery store. Remember, you will be measuring your spices by the teaspoonful for each recipe, so you will need more spice than you think. If you don't have any such store nearby, the san francisco spice company is good for most of the spices you need to make indian food.

-- lynn (lynellef@netscape.net), January 05, 2000

Answers

Your local food co-op is also a good source of herbs, spices and seasonings. Ours stocks bulk herbs and spices and sells them much cheaper than the prepackaged stuff at the grocers--and they sell so much that it is fresher too. Check at this website to find co-ops: http://www.prairienet.org/co-op/directory/

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.

For more recipes than you can possibly use ...............

on address line type ..............Google.com in query slot type ................vegetarian recipes click on ..........................Google Search

-- RT (Rngfr49@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.


and now the same info in more comprehensible format

in address line type...............Google.com

in query slot type ................vegetarian recipes

click on ........................ Google search

-- RT (Rngfr49@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.


the same info in more comprehensible format

on address line type...............Google.com

in query slot type ................vegetarian recipes

click on ........................ Google search

-- RT (Rngfr49@yahoo.com), January 05, 2000.


I know I can search online for recipes, and that's helpful, but still prefer when people send their tried and true favorites...thanks!

-- Mumsie (shezdremn@aol.com), January 05, 2000.


Lynn, I've been known to cook authentic Indian Food here at Chez Old Git and I can tell just by reading that your recipe is basic Indian cooking at its very best. I urge you all to try this recipe--I certainly shall--and I hope we see more from you, Lynn.

Those of you trying Indian for the first time: take that first mouthful and carefully savor the different flavors beginning to meld together. You will be able to differentiate several "layers" of flavor before they all combine into one delicious mouthful. Indian cooking is VERY subtle and almost always very healthy.

As Lynn notes, this recipe is from northern India. There are as many styles of cooking in India as there are in China--or in the United States. The word "curry" is said to derive from the British, who took the word "kouri," meaning a kind of stew, and applied it to all stew-like dishes. Although you can buy several types of curry powder, which is actually a mixture of several spices, it's best to add the different spices yourself so you can adjust the flavor. Garam masala is also a mixture of spices. (I bet if you search on the web, you can find a few recipes for each spice blend.)

Thanks for the recipe, Lynn--do you have a family recipe for raita, by any chance?

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 05, 2000.


Hi Old Git, Yes, I have a recipe for raita, a fresh yogurt and cucumber "salad". Minty and refreshing, just the thing to cool down a hot mouth!

Raita 2 cups plain yogurt into a bowl, stir up to make it creamy. Add: 1 medium cucumber, minced or grated, stir in. Add: 1/2 tsp. garam masala 1/2 tsp. chili powder (optional) 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. kir (an odd ingredient, a perfumy water only found in Indian stores) 1 1/2 tsp. chopped fresh mint. Serve with a lime wedge and garnished with a mint leaf on top of the dish. Yum.

-- lynn (lynellef@netscape.net), January 05, 2000.


Chicken

Think the subject of contaminated chicken has been done to death?

Think again.

Find out just how foul eating fowl can be.

Consider these realities:

The average North American eats more than 50 pounds of chicken per year roughly double the amount consumed just 20 years ago.

At least 1,000 US citizens are killed each year by contaminated chicken. As many as 80 million others are sickened.

Inspectors have about two seconds to visually examine the inside and outside of each chicken. At this rate, inspectors may examine 12,000 or more chickens in one day.

There are presently 1,370 unfilled federal meat inspector positions. In 1994 and 1995, more than 1.9 million inspection tasks went unperformed because of these vacancies.

A 3-ounce serving of chicken breast contains 75 mgs of cholesterol. A 3-ounce serving of ground beef contains 72 mgs. No plant foods contain cholesterol.

The owner of the nation's largest chicken producer Don Tyson earns about $5 million in salary, dividends and bonuses each year. Pay for workers on the poultry line are less than for any other manufacturing industry except apparel.

More than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are produced on factory farms. Roughly 7.5 billion chickens were slaughtered in the US in 1995.

In a single year, US poultry operations use enough water to meet all the domestic needs of nearly 4.5 million North Americans.

Producing one egg takes about 63 gallons of water.

Full citations for this brochure are available upon request or see www.earthsave.org.

Eating chicken is proving to be an especially hazardous enterprise...

For starters, approximately 30 percent of chicken is tainted with Salmonella and 62 percent with its equally virulent cousin, Campylobacter.

Time magazine calls raw chicken "one of the most dangerous items in the American home," and each year in the US alone, contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 people while sickening as many as 80 million others.

It's no surprise really that chicken is decidedly foul. Desperately crowded factory farms--where more than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are raised--are fertile breeding grounds for disease. Additionally, slaughterhouses do an excellent job of spreading pathogens from one bird to the next.

Even if chicken was pathogen-free (clearly an unsafe assumption for any shopper to make), it would hardly qualify as wholesome. Not only is chicken nearly devoid of health-promoting compounds found only in plant foods--things like complex carbohydrates, antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber--it also contains other suspect ingredients rarely recommended as part of a healthy diet.

Cholesterol. You'll find just as much artery-filling cholesterol in chicken as in beef and pork. Cholesterol is found exclusively in muscle tissue and can't be trimmed away.

Protein. People can meet or exceed their protein requirements simply by choosing a varied plant-centered diet and eating ample calories, says the American Dietetic Association. No animal foods are necessary. Many North Americans already eat twice the protein they need, and excessive protein has been linked to osteoporosis, kidney disease and other medical problems.

Antibiotic Residues. Roughly half of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals. If meat contains drug residues, it's highly unlikely to be detected, as these tests are rarely conducted.

Mystery Feed. Each year billions of pounds of slaughterhouse leftovers are made into animal reed, much of it for chickens. Chickens are also sometimes fed manure, which may contain pesticides, drug residues, pathogens, heavy metals, hormones and microbial toxins.

If you took a raw chicken and dropped it in a cow pile or in a pile of chicken manure, would you pick it up, wash it off and cook it for dinner? That's just about what's happening at these plants. -- Pat Godfrey, Inspector Tyson's chicken processing plant, Springdale, Arkansas

Despite millions of people falling ill each year, the US Department of Agriculture (the government agency responsible for meat safety) continues to stamp every thigh, breast and wing with its seal of approval, prompting many to ask, "Who's minding the henhouse?" Sadly, USDA has historically placed the interests of the influential poultry industry ahead of those of the poultry-consuming public. A new, more- scientific governrnent meat inspection system has been agreed upon in principle, but tangible improvements remain years away.

A poultry plant is not a good place to work. When you miss a day they punish you. If you're sick they punish you. The supervisors holler at you, but you can't say anything. They treat you like a child. -- Wonder Sims, 23, poultry worker.

The horrors found routinely inside chicken slaughterhouses are not limited to grisly scenes of disassembled chickens. They also include treacherous working conditions and dismally low wages. In 1994, a Wall Street Journal writer described the work he experienced first-hand in several slaughterhouses as, "faster than ever before, subject to Orwellian control and electronic surveillance, arid reduced to limited tasks that are numbingly repetitive, potentially crippling and stripped of any meaningful skills or chance to develop them... The work was so fast-paced that it took on a zany chaos, with arms and boxes and poultry flying in every direction."

Chicken production also exacts a steep environmental toll. It takes up to 700 gallons of water, six pounds of grain, and the equivalent of about one-fifth a gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of chicken. In addition, manure from the chicken industry is directly responsible for wide-spread pollution of waterways and groundwater.

Unless we dramatically curb our appetite for chicken, the future seems grim. We can expect more people hospitalized and killed by contaminated chicken, and more families mourning the loss of loved ones. We can look forward to more rivers ;and drinking water fouled with manure, more workers facing perilous tasks and lousy pay, and much more animal suffering. Despite the present horrors and bleak forecast, however, consumers continue to sleepwalk through the checkout line with shopping carts full of fowl. One can only wonder, when will we awaken from this nightmare?

For references and more information on this subject, please see: http://www.earthsave.org/ chicken.htm

Copyright 1997 Earthsave International



-- ... (...@...com), January 09, 2000.


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