Photo credit: The Imperial War Museum

“Dr. Carrot was a well loved character who promoted healthy-eating messages to keep the nation fit during the dark days of war,” says Dr. Christian.  “I’m delighted to be revisiting his advice on behalf of the British Carrot Growers’ Association.  Together we’ll get Britain healthy!”

The Get Healthy with Dr Carrot leaflet explains in a child friendly way just how important carrots are in our diets in particular the role that beta-carotene plays.  This is an antioxidant that occurs in high levels in carrots and which creates Vitamin A in the body.  This vitamin is vital for good eyesight, immunity, healthy hair and skin and ensuring good growth and strong bones and teeth.   As Dr Christian explains: “Research* has shown that many of this country’s youngsters and indeed adults have lower levels of vitamin A intakes than is ideally necessary.   But an 80g serving of cooked carrot – that’s just half a medium sized carrot – contains more than twice the recommended daily amount of vitamin A equivalent needed by adults.  It really couldn’t be easier to eat yourself healthier with carrots.”

The leaflet also looks into the fascinating history of carrots, which believe it or not were originally purple.  They only turned the more familiar orange colour in the 15th century when carrots were developed by Dutch growers in honour of their royal family who were from the ‘House of Orange’.

Perfect fodder for school quizzes, the leaflet contains some fun, interesting facts about carrots.  Do you know, for example, how many carrots are bought in the UK every weekend?  Or why carrots are ‘put to bed’ in winter and harvested at midnight at the start of the new season in June?  For the answers visit www.britishcarrots.co.uk!

Carrots are incredibly versatile and can be eaten raw or cooked.  During the Second World War carrots were promoted as a replacement for sugar in many recipes due to their natural sweetness which probably explains their popularity with children.   If, as a mum though, you still struggle to think of ways to get your kids to eat more carrots, the Get Healthy with Dr Carrot leaflet can give some top tips to help make it happen eg mix mashed carrots with mashed potato and use to top cottage pie or fish pie.

Another sure-fire way to get children to eat better is to get them involved in cooking and the leaflet provides some simple recipes that youngsters should find easy to make and which have been developed by Dr Christian for that ‘celebrity flair and kudos’.

Dr Christian adds: “There’s so much to say about carrots.  They’re low in calories, low in fat and saturates, naturally low in salt but high in fibre making them the perfect snack to crunch on when you’re watching your weight or that of your children.  The beta-carotene, when converted into Vitamin A, is an important nutrient for eye health – a lack of it can cause blindness – and because beta-carotene is an important antioxidant, eating carrots helps to keep your skin healthy and elastic.”

To find out more about the wonder of carrots and to download the Get Healthy with Dr Carrot leaflet visit www.britishcarrots.co.uk.

*The research to which Dr. Christian refers is the National Diet and Nutrition Survey of Young People¹ that revealed that 13 per cent of 11-14 year old boys and 20 per cent of 11-14 year old girls have vitamin A intakes below the minimum amount needed for good health.  This is also true of 16 per cent of men and 19 per cent of women aged between 19 and 24².

References:

¹  National Diet and Nutrition Survey:  Young People Aged 4-18 Years. 2000.
² National Diet and Nutrition Survey: Adults Aged 19-64 Years. Volume 2, 2003

Content provided by Mustard Communications.

Choosing to buy organic and locally-produced fruit and vegetables should ensure you get the very best for your BBQ and will supply you with fresher fruit and vegetables and help support local farmers. If you’re lucky enough to live near a farmer’s market or a farm shop, you should be able to pick up fantastically fresh, tasty, and good value seasonal fruit and vegetables.

And what better way to make the most of the best your area has to offer than with a BBQ and a wide variety of salads? Grilling seals in the flavours of the vegetables and it’s a healthy and fun way of cooking. You can experiment with marinades, fresh herbs, and vegetables you might not have otherwise tried. It’s also a great way to encourage the pickier members of the family to eat more vegetables!

The Usual Suspects

Mushrooms are a must for vegetable kebabs! Image Credit: Dinostock

The humble vegetable kebab can be brightened up with a marinade. Simply mix olive oil with a little lemon juice, then add fresh herbs, chilli, or crushed garlic. Soy sauce or balsamic vinegar are nice additions, too, or try harissa (a chilli paste from Tunisia) for warmth. Flavourful oils, such as walnut or avocado, are great drizzled over a green salad as an accompaniment. If you’re using wooden skewers, be sure to soak them overnight to minimise the risk of splinters.

For extra flavour, you could try skewering vegetables on stripped sprigs of rosemary. Good vegetables for grilling include sweet pepper, aubergine, courgette, tomato, mushroom, red onion, asparagus, sweetcorn, and sweet potato. Be aware that some vegetables, such as aubergines and mushrooms, tend to soak up a lot of flavour, so it’s best to limit the marinade time of these to avoid overpowering the natural flavour.

Your Vegan Platter

Make plenty of salads to fit the season, pasta, green leaves, and maybe some leaf and fruits, and the absolute essential, potato salad (with vegan mayonnaise and dill) – and provide plenty of rolls and dips (such as hummus, good quality olive oil, guacamole, tapenades, and whatever else might go well with crudités and bread). Supply some wine and perhaps a non-alcoholic punch or juice.

The Main Event

Grilled red peppers. Image credit: Food Factory

Find a few large portobello mushrooms and brush them liberally with some good quality olive oil or margarine, and some torn herbs or fresh crushed garlic. Alternatively, spread a little pesto, or olive or tomato tapenade over them before grilling. Or you can make your own garlic ‘butter’ with roasted garlic and margarine – simply spread this lightly over the mushrooms as they cook, adding more as necessary. The mushrooms should be grilled gills uppermost, and can be served in warmed buns with rings of red onion and some fresh organic salad leaves.*

New potatoes should be skewered and given a liberal brushing of olive oil with herbs (rosemary really shines here) before grilling, or you could bake a potato or sweet potato in foil in the smouldering coals for a side dish.

Stuff sweet peppers or large, par-boiled onions with a cooked grain and your favourite mixture of cooked vegetables (try Mediterranean vegetables with basil and pine nuts) and grill until soft.

For the best sweetcorn, peel back the husks, remove the silk, then rub the corn with margarine and tie the husks back over the corn. Cook the corn around the outside of the grill for about 20 minutes. To cook it quicker, try soaking it in cold water for thirty minutes beforehand, or blanch it in hot water.

Tofu well deserves its place on the vegan BBQ, too. Choose a good, firm, organic brand, and marinade it well (overnight is best, and add soy sauce to the marinade for a salty, savoury taste) before grilling. It’s great threaded onto skewers with vegetables.**

Don’t Forget Dessert

As the perfect finish for your meal, try wrapping bananas or plantains (choose plantains with black skin to get the sweetest) in foil, or cook them directly in their skins.

You can also thread fruit onto skewers and grill it – pineapple, peaches, pear, and apple all work well, and you can sprinkle these with a little mixed spice or brush them with agave nectar (a vegan substitute for honey).

Some fruits, such as peach, nectarine, or apple, can simply be sliced in half, grilled, and served with a scoop of vegan ice cream or sorbet for a simple dessert.

If you’re feeling really adventurous, you could try putting some stoned, ripe cherries in a foil pouch on the grill and serve them over vanilla vegan ice cream.

So there is every reason to fire up the barbecue, cast iron chiminea, or fire pit this year. As long as you have the time for a little preparation, and as long as you can source the best fruit and vegetables, you’ll be able to get the family and friends around a barbecue and enjoy a delicious, home-cooked meal alfresco.

And it’s well worth considering signing up to a local veg-box scheme or creating a vegetable plot in your own garden. You need surprisingly little space, and you can have as much fun growing your food as you can cooking and eating it!

——————————————————————————————–

Laura Phillips is a vegan – and has been for several years! – and outdoor living enthusiast, and writes for http://www.chimineashop.co.uk/

This post has been syndicated by Nathan Brown, the gardening jobs recruiter for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage and provider of Eco Advertising.

Sources:

* http://www.bbq.co.uk/bbq-recipes/vegetables/readers-recipes-vegetable.htm – another site with lots of BBQ ideas.

** http://vegetarian.about.com/od/vegetarianbarbecuerecipes/qt/grillingtofu.htm – an informative article with loads of good ideas for tofu.

The Green Teen Cookbook

The book will also give teens advice on how to cook healthy recipes that are both simple and impressive, but cheap enough for those on a budget!

The Green Teen Cookbook will be ethical, healthy and fun but we also want it to be a collective project; that’s why we are looking for teenagers to get involved and send us their recipes. So if you’re between 13 and 18 (or a little older and you just feel like you have the soul of a teenager!), please send us your favourite recipe. For you, it could be an amazing opportunity to get published. For us, it would be a chance to create a cook book that could change the way young people look at food.

We are already working with several organisations such as Jamie Oliver’s The Fifteen Foundation, Acornhouse Restaurant, Heatham House Café and Kneller Café, as well as various schools, colleges, youth groups in and around London… All we need now is a little help from those among you who like to cook!

You can send your recipes to:  info@aurorametro.com

For more information see the Aurora Metro website:

www.aurorametro.org

Or phone 0203 261 000

Begin the year by feeding your health with pure and natural dishes.  Delight your palate with delicious cooking that’s healthy too.

Can you really enjoy both yummy and healthy meals?

Anna Freedman, a qualified Macrobiotic Cook and Wholefood Coach from Wholefood Harmony, is passionate about inspiring health through delicious, natural cuisine. She believes in whole, unprocessed foods for their powerful benefits to health and mitigation against disease.

Wholefood Harmony offer cooking workshops, coaching sessions and personal cook services  to share the wisdom of natural food diets, rich in whole grains, pulses and local, seasonal vegetables with no fat, sugar or added preservatives.

Anna says that ‘the influence of season and the balance of pure ingredients, dishes and cooking styles are central to the art of our menu design.  I love creating menus made up of dishes and flavours that harmonise together beautifully bestowing pleasure, vitality and wellness on those enjoying our meals.”

Wholefood Harmony are running a ‘Healthy New Year’ Cooking Workshop series beginning 20th January.  Here you can learn to create dishes that delight your appetite and expand your health.  The series will allow you to discover how to integrate pure foods into busy schedules and make a healthy start on enjoying feeding your vitality this year.

The workshops include themed wholefood teaching, hands on cooking and they conclude with enjoyment of a full, three course meal comprising over seven different dishes.  Sessions are £40 each and take place close to Golders Green, North West London.

For more information please visit www.wholefoodharmony.com.  You can contact Anna on 07957313187 or at welcome@wholefoodharmony.com.

Healthy New Year Cooking Workshops

Thursday 20th January – Cooking for Men & Women6.30-930pm; Includes full balanced wholefoods meal that will delight both men and women.

Sunday 23rd January 2011 – New Year Recipes for Vitality10am-1.30pm; Discover ingredients for wellbeing and learn to create recipes to expand health this year. Includes full luncheon.

Wednesday 26th January 2011 – Naturally Fast Cuisine10am-1.30pm; Learn about nourishing yourself and others with delicious, natural dishes that you can prepare quickly. Includes full luncheon.

British Herb Trade Association has joined forces with top chef John Torode to launch a search for the nations Herb Hero, which will begin in January 2011.  Here’s what they had to say about the competition

While much of the food industry has been feeling the pinch during the recession, there is one category which has flourished.  Fresh herbs saw a rise in sales as consumers went ‘back to basics’ and to cooking meals from scratch. However, while one third of us use fresh herbs, that still leaves many who do not.  The British Herb Trade Association has joined forces with top chef John Torode, to launch a nationwide cookery competition in a bid to help change this.

For thousands of years, herbs have been used to add flavour and aroma to a wide range of dishes and have long been known for their health properties.  They can transform the most ordinary meals into something extraordinary.  And now The British Herb Trade Association is launching a search for ‘the nation’s Herb Heroes;’ looking for incredible food from real people, who are transforming everyday meals with fresh herbs. So if you love food, love cooking and want to share your innovative herb recipes with the nation, or simply relish the idea of showing off your culinary expertise, this is your chance to shine.

Leon Mundey of the British Herb Trade Association says: “We’re always on the lookout for new and exciting fresh herb recipes.  Perhaps you have a great family recipe which has been handed down through the generations or just love to come up with new ideas. We believe that when it comes to cooking, Britain really has got talent. So whether you love cooking, love fresh herbs, or think you can give Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson a run for their money, we’d love you to enter the competition.  If you don’t like being the star of the show, then we urge you to log on to fresh-herbs.co.uk and simply vote for your favourites.”

John Torode, chef and restaurateur says: “This is a great competition for people who love cooking and who understand the importance of using fresh herbs to transform ordinary meals into something really special.  The best chefs know that fresh is best and herbs are no exception. Fresh herbs can elevate recipes to something really extraordinary.  The balance of herbs in a recipe can make or break a dish with the correct combination exuding taste, freshness, flavour and aroma.”

To enter, simply create a home-video of yourself cooking up your creation.  You can record your demonstration on a mobile phone, camera or camcorder. Then go to www.fresh-herbs.co.uk/competition to follow instructions to upload it from January 2011.  Videos should be no longer than 4 minutes and all entrants must be UK residents. Entrants will be judged by both the public and the competition organisers, according to their cooking skills, recipe, competence in the kitchen, but also their star quality as a presenter.  Most importantly we want to see enthusiasm for food and great use of fresh herbs.

If you don’t have access to the internet, simply send your herb recipe and a picture of the finished dish, along with your contact details to HERB HEROES, Mustard Communications, 5th Floor, Regal House, 70 London Road, Twickenham, TW1 3QS.

The top three entrants will be invited to the cook off in London as well as being treated to a 2 night stay in London for themselves and a guest, with the overall winner picking up the top prize of £2,500.

There is also a junior category for budding chefs aged 7-16 years.

So if you think you can make a meal of herbs, turn up the heat and get cooking!  The competition opens in January 2011 and all entries must be uploaded by Friday 6^th May 2011, with the cook off taking place on Tuesday 24^th May 2011 in London.

In this blog entry we’ve highlighted kale, including scrummy recipes such as Spicy Kale with Chickpeas and Kale & Roquefort Parcels.  We’ve also included two recipes that mix apples and celeriac (read on to find out more), and we have a special soup section.

Enjoy the blog and we wish you all a very merry, festive time!

The VegBox Recipes Team

PS. This recipe for Mushroom and Winter Veg Pie should not be missed.  It’s a perfect winter warmer that will turn whatever root veg you have into a divine treat!

In Season in December

As well as marking the start of winter, December is of course the festive season, and the way things are going you would be forgiven for thinking that here in the UK, it might be a white one!   So what can you expect in your veg box?  Forced Rhubarb and Purple Sprouting Broccoli is coming in, and plenty is still in season including: Beetroot, Celeriac, Kale, Pototoes & Swede.

Click through for the full list.

Veggie-in-the-Spotlight: Kale

Kale is a great source of Vitamins C, A and B6. It’s also packed with antioxidants, which are vital for a healthy immune system.  It’s in season over the winter, which makes it a useful ingredient in the vegetable box.  It’s strong flavour requires careful cooking, so it’s worth reading how to use it and checking out the recipes, to make sure you enjoy it.

Read more about this ingredient.

Try these recipes:

• Spicy Kale and Chickpeas
• Winter Stir Fry
• Kale Pesto Pasta
• Kale & Roquefort Parcels

Celeriac & Apples!

And what about putting celeriac and apples together? Try these recipes:

• Celeriac and Apple Bake
• Denise Tolson’s Bramley, Cox and Celeriac Dish

Wholesome, Warming Soups

With the temperatures as they are, here in the office we have been bringing in soup to have for lunch, to warm our cockles and help power us through the afternoon.  Here are some of our favourite recipes which we think you will love too:

• Carrot & Celeriac Soup
• Black Nero Cabbage Soup
• Easy Italian Potatoes & Tomato Soup
• Pumpkin Soup with Coconut Milk & Curry

Ooffoo Community

These fabulous articles were uploaded to our sister site, Ooffoo, by community members:

Tips for Wormeries, by Maddy

…BEDDING - Add some additional bedding to your wormery such as shredded paper, scrunched up newspaper and/or a moisture mat as this can help to add some “insulation” and keep your worms a little warmer over the winter…

Read the full article.

The Joy of Mess, by Kerryb

…it isn’t just laziness or the comfort of soft furnishings and central heating that keep me inside.  It is not because I choose to neglect my garden, it is because I choose not to interfere.  This is armchair gardening at its best.  With a cup of tea and biscuit by my side, I sit back on my comfortable settee and watch, reaping the rewards of my negligence…

Read the full article

Marketplace Goodies

Scented Drawer Sachets

Fair trade. Perfect for keeping drawers smelling sweet.

£10.50

Flower Embroidered Jacket

Keep the cold out this winter.

£160.00

Long Socks

Warm and cosy socks knitted from recycled yarn.

£22.00

Sustainable Gift Wrap

Sustainable wrapping kit using recycled material.

£10.00

Garden Sign

An amusing sign that makes the perfect gift for a green fingered loved one.

£4.99

Gardening Book

Organise your gardening year and make the most of your produce.

£19.50

Get Recipe

They’re nearly all gone for the year now. If you’re growing them and you’ve got some still on the vine but they’re still very green, try cutting off the vine and hanging it up indoors somewhere, or putting them in a paper bag with a ripe banana!

Once they’re ripe, make the most of them with our recipes for Autumn Pancakes with Blue Cheese Sauce, Tomato and Roast Garlic Soup, or Homemade Tomato Sauce (which you could freeze to use later in the year when the tomatoes are gone).

Tomatoes Baked with Parmesan, Parsley & Garlic

This toasty tomato recipe from the Vista Veg cooperative might help use up the final few tomatoes – perhaps nestled into a basic risotto or on fresh, warm buttered bread? Mmm…

We’ve only really got one month left to enjoy British grown peppers and chillies, so best make the most of them. As well as trying our new and special feature recipe, don’t miss other VegBox favourites like Andrew Williams’ Spicy Vegetable Lasagne with Peppers, or our Baked Autumn Omelette which you can cram with as many seasonal veggies as you like!

Honest to Goodness’ Cinnamon Roasted Seasonal Vegetables

cinnamon roasted veg

We love how simple this is, and we love the cinnamon variation on roasting whatever’s in season. Thanks to our friends at “Honest to Goodness” for the recipe!

Get Recipe

Read more about this ingredient.

Oh-So-Simple Jerusalem Artichokes and Sauteed Onions

sauteed with onions

This truly oh-so-simple recipe was provided by Polly B from Holymoor. How about serving this dish with rice for a substantial meal, or with hunks of bread at lunch time?

Get Recipe

in season in october

October brings with it beautiful Autumn colours, the World Conker Championship (second Sunday), Apple Day (21st October), the end of British Summer Time (31st October), and Hallowe’en (also 31st October – don’t miss our top Eco-Hallowe’en Tips from last year, and our list of seasonal “paranormal party foods“).

The Saxons called the month Wyn Monath because it was the season of wine making, and it’s the central month for ripe English hot-house grapes. October 1st used to be the start of “English Pudding Season” (although this refers to savoury “puddings” filled with steak, leeks and mushrooms, rather than the kinds of puddings we personally prefer, like Treacle, for instance!).

As for fruit and veggies – don’t miss the last of the courgettes, figs, runner beans or Spring onions. And crack out the recipes for Brussels (they’re back!), celeriac and Jerusalem (f)artichokes (!) – all back in season from now.

Read on for the full list…