A Feast of Summer Vegetables

Ask someone to cook, or even eat, a fully vegetarian meal and many people would look back with a mixture of horror and disbelief.  Meat so often is the focus of a dish, with veg just as a supporting act, that it’s hard to conceive of a tasty and satisfying meal without it.  Our ‘Cooking with Summer Veg’ workshop in Templehall last Saturday aimed to shake this worldview and prove that veg can be the star of the show.

In July and August we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to vegetables, so there’s no better time to give this a go (although winter veg can be just as exciting).  13 people attended our workshop and discovered the delights of beet (not beef) bouguignon, carrot falafels and cabbage tacos.  Cooking with veg needs a bit of imagination but the results are great fun.  You can download the recipes for the dishes we cooked below:

Beet Bourguignon

Cabbage Tacos with summer vegetable filling

Carrot and coriander falafels

There are many reasons why we ran this workshop to inspire and encourage folk to try to cook with seasonal veg more.  Here are some of them:

• It’s healthy – you can get your 5-a-day in one meal!
• It’s cheap – in season veg is plentiful and the laws of supply and demand mean low prices
• It’s easy to find local produce if you cook with seasonal ingredients – that’s fewer food miles, and fresher food.
• It’s better for the planet – producing meat demands more resources and creates more pollution than vegetables.

Here’s a picture of the delicious looking beet bourguignon on the hob.  It smelled delicious too!

Is Organic Food Worth the Extra Cost?

A while back I made a decision to try organic food and see if there was any difference compared with standard food in the supermarket. Some foods I felt were better and some just tasted the same. But I didn’t just go organic because of the taste. The more I thought about the possible chemicals that food may be exposed to before reaching my dinner plate started to worry me. If there was any way I could reduce this that surely felt like a good thing.

The main foods/liquids I noticed differences in were:

Milk (Price – Organic 4L £1.84 Standard £1.39)*

The organic one stays fresher for longer. Living on my own I often found myself pouring a lot of milk down the sink as it didn’t seem to stay fresh past a couple of days. With the organic milk I’ve had it sometimes a few days past the used by date and it is still fresh with no odour.

Bacon/Gammon (Price – Organic 8 slices £4.49, Standard £1.99)*

The organic products don’t produce that nasty white substance on the top when cooked.

Chicken (Price – Organic 2 chicken breasts £4.06, Standard £2.99)*

There is a dramatic difference in the amount of water loss from chicken when cooking. The non-organic chicken loses so much water and tends to decrease a lot in size by the time it gets to the plate. Organic or chicken from the farmers market doesn’t lose water because there’s probably none to lose and is the same size from beginning to end of cooking.

Meat e.g. burgers, sausages (Price – Organic burgers 4 pack £3.99, Standard £3.50)*

The main difference here is taste. When I started to eat organic meat and meat from the farmers’ market I couldn’t go back to meat from the supermarket as it was tasteless in comparison.

*prices are compared from one supermarket.

I now regularly visit organic shops, farmers’ markets and farm shops for my food and hardly ever go to the supermarket. Good places I have found around the Fife area are Pillars of Hercules in Falkland, Blacketyside Farm Shop in Leven, The Farmers’ Market which travels around between Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline, Cupar and St Andrews on Saturdays.

I have also learned to cook! Buying these kinds of foods requires thought into what to do with them instead of reading the instructions and putting them in the oven. Even though I am on a pretty tight budget I manage to eat well and the food lasts for ages. If I buy in bulk at the farmers’ market I freeze most of it and it keeps me going for weeks.

For me its a positive change I have made in my diet and lifestyle and I’m feeling great and full of energy. My advice is Eat Healthy, Be Active and Stay Positive!

Whether the extra cost is worth it is up to you I personally think that eating foods with less chemicals in is worth a bit of extra cash even for piece of mind.

The best way to eat real food is to grow your own. Since I don’t have a garden I took some photos of my brother’s garden.