Category Archives: health

Home-made mayonnaise and Brexit

Posted on June 28, 2016 | 3 comments

I arrive the day before the EU referendum vote. London is hot and sticky, under a heavy grey cloud. Later, there is lightning and biblical rains.

My 93-year-old mother and I agree not to talk about Brexit. It would be too painful and divisive. She believes the Daily Mail. I think it is the politics of hate.

So, I watch her making mayonnaise, Zimmer-framed yet resolute. I admire her spirit.

My mother Fay has been making home-made mayonnaise since the 1950s.

She would not dream of having shop-bought mayonnaise in her home. Ever.

Now she is old, my mother uses a food processor but says nothing equals mayonnaise made by hand using a fork as a whisk.

My sister Gee (see pics of her 1974 mayonnaise recipe below) eschews a food processor because it makes the mayonnaise too dense, and uses an electric mixer with the balloon whisk attachment instead. She also (I love this refinement!) whisks in the olive oil by hand, with a fork, at the very end of the process.

Gee adds a teaspoon of warm water to lighten the mixture when she is feeling French.

Fay’s home-made mayonnaise

The risk factor is curdling: when the oil and egg separate. So, make sure the eggs are at room temperature. Emulsify the egg yolks with mustard, then add the oil very, very, very, slowly, drop-by-drop.

Then – once the terrifying risk of curdling has passed – pour oil in a thin stream, whisking all the time. You can speed up the streaming of the oil. Add lemon juice or a dribbles of vinegar to thin.

If it curdles, do not despair but start again with one egg yolk and add the curdled mixture, again – s l o o o o w l y.

My mum uses 1/2 pint of oil, which equals 10 fluid ounces, of which 7 or 8 fluid ounces is sunflower oil, and the remaining 3 or 2 fluid ounces is olive oil. My sister Gee (who makes mayonnaise without such exact measuring) says in other words: use mostly sunflower oil.

I use organic oil because organic certification guarantees it has been cold-pressed by mechanical (not chemical) to ensure = maximum nutrients and top taste.

Ingredients

2 egg yolks
Two egg yolks is the minimum whether for 1/2 pint or 1 pint of oil. Keep the egg whites in the fridge (or freeze them) for future meringues or cocktails.

1/2 pint of oil of which most is sunflower oil, with top-up of olive oil

1 heaped teaspoon dry mustard powder (my mother thinks ready-made mustard is sacrilegious but Gee, free-thinker that she is, says this makes the mayonnaise bitter and swears instead by Dijon mustard.).

2-3 or more garlic cloves cut-up

Using a food processor, electric balloon whisk or a fork, start by combining the egg yolks and mustard. Add garlic. Add oil SLOW-BY-SLOW until the mixture emulsifies. Then, once there is no risk of egg and oil separating, gently add the oil in a thin stream – whisking all the time!

Juice of half – one lemon, as little salt as possible to taste and a light shake of cayenne pepper. (In another departure from the status-quo, Gee adds seasoning – salt (1/2 teaspoon to 1/2 pint of oil) and paprika which is less spicy than cayenne – at the very start because otherwise, she says, the salt does not mix in properly).

I cannot end this post without adding, for the record:

I am European, continental, global. We are one family.

If money and weapons can move freely around the globe, why not people? Especially people displaced by war.

I am not saying the EU is perfect (obvs). It needs reform. But, hey, the UK has its own unelected bureaucrats and neo-liberal project. Surely any reform starts (like charity) at home?

The Brexit campaign was led by vile hate-filled propaganda which has legitimised hate, unleashing a rise in racist crimes.

Many who voted to leave are angry, and this anger (zero hours contracts, underfunded public services and unaffordable housing) is correct. But to conclude the problem is caused by the EU and immigration is a severe misdiagnosis resulting in the wrong medicine, which will only make conditions deteriorate.

Leave is the operative word. I feel the grown-ups have taken leave of their senses. I feel left in the hands of an irresponsible parent consumed by their own crazy agenda.

I am returning to the comfort of mayonnaise.

Hand written mayonnaise recipe

3 Comments

Posted in food, health, organic, rant, recipe, vegetarian

Tagged Brexit, hand made, home made, mayonnaise, recipe

Sore throat? Use the whole lemon!

Posted on May 30, 2016 | 8 comments

I had a sore throat. My mother said:

“Drink hot lemon. Use the whole lemon.”

Yeah, yeah, I know about lemons. Indeed, lemon water – a squeeze o’ lemon in water plus the peel – is my daily, refreshing, health-giving drink.

But, wait….

The whole lemon? A revelation.

“In the days before antibiotics, that is what we used,” says my mother, now aged 93. “My grandfather used to gargle every morning with warm salted water to prevent infections.”

Lemons deliver an impressive 187% of a person’s daily value of Vitamin C, as well as a host of other disease-fighting nutrients, according to Dr Mercola.

So I squeeze the juice of a whole lemon in a mug of boiling hot water and add a dessertspoon of honey.

Don’t stint on the honey. It makes it delightful to drink – and honey adds health-giving properties.

I cannot mention honey without comment: How outrageous that pesticides used by chemical agriculture are killing our beautiful bees.

My throat felt much better. So I made myself another hot drink with the juice of a whole lemon. And my sore throat was cured.

I also reach for the raw ginger, and raw garlic, when under-the-weather. What are your favourite natural remedies?

8 Comments

Posted in food, health, recipe idea, Uncategorized, vegetarian

Tagged does it work?, honey, lemons

Junior doctors strike and Cullen skink

Posted on April 30, 2016 | 2 comments

My mum, aged 93, (her pic, left) made me the traditional Scottish dish, Cullen skink.

She bought the smoked haddock at Whole Foods Market.

“Only use undyed haddock” she commands.

Recipe for Cullen skink

Here is the recipe my mother uses:

Put undyed smoked haddock (500g) in cold water (300 mls) water, bring to boil and simmer for 8-10 mins until fish is cooked. Remove fish with slotted spoon, and set aside.

Peel and chop 2 large onions and 2 large potatoes (instead of potatoes use Jerusalem artichokes). Add pepper for seasoning (no salt as the smoked fish is salty). Cook the vegetables in the haddock’s cooking water for glorious fish taste; if there is not enough haddock water to cover the potatoes, add some more water to cover them. Cook until potatoes are soft and tender – about 15/20 mins.

While veg are cooking, skin the fish, flake into chunks removing any bones, and set aside.

Take the cooked vegetables off heat, roughly mash contents, add (450 ml) whole milk and (2g) unsalted butter. Bring to boil, turn down to simmer and gently add fish.

Gently, reheat. Serve with chopped chives and if desired, creme fraiche.

(Or drink it cold from a jar as I did happily on my return train to Bristol).

The next day, I received a call that my Cullen skink-maker. My mum had fallen and hurt her head. Luckily she had been able to press her Community Alarm and, within five minutes of being alerted, an ambulance team had arrived and had taken her to a large London teaching hospital.

And this the day of the Junior Doctors’ strike! It had not compromised her care. We could carry on supporting the strike with impunity: it is against a new contract that will be, “Bad for patients, bad for doctors and bad for the NHS,” according to the British Medical Association, reports the New Economic Foundation.

After a scan, my mother was kept in for monitoring, and a battery of tests to ascertain why she keeps losing her balance.

God bless the National Health Service (NHS).

My late dad was one of its first GPs – see Dr John Winkler’s obituary in the Guardian.

The NHS is free health care for all – the embodiment of the world I want to live in.

God bless the NHS.

2 Comments

Posted in carnivore, eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe

Tagged care of patients, junior doctors strike, nhs, support

Animal welfare: fox in charge of henhouse

Posted on March 31, 2016 | 1 comment

Is there anyone – apart from a fox – who thinks this is a good idea?

From 27 April 2016, the poultry industry itself will be in charge of writing and upholding its own welfare codes, says the Metro.

And that is just the start.

“Conservative ministers are planning to repeal an array of official guidance on animal welfare standards,” says the Guardian, whose Freedom of Information request helped reveal the government’s plan to deregulate animal welfare.

Deregulation is a terrible backward step for a better world.

Campaigners for animal welfare and safe food systems have fought long and hard for regulations, and the battle is by no means over.

Regulations need to be strengthened further – not weakened, in this blatant move to please Big Farma. (Or perhaps it is the current government showing how it can get rid of regulations quite easily without having to leave Europe).

Conservative types (whether anti-Europe or pro-Europe) like to portray legislation as tedious red tape that stifles the entrepreneurial spirit of business.

Poppycock!

We need legislation and regulations because (sadly) humans with power and vested interests cannot be trusted.

The Metro poll asks its readers to vote yes or no to:

“Should the meat industry regulate itself?”

What do you think?

PS So far, 97% voted “No, the system could be abused”.

PPS I stole my title from the New Economic Foundation blog on poultry deregulation by Stephen Devlin. Read his excellent co-written piece on so-called “better regulation”, in whose name “a large and unaccountable bureaucracy has been created to…mak(e) it more difficult for government departments to pass laws which impose costs on businesses.”

PPPS Sign the Change.org petition to stop the repeal of animal welfare codes.

Stop press

Campaigning works! It looks as if this controversial deregulation will not go ahead. According to the BBC:

“The government has abandoned a controversial plan to repeal animal welfare codes.
The plan would have put standards into the hands of the livestock industry.”

However, the “price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

So, remain vigilant.

1 Comment

Posted in carnivore, food, health, producers, rant

Tagged animal welfare, anti government, bureaucracy, code, deregulation, NEF, New Economics Foundation, regulations, standards

Simple oat cake recipe

Posted on February 28, 2016 | 5 comments

When I am out-and-about, and get hungry, I need healthy food, such as slow-release carbs for sustaining energy. Oats are the nutritional answer. My oatcake recipe comes from Jane Mannings of World Jungle.

Award-winning social enterprise, World Jungle brings people together creating healthier communities.

Based in Gloucestershire, World Jungle also holds regular dance classes, and organises festivals and events including African drumming and dance (see pic) . Dance is a great way to bring people together.

I like this recipe because it only uses two ingredients and there is no fancy pastry-cutting involved.

Simple oatcake recipe

200g fine oatmeal – Jane used Good Food organic oatmeal.
50g butter.

Heat the oven to hot – Gas 7 \ 425° \ 220°C

Squish the oatmeal and butter together with a fork adding a little water to bind into a dough. Roll pastry dough (on a floured board ) as thin as you can without it breaking. Lift the flattened shape, draped over rolling pin, place on a greased baking tray, and bake for 15 minutes. Eat warm, or store in an airtight container for when you are out-and-about.

I might experiment by replacing oatmeal with buckwheat flour, butter with olive oil, and adding salt, or caraway seeds.

What ingredients would you use in your oatcakes?

5 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe, vegetarian

Easy fruit smoothie

Posted on September 26, 2015 | 2 comments

Ta da.

Start the day with a health-boosting refreshing fresh fruit drink.

You need an electric hand-blender to do the whizzing. I use the cheapest, least fancy (about £20) – my most valuable and versatile piece of kitchen technology.

Banana is the base – add fruit such as apple/pear/orange/berries.

Use the whole apple/pear: whizz it up, pips, peel and all. Don’t even peel the apple/pear (especially if organic).

Yes, take stones out of mango/peach/plum/apricot. (Blender blade can’t cope).
Yes, peel the orange.

But no need to de-pith orange. Whizz it up with pith, and pips.

I learned this time-saving tip at a raw food workshop by Kira G Goldy. Kira is also a healer.

She encouraged me to write creatively: “You have all these voices inside that want to be heard.”

As a journalist, a challenge. But her words rung true. I focused on writing and two things have developed from my new intention.

I give courses to facilitate creative writing (and at the same time teach myself as it turns out).

And I have written a verbatim play based on interviews of people facing eviction in the hyper-regeneration of Brixton, and Lambeth council estates.

Verbatim is like journalism because it is entirely made of people’s quotes, like a documentary. The subject – how profit-driven thinking wrecks human lives – is a subject close to my campaigning heart.

The play is a collaboration with Changing Face Collective and director Lucy Curtis.

Where Will We Live? premieres at Southwark Playhouse on 25 – 28 November 2015.

I will need to keep my strength up. Time to make an easy smoothie!

Smoothie recipe for 1 – 2

Use organic fruit if possible. Why organic?

1 apple (cut-up with pips and peel )
1 orange (cut-up with pith and pips)
1 banana (peeled and sliced)
Half a glass of water/milk (dairy/plant) to thin
A dollop of peanut butter and/or coconut oil and/or yogurt for protein and good fats. Or a handful of cashew nuts soaked overnight in water
Optional: ground cinnamon/raw ginger
Blend with a hand-blender in a jug, pour and enjoy.

Ta da!

2 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe idea, sustainable, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged blender, fruit, gentrification, juicing, peel or not peel, playwright, raw, smoothie

Making chicken soup from scratch

Posted on July 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

The secret of chicken soup is to use raw chicken.

By all means, use a cooked chicken carcass to make stock but if you want to make healing chicken soup, start from scratch with raw chicken.

I used two legs from Abel and Cole high-welfare chickens.

Add a cut-up onion and carrots. Cover with water. If you use loads of water, it will dilute the soup. But just covering the chicken and veg with water will create the right concentrated amount.

Bring to the boil and simmer for about one and a half hours to two hours until the chicken is tender and falls away from the bone.

The next secret – imparted by my mother – is not to let the precious liquid boil away. So keep a lid on the pan. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Strain to drink the healing soup – this article explains why chicken soup has healing properties.

The beautifully-tender chicken and vegetables will make another meal.

It is simple to make, and will bring strength.

My grandmother’s beetroot soup

Posted on June 29, 2015 | 14 comments

Cup of purple coloured soup pictured from above against big pink flowers

Image: Michael Caplan

I ring my mother. She is 92.

“Do you use beef stock to make beetroot soup?” I ask.

“No,” Fay says, “we never used beef stock. This is how we did it,” said my mother. “This is my mother’s recipe.”

Sarah’s beetroot soup

Slice the beetroots.

Cover with water. Simmer for about half an hour until tender.

Drain the sliced beetroot and keep the beetroot stock.

(You don’t use the sliced beetroot for the soup. My mum says: use them in a salad with sour cream with sliced onions).

Crack and Beat 2 whole eggs with the juice of one lemon.

Add eggs carefully – or they will curdle – to some of the warmed beetroot stock.

Once the beaten eggs are incorporated into this small amount, tip it into the main soup.

Reheat carefully – very carefully – so the eggs don’t curdle.

Add sour cream if desired.

Thanks, mum.

The ingredients were organic (what my grandparents called “food“) for improved quality and taste.

The purple soup enabled nourishment to slip-in unsuspected via beetroot-sweet, lemony lightness.

My grandmother Sarah died when I was 16. She was warm, earthy and wise, with fierce opinions I did not always agree with. Born in 1899 in London, her parents were migrants from anti-semitic Tsarist Belarus and Lithuania. I think of her so much in my heart.

My mother says the older she gets, the more she thinks of her grandmother, Jesse, (Sarah’s mother). Jesse died when my mother was ten years old. My mother says: “I talk to her every day. I call to her by her Yiddish name, Yeshki. She used to read the Yiddish translation of Shakespeare’s plays.”

(I only learned that bit yesterday when reading out this blog to my mum – see pic above).

My mother repeats stories endlessly so we remember them. My mother’s recollection of her grandmother are imprinted on my DNA since childhood so I have absorbed Jess’s “live each day as if it were your last” philosophy as if it were my own.

My mum again: “Jesse used to say: ‘I am not frightened of death.’ She would point to the window and say: ‘It’s as if I’m passing to the other side of that net curtain.'”

So, eat beetroot soup, and enjoy this precious life!

Try organic food… or as your grandparents called it, food ...

14 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe idea, vegetarian

Tagged beetroot, egg, family, healthy, lemon, migrant, recipe, Shakespeare, Yiddish

Gut gastronomy beef broth

Posted on May 2, 2015 | 4 comments

Beef broth soothes the digestion and produces easy-to-absorb minerals including calcium. Made with bones, it is a low-cost way of sustaining your health. Bones cost a few pounds.

(Apologies to vegetarians and vegans and please let us know your best tonics.)

“A good broth will resurrect the dead,”

– South American proverb.

Read more about broth’s healing powers at the Weston Price Foundation and the way broth also delivers easy-to-absorb broken-down material from cartilage and tendons that might help arthritis and joint pain.

I bought the beef rib bones from Sheepdrove Organic Farm for £2.50 per kg.

Why organic? Because I want to eat meat from an animal which has not been given routine antibiotics, which has chewed fresh grass in the fields as nature intended (not convenience-food grain that gives the beast a belly-ache), and can follow its natural animal behaviour.

I used a recipe from Gut Gastronomy by nutritional therapist Vicky Edgson and Grayshott spa chef Adam Palmer based on the spa’s health regime. Published by Jacqui Small, this fine book with beautiful images by Lisa Linder is filled with highly nutritious recipes to help increase digestive health, and repair and nourish the body.

The Gut Gastronomy recipe uses beef marrow bones.

Here is the recipe (for four) slightly adapted.

Ingredients

3 kg (6lb 10 oz) beef marrow bones – ask the butcher to chop them into manageable chunks, about 3-5 cms (1-2 inches) pieces

4 carrots, 3 large onions, 4 celery sticks (optional), roughly chopped

5 litres (8 3/4 pints/20 cups) of cold water
(I used my biggest pan, about 5 pints, and this made a lovely, concentrated broth)

2 bay leaves, 10 whole peppercorns

If you have some, add half bunch of thyme.

I also added dried chilli for extra hotness.

Method
Roast the cut bones in a large roasting dish for 30 – 40 minutes at Gas Mark 7.

Drain 2 teaspoons of the fat from the bones into a large saucepan and sauté the veg.

(There was no fat from my rib bones so I omitted this stage and added the carrots and onions at the next stage, without frying them.)

Add the bay leaves, peppercorns (and dried chilli), sprigs of thyme and roasted bones and cover with 5 litres (8 3/4 pints/ 20 cups) of cold water. Skim any fat as you bring it to a simmer. Gently cook for 5 – 6 hours.

Broth is served clear, strained of meat and vegetables. Strain to make consommé, and cool before freezing. I shredded the plentiful meat from the bones and made several servings of delicious broth with meat (see top pic).

I swear I cured my poor inflamed gums thanks to this healing soup.

Fellow blogger, Annie Levy at Kitchen Counter Culture, suggested I used some of the broth for borscht, which I did, using my grandmother’s recipe.

And that is for the next blog post.

Update (January 2016): This recipe cured another bout of gum infection after two days of drinking 5 pints of the above broth (this time made with non-organic bones). It worked its magic.

4 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, health, organic, recipe

Tagged beef broth, benefits, budget, digestion, Grayshott spa, healing, health, Jacqi Small, Sheepdrove organic farm

Bristol Metrobus protest protecting trees and soil

Posted on February 15, 2015 | 15 comments

Instead of running away to join the circus, I would join a protest camp: outdoor places of learning and purpose, infused with community spirit and love of the land, they give me hope.

I visited the Rising Up camp on Friday 13 February 2015.

The camp is protecting land and trees from a destructive and unnecessary road-and-bridge building scheme to create a bus route (Bristol needs more buses but not new roads).

The soil at stake is part of the Blue Finger with prime agricultural soil. It is irreplaceable. Soil takes centuries to form yet can be lost in no time.

Look at the timing: the destruction of these Bristol soils takes place in the year the United Nations has launched the International Year of Soils 2015 to alert the world to the destruction of a resource on which we depend for over 95% of our food.

Look at the timing: The University of Sheffield has found UK’s soils are so degraded, there may only be enough for 100 more harvests, it warned last autumn.

Look at the timing: the destruction of Bristol’s soils takes place in the year that Bristol is European Green Capital 2015.

In other words, one part of the system is aware of the importance of protecting our planet, while the other part of the system is intent on destroying it.

It is not only the trees and land of the allotments at Stapleton allotments and Feed Bristol that will suffer.

Here is the Metrobust 2015 calendar of city-wide destruction:

The Metrobus scheme received final planning approval on the 27 August 2014 from Bristol City Council planning committee, despite two years of protest.

The following are worth reading:

The complaint from Alliance to Rethink Metrobus about this meeting records a shocking lack of even-handedness by its road-friendly chair, Councillor Peter Abraham, aided by an uninformed council officer.
An intelligent and eloquent cross-party open letter sent early last week, including from Labour and Conservative MPs and several Green councillors, urging Bristol’s first Independent mayor, George Ferguson, to look at alternatives stating: “we have been frustrated by our inability to get answers from you and from your officers”.
An excellent letter from a Stapleton allotment holder ” (added just after publishing post) saying: “West of England Partnership, who are behind Metrobus, are an unelected, unaccountable consortium of big businesses and vested interests.”

On Thursday 12 February 2015, Bristol City Council went to the High Court to evict the protesters and, surprise surprise, with the aid of top lawyers, Burges Salmon, (and supporters of Bristol Green Capital) won a court order. Above and below is a copy of the council’s possession order.

A man (who gave me permission to take his photo but would not say where he was from) handed over the order on Friday 13 December 2015.

The tree top protestors hope to halt the felling of these irreplaceable trees.

The trees are protected – read the notice!

At the edge of the protest camp, bailiffs set up flood lights last week which are kept on ALL NIGHT.

Which side of this steel fence would you rather be on?

Back in the protest camp, a beautiful village has sprung up including with a compost loo (above).

The field kitchen under canvas cooks healthy meals.

Leanna wields a packet of nutrition-laden red lentils.

Leanna shows me a cosmetically-imperfect but perfectly-healthy parsnip – the kind of produce that would be rejected by a supermarket.

Leanna who is studying nutrition tells me how she and Jack made the communal stew: Chopped onions and chilli coated in coconut oil and fried with spices to hand including turmeric and coriander spices, with water added to stew to cook the lentils and rice (providing all 8 essential amino acids) and parsnips and carrots (once muddy now scrubbed and cut), with fresh tomatoes and cauliflower and cabbage and fresh garlic added at the end.

Stew is served on a log table.

The Rising Up notice (above) says, this situation:

“reveals the crisis of our systems and our leadership. If our Mayor cannot call for the design to be altered, to stop the destruction (and he says he cannot) who has the power to bring the beast to heel?

Perhaps it is only us“.

This Rising up camp shows people of spirit and principle proclaim a stand against the might of a mindless system that turns a blind eye to its own destructiveness.

The brave protestors await the bailiffs to descend at any moment to remove them from the land and trees they are trying to protect.

Please sign this petition to show your support

– currently only 1,500 signatures away from 5,000!