Alternatives to Orange Juice

Posted on August 2, 2011 by

In our last post Organic Fruit – Orange Juice and Diabetes I promised to give you some recipes for alternative drinks. I should really make this part of a series called ‘things your granny knew’ as a lot of my recipes come straight from one or other of my Nanas. These were country women who knew how to feed and look after their children on a tight budget. It should also be noted that both of them had been exposed to the work of Adelle Davis in the 1930s (I know, I’m sooo old!) so they were keen to provide their charges with good vitamin rich food.

Later I made these drinks for my family & numerous other children over the years and they were very popular. Orange and Lemon Barely Water is first on the list as it was always my favourite.

Dilute it by at least 50% in the glass and add ice.

Nana’s Orange & Lemon Barley Water

Nothing like the stuff you buy in the shops from that well known brand. This is refreshing and nutritious. Even so, it’s not for every day, but perfect for hot summer days and holidays. It brings back memories of tents in the garden, long summer days and grown ups having something in their drink that wasn’t in mine! recipes icon wink

This is a messy job. Clean hands, clean surfaces and an apron are all important. (See it even gives you an excuse to buy a pretty apron and play Domestic Goddess!)

The big old fashioned mixing bowls are great for this job. You can use either a glass or wooden lemon squeezer. Don’t use metal stuff for fruit as it can make it taste funny.

BTW – child labour is perfect for squeezing oranges & lemons. Older children can also be taught to remove the rind.

We’re using elegant tea cups here as a measure. Nana’s was good china but had a broken handle. You could use a mug, I suppose, but a cup is better. Nana didn’t like scales – too much washing up!

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup of organic pot barley
  • 10 cups of water
  • 2 organic, unwaxed lemons
  • 6 organic unwaxed oranges
  • A small amount of organic honey to taste

Method

  1. Simmer the barley in the water for about an hour.
  2. While it simmers cut the fruit into halves and juice it. This is easily done with an old fashioned lemon squeezer. Give each one a roll on a wooden board first to loosen the juice & start to break it down. Don’t follow any fancy tips about microwaving it first to get more juice. You’ll destroy all that lovely vitamin C!
  3. Peel the rinds from the fruit. You can use a potato peeler but make sure you just get the rind not the white.
  4. Add the rinds to the simmering water
  5. Leave to cool
  6. Strain the cooled water into a large bowl. Throw away the barley (ouch – if you have any good ideas what to do with it leave a comment! I put out for the birds. Then throw it away!)
  7. Add the fruit juice
  8. Taste and add a little (as little as you can) honey
  9. Pour it in a covered jug
  10. Keep it in the fridge

Serving Suggestions

A tall cold glass, ice & a slice of lemon.

recipes alternativestoorangejuice If serving it in a glass jug you could add slices of fruit or a sprig of fresh tarragon.

Also tastes great from tin mugs if glamping! Decant into screw top bottle and take it on picnics with you but don’t keep it for more than a day without a fridge.

Oh, and if it’s for a special garden party,  those grown ups might try it with a dash of gin or vodka (personally I’d add it to a little Ricard!) but then grown-ups are very naughty like that recipes icon wink

[Photo Credit CC Brandon C Warren]

 

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Organic Fruit – Orange Juice and Diabetes

Posted on July 31, 2011 by

Organic boxes may contain organic vegetable, organic fruit or both. But what’s the point of having a couple of organic oranges delivered when you can buy a carton of organic orange juice at the shops containing the juice of a dozen or so organic fruit?

organicboxes organic fruit Organic Fruit in box from Abel and Cole 300x178

Organic Fruit

Well, we discovered that drinking fruit juice is not at all the same as eating whole fruit, and that so called fresh ‘not from concentrate’ fruit juice is not what it seems.

First, the worst thing about industrial ‘fresh’ Orange Juice:

Flavour Packs : The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice

That’s right, they are adding back flavour and smell to stored orange juice and they don’t even have to mention anything about it on the label. This is because the things they add back are ‘derived’ from natural oranges. This can’t be right, can it? And don’t even get me started on what they do to apple juice to stop it turning brown.

But it gets worse. Just read what that innocent looking orange juice can do to your health:

And now, the health implications of even the best type of bought orange juice:

In April 2008 a study in the journal Diabetes Care, looked at the diets of 70,000 women as part of the ongoing Nurse’s Health Study, and found that unlike daily consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, which was associated with an 18 per cent reduction in the risk of diabetes, consumption of fruit juice even in small daily amounts, was associated with an overall 18 per cent increased risk of the disease.

Juice, unlike the whole fruit, contains all the sugars but less of the cofactors found in the whole fruit that help the body metabolise them. This association was strong and independent of other health factors and was higher for those who had a daily glass of orange juice (which raises the risk of diabetes by 24 per cent) than those who had a daily glass of cola or other sweetened soft drink (which raised it by between 6 and 15 per cent).

This was the first study of its kind and such findings are challenging to much that we think we know. For instance orange juice is almost universally hailed as a healthy drink because of its useful levels of antioxidants, but few realise that it contains the same amount of sugar as a glass of cola. If your diet is already high in sugar – like most of those in the Western world, orange juice may simply add to that burden without conferring any real benefit.

…

So is organic orange juice a better option? The answer is yes – and no. Growing organic oranges does not involve the use of pesticides and fertilisers and therefore it may have a lower carbon footprint and lower impact on the environment. However if it comes in a carton or bottle it will have gone through the same industrial process as non-organic juice and is therefore still less nutritious than eating an actual orange or squeezing juice from an organic orange for yourself.

Organic standards of course do not legislate for how the workers are treated. Your organic fruit juice may well still have been picked by an exploited child who should have been in school.

If you absolutely need orange juice, then squeezing it fresh at home from an organic fruit may be your healthiest and most environmentally friendly option.

– Behind the Label: orange juice

So we should all be buying those expensive juicers and making our own OJ then? Well no, not really. Although freshly squeezed juice is lovely, and better than the processed stuff, juice really isn’t all that good for you in many ways. Juicing allows you to consume far more than you ever would if you were eating whole fruit. When was the last time you sat down & ate 5 or 6 oranges at a sitting? That’s an awful lot of fructose (fruit sugar) for the body to cope with, before we even think about what the acid might be doing to your teeth.

Ironically you might be better with old fashioned home-made lemonade than ‘healthy’ juice. I’ll post my recipe for my Nana’s Home-made Still Lemonade later and I might also include her Lemon Barley Water as a bonus.

Ideally, though, eat your organic fruit as part of a meal and drink water if you want a cold drink. Keep it in a covered jug in the fridge, flavour it with a slice of lemon or lime and a sprig of mint. Serve it in pretty glass with ice and it will feel like a treat.

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Are sprouts safe?

Posted on June 30, 2011 by

Home grown sprouts v the ones in organic veg boxes

After all the hoohaa of the last few weeks dies down some of us are left wondering if our home grown sprouts are really safe to eat. It always seemed slightly dodgy to me to grow something in conditions that so closely mimic a petri dish and not risk growing other less friendly things in there too.

Update from the UK Food Standards Agency:

Since I wrote this post there has been an update from the FSA  (July 1st 2011)

Sprouted seeds should only be eaten if they have been cooked thoroughly until steaming hot throughout; they should not be eaten raw.

It  goes on to say:

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have potentially linked the outbreaks in France and Germany to fenugreek seeds.

and goes on to say:

The Food Standards Agency is continuing to work with the Health Protection Agency to investigate possible links between a UK company and the outbreak in France. Samples of the implicated seeds (fenugreek, rocket, and mustard) from the company are being tested for E. coli O104:H4. Once the full set of test results are returned, the Agency will make these available.

They also say:

The EFSA and ECDC summary concludes that ‘because fenugreek seeds are often sold as mixes of seeds and that during re-packaging cross-contamination cannot be excluded pending outcome of the epidemiological investigation under way, consumers should be advised to ensure that all types of sprouts are thoroughly cooked before consumption’. (my emphasis)

 

Sprouts are not just tasty they are really good for you. There is lots of evidence that eating sprouts has health benefits so cooking them or even not eating them are not options I want to consider. But it is possible I might have to cook them from now on.

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Are sprouts safe?

One of the things I’ve discovered is that commercial sprout growers sterilise their seeds first before they start and  then keep them in totally sterile environments. I’ve got to confess I’ve never done that. Worse still I’ve sprouted all sorts of things (like dried lentils) that were never intended to be sprouted. I tended to think that the packets of sprouting seeds were a bit of a con. Now I know they are more expensive because they are treated to avoid contamination. Ooops!

It seems that problems can arise when:

  • They are handled by anyone with uncertain hygiene
  • The water they are rinsed in is anything less than drinking quality
  • Un-germinated seeds or seed cases are not removed and start to decay
  • Sprouts are allowed to form clumps making it harder to remove debris
  • The environment they are grown in is open to insect or bird contamination.

Growing sprouts at home

Now, I don’t know about you, but, clean as our kitchen is, it certainly is not a ‘sterile environment’. I am careful about washing my hands before handling food.

I always try to rinse sprouts 3 or 4 times a day but I have to admit to occasionally forgetting. Also I’m not sure I always get them as dry as they should really be after rinsing. It can be hard too to spread them out properly  after they’ve started to sprout.

What with that and my slap dash attitude to what I was sprouting I’m starting to think we’ve been quite lucky!

Commercially grown sprouts

On the Riverford web site they say:

Brett Kellett who grows our beansprouts grows in very small batches which are constantly turned and flushed with water.

Beansprouts are the only crop that Brett grows and the whole process takes place indoors. It is more of a hygienic factory type environment than that of a farm. The young sprouts obtain all the energy they need for growth from the seed, naturally reserved there by its mother plant. Hence, no fertiliser or manure is needed or used.

Brett sterilises all of his seed, before germination. To ensure his hygiene standards are effective, he tests every batch of his product for the presence of bacteria, guaranteeing they are perfectly safe and healthy to eat. There are reports that two of the staff at the German farm had previously suffered E. coli and it is possible that these staff infected the crop. Brett has only a couple of employees, who are fully aware of UK legislation that food handlers must inform their manager and not report to work if they have food poisoning symptoms (not that any of them ever have had).

This sounds wonderfully reassuring. An open and transparent response to people’s worries. Having read this I’m happy. We’ll keep adding a box or two of sprouts to our organic veg boxes and the sprouting pots will have to find a new use.

Note – our latest box came with a sticker passing on the FSA advice to cook them thoroughly before eating.

So – Are sprouts safe?

The answer to the original question seems to be “Yes, sprouts are safe but be sure you trust your supplier” Er, No, see updated answer below

A more up to date answer:

“Yes sprouts are safe if you cook them until steaming.”


photo source

 

 

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Local Veg Box Schemes

Posted on March 12, 2011 by

We heard from a really interesting local veg box scheme recently and thought we’d invite Chris Pryke to tell you a bit more about what they do and how it works. If you are in the Nottingham area and you are interested in local veg box schemes why not get in touch?

Ecoworks Vegboxes- The Nottingham box scheme with added social aims

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Local veg box scheme

Ecoworks has been delivering veg boxes in Nottingham for over 18 months now, and we like to think we’re getting pretty good at it. Ecoworks is an environmental community organisation established back in 1992, with the key aim of helping socially-disadvantaged people to enjoy and improve their local environment. Since then we have taken on 13 projects, all aiming to make Nottingham a more vibrant, inclusive and beautiful place to live.

Our vegboxes form a cornerstone of this work. We use them to promote the local-food movement, bringing its benefits to a much wider range of communities and giving people access to a healthier lifestyle without paying through the nose for supermarket organics. Our boxes (well, they’re green bags actually!) contain a mixture of fruit, vegetables, herbs and salad that are a healthy and affordable option for the all people of Nottingham.

Alongside the obvious environmental benefits of a local vegbox scheme, all of Ecoworks’ projects aim to increase social inclusion too, ensuring that people on low incomes can play an active part in our society’s transition to sustainability. That’s our key aim. The business-ey types out their might even call it our “unique selling point”.

All we know is that the environment and communities are integrated in a very fundamental way. This isn’t anything hippy or “new age” necessarily- it just makes sense. Every environmental problem is rooted in a social problem. Environmental sustainability can only go hand-in-hand with social inclusion.

In our vegbox scheme these values are at the forefront of our work- essentially what we do is sell full price vegboxes to those with decent incomes and then use any profit from that to subsidise boxes for those on low incomes or the unemployed. That way, everyone gets a chance to be part of the local-food movement

Our key aims in providing vegboxes:

To make quality local produce affordable-
for those who are unemployed or on low income, it costs £3.50 per week for a small bag suitable for 2 people, or £7 per week to feed 3-4. If customers are lucky enough to have a job, we ask for £5 and £10 respectively. This is still cheaper than supermarket organics, and allows us to keep subsidising those who can’t afford more.

To really reduce food miles-
On the most part, our produce is grown in Nottingham and eaten in Nottingham. Proper local. When joining our box scheme customers can choose from one of 10 collection points around Nottingham. We worked out that if we were to aim for super convenience like the Riverford’s of the vegbox world and deliver door-to-door, we would end up chugging our van over 100 miles around the city each week. With the collection point system (at libraries, community centres and some housing co-operatives around the city) we can truly minimize the carbon-footprint of our produce. We’ve found this also has a side effect of getting people more involved with their local community centres!

vegetableboxes growing group annual reportscaled 300x195 To support local communities-
The produce in our vegboxes is grown by local people, the majority of it on our gardens in Nottingham. They provide an  income for a host of local growers, whilst ensuring that we are able to continue our work with socially disadvantaged people in Nottingham.

Want to try one? Well, just take a look at www.ecoworks.org.uk for more information and to order yours. Alternatively you can give us a call on 0115 962 2200, send an email to vegboxes@ecoworks.org.uk, or even better come and visit us and see the gardens for yourselves! (guest post by Chris Pryke)

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Veg box schemes, just how local is yours?

Posted on December 11, 2010 by

Today we have a guest post from Tom Howlett explaining just why we should all think about just who we buy our veg box from.

If you are looking for a veg box you have to make, what I believe to be one fundamental choice. Do you find a small local scheme or go for one of the 2 larger national companies.

Britain is becoming dominated by 2 large national veg box schemes (Riverford and Able and Cole). They do an amazing job of combining the benefits of a local veg box with real convenience. They make veg boxes more easily consumable by providing recipe cards and making videos of how to prepare the more unusual weirdly shapes things you’ll find lurking at the bottom of your box. They have done a great job of bringing veg boxes to the masses through their funky marketing. They provide a huge range of products and you can change your order online. But I don’t think they are the real deal. Here’s why.

We don’t just choose a veg box for the fantastically fresh seasonal produce. A local veg box connects us with our local farmers. Our hard-earned cash isn’t filling the pockets rich businessmen, it’s helping local people earn an honest living from the land.

Many local veg box scheme’s purity means they include a more limited range of produce then the national schemes. The ever-changing seasons mean we are delivered an ever-changing variety of vegetables. On good days we discover fantastic new recipes. On bad days we struggle to find a use for 3 swedes and a beetroot. All year round we are challenged to find recipes for a new seasons produce; its part of the fun and help us regain our connection with the cyclic nature of our environment.

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Buying veg boxes online

What about convenience? If you want to change your order with a local scheme you usually need to make a telephone call, although more personal, it’s easy to forget and at times it can go wrong. The large schemes spend 1000′s on online systems that allow customers to change their order week by week, encouraging them to buy more and giving the company the opportunity to sell a wider range of produce and provide a viable more ethical alternative to a supermarket shop. At From Where It’s Grown we are providing local veg box schemes with solutions that match the sophistication of the big 2′s systems for a small monthly fee.

So if you are faced with this choice do at least find out about and give your local veg box scheme a try. If they don’t offer what you are looking for tell them what the need to do to win your custom, I think they will appreciate your candour. Local veg box schemes are a unique type of business. They are driven by beliefs not money, They deserve our support.

So there you are, will you think really local when it comes to buying your  veg box?

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