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CONTENTS:
BOOKS: The Sugar Solution and Simple Food
for the Good Life
VRG - THE VEGETARIAN RESOURCE GROUP
GREEN BEAN STEW RECIPE
SARSAPARILLA, SASSAFRAS AND ROOT BEER
HI ARBOR COOKBOOK
Hello, and welcome back to Hi Arbor. Memorial Day is fast
approaching. Would you like to fire up the grill, but aren't
sure what to put on it? Perhaps the VRG can help out. I hope
each of you will find something here you like. If you have any
information, suggestions or recipes, please send them to
hiarbornews@aol.com. The next issue of this newsletter will go
out on June 16, 2005.
Take care and have a happy and safe holiday.
Roxanne
BOOKS
"The Sugar Solution" by Sari Harrar is a Prevention
book that is about what happens in our bodies when we eat
sugar. This book isn't about avoiding sugar completely.
It's about balancing "your blood sugar naturally to avoid
disease, lose weight, gain energy, and feel great." It's a
hardbound book and
Amazon.com
has it for $15.75.
"Simple Food for the Good Life" by Helen Nearing. This
book has the subtitle "random acts of cooking and pithy
quotations". Ms. Nearing, who lived to be 91 years old, did not
like cooking and tried to keep it simple. She liked to read
old books and other dated information at libraries and
museums so some of the quotes [always food related] go way
back. One of the earliest is Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
Satires, 35 B.C. - "If you know better precepts than these
[recipes], candidly tell me; if not, follow them, as I do."
Helen Nearing was a vegetarian with strong vegan leanings and
she wrote some strong words about not eating meat and why. The
book offers a look at a simpler approach to food. For example,
Ms. Nearing suggests eating a raw apple instead of apple pie.
She has strong words, also, in favor of eating foods raw as much
as possible.
Amazon.com has "Simple Foods for the Good Life" for $11.53.
It is a softbound book.
VRG - THE VEGETARIAN RESOURCE GROUP
I read about Helen Nearing's book in the most recent
issue of the Vegetarian Journal [volume 24, no.
2, 2005), a magazine published by the Vegetarian Resource
Group. The VRG is a non-profit organization and an excellent
source of information about anything related to vegetarian and
vegan dining. The VRG web site [address below] has
"vegetarian nutrition", "vegetarian recipes", "vegan
information", "fast food information" and so much more. All of
you on my list have probably been there, maybe many times, but
if you were wondering what to fix for dinner, maybe the
VRG web site can help out.
The following recipe is my own effort at simple cooking. I used
canned green beans and frozen corn.
GREEN BEAN STEW
Serves 2
1 Tablespoon oil
1 Tablespoon flour
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 cup cut green beans
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1/2 cup chopped tomato
1/4 cup kernel corn
2 cups water
salt and cayenne pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon basil
handful egg noodles (optional)
In a cool saucepan mix oil and flour well then place on low heat
and stir constantly for a few minutes. Add the vegetables and
stir. Add water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer
uncovered for fifteen minutes.
SARSAPARILLA, SASSAFRAS AND ROOT BEER
Once while visiting a friend, she gave me a clipping from a
sassafras tree in the woods by her home. It smelled like
root beer, and I found that so interesting that I broke it into
pieces and mailed the pieces to family and friends. Recently I
thought about that. Also, I wondered about sarsaparilla and
root beer being the same thing so I gathered the clarifying
information below. Sarsaparilla can be an ingredient in root
beer, but it is apparently
sassafras that makes root beer root beer.
DICTIONARY:
Root beer -
made of root extracts from certain plants, as sassafras, etc. (Webster's
New Universal Unabridged Dictionary)
Deciduous - 1. Falling off or shed at maturity or at
specific seasons, as petals, fruit, leaves...2. Characterized by
such a falling off: distinguished from evergreen.
Drupe - A soft, fleshy fruit, as a peach or a cherry,
enclosing a hard-shelled stone or seed.
Sarsaparilla - 1. The dried roots of certain tropical
American climbing plants of the lily family. 2. A medicinal
preparation or a beverage made from such roots.
Sassafras - 1. An aromatic, deciduous tree of the laurel
family. 2. The root bark of this tree, used for flavoring, and
yielding a volatile oil.
(Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary)
ENCYCLOPEDIA:
Sassafras - genus of trees and shrubs of the family
Lauraceae...[laurel]. The genus, which is native to the North
Temperate Zone, contains few species, the most important of
which is the American sassafras, Sassafras albidum, which
is cultivated for the bark of its root. The American sassafras
is found almost throughout the eastern U.S., it grows from bush
to tree size and attains a height of almost 15 m (50 ft) in the
southern U.S. The leaves are deciduous, and the wood is yellow
and soft. The bark of the root has long been used in medicine
as a stimulant and diuretic. The bark, which contains a
volatile oil, oil of sassafras, is also used in perfumery.
Extracts of sassafras bark are used as bitters and flavoring
agents in the preparation of beverages. The yellow flowers,
which are borne in racemes, have a six-lobed calyx and a
six-lobed corolla. The male flowers have nine stamens; the
female flowers bear a solitary pistil. The fruit is a blue
drupe, borne on a red pedicel or stalk. (Funk
& Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, vol. 23, pg. 156, 1986)
Note:
[Gumbo file' is made with sassafras leaves.]
Sarsaparilla [Smilax] - genus of about 225 species, of
the family
Liliaceae...[lily]...mostly herbs and woody climbing or trailing
plants, best represented in the temperate and tropical parts of
Asia and America. In some species, for example, in the
greenbriers, the stems are often very prickly. The roots or
rootstocks of a number of species yield sarsaparilla. About a
dozen American species exist; the best known is Smilax
herbacea, carrion flower, with herbacea stems, and S.
rotundifolia, the greenbrier or horse brier. (Funk
& Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, vol. 24, pg. 32, 1986
)
ROOT BEER Q & A FROM THE WEB SITE BELOW:
"What is root beer?"
Root beer is a sweetened, carbonated beverage originally made
using the root of a sassafras plant (or bark of a sassafras
tree), with sassafras as the
primary flavor.
"What's in root beer?"
In addition to sassafras flavor, root beer often has other
flavorings, including anise, burdock, cinnamon, dandelion,
ginger, juniper, spikenard/sarsaparilla, vanilla, wintergreen,
and/or yellow dock and sweetened with aspartame, corn syrup,
honey, maple syrup, molasses, and, most commonly sugar. Although
originally carbonated with yeast, most modern root beer brands
are artificially carbonated. Most brands of root beer contain
sodium benzoate as a preservative.
http://www.rootbeerworld.com/questions.htm
HI ARBOR COOKBOOK
The Hi Arbor cookbook, "Take This Veggie And Stuff It", has
recipes for stuffing 21 vegetables from artichokes to
zucchini, and if you don't know how to stuff an artichoke, the
book explains. There are 87 recipes, some of which have
seafood but most are vegetarian. It's got lists of substitutions
and
measurements and equivalents. Herbs and seasonings are defined
and there is a glossary of cooking terms in addition to a
list of how much of a fresh spice is needed versus the same
spice in a dry form.
"Take This Veggie And Stuff It" costs $12.50 per copy plus $2.50
for
shipping and handling, and it can be ordered from Hi Arbor,
Inc.; P. O.
Box 265; Oceanville, NJ 08231. Or from the web address below.
Click here to order Hi Arbor's
Take This
Veggie and Stuff It!
The End
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