Embracing a whole food plant-based diet and natural health.
This is a nice simple Indian style curry! While tinned chickpeas can be used, I always like to cook my own chickpeas as I think they taste so much better. I regularly cook a big batch and keep smaller portions in the deep freeze ready to use in recipes.
I thought I would share 3 homemade sprays that I use quite often in the vegetable garden. The recipes have been adapted from Annette McFarlane’s website: Successful Gardening.http://www.annettemcfarlane.com/ While nothing can beat healthy organic soil for growing healthy plants, having a few additional weapons up your sleeve, when pests appear on the scene or disease sets in, can be a bonus. These sprays aren’t “cure-alls” but are helpful for remedying problems in the garden or at least preventing them from getting worse.
The traditional Italian basil makes a really nice pesto but unfortunately it is an annual plant. I am excited as I now have a perennial basil bush in my garden so I should be able to make pesto all year round. Basil Pesto can be used in its own right as a dip or it can be used to boost the flavour of other dishes.
There is a lot of debate over the benefits of raw versus cooked foods. Certainly some nutrients are better absorbed after being cooked (eg. lycopene in tomatoes and beta-carotene in carrots) but on the other hand some nutrients and enzymes are destroyed by cooking. While everyone has different nutritional needs I think we can all benefit from including some raw food in our diet each day. There is definitely something fresh and invigorating about eating food just as nature intended it to be! This recipe is an interesting way to add some raw food into your day. I love the fact that it’s so simple to make but very nutrient dense.
Beans are a staple food of many civilisations around the world. Recent research indicates that: not meat, eggs or dairy but “the intake of legumes (beans, chickpeas and lentils) may be the single most important dietary predictor of a long lifespan”. http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/info/articles/diets-foods/Darmadi.pdf What a great incentive to include more beans in your diet!