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Recipes

My fave recipes - some original! But I don't cook much these days...

Links

• Slow Food - the world wide movement for the enjoyment of food and drink produced by small scale, dedicated farmers for people who don't want bland, branded uniformity.
• Vegan village - recipes, companies, activism.
• Frequently asked questions about veganism - courtesy of the Vegan Society.
• Soil Association - terrible name, but an excellent campaign group for organic food, including meat.
• BBC Food page - recipe finder by ingredient, links to radio programmes.
• Epicurious - American, but lots of recipes.
• Kokkieblanda - Indonesian food website
• Mount Fuji - mail order Japanese foods
• Olives et al - mail order olives and stuff

Organic Food

• Meat - there have been over 100 probable or confirmed cases of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD) since 1996 when the link was found between new variant CJD and BSE. BSE emerged as a disease of cattle after sheep meat was used in cattle feed. No organically reared cow has ever developed BSE.
• Pesticides - 25 000 tonnes of pesticides were used in the UK in 2000. Cox's apples may be sprayed up to 16 times with up to 36 different pesticides. Although safe limits have been developed for individual chemicals, there is little knowledge about how multiple substances may interact in the body. Current government advice is to wash and peel fruit and veg for young children. Ironically, processed foods may contain less contaminants.
• Antibiotics - used as growth promoters in animals. May potentially lead to resistance of human pathogens.
• Subsidies - the Common Agricultural Policy subsidises non-organic farmers, and encourages intensive farming practices.
• Wildlife - organic, arable fields contain five times as many wild plants and more species. At the field margins, more birds and more species of birds are found. Organic farmers preserve hedgerows, trees and field margins to encourage habitats for natural predators against pests.
• Poultry - most chickens live in windowless sheds of around 30 000 birds. Each bird will have space equivalent to an A4 sheet of paper. Free range chickens theoretically have access to open air runs. In practice, numbers may be so large and entrances so few that this access is minimal. The Soil Association insists on smaller numbers, and birds live at least twice as long as non-organic.
• Pigs - most pigs live indoors on concrete floors. Breeding sows are confined to crates for 5 weeks at a time.

Drink

• Superplonk - Malcolm Gluck's website for finding good cheap wine on the high street. Articles too. Subscription lets you access the database on mobile phone or PDA.