A horse is a course, of course of course....

Horsemeat!  In Burgers!  Shock Horror and shame on Tescos, Aldi & Lidl (but not Sainsburys… ha!, what a marketing boon for that chain).  Personally, I don't give a hoot, all supermarkets are inherently evil in how they manipulate the masses into purchasing the unhealthiest of items and as I couldn't kill a cow, let alone a horse, unless somebody offered me to give me a large plot of land where David and I could grow our own food, (I do have a price, it would seem) I would never actually eat a frozen burger from anywhere. 

 

I read the other day in the Sun (it was free, on the train, and something made me pick up this comic book excuse of a newspaper and actually read it) that a family gave up on the supermarkets, bought produce only from markets and local stores (for local people), and managed to save £100+ on their shopping AND they became healthier AND they became better cooks – aha!  I get it, they were buying all those ready made meal items - full of fat, salt and processed muck.  Ever since David and I were diagnosed with a Gluten Allergy/Intolerance* we haven't been able to eat pretty much ANY convenience foods – and those convenience foods that we can eat tend to be filled with trans-fats (barrel shaped lardy bodies anyone?) So that made us better cooks too but it did the opposite to our shopping bills, nearly doubling them at times and sadly made us even more reliant on the larger chains – back to the Horses.

I have a very dear friend on facebook (and in my life! Yes, we actually meet from time to time) who is always posting images of dogs and adorable puppies with cute captions and sometimes a message worth taking on board about the care of such creatures. Now I LOVE dogs, having had them in my life from an early age and although we aren't blessed right now with sharing our inside home with any animals (I actually really want a pet pig) as due to our inability to actually be able to commit to anywhere permanently and the fact that we both work full time jobs that often move us away from our residence we would never be that irresponsible.  I know people who keep their dogs in the laundry, in a cage, etc. etc. while they work – I find this intolerable myself and even IF the dog can cope, we certainly could not.

There are many myths associated with Korea and the consumption of dogs

So, my friend, let's just call her "D", one day posted a picture of a Korean market showing dog carcasses.  I was, initially distressed with the image as most of us Westerners tend to be because we cannot fathom the concept of eating "man's best friend", and most of us would rather starve than eat one, even it weren't our "pet".  Then it dawned on me that D enjoys a good steak from time to time, in fact, she eats all kinds of "acceptable" meat.  So cows are fair game?  Imagine if she moved to India, would she be able to understand why the local population thought she was horrendous for craving that steak?  Probably not because from an English point of view that animal is "fair game".  Now I, too, have my reasons for not eating certain animals – and it would be unlikely that I could ever kill a dog – but isn't it slightly hypocritical to campaign for one culture to "stop their animal cruelty" whilst continuing to participate in your own culture's "acceptable" versions of it?  It just doesn't make any sense to me – and so nor does the "horror" of the horsemeat scandal.  To me, there is not much of a difference between a cow and a horse – they are equally beautiful animals and they can both pull a plough to sow my fields for the vegetables and grains that we all can eat.  AND for the record, the practice of eating dog meat in Korea is not widespread - it's not an everyday dish, it's not available in every restaurant, and ultimately if you're poor (not that all consumers of dog flesh are, but, just saying...) you really shouldn't judge people for eating whatever protein they can in order to survive.  DON'T FALL FOR THE CRAP THAT IS ERRONEOUSLY SENT VIA VIRAL IMAGERY - don't even trust Wikipedia on this one - try asking a Korean.

My mother used to have (before she threw it away because it was 'old') some super 8 film footage of her devouring a horse sausage from a local stall - immediately upon returning to her home town of Hamburg, Germany. She did this with great relish (and I don't mean a tremendously good chutney....).  Whenever I recounted this story to my Australian friends they would reel with shock and disgust – even I found the practice of consuming horse-flesh slightly disgusting and this is purely because I was born into a culture where this practice was considered completely unacceptable (and also because there were girls who made love to their horses, were obsessed with horses, did nothing but think of horses.  Is there another animal that we all eat with great pleasure that is revered and loved like a horse or a dog?  I mean, I know that in India cows are considered "sacred", but do kids in India draw pictures of them and love them like those girls in my classes did with horses?

We have another friend (now only on facebook, because she moved to another country that we are unlikely to visit within the next few years) who collected strange characters and she had a tendency to bring them over to our house for us to entertain.  To date she has introduced us to more than a few transgender folk, a racist South African woman (whom she brought to a party filled with colour), a very masculine woman (whom we all thought was a transgender…) and many, many lesbians.  One day she introduced us to a vegan celiac who was also attempting to raise her 6 year old son as such on her own.  Whilst we all sat outside in the garden enjoying the sunshine, David offered to make the boy a smoothie (because the only thing he had eaten on our "picnic" was chocolate, because the mother, in her craziness, did not actually bring any gluten free produce and this was well before David and I were diagnosed with similar maladies.

 Obviously the boy looked sickly and was incredibly fussy about what he would eat, and so David started to make jokes about how the ingredients were things like 'pigs blood' (in hindsight, he realised later that this was perhaps not the best thing to entice a vegan to drink something).  His mother, to show the boy that it was okay to drink, took a sip.  David then rattled off the ingredients…. When he got to 'honey', those of us "in the know" immediately looked at the woman's face to see if she was that kind of vegan.

As our luck would have it, she was.  Now honey, although technically produced by insects, is still out for most vegans.  You wouldn't eat snails as a vegan, would you? Or prawns? (Actually, I never quite understood the problem with snails, being that they are rather simple organisms, although in comparison to lettuce, still awfully complex. I'll admit I used to think it was hard to anthropomorphise them, but if you've ever taken the time to watch a snail eat a piece of lettuce, it is, actually, rather cute the way that mouth munches little parts of it, bite by bite, munch by munch. Also, watching them reproduce is, well, it is just amazing [and kind of perverse, in a very alien, non-mammalian kind of way that only insects can be].

I had snails in Paris with my daughter on my 38^th birthday at a very expensive Parisian restaurant.  It was truly one of the most delicious mollusks I had ever eaten but it was probably all about the garlic butter.)  For David, of course, it was an eye-opening experience.  Really?  Honey is out?  Honey????  Yes, bees died to make that honey, David (although one can argue that there has developed a symbiotic relationship between bees and humans.  Similarly with cows – certainly of the milk producing variety, unless you tear away their children at birth and send them to the slaughterhouse so you can steal all that milk, of course…..)

Which brings me to favourite Vegan Cookbook – Leah Leneman's "The Single Vegan" (for US Readers click here).  Why do Vegans get to have a cookbook that is purely written for a single individual?  Probably because they are such difficult customers at the best of times and at the worst of times, they are just downright kooky.  Are they all hippy crazy loons?  Well of course not! Well… not always, I mean, well, not all of them…. I'll stop now before PETA picket my blog and ask for its removal.  I am no longer vegan, but I did become a vegan and stick to the diet for approximately 3 years before finally deciding that I wanted to have some ice cream. 

 Actually I'm belittling the reasons that I stopped veganism - for example, I was against ALL animal testing.  It was repulsive, said I.  It was disgusting and inhuman.  Then somebody put it to me that if I could choose between a chimp dying or my own child, I kind of caved.  I'd happily sacrifice the chimp (provided that the chimp's life was sacrified in order to find a cure for a horrendous hypothetical illness that was afflicting my child but equally the [ridiculous?] hypothetical situation of somebody making me eat a chimp or they'd kill my child....).  I'm still against the testing of some things – cosmetics, for example.  Do we really need to develop another type of lipstick?  Have we not created the most amazing cosmetics already?  And why do companies test things that have already been tested before anyway, by another company, 50 years hence?

I remember attending a vegan gathering when I was young (and vegan).  I had attended this with the then pregnant mother of my first daughter (who was Vegetarian… she had been Vegan, but on becoming pregnant had been frightened [perhaps correctly?] into believing that Veganism for a pregnant mother was just not healthy). At the gathering we met a man who declared that there was absolutely no way that he could ever be with a woman that was not a vegan.  Really?  Thought I?  That would severely narrow down the amount of seaweed in the sea.  At that stage my own sexuality was in a state of confusion, but even I realised how severely narrow this approach was to finding a partner.  It was like declaring that you could only ever go out with a black deaf gay man who had a desire to dress in women's clothing ….. I mean, seriously???  So Leah's book had a temendously large market - and truly, it is quite fantastic.

The book excited me on many levels – it had two sections – one for Winter and one for Summer and each section was divided into 5 weeks of recipes for evening meals (except for Saturday night) and 2 weekend lunches.  Each week had a shopping list which was divided into fruit & veg and other miscellaeneous items.  Each recipe had ingredient measurements for the UK and the USA. It was perfect for this little OCD boy, and, at the age of 21 I decided to try it whilst staying at my Auntie & Uncle's holiday home on "the Island" (Phillip Island in Australia).  I decided to spend a fortnight on the island on a writing holiday, and having bought 4 weeks worth of ingredients from the Winter section, my mother drove me to the house and once there, I, on my little ownsome for the next 2 weeks, cooked, wrote and walked my dog on the beach (a black lab called "Duke").  I quickly redeveloped a habit of talking to myself and it is probably the only time that I have ever had such fun writing on my little Mac Plus (that at the time was the most treasured (and expensive) possession that I could actually call my own.

At the end of the two weeks, the at-this-point-not-pregnant Mother of my daughter arrived with a 4 litre cask of moselle.  After playing drunken trivial pursuit until we were both utterly smashed, she rather openly suggested that we have sex.  So we did.  In the shower.  That very night was the night my daughter was conceived.  That morning I had consumed, for the very first time, an adzuki bean spread.  I still make adzuki bean spread today, in fact I started to make some this morning, and David chimed in to help out as I have been putting off finishing this blog entry for days now, and it was getting ridiculous how easily I would allow myself to become distracted.  It is, quite simply, the most divine little bean spread that you will ever taste – it should be served warm, on hot buttered toast.
 

Here's how you make it:  Soak a cup of adzuki beans overnight in some water (2 cups if you're not single).  It must be soaked for at least 8 hours and you will be lucky to find adzuki (sometimes also referred to as 'aduki') beans in a can – although if you do stumble across a canned variety (probably you're in a Health Food store if you do) then this will save you the hassle of soaking and cooking them – but be prepared to pay quite a bit more for this luxury – and as for ratio, 1 can will be equal to about 1 cup of dried beans).  Aduki beans are often used in Asian Cooking as a desert ingredient – the reason?  They are naturally quite sweet (but don't imagine that they will taste as sweet as honey or refined sugar – that is super sweet…. Comprehendo?). 

Boil the dried beans in a saucepan until they are tender (I always boil any pre-soaked dried beans quite rapidly for the first 10 minutes, skimming off any frothy 'scum' that accumulates at the top of the pan – this is often the toxins that are in the bean skins [some varieties, like Kidney Beans, for example, are more toxic than others – and nowadays many varieties of beans have been specifically bred to be (a) less toxic and (b) rapid cookers].  Then I turn down the heat and simmer them for approximately 45 mins to an hour – this is probably why canned varieties are more desirable – but 20 years ago you just couldn't find beans in a can unless they were boston baked and mixed with tomato sauce!).  Once you have your adzuki beans cooked – drain them (reserving the liquid) and mash them, adding some of the cooking liquid to make a nice mooshy bean mash.

Melt some butter in a saucepan (or vegan margarine, if you're a vegan or cooking for one) and then add the adzuki mash.  If the mash starts to dry out too much, simply add more of the reserved cooking liquid (or just water will do fine too).  Next add a tablespoon or three of tahini (sesame paste)– and a healthy splash of shoyu (soya sauce, or tamari) to the mix – stir until it thickens nicely.  Taste it.  You should get a lovely blend of the bitter sesame with the sweet adzuki - you then want to counter this (to taste) with the salty shoyu.  The tahini will thicken the mix, so add more if it is too runny.  It should resemble a pate, of sorts.  Once this has reached a consistency that will allow itself to be "spread", add some chopped parsley (I usually forget to do this, which is annoying as it really adds to the flavour of the dish, but I guess as I still eat the spread without it quite regularly this is not an essential ingredient  - funnily enough, I mentioned the ingredient to David this morning and he too forgot to add to the dish!).
 

As a final note - I have made this with canned kidney beans - which is still nice and I suppose you could really use almost any bean instead of adzuki, but as no other bean can match the sweetness of this little red wonder, I heartily recommend you take the time and effort to find and use them.

*David is allergic to gluten and I am completely intolerant (I know, I should really just learn not to judge my foodstuffs so harshly, right?)