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Last week I ordered 12 cans of ackee for $99.99 from a site I discovered. Their contact information is at the end of this article. Shipping and handling is free, and it arrived in only 3 days via USPS. The company is based in Florida, so I suspected they might be growing ackee there. The tin clearly states it is the produce of Haiti. Because it is grown and packaged in earthquake ravaged Haiti, it makes me feel good that buying products like this from their country might help their economy out. One can only hope.
If you are not familiar with ackee, it is the national fruit of Jamaica. It was introduced to the Island by the British about 300 years ago. It is native to West Africa. The fruit is cooked as if it were a vegetable - in fact it is often cooked with another fruit - tomato. It is my favorite breakfast, second only to Scrambled Tofu. What does it taste like? Sorry, I can't help you there, it doesn't resemble the taste of anything I know of, so it is indescribable. It does look like scrambled eggs, but that's only because it is yellow. All I can say is that ackee is very delicious.
Typically, Jamaicans will eat ackee with saltfish. In fact, the national dish of Jamaica is, you got it, Ackee and Saltfish. But we vegetarians omit the fish and just eat the ackee. It is delicious on its own.
Here is my recipe on how to make ackee.
What you need:
1 tin of ackee
1 medium to large onion
2 tomato's (or tomato puree as substitute)
Thyme (preferably powdered)
some garlic (optional)
*black pepper
*salt to taste
(*about 1/2 teaspoon - you can add more later to suit your taste)
First open the tin of ackee and drain the water out. Chop up the onions and fry them until almost brown. Now throw in the chopped up tomatoes and stir, cover over medium heat and let them get soft (about 3 min). Put in the garlic (optional), half teaspoon of thyme, about half teaspoon black pepper and salt. Now toss in the ackee. Stir it up over medium heat and let simmer for about 3-5 minutes.
I eat ackee with bread, roti or I sometimes fry up potatoes to eat with it.
My mum sometimes treats me by sending ackee from Florida. I believe she gets it for $16 a tin. I live in California, and the closest place to buy Jamaican ackee is in Oakland, and I think the going price is $26/tin. So right off the bat this place is much more economical - $99.99 for 12 cans (with free shipping and handling) so it works out to be $8.33 per can.
But what about taste and texture? This can be subjective, but to me the taste is very similar to what I am accustomed to. Texture-wise there is a noticeable difference. This ackee is more firmer and thus I am inclined to think it might be more fresher. I'm no expert on ackee, but those are my final thoughts.
My cousin Mikey lives in Boca Raton and he is a bona fide expert on ackee. I will post his final judgement when he gets around to sampling this ackee.
This weeks episode of Nikita featured Tofu Scramble. It was made for her by one of her comrades just before a raid. But who doesn't love tofu scramble?? Nikita is a rogue secret agent gone wild, and is vegan. The actress Maggie Q is vegan in real life too.
The Pretenders' singer/guitarist and staunch animal rights supporter Chrissie Hynde has been forced to close her vegetarian restaurant. According to The Associated Press, Hynde had to close shop due to the economic downturn. The eatery was located in her Akron, Ohio hometown.
Hynde posted a note on the VegiTerranean restaurant website on Sunday, saying that she and the staff had tried to keep the restaurant open but that the economic climate made it impossible. The restaurant was open for four years.
What a bum out. I'm a vegetarian and I am sure that it was a terrific joint. Perhaps if the economy experiences an uptick, Hynde will reopen it! It sucks when a cool eatery such as this has to close its doors.
Dalai Lama to receive Mahatma Gandhi peace prize in South Africa
JOHANNESBURG: The Dalai Lama will receive the Mahatma Gandhi peace prize, the legendary Indian leader's granddaughter Ela Gandhiannounced here today on Gandhi Jayanti and asked the South African government to grant a visa to the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the country. The Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation will be conferred on the 76-year-old Dalai Lama at the annual Satyagraha Awards to be held at the Durban City Hall next Sunday...
Chinese bloggers caused the cancellation of Jinhua festival - where it is common practice to slaughter many thousands of dogs and eat their meat.
The dog meat festival, held in the Wucheng district of Jinhua in Zhejiang Province, is part of an annual three-day temple fair. The dog market has been part of the fair for centuries, according to the district government’s Web site. Local folklore says the tradition of feasting on dogs originated when Hu Dahai, a rebel battling Yuan Dynasty rulers in the 14th century, ordered all the dogs in Jinhua to be slaughtered because their barking had warned rebels in the city of his army’s approach. His soldiers were treated to dog meat, the story goes, and eating dog has been a custom at local temple fairs ever since.
Want to see a summer block buster movie, but one which is smart, thought-provoking, and intelligently made? Then look no further than "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes". The preview doesn't make you think of these qualities, but the movie has it, and has it in spades.
I am bewildered as to why the animal rights community hasn't been buzzing about it. The film embodies our heart and soul in every frame of this picture.
I believe this film will touch impressionable young people, as the original 'apes' films had on me. In the 70's, the original films put me on the path of questioning animal experiments and our role in the big scheme of things. Ultimately, I became vegan because of them.
"Meat-Free No Longer Bourgeois" is the headline in a Moscow article today.
When Ekanga Davova decided to become a vegetarian in 1993 in an effort to cleanse her body, it made her the odd one out in her social circle.
Davova, an Uzbek native who was then 25, recalls her friends' extreme wonder and disbelief with her "new" lifestyle, which excluded meat, fish and poultry.
"It was hard to keep up with it then because there were no other vegetarians around me," she said. "I struggled to find inspiration."
Davova, now 42, works at Cafe Ganga, a vegan restaurant in Moscow, with a staff of about 30 other vegans and vegetarians, and she said the environment for those abstaining from meat is blooming.
This article talks about Berlin Reed, a vegetarian from age 12, for ethical reasons, but one who has since changed and now not only eats meat but became a butcher by trade.
He still considers himself socially responsible for the treatment of animals... if more meat eaters could be like Reed, more socially aware of what meat is, and consume less of it, then things would be a lot better than things are today.
We all do not have to be vegetarian - that is the message of meatless monday's, but being vegetarian is ultimately the best choice for your health, the animals and the environment.
Carrie Underwood has been a vegetarian since age 13 when she learned what happens to the animals on her family’s farm. “And living in Oklahoma it was almost impossible to be vegetarian, so when I moved away — I was about 21 — I became a vegetarian.” Now she has eliminated all animal products from her diet to become vegan.
Meat grown artificially in a laboratory could offer a viable solution for environmentalists who want to cut their carbon footprint but cannot face going vegetarian, research suggests.
Join Eco Chef Bryan Au in his Raw Organic Vegan and Vegetarian Adventure by trying his new RAW STAR Recipe Book! More than 100 new raw organic recipes to delight you and they all only take 5 to 10 minutes to make, no bake tastes great!
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Actress Maggie Q is a well known PETA activist and vegan in real life, but a couple weeks ago, on episode 20 of 'Nikita' it was revealed her character also refrains from eating flesh.
"Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have demonstrated the ability to store data that is encrypted using bacteria. The team used a colony of E.coli for the demonstration."
"The researchers were able to store enough data to put the Declaration of Independence inside 18 bacterial cells. When scaled up that would mean 1g of bacteria could store a whopping 90GB of data. The data can be encrypted by using site-specific genetic recombination."
The more isoflavone-containing soy products a young woman eats, the lower her odds for developing invasive breast cancers, according to research presented at a meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Philadelphia...
...The study included 683 women with breast cancer and 611 women without the disease. It found that participants who consumed the most isoflavones had a 30% lower risk of developing an invasive tumor.
Examining the data more closely, researchers found that among premenopausal women, those who consumed the most isoflavones had a 30% decreased risk of early, stage I disease, a 70% decreased risk of having a tumor larger than 2 centimeters, and a 60% decreased risk of having stage 2 breast cancer. These connections were not seen among postmenopausal women, the researchers reported...
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