We often reccommend that our customers eat good quality (preferably organic) nuts on a daily basis to help stabilise blood sugar – nuts are a protien rich food source which is digested much more slowly than, say, toast. Hence they make good night time snacks for people who wake in the night, and good day time snacks for everybody.

Recently I recieved an email which confirmed all of this – thanks to Catherine from A.Vogel for the information!

”Adding nuts to a healthy diet may help release people from a dangerous combination of health problems. Up to 25% of people in the UK and Ireland are thought to have “metabolic syndrome”, which includes obesity and high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.

‘A Mediterranean diet of vegetables, fruit and fish plus daily nuts boosted health in more than one in eight at-risk volunteers, a Spanish study found. 13.7% of those eating their daily bag of nuts as well as the Mediterranean diet had improved. Even though none of the participants’ weight had dropped significantly over the year, waist circumferences had diminished in the nut-eating group, and cholesterol and blood pressure levels had dropped. The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal”.

Nuts also contain great sources of minerals – for example almonds for calcium and Brazils for selenium.For anyone who doeswn’t know the mediterranean Diet is a diet rich in fruit, veg, grains, olive oil, fish, and small amounts of meat and dairy. And red wine of course!!!!

Organico Cafe in Bantry is the perfect place to order your party food to make having guests enjoyable and hassle-free. We can offer most of our menu on a catering basis including our ever popular savoury tarts with fillings ranging from Cashel Blue Cheese and Brazils to fetta, roasted seasonal vegetables and black olives. We can also provide curries, chillies, bakes, salads, cakes and deserts such as Chocolate Tart (made with Jaime Oliver’s receipe – yum!)

Some possible ideas are listed below:

• 3-Bean Vegetable Chilli, (we would reccemmend serving this with brown rice, grated cheddar & tsatziki, finely sliced onions and corriander)
• Summer Tart (roasted cherry tomatoes & fetta) – we normally serve this with salads – if you like we can put aside some fantastic leaves grown for us by Theo on his Demeter-certified Organic Farm in Gkengarriff; and perhaps some wild rice or quinoa salad.
• Thai Vegetable Curry – this dish is so rich and flavourful that it rarely needs more than some brown Jasmin rice and corriander as a garnish.
• Courgette Fritters – these light and tasty fritters are always the first to sell out in Organico Cafe and we would reccommend serving them with lots of fresh leaves, some tasty organic tomatoes and some quinoa salad ( this salad is very similar to couscous while being gluten free and packed with protien and minerals.
• Organico Pizza – always a favourite with kids and adults alike! We make a spelt base and top it with an organic tomato sauce, roasted veggies and lots of cheese.

Salads

• Carrot & fresh sprouts with a light tahini dressing
• Brown rice with a yoghurt/tahini dressing
• Quinoa with mint & cherry tomatoes
• Thai noodles with a spicy peanut dressing
• Mixed beans with a sweett chilli dressing
• Marinated chickpeas with a garlic/lemon dressing
• Mixed wild and red rice with peppers, herbs and a yoghurt/tahini dressing

If you contact us a few days before a small dinner party and at least a week before a large event, we will try to cater for your needs using the freshest local or organic ingredients.

Main meals cost from €5 – €9 per person depending on whether you wish us to prepare the accompanyments. Salads are approximately €2.50 per portion. These prices are for food collected from Organico Bantry.

• Mi

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic clove, finely chopped
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 3 cm fresh root ginger, grated1 red pepper, diced
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 1 courgette, diced
• 4 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp paprika
• 0.5 tsp crushed chilli flakes
• 1 heaped tsp cocoa powder
• 2 can chopped tomatoes, 400g
• 1 can kidney beans, 400g
• 1 can harricot/cannolini beans, 400g
• salt and pepper to taste

To Serve

• Handfull of organic corriander, chopped
• Minced onion
• grated cheddar cheese
• Tabasco (for the real chilli fanatics) or Green Tabasco (not organic but great flavour!)
• Creme fraiche or natural live yoghurt

Method

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion, carrot garlic, ginger, cumin and paprika and fry for a few minutes, stirring all the time. Tip in the red pepper and courgette and cook for 2 minutes. Add the tomato paste and fry for a further 2 minutes. Empty the can of chopped tomatoes and their juice into the pan and simmer until cooked down and thickened and the vegetables are soft. Wash kidney beans and add along with the chopped coriander and cook for a further 5 mins. Serson with salt and pepper.

Serve piping hot, with organic brown basmati rice, and a selection of the toppings mentioned above. If you are having people to dinner you can put all the topping out on the table and let your guests chose their favourites. Another option that we offer in Organico cafe is to serve the chilli in a wrap – in that case heat the wraps (tortilla wraps made without chemicals are available in most good health food shops) and put them on the tabls covered with a tea towl to keep them warm. Put everything else in serving dishes and let your guests mix and match! Make sure lots of napkins are to hand!

Ingredients

225g yellow split peas

1 vegetable stock cube

1 tsp vegetable bouillion powder

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 onion peeled and diced

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped

3 carrots,scrubbed and diced

Place the peas in a sieve and rinse well under running water for a few minutes. Place in a large sauce pan and cover with 1.5l cold water, the stock cube and the bouillion powder. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 25 minutes, Remove any scum that rises up to the surface with a slotted spoon.

While the peas are cooking fry the onions and carrots in olive oil on a medium heat for 10 mins then add the sweet potato and cook for another 5 mins. When the peas have cooked for 25 mins add the cooked veggies to the pan and cook for another 15 mins.

Allow cool a little then blend the soup with a hand blender or food processor until smooth, reheat and serve with the sprigs of mint garnishing the surface

For a fat free and quicker version:

Add the rest of the vegetables to the cooked peas and simmer for a further 15 to 20 mins or until veggies are tender when pierced with a knife then follow the rest of the directions.

Other favourites include fetta and sweet chilli and black pepper and tomato. Watch out for more receipes over the next months!

On our website you can see some of our receipes, and reports of some of the differents events we have held in our Cafe. We also have a health food shop so one of the things we focus on is experimenting with all the ingredients we sell. All our fruit and veg is supplied by the shop so it is all certified organic, as are all the pulses and grains we use in our cooking.

We are always looking for customer feedback and receipe suggestions so please feel free to let us know what you like and what you think!

Ingredients

6 large Carrots, peeled (the only time I peel organic carrots is for salad as they discolour if just scrubbed)

50g dessicated coconut

Juice and zest of 1 orange

Handfull of sultanas

Good pinch of sea salt

Add the juice and zest to the coconut and sultanas and allow to soak for 30 mins.

Grate the Carrots and put into a large bowl, add the coconut, sultanas and juice and combine. Add the sea salt to taste.

Leave to chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator and serve.

]]> http://www.organico.ie/news/organic-food/sweet-carrot-salad/feed 0 http://www.organico.ie/news/organic-food/greek-fetta-salad http://www.organico.ie/news/organic-food/greek-fetta-salad#comments Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:45:54 +0000 darehannah http://www.organico.ie/news/organic-food/greek-fetta-salad 5 Ripe tomatoes

1 Cucumber, diced

250g Feta cheese, crumbled

a handfull of black olives, kalamata if possible

125ml olive oil

4 tbsp lemon juice

freshly black pepper

small bunck of Oregano, finely chopped

Chop up the tomatoes and put into a large salad bowl, and add the cucumber, feta cheese and olives.
Pour over the olive oil and lemon juice. Season with freshly ground black pepper, add a little salt if necessary bearing in mind that the feta is very salty. Toss gently to mix. Serve with some crispy lettuce sprinkling with fresh oregano.

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In Ireland, the organic sector is growing by 10% per year (Mitchell got these stats a year ago – I think it has sped up since then.) Apparently this represent only 1% of the entire Irish food industry – worth an estimated 38 million in 2003. However if we follow European treads then it will be worth 4 times that by the end of this year.

Mitchell’s article is not entirely complimentary to the ‘organic philosophy’. She quotes many sources that question whether organic agriculture is better than conventional agriculture, and whether the resulting foods are better for consumers. She quotes the British Food Commission (2000) as saying:

.
”Hundreds of organic products are coming on to the market, including highly processed jelly sweets, sugar-laden organic cereals, organic chicken burgers and even organic cigarettes.”

In Organico, we clearly do buy into the Organic Philosophy; but we also welcome articles of this sort that encourage consumers to question what they are being fed. Unfortunately many organic products are coming onto the market now that are just as harmful to health, if not to the environment, than non-organic foods. We still have to read labels and choose brands that w believe in, not just brands that shout the loudest through their adverts.

When buying for a Wholefood Shop you carry a weight of responsibility in terms of what you choose to stock, as many customers believe that if a product is on a Wholefood Shop shelf it is going to be beneficial for their health. Also, many of us are in this business because we want to sell positive products, so naturally we select the products we sell for their organic credentials – not just their packaging!

Ingredients:

Beetroot (approximately I large root or 2 small roots per person).
Yoghurt

Garlic

Mint

Salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Wash the beetroot, place in a pan with enough water to cover the beetroot and bring to the boil. Simmer until the beetroot is soft when pierced with a skewer. Discard the water and leave the beetroot to cool, then peel under running water. (Use washing up gloves if you don’t like pink hands!). Dice the beetroot and put in a bowl large enough to mix it all.