Organico Bantry

•    Lunch Time Special – Main Course plus tea/coffee for €10.00

•    We are developing Home Pizza Kit for those Friday nights when you need something quick but want to avoid the freezer section.

•    Take Away Fresh Delicious Organic Soup          €3.50

•    Take Away Organic Fair Trade Coffee              €1.50

•    Monday’s Bread Offer 2 Wholemeal loaves         €3.00

In the shop selected Pataks curry pastes are on offer at €1.99 instead of the normal Rsp of €2.83, and the Red and the Green Alpro Soya milks are on offer at €1.29 instead of our normal Rsp of €1.86! We also still have our ‘cost price rice’ offers of 5 kg of Organico Brown short/long grain for €10.00 and 5 kg of Fair Trade Organic brown Basmatti for €15.00.

Hi I’m Rachel (the one who you never see because I’m always in the kitchen!) and I would like to share my passion with you for healthy food that tastes great and doesn’t cost the earth. In Organico Café our aim is to provide tasty, healthy food that is really good for you (and to serve it along side indulgent treats to comfort and spoil you). There is a very important link between the food you eat and the way you look and feel. We have always been told that a healthy diet is important but as I discover more about what it means to eat healthily, I realise how different everyone’s interpretations of “a healthy diet” are. There is a confusing amount of information available and a lot of it contradicts itself.  So we have decided to try a new approach for this column, writing about natural remedies every 2nd month and  giving tasty recipes in between.  Along with the recipes we will give some nutritional information on the main ingredients involved. Following Hippocrates’ advice and letting your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food is certainly a recession-proof approach to health!

I have chosen a soup to start with as I think it is essential to a healthy diet – a home made nutritious soup is a complete meal and is very easy to digest. Dried Split Peas are a very good source of cholesterol lowering-fiber, they are also very helpful in managing blood sugar levels as their high fiber content prevents blood sugar rising after meals. They also provide minerals including Iron and magnesium, as well as B vitamins and protein. The fresh herbs change it from a good soup into something special so please don’t skip them! (We will have lots of fresh herbs in the shop from now on – sometimes they can be hard to find). As with all our recipes we recommend the use of organic vegetables and split peas for their higher nutritional quality and taste. The type of stock powder you use is also important, as many use salt as the main flavour which isn’t the healthiest, so look our for Marigold Bouillon or Kallo stock cubes (they both also do a very nice low salt option). In the Café we have found this to be one of our most popular soups with people always asking for the recipe – and it goes down really well with children too!

Spring Sweetcorn Chowder

225g Yellow split peas

2 Cloves of Garlic
2 Tsp Vegetable Marigold bouillon powder

250g Spinach, Kale or Spring Cabbage
2 Tbsp of olive oil

2 Leeks, washed and sliced

1 Can Sweet corn
3 carrots, scrubbed and diced       Handful Parsley and Basil or Mint
1 Onion, peeled and diced             Salt and pepper  1 Bay leaf

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, Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, sometimes they will take longer so just check every 5 minutes until they feel soft. Remove any residue that rises up to the surface with a slotted spoon. Top up with more water if necessary. While the peas are cooking fry the chopped onions, leeks, carrots and bay leaf in olive oil on a medium heat for 10 min’s then add the sweet potato and garlic and cook for another 5 min’s., keeping you eye on it to make sure nothing is sticking. When the peas have cooked for 25 min’s blend with a hand blender, add the cooked veggies to the split peas, remembering to take out the bay leaf at this point, and cook for another 15 min’s. Chop up the greens and add along with the sweet corn to the split peas, cook for a further 5 minutes. Season to taste. Chop the herbs, stir into the soup and serve. If you would like to freeze some portions then just leave out the greens and the herbs and add them later.

Daily nuts may help boost health!

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!!!!

This is a quick, easy, healthy and economical soup that tastes great. For the best taste and health value use organic carrots. There are 2 ways if making this soup – the first is quicker and heathier, the second perhaps a little more tasty!

Ingredients:

5 big Carrots, approx 500g, diced small
1 large Onion, chopped
600ml boiling water
1 bunch fresh Mint or Coriander (or both) chopped
1 tbsp Orange rind, grated
1 tsp salt and fresh ground Black Pepper
Juice of fresh Orange
Olive oil (for 1st way)

Verision 1:

Bring the water to the boil, add the carrots, onion, mint, orange zest and seasoning.
Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
Remove the mint and (add some of the coriander if using) and blend the soup until smooth. Add the rest of the corriander on to as a garnish when you serve.

Version 2 (This is how I usually make it but it takes a little more time and it’s less healthy because of the frying.)

Heat olive oil in a pan adding onion, carrot and seasoning, cook on a med heat for 10 minutes.
Add the water, orange juice and zest and mint, lower the heat, cover the pan and cook for 10-15 minutes,
until the vegetables are tender. Add coriander if using, keeping some back for garnish, and blend the soup until smooth. Serve with chopped Corriander on top.

Come in on Mondays and take advantage of our great wholemeal bread offer – 2 loaves for €3.00!

Stock up on Organic Soyamilk from Provamel at only €1.29 while stocks last

Buy 5 KG Organic Brown Long/short grain rice for only €10 – normal price approx €1.99 for 500g so our offer is half price!

Coming soon: Great value on bulk buying of Organic basmatti, Quinoa, Organic red Lentils, Organic Oats and much more….

All these available instore while stocks last. Unfortunately we can’t post these offers.

In Organico we have always encouraged people to resort to antibiotics as a last measure; and now the HSE are saying the same thing. Antibiotic resistance is a very real threat to increasing numbers of people, so staying healthy by boosting our immunes systems and generally taking care of ourselves should be our first priority, with our second treating all colds and flues as naturally as possible.

In previous columns we have discussed Echinacea, Kyolic Garlic and Vitamin C which are some of the first remedies we should reach for when either boosting immunity (if you feel under stress, get run down or are exposed to bad colds from other people) or treating a cold/flu. This month I though we should discuss digestive health and in particular Probiotics as a powerful and safe alternatives to Antibiotics.

Digestive health is the basis for good health. Regarding diet and digestive health, enough dietary fibre is vital. Good sources of soluble fibre are fruit, raw or lightly cooked vegetables, oats, brown rice, linseeds (ground linseeds make a great addition to cereal or porridge), or psyllium which is pure fibre in powder form. This type of fibre absorbs water and adds bulk to the stool, as well as helping to control cholesterol levels. Low stool weight and constipation over long periods are thought to be associated with increased risk of bowel cancer, so maintaining high levels in the diet is very important.

Probiotics are added to many different foods but unfortunately, contrary to much advertising, drinking‘Probiotic’ drinks that contain vast amounts of sugar is counter productive. To add Probiotics to your diet we always recommend eating natural ‘live’ yoghurt from a trustworthy brand (Glenisk, Glenillen, Yeo Valley, and Rachel’s Dairy all make good quality natural yoghurts). However, according to one study, to get the optimum amount of Probiotics from your diet you would need to eat 1 litre of live yoghurt per day – or take 1 tablet of a good quality supplement.

The biological roles of Probiotic bacteria are numerous, and include:

• Helping to protect your whole system from bacteria and viruses by stimulating the immune system of the digestive tract
• Improving symptoms of Candida overgrowth such as thrush by starving the Candida yeast
• Regulation of ‘intestinal transit time’ – keeping you regular, in other words
• Some kinds of Probiotics are particularly effective in reducing symptoms of IBS
• Can relieve symptoms of Urinary tract infections and give protection from recurrences
• If you have taken a course of Antibiotics, a course of Probiotics is a good follow up to restore your intestinal flora and boost your immune system.

As a general rule, we always recommend the Udo’s Range of Probiotics, because they are much more powerful than most other brands and feedback from everyone taking them is very positive. For general health protection they offer the Adult’s Blend or the Advanced Adults Blend (age 65 and over – as well as everything else this blend can help control Cholesterol levels); as well as specific blends for infants (a powder that you add to bottles of milk or juice) and for children. They also offer Super 8 which helps to combat fungal and yeast infections (think Candida) and helps with urinary tract infections.

For sufferers of IBS, there is another product that has been the subject of extensive research. It is called Lp299v and is made by Quest. One study found that 95% of patients taking Lp299v for just 4 weeks showed significant improvements in all IBS symptoms, such as bloating, diarrhoea and constipation.

For a high fibre, tasty and healthy lunch, call in to Organico Café (open Monday – Friday only until the end of February); and for further dietary tips or supplement advice call into Organico Shop and talk to one of our Product Advisors. Always consult a medical practicioner if you have health issues.

On the strength of the article that we wrote for the Grapevine last week, I have persuaded our suppliers to give us some free stock so we can offer a special deal on the 3 products I mentioned. So often we would like to give away products we know would be good for people because we are very aware of the cost – especially if you are trying to treat a whole family – of really good quality natural remedies. So this time we can!

The Deal!

The deal is – you buy a bottle of Echinaforce (or echinacea throat spray, if you already have some echinaea) and a bottle of Kyolic Garlic 1000 mg tablent (the combined cost is about €24.50) and you get a free bottle of Higher Nature Vitamin C 30 tablets (RSP €7.15 approx).

Carrageen Moss

Call in to Organico to get your Cold Busting Pack, and while you’re there pick up some local honey and some carrageen moss and a reciepe for a warming nutritious drink to help lift your mood.

This deal is only available while the free stock lasts!

Staying healthy and free from infections is so important in the winter. Getting plenty of sleep is vital, as well as not eating too much sugar or drinking too much alcohol or coffee. Sugar in particular depresses the immune system which allows viruses and bacterial infection to get a hold of us.

I’m doing a few different things to stay healthy this winter. I am taking 2 yoga classes per week with Esther Ekhart at the Boab Centre which helps to keep me strong physically and I am reducing my sugar intake because I think I get fewer colds this way. Of course I  try to eat really healthily – we hear ‘eat your fruit and veg’ so many times that we might be in danger of tuning out but don’t – it is so important to eat well.

I also use some natural products regularly over the winter to keep me healthy. The first thing I reach for when I feel a sore throat coming (for me a cold always starts with a sore throat) is Echinaforce by A.Vogel. Echinacea is a well established immune stimulant and recent research has shown that taking it regularly (during winter months) reduces your risk of getting a cold by over 50%, and hugely reduces the length of time you suffer also. A.Vogel also make Ivy Thyme which I find amazing for helping to prevent a cold taking hold in the chest area – if you are prone to chest infections this is a good remedy to try.

Kyolic Garlic is another of my favourite supplements. Books could be written about all the health issues is can help. Kyolic Garlic is much stronger than regular garlic capsules. It has benefits that range from heart-protection to anti-candida to immune-stimulation. Coming from Japan, with hundreds of clinical studies to back it up, Kyolic Garlic is something of a super-supplement. The strengths range from Kyolic 100 to Kyolic 1000. The standard one we would recommend to most people if they want to fight off colds would be the Kyolic 600; I take 2 per day when I feel un well and 1 per day most of the winter. (Because Kyolic Garlic is ‘aged garlic’ it is naturally odourless, so you don’t have to worry about your breath!)

Added to that I always take Vitamin C. There are a lot of different Vitamin C products on the market but the one I prefer is Higher Nature’s True Food C, easy on the stomach and supported by lots of research which shows that it absorbs into our blood very effectively. A high serum (blood) level of Vitamin C is what we need to help fight infections, so it is important to take one that is easy to absorb.

Finally, a traditional local remedy that I always recommend is Carrageen Moss. Made into a drink with water, lemon and honey, Carrageen is soothing for the throat, boosts energy and is a great source of micro-minerals that aid convalescence. Call in for the recipe!

For more information and dietary advice contact Organico on 027 51391, visit us online at www.organico.ie or pop in and see us at No 2 Glengarriff Road, Bantry.

One of the conditions we receive the most questions about in Organico is joint pain and stiffness. Many people have been to their GP and have perhaps tried anti-inflammatory medications, which may not have relieved their pain and on top of that may have given them side effects that increased their discomfort. The difficulty for us is that from the natural perspective it is necessary to make some dramatic dietary changes to help arthritis, and not everyone wants to hear that.
However, there are some natural products that can help. Atrogel and Atrosan are two recently licensed herbal medicines for the treatment of muscular pain and stiffness and aches and pains in the joints. Atrogel (formally Arnica Gel) can also be very effective for shoulder and neck pain, swelling, bruising, and sore feet (I took some on my recent trip to Prague and pretty much coated myself in it every day!). Atrosan is a tablet made from Devil’s Claw which is used for rheumatic or muscular pain, as well as sore joints. Atrogel works pretty much instantly; Atrosan takes some time to be effective. Both can be used long term.
Glucosamine Sulphate is another supplement that is regularly prescribed by GP’s and alternative practitioners for helping to re-build damaged cartilage in the joints. Quest Glucosamine is fantastic value and very effective.
Lastly, AquaCal from Nature’s Calcium is one of the best calcium products that we sell in Organico. Nature’s Calcium is made from seaweed harvested off West Cork’s coast (it is purified, before you ask) and it provides a uniquely pure source of calcium. So many calcium supplements contain Calcium Carbonate which is just a fancy name for chalk! Eating chalk is not something most people would do – for good reason, as it is nearly indigestible and un-absorbable. Besides being far more absorbable, Aquacal is also useful for combating acidity in the body. In nearly all cases of Arthritic pain, over-acidity is a significant factor.
On Friday the 17th of October we have Gabrielle Mcauley offering mini-consultations in Organico between the times of 10.30 and 3.30 pm. Gabrielle works with and has trained with Jan de Vries. She can answer questions on any health topic. If you would like to avail of a free consultation with Gabrielle, please call Organico Shop on 51391 and make an appointment. Otherwise, call in any time for dietary advice, for free samples of Atrogel, for healthy tasty food, or just to say hello!