However, a routine of ‘meat and two veg’ without the meat is not sustainable. A person who eats meals such as these will soon fall sick, particularly if there is no fish, dairy or eggs in the diets either. Many vegetarians opt to eat a small amount to dairy, fish or eggs to help supply much needed protein, which can be difficult to replace in a met-free diet.

Vegetarians have to plan their meals far more than meat-eaters in order to get everything that a body requires to grow, repair itself and defend itself from disease. It will of course take some time for the newcomer to vegetarianism to learn new recipes and how to cook them so in the beginning, many vegetarians do indeed cook meals which are of the ‘meat and two veg’ without the meat sort.

This is all OK if you know what to exchange for the meat. There are a number of things in the stores, but one of the most useful is soya in all its various kinds. Tempeh is a soya bean meat substitute and so is tofu. Both these can be used to replace meat for a supply of protein.

The good thing about these substances is that they can be made to taste of anything you like – they take on flavours fairly readily. They can also be treated to resemble the texture of meat.

Seitan (wheat gluten) is a similarly adaptable and helpful product, but you have to be sure that you are not allergic to gluten first, because this allergy appears to be spreading. Soya bean products and seitan can be easily bought at health food shops and Oriental shops.

As you get more capable at cooking vegetarian meals, you will probably rely less heavily on these things. Beans and nuts are also useful substitutes, but you will probably have to learn how to use them first. Take a look at chickpeas, lentils yet kidney beans.

Soya by-products like soya milk and soya yoghurt and even soya margarine can be used to take the place of regular dairy products. You can also create a type of healthy milk from rice water or / and blended nuts. Besides making milk and casseroles from nuts, some nuts are fantastic in salads. Have a go with walnuts, cashews and almonds and try seeds too like sesame and poppy. Sunflower seeds and others are great for snacks.

Bread and sandwiches are tasty vegetarian fast foods. Experiment with different sorts of flour. Get yourself a bread-making machine and make your own bread. Preparation time is minutes but you can set the timer to cook the bread for whenever you like. Seven in the morning beats any alarm clock.

If you want to read more about Welsh food, food in general or cooking eggs in particular, please go over to Traditional Welsh Recipes

The flour can be manufactured from almost anything that can be dried and pulverized, so in Europe and America, flour is most normally manufactured from wheat, rye and corn, whereas in India it is often made from gram and in Thailand it can be made from rice but there are numerous other types of flour as well, besides all the possible mixtures obtained by mixing the different flours.

Often, whole grains or rough-ground material will become added into fine flour to improve texture, taste, roughage or / and aesthetics. Also, in the same vein, occasionally the dough will get rolled in seeds such as sesame, poppy or other kinds of crop like rolled oats. The second ingredient is water, but not always. You can use water, milk or even beer or yoghurt or a mixture of a few of them.

Then there are additives. No, not the E-numbers or chemicals such as flavour-enhancers or preservatives, they are entirely uncalled for, unless you are using poor quality ingredients or you would like the loaf to have a long shelf life. No, I am talking about natural additives. Yeast is the first additive. It makes the bread rise and so makes it light. Bread without yeast is more like cake. Sugar, honey or molasses is added to help the yeast rise.

Salt is the first real additive. Salt is added to inhibit the action of the yeast and as a flavour-enhancer, but you could add celery salt (garlic or any other salt) instead or table salt. However, you do not actually have to use it if you do not use yeast. After that, the world is your oyster, you can put what you want.

Some individuals add an egg to give the bread more body or fruit such as raisins. Or you can add bananas instead or as well. Nuts are good in home baked bread too and so are dried plums and apricots. I used to like to add a handful of rolled oats for extra fibre.

A little oil (olive or other) or butter will help the bread’s elasticity and it will also keep longer too, not that that was ever a problem in our household. Herbs and garlic is nice in homemade bread yet so is ginger or onions. In fact, one of the best breads I ever baked was done with the left overs from my Sunday luncheon. I could not eat it but it was not enough to put in the fridge so I put it in the bread mixture.

I put in French green beans, a little potato, some cabbage, a bit of chicken, kidney beans and the gravy – only a little of |each. It was the best bread I ever baked, and I have spent the last ten years trying to replicate the loaf in vain, because I did not note down precisely what I did.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on numerous subjects, but is now concerned with low cholesterol diet recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

The advantages of being a member of such a support group are manifold, but some of them are encouragement, advice and friendship. You may not require the friendship, yet you might like to socialize with other vegetarians so that you can see how they cope with eating out and basically just fitting into a society designed by and for meat-eaters.

However, whether you propose giving up your old friends or not, you may find yourself gravitating away from them after a while quite naturally. Remember the old expression: ‘Birds of a feather flock together’? This is fairly standard.

You will have concerns substituting something else for meat; you will be worried that your diet is lacking in some nutrient; you will start asking yourself which restaurants serve truly vegetarian food and lots more.

Your newly found support group friends will be a immense source of encouragement and advice in this sphere. You may not like the notion of a ‘vegetarian support group’, yet you could just as easily join a vegetarian dining club or vegetarian cookery class, the effect will work out the same – you will learn and you will make new acquaintances.

If you have difficulty locating such a group by the normal methods of your local Yellow Pages and an Internet search, try going to the local community centre, where there may be yoga classes – a few of the attendees will be vegetarians that you can ask. Or go to you local health food shop and ask there Likewise you could ask at a martial arts club or a Hindu Indian restaurant. If all else fails, you could begin your own club.

If you set up your own club, find a sympathetic bar or restaurant that will prepare your meal suggestions for that night at a reasonable price. After a time, I am sure you could build up a lovely little club of twenty people and the landlord may let you have your own room to dine in once a month like the Masons.

If you think that this is too much in the early days, you could simply set up a blog. A blog is an interactive website, where you and others can post relevant knowledge. If you keep the name of the blog relevant to your town and vegetarianism, you should find that other people looking as you once did will find you, whereas you found no one. Once you have built up a circle of local, on line vegetarian sympathizers, you could suggest meeting once a month in the flesh and take the dining idea from there. An advert in the local paper would help too.

If you want to read more about Welsh food, food in general or cooking eggs in particular, please visit Traditional Welsh Recipes

There are many types of meats and side dishes that are perfect for barbecuing. Fish, pork and beef are the most popular but don’t forget the lamb and chicken. When visiting your local grocery store, look for meats that are specifically cut and packaged for barbecuing. If you do not find pre-packaged meats, then chances are spices, marinades, and other kits for grilling are somewhere near by.

Some of the more traditional side dishes might be coleslaw, potato salad, beans and coleslaw. Most people expect these side dishes as a minimum at barbecues. These sides work well with the variety of meats available and are easy to prepare and store until it is time to eat. Pickles, relish and onions are the traditional condiments that should be available at every barbecue gathering. For different flavors in your meat you can try different styles of grills. The grilled ’smoked’ flavor is probably one of the most well known flavors and favorite of barbecuing. With a smoker barbecue you can have fun getting different flavors in your meat by simply changing the type of wood you use. For a faster grilling time you can use a propane grill but you won’t get the nice smoky flavor.

Some grills have the ability to come with many different types of cooking surfaces. These different cooking surfaces include a brazier grill, a flat grill, and a ribbed grill. For even more types of food cooking options these surfaces are also available as non-stick. By planning correctly you should be able to cook an entire meal on the barbecue.

With the many options of addon cooking surfaces you can cook anything from stir fries to rotisserie chickens. Barbecuing might also be popular because it’s a great excuse to have a get together or a party. With a barbecue you have the room to gather around and chat with friends during the actual cooking of the meal. It’s a great social atmosphere. Everyone loves a themed party and barbecues can fit this style of party perfectly. Throw up a few festive decorations which can be purchased cheaply from a party or general store. You may also consider purchasing decorations that can be stored and reused at a different time, such as reusable tablecloths and torches. Tropical music and a bit of sand can do wonders for a beach themed party.

Barbecuing is considered to be a hobby as well which might be helping to add to its popularity. Barbecuing, like anything else in life, takes time and practice. if you experiment with recipes, techniques and different styles of barbecues you will make it more interesting and fun. Once you have developed a liking for barbecuing, then you can focus on creating your own variations on traditional recipes and ideas.

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That has to become a good thing; it has to mean that we are starting to cure or at least improve most types of blindness.

My aunty had cataracts for years when I was a child in the Sixties – it was just one of those facts of life. Some people got them when they were old and others did not.

My brother’s mother-in-law had cataracts in the late Nineties and she was put on a two year waiting list to have them taken away, but at least she had hope and they were going to be got rid of free of charge.

I do not know of anyone else that has eye problems except myself. I could not get my specs clean one day and then a friend said he saw a white spot in one of my eyes. He took me to the hospital and the optician stated that I had ‘premature senile cataracts’.

Well, I live in Thailand now and he did not say those exact words. He told me that the cataracts were because I was prematurely senile.

I asked him if that was what he really meant; he looked it up in a book and we both had a hearty laugh about it, although he never really corrected himself.

My condition turned out to be a little bit more problematic than only cataracts, but when I went from the local hospital to a major hospital in Pattaya, the doctor saw me within 30 minutes and asked me if I wanted the cataracts taken away.

I said that I did and she was willing to do the operation there and then. I had it postponed for 24 hours, but she would have sorted my eye out that day in a 30 minute operation, which does not need anaesthetic. I think that that was wonderful.

We have come a long way from routinely seeing blind people on the street and putting up with cataracts through a two-year waiting list to immediate removal of cataracts by laser surgery in 40-50 years.

At least we have in the West and in the East too, if you have the money. There are still millions of people in Asia and particularly in Africa suffering blindness and partial blindness for the sake of an simple 30 minute operation.

Two weeks after my surgical treatment, my other eye started to cloud over. It was as if it had been holding on with its last scrap of strength until I got his mate sorted out.

I had that one done last year and when I was permitted to take off my patch and look about me with two decent eyes again for the first time in a decade, I could not believe that I had forgotten how bright the world really is and that I had not noticed how dingy my world had gotten.

If you are worried about an eye operation, do not be. What you will experience once you can see properly again will make all the worry seem ridiculous and if you get the opportunity to give someone their vision back, please do it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, and is now involved with 500 Delicious Diabetic Recipes. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Easy Diabetic Meals

Extensive variation occurs in this fruit. Some cantaloupes are large yet others are small; some have pink or yellow flesh yet others have white or light-green flesh. The flesh of these fruits contains a large amount of water; therefore, their food value is not high, being only a little over half as much as that of apples.

If melons good enough for the table are desired, they ought to be chosen with care. To be just at the right stage, the blossom end of the melon ought to be a little soft when pressed with the fingers. If it is very soft, the melon is perhaps too ripe; but if it does not give with pressure, the melon is still young.

Various ways of serving cantaloupes exist. When they are to be served natural as a breakfast food or a lunch dessert, cut them crosswise into halves, or, if they are large, divide them into sections lengthwise.

With the melons cut in the desired way, remove all the seeds but keep the melons on ice until they are to be served. The pulp of the melon may also be cut from the rind yet then diced and used in the making of fruit salads.

Again, the pulp can be partly scraped out of the melon and the rinds then packed with fruit mixtures and served with a salad dressing for a salad or with fruit juices for a cocktail. The pulp that is scraped out may be diced and used in the fruit mixture.

Recipe 1

FRUIT IN CANTALOUPE SHELLS

During cantaloupe season, a delightful fruit salad can be made by combining a number of different types of fruit with the flesh of cantaloupe and serving the mixture in the cantaloupe shells. Such a salad is a fantastic one to serve if light refreshments are desired or when something unusual is required for a light lunch.

Cut cantaloupes in half crosswise, but, using the French cutter, cut some of the meat into round balls. Dice the remainder and mix with any combination of fruit desired. Place this in the cantaloupe shells after cutting points in the top edge. Garnish with the balls cut from the cantaloupe but serve with any desired dressing. You can also sprinkle nuts on top to add a variation of textures.

Recipe 2

FRESH FRUIT COMPOTE

1 cup fresh blueberries 1 cup fresh strawberries, halved 1 cup sliced fresh peaches, peeled 1 cup fresh blackberries or raspberries 1 cup watermelon balls 1 cup cantaloupe balls 1 cup seedless grapes 1/2 cup sparkling wine (or sweet) wine, chilled 2 tbs thawed orange juice, frozen, concentrated, undiluted

Mix together all of the fruit in a large glass or ceramic bowl then gently stir to mix. Add the orange juice and wine and lightly toss again. Chill with a cover on it for at least 20 minutes. Mix again lightly before serving.

Recipe 3

ERDBEER BOWLE (Strawberry Wine Punch)

1/2 pt strawberries, stemmed, rinsed, cut in half 1 tbs granulated sugar 1/2 bottle German Riesling, well chilled 1 tbs brandy (preferably Alsbach Uralt) 1/2 bottle German Sekt well chilled

Bowle is a typical German party wine punch. During the month of May, throughout Germany, bowle is served flavoured with fresh woodruff (Waldmeister), a sweet scented herb with white flowers, which grows particularly well in wooded yet shady areas away from hot sun. Later, during strawberry season, bowle is made with strawberries which grow abundantly everywhere. As German summer season progresses, bowle is willing with other fruits like peaches, chunks of juicy watermelon, cubes of bright orange cantaloupe, or plump raspberries.

Place the strawberries in a substantial covered glass jar (a sun tea jar will be fine), sprinkle them with sugar and drizzle them with the brandy. Set them aside to marinate for two hours to permit the sugar to draw out the juice from the berries.

Add white wine, stir, and set aside for two further hours. When finished to serve, pour into a punch bowl. Add Sekt then serve chilled in wide champagne style glasses, making sure to distribute strawberries with the wine.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on a variety of topics, but is at present concerned with Recipes to Lower Your High Blood Pressure. If you want to know more, go to our web site at Gourmet Recipes and Good Health.

Bread can also be a decent source of dietary fibre and once you have eaten real bread, you will never go back to white, sliced, supermarket bread. In fact, it is the white sliced bread that gives bread such a dire name.

These recipes are meant to be mixed and baked in a bread cooking machine, but they can be mixed by hand as well. I have used a bread making machine for years, but I used to prepare it by hand, and I can honestly say that I can not tell the difference between them.

Furthermore, the machine saves a great deal of time and because it cooks on a timer, you can wake up to warm bread every morning, if you want.

Recipe 1

Celery Bread

1 package yeast 1/4 teaspoon ginger 1/4 teaspoon sugar 3 cups Better for Bread flour 1/2 cup Quick-cooking oats 2 tablespoons Gluten 2 teaspoons Celery seeds 1 1/2 teaspoons Celery, Garlic or Onion salt 3/4 cup Celery — fresh/slice thin 1 tablespoon Celery leaves, fresh / chopped 1 Egg 10 3/4 ounces cream of celery soup 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 3 tablespoons warm low-fat milk

Combine all ingredients and bake

Recipe 2

Citrus Bread

2/3 cup water 2 cups white bread flour 1 teaspoon dry milk 2 teaspoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon butter 2 tablespoons orange marmalade 2 teaspoons lime juice 1 pinch lemon peel 2 teaspoons yeast (active, dry)

Mix all ingredients and cook.

Recipe 3

Chart House Squaw Bread

1 1/4 cups warm water 2 tablespoons molasses 1/2 teaspoon caramel coloring * — optional. 1 1/2 teaspoons malted barley flour ** 2 cups bread flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup unprocessed bran or wheat bran 1/4 cup dark brown sugar (3 TB) 1 1/2 tablespoons oatbran 1 1/2 tablespoons rolled oats 2 teaspoons granola 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast (1 envelope)

Oil and / or butter are not needed.

* Caramel colouring is just used to give the bread an almost pumpernickel colour. You can get it in a cake decorating store . ** The malted barley flour is also known as diastatic malt powder.

In a bowl combine bread flour, whole wheat flour, unprocessed bran, dark brown sugar, oatbran, rolled oats, granola, malted barley flour yet salt.

In bread pan add water, molasses, and caramel colouing. Add flour mixture; top with yeast and pick dark bread setting.

NOTE: Raisins could be added if desired. If you do, do not add the caramel colouring but blend the water, 1/4 cup raisins, molasses and brown sugar before adding to the machine.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a variety of topics, but is at present concerned with Recipes to Lower Your High Blood Pressure. If you want to know more, go to our website at Gourmet Recipes and Good Health.

There are different ways to attacking this problem of being unhealthy and some of the reason for this depends on why you are unhealthy and some of it on your personal approach to things. For instance, some people will know that they have got into an unhealthy rut and will make lifestyle changes like exercising more and eating more healthily, whereas others will buy a load of pills and hope that they work.

Then there is the middle road. We are busy and we do not all have an hour a day to spend at the gym and some of us could not work out even if we wished to. So, the middle way, might be to exercise as frequently as you can by hiking or practicing yoga at home; eating more healthy food, that is foodstuff that you can eat raw or that you cook yourself and by taking a few supplements.

Which supplements might you decide on? Well, that actually depends on your diet. There is not much point in taking calcium tablets if you eat cheese sandwiches for lunch, a T-bone steak for dinner and drink milk every day, but there might be a decent reason for taking calcium supplements if you are a vegan.

I have a friend who will not eat vegetables and especially greens, but, knowing that his diet lacks roughage amongst other things, he eats porridge for breakfast and snacks on fruit. Another friend hates fish, he cannot even look at it, but he is aware of the value of omega 3 essential fatty acids and so he takes it in the form of capsules. He almost certainly gets more omega 3 than I do and I love fish.

So, the first thing to do is note down everything that you eat for a week or two and then analyze what is lacking in your diet. The analysis might be above you, although it probably is not, but you could take your diary or food to your medical doctor or dietitian. It might surprise you a lot to find out exactly what you eat during a week.

As a point of interest, the majority of rural Thais do not eat beef or produce cheese or drink milk, so over the centuries they have added small bones to their diet. In the West if we get a small bone in our mouth, we tend to remove it, but a Thai will crunch it to tiny pieces and swallow it – fish bones, small bird bones, frogs bones. Not only does it replace the missing calcium but it keeps their teeth strong in a country that is only just developing dentistry for the masses.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of subjects, and is now concerned with pure omega 3. If you want to know more, please visit our site at Omega 6 9

However, it is vital to strive to reduce your blood pressure, also called hypertension, before you go on tablets. Lots of people are of the belief that once your body relies on medication to moderate its hypertension, you will never be able to wean yourself off the tablets. This is what my GP told me. Therefore, if it goes against your personal philosophy to take tablets, now is the time to do something about it.

The first thing to do is quit smoking and if you regularly drink too much alcohol, to cut back on that too, as both actions will have the effect of raising your blood pressure. Adopting these measures will also have knock-on effects for the remainder of your body. You will be fitter in general by not smoking at all and not drinking very much.

The next thing to do is to raise your level of daily activity. Do you take any exercise at all? If not, you will be surprised at how much two thirty-minute sessions of light exercise will help. Walk for thirty minutes in the morning and evening or replace one walk for thirty minutes gardening or swimming.

Diet is another manner of beating off the hypertension tablets. Salt, or sodium as it is often referred to, is a major cause of hypertension, usually because it encourages water retention. So, cutting back on salt or following a sodium depleted diet can have a major impact on your blood pressure.

Try substituting something else for salt: more pepper, a mixture of some other herbs or just leave it out altogether. After a couple of weeks you will not notice, except that everyone else’s cooking will taste really heavily over-salted! I did this quite successfully.

Add more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet, because that will also reduce your hypertension. Eating less fat and red meat will also help. Stress is a main factor in hypertension, try to relax a bit more and possibly take up meditation or yoga.

If you are on medication, it is possible that the drugs are increasing your blood pressure. If you think that this may be true, take your drugs to the doctor and seek his opinion. You might be able to substitute some of them. Some of the drugs that can have an undesirable effect are: oral contraceptives, steroids, anti-depressants and cold / flu treatments.

You will notice that many of these methods for reducing your (possible) hypertension are related, so if you are an over-weight, inactive smoker who likes a drink, you can do a great deal by remedying that and your pressure will fall and you will become healthier in other ways too.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with work on the cause of high blood pressure. If you want to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at High Blood Pressure Recipes.

The absolute importance of Omega 3 essential fatty acids really came to light in the 1970’s when a group of Danish scientists discovered than Inuits in Greenland had a far lower rate of cardiovascular issues than Europeans and Americans, despite eating a diet high in fat.

However, the dissimilarity between the diets was that the Inuits derived their fat from sea creatures whereas the other nationalities derived theirs from land animals. The significance of Omega 3 essential fatty acids was established

Once that original research had been verified, other tests on the same topic were carried out by other groups and they all confirmed the significance of Omega 3 essential fatty acids in our diets. These substances help prevent heart disease, cancer, diabetes and macular degeneration and will also alleviate these conditions if you did not find out about them until it was ‘too late’.

Our main source of Omega 3 essential fatty acids is oily fish like tuna, salmon and mackerel fish and other sea foodstuffs. Research backs up the age-old old wives’ tale that fish is brain food. It really is, but it also goes further than that. Omega 3 can help stave off many of the so-called age-related complaints like memory loss apart from the ones already mentioned above.

Some research has also indicated that a deficiency in Omega 3 in children may lead to learning disorders like hyperactivity and attention disorders. There could also be a relationship to dyslexia. Other disorders that are more certainly linked to a shortage of Omega 3 are depression, some allergies and arthritis. This means that expectant mothers ought to be watchful of their intake of Omega 3.

This fish oil has also been seen to reduce the seriousness of high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. It also seems to have a beneficial, anti-aging effect on the skin and wrinkles if taken internally as part of a healthy, balanced diet. Most dietitians would recommend eating oily fish twice per week, but that does not mean that you cannot ingest it in capsules.

It is important to see Omega 3 in relation to other essential fatty acids like omega 6. Omega 6 and omega 3 vie for the same position in our systems and that place is only so big. If you eat too much omega 3, omega 6 cannot get a look in and vice-versa. It is a broad topic, so you are advised to do more research or take the advice of a dietitian.

However, before you believe everything that they say, ask about the interaction of omegas 3 and 6 and see what they have to say.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, and is now concerned with pure omega 3. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Omega 6 9