Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes – Seven Tips to Cook Beans and Peas

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(article by Albertin Abemont)

A large number of vegetarian slow cooker recipes contain beans or peas in their ingredients. This is because it favors the cooking of beans and peas like no other. Most of the beans, except chickpeas and soybeans, become tender in a slow cooker within 6 to 8 hours of cooking, provided they are presoaked. Black-eyed peas, lentils, and red lentils cook quickly. You need not presoak them either. Chickpeas are stubborn beans. They need about 12 hours to get tender in a slow cooker. Also, you need to presoak them the night before.

The time peas and beans take to cook depends on the working of your crock pot, the freshness of the beans or peas, and the hardness of the water. The type of recipe may also influence the cooking time. That’s why vegetarian slow cooker recipes using beans have different cooking times.

Tips for Cooking Vegetarian Crock Pot Recipes With Beans or Peas

• Add spices, especially tomatoes and salt, only after the beans are tender.
• Slow cooking the beans and peas intensifies their flavor. You may need lesser amount of spices to enrich the dish than that required in regular cooking.
• You can cut 2 to 3 hours of the cooking time if you pour boiling water with beans.
• When cooking beans or peas, setting the time on a digital timer is not required. If there is sufficient cooking water in the crock pot, it’s unlikely that the peas or beans will overcook. Start your slow cooker early in the morning, and forget it until dinner time!
• For cooking plain beans, it’s best to cook them in the crock pot overnight. In the morning, you can have a healthy breakfast of freshly cooked beans or peas, combined with freshly cut salad or cheese. You can keep aside some cooked beans for preparing healthy slow cooker recipes for supper.
• If you’re present at home while cooking, do this: Set the cooker at high in the first 2 to 3 hours of cooking beans or peas. Then, set at low for the remaining time.
• When preparing bean stews and soups, sauté the onions and spices in oil before putting them in the crock pot. This adds to the flavor of the vegetarian recipes.

Beans and peas make for such fantastic vegetarian slow cooker recipes that you may never feel the need to add meat or other such animal-based foods to the recipe. There are a variety of peas and beans to create savory and purely vegetarian dishes. Whether it’s green peas, chick peas, split peas, or kidney beans, soybeans, and others, it helps in putting together a tantalizing dish at the end of a hard day.

If your kids hate beans or refuse to eat peas, introduce a crock pot in your kitchen. Watch the eating habits of your kid change! The tasty vegetarian slow cooker recipes will teach your kid to savor plant-based ingredients with delight.

The yeahtips.com offers a collection of yummy vegetarian slow cooker recipes that are easy to prepare. To get a variety of healthy slow cooker recipes, log on to the site.

(article by Albertin Abelmont)

Chia Seeds Health Benefits for Vegetarians

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(article by Alex Amari)

Vegetarians, Omega-3, and Chia Seeds

In this article, you will learn what omega-3 fatty acids are, why you need them, and how you can be vegetarian and still attain optimum levels of omega-3 in your body. (Hint: we will be talking a lot about chia seeds health benefits!)

Omega-3 fatty acids are not produced or synthesized by the body, but we need them to maintain an option level of fitness, health and well-being. They are crucial for normal metabolism. Research shows a link between omega-3 consumption and lowered risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer.

Many people eat fish, which are extremely high in these fatty acids. However, if you are vegetarian or vegan, you don’t eat fish and will not be able to get your omega-3 fatty acids in this way. Many people take fish oil supplements if they do not eat fish, but obviously, this is also out for vegetarians and vegans.

Problem: how can vegetarians get enough omega-3 fatty acids to stay healthy?

Solution: chia seeds.

Health benefits of chia include omega-3. In fact, this ancient seed is the highest plant-based source of omega-3 fatty acids! No small feat considering it’s up against such omega-3 powerhouses such as flax, radish seeds, bok choi, and spinach.

Even if you are not vegetarian, you may prefer chia over fish oil supplements, as you can avoid that unpleasant fishy smell. Also, chia has dozens of other health benefits in addition to being high in omega-3 fatty acids.

In addition to omega-3, the other big thing that may interest vegetarians is that chia seeds health benefits include protein. As vegetarians we have to be careful to get enough protein through beans, tofu, vegetables, and pulses; chia is an easy way of making sure we get protein every day without fail, since it is so easy to add to whatever we are eating. Chia is a complete protein, which means it contains all 9 essential amino acids in the correct proportions for human consumption.

Adding chia health benefits to your vegetarian diet is easy. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Sprinkle chia over your breakfast cereal or stir it into porridge or pancake batter
  • Enjoy a fresh salad with chia salad dressing, or a sandwich using chia butter
  • Prepare your family’s favorite casseroles, stews, soups, or pies – just stir a handful of chia into the recipe, before or after cooking!

Looking for more ways to add chia seeds health benefits into your vegetarian diet? There are literally hundreds.

For free chia seeds recipes, visit Chia Seeds Health Benefits, a website dedicated to providing you with tutorials, articles, tips, and where you can buy chia seeds inexpensively.

(article by Alex Amari)

Candles – Romantic Treats or Health and Environmental Hazards?

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(article by Kit Cassingham)

Has it occurred to you that all the festivity, relaxing and romancing you get from the candles you use could be harming your health and the health of those who frequent your hotel or B&B? The wax of most candles is made from petroleum, so burning it is like having a tiny diesel engine running right in beside you. And the wicks on standard candles often contain lead cores — not a good thing to breathe while your candle burns. Scents used in most perfumed candles have impacts on health too. Sorry to bring you down like that, however, I do have some healthy alternatives to suggest.

Environmentally friendly candles are generally a healthy candle alternative. The three options to consider are beeswax candles, 100 percent soy candles, and palm oil candles. You will love these candles for a lot of reasons including:

  • they burn clean(er)
  • when they drip of spill, the wax is easier to clean up
  • burn time is longer
  • brighter flames
  • renewable resources

Candles have provided light for over five thousand years. Originally they were made from animal fat and produced a lot of smoke and order (stench by today’s standards). Beeswax candles have been around for a long time. Beeswax candles made their entrance onto the scene in the Middle Ages and stayed popular until electric light took over the job of lighting the way in the early 1900s. It’s interesting to see how candles have evolved throughout the years.

There have always been issues around burning candles, not counting the open flame hazards. Environmentally friendly candles have their own issues of some sort or another. There are several issues that are important in this discussion.

  1. GM (Genetically Modified) crops: It is important to take into consideration the effects of genetically modified crops’ effects on the environment and agriculture. This is mostly associated with soy candles.
  2. Distillation Process: Are chemicals used, or steam?
  3. Plantation Crops: Plantation crops can threaten rain forests because they eliminate biodiversity, degrade soil, as well as bringing up issues of land rights and local peoples’ rights. Palm oil plantations can be culprits here.
  4. Chemicals: Are pesticides or herbicides used?

So it seems you change one issue for another — health of people versus potential environmental harm. Seems like a bad trade in a lot of ways, doesn’t it? In my opinion, no it’s not as bad as it looks if you make the right changes.

Beeswax candles are expensive enough that most hospitality venues probably won’t buy them, so I’m going to ignore them in the balance of this discussion. That leaves plantation (palm oil) and GM (soy) issues.

I believe that GM crops are a serious threat to agriculture and future food sources. When seeds of GM crops are sterile, not able to be used for future crops, this forces us to rely on the companies that created those plants, creating food monopolies and potential reasons for more strife. So I see GM as an important and easy issue to avoid — don’t buy things that are made from GM crops.

Most soy is a GM crop. I can reduce, even a little bit, the demand for that GM crop by not buying soy candles. And since most soy candles are a blend of petroleum and soy, it’s an even better reason to add soy candles to my list of products to avoid buying. I urge you to do the same. Palm oil, not being a GM crop, makes good sense here.

Then there is the distillation issue. Choosing steam distillation over chemical distillation seems like a no-brainer to me. Both cost and damage are increased by relying on chemical distillation, leaving steam distillation the clear winner in my mind. That again points to palm oil as the preferred ingredient for candles. Soy requires chemical distillation, making it again a less than desirable option.

What about plantations and the problems they cause? Indeed, this is a big issue. But it’s getting easier to support programs that don’t put pressure on people to cut down rain forests to monocrop plants that they think will make them more money. Saving the rain forests is vital for many reasons. So how can we avoid encouraging more damage?

In the case of palm oil plantations, it’s done through the Green Palm Sustainability program. This is a certificate trading program designed to tackle the environmental and social problems created by the production of palm oil, kind of like Carbon Credits help reduce carbon damage on the planet. It’s based on the principle that the best way to encourage people to work in a sustainable way is to reward them for doing so. The Green Palm Sustainability program is endorsed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Another plus to using palm oils is that they are a highly efficient oil producer. About 50 percent of a palm fruit is oil, which means it takes less land (ten times less according to some sources I read) than other oil-producing crops. With soy and palm oils making up about 60 percent of the world’s production of oil crops, properly managed palm plantations can increase the supply of healthy candles without harming the environment and ecosystems where they are grown.

Pesticide and herbicide use is another concern with some oil crop production. Soy is a heavy user of these chemicals. Oil palms are not.

My research has lead me to believe that buying palm oil candles of certified sustainable palm oil are environmentally friendly. Certified sustainable palm oil is produced at palm oil plantations which have been independently audited, and found to comply with the globally agreed upon environmental standards devised by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Their standards have stringent sustainability criteria that include good social, environmental, and economic practices. The proceeds from Green Palm certificate sales encourage plantations to continually strive for improvements that ultimately lead to an increase in the production of sustainable palm oil with social, environmental and economic benefits to them and their communities.

Part of being a green hospitality business is paying attention to the 3Ps (People, Profit, Planet) of sustainability, at your property and with the suppliers you use and the products you buy. Buying palm oil candles from companies that have the Green Palm Sustainability seal is another easy step you can take toward your efforts of sustainability.

Get greener by buying unscented, palm oil candles and improve your health and that of your guests. Use dinner candles, and candles for any situation that you and your guests want to be more special.

Kit Cassingham, Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer of Sage Blossom Consulting, is a hospitality consultant to the B&B and hotel industries, and has been since 1988. Her focus includes market niche, and sustainable and green operations. Kit is the “go to” person when you want to improve your hospitality business. Learn more at http://www.SageBlossom.com