Kategorie: English Articles

Alex is cooking @ July 7th & 8th

Join Alex and her crew for a long table pop-up dinner in an industrial warehouse in Zurich. Due to the special location, space will be limited!

Two dates to keep in mind, Friday 7th and Saturday 8th July. The 5 course tasting menu will be entirely plant-based and will feature locally grown and organic ingredients. The main concept of this pop-up is to introduce you to a different gastronomic experience that she hope will be as inspiring to you as it was for Alex. She will be partnering with amazing people that she can’t wait to introduce you to.

Alexiscooking is actually her Instagram account where it all started. You can follow her adventures there and see what up to the last few months. alexiscooking

LOCATION

Kreis 2 in Zurich.

TWO DAYS AVAILABLE
Friday 7th & Saturday 8th July 2017, at 7pm.

COST
CHF 85 for the 5 course tasting menu and a few more surprises. The payment will be done in advance via TWINT/PAYMIT. Wines and drinks will be charged on consumption at the event.

RESERVATION
If you want to book, please use the „Going“ button in Facebook or email her the date you want to join, your name and phone number at hello@eatbyalex.com. She will confirm your spot with further details about the location. 

..And invite your friends to that next upcoming plant-based event, please!

 

Magic Tea

Right now in the spring, we should thoroughly clean our body so that your bikini figure can score in the summer. A glass of hot water immediately after getting up in the morning early brings your entire system in a motion. Refined with these fruity citrus fruits, this will make a really delicious magic drink for the best start into the day. In addition, the fresh ginger brings warmth into your body and wakes you up. The fresh peppermint helps you for a pleasant breathe. Drink this tea over the day again and again and especially after too much coffee: it is a super rehydration for your body.

Use for the preparation of this tea different citrus fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, lemons or limes and cut some tranches fresh ginger and add this extra into the tea. Some leaves of fresh peppermint can be added after the pouring. Please ensure that the citrus fruits, the ginger and also the fresh peppermint are bought in organic quality so that you can use the peel of fruits for the tea without any thought of pestiziede. A physical detoxification of the heavy winter food is now no longer in the way, because summer bodies are made in the spring!

Mushroom Pumpkin Quiche

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Ingredients

1 homemade or pre-made pie crust

3 russet potatoes, medium-sized

3 sweet potatoes, small and long

1 medium pumpkin

1 tbsp roasted sesame oil + more for green onions

4 green onions, chopped

1 tsp olive oil

1 lb silken tofu

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp curry powder

3-5 mushrooms, sliced

salt and pepper to taste

Optional Garnish:

1 tbsp finely sliced green onion

one hand full of chanterelles

a few leaves of  fresh chervil

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 300°F/150°C.

Crust:

Gently lay pie dough on ungreased 9-inch glass or ceramic pie or quiche plate and shape by pressing firmly against sides and bottom. If using a pre-made crust, roll it up and re-roll into the plate. Lightly prick the surface and edges with a fork. Pre- bake the dough for 10 minutes. While baking, prepare filling.

Filling:

Peel the potatoes and the sweet potatoes. Cut the potatoes into narrow slices.

Cut the pumpkin in half vertically. Discard the stem. Remove the seeds with a spoon, then cut into medium cubes. 

Steam the potatoes and pumpkin in a steam basket for 10-15 minutes. After steaming, rinse the vegetables with cold water or place in a cold water bath to halt the cooking process. Remove skin from pumpkin.

Place vegetables on a baking sheet. Drizzle with roasted sesame oil and mix together. Bake 10-15 minutes in the oven at 350°F/180°C.

Cut the green onions into long, narrow slices. Sauté in frying pan with a dash of sesame oil for about 3 min. Season with salt and generous pepper.

In a blender, combine the silken tofu, turmeric, curry powder, olive oil, and salt. After completely blended, add the sautéed green onions and pulse once more.

Now everything comes together:

Place the steamed pumpkin pieces in the dough first. Top with the blended silken tofu mixture. Evenly place the mushrooms, potatoes, and sweet potatoes on top of the filling. Bake the quiche until golden brown at 350°F/180°C for about 10-15 minutes or until the filling has set in the middle.

Optional Garnish:

While the quiche is baking, mix the chanterelles and the green onions in a small pan. Drizzle with olive oil.  When quiche is removed from oven, garnish with the chervil. Serve the quiche warm together with chanterelles and enjoy!

VAUTE

Sie sehen gerade einen Platzhalterinhalt von Youtube. Um auf den eigentlichen Inhalt zuzugreifen, klicken Sie auf die Schaltfläche unten. Bitte beachten Sie, dass dabei Daten an Drittanbieter weitergegeben werden.

Mehr Informationen

Vegan fashion designer Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart of VAUTE shares her insider tips for finding animal-friendly clothing and accessories.

The Hermès Birkin bag is no longer timeless

Sie sehen gerade einen Platzhalterinhalt von Youtube. Um auf den eigentlichen Inhalt zuzugreifen, klicken Sie auf die Schaltfläche unten. Bitte beachten Sie, dass dabei Daten an Drittanbieter weitergegeben werden.

Mehr Informationen

Those bags made by Hermès and Prada, which are “status symbols” for wealthy customers willing to part with thousands of pounds for a single ostrich-skin accessory. The origin of the leather used for these “luxury” handbags would shock even the most hardened fashionistas.

South Africa – where these intelligent, sensitive animals are intensively farmed for their skins – is the ostrich-killing capital of the world. The farm featured in this PETA US investigation is the exclusive supplier of the infamous Hermès Birkin bags. Investigators saw juvenile birds tightly packed into open-topped vehicles for the terrifying journey to slaughter.

Once the animals reach the abattoir, workers forcibly restrain them, electrically stun them and then cut their throats. Moments later, the feathers are torn from the birds’ still-warm bodies, and they are then skinned and dismembered. Wild ostriches can live for around 40 years, but on these farms, they are slaughtered when they’re just 1 year old to be turned into fashion accessories.

Read more here.

Please go cruelty free and shop for example here your new Handbag

 

 

In her Shoes

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“Even though Stella McCartney’s brand is not a 100% vegan and cruelty free, she is still the one that made me go vegan thanks to a video about the leather industry in India she produced with PETA. And to the great displeasure of my wallet, she is my favorite leather-free shoe designer ever since I adopted a vegan lifestyle almost 2 years ago.“

Bildschirmfoto 2016-04-04 um 17.00.39Mona Diederich schreibt für uns einen englischen Gastblog-Beitrag über vegane Schuhe. Ihr Instagram Profil ist mona_ttitude.

Als ich ihr Profil eindeckte habe und ihre offensichtliche Hingabe, Begeisterung und Liebe zu veganen Schuhen sehen konnte, wollte ich nicht anders und bat sie um einen Beitrag auf unserem Blog.

Wie bedanken uns ganz herzlich für den super Artikel- Viel Spass beim lesen und recherchieren! 

 

What is wrong with leather?

To be vegan, shoes have to be free of any animal products and by-products, the most obvious one being leather.

Many people happily wear leather on the grounds that it is a by-product of animal slaughter for meat consumption and therefore using it is considered as being a form of recycling or waste limitation. But it also brings the meat farmers huge additional revenues and therefore supports the meat industry. Furthermore not all leather comes from grown-up cows that get killed to be transformed into steaks. The fashion industry also uses:

  • leather from animals that won’t get eaten (one of the biggest leather producing country is India, where cows don’t get eaten);
  • exotic leathers (crocodile, ostrich, snake);
  • leather from animals that occidental cultures consider as pets (dog);
  • leather from animals that are not born yet (unborn calves make very soft and expensive leather).

Not only is leather accountable for the miserable lives and horrific deaths of millions of animals every year, it also comes with a high environmental impact. Used as such, the hides would just rot. In order to avoid this natural decomposition, the protein structure of the leather gets transformed through an incredibly toxic process called tanning, which requires a lot of water and uses products like chrome. In most of the leather production countries, the wastewater just gets dumped untreated into the next river or the next sea, killing the ecosystems and causing diseases in the surrounding population.

 

What else should be taken into consideration?

 

Glues

Next to leather, most shoes contain an invisible animal product: animal-based glues(bone glue). It is almost impossible to know if a pair of shoes contains animal-based glues, as this information does not get mentioned on the product descriptions. The only solution is either to ask the brand you are interested in and hope to get an honest and  unambiguous answer if an answer at all, or to rely on brands that publicly commit not to use such glues.

Dyes

Even though most shoes are made with synthetic dyes, some brands may color their shoes with inks and dyes derived from animals.

 

Where to find vegan & cruelty free shoes?

When going vegan I promised the shoe-addict I was to stay fashionable and to show people around me that being stylish and vegan at the same time is possible. Because I believe that inspiring people is the best way to convince them. And because I did not want to walk around in flip-flops and in rubber boots.

There are basically 3 options when looking for vegan shoes:

Buying manmade material based shoes from well established brands like H&M , Zara, Nike or Adidas

The advantage is that you can find those almost everywhere but the drawbacks are numerous:

  • excepted if you ask the brand, you usually won’t know what type of glue they use;
  • the materials used for faux-leather options might not smell very nicely and usually don’t allow your feet to breathe properly;
  • the production conditions might be as polluting as for leather;
  • those big brands mainly produce in countries like China, Bangladesh or India, where the working conditions can be close to slavery and imply child labor.

Buying from vegan & cruelty free brands

10 or even 5 years ago this might still have been a challenge, but nowadays there is an increasing offer on the market for the vegan shoe lover.

Brands like Beyond Skin, Bourgeois Bohemes or Nicora to name only a few (longer list at the bottom of this post) sell vegan, cruelty free, mostly ethically produced and sustainable, high quality, waterproof, breathable and fashionable shoes.

The only issue is that they are still mainly available online and any Swiss resident knows that importing goods to Switzerland can get expensive, mainly if the item does not fit and has to be sent back.

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Vegan & cruelty free shoe brands

(alphabetical order – non-exhaustive )

Bahatika

Bambi and tramp

BC footwear (not a 100% vegan, but with many vegan options)

Beyond Skin

Bhava

Bourgeois Boheme

Brooks (running shoes)

ByBlanch

Cosi Cosi

Cri de Coeur

Fritzi aus Preussen (partly available on Zalando and on About You)

Good guys don’t wear leather

Gurus (specialized in flip-flops)

Insecta Shoes

Kagui

Lulus (not a 100% vegan, but with many vegan options)

Melissa

Mizuno (sport shoes)

NAE

NAK

Neura Shoes

Newton (running shoes)

Noah

Nicora

Olsen Haus

Pammies (Pamela Anderson’s brand of vegan “Uggs”)

Stella McCartney

The No Animal Brand (Swiss brand available at Jelmoli and The Gallery Shop)

Vegetarian Shoes

Wills vegan shoes

 

Multi brand online shops (alphabetical order – non-exhaustive)

Avesu (based in Germany)

Moo Shoes (based in the US)

V-Angle (based in Switzerland)

 

Additional useful links

Collonil (natural shoe care products)

 

 

 

 

Macrobiotic Ramen Soba Soup

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Ingredients

1 Tsp. fresh ginger

1/2 onion

1/2 pice of garlic

or 1 Tsp. vegetable  bouillon & misou & the chopped ginger (1 Tsp.)

Tamari Raw Sojasauce

a few miso-glazed baby carrots

1 carrot

1/2 zuchetti

1 big leaf herb stalk

on hand full organic soba

one hand full whole grain Koshihikari Rice

 

Topping

whole grain sesame

dried and small chopped  AoNori

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Ramen broth

start with the broth: Ramen broth can be made many different ways, but to keep ours vegan-friendly we went with vegetable broth infused with ginger, onion and garlic. To add more depth and that “umami” flavor, I also added a bit of soy (or tamari) sauce and white miso paste. If you have no time to do the fresh broth, you just take some vegetable bouillon and miss-paste (half/half) and add only the small chopped ginger. While your broth simmers, prepare any desired toppings. When the broth is ready add miso-glazed carrots, zuchetti and herb stalk, but cook it in the broth only in the end, that ist still full of nutrition and stay aldente!

 

Koshihikari Rice (Japan Rice)

Cook the brown Koshihikari Rice (in your rice cooker).

Now cook the Soba:

 

Soba

These noodles are made from buckwheat flour and have a correspondingly strong, nutty flavor. Many buckwheat noodles also have some wheat flour in them, which means they’re not gluten-free. However, pure buckwheat soba can be found — it’s stronger in flavor and really delicious, and of course, gluten-free. We generally find dried soba in packets, but keep your eyes open for fresh organic Soba at Japan-Shop for example here in zurich (or make your own!). Dried soba looks like flat spaghetti and is usually light beige to dark brown-gray in color.

You generally cook these Soba noodles the same way you cook any other kind of pasta: in a large amount of salted boiling water until the pasta is al dente.

 

Finishing

For the finish you pour your ramen broth into a big bowl included the vegetable, add your soba-nudels and give a beautiful topping with the whole grain sesame dried and small chopped  AoNori.

We hope you all LOVE this hearty, satisfying, simple macrobiotic vegan Ramen Soba Soup!