Current Newsletter

Desejar você um feliz ano Novo.

Gosh! 2008 is done and what an extraordinary year, both globally and locally. Entering 2009 there seems to be a paradoxical mix of emotions swirling around hefty helpings of economic gloom and doom are curiously leavened by a smattering of optimism and hope that maybe the bursting of this credit bubble may actually prove something of a liberation. At the same time, if youre someone whose job or small business is on the line right now owing to the general belt tightening Ive no doubt its very hard to see the upside.

One things for sure, theres never been a better time to grow your own food and look more carefully at reducing your outgoings and monthly costs. And from what I have been reading from some of your supportive emails, a number of you are keen to give it a go. Empowering people with the skills and confidence to grow your own, as well as showing them how to harvest from the wild larder, is at the heart of the Projeto-Ahimsas approach to life.

In all of our workshops and practice sessions during 2008 and into 2009 weve been urging people to think hard about how they live their lives, where their food comes from and where their waste goes, and to take a little more personal responsibility for making it a more sustainable process. And weve also been trying to make it easier for people who want to grow their own food and live a more sustainable life to find ways to do it for themselves.

From the summer of this year we are launching our Workshop Calendar which will offer a range of workshops and work-experience periods aimed to help would be growers and self-sustainers learn the skills and gain confidence to sow and reap for themselves.

On our own patch of land here at Fonte de Baixo we have had a wonderful and productive year thanks to some good weather and rich fertile soil. We will start reconfiguring our-much loved website forum into an even more user-friendly online community we hope to be able to add your own profile where you will be able to add and share recipes, videos and pictures. You will also be able to read our team blogs, and, as ever, enthusiastically debate issues with the rest of the community.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the year ending is that so many of these things weve been up to in the past twelve months feel like tender little seedlings that are, with continued nurturing and a bit of luck, due to blossom and bear fruit in the coming year. Bruni is returning back to India on the 12^th to continue her studies in Ayerveda and Thai Yoga Massage. We wish her well and look forward to her future contributions to the newsletter.

Preview of 2009

As our Ahimsa-Portugal project expands, you can expect to see more and more of our talented friends and contributors running workshops and work-experience periods. We are still in the process of confirming dates but we hope to launch a series of Bread making workshops using both our wood-fired conventional oven and our clay-cob charcoal bread oven, together with a trio of Permaculture courses including Allotment and Urban Kitchen Gardening.

We will also be hosting a new course, An Introduction to Bee Keeping running throughout June. New courses for 2009/10 include, Dry Stone Walling and Reed Basket Weaving. You can email garriwiest@aol.com to be kept informed.     Pay a visit to our site (www.ahimsa-portugal.com/events) where we have posted a list of working break opportunities and a couple of workshops Bruni and I will be running early next year more to be added soon.

Ayurveda

Open the Dosha Questionnaire (PDF)

This month,   I want to look at Kapha dosha, which is the complete opposite of Vata. Kapha is a combination of earth and water; it is responsible for stability in the body and mind. Its characteristics are: heavy, cold, soft, unctuous, slow and stable.

People with more Kapha in their constitutions tend to be of larger proportions, with a robust frame and padded joints, thick smooth skin that may tend towards oiliness, and rich, wavy hair. They are stable and calm in thought, speech and action, and are easy-going and supportive in relationships. There is an element of steadiness to their step, a quality of serenity in their smile. They are loyal and reliable friends. They are long, heavy sleepers and uncomfortable in damp, clammy environments. Calm and sweetness of disposition are hallmarks of balanced Kapha.

Factors that can cause Kapha dosha to increase are a diet that contains too many deep-fried, sweet or heavy foods, over-consumption of ice-cold foods or beverages, exposure to cold and damp, daytime sleep, and lack of exercise.

Signs that you need to balance Kapha

• Are you gaining weight easily, even though you feel like you don't really have an appetite?
• Do you feel tired even though you are not performing any physical activity?
• Do you find it difficult to awake even after long hours of sleep? Do you wake up feeling un-refreshed and tired?
• Is your skin feeling oilier than usual with breakouts?
• Is your hair oily and streaky even with regular shampooing?
• Are you heavy and congested in your throat, head and chest?
• Is your digestion slow? Do you feel heavy and lethargic after a meal?
• Do you feel like you just want to sit and be a spectator?
• Do you feel withdrawn? Is it difficult to deal with change? Do you constantly feel the need to "cling"?
• Do you feel mentally unmotivated?

Lifestyle recommendations

The primary lifestyle recommendation for balancing Kapha is to get moving. Vigorous activities are ideal. For best results exercise every single day, but without overstraining. Badminton, tennis, jogging and aerobic exercises are good activity choices for balancing Kapha. Exercise in the morning if you can to get a good charge for the day ahead. Protect yourself from the damp and cold.

Add zest to your life by consciously incorporating variety and new experiences into your life. Travel, meet new people or try a new hobby to embrace change.

Do not skip meals as this slows down sluggish metabolism even more. Have a light breakfast. Eat a sustaining meal at lunch, and a lighter dinner.

Deep-cleanse oily skin twice a day to rid the skin of surface impurities and grime. Once a week, exfoliate your skin with a cleansing scrub. Shampoo your hair every other day at least with a gentle natural shampoo. At-home steam therapy and daily massage can help open clogged channels.

Go to bed early and get up early in the morning before sunrise. Do not indulge in daytime snoozes. 

Set aside about 30 minutes each day for meditation, to help balance the heart, mind and emotions and to enhance body-mind-spirit coordination.

Diet

Include a few dry foods in your daily diet to balance the oily nature of Kapha, foods that are nourishing but light to counter the heaviness of Kapha, and warm foods with a zing to balance the sweet, cold quality of Kapha.

The three ayurvedic tastes that help balance Kapha are pungent, bitter and astringent (tangy).  Eat less sweet, sour and salty tastes.

Avoid too many oily foods.

Eat light, warming foods. Clear vegetable soups with beans and diced vegetables, stews made with Kapha-balancing vegetables, bean casseroles, dhal soups and light grain/vegetable combinations are ideal for balancing Kapha, especially when combined with Kapha balancing spicessuch as turmeric, cumin, cardamom, coriander, fennel, dried ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, mint, saffron, dill, lime zest, nutmeg, cayenne, fenugreek, mustard seed, oregano, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, paprika, maces and cloves.

Stay away from too much salt to avoid fluid retention.

Honey in small quantities is the recommended sweetener

Dry cereal, salt-free crackers and rice cakes balance the liquid nature of Kapha dosha and make good snacks. However, eat snacks in moderation if you are trying to balance Kapha, and avoid sugary snacks.

Drink lots of warm water through the day to help flush toxins from the body.

Ahimsa-Kitchen

Whole food and wholesome food is very much part of our living experience. The fundamental aim of our Zen approach to cooking is to open up awareness in ourselves, a process that can be enhanced by choosing ingredients that match our evolution and support our individual needs.

Hearty Fonte de Baixo Soup

Serves 4

100g haricot beans, soaked overnight in boiling water and 5ml bicarbonate of soda or 1 x 410g can of beans
20ml olive oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1 large potato, finely diced
1 litre vegetable stock
30ml tomato paste
5ml dried basil
Salt and pepper to taste
100g green beans, sliced (we used those we froze in the summer)
Amarelo da Beira Baixo or Parmesan cheese

Gently fry the onions, carrots and potato in olive oil until softened.

Add garlic, stock, tomato paste and basil.

Simmer until thickened.

Add the haricot beans, followed by the green beans; adjust the seasoning and simmer for another 20 minutes.

Serve with freshly grated cheese.

Winter Layers

Serves 4 Give this stick-to-the-ribs filler a try, you will be pleasantly surprised by this unusually flavoured bed of vegetables, covered with a fluffy layer of golden grilled potato.

4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
125ml potato cooking liquid or milk
Salt and pepper to taste
2 onions, finely chopped
25g butter
400g chickpeas or butter beans
250gl sweet corn, tinned or fresh
250g frozen peas, thawed
80g smooth peanut butter
125ml of water or additional potato cooking liquid
15ml soy sauce
Paprika

Gently fry onions in butter.

Place potatoes in a large saucepan, and add just enough water to cover.

Boil for 15 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Drain the potatoes, reserving liquid.

Mash cooked potatoes with hot cooking liquid or milk, salt and onions.

Add additional liquid for desired consistency. Set aside.

Combine the chickpeas or beans, sweet corn and peas in a greased ovenproof dish.

In a separate bowl, whisk together peanut butter, water or cooking liquid, seasoning and soy sauce until smooth.

Pour over the vegetables.

Top with mashed potatoes and sprinkle with paprika. Dot with butter.

Bake at 180° C for 30 40 minutes, until top is crisp and golden.

Serve with a simple salad which contains some sweet ingredients like fruit.

Comforting Caramel Caramel, ginger and fruit sponge pudding

Serves 6-8

A traditional caramel sponge pudding which benefits from some creative additions like slivers of preserved ginger, dried apricots and chopped glace fruit.

250ml milk
15g butter
15g smooth apricot jam
1 medium egg
180g sugar
15 ml cider vinegar
250 g plain flour
5g bicarbonate of soda

Sauce

250ml of single cream
125ml milk
50g butter
125ml sugar

Combine the milk, butter and jam in a saucepan and heat to melt the butter and jam. Leave to cool. Whisk the egg and sugar together over a bowl of hot water until fluffy. Stir in the vinegar.

Sift the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the milk mixture and mix well. Then fold in the egg mixture lightly.

Add one of the following: 100g chopped preserved ginger, 250g chopped dried apricots or 250g mixed fruit cake fruit or glace fruit.. Pour the batter into a greased oven dish and bake at 165°C for 45 -55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Sauce

Combine the ingredients and boil over low heat for 5 minutes. As soon as the pudding is cooked, remove from the oven and prick the surface of the pudding with a skewer or fork. Spoon the sauce over and serve warm.

Sustainability Tip

One of the core values at Ahimsa-Portugal is that we try as much as possible to live and work with nature. We are very conscious of our foot print, not only the energy we use but across everything we do. Ahimsa means to do no harm or at least to minimise our impact as much as we can. Below are some of the ideas that we are putting into practice and perhaps you could try some of them too?

Permaculture is two things simultaneously. It is a discipline with a set of ethics and principles used in the same way we might practice yoga, Ayerveda or meditation. It also has practical means for achieving a move towards sustainable living. In both senses, it is something to be incorporated in all aspects of a healthy, caring and thoughtful approach to life. In earlier newsletters we tried to show how we need to get much better at using the suns energy, especially via plants, to help us travel down from the oil peak in a safe and prosperous way. In this and the next couple of newsletters we will cover some of the main techniques you can use or adapt for your journey down the mountain.

Permaculture as a toolkit for sustainable living

Growing food locally is an important part of permaculture, but permaculture is much more than this. It is a set of values and techniques to be incorporated into every part of your life, and a way of living as part of your community. You may live in the city or country; you may be young or old, new to the area of someone whose family have lived in your part for many generations. Through permaculture, you can develop a better sense of place that will help you meet your material and spiritual needs from the local area.

Permaculture designs are a success if they help us use less non-renewable resources. For example, recycle your grey water is useful, but not very useful if you continue to be a very high water user. A permaculture designed system will both recycle water and allow you to use less water in total. Recycling your bottles and cans is useful, but if you consume more each week, recycling is only helping to reclaim a small part of the resources you have used. A permaculture inspired system, with more food in your garden, home brew in the cellar and preserves in your pantry, means you will need less bottles and cans in total perhaps none! (It is our plan to build an earthship designed greenhouse using recycled car tyres and wine bottles in 2009/10.)

Reducing our eco-footprint

Even if we access sustainable fuel sources, it is important to change our high-consuming habits, otherwise we will use up all other resources and continue to destroy the remaining living systems on the planet, including human life. In most countries in the world, native vegetation such as forest and hedgerow continue to be lost as large scale agriculture pushes them out. Here in Portugal large scale Eucalyptus planting and logging is causing problems with forest fires, increased water usage and stale non-culture. Everything we consume has a knock-on effect elsewhere. Unless supplied locally, our requirements for food, transport, building materials and every other service damages the environment somewhere else.  

Although there are many new trees being planted around the world, these dont compensate for trees being lost each year through land clearing, let alone replace the trees cleared over the last two centuries. In the UK, where there is a greater area under trees than at any time for centuries, many of these are 1990s community plantings (still young trees) or they are conifer plantations. Fifty percent of ancient woodlands in northern Europe have been lost since the 1930s and it is in these old forests that bio-diversity is to be found. These huge and important areas of forest in own countries dont just disappear they have to be cut down to make money from the wood itself and to make way for certain types of agriculture, usually high energy agriculture using fossil fuels to supply remote markets. Making money isnt a bad thing, but making it is, if at the expense of our life blood. Eco foot printing is a simple starting point to assess your impact on the earth. You can work out your own footprint online at ww.myfootprint.org

Gardening Tip:

This is a new section. Each month we will give you some idea for growing fruit and vegetables from scratch. This is a time to plan your vegetable and fruit growing areas. The ground is cold and often wet so staying off it is the best thing to do this month. If you have a greenhouse or a warm window sill you could plant up some chillies and winter lettuce varieties. The best days for this would be:

Fruit i.e. chillies from 10.00am on the 9^th of Feb to 08.00pm on the 11^th of Feb. or from 10.00am on the 19^th of Feb. to 10.00pm on the 21^st of Feb.

Leaves i.e. lettuce from 07.00pm on the 16^th of Feb. to 09.00am on the 19^th of Feb.

The Bees

The bees are still snugly tucked up in their boxes. Last week when we had a warm day, I opened the boxes very quickly to see if they had enough stores to see them through for another month luckily, they did so I will leave them alone now until the end of February.

Beauty Tip:

To reduce sluggishness, which is setting in after the Christmas season, extend your morning routine to clear toxins from the body. Support the lymphatic system by brushing the skin with a soft brush before having a shower. Starting with the feet brush with circling movements towards the heart.

Warming Winter Body Oil

This fragrant oil enhances the circulation and keeps you warm.

In a small bottle mix together

100 ml of sesame or sweet almond oil
15 drops of Orange essential Oil
10 drops of Ginger essential Oil
6 drops of Cinnamon essential Oil
2 drops of Clove essential Oil

Massage this oil into your skin after a shower:

If you want to add anything to our newsletter, events, workshops, ideas or services for sale or trade, please dont hesitate to send them through and we are happy to add them to future newsletters. If you would like to go onto our newsletter list then please send an email to: info@ahimsa-portugal.com

From Projeto-Ahimsa and Fonte de Baixo -