Veg-licious May 2017

Kenya Vegetarian Club – Veg-licious- a monthly newsletter

Connecting People to Nature

This year the theme for World Environment Day on 5^th June is ‘Connecting people to nature’. Unless we move outdoors and see and feel the nature around us we will never be inspired to preserve the precious resources that are scattered all over this wide earth. Every year the 5^th of June is celebrated as World Environment Day all around the globe and it is a celebration and a thanksgiving for all that nature has bestowed upon us in her munificence. At the same time, it is also a day when we need to pause and take stock of the state of things. We are doing too little and too late. Unless corrective measures are taken on a war footing it would be irreversible damage done to our environment. Keeping all these in mind, the host country Canada has chosen the theme as Connecting People to Nature.

Ever since the observance of the day first began in 1972, people around the world have been taking part in many programs like cleaning the lakes and river bodies, preventing crime against wildlife, planting trees, neighborhood clean ups, campaigns, competitions, seminars and the like. It requires the combined effort of each and every one of us to conserve our environment and no effort can be dismissed as miniscule or insignificant. Nature’s gifts are priceless. It is hard to put a price on the resources but once we don’t get them then we realize its value.

Hence this year’s theme exhorts us to go out, savor nature in all its glory, take responsibility to protect it for it nurtures and nourishes us. It gives back manifold when compared to our efforts. Celebrate this environment day with your family, friends, community or fraternity. Go out, shake a leg, take a walk, run a mile or simply allow the gentle breeze to caress you as you spend time outdoors. It is time we learnt to value nature and her gifts and also learn how nature is the best teacher. Let us connect ourselves to nature, this environment day and every other single day.

The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved. – Richard Rogers

Easy Recipes for you

Vermicelli Upma

Upma is a breakfast dish that is popular in South India, Maharashtra and among Sri Lankan Tamils. It is known as upma, uppuma, uppeet or uppittu.

Ingredients

1 packet of store bought Indian vermicelli
water to boil the vermicelli
3 green chillies cut fine
A cup of finely cut vegetables like tomatoes, carrot, beans, capsicum
2 medium size onions cut fine
Pinch of turmeric powder & asafetida powder
1 tbsp of roasted peanuts
Salt to taste
A piece of ginger (skin to be taken out and then grated)
Curry leaves (5-6); cilantro for garnishing
Juice of 1 lemon
Some sev for garnishing (optional)
Three tbsps oil
1 tsp rai or Mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin or jeera; 1 tsp chana daal

Method Add oil in a big wok. After it becomes hot put mustard seeds, cumin, chana daal, peanuts. When they splutter put asafetida or hing pdr, curry leaves, green chillies, grated ginger.

Then add the onions. Saute till brown, add cut vegetables and cook till oil separates. Add turmeric pdr, salt.
Then add the vermicelli.
Pour water and cook till they mix well.
Garnish with cilantro and Sev.

News from the Veg World

Antarctic has seen widespread change in last 50 years, moss study reveals

This photograph shows Green Island moss bank with icebergs in background.

Credit: Matt Amesbury

In 2013, researchers studying mosses and microbes growing at the southern end of the Antarctic Peninsula documented unprecedented ecological change over the last 50 years, driven by warming temperatures. Now, the same research group has confirmed that those striking changes in the Antarctic are widespread, occurring all across the Peninsula. The findings appear in Current Biology on May 18.

“This gives us a much clearer idea of the scale over which these changes are occurring,” says lead author Matthew Amesbury of the University of Exeter. “Previously, we had only identified such a response in a single location at the far south of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now we know that moss banks are responding to recent climate change across the whole of the Peninsula.”

The Antarctic Peninsula is known to have been one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. Annual temperatures there have crept up about 0.5°C each decade since the 1950s. The researchers realized they could learn a lot about how rising temperatures have affected the ecology of the Peninsula by studying core samples taken from moss banks established more than 150 years ago.

In the new study, the researchers added an additional three sites and five cores to their earlier sample. Those sites include three Antarctic islands (Elephant Island, Ardley Island, and Green Island) where the deepest and oldest moss banks grow, representing a 600-kilometer transect along the Peninsula.

Careful analysis of those five cores going back 150 years showed increased biological activity as the Peninsula has warmed in the last 50 years. Those findings suggest that the Peninsula is undergoing fundamental and widespread change. Amesbury noted that the consistency of changes in the moss samples taken from different parts of the Peninsula was particularly striking.

There’s more to come, the researchers say. The sensitivity of mosses’ rate of growth in response to past temperature increases suggests that terrestrial ecosystems of the Antarctic Peninsula will continue to experience rapid change with future warming.

“Temperature increases over roughly the past half century on the Antarctic Peninsula have had a dramatic effect on moss banks growing in the region, with rapid increases in growth rates and microbial activity,” says Dan Charman, who led the research in Exeter. “If this continues, and with increasing amounts of ice-free land from continued glacier retreat, the Antarctic Peninsula will be a much greener place in the future.”

The researchers say they’ll continue to examine core records stretching back in time over thousands of years. Their goal is to explore the impact of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems before humans began heating things up.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com