Vegan Ma'moul/ Klaycha

recipe from an Iraqi friend. The Iraqi version is naturally vegan, apart from the egg glaze on top.

about to try with spelt flour... and an Oat milk as a glaze.

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three cups of plain flour
3/4 cup of sunflower oil
pinch of salt
tea spoon baking powder
mix together

add lukewarm water bit by bit until it becomes a dough
can add some rosewater to the dough too.

cover it with a towel and a leave for a bit (few minutes) while you get the date paste ready

date paste, add cardamon or aniseed (I presume powder…)
to make the date paste, just heat the chopped date with some oil to make a paste

try oatly as a glaze before baking. It's usually egg.

no need to oil the mould as the dough is oily.

oven on 160C until they are baked, (slightly red)

Vegan Crepes

Vegan Crepes


here you go! from voted no 1 vegetarian restaurant for many years, Terre a terre in Brighton. I had them on pancake day last year and they were so amazing that I asked for the recipe and they kindly obliged!

Recipe ... don't quite know how many these make ?
1cup soya milk 1 cup cold water 1/2 cup soya marg. - melted 2 tbsp sugar 4 tbsp maple syrup 2 cup plain flour 1tsp salt Mix all together and leave to rest for 2HOURS.. then cook


(and some wisdom from me…)
I cut out the sugar but leave the maple syrup in. I had them with spinach and garlic this time, as well as chocolate and banana.
also accidentally made them with soya cream intead of milk. so had to water it down. but certainly came out well! have also made them with oat milk yesterday so I think any sort of milk replacement thing is fine.

bit of a 'replacement fest' but resulting texture is perfect!

Video of me enjoying them in the restaurant. (great place btw, highly recommended!)

Mung Bean Dhal

I'm going to use the word 'some' or other vague words as I am pretty clueless about amounts. Might be worth having a look at some recipes online to get an idea of relative quantity. I tend to vary the amounts too, but that's the beauty of this recipe, its really hard to make it inedible!

Put some green mung beans - in the photo, I use the packet shown, but this makes huge amounts. You might want to start with small quantities and working out what you like -into a saucepan, put plenty of water (I have about an inch and a half on top of the beans - it will soak it all up and then some), bring to the boil and them simmer.

While that is cooking, chop up, or grate some ginger and garlic, and throw that in.


Put in some chopped tomatoes (I have varied the amount of tomatoes wildly and it never seems to make much difference).

Add some hot pepper (we put in a whole Scotch Bonnet and let it cook in there but that might be a bit too mad for most) or not. You can always add some hot sauce at the end, when you eat it.

Add some ground tumeric and ground cumin (roasted cumin is best). there is traditionally a stage where some oil is heated in ladle, and the whole or ground cumin is 'burnt' in there and then plunged into the dhal but I'm happy without this stage (and makes it healthier and safer!)

Just let it carry on cooking, and add water until its a mushy texture. Salt to taste.

Serve with rice, or I have even watered it down as a soup. A tomato and onion salad can go nicely, or some cucumber.

Good luck!

Bata de Cola

I was asking around to see if anyone knew of any good bata de cola videos and they came up with these


Fast and furious!



Matilde Coral - This one has some slow flowing moves in it too.

(this one has a second half too)

Its an art that can look good..if you do it really well... but otherwise it looks utterly ridiculous! It requires an interesting technique though, more balletic than flamenco in a lot of ways.

.mov from Flash

Convoluted method for getting an avi or decent .mov out of a Flash file. this was to get stuff into an .avi uncompressed, odd shape (one is a football perimeter fence) 30fps as per specification.


The built in 'export as movie' to .mov is dreadful in Flash CS4. Lots of artefacts and random results.

The solution I found is detailed below.

exporting it as a jpeg sequence (caveat is that any movie clips won't play (Jpeg sequence seems to give you exactly what you see as you scrub, and you don't see movie clip animations (you only see those when you export as swf). solution for the movie clip problem is to convert them to graphic symbols, or put the frames directly on the timeline.

putting it together in FCP. (in a 30fps sequence, need to edit timebase before you put the images in).

export using compressor (no compression, keeping and frame rate the same) to .mov (oddly comes out half second shy). The settings I used as a base were the 'uncompressed 10bit' and then checked through and saved them as a specific one.

then my first attempt was to convert using quicktime pro into .avi (oddly retrieves the half second!). this had the result of a dreadful colour shift. So I processed the .mov through Shake and used no codec and .avi container for the fileout node settings. slight colour shift, but nothing as startling as the quicktime effort. (shown - left is .mov right is mov to avi via shake. bottom is mov to avi using quicktime pro)

Oddly putting it through shake restored the extra half second missing.. !!??!!!

gossypium packaging

gossypium packaging, originally uploaded by london_lime.

cutest packaging ever!

RSA - Postage Stamps

RSA - Postage Stamps, originally uploaded by Kathryn Brookes.

such a cool idea.

Peppers from Flickr

PEPPERS, originally uploaded by thenitygrity.

aaah...

anyone know where the best pepper sauce in London is to be found? my vote is currently for Roti Joupa..

We will be here - Map of the Future -

We will be here - Map of the Future -, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

Awesome infographic, The content is cool but the style is really awesome. I love the use of the brown tint, which means they can use white as a highlight (always a favourite thing of mine). The use of the 'big picture' underneath makes the points of data less overwhelming. A subtle texture on the background is a lovely feature.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Dhal Pouri

Step by step photos are here

Yellow Split Peas (~1kg)

Wash peas in cold running water (no need to soak)

Strain peas and place in large pan of water (no salt)

Add 1teaspoon of tumeric to the water and stir in well. Bring the pan to the boil.

Check the texture of the peas - should be soft but firm (you are not making dhal). so that it can be ground. Stir occasionally while peas simmer, peel some garlic cloves.

Prepare self-raising flour (~800g) and baking powder.

Check the peas after 10 minutes. Skim off any foam that forms. Sift the flour with 2-25 teaspoons of baking powder, mix well and then add some salt.

After 20 minutes, check the peas (try biting one) - should be soft enough to bite through, but still firm - could be 25 minutes.

When the peas are ready, strain them.

Add some oil to the flour (about 2-3 teaspoons) and mix together by hand until it is almost dry again.

Add (800ml - 1litre cold water, a bit at a time to make an 'elastic' dough (be careful not to make it too wet).

If it sticks to your hands its too wet.

Cover the dough in cling film whilst you grind the peas.

Set up a food mill/ grinder and grind the cooked peas in batches (if using whole cumin seeds, add them to the peas to be ground at the same time). Add 3-4 garlic cloves to the peas to be ground at the same time. Aiming for quite a fine consistency. When all the of the peas are ground put them in a very large bowl and season well with black pepper, ground (roasted) cumin and salt (~ 1 tablespoon) - check the seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Ground peas should be quite dry but if they are too dry, but if they are too dry and some oil to moisten them.

(At this stage the ingredients can be left to rest)

Put some oil in a flat bottomed saucer and place a flat-bottomed glass in it.

Prepare a teatowel over another plate.

Divide the dough into clementine sized rounds.

Lightly flour the rounds to stop them from sticking and leave them to rest for a while.

Lightly flour a spare plate.

Take each round and flatten it out with a circular motion - use more flour to keep it dry.

Cup a flattened round in the palm of your hand (the round should be around 6 inches across) and pack some of the pea mixture into it.

Draw the sides up to form a pasty and then pinch the edges together.

Pinch the edges well together. Press onto the plate to seal into a round dumpling shape.

Don't prepare too many filled rounds at once (let them rest, but not for too long).

Heat a large flat griddle (tawwa) over a high heat (then drop to medium).

Take a filled round and roll it out to around 8 inches diameter.

Use the glass to wet the griddle with oil.

Place the flat round onto the hot oil - put more oil on to the dry side - and turn it over. Push the dhal around for a few seconds and turn again. It should start to swell. Turn again and push to stop in burning - allow to cook for 1-2 minutes.

If you find one with a hole, block the hole to allow the steam to inflate the pouri.

Keep the cooked pouri warm in a tea towel.

(the rounds need to be well sealed to make sure that none of the dhal escapes).

Any unused dhal mixture can be frozen or used for soup.

Photos showing the whole process are here

Playing the Energy Game at the Dana Centre

Serious Change has recently run an event at the Dana Centre in London where we played an Energy Game based on David MacKay's book, Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. Here are a few notes about it.

We had played Emilia and friend's version of the game a few times and came up with a few thoughts about new pieces (different fold out amounts, pieces for money, fuzzy felt, magnetic pieces, building blocks). I selected what would be the simplest I could manage in the timescale.

I went through David MacKay's book, to work through numbers for the pieces. This was a very useful exercise to get myself acquainted with the numbers. This also assisted in making sheets that gave information about each technology. Hopefully this information should be making it's way onto the Serious Change website soon.

It was quite stressful getting it all together but with the help of friends and my very patient designer sister we got it done just in time (about 20 mins before the event started).

Once we had actually got the formalities of the event out of the way I really enjoyed playing the game with my group.

There was a lot of discussion about the merits and security implications of overseas power. People were slightly blase about coating the country with wind turbines. Perhaps pictures of the country with an idea of scale would help. I also need to tie it down to specific areas where wind resource is possible as opposed to % of UK land area.

There should have been a better element of cost in the game (and including the HDVC lines into the CSP cost). I had abstracted the costs to make it easier to count up but I think some relation to every day life (as in the orginal) is more useful. There were also no costs associated with the demand side so it was essentially free to implement electric cars, heat pumps etc.

It was nice having a wide game board to do multiple plans (or silly plans) and the magnets worked well. Having current demand printed on the backboard was useful as well. Having the pieces in blocks was useful because it was much easier to get started and change the plan around. My group did use the blocks, at one point, in a similar way to the old pieces, i.e. utilising just part of a piece.

The Tech sheets need to have more information on them. While I could quite easily answer questions because I had gone through all the numbers and I knew the assumptions that were made, I realise that that might have been harder for other Facilitators.

Assumptions about what was missing should have been available as well. I left a few technologies out because they were negligible in scale.

Facilitators should have had sheets to write down questions they are asked (and email addresses to send answers too and sign up to SC). Also to make general notes about how it went. There should also have been email sign up sheets for the tables.

There wasn't really enough time for discussion so we couldn't address points that did occur (about bio-waste gas power etc). This was constrained by the entire event needing to fit into 2 hours. Ideally a good 2 or 3 hours discussion afterwards would have been useful for those really interested. I think the advantage of the short format is that you get over the main points of the game (scale, demand, technologies) in a short space of time which is vital.

I've made a note of some of the changes that people have suggested to the game pieces and hopefully in the New Year we'll all get together to discuss them.

I was very please with the turnout. I think it was about 40 people and about 12 of us. This made for a good group size around the 5 game boards.

In general I think most people enjoyed the evening and got a lot out of it. The Dana Centre seemed very happy as the event was engaging and prompted a lot of discussion.

Afterwards a few of us went to the pub where I really needed a couple of beers.

A massive thank you for everyone who helped pull it together and all those who came to the event itself to help.

If you have any feedback on the game, want to hold your own energy game or know of a good place to hold one then email us at: contact@seriouschange.org.uk

Poker T-Shirt

Designed a tshirt which might or might not get printed (only if enough people actually want one!) by Teepay, (who have organic fair trade tshirts) which is a Howies offshoot. Cafepress is such a lovely idea, but I can't bring myself to be participating in the Great Cotton Scandal, that this is just perfect (Equop used to do this before.. but seem to have disappeared).

Link to Teepay for the shirts

Apologies for not doing a version in black! I was in a bit of a hurry and its an experiment anyway.

Stupid Show from Copenhagen

Present Ideas

Not particularly for Christmas.



One is to have a custom stamp made at Blade Rubber Stamps. This shop is right next to the British Museum, but you can do the whole process online now. (You can ignore all of the 'make a rubber stamp' application and just send them an image too.). I did this one year and everyone seemed really happy. One friend is still using his 'done!' stamp to mark all his paperwork and says it is very satisfying indeed.

I've just sent off a design for stamping into a notebook to copy the idea behind Muji's ChronoNotebooks, which won an award but they seem to not have bothered bringing into the UK (after emailing them, they said possibly next year).
Have tarted mine up a bit with a kanji. Would be nice to stamp it in different colours, even silver, into a notebook.



Another nice present, would be the customisable Sigg bottles from Cafepress. You can put in text, or just put in images if you like. Some of the previews are hilarious (including a cute but hairy dogs), or of course, next to one's MacBook. If anyone wants a hand doing an image, I'm happy to help. All in the service of Tap Water!

Basic Guides to Climate Change

I've just made this post so I can keep them all together, as I have been coming across some excellently written guides.

First up, we have a guide from the Met Office.


Met Office Guide (PDF 1.09M)
This is a gorgeously designed guide, laying out all the facts in simple language.

10:10 Vote in Parliament - What are they playing at?

Guardian Article on the 10:10 vote in the Commons yesterday

The fact they can't even agree to a simple motion, which would have shown amazing unity, to the world, and to the population, and in view of the fact that most front benchers have already signed up to the 10:10 target. It's a target, its non-binding and it has incredible value in signaling to the country and the world as a whole that we are serious about this, in a non-partisan way. Particularly in view of the fact Copenhagen is fast coming up.

I was particularly disappointed to see that Ed Miliband voted against it. This beggars belief.. considering he has spoken for it, asked councils to sign it, etc. We would very much like to hear his reasoning!

"I’ve been backing the 10:10 campaign - I was really pleased when the whole cabinet signed up to cut their CO2 emissions by 10% in 2010, and I know the campaign has been going from strength to strength." from EdsPledge

Some resources - The vote on Public Whip which is an awesome site for trying to make it plain and simple what is going on.

where you can have the fun of finding your MP and seeing which way they voted it!

(and they are voting on the first 'motion' not the 'amendment' which 'welcomed' it.)

So, what went wrong? Parties playing off against each other? Did our Conservative MP only vote for it because it was Anti-Labour? Do we really have a chance if big decisions get reduced to this playground level? Answers please :)

International Space Station and Shuttle

Space Shuttle and International Space Station Time Lapse from Londonlime on Vimeo.

Here is a time lapse video of the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle going over. This is our first foray into time lapse and the opportunity just presented itself.

The Shuttle is the first streak, and the second is the ISS. The latter is much brighter than it used to be, apparently due to the extra solar panels that have been fitted.

They regularly go over our heads, but of course they don't always catch the sun.

You can find a list of sightings for London or pick a UK City

Flamenco and Dance Links

in the 'how to' vein

Flamenco Posture (particularly how not to damage your back by arching it. This isn't really a problem you encounter until a few years in!)

Flamenco Footwork

I'm taking this one to heart, and to technique class tomorrow!

Kicking the Bata de Cola Good to know, although perhaps some more basic moves need to be learnt really well first..

and finally a very general article on Learning how to Dance which makes a lot of sense

Creating a Picture Gallery

I have a terrible memory so I take a lot of pictures. I've been uploading these since about the year n. I was using Fotopic which has served me well. I pay for the premium service.

I've found that it has become a bit slow of late and also that the tedious process of uploading files the sorting them on a remote site, adding captions etc was slowing me down. I'm now over a year behind. And I'd run out of space.

So I dedicated some effort to sorting the problem. I have two virtual servers with Bytemark (who rock) so I cleared my obsessive number of backups of backups off the machines and that left me with gigs of space to store my piccies.

My initial thought was to put Gallery (or Gallery 2 ... and then it gets a bit confusing as Gallery 2 seems to have been missed in an Debian release) on the server and then get it to automatically add the photos. But this didn't really address one of my ideals which was to be able to sort and caption offline.

Plan 2, which I started to implement was to have Gallery on my lovely newish (but scratched) Acer Netbook. This was okay. There was a bit of a drain having apache/gallery2 and mysql running on it but it seemed to work. The tedious bit was all the syncing and dumping of databases etc. And for what? I gained all the cool features of Gallery but most were useless cos the remote database where people could comment etc would get wiped as I uploaded. Also I wasn't trying to create a community, I just wanted to show my friends the photos they were in.

So backpedal a bit and have a look around. Finally found llgal. It totally rules. Configurable in all ways. Just generates a static site from the pictures and a captions file. So I can write the captions in a something useful like vi, manage the pictures with gthumb, run llgal to generate it and then a simple directory traversal script finds anything that has a directory called 'Remote' in it and uploads it to the server.

I added a bit to make my own index page but I'm fussy like that.