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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.