One thing that strikes me about yesterdays launch of Sustainable Glasgow, is a contradiction over vacant land.
The report recommends an urban woodland strategy, with community involvement, and creating urban woodland on vacant ground. All well and good. However Glasgow City Council (one of the partners of Sustainable Glasgow) has been heavy-handed and litigious with The North Kelvin Meadow – a group who have taken over derelict land and build raised beds, wildflower meadows and woodland.
Not sure whether putting this kind of art on the allotment would be a good thing:
One of the things I like about being on the plot is the sound. There’s ambient traffic noise and an occasional siren from the prison, but apart fom that it’s mostly birds and wind in the trees. Mellow and contemplative. Quite different from day-to-day office, household and traffic noise.
First thing to appear this year should be the rhubarb. I’ve got one newly-transplanted crown, one re-planted crown and two crowns that haven’t been touched. That is an awful lot of rhubarb! Perhaps I’ll try and force the smallest of the crowns, just to see what happens.
And there’s loads of soft fruit…
Here’s a plan for the vegetable beds:
planting plan for 2010 and beyond!
Last year 4 people helped out, and I’m really grateful to them. Three of them say they want to continue helping out, so I’m looking forward to seeing them & having a bit of company on the plot. (The fourth was a neighbour, so I’m not angling to get more help from them!)
The Community Channel has just shown In Transition 1.0 — a film about transition initiatives, climate change and resource depletion. It’s pretty good, and I’ve seen it before: in October I saw it with my Dad at the Filmhouse. By happy coincidence it’s his 65th birthday today, so I hope he’s enjoying his quiet family meal ;-)
A couple of days ago, the Community Channel showed The last beekeeper. This is a film about the plight of the industrialised honeybee and Colony Collapse Disorder in the US. It focusses on three beekeeping family businesses and is a poignant look at one season in their lives.
World of Wonder: Production company for the last beekeeper
Interview with Jeremy Simmons — director of the last beekeeper
You can’t fit everything into 70 minutes so the film glosses over the science. This can be read in A world without bees by Alison Benjamin and Brian MacCullum. It’s a US-centric view of the plight of bees.
POSTnotes 348: insect pollination gives the UK-centric view. I’m concerned to learn that “Blackcurrant and its pollinators have diverged by 28 days since the 1970s”.
Lao Tsu’s phrase ‘a journey of a thousand miles…’ crops up frequently, although I wish it was quoted with the other two lines. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 64 of the Tao Te Ching, translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, 1972.
Deal with it before it happens
Set things in order before there is confusionA tree as great as a man’s embrace begins as a tiny shoot
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one’s feet
duhtao.com has multiple translations & a nifty side-by-side comparison
I’ve taken the daughter to a couple of galleries in the last couple of days. Yesterday we caught the Fruitmarket exhibition ‘end of the line: beyond drawing’. Upstairs there were a number of drawn reproductions of posters, and she pointed out a WWII Russian soldier bayonetting a caricature of Hitler. The Russian was drawn boldly — solid blocks of black — at the top of the piece, and Hitler, craven and wizened at the bottom of the page. I was explaining how the Russian was destroying Hitler and she asked whether that destroyed the Russian too.
What others teach , I also teach; that is:
“A violent man will die a violent death”
This will be the essence of my teaching
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42.
Today, we went round the Gallery on the Mound. When talking about Van Dyck’s Saint Sebastian bound for martyrdom, I noted that Sebastian would soon have arrows in him. And the girl asked what an arrow was…
In other news, Crown Prince squash is pretty amazing. I’ve roasted it with some other veggies for tea and it has lovely honeyed flesh. I also roasted some slices, cut the flesh from the skin, and made simple squash soup:
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But these fantastic flavours are balanced by the squash having dense flesh and really tough skin. I’m definitely going to grow squash this year, but I don’t know whether this is the variety I’ll choose.
Mum & step-dad came round yesterday for a meal, so I got 6 lamb shanks out of the freezer. Only then did I find out the the large casserole can only fit 4 in! Cue: a second day eating stewed lamb.
The general idea is: cook them at a low temperature, slowly, and with a lot of liquid.
Yesterday I used a Jamie Oliver recipe. Coated the shanks in rosemary, salt and pepper, browned them. Then sweated carrots, celery, onions, garlic and anchovies; white wine and tinned tomatoes provided the liquid; and then 2 hours in the oven, taking the lid off for the last half hour. The vegetables were cut up quite small and so the sauce thickened and reduced considerably. Served with roast potatoes, parsnips and carrot/swede mash.
Today: read a couple of cookery books and experimented. Coated the shanks in rosemary, salt and pepper, browned them; sweated big chunks of carrots, onion rings and anchovies; red wine and stock as liquid; 2 hours in the oven. The sauce was more liquid today and the onions retained their shape. Served with cous cous ‘cos I forgot to put any starch on until 5 minutes before serving…
Both recipes were tasty, so I think I’ve learned this lesson. Next time, though, I’ll try without wine because we don’t always have litres of the stuff kicking around.
As we pass the Winter Solstice, I’m taking stock of what produce I have left from this growing season: one and a half jars of jam; 500g frozen blackcurrants; a kilo of frozen rhubarb; some frozen beans; and 3 small heads of garlic. That’s a crap shopping basket for Can’t cook won’t cook (cheers, Stephen)
Not much is going on down the allotment at the moment:
and the no-dig herb bed is looking sparse:
Some success from last year: a layered blackcurrant that’s now growing strongly and will be transplanted next Autumn.
Many of the other allotment holders have leeks and cabbage growing through to the New Year, and Winter onions and broad beans for early Summer. But rather than moan about what could have been, I should count my blessings: I still have an allotment, so many thanks to my neighbours and friends for helping out over the year. The daughter has also had a good time, and I’ve found out what peas look like when they’re growing.
Jethro Tull’s Solstice Bells seems an appropriate song for the season
Press release – La Via Campesina
Traders failed in Copenhagen
The future lies in people’s hands
(Copenhagen, 19 December 2009) The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade “solutions” that have so far proven useless and even damaging.
Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: “Money and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what was not discussed in Copenhagen”. The governments of the industrialized and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle the model of development which has created and economic and environmental disaster.
There’s a small triangle of sloping ground near my folks’ house, between the railway station and the access path, where several trees have been planted. Not sure how long the trees have been there – at least a few years – and the staking hasn’t been removed. It’s really started to bug me that the straps are digging into the trees, and will eventually kill them off. So when we were over yesterday for the last time before the folks move house, I had a last chance to help the trees out.
After the last few posts about the World Food Summit, I thought I’d blog about something closer to home. I can cook is a BBC programme* that shows young children cooking. They cook real food in a cheerful kitchen and then eat it. Simple!
There are many things to like about the show: 5 kids and the presenter make the same dish so you can see that each of them makes it in a different way; and each kid is praised for the work they’re doing. They use raw egg in some shows, and use blunt-nosed kitchen scissors in others. The recipes are child-appropriate, although one minor worry was the fish triple decker smothered in a layer of ketchup, with its salt and sugar content. (Ha! I should talk … my daughter mainlines the stuff)
I’m most impressed with the I can cook garden, where they take the kids out to collect an ingredient. Am envious of their nice raised beds and greenhouse.
Today’s recipe was for savoury bites. The daughter and I had just made scones, so it was interesting to show her that some of the recipe was the same, and how they used chives instead of sultanas and sugar. I really like their way of describing mixing the fat and flour as tickling the flour.
Our scones turned out well, using rice milk and stork instead of cows’ milk and butter. Taste great with home-made jam, too.
Search for I can cook on BBC iplayer
* It’s actually an Endemol programme for the BBC, but I won’t quibble.
