Biodiesel in Scotland

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From BBC news: Green biodiesel production starts.

Finally, Argent Energy are ready to roll with cleaned-up chip fat (and other cooking oils) as biodiesel. While biodiesel by no means solves the problem of increasing carbon dioxide levels, it will help alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels, which must run out at some point. [It cannot be stressed enough at this point that biodiesels will NOT help reduce the damage we do to our atmosphere. It’s merely a stop-gap, and cars using it will still release carbon dioxide. Fewer of the other pollutants, and less dependence on fossil fuels and the damage we do to the environment to get at it!]

But this will not the perfect biodiesel solution I would have liked. Argent are planning to blend their biodiesel with mineral diesel, and call it “Bio-plus”. Now, that seems like quite a cop-out to me, and I know quite a few other people who will be disappointed to hear that this won’t be marketed as a purely recycled fuel. Sundance Renewables in Wales are a co-operative that produce and supply 100% recycled biodiesel to Welsh businesses. To be fair to Argent, they’re planning to refine 25k tonnes a year, have probably put quite a lot of investment in complex machinery (it doesn’t have to be that complex on a small scale), and must answer to shareholders etc.

Prior to recent commercial developments, there were stories in the news about some Welsh folk using Asda’s cooking oil in their cars, with one of them (John Nicholson, an environmentalist) having gone out of his way to recycle chip fat and contacting Customs to pay duty on what he put in his car. Following the media hoo-hah, Asda also announced that some of their fleet would use fat used to roast chickens. 🙂

And let’s not forget that diesel engines were first invented by Rudolf Diesel expressly to use vegetable oil. He mysteriously disappeared on a ferry crossing the Channel… To end on a sober note, George Monbiot had a wee rant last year in the Guardian about the endemic blindness to the downsides of switching to biodiesel on a massive scale, namely the commercial growth of oil-rich crops over that of food crops. Naturally, I hope his worst-case scenario does not come to pass, where political idiocy prevales over common sense, and the nutritional needs of the poor are neglected in the pursuit of alternative fuels. But you never know with our money-hungry society.

Funny feet

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Funny feet
Funny feet
Originally uploaded by framboise.

I’ve got weird feet. Those big toes look enormous! The kimono is an orangey komon, with a print that mimics shibori. It’s quite pretty, but oh-so-orange. This kimono fits a lot better than my other two. For one, it’s long enough to have a decent waist-fold. Plus, the sleeves are almost long enough to touch my wrists, if I tuck my elbows in a little.

I don’t think I’m any taller than the average Japanese woman, but I must be descended from orang utans (very likely in my neck of the woods), ‘cos the sleeves are all too short for me. This seems to be a common phenomenon for vintage kimonos. Since learning a little more about kitsuke, I’ve decided to be more discerning when bidding for items on ebay. I’ve been trying to perfect a search string to pull up kimonos with long-enough sleeves, but because some people publish in inches, I’m bound to miss quite a few out. Oh well, I guess a slow and painful trawl through the better merchants will have to do.


Kitsuke attempt



Kitsuke attempt

Originally uploaded by framboise.

Courgette Caterpillar

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Courgette Caterpillar

Tonight’s dinner: Agedashi tofu and courgette omelette.

Recipe for agedashi tofu:

  • Take some silken tofu, and drain on kitchen towels for 20 min.
  • Heat an inch or two of corn oil in a wok/pan until just before it starts to smoke.
  • Coat the tofu cubes in some potato flour, and place carefully in the oil. Keep turning the tofu cubes so they’re just lightly crispy all over (almost golden brown).
  • Transfer to small bowls, and spoon over the sauce that has been brought up to the boil:
    1/2 cup dashi stock
    1 tbsp soya sauce
    1 tbsp sake
    1 tsp mirin

Eat ASAP, as it gets soggy very quickly. It’s scrummy!

Ingredients for agedashi tofu Agedashi tofu Lovely yolks A mess of courgettes
Ingredients Agedashi tofu Eggy eggs Funny omelette

And for dessert: mango sorbet from M&S, and coconut and lemongrass pannacotta from Stichill Jerseys (bought at the almost fortnightly Edinburgh Farmers’ Market; 1st and 3rd Sat of every month).

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Quiptic No. 280

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I’ve been neglecting the crosswords lately. Been just a bit too busy with other things. So with “Lethal Weapon 2” playing in the background, I decided to tackle this week’s Guardian quiptic crossword before it’s out of date. I’ll get round to doing No. 279 at some point…

Some nice clues (as usual, highlight below to see answer):

  • Sodium smell developing (7)
    (Na)scent
  • Paying too much council tax? (9)
    Overrated… Quite apt given the recent re-jigging of council taxes.
  • German cake lost out to the French number (7)
    Stollen (breakdown: stol(le)-n)
  • Up in arms (7)
    rampant
  • And finally, a classic clue: Decreases the clubs (5)
    Irons

Food nostalgia

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I’ve been reading a few food blogs this evening:

And I was thinking of how much I’m going to miss having a decent sized kitchen, not that there’s even enough space in it now. I’m given to understand that apartments in LA are über-expensive to rent, and we’ll probably have to downsize a lot. I’m going to miss my baking tins/trays, my two drawers of kitchen gadgets and utensils that have taken me 10 years to accumulate, my crazy but effective fan oven, our collection of all sorts of different flavoured alcohols (for cooking, not drinking), a pantry of hard-to-find dried and bottled food, and a whole host of other cooking things. The upside is that there will be plenty of ‘ethnic’ food stores in LA. Whether we’ll be able to find them or get to them without sitting in traffic jams, and polluting the air, is another thing.

I’m sure the restaurants there will be good, but will we have any money to eat out? We’ve not eaten out much in Edinburgh recently… Quite a few of our favourite restaurants have closed in the last year. Among the much-missed are:

  • Fitzhenry’s – replaced with a Smokestack, of all things (sacrilege),
  • JM’s – a honest-to-goodness French bistro run by one man and a rotating waitress, where we spent many a happy evening getting stuffed, and
  • a Chinese restaurant on Inverleith Row – never knew its name, but it had good dim sum (for Edinburgh, that is… still can’t compare to Glasgow/London, let alone Singapore/Hong Kong).

There are still plenty of excellent joints in town, but those places held special memories for us. JM’s in particular was a real find. We’ve had a whole host of French bistro-like places that excel in ‘Scottish-French’ cooking (even though the demise of the Pierre Victoire chain cooled the field a little), but none had the true atmosphere of a man/woman in the kitchen, sweating over several hot stoves to feed a small, but crowded room of regular customers. I wonder where he is now…

Was left to my own devices tonight, so I baked a sole (don’t know which type) with some lemon zest and juice squeezed into a little dashi (Japanese fish stock), with a very wee dram of random alcohol (Martini this time), and a knob of butter. How is it that when I cook, the kitchen looks untouched when I’m done, but when a blokey cooks, it looks like a wee tornado passed through the kitchen?

Giggle

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Glutamate Grape (^o^) I wonder if it improves performance in the Morris water or T mazes.
Can’t stop smiling (^_^) Sero-Tonic (^_^) Ursa Major (^_^)

As for Scientific American’s editorial, it was bleeding hilarious! It was *almost* as good as what I think was the all-time great: T. rex DNA. It’s a real shame that ensembl didn’t archive the page, but a Google found this.

Guardian Unlimited has an April Fools’ quiz. Results:

Can you spot the April fools’ gags?
You scored 9 out of a possible 9
You’re no fool. April 1 holds no fears for someone with your ability to separate fact from fiction.

Sad, but true: I’d read in some Saturday/Sunday newspaper’s magazine that Alexander McQueen scribbled graffiti in the lining of Prince Charles’ jacket when he worked on Saville Row. As for elephants mimicing sounds, they’re very canny animals.

Shawn the shortbread sheep

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Shawn the shortbread sheep

A rather blurry shot of a piece of shortbread I baked yesterday for some friends who are doing some DIY in their new flat and havenae time to eat, let alone cook. I used a 6-4-2oz recipe, which gave a much better hold than my usual 2-2-1 proportions. The 6-4-2 recipe is just right for two baking sheets of shortbread, whereas my old recipe had to be spread over three or four due to the way it oozed everywhere. In addition to the flour, butter and sugar, I added 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger, a good pinch of ground cloves, and just to experiment, some caraway seeds.

I don’t normally like pre-ground spices, but it’s really handy for cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, and other baking spices. I can never get small amounts pounded finely enough to be sifted, but that’s probably due to my modern upbringing. Made some ducks too.

Three flying ducks

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Eilean A` Cheo

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Cuillin and river
Cuillin and river
Originally uploaded by framboise.

Skye truly is an island of mist. We woke to misty wetness every morning, but the weather usually cleared up by lunchtime to leave the most beautiful blue skies. Skye is now accessible by a toll-free bridge from the Kyle of Lochalsh, which takes some of the magic of the Western Isles away from it, and makes its roads the busiest of the islands we’ve been to. I’ve always loved the short ferry trips from the west of Scotland, and being able to take a half minute drive just isn’t the same.

The hard rock that makes up Skye makes it look quite alien, as there is hardly any vegetation on the higher hills and mountains. And you don’t have to get particularly high up to get the most impressive views. This shot was taken in Glen Brittle, by the base of an easily accessed waterfall, Eas Mors (see other photo). The peak in the back is of one of the Cuillins, but I can’t remember which one. We observed someone picking mussles in the bay at the end of Glen Brittle, but didn’t join in for fear of spoiling our appetites for dinner at the Three Chimneys that evening. If you’re a foodie, and sometimes despair of the quality of restaus in rural Scotland, it’d do you a lot of good to get out to Skye. There, they’re proud of their local produce, of which the shellfish is particularly good. For example, fishermen bring in fresh langoustines from Loch Bay, to be scoffed locally at the Lochbay Seafood Restaurant in Stein.

Skye is also chock full of craft shops and galleries. The harsh environment probably leads to a lot of time to sit, think and create during the winter months. We spent a fair amount of time in the Skye Silver shop, as well as the Raven Press, where we saw the most intricate woodblock prints and just HAD to get a wee souvenir print of Skye with minke whales by Neist Lighthouse. Our visit didn’t last long enough, but we were glad to get out when we did, for on our drive home, we saw the most ridiculous convoys of cars heading in (probably to take up every last BnB and hotel room on the island). Typical Easter weekend then…

Oh yeah, the mini banana loaves came in handy as carbo and sugar snacks to keep us going between massive breakfasts and dinners.

Eas Mors (Mors waterfall) the three chimneys View from Stein Trumpan church ruins
Eas Mors The Three Chimneys Loch Bay from Stein Clear blue skies

For more photos of Skye and Eilean Donan, see my Flickr set.

Banana, chocolate and walnut loaf

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banana loaf

Another super easy G&B recipe. Yum! Decided to split the 2lb recipe so we could bring some small cakes with us to Skye. Can’t walk very far without the occasional carbohydrate snack to sustain us. The 1lb loaf took 35min at 180degC (150degC in my fan oven), and the 6 little loaves took about 25min. End result out of the 1lb corrugated cardboard “tin”:

banana loaf

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Culcutta Cup

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Aye, the game against the auld enemy seems a wee bit redundant now. But I’m still hoping Scotland does well enough to shut up those arrogant English TV commentators and fans.

19:20 edit: Partisan commentary yet again by the English. Scotland seem to be trying a lot harder, and deserve more tries than are on the scoreboard.

19:44 edit: England 43-22 Scotland. Oh well. They tried hard and didnae give up. Again, defence was appalling, but perhaps they can spend the summer working on that when the Lions are on tour.