Growing new life forms...

As I said when I posted about my new green bags, we’ve been on a self-reliance kick lately. Well, our latest DIY project is the result of this purchase from the second hand shop. It looks like some kind of weird space capsule, and in a way it is—we use it to grow new life forms...

I love yogurt, and I always have. Unfortunately, the soy yogurt available in Townsville is overpriced, full of sugar, and comes in really wasteful single-serve containers. As a result, we only ever buy it when it’s reduced to clear.

That’s why I was so excited to find this yogurt maker for only $8. I grabbed it straightaway and was afraid to set it down when I was searching through the clothing racks. It even had all of the instruction books with it—now that was luck.

But, my yogurt-experimenting had to wait until we could find yogurt cultures that aren’t dairy-derived. A few weeks went by with no yogurt until Andy suggested we use probiotic capsules. I wasn’t sure it would work, but thought it was worth a try. We found good-quality, dairy-free and refrigerated probiotic capsules and gave them a go.

Our first experiment was with one capsule and one litre of soy milk. We let it sit overnight in the space capsule and in the morning I found slightly thick, yogurt-flavoured soy milk. According to Andy, it tasted like “that fancy expensive fresh yogurt that mum bought for [his brother] when he had glandular fever”.

I’ve read that soymilk doesn’t thicken as much as cow milk, so I wasn’t surprised at its consistency. The most important part was that it tasted like yogurt. Anyways, its consistency was perfect for smoothies or to have with muesli.

The next few experiments were an illustration of bad science—we changed more than one variable each time.

Batch #2: Andy mixed a half cup of our first batch of yogurt with more soymilk and some golden syrup. This batch separated a lot—but was it because of the starter or the sweetener? (Even without isolating variables, the yogurt was still drinkable and delicious, and none of it went to waste.)

We made the same mistake with Batch #3. Instead of golden syrup, this time we used raw sugar, and used ¼ c. of Batch #2 as the starter. And we let it sit for about 13 hours. The result was almost unbearably tangy.

For Batch #4, I thought I would try to thicken the soy milk before adding the cultures. But we were out of the organic soymilk we had used for the first three tests, so I just used Cole’s brand, thickened with corn flour and then chilled before adding another probiotic capsule. This one we tasted after 7 hours, and we found it had no yogurt taste. So we left it, and tasted it every hour. It sat for a total of 12 hours, and never lost its chalky taste and gained that tangy yogurtiness. Was it the brand of milk or the corn flour?

Batch #5 was similar—Cole’s milk and one capsule (no thickening)—and resulted in soy milk with only the faintest yogurty tang.

Finally, with Batch #6, we were back on track. So Natural brand milk and one capsule yielded a similar result to Batch #1. I think the trick is that the soymilk needs to be made from whole soy beans.

Needless to say, we’re still working out the kinks. But even the not-so-great batches are better than no yogurt, so I’ve been enjoying yogurt in muesli, adding it to bread, and Andy loves chugging it straight from the jar. Nacho even likes it mixed with some cat food.

I’ll let you know if I get a great batch, and if anyone has any yogurt tips, please share them!

Smokin'

I mentioned in my last post that I would be gone for a few days on a tour of significant sites and for a smoking ceremony... well, the trip was shorter than I expected, although we'll be going out again for some camping in a few weeks. But even though it was cut short and a bit different from what I expected, it was a really great trip. And, since we came home the same day we left, I was able to head up to the Townsville Correctional Centre to celebrate NAIDOC with some of the prisoners and staff there. Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in prisons, so I can't share any photos from that day...

Despite the rain on Monday, I piled into a 4WD with my friend Gracelyn, her cousin and flatmate Jim and Grace's ex-husband Joe. Jim and Joe are traditional elders and they are experts at locating culturally significant sites, finding artefacts, etc--they are usually hired by archaeologists because their knowledge is so extensive.

We headed down to Bowen for our first task, a smoking ceremony to kick start the preparations for the upcoming Bowen Fest. We stopped along the way to pick some sandalwood to use in the ceremony, and throughout the trip Jim and Joe pointed out significant areas where we would be stopping on the way back through.

The Bowen Fest kick-off was attended by a small crowd, including the Mayor of Bowen, Mike Brunker. Luckily the rain cleared, and Jim and Joe used the freshly picked sandalwood to clear the area of negative spirits and call on the positive energy to bless the location and the participants.

After some lunch, we were back on the road. Our first stop was Muller’s Lagoon in Bowen, where Joe and Jim showed me a burial site of two repatriated remains. They explained the process of getting those remains back and why they were buried there.

Our next stop was meant to be a rock art site just off the Bruce Highway, for which we had to drive through a cow pasture. We were lucky that the gate was unlocked, but unfortunately all the rain had filled some of the gullies so we couldn’t make it out there.

Instead, we went a bit further along to Guthe Munga, or Cape Upstart. Here, we were greeted by several curious kangaroos and lots of mosquitos. Jim and Joe showed me another burial site, this one containing remains from a nearby massacre site. The pointed out midden sites where piles of shells indicate the importance of the area for food gathering. We drove along the Snake Trail, which is punctuated by traditional fish traps, a stone greenback sea turtle, and lots of wild passionfruit vines.

Along the way back to Ayr, Joe and Jim told me lots of stories about the area, including one about three European sailors who were shipwrecked—two died and are buried on one of the beaches, and the other lived with the Bindal people for nearly 20 years. Once in Ayr, we dropped off Joe and took a tour of the Gudjuda Cultural Centre, which houses stone artefacts and artwork. Outside is another burial site holding remains that date back 500 years ago. Guarding over the remains is a giant Gubulla Munda, or carpet snake.

Our final stop was a quick one, just off the highway for a look at some rock art there.

Jim explained that the art is identical to some found closer to Bowen as well as at several sites further inland. The art itself is significant because these sites are the 'portals' through which the Feather-Feet men or spirit men travel from place to place very quickly.

Although the trip was short, it was significant for several reasons. I’ve lived in this area for two years now and had no idea about what has gone on here in the past, where the cultural sites are or why they are important. More importantly, Jim and Joe were able to give me a glimpse into a very important aspect of contemporary Aboriginal culture that I don’t see in my normal research. Because my work is with activists, it can be a very high-pressure, even confrontational area. But this trip showed me the importance of country and culture to those activists—it was much more peaceful than my normal research.

(More photos on my flickr)

Pizza, Pasta, Pastry

These three Ps are some of my favourite foods, particularly in winter.

Punk-kin Pasta from La Dolce Vegan has become a regular meal in our house, though it takes different variations every time. This time we used rocket (arugula) instead of sausage. And we had it alongside a big old salad full of rocket, three kinds of sprouts, tomato, capsicum, sautéed mushrooms, corn, and avocado dressing.

This is a bad photo of a really good dinner. I made the Classic Broccoli Quiche from the PPK blog. I doubled the recipe, so I had one quiche to bring to an AR meeting/vegan picnic, but I wanted to make sure it worked before bringing it out in public—it worked, quite well. This quiche is really yum, and I highly recommend trying it out. To go with it, Andy made a veggie sauté with potato, eggplant and spinach, which was really good as well.

One night I had to stay at uni until late to help out a friend who was doing a phone interview on ABC Radio National. When I got home, I found an over-stuffed but delicious pizza waiting for me, courtesy of Andy. This was chock full of seitan, pineapple, tomato, capsicum, nutritional yeast and bbq sauce.

This was an odd pairing, but somehow it work. Macaroni and Peas with nut yeast sauce on one side. On the other, veggies sautéed in spicy peanut sauce. They were brought together with some super-good garlic bread.

Inspired by all of the Daring Bakers with their Danish Braids, I made a curried lentil braid, using frozen puff pastry. This was really tasty, although my braid was definitely not as pretty as the ones I saw.

Early next week I'm going out bush for a cultural festival and to take part in an Aboriginal smoking/cleansing ceremony, so you won't be hearing from me for a few days!

Last Exit...

Last exit for the Holocene ahead

Originally from here, but reposted by me because I think it's an interesting and important read. Thanks to Andy for sending me the article in the first place.

July 14, 2008

Gwynne Dyer
Independent
(Jul 14, 2008)

"Damn! I think we just passed the last exit for the Holocene!"

"I'm sorry, honey, I wasn't looking."

"We have to get off this highway. What's the next exit?"

"It's a long way ahead. Goes to somewhere called Perdition."

(Ragged chorus from the back seat) "Are we there yet, Daddy?"

The Holocene era is that blessed time of stable, warm climate (but not too hot) and unchanging sea levels in which human civilization was born and grew to its present size.

In 10,000 years, our numbers have increased about a thousandfold -- but we may be about to leave the Holocene, and that would be too bad. No other climatic state would let us maintain our current numbers, and massive diebacks are no fun at all.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in New York, is one of the most respected scientists working in the field of climate studies. It was his famous speech to the U.S. Congress 20 years ago that put climate change on the U.S. political agenda, and led indirectly to the Earth Summit and the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

Now he has something else to say.

For most of the past decade, Hansen adhered to the emerging consensus among climate scientists that the maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 450 parts per million (ppm). That was believed to give us a 50 per cent chance of getting away with an average global temperature only 2 C (3.6 F) hotter than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. Now Hansen doesn't believe in 450 ppm any more.

The 450 ppm concentration was chosen partly because it seemed impossible to stop the rise in carbon dioxide before that -- we're already at 387 ppm, and going up almost 3 ppm per year -- and partly because it seemed relatively safe. A 2 C rise in temperature would turn a lot of subtropical land into desert, cause bigger hurricanes and turn most of Asia's big rivers into seasonal watercourses that are empty in summer, but it would not melt the ice caps.

At least that's what they thought, although everybody knew that the numbers were soft.

You can do a lot with climate models, but the Earth hasn't actually seen a carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration as high as 450 ppm since about 35 million years ago. So Hansen and some colleagues went to work on exactly that period, and came back with some bad news. If you leave the world at even 425 ppm for very long, all the ice will probably melt: Greenland, Antarctica, the lot. And the sea level will go up 70 to 80 metres (240 to 270 feet).

How do they know? Because the world was very hot and completely ice-free for a long time before 35 million years ago, but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was falling gradually. When it reached 425 ppm, Antarctica began to freeze over. So if that's where the first permanent ice appeared while CO2 was on the way down, it's probably where the last permanent ice will disappear when CO2 is on its way back up.

Now, there's a big margin of error when you are dealing with 35 million years ago: plus or minus 75 ppm, in this case. That means the fatal number when all the ice disappears could be as high as 500 ppm -- or it could be as low as 350 ppm. If that is the range within which ALL the world's ice will eventually melt, and you like living in the Holocene, then you probably should not put all your money on a 450 ppm ceiling for CO2.

So Hansen is now spearheading a campaign to get 350 ppm recognized as the real long-term target we should be aiming at. Tricky, since we are already at 387 ppm and rising fast, but recently, when I spoke to him at the Tallberg Forum's annual conference in Sweden, he explained: "To figure out the optimum is going to take awhile, but the fundamental thing about the 350 (ppm target), and the reason that it completely changes the ball game, is precisely the fact that it's less than we have now.

"Even if the optimum turns out to be 325 or 300 or something else, we've got to go through 350 to get there.

"So we know the direction now that we've got to go, and it's fundamentally different. It means that we really have to start to act almost immediately.

"Even if we cut off coal emissions entirely, CO2 would still get up to at least 400, maybe 425, and then we're going to have to draw it down, and we're almost certainly going to have to do it within decades."

But there is time. The oceans and the ice sheets react so slowly to changes in the air temperature that you can overshoot the limit for awhile, so long as you get the temperature back down before irreversible changes set in. Stop at 450 ppm in 25 years' time, then get back below 400 in another 25, and down to 350 by, say, 2075. It could work: there is still one last exit for the Holocene.

Green bags

I hope that, by this stage in human evolution, everyone is aware of the importance of avoiding plastic bags (whether we do it is another matter). Of course, corporate evolution is never far behind human evolution (or is it one step ahead?)—so they sell reusable bags for about $1 each, always plastered with brand names.

Those mass-produced bags are good because they’re sturdy, plus their shape is perfect for packing groceries. But what if I don’t want to be a walking advertisement for one of the two major supermarket chains in Australia? Or what if I just don’t want to look like everyone else in the shopping centre?

Well, I have two choices. I can pay a bit more for bags with cool messages that I want to promote. Or, I can make my own. Then I can personalise them with different fabric prints (or just buy the cheap off-cuts, whichever), alter the size if I want, and I can choose materials that aren't made with plastics, like the mass-produced bags are.

So here is my step-by-step pictorial guide for making your own green bags....

What you need (for one bag):

2 squares – 30 cm x 30 cm
3 rectangles – 30 cm x 22 cm
2 handles – 10 cm x 60 cm
A bit of cardboard or stiff plastic - 28 cm x 20 cm
Needle
Thread
Optional: pins, iron, and/or sewing machine. These will make the process much, much quicker. But, even sewing by hand doesn’t take long for these simple bags.

What you do:

Cut your fabric (good luck doing this if you have a playful cat!) and decide which side you want to face out. Mark the OPPOSITE side with pencil or chalk to remind yourself later.

Take two rectangles. Place them together with both outsides facing in—you should be able to see the pencil marks. Line up the edges and sew about ½ a centimetre in along one of the short sides. Use a fairly strong stitch so the bag doesn’t fall apart when it’s loaded full of canned food or soy milk. Do the same thing with the other rectangle, and then with the two squares. Once you’ve sewn all four sides, you should have something that looks like this (forgive my uneven stitches, I was sewing by hand):

Next, hem the tops of each side panel. I didn’t do this on these yellow bags because I lined up the cutting just right and had un-cut sides of fabric along the tops.

Take two adjacent side panels and line them up, then sew them together. Repeat for the other four corners.

For the handles—Fold each 10x60cm strip of fabric in half (outsides in). Iron or press down with a ruler to make a crease. Sew both sides together along the length. Use your fingers or a pencil to turn the straps inside out.

Attach the straps to the bag—on the square sides, 2 to 4 centimetres from the corner, and 5 centimetres from the top. Sew these on strongly so the handles don’t break off when you’re walking home from the grocery store. Make sure the handles aren’t twisted before you attach the other end.

Once both handles are attached, you’re basically done. Stick the cardboard or plastic down in the bottom to make the bag sturdier, and go buy some veggies!

As you can see, we’ve been on a bit of a self-sufficiency kick lately, especially with the new bread maker, and with a few other things that I will reveal to you all shortly.

Multigrain bread baking in the bread machine.

In addition to continually reducing my reliance on corporations, I’ve also just been to a day and a half seminar on finishing my PhD on time... and spending so much time blogging isn’t the way to do it! So I’ll have to apologise in advance because I’m fully intending to get cracking on my work so my presence on other blogs will be noticeably declined, and my posting here may well become a bit more sporadic. I will still be around, just not as constantly. So keep your fingers crossed that the next 18 months go smoothly and I’m one of the few people who actually submits her PhD without extending beyond three years.

Veggies Galore.

Here are some more veggie-full meals that we’ve eaten lately.

Sweet potato hash with five spice and watercress, from Vegan with a Vengeance. I used a mix of gold kumara and purple-skinned sweet potato. To go with it, Andy made some broccoli flavoured with mustard seeds, lemon juice and fresh dill.

This was the makings of vegetable wraps. In the farthest black bowl is a mixture of sautéed zucchini and green capsicum, flavoured with mustard seeds. The closest black bowl has raw corn, which added a lovely crunch to the wraps. The rainbow bowl has Andy’s favourite side dish of sautéed spinach and grated carrot, with balsamic vinegar. The yellow bowl holds guacamole, and the glass bowl has some Almost Sour Cream (from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah). All that filling, plus sauce, made for overstuffed tortillas.

Here we have roasted green beans, a garlic-herb dinner roll, baked mushrooms, mashed potato balls and stuffed zucchini. The zucchini stuffing had the zuke inners, a big mushrooms, grated carrot, tomato, bread crumbs and nut yeast.

This was a very filling dinner, but somehow we found room for salad. It wasn’t a typical salad since it didn’t have any leaves in it. Most of the salad was made up of alfalfa sprouts, raw corn and grated carrot. It also had avocado, green olives, capers, and balsamic vinaigrette.

Here was another filling dinner, made entirely for me by Andy. He made sweet potato chippies in the oven, roasted green beans, broccoli and cauliflower baked in cream sauce and topped with yeast sauce, raw corn and red capsicum, and baked peanut tofu (pre-marinated and marked down to $1).

We’re not the only ones who love raw corn. We have to fend off a voracious feline whenever we bring it home from the market or pull it out of the fridge.

Nacho plays with the leaves, wolfs down the kernels and cleans off the cob for us. She likes cornflakes, too, but she really prefers the box.

Fusion Cuisine.

India, meet Ethiopia. Oh, and here's Australia and America, too.

This is a meal that Andy made for me last week. He followed Peter Singer's (Australian) recipe for dhal (Indian), which we like for the inclusion of tomatoes and coconut milk. But, in place of curry powder, we subbed Berbere powder (Ethiopian) which was based on a recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen (American). I think we had it on some brown rice. And to drink, we had a home brew blend called Dublin. So there's some Europe for you, too.

The only continents we were missing were South America and Antarctica.

Salad, on a vegan blog. How creative.

I'm not writing this post to talk about salad, though this one was particularly good (spinach, lettuce, tomato, avocado, cucumber, and raw corn). No, my interest lies in the glass of brown stuff next to the salad.

That, my friends, is the tastiest salad dressing ever. I kid you not.

I was flipping through the salad dressing section of La Dolce Vegan looking for some inspiration one night, when I saw a recipe for "Sesame Miso Dressing". I thought that sounded pretty darn good. But as I was making it, I remembered that we had some sunflower seed butter in the fridge (marked down from $5 to $1--score! we grabbed two and stuck one straight in the freezer). So instead of using tahini, I made "Sunflower Miso Dressing".

This is really that good. Somehow the simple combination of water, vinegar, maple syrup, miso and sunflower butter morphs a regular salad into a plate of edible heaven.

Maybe it's just a sign of my new obsession with sunflower butter. But it's not just me--Andy made this again two days later, and I had to refrain him from drinking the leftovers straight out of the glass.

I'm lovin' my oven.

Although this winter hasn't been anywhere near as chilly as last year, I still prefer summery heat. But, winter is a good excuse to have lots of yummy baked and roasted meals, so that's what we've been doing. I guess we need to take advantage of it while we can, since the summer temperatures usually mean it's far too hot to turn the oven on.

We resurrected one of our favourite meals from last year, the Mexican Lasagne. This one was different from those past, because it has our new-found favourite ingredient, fresh corn. It also contains pressure-cooked kidney beans, sweet potato, capsicum, and tomatoes, and it was topped with a beautiful dollop of avocado mash after it came out of the oven. We also did the usual doubling-up of oven heat by baking some corn muffins, and throwing in some tater tots.

Another favourite is veggies roasted in simple flavours. The picture is a bit dim, but the pink things are radishes roasted with salt, pepper, and coriander roots. Above them is a mixture of plain potato, orange kumara sweet potato, and purple skin/white flesh sweet potato. The tubers were tossed with some flour, cumin, paprika and black sesame seeds and they got all crunchy in the oven. Finally on the plate you'll see Andy's recent favourite dish--spinach (or silverbeet, in this case) sauteed with garlic and shredded carrot, then splashed with soy sauce.
And while the oven is on, why not make dessert? Strawberries were on special last week so we grabbed two punnets. I really had a craving for strawberry shortcake--despite the fact that it is a quintessential summer dessert. I remember really hot days in summer when strawberry shortcake was our entire dinner... my mom was the best! Andy wasn't too keen on the idea of these, because he envisaged hard shortcake biscuits. But, he was pleasantly surprised at the delicious simplicity of scones and strawberries, topped with a bit of custard.
The other thing winter is great for is curling up on the couch with a good book.

Getting to know you...

Like Katie, who has been busy introducing blog readers to all of her new friends, I too have a new addition to my household that I would like you to meet.

We got it on Monday, the last day of the financial year, when most shops were having major sales (also, coincidentally, a public holiday thanks to the Townsville Show, so we didn’t feel bad about skipping uni to go shopping).

Here it is, in all its glory... our new breadmaker.

We decided to get one after shopping on Saturday and finding that all the bread--in addition to costing more than $2 a loaf--contained milk solids. I’m sure all my vegan readers know the frustration that is milk solids, but suffice it to say that I wanted to throw the loaves of milky bread at someone. Plus, the grocery store within walking distance from us has a very poor bakery section, so we have to go out of our way to buy bread in bulk at evening markdown sales from a bit further afield. When we do that, our freezer is consumed with loaves, rolls and baguettes. With all of this hassle, we wondered why we shouldn’t just make our own.

So that’s what we’re doing from now on.

Our inaugural loaf was plain white bread. In a bit over 3 hours we had this warm, homemade loaf to dig into.

We used regular flour and threw in a bit of gluten, but the texture was still a bit... homemade. It was good, don't get me wrong. But we knew that proper bread flour was a necessity.

Our next experiment went to the opposite end of the spectrum. This time we used a bread machine pre-mix for multigrain bread. It costs about $1 a loaf to use pre-mix, and it's not all that much easier than making from scratch, so we probably won't rely on this method too heavily in the future. But, the benefit of pre-mix was the texture was perfectly chewy and delicious.Now the possibilities are practically endless. We can make any kind of bread, cakes and quickbreads, and even jam inside of our new breadmaker. It was a bit expensive, but this is one of those investments that will pay for itself in convenience (no milk solids!), health (no preservatives!), and pure economics (no $2.50 per loaf!). Expect to see a lot more of this new family member around this blog.