Make yer own dang
weed butter
October 13, 2006
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The fresher the better, but this ball of dried leaf, brought home from the friends’ Friesche farm, will do just fine. Remerçi, Madame!
Of course you can substitute any old weed in this weed butter recipe, but I’m old fashioned and just like to use weed. The culinary reasoning behind making butter is that it is more neutral in flavour than filling your fine cooking with loads of bulky chaw. You can use weed butter exactly as you would butter, substituting it in all recipes that you deem appropriate. Be good and make sure that everyone tasting your weed cuisine is acutely aware of what they’re about to ingest. If you make an alternative dish without the weed butter, make sure it looks completely different so that people don’t inadvertently confuse the two. Don’t mix this butter with the drinking of alcohol, or the driving of cars.
It’s good practice to know the strength of the butter before offering it in food to others. You’re going to have to test this on yourself first and then use your own best judgement in deciding whether you need to cut it with plain butter in your cooking. Remember that ingested THC is long lasting - up to eight hours. Take it easy and remember that you’re not an eleven year old boy. (Please read more… )
debra at 2:51 | Comments (58) | post to del.icio.us
Get the vault out:
Vote for la Voute!
October 6, 2006
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
What does nubian vaulted architecture have to do with food culture? It’s a stretch, but suffice it to say that good cookin’ and eatin’ requires stable communities and a stable kitchens requires a stable roof. My buddies at La Voute Nubienne are among the 13 finalists of the Ashoka-Changemakers Competition on “How to Provide Affordable Housing.” Vaulted homes are an ancient architectural technique, traditionally used in Sudan and central Asia, but until now unknown in West Africa, can accelerate appropriate house-building in the Sahel. The Nubian Vault (“la Voute Nubienne” or VN) technique uses basic, readily available local materials and simple, easily learned procedures. The only major cost is labour, which is great - cash stays in the local economy. Raw materials, are all locally available and more importantly, ecologically sound. In Burkina Faso, trained VN builders are becoming independent entrepreneurs. A voute may be different from a yurt, but voute entrepreneurs get my vote any day.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
La Voute Nubienne initiative has been shortlisted by a panel of five distinguished judges. Now it’s over to us, the online community to vote for three winners. Each voter is required to cast three votes, otherwise your vote will be rendered invalid. This, to ensure fairplay, it’s a prestigious award. The deadline for voting is October 16, 2006. The Changemakers Innovation Award winners will be announced on October 17, 2006.
Cast your vote for La Voute Nubienne and two others right here.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
What’s so special about the VN technique?
- the only raw material used is earth, for making both mortar, and mud bricks dried in the sun
- timber shuttering is not needed to support the vault during construction
the traditional methods have been simplified, and adapted to provide protection during the short but heavy rainy seasons of sub-Saharan Africa.
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Image courtesy of La Voute Nubienne.
debra at 8:13 | Comments (6) | post to del.icio.us
Meat meeting tonight
October 5, 2006
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Image of First Nations Sioux ladies drying meat used entirely without permission.
That should read meat fight tonight! If you’re interested in the meat industry and are currently in Amsterdam, you’re not going to want to miss tonight’s Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global Meat Industry at Felix Meritus on the Keizersgracht. Specifically the event promises to address the environmental impact of raising livestock and eating animal protein. culiblog has an inside scoop that there will be audience members present that are heading the teams cooking up meat in the laboratory using animal and/or vegetable protein and not involving any actual livestock at all. Let the wingflapping begin.
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Image from the Tissue Culture and Art website showing an attempt at growing frog muscle tissue used entirely without permission.
Indeed, it seems there are two camps in this crazy mixed-up world that refuse to believe in rice and beans like the rest of us. One of the camps is animal and one is vegetable. Just for the sake of poetry, it would be nice if at tonight’s lecture there was also a representative from the mineral camp, but we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone from the oil industry shows up to defend themselves (and all that other foul off-subject stuff they’re doing). I’ll be the one sitting in-between the esteemed gentlemen catching all the spit. I was thinking of wearing a skirt.
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Microscope image of muscle tissue from the Pruned landscape architecture weblog used entirely without permission.
I would like to take this opportunity to dispel a myth. This week I have spoken to the heads of both Dutch research teams working to be the first to produce an alternative to livestock grown meat. For clarity’s sake I would like to announce right here and now that I have spoken to Professor Haagsman (Meat Scientist!) who told me that ‘lab meat’ does not yet exist and that we will have to wait at least six years if not fifteen to taste this product. I know a lot of media suggests that this product exists, but this is apparently 100% not true.
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Image of rectangular cuts of perfectly marbled beef from the E-meat website (in Japanese language only) and used entirely without permission.
- Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global Meat Industry at Felix Meritus, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam
Thursday Oct 5, 2006 at 20.00h
Entrance: € 10,- / € 7,50 (student) discount)
Reserve: +31 (0)20 623 13 11
Email: receptie@felix.meritis.nl - The artist initative Tissue Culture and Art
- Tissue Culture and Art, Disembodied Meat
- Pruned landscape architecture blog only shows the prettiest of pictures
- Why does this Japanese company call itself E-meat?
Shouldn’t that be iMeat? - Comprehensive article about lab-grown meat in the AnimalRighter - iMeat: How Lab-Grown Meat Could Revolutionize Vegetarianism and the World
debra at 13:37 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us
