Quick and easy, much more satisfying than buying a pack! These can easily be made vegan by substituting butter for vegan spread.
Hob Nobs
Ingredients – Makes 30 – 40 depending on size
225g of self raising flour
225g of sugar
225g of good whole porridge oats
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
225g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon of golden syrup
1 tablespoon of hot water
Method
Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
In a pan melt the butter, syrup and add the hot water.
When melted add to the dry ingredients.
Mix well, make into small balls and place on a greased baking tray, flatten slightly.
Bake at 180C for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Cool on a rack and nom!
I’ve neglected the food part of the blog for a while so I thought I’d write this down, I had a butternut squash to use and came up with this!
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- In the pan…
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- On the plate…
Ingredients – Makes 6
A 1KG butternut squash, peeled and diced into 1-2cm cubes
A little olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
A sprinkle of dried sage
200ml of vegetable stock
175ml white wine
150g of spinach
30g of toasted pine nuts
125g of crumbled vegetarian blue cheese
50g of feshly grated vegetarian Parmesan cheese
1litre of passata
6 sheets of fresh lasagne
Method
Pour a little olive oil into a large pan and add the diced onion, sauté for 5 minutes or until soft.
Add the peeled & diced butternut squash and garlic to the pan, give it a good stir.
Add the herbs, vegetable stock and wine, you may as well pour yourself another glass whilst you’re at it.
Season with freshly ground black pepper, stir, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the squash is just soft.
If there’s any liquid left in the pan, drain it off then lightly mash the squash with the back of a spoon.
Add the spinach, crumbled blue cheese, half the parmesan and half of the pine nuts. Stir the mix and cover until the spinach has milted.
Lay out the lasagne sheets and place a hearty spoonful of the mix on each one, roll up and place in a greased baking dish.
Pour the passata over the cannelloni until they are almost covered and sprinkle with the remaining parmesan and pine nuts.
Bake in the oven at 200C for 20-30 minutes or until the pasta is tender.
I’m no professional photographer, but I can use a camera. Last year I started taking pictures of star trails and recently with the hightened geomagnetic activity we thought we’d have a go at shooting the Aurora whilst it was here.
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- Aurora over Saltburn Pier
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- Star Trails over Whitby Abbey
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- Star Trails
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- Star Trails
Depending on where you are and at what stage the Aurora is at will determine what you need. Over the last few days the ‘Kp index‘ of the Aurora has been fairly low, so the further south you are the dimmer the lights will appear. Ideally you need to be close to the earth’s magnetic poles but they’re still visable from further away. When we went out the green hue wasn’t really visible to look at, it just looked like a cloud in the sky near to the horizon, but with a digital SLR camera or high end compact you should be able to get some good results.
What you need
- A digital camera with Av (Aperture Priority), bulb or manual modes.
- A sturdy tripod
- Remote shutter release
I’ve got a Canon 450D, it’s a few years old but it does exactly what I need it to do, it has Av and bulb modes which means I can set the shutter to be open for 30 seconds or more to capture all the available light.
My tripod is a Velbon CX-540, it stands tall enough to not need the elevator up so it stays steady in the wind. Because you’ll be taking long exposures you need to minimise any movement, even a light breeze will cause a blur in your pictures.
Using a remote shutter release also minimises any movement of the camera, because you’re not pressing the button down on the camera body it eliminates the initial shake, I’ve got a cheap Hama CA-1 for my Canon which also lets me lock the shutter down to shoot continually, useful for taking photographs of star trails.
What now?
So you’ve got the kit, what now? If you’re in the north east then the Aurora will usually appear fairly low to the horizon due to our location, you’ll need a good clear view from a dark location away from any light pollution. We had a ride out to Saltburn, it’s far enough away from any large towns, after midnight the pier lights go off too so bear that in mind if you want to use the pier as a focal point of your pictures.
- Set your tripod up on some sturdy ground, away from any direct lights, if it’s windy don’t wind the elevator up. Point your camera to the north and towards the horizon, this will change the further north you go, as your eyes get used to the dark you should be able to at least see a faint smudge of the aurora so try and aim for that.
- With your camera in Av (Aperture Priority) mode set the aperture as wide as you can, this lets as much light in through the lens as possible, meaning you can use a lower ISO, you’ll end up with less noise on the final image. I had mine set between f/3.5 and f/5.6.
- Shutter Speed, set it as slow as possible, most cameras will go to at least 30 seconds and then have a bulb mode. 30 seconds should be long enough to capture a decent picture but if you have a remote shutter release in bulb mode the shutter will stay open as long as you’re holding down the button. Again, play around with a few test shots and see what works best for you.
- Set your ISO to either 400 or 800, again depending on the aperture of your lens this can change. The lower the f/ the wider the aperture opens meaning more light can hit the camera sensor. More light means you need a lower ISO sensitivity. It’s best to play around with these settings once you’re happy you have everything else set up.
- Set your White Balance, I used 4000K to keep the images a cold blue/white and to stop any extra light turning the sky orange.
- Manual focus, it’s dark, your automatic focus won’t be able to see anything to do this for you. If you can, try and focus on something towards infinity, be warned that some lenses including mine focus past infinity when you turn the focus ring so don’t just turn it all the way and hope for the best. I used some lights from the ships that were out at sea to set mine. You might want to tape the focus ring down once you’ve got it set just in case you knock it.
- Wrapped up warm and with your remote shutter release in hand, fire away!
Useful Resources
I got my HTC Desire back at the beginning of 2010, my second Android phone because I liked the Hero so much. It came with Froyo and HTC made a Gingerbread update available in 2011.
The Desire only has 512MB of flash memory, when HTC made the Gingerbread update they repartitioned the flash to make more space for /system and less for /data, one problem with this is that there’s now only 147MB available for /data.
Because on this I’ve always had to run a tight ship app wise on my Desire, HTC bundled Facebook and Flash with their ROM, these took up a lot of space on /data.
I stumbled across this thread over at xdadevelopers, Sandvold and others have been working on getting ICS working on the Desire and as it turns out they’ve done one hell of a job!
Ice Cream Sandwich
I grabbed the latest ROM from http://www.sandvold.as, rooted my phone with Revolutionary and set to work.
A few minutes later I had ICS on my Desire, it’s still very much in beta but it’s running Android 4.0.3 with pretty much full hardware support and it has more free space in /data, but wait, this is where Apps2SD comes to the rescue!
Apps2SD makes your phone think your SD card is part of the internal storage and essentially extends /data onto it so everything to do with an application and system caches can be stored there! So as long as you have a class 4 or above card in your phone it really does help extend the life of the Desire.
A few issues…
It’s beta and it seems to have a few issues but nothing to stop me using it every day…
- After A2SD has been installed the ring and notifications tones are fairly quiet.
- The camera shutter sound is always on, even when the phone is set to silent.
- Sometimes when you press and hold a key on the keyboard for the pop up shortcuts you have to move your finger well away from the character you want to select to actually select it.
- No video recording or panorama in the Camera app.
- No USB mass storage mode support, ICS is supposed to support MTP on Windows but that doesn’t work either. You can however reboot to ClockworkMod recovery and enable USB mass storage mode there.
- Sometimes the Screen Lock enables itself immediately when you put the phone to sleep even if it is set to lock 2 minutes after sleep.
Whitby Abbey star trails
Roughly 90, 30 second exposures stacked. Oh, it was a bit windy too!
f3.5, ISO 800, WB 3500K
Sometimes, a nice White Russian simply won’t do, so why not go one better than The Dude and mix it together with home made ice cream!
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- Ingredients
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- In the mixer
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- Ice cream!
Ingredients
125ml of whole milk
600ml of double cream
200g of sugar
The yolks of 4 medium eggs
1 tablespoon of Agar Agar flakes (You can use gelatin if you’re not making it vegetarian)
60ml of water
150ml of good vodka
150ml of Kahlua
An ice cream mixer
Method
Add the milk, cream and sugar to a pan, put on a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. You don’t want to boil it, just heat it through until just before it boils and the sugar has dissolved.
In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
Slowly add a little bit of the hot milk/cream mixture whisking all the time. This is called tempering, you don’t want too much of the hot mixture to come in contact with the egg yolks or they will go lumpy. The idea is you add a little bit at a time so the yolks don’t get hot enough to solidify.
Once you’ve incorporated all of the milk/cream mixture into the egg yolks you have your custard.
Strain the custard back into a pan and heat for a few minutes, stirring constantly.
Coat the back of a spoon with the custard, run your finger across it, if you can make a line without any of the mixture running back over the line it’s ready.
Strain the custard into another bowl, cover with cling film, place in another bowl filled with ice and put it in the fridge for at least 8 hours, overnight if possible.
Add the water to a pan and sprinkle the Agar Agar flakes over the top, heat the water until the Agar Agar dissolves and stir until it thickens.
Add the vodka and Kahlua, mix and then strain into the cold custard. Give it all a good stir.
Take the freezer bowl for the ice cream maker from the freezer and immediately add the custard.
Mix it for up to 40 minutes, it should start to thicken after 20 minutes depending on how cold your freezer bowl is.
That’s it! If you want your ice cream thicker pour it from the freezer bowl into a container and place in the freezer overnight.
The Dude would be truly proud!
It’s almost ratatouille but not quite but it tastes really nice and smothered over a lovely soft baked aubergine it makes for an easy meal. It goes down equally well over some roasted butternut squash wedges or topped off with some paneer pieces and a light grilling.
Ingredients
1 aubergine, washed and cut in half lengthways
1 400g can of chopped tomatoes
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 orange pepper, washed and cut into chunks
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon of sugar
A sprinkle of dried oregano
A sprinkle of dried sage
Freshly ground black pepper
A little olive oil
Method
Preheat your oven to 200C (I’ve got a fan oven).
Place the halved aubergine on a baking tray, score the flesh, rub with a little olive oil and add a little ground black pepper.
Bake in the oven for around 40 minutes but keep an eye on them!
Meanwhile in a large pan add a little olive oil and sauté the onion and orange pepper for a few minutes until the onion is soft.
Add the chopped tomatoes, garlic, sugar and a little black pepper, stir until combined.
Add as much of the herbs as you like, I probably added a teaspoon of each.
Give it all a good stir, have a taste, if it’s good let’s rock and roll.
When the aubergine flesh has turned golden brown and the edges catching move them to plates and spoon over the almost ratatouille.
Picked a bag of veg up from the farmers’ market for £1.50 and it made enough soup for a week. It’s easy to make and will keep in the freezer.
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- Vegetables!
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- Yummy soup in the pan
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- Nom, with a thick wedge of bread!
Ingredients
40g of unsalted butter (Recipe could easily be made vegan by substituting the butter for olive oil or vegan spread)
2 celeriac, peeled and chopped
4 large carrots, peeled and chopped
4 medium sized potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and chopped
1 litre of hot vegetable stock (I used 2 Knorr stock pots)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
In a large pan, melt the butter then add the onion, carrots and celeriac.
Stir to cover the veg in some butter, put a lid on the pan and cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.
Add the potatoes and stock, make sure the stock covers all the veg.
Season with freshly ground pepper and a little salt, remember there’s probably already salt in the stock so don’t overdo it!
Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until the veg is cooked.
With a stick blender, purée the soup leaving some lumpy veg.
Serve in hot bowls with a chunky wedge of bread!
Left over béchamel sauce and some broccoli in the bottom of the fridge, throw it in a pan with some other stuff, quick food!
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- Steaming broccoli
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- Mix it all up!
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- Serve!
Ingredients – Serves 4
300g whole wheat penne pasta
680ml of béchamel sauce
1 head of broccoli, washed and cut into bite size chunks
A hand full of frozen peas
Freshly ground black pepper
As much vegetarian Parmesan cheese as you have to hand, grated
Method
Steam the broccoli for about 20 minutes.
Whilst that’s going on, pour some boiling water in to a large pan and add the pasta, cook for around 12 minutes or until it’s done!
Drain the pasta and add it back to the empty pan.
Add the béchamel sauce and heat through.
Throw in a hand full of frozen peas and cook for a few minutes.
Twist in some black pepper.
Add the Parmesan and broccoli and stir in gently.
Serve up!
