Categories

 

September 2010
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  

Vegtember: Lebanese Meze Platter

So not done a Vegtember blog for a couple of days, was busy playing Mafia 2 on Sunday, and I was knackered after work yesterday. So below are the recipes from my vegetarian meze platter on Sunday. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures as was a little big rushed so apologies for that.

All these dishes were very nice, but it didn’t quite work as a main meal; I have to confess I was busy thinking about how much better it all would have been with a nice Lamb Kofte kebab!

Continue reading Vegtember: Lebanese Meze Platter

Vegtember: Using local Greengrocers

Saturday was always going to be tricky for me. It is my normal “bacon buttie” day. I have already said I am a massive carnivore and bacon is probably the foodstuff I love more than anything else in the world. So my first Saturday of Vegtember was one in which I intended to keep myself very busy, and my mind firmly off the topic of various pig related products.

My new toy!

Lots of the vegetarian recipes that people have sent me call for the use of a Griddle pan, a

Continue reading Vegtember: Using local Greengrocers

Vegtember Day Two: Spinach and Mushroom Curry

Day two of Vegtember and I am jonesing for a curry. Now I think it is fair to say that it is very much a western thing that all curries have to contain meat. Mostly on the subcontinent the food will be predominantly vegetarian. I love curry, and I think that cooking vegetarian ones this month will probably improve my skill as I will be less likely to rely on the meat and think more about the flavour.

This recipe is another of my kid brothers (thanks Dan!) slightly adapted to

Continue reading Vegtember Day Two: Spinach and Mushroom Curry

Vegtember: Last (meaty) Supper!

So on waking up this morning I realised that it’s happening tomorrow, a whole month without eating any meat. And although Vegtember hadn’t really started yet, I had already started getting rid of all the meat in my fridge so had a vegetarian packed lunch today.

So therefore I thought I had to go out with a bang tonight and have something that’s both meat, and treat. Steak it is them. Now steak is not my very favourite food, I’m a big fan for sure, but there is other stuff that

Continue reading Vegtember: Last (meaty) Supper!

Vegtember: So what is Vegtember?

So what is Vegtember then? Put simply it is a Vegetarian September, Why? Well my union the CWU is part of a green project called Climate Solidarity. This is a coalition of a number of Trade Unions which includes the PCS, the NUT, the UCU, ourselves and the charity COIN. The idea is to set up a number of climate change action groups in which individuals will look to reduce their personal carbon footprint at home or at work.

The CWU’s national youth committee is one such action group, and as

Continue reading Vegtember: So what is Vegtember?

Bank charges are not fair.

Following the excellent and thought provoking blog from my colleague Matt Edwards, entitled “In defence of bank charges.”,  I though I would post a blog response with a different view.

My politics is based massively around my ideas fairness, and it is on this crucial test that I think the bank charges fall down, and fall down in a big way.

Firstly the problem as I see it is the value of the charges is so often out of all proportion to the nature of the “offence”. Put simply the punishment does

Continue reading Bank charges are not fair.

Some silver linings if the coalition does last.

Having recently blogged about why I think the coalition is most likely going to last the best part of a whole term of Parliament. It is now time for the companion piece about why I am not even sure it would be desirable to bring down the government quickly. On balance, I really want to see the back of the coalition as soon as possible and if they fail quickly, proving my last blog wrong then I would be delighted. But if that doesn’t happen here are a few reasons

Continue reading Some silver linings if the coalition does last.

Tories = Dark Lords of the Sith?

Special thanks to my friend Matthew Travis for pointing this out to me. It appears from this irrefutable documentary evidence that Francis Maude and Emporer Palpatine/Darth Sidious are in fact one and the same person.

See for yourself, here are some pictures of Palpatine/Sidious:-

Emporer Palpatine

Darth Sidious

Now let us compare this to Some pictures of Francis Maude:-

Former Tory Chairman Francis Maude

Apparently both Michael Gove, and George Osborne applied to become Sith Lords but were denied entry on the grounds that they were far, far to evil to actually be

Continue reading Tories = Dark Lords of the Sith?

5 reasons why the Coalition will last.

My recent blog on why I think it is a mistake for the left to be focussing so much on the Liberal Democrats generated some interesting debate, on the blog, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Much of this debate focussed on the need to attack the coalition to try and bring it down as quickly as possible. Now I cant say that this would be anything other than a hot damn good thang! But I feel the need to write a couple of quick blogs about firstly how likely I think

Continue reading 5 reasons why the Coalition will last.

Time to stop wasting time hating the Lib Dems.

A significant trick will have been missed by the left if we focus all or our ire with the coalition on the Liberal Democrats. The sense of almost visceral hatred, at the alleged betrayal is for my money misplaced and is meaning that the left are missing a trick in respect of who the enemy really are.

For my money the Liberal Democrats really didn’t have too much choice after the election given the mathematics of the parliament. There really wasn’t a credible possibility of a workable Lib/Lab coalition and for

Continue reading Time to stop wasting time hating the Lib Dems.