Tall Skinny Kiwi

Willy Wonka Party

This is a record of our Willy Wonka birthday party last week and in particular, the media, food and games we created for it in the few hours before the party. Maybe it will be helpful to others doing the same thing.

Thats me on the left, dressed up as Willy Wonka. I welcomed people at the front door with a rolled out red carpet. This was the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory themed birthday party for our daughter Elizabeth, who turned 15. It was a great time and exceeded expectations. It was done on a budget and done quite well. So . . . I thought I would blog some of the links that were helpful, the games we invented, and, for non-geeks,  some of the hacks I used to get Willy Wonka media like fonts, .mp3 and video into our home. I use a Mac, btw and cant really recommend the best tools and programs to PC users.

Video
There are plenty of Willy Wonka video clips out there (youtube, etc) but importing and reusing can be a challenge. I download them with the Video Downloader 2.0 which is an add on to my Firefox browser. Then I open them up with MPEG Streamclip as a Quick Time movie, or, as DV footage for iMovie. If you can find some movies in .mov or .mpg format, (I search for them on Google) then you can download them directly as QT movies and use them as fodder for your video wallpaper. Some of my downloads needed editing to get the credits and words out of them which i did in Quicktime Pro (costs a little but its worth it). When you are all done, make sure the movie is in "loop" mode and play it on your TV or, if you have a projector, shoot it on the ceiling or a wall.

Technorati Tags: willy wonka

Technorati Tags: willy wonka

Cruelty-Free Chicken Runs

Update: Tesco criticised for £2 chickens and rightly so.

Talk at the pub last night revolved around cruelty-free diets and the effect of the recent Chicken Run Series on Channel 4 by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I really liked what Hugh did and what he was trying to achieve in making his town completely free range. For those of you outside the country, Hugh set up his own intensive chicken farm alongside a free-range farm and compare the two. Really great and disturbing program!

We have 5 chickens in our back yard and let them run wherever they want. We handed over our original free-range chicken cooperative down the road to some other families and couples who wanted to give it a shot. There are 10 chickens in the cooperative.

Our chickens are really friendly and they like lots of cuddles.

A lot of the conversation comes down to money. Does the single housewife on social welfare buy two intensively farmed chickens for a fiver at the local supermarket or does she buy only one cruelty free chicken for a the same price, or a little more? You can have your say here.

Our policy for the last 2-3 years has been to completely avoid the cheap nasties and pay extra for the cruelty-free. But to pay twice as much for meat often means to eat half as much so we have added more vegetarian meals to our diet. We are also able to get two meals out of one chicken by keeping the bones and making a soup for another day. And they just taste better, as well as easing the conscience.

My post in 2006 called "Grace To Ewe: Our Cruelty-Free Diet" is, surprisingly, still the Number 2 pick at Buzzfeed for Cruelty free Carnivorism, the number one being Wolfgang Puck's new standards. My post, and in particular, something I wrote in 2005 called "The Skinny on Our Cruelty Free Diet" has some Biblical guidelines for carnivore diets so it good to see it getting read by a lot of people who don't often relate the Bible with their diet. Which reminds me, Hugh F-W's excellent book called The River Cottage Meat Book begins with some principles from the book of Genesis on the contract we have with our animals.

Technorati Tags: cruelty free, free range

My Christmas Gingerbread Waffles with Boysenberry Sauce.

I have been asked for the recipe for my Christmas gingerbread waffles. I have to admit that the first time I cooked them for my Christmas guests they were really boring and so I revamped them for Christmas eve with extra cherries and nutmeg and chunks of Chinese stem ginger and they came out far better, despite the cherries turning a little black. Heres how to make them.

The Mix:

Throw half a dozen eggs in a bowl with a little full cream milk and beat it. Throw a few tablespoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt and keep mixing. Then tip a whole load of flour and beat it until it is really thick and gets a life of its own. Melt some butter - a few tablespoons will do - and pour it in. Now gradually add milk until it comes to a good thickness - dripping off the beaters in big heavy drops but not runny enough to pour from them. The mixture is much thicker than what you use for crepes. At this point, I put in lots of ginger powder, a generous sprinkle of nutmeg, chopped stem ginger (soaked in sugar syrup) and glazed cherries. Just mix it in gently or you will crush the cherries. And thats your waffle mixture. BTW - The Belgians use more eggs and sugar and less milk to make the famous waffles they sell on the streets.

Hope you have decent waffle maker like mine - a Krups FDD912 Expert Waffle Maker with Rotary System. It was the best one i could find in Belgium. The plastic knob on the top has broken off but it still works fine. The secret on these is to turn them upside down almost immediately after putting in your mixture and let them cook this way the whole time (4 minutes should do it).

The Sauce:

I made a fantastic Boysenberry syrup and I cheated by using JAM. I melted a tablespoon of butter, threw in 2 or 3 tablespoons of Walls Boysenberry jam from Oregon, a few grindings of nutmeg and a splash of Cointreau. The boysenberry is a fabulous American invention connected with Knots Berry Farm in California. Hey - I would use real berries if i could find them. But its winter so I use jam. And if i cant find boysenberries, I use raspberries which are a little more cliché but taste good with the Cointreau.

Related: Waffles for 30

Technorati Tags: cooking, waffles

Grace to Ewe: Our Cruelty-Free Diet

UPDATE: See the latest on our cruelty-free chicken co-operative and what we think of Hugh Fearning-Whittingstall's Chicken Run series right here.

Some of you are asking what i mean by "Cruelty-Free", as in our Cruelty-Free Christmas Feast that we enjoyed a few days ago. I didnt want to post on this right before you started to bake your huge turkey - bad timing - but maybe now is more appropriate.

This is a post i wrote in 2005 which didnt get ANY attention:
There's a lot of confusion about cruelty free diets, and most websites are not very helpful if you are not vegetarian or vegan. So | will briefly describe our understanding of a Biblical, ethical meat eating diet.

I told you at the beginning of the year about our commitment to a cruelty-free diet in a post called "Righteous Men and Meat", and that i had brought the subject up (perhaps unwisely) at a briefing for some Foundations who were asking about the Emerging Church. I also told you that last week I had a weak moment, a lapse of judgment, and am now back on track. But there is some confusion as to what it is we are doing. Maybe I am assuming that everyone knows more than they do. Here is the skinny on our cruelty free diet.

I believe God gave us care of the animals ("govern" is a better word than "dominion") and they, in return, give us food and clothing. We look after each other. It is a contract we have with the animals. under the eye of God. This is why Solomon can say "The righteous man cares for the needs of his animals" Proverbs 12:10

Our Cruelty-Free Christmas Feast

I am not a man given to boasting, but if i must boast, let me boast in the Lord's bountiful provision of game, seafood, grass fed beef, and the many culinary blessings of the Orkney Islands. Especially around Christmas time. We have been working on our Christmas feast since summer and are really excited about bringing out our best for our guests - six of whom are flying in from USA.
Here are some of the highlights:
Goose with rowan jelly made from rowan tree in our back yard, ducks from Orkney's St Ola Island, Orkney crabs [which nearly bit me yesterday with their huge claws, Orkney herring in a sweet marinade, venison sausages with chocolate sauce, London Broil from a cow down the road that had a bad leg. I bought the back quarter of it from the farmer. Poor old cow. But I dont think we will be feeling sorry for it as we eat my delicious beef and rosemary sausages [i really did make my own sausages on the MIGHTY Kenwood food processor and sausage making attachment, but thats another story]

ITS A CRUELTY-FREE CHRISTMAS!

All the meat was killed humanely and we know most of the farmers who killed our birds and beef. And I popped the crabs in the freezer to put them to sleep before boiling them - although i was tempted to taunt that big horrible one and get him back for scaring me!

Breakfasts will include gingerbread waffles and crepes.We have German stollen and pepper gingerbread. Friday night pizza will feature a special Christmas pizza - complete with ham, pineapple and cherries. Tonight we will have my beef and mushroom pie cooked in homebrewed stout.

What's to drink at the Jones Christmas Feast?
To accompany our white and red wines, and the mandatory Orkney Highland Park 12 year, I will be offering something closer to home this year. Our homebrewed stout and dark ale and .. . most importantly, our CelticMonk-inspired Heather Ale with heather that we picked in Stenness. I have also made a Christmas mead and a gooseberry wine from our gooseberry tree. It has been aging in my wine cellar for about 5 months. Oh . . and we have some bottles of German gluhwein [mulled wine] for the cold evenings.

And my Christmas Ale? Ahhhh . . just when i was on a roll you would have to ask that. Well, the truth is my glorious Christmas Ale, inspired by Trappist monks in Belguim, and brewed in late summer to give plenty of time for maturation, actually turned out to be total CRAP . . ghastly stuff!! . . if evaporated to half its size and is practically undrinkable. I think the temperature on the first fermentation was unstable and too low so it messed up the whole process. Oh well.

Anyway, I hope your Christmas is also filled with good friends and good food.

Related: Righteous men and eating meat

Technorati Tags: christmas, puppy

New Scottish Beer: The Island Bere

Fabulous beer called "Island Bere" launched last night at the Stromness Hotel in Orkney. So good, in fact, that i had to go all the way home to get my wife. Lucky that we live only a few doors down.

This is Debbie and I congratulating Sonny Priest, the brewmaster from Valhalla Brewery in Shetland Islands. His "Island Bere" is a fantastic brew made from the ancient bere barley from Orkney - it taste like a cross between an IPA and an Irish Red. The bere barley has a high nitrogen content so the alcohol level is slighter lower than other beers but the hoppy flavour and reddish buttery taste more than make up for it. It is made with Cascade hops at the start and Fogels at the finish. The end result is stunning and a compliment to Orkney. It ranks up there with the great Scottish beers. Well done!

The idea of using the ancient Orkney bere stems from from Peter Martin (top photo - center back, with striped jumper), Senior Researcher at Orkney's Agronomy Institute. I asked him about the monastic beers in Orkney but neither of us are sure whether the monks would have used bere in the beer [no pun intended] but we both suspect they did, since it was the main barley back then. Thank God for the monks. "In fact, for nearly two centuries, monasteries across Scotland were almost solely responsible for the production of beer." Scottish Pubs
BTW - I am thinking of brewing a heather ale, a beer that has been traditionally brewed by Celtic monks, and before them, the Picts. Actually, there is evidence in the Scotish Islands of heather ale from 2000BC.

Some Scottish beers of note:
- Michael Jackson tells a good yarn about heather ale
- More recent history of Scottish ales and their unusual categories.
- Scottish beers are tasted and tested at the Opinionated Beer Page.The "Old Engine Oil Reserve" looks interesting and is aged in whiskey barrels.
- The Grozet, or beer made from gooseberries, was another beer made by monks in the 17th Century. Mike Miliard dates it back to the 1500's.
- There is a Kelpie seaweed ale that has a chocolate taste.
- The Orkney Brewery and Highland Brewing Co are the big ones in Orkney. The latter is preferred by locals.

And lest you assume that all Scots are beer connoisseurs, the favourite beer up here in Orkney is the horrible Tennents which doesnt even deserve a hyperlink.

Technorati Tags: beer, orkney, orkney folk festival

Capon on Cooking

While in London a few weeks ago, I read a fantastic little book on food and spirituality by Father Robert Farrar Capon called The Supper of the Lamb. I loved the book, even though it was written in the 60's. Especially because it was written in the 60's. Its still works today! This guy has similar taste in cuisine and talks in my language. He loves economy, taste, celebration, hospitality, thrift, pleasure, and more importantly, he sees the divine in the breadcrumbs and the yeast. Now I see that Michael Spencer has a very hyper-linky post on Capon's work that he blogged yesterday at Boars Head Tavern - obviously the first step for anyone discovering this priest-chef.

The church began with a meal. The Church needs to come back to the kitchen and get itself sorted again. The Church needs to rethink the puny wafer and thimble ritual and get back to the love feast which is a MEAL that takes TIME and happens MORE than once a week and has LEFTOVERS which can given to the POOR (the justice element) and resembles a PARTY that is full of HOPE towards the FEAST that awaits us with our SAVIOR who is not drinking wine until we get there to toast with Him. Jesus said DO THIS in remembrance of me. We would do well to ask "WHAT?"

Other books on cooking and spirituality that I recommend are:
- The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking by Brother Rick Curry (also recommended by Michael)
- Mealtime Habits of the Messiah, by Congrad Gempf, which is bigger on Bible than bread but worth reading.

- Appetite, by Nigel Slater, which does not count as a "spiritual" book per se but it will teach you to love cooking and advise you on how to stock your kitchen. Nigel's "New Cook Survival Guide" from this book [read it for free here] is a great guide to get started.

Technorati Tags: food, spirituality

Clapshot for dinner

Our family is eating Clapshot for the first time tonight.

Kiwi Mission Diet

"The kiwi~mission~diet is simply an spirituality exercise that invites each of us to reflect on our lifestyles and timestyles." Steve Taylor, who is giving a 3-week challenge for bloggers to eat for half the price and send the leftover (money, not food) to global mission causes. He also provides menus and shopping lists.
Where and how are you going to give? Check out Generous Giving.

The Fatkins Diet

I am way too skinny and have decided to gain some weight for the summer. I am creating a new diet called The Fatkins Diet which i believe will give me some extra poundage. Hannah, my 6 year old daughter is going to join me.
Firstly, i am giving up tea and coffee, or at least limiting it to once or twice a day rather than all day long whenever i feel like it. This should help return my appetite for food, which is suppressed by the caffeine. It should also reduce my metabolism to a reasonable speed.
Secondly, I am replacing tea with Milo and Ovaltine made with milk.
Thirdly, I started taking a supplement called Floradix, "a liquid iron formula containing herbal extract and fruit concentrates", which apparently increases appetite.
Weight lifting? Wish i could but its too expensive to join a gym around here. I will try without it for now. Lets see if i can gain some weight on my Fatkins Diet.

You had me at Halal

Every Friday I buy some halal meat to go with our pizzas, since we get a number of Muslim young people from our neighbourhood coming for an action movie and to cook their own pizza in our oven. I actually didn't buy any this week, since we had so many other friends coming. We had lots of kids, South Africans,good friends, and neighbour kids we haven't seen before, and Amerca's best pastor, Rev. Paul Jackson of Glenwood Community Church who blessed the food.

Pizza party is not church for us, but it is one of the weekly loops in our lives that allows others to enter our life of celebration. We are dependent on others to throw different kinds of parties to allow different parts of kingdom living to find expression. It is also an element of regularity for our family and our transient lifestyle. We have pizza every Friday, even when traveling. We got the idea from an International Teams guy (Tim Barnes) in Illinois who eats pizza and watches a football game each week wtih his family and friends. I have heard that a lot of people do this on a regular basis.

PREDICTION:
I believe that FOOD and cooking are as essential to emerging/organic church than what music was to contemporary/seeker church. I also predict that in the next few years, as emerging churches stop emerging and settle down into their calling, that we will see a resurrection of the church cookery books in the tradition of the Mennonite and Amish churches. Although these will be web based instead of print.

Vespas and Coffee

In SE London, I met the good people at CMS (Church Mission Society) and we went out for coffee at this wicked cool coffee shop - It is a shop for used Vespas and old Italian coffee machines. In the back are tables and chairs. You can smell the engine oil and the coffee is great - really cool coffee shop. Jonny, who works with CMS, sent me these images.
Jonny and Paul (middle image) are two of the people behind the EmergingChurch.info site that was released last month and is already looking really good. I am telling you this to make up for the fact I told them i would write up an article for the site and they are still waiting for it.