spacekadet blog

Home Office

2008-11-11T14:43:47Z

Click on the images to read funny Flickr notes about Tim’s and my home office.

Twitter Me This?

2008-11-09T10:32:48Z

So I’ve decided to see what this Twitter thing is all about.

http://twitter.com/MonicaShaw

Too Many Blogs

2008-11-07T08:47:59Z

Writer’s Residence has been coming along. Slowly. I’ve started a blog to help with our marketing efforts. It’s been an interesting learning experience and I’m glad to see that it’s far easier to gain traction in the writing blogosphere than the fitness blogosphere.

Speaking of fitness, I’ve been keeping a daily food/photo diary at SmarterFitter, part of an experiment for an article I’d like to write on food diaries. Check it out.

Seems all this writing and blogging elsewhere has kept me from keeping up a personal blog. That’s me, “all business.” Not really.

Monica in VegNews Magazine

2008-10-30T13:22:00Z

I just got my copy of the December 2008 issue of VegNews Magazine featuring my article (!!!) about veggie travel in London! I’ve been waiting for months to see this in print and am not disappointed by the result. Not only did I write the article, but it also features four of my photos.

You can check out the article by clicking on the thumbnails below, visiting my portfolio or better yet, by picking up a copy of VegNews!

VegEscapes: London Calling

Growing Oyster Mushrooms

2008-10-21T13:40:38Z

Fungus would normally be the last thing I’d want to find in my apartment, but in this case, I don’t mind.

Tim and I recently bought a “Table Oyster Mushroom Medley Kit” so we can grow our own mushrooms at home. We found our kit at the local farmer’s market, where it cost £8 and claimed to produce about 1kg of mushrooms. This seemed like a pretty good deal, especially when it costs about £22 per kilo to buy oyster mushrooms on their own. Plus, growing mushrooms sounded like fun, and I was really excited to learn that they could be grown indoors.

The kit consists of two myceliated blocks of “mushroom substrate” made from beech sawdust. Setup is a no-brainer - just cut a diagonal “H” into the plastic of each block and place the blocks in a light, airy room away from drafts (or if growing outdoors, place in a sheltered spot protected from the wind and sun).

The mushrooms started out as little “pins” poking through the slits in the plastic after a day or two. It was only a few more days before one of our logs exploded with glorious fungal life. I couldn’t believe how fast they grew! I wish I had taken some time lapse photography to record the process.

The instructions say that the kit can produce about 1 kg of mushrooms over two crops and estimates the growth time to be about eight to ten days. Yesterday, we harvested our first lot of mushrooms from one of the logs (shown above), about seven days after slicing the plastic. It weighed in at 145g which was a little disappointing.

More disappointing is that the other log seems pretty dead. Or is it? I just gave it a closer look today and noticed the “pins” poking through, but this is way slower than the instructions let on. I’ll be super happy if they spring to life. So far, at £55 per kilo, these shrooms are proving to be an expensive experiment! But you can put a price on experience. It IS fun and unbelievably easy to do this. My hope is that the “dead” mushroom log is simply a late but ample bloomer, and that its lively brother will produce an impressive second harvest.

Of course, the best part about growing mushrooms is eating them! We decided to make something simple that would really let the mushrooms stand on their own. I bought a nice baguette while Tim fried up the mushrooms in olive oil with a little onion and garlic. Tim had his mushrooms in a baguette with parsley and parmesan. I put my mushrooms on little baguette slices, kind of like mushroom bruschetta. The mushrooms were delicious, and tasted even better knowing they were made in our flat and picked that day.

If you love mushrooms as much as I do, or even if you just kind of like them a little, I highly recommend growing your own. You can buy a Pearl Oyster Mushroom Patch for just $20 from Amazon and works indoors or outdoors. I’ve never used it but the girl in the picture looks pretty happy. I don’t blame her - growing your own stuff is fun and rewarding. Plus, the shrooms take up very little space, they don’t smell bad, and you don’t even need to water them. It’s the ultimate houseplant for the lazy gardener!

More fungal finds:

My Growing Mushrooms Flickr set

Shiitake Mushroom Indoor / Outdoor Growing Kit

Growing Mushrooms Guide on Channel 4

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Vegetable Tagine

2008-10-19T16:27:12Z

Autumn in London can seem a cold and dreary place, but there is sunshine in the vegetable aisle as some of my favorite vegetables are starting to come into season. Cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and butternut squash are slowly overtaking last month’s peppers and tomatoes, and I am armed with plenty of good reasons to warm up the house with a hot oven. Roasted winter vegetables are one of my favorite things. Winter blues be gone - bring on the comfort food.

Last night, I made my first foray into Morrocan cuisine with a tagine recipe I found on BBC Good Food. A tagine is a type of conical clay pot used in Moroccan cuisine to make slow-cooked stews. This particular stew consists of mixed vegetables, onions and prunes in a chermoula marinade consisting of onion, garlic, ginger, lemon juice and spices.

For lack of a traditional tagine pot, I made do with a Chasseur covered casserole which seemed to do the trick. The chermoula is amazing - I bet it would be a tasty marinade for tofu. The prunes were also a great addition, though other dried fruits like apricots or figs would probably work as well. I love that this tagine can pretty much be made with whatever vegetables are handy. The original recipe called for potatoes and parsnips, but I used cauliflower and butternut squash, in addition to carrots, leeks, and red onion.

I served this with almond and chickpea couscous. As far as “complete meals” go, this one’s pretty solid: beans, grains, and way more than your five-a-day. I bet this is the kind of dish that tastes even better the next day (I will find out tonight when I eat what little tagine is leftover).

Moroccan Tagine in a Chermoula Paste

You can use whatever veggies you have handy for this. If you don’t have prunes, you could also try dried apricots or figs.

Serves 4

For the chermoua paste:
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled
1/2-inch fresh ginger, peeled
juice of half a lemon
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp chili powder
handful cilantro

For the tagine:
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 carrots, cut into chunks
1/2 butternut squash, cut into chunks
1 green bell pepper, cut into chunks
2 leeks, cut into chunks
1 red onion, cut into chunks
1/2 head of cauliflower, divided into big florets
6 dried prunes
2 springs mint, leaves only, finely chopped

Pre-heat oven to 220 C / 430 F.

To make the chermoula, whizz paste ingredients in a blender.

Combine the olive oil and vegetables in an oven-proof casserole and cook on the stove until lightly browned, about 7 minutes.

Add the chermoula paste to the casserole, along with the prunes. Pour in 400 ml water, cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 45 minutes. Reduce heat to 180 C/ 350 F and cook for another 45 minutes.

Sprinkle with mint. Serve with almond and chickpea couscous (see below).

Almond and Chickpea Couscous

175g couscous
1.5 tsp harissa
(Moroccan chilli paste)
400g can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
small handful toasted almonds

Pour 400ml boiling water over the couscous in a bowl, then stir in the harissa with 1/4 tsp salt. Add the chickpeas, then cover and leave for 5 mins. Fluff up with a fork and serve with the tagine, flaked almonds and extra mint.

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Bikely for Bike Routes

2008-10-18T12:36:23Z

Yesterday was a GORGEOUS day here in London - cloudless blue skies, cool autumn air, a mild breeze, PERFECT weather for a bike ride.

London may not seem like a great place for a leisurely bike ride, and for day-to-day practicalities, that’s pretty much true. London roads are riddled with traffic, pollution, potholes and a surprising lack of good views. Fortunately, there are plenty of great parks scattered about, including Hampstead Heath, London’s largest (791 acre) parkland. I decided that “the Heath” seemed like a great destination, but I wanted to to enjoy the journey, too. So I Googled for “Stoke Newington Hampstead Heath Bike Route” and that is how I discovered Bikely.com.

Bikely is basically a place for cyclists to share their bike routes. Anyone can create a route on a Google map, then tag that route with helpful terms like “hills”, “scenic”, “commute”, “offroad”, etc. You can also search for routes near a specific city.

What makes Bikely WORK is that a lot of people from all over the world actually seem to use it so there’s plenty to choose from.

The route I found was the Stoke Newington Hampstead Heath circuit, a 15mi loop tagged as “training”, “steep” and “scenic”. Steep and scenic it was. I had no idea such hills existed in London! But I’ve gotta give props to “happyhenry”, the route’s author - most of the ride was on VERY quiet streets and it took me to places in London I never new existed, such as Queen’s Wood, a 21-hectare patch of ancient oak-hornbeam woodland just a few miles from my house. How could I have missed that?

Hampstead Heath rocked my world - trees everywhere, leaves falling, ducks, ponds, woods, grassland. And glorious sunshine! As it was a Friday afternoon, it was very quiet except for a few rich people and their dogs, a small film crew, and a very happy runner taking a load off in the sun. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of juice so I couldn’t take any pictures. But by that point I was pretty pooped from the ride, and I still had to cycle back home. The whole trip took about 2.5 hours (an hour more than I estimated, no wonder I was so hungry when I got home).

I love cycling and shouldn’t let London limit my horizons. I’ll definitely be using Bikely again. There were a few longer loops from Stoke Newington that go beyond London and into the country. I can’t think of a cheaper, greener, or higher energy way to escape the big bad city!

I leave you with one of the few photos I took before the camera batteries died. This was taken atop of a hill in Crouch End. Behold the blue sky!

Bikely

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Seasonal Food: Kale

2008-10-15T07:24:58Z

I’m one of those rare people who actually enjoy eating their greens, especially when it comes to kale.

Kale is from the Brassica oleracea family, just like cabbage and brussel sprouts. This hearty green vegetable is delicious, versatile, and like all leafy greens, highly nutritious! Kale is very high in vitamins A, C and E, and is also full of sulfer-containg phytonutrients which are thought to lessen the occurrence of a wide variety of cancers, including breast and ovarian cancers.

Me? I love kale for its flavor and texture. There are several varieties of kale, including curly- and plain-leaved, but my favorite is is cavolo nero, also known as “black cabbage” or “Tuscan kale”. I’ve never seen it in US supermarkets but it’s popular here in London.

Last year, my favorite way to prepare kale was simple: lightly steamed with salt and pepper. When served with a bit of brown rice and lentils, you get a complete meal that is somehow comforting in its simplicity.

At least I think so, anyway.

This year, when I got my hands on the first kale crop, Tim asked me a simple question:

“Can you try to make them yummy this time?”

I guess not everyone shares my enjoyment of pure and simple kale.

Very well. I can appreciate a little flavor boost. So I’ve been experimenting…

Stir-fried garlic and kale never fails.
Even better is kale stir-fried with caramelized onion.
For a spicy kick, top steamed or boiled kale mixed with roasted chili and caramelized onion garnish
When all else fails, greenophobes can hide their kale in a big pot of soup or chili.
Kale also makes a great addition to tofu scrambles!
Kale pairs nicely with carrots. What do I mean? Read on…

One pairing I can definitely recommend is kale and carrots. In both stir-fries and salads (yes, kale can be eaten raw!), the sweetness of the carrot is a nice balance to the earthiness of the kale. Here are a couple recipes that take advantage of this combination.

Curly Kale With Carrots, Raisins, Walnuts and Chili

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, sliced into thin rounds
2 carrots, julienned
10 raisins
5 walnuts, crumbled into pieces
4 cups kale, de-stemmed and chopped
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
salt

Heat oil in a large pan. Add carrots, onions, raisins, walnuts and chili and saute until onions are soft.

Add the kale, salt and a couple tablespoons of water. Cover pan with a lid.

Check the kale after a couple of minutes. Add more water and cook longer if necessary.

Raw Kale and Carrot Salad

200g curly kale, chopped
2 tbsp flax oil
juice of 1 lemon
2 carrots, shredded
1 red onion, sliced
salt to taste
cayenne pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients. Allow to marinate in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Be a Purple Cow

2008-10-10T17:55:30Z

In my ongoing effort to be my own boss, I’ve been reading some books on business and marketing. In my latest read, Purple Cow, Seth Godin argues that the only way to sell a product in today’s overcrowded marketplace to be remarkable. I noticed that some of his ideas about business success parallel nicely with fitness success. For those of us trying to improve our physical selves, a cow is probably the last thing we want to be. But trust me, Seth’s “Purple Cow” is a good thing. Give it a chance!

In Seth’s book, a “Purple Cow” is something remarkable, something that gets people talking. Seth argues that Purple Cows are the only way businesses can succeed in a world where television and mass marketing are no longer the most successful ways to reach an audience.

The fitness industry is full of Purple Cows, diets and books that do something remarkable, be it remarkably extreme, cheap, lazy, high energy, or high cost. For example:

Atkins - Atkins gained widespread popularity in 2003 and is STILL talked about as THE low-carb diet of reference.
Body for Life - An extreme 12-week diet and fitness regime where the ultimate goal is more than to just lose weight, it’s to be totally transformed into a musclebound badass.
Spinning - Take a boring exercise bike and add high-energy music and bouncy instructors and you get a workout that fills classes at gyms all over the world.

The cool thing about reading books like Purple Cow is that it gives me some insight into what makes companies like these tick. When you look at it from a business perspective, it’s much easier to understand why diet fads don’t work and why the only true key to fitness success is to be remarkable (i.e. a Purple Cow) as an individual. Yes! Purple Cow ideas apply as much to individuals as they do to businesses, and we can use some the same approaches that made Atkins so great to make ourselves even greater. Here are a few of those ideas that seem especially relevant to us fitness geeks.

Stop following the leader

The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken - it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.

Anyone who’s been on Atkins or Body for Life will tell you that they are not sustainable diets (so much for the “for life” part). Stop chasing diets that won’t work for the long haul.

Awareness is not the point

People know that they need to eat better and exercise more. If that’s true, then why do so many people struggle with their weight? If diet and exercise isn’t the answer, what is?

The will and the way

What’s missing isn’t the knowledge to know how to get fitter. It’s the will to do so.

Many people will say that they don’t know how. That may or may not be true. The point is - if you have the will you’ll find the way that works for you.

The problem with being a Purple Cow…

… is actually a problem with fear.

If eating well and doing exercise was such an easy and effective way to be fit, why aren’t more people doing it?

Fitness is rare because people are afraid. Seth attributes this fear to criticism from others. With health and fitness, fear is a bit more complex than that, but the effect is the same: we do nothing.

We often respond to our aversion to criticism by hiding, avoiding the negative feedback, and thus (ironically) guarunteeing that we won’t succeed! If the only way to cut through is to be remarkable, and the only way to avoid critciism is to be boring and safe, well, that’s quite a choice, isn’t it?

Being safe is risky

When I was working a desk job, most people I worked with ate lunch at their desks in less than 5 minutes while reading BBC news and then promptly went back to work. They thought this would make them more successful at their jobs. Many of these people also skipped dinner in favor of the pub because that’s the norm for some workplaces.

Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best ways to avoid failure…Alas, these rules set a pattern for most people, and that pattern is awfully dangerous. These are the rules that ultimately lead to failure.

Safe is risky. How risky? Diabetes. Heart disease. Metabolic syndrome. Need I say more?

If that’s true, how do we break out of safe patterns and do something different?

The process and the plan

There’s good news and bad news here.

Is there a fool proof way to get fit? Not really.

The eventual slowdown of almost every Purple Cow company indicates that there’s no rule book listing things that always produce. That’s one reason that seeing the insight of the Cow is so difficult.

There is no plan, but there is a process: go for the edges. Challenge yourself to find out what those edges are and test which edge is most likely to deliver results. When running gets boring, try swimming. Sick of egg white omelets? Switch to oatmeal. Fitness is a life-long process of changing and adapting. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

It’s this process that makes The Purple Cow so remarkable.

The power of a slogan

According to Seth, “a slogan that accurately conveys the essence of your Purple Cow is a script.” When it comes to products, the slogan is the product itself - Tiffany’s blue box, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Apple’s industrial design.

What does this have to do with fitness? A slogan can serve as a personal mantra, a credo, a handy catchphrase to remind us what all this health stuff means to us. Look at a few slogans for some cool health bloggers out there:

Because fitness isn’t about fitting in (MizFit)
Unleash your inner badass (Fitness Fixation)
Healthy living for busy people (The Office Diet)

All these slogans do a great job of summing up what that blogger is all about. What’s your health and fitness mantra? What’s your goal? Think about it. Write it down. Put it on the fridge. The is your swift kick in the behind whenever you need a little motivation.

The art of projecting

What if you simply don’t care? Seth talks about marketers who have to sell a product they just can’t get passionate about. But he argues that people who aren’t passionate about what they’re selling won’t do a good job. Similarly, people who aren’t passionate about eating well and doing exercise are going to quit after a few weeks. Is it possible to learn to care?

You don’t need passion to create a Purple Cow. Nor do you need an awful lot of creativity. What you need is the insight to realize that you have no other choice but to grow your business or launch your product with Purple Cow thinking. Nothing else is going to work.

Seth offers two techniques: learn the art of projection, get inside the heads of people who do care deeply and imagine what they’d do. Or, learn the science of projecting. Build a discipline of learning, trying new things, seeing what happens, and doing it again. Chances are you do care about something, you just need to find out what works for you.

Dieters No Longer: Now We are… SmarterFitter?

Seth argues that marketers must now be designers. I argue that dieters must now simply be smarter. There is no script for getting fit, and the only way to do it is to become immersed in the process. Learn. Be critical. Read books about food and physiology. Learn how to cook. Experiment with recipes. Try new exercises until you find something you like. And when that gets boring, learn a few more. Don’t stop until you die. (This is the true body for life!)

Yo body is yo business!

My goal in Purple Cow is to make it clear that it’s safer to be risky - to fortify your desire to do truly amazing things. Once you see that the old ways have nowhere to go but down, it becomes even more imperative to create things worth talking about.

Seth’s book may be all about Aeron chairs and Volkswagon beetles, but there’s a lot here for anyone who has wanted to do something remarkable but was afraid to try. You can even use Seth’s business rules to free yourself from businesses (i.e. faddish diets) themselves. Screw diets, useless products, marketing hype, and other corporate garbage. Be your own fitness guru. Or, as Seth says, be a Purple Cow.

You don’t need a book about creativity or brainstorming or team building…You don’t need more time or even more money. You just need the realization that a brand new business paradigm [a brand new you?] is now in charge, and once you accept the reality of the Cow, finding one suddenly gets much easier.

Moo.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

This photo made my day

2008-10-07T20:28:30Z

Me and the old FTSE development gang at Adele’s leaving do.