©Ashy Macbean 2005.
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New additions to Ashy's On-line Vegetarian
Cookbook 2005
15 December
30 October
21 August
19 June
24 May
22 March
08 March
23 February
The last update was a bit rushed even though it was the first for a while. I haven't spent much time in front of the computer this autumn - been busy travelling -Turkey, China and around Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I had a notebook that I could have taken with me, but it isn't very good. It's a Sony Vaio, which I assumed would be quite a reliable make when I bought it but I had problems from day one with programmes frequently jamming, flash cards and cameras not being recognised and even the whole system crashing. I think my particular machine was just an unlucky one and other Sony machines are no doubt more robust, but another irritating thing that would have been true of any model was the amount of Sony-specific software which came along with the machine. Basically for trouble free use you have to plug in only Sony accessories, cameras etc. Otherwise you have to change all the settings (and you still get annoying Sony pop-ups everywhere saying "Are you sure you want to go through with this? You're probably too stupid to be tampering with the basic settings on this machine."). I tried to uninstal all the garbage but a lot of it wouldn't leave or left wee fragments all over the place when it did. I am going to try not to purchase a Sony product again.
A few days ago all my notebook problems ended. I am now the owner of a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro which so far has given me no jip at all. It came without even an operating system, so I've loaded it up with only the stuff I need and there's still loads of space for more programmes, photos etc. It's been running perfectly so far (raps on cranium for good luck). I got a new, updated edition of Dreamweaver which has loads of extra features. It will take me a while to figure it out but the look of my site might change a bit if I find anything interesting. We'll see.
I took all the site files from my old notebook and put them on to the Amilo Pro and got Dreamweaver running straight away. I've spent my free time over the last couple of days finishing off the pages I almost had ready for upload. You can view them, as usual, via the links below. I found some inspiration for a few simple Chinese style recipes while staying on Pu Ti (or 'Happy') Island and I've posted them on the site. I've also done a couple of new photopages containing some of my better pictures from Istanbul and China; however, quite a few of the pictures from both trips were of boats so I put them on the boat page instead (it does seem the logical place for them).
I noticed that whenever I mention 'low fat' or 'low carbohydrate' in any recipes they soon attract a pile of incoming links from other sites. I guess then there is a demand for such recipes, so I've decided to list all the low fat, low carb and low calorie recipes I have on one page. This should, of course, in no way be viewed as a cynical attempt attempt to boost my site's seach engine rankings by incorporating lots of obviously popular keywords on a page so that it attracts a massive amount of incoming links.
I won't be updating again for a while as we're heading off to India at the end of the week. I know I've just been talking about my new notebook and one might assume that I would want to take it with me and do some work on the road, but we're also planning to go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore on this trip, then fly back to India before returning to Kazakhstan. That's just too many nosey customs officers for comfort, I reckon. I'll take notes during the trip and write them up in February when we get back to Kazakhstan. Meantime I'll update my travelblog periodically whenever I find an internet cafe.
Wishing a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing...
New recipes
Brussels sprouts and
chestnuts in red wine
Happy Island eggplants
Chinese chilli potatoes
tofu with spinach
nutty noodles
spinach, beansprout and apple
salad
Fat-free kidney bean pate
tomato and coriander salad
New photo pages
Istanbul September 05
China, October 05
A rushed update...hope the links are all ok...
New recipes
tomato walnut and basil salad
aubergine and tomato salad
courgette and pumpkin
seed pasta
Samarkand salad
broccoli pasta
New photo pages
Baravoe 05 - introducing
the Canon Powershot A520
New links
The
Penguin House has loads of facts about penguins plus pictures and
jokes.
Brompton Bicycles are the ultimate fold-up bikes. I don't have one but I wish I did. Have a look and be amazed.
Finally finished changing the text format and background on all pages. I think it looks good. My 'Soups' pages were last and I kept avoiding the job because there were so many - never do today what you can put off until tomorrow - that's one of my mottos. This update sees two new soup recipes and it was that which got me moving in the end. To make a new recipe page, I usually go to the the folder I want to create the page in, save an existing page under the new title and then change the text. That way all the formatting is already taken care of. Except of course if the folder is full of pages which have the old style of format. Then I'd be creating more pages which need updating.
So, two new soup recipes, but both quite similar to recipes on the site already. Here is a dilemma - as my cooking skills develop and I discover more new recipes, I'm sure to come up a few good ones which are very similar to existing ones. What makes a recipe distinct rather than just a variation on an already published one? This becomes especially complicated when I take into account the fact that I try to encourage visitors to experiment. Then each recipe becomes a starting point for a range of possible outcomes. There's also the need to keep my visitors interested. I've seen recipe books full of recipes which were all the same - very boring. I once had a '2 million indian curries' book and it was basically 2 million variations on the same theme and all the recipes tasted similar.
Maybe I shouldn't worry too much. This probably has to be a natural part of the development and evolution of my cookbook. Now and then I'll find myself adding a few recipes which are similar to others in some ways, but also significantly different in others. What's significant, though? Maybe things I don't expect cooks experimenting with my recipes would come up with themselves. There's also the point that a small variation, however minor on paper (or on the monitor) can lead to a striking difference in the final dish. For example, beetroot okroshka - the taste experience of the hot potatoes with the chilled soup merits it's inclusion , I think, even though I have already done chilled borsch. The lentil and coconut soup, too becomes very different from the other lentil soup recipes through the addition of the coconut milk and a seasoning with a Thai leaning. So, yes. Maybe I shouldn't worry so much.
On another subject, I just returned from the woods in north Kazakhstan and brought a load of mushrooms with me. Last time I was there, Sveta and I gathered fresh chanterelles, but this time we were too late. It was also particularly dry and there were very few mushrooms of any kind. I found a woman selling dried mushrooms in Baravoe village market and I got half a kilo of dried ceps. That's a very tasty species of Boletus mushroom, which some might claim is one of the tastiest mushrooms you can get. I can promise some more mushroom recipes in the future then, but maybe not so soon as I have a backlog of stuff to write up. I've been away from my computer for a while but still collecting recipes as I travel around.
Booked my tickets for China last week. Due to fly at the beginning of October, but Sveta and I need to squeeze in a week in Istanbul around the end of September so it might be a but hectic. Can't wait.
New recipes
beetroot okroshka with fried potatoes
lentil and coconut soup
zucchini stuffed tomatoes
apple rice
scrambled tofu
Tibetan vegetables
the Full Monty
vegan fried breakfast
Just got a new passport. The old one was full and I couldn't get any more visas in it. Now I've got 48 clean pages to use up. Must get moving. I've been a bit limited in my travel options over the last few months because of the passport situation. I did manage to get across to Kyrgyzstan a couple of times before my visa expired. My planned visit to the Altai mountains got cancelled. Obtaining the necessary border-zone permits proved too much of a hassle, but I'll try again another time.
New recipes
cherry salad
puffball slices with sour-cream
and garlic sauce
new potato and summer herb salad
lazy hummus salad
zucchini cakes
New cartoons
Caring for the elderly
Another long gap between updates. I haven't been totally lazy. I've changed the text and background on most of the pages. It was a lot of work but I think the site looks better and the text is easier to read. Otherwise I don't have much to offer this time.
I'm still here. I haven't given up writing recipes. The last few months just seem to have been more hectic than usual and I've been cooking on automatic pilot - mostly stuff I can do in my sleep. I plan to get back to experimenting very soon and I have a load of ideas to try out, so watch this space.....
New recipes
cabbage stuffed with mushrooms
and buckwheat
cabbage and apple salad
New cartoons
Born again
The press gang
At the doctor's
This is getting to be like the old days! Two updates in one month! I've been feeling creative lately and I know it won't last for long so I'm trying to take advantage of the urge while it's there.
Today is Nauriz, Kazakh New Year. Happy New Year, everyone in Kazakhstan (and Kazakhs everywhere..). Sveta and I spent the day wandering around Almaty city centre enjoying the public celebrations. I hastily stuck a few photos up on the site this evening and there's a link below.
The recipes today are all new, in the sense that I tried them out for quantity and cookability over the past week or two. I also sprouted some beans as promised and it went very well. One thing I should however point out is that, if you plan to try it at home, use a vessel with a wide aperture or you'll have trouble getting the bean sprouts out. The rest of my sprouting advice is accessible via the link below.
I finished the India Photos page that I forgot last time - there's now a wee bit of commentary to go with the photos - nothing startling, but the page looks better. And..at last.... there's a third part to Nessie..The story of the Loch Ness monster in pictures. I've been wanting to do that for ages and now, there it is. I looked at the second part last week and realised I wrote it way back in 2002... Definitely time for more. I usually wait for inspiration for cartoons, which is why things happen like three penguin cartoons in a row, but with Nessie it's different. The ideas are here with me, but the sheer workload puts me off starting a new page. The last one took from 8pm on Saturday till 2 am Sunday morning to do. That's sad, staying home on a Saturday night to work on the computer, I know...showing my age. But the main point is, it takes a long time and I'm not sure if it's really worth it. I have considered doing the cartoons on paper and scanning them. I think that would be quicker but I've sort of got into the style which results from working in MS paint with a mouse as a drawing tool...(No, I never got round to purchasing the magic mouse-pen I talked about last year)...
It's been a long time since I put a link up to another site. I'm being very choosy these days, but this time I have one to offer. I thought about it a while ago, then forgot about it. I was only reminded when I got my Wild Country Mistral tent out to give it an airing before the spring. I remembered how last summer I camped with some friends out on the Kazakh steppe. We were miles from any shelter when an evil sandstorm blew up. One tent was completely destroyed before it was even fully erected and we all had to pile into the Mistral. We had to weight the pegs down with large rocks to stop the tent blowing away before we got into it. The wind kept up all night. The roof was almost touching our heads and we could hear stones and other debris hitting the tent. Early in the morning the wind died down and we came out (I don't say 'woke up' because nobody really slept) to a beautiful still and sunny morning. The tent hadn't a scratch on it. I've used it since in dreadful Scottish rainstorms and it's still as waterproof as the day I bought it three years ago. Below, and on my links page, you can find a link to the Wild Country website.
This might be the last update for a while...though,equally, it might not. I'm going back up to Astana for a week and then Sveta and I are going to the UK for a couple of weeks. I'll be taking my laptop to Astana and to the UK which is why I suggest there is the possibility of further regular updates. I've never taken the computer on the road however and it could easily be the case that I leave it in it's bag and do nothing. After the UK, I'm not sure what's happening, but I suspect the rest of April and May will involve a lot of travelling. In June, I'm joining my birding friend Big Frank and some others for a short expedition of two or three weeks to the Altai mountains region which is between Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The trip depends on whether we get the necessary permits or not but I think we will. My job, as usual, will be to translate, draw maps, cook and keep the others out of trouble, while they locate and identify the birds. I like Frank. He's an open-minded, kind-hearted and mentally mature human being as well as an excellent ornithologist. That's a rare combination.
New recipes
paneer navratan korma
green beans with walnuts
and coconut
chickpea and coconut rasam
hot and sour soup
stir-fried mushrooms, beansprouts
and green pepper
beetroot with coconut
how to sprout beans
New cartoons
Yozhik the famous coconut
part 2
Nessie part 3
New photo pages
Nauriz 05, Kazakhstan
Links to other websites
Terra
Nova/Wild Country tents - the business if you need a dependable,
lightweight and roomy tent at a reasonable price.
Search engine optimization - that's something I spent a great deal of time on when I first started the site. It involves, amongst other things, getting the right density of keywords and asking the owners of sites with relevant content to link to you. It seemed I was quite successful, until recently. Google has now decided my site is crap and it has slid from page four to page fourteen when searching for 'vegetarian recipes'. I find this depressing.
At this point in time, I can't be bothered going over everything again in an attempt to tweak my index page back into a high ranking position. Stuff it, I have better things to do. Some of the better things I have already done and you can see them by following the list of links below. The new addition to my stories page - Metro - is a bit of a departure from the usual stuff. The idea is to have a constantly changing and developing story on-line. I've been thinking about it for a while and I had some time to start when I was in Astana last week. Astana is the new capital of Kazakhstan and it's a bit boring anyway, but I was there without Sveta and the temperature was fluctuating between zero and minus twenty. I was there to do a bit of work, but I had plenty of time in the evenings and as I was bored and had my lap-top with me, I decided to start on the story. I don't know why - maybe my mood at the time - but the stuff that came out of my head first was pretty grizzly. My first characters are horrible, as are the things they do and say. There's a great deal more to come and maybe it'll be different, maybe not. I don't know. That's the nature of this undertaking. The only connection with vegetarianism so far is that the main character is a vegetarian.
The recipes I've written up this time are all quick and simple ones, reflecting the speed I've been dashing about at lately. I did a bean-sprout salad recipe and I used bean sprouts from the bazaar. I've sprouted them before at home and it wasn't difficult, but it was a long time ago. I had time to start a batch off at home a couple of days ago and they're already well on the way. When they are ready I'll write up how I did it.
I just realised that I hadn't written anything to go with the photos I put on my first India photo page. I'll have to write something later as it's now up-date time, but the photos are there...
New recipes
fried courgette salad
spicy tahini sauce
pomegranate, walnut and green
olive dressing
black olive and red pepper salad
bean sprout salad
New cartoons
The foxes graveyard
The foxes graveyard 2
New stories
Metro
New photo pages
India 05 page 1
Happy New Year, everyone! It's good to be back. I've been banging away at recipes, stories, cartoons and stuff since we returned from India - I've got loads of half finished stuff on my desktop, but I thought I'd do a quick update today as events are rapidly overtaking me. I mean the fox hunting thing in Britain. For anyone who hasn't heard, at last the British government has got round to attempting to ban fox hunting. but the monsters who do it are not happy about it. The media is full of the most amazingly illogical, stupid hot air at the moment about why the ban constitutes an infringement of human rights that makes Britain look like the Soviet Union under Stalin and why fox hunting is not a cruel activity at all and should be encouraged not only as a humane way of controlling fox populations but as an essential part of British cultural heritage.... Well, I can't remain silent while this is happening, therefore I've updated everything I've finished so far, including a few cartoons which I hope reflect the absurdity of the pro-hunt mob's position. I've also put all the cartoons on a 'Macbean in support of the fox-hunting ban' page in the hope that it pops up in web searches. This is an issue I feel very strongly about.
I've only posted links to a few new recipes but there are more in the pipe-line. Since I seem to be doing quite a lot of recpes with olives, I thought I'd put them all on a recipes with olives page. Sometimes I find that after doing the same recipe many times I figure out shortcuts and the recipe becomes easier. This is surely a good thing and I do try to update recipes as necessary to reflect this. This time I reworked my noodles with tofu and peanuts recipe and I think anyone who tried it before will appreciate the difference. It's much easier to do now and it tastes just as good as before.
I've got some photos from india to put up, but they still need editing and I have to do thumbnails - it's a lot of work. I'll do them as soon as possible and finish off the rest of the recipes, so a further up-date is imminent (How many times have we heard that one, Macbean?).
I tried to keep my travel-blog updated on a regular basis but I wasn't very successful. Partly, it was due to the poor internet connections in many of the places we visited. Also, after the tsunami, there were many desperate people trying to contact friend and relatives and we thought it best to give them space as their need was obviously greater than ours. Thank you again, people who expressed concern for our safety immediately after the event and I do apologise for not posting an assurance that we were okay sooner than I did.
New recipes
broccoli, hazelnut
and sesame noodles
green olives in herb dressing
cabbage, black olive
and juniper salad
New cartoons
Time to stop the killing
What's wrong with drag hunting?
Hunting nostalgia
A balanced view?
More sheep thoughts
New stories
Somebody somewhere