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Solar successes
I was reading The Knowledge and noticed a snippet about the UK’s energy production. As of Saturday, we’ve produced 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity. That feels like brilliant progress.
But the part that really got me was the comparison: “enough to power 5.2 million homes for a year, or the London Underground for a decade.” I’d never thought about how much energy the Underground uses compared to homes. This suggests that 500,000 homes worth of electrical use equates to one year of London Underground use.
I was curious, so I asked Gemini to double-check the figures for me. The calculation showed it was actually 11.7 years of London Underground energy, not just “a decade.” So the original quote was an underestimate. Interesting to see!
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Yesterday’s make: Labneh
We watched an episode of “River Cottage Revisited” the other week and in it Hugh made cheese out of yoghurt. Technically he made labneh out of yoghurt but either way it’s cheese adjacent.
I’d been waiting for an opportunity to give it a try, and yesterday seemed ideal as the fridge had space for a sieve and bowl to rest. I did half of the recipe I found online using 250g full fat Greek yogurt and half a teaspoon of salt. I used a thin tea towel that I’d bought specifically for this and popped it in the fridge for around 23 hours. I wasn’t seeing much whey appear after a few hours tho the tea towel was damp so I gave it a squeeze to release the liquid.
This morning I opened the tea towel and found a round ball pleasingly patterned with the texture of the tea towel. The end result is a mild flavoured spreadable feta like cheese which we spread on freshly baked seeded soda bread.
Definitely a success and quite fun too. I might add some za’atar to the next batch I make as I think that would work really well with the underlying flavour.
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Today's bake: Toasted sesame tahini cookies
After a few successful batches of the original tahini cookies and my orange-flavoured version, I was ready to experiment again. I asked Claude for other flavour suggestions, and it came back with a great idea: toasted sesame seeds and honey instead of maple syrup to add to the Middle Eastern flavour profile.
That’s what I did. I toasted four tablespoons of sesame seeds. Three went into the mixture once they were cool, and I sprinkled the last tablespoon on top. The result is a really chewy and tasty cookie.
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