This is your turn to talk. Bring your questions – and answers too – to our Open Space meeting with Greener Leith at Out of the Blue Drill Hall on Tuesday 5 June 6-9pm. As always Open Space aims to turn words into actions so come prepared to get involved.
‘I wish I could join you, But perhaps you could share this recipe with your friends instead.’
Rose Jamieson lives in Perthshire so was not able to join us for our recent events in Out of the Blue Drill Hall. But her cake was a hot favourite on the desert stall at Jock Tamson’s Brunch. We’re hoping Rose can join us in person when World Kitchen in Leith goes on tour (no kidding, more about that later) but meanwhile here’s her lovely apple cake recipe’¦
Continue reading “A cake for all weathers”
“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” Jimmy Carter
Welcoming guests to Put the World on Your Plate, Agnes Ngulube Holmes quoted Jimmy Carter. The words were a tribute to the great diversity around her at Sunday’s multicultural event when World Kitchen in Leith served up a fusion of foods inspired by the pictures and stories in Jock Tamson’s Bairns exhibition. This is not your stereotypical view of Scotland’s capital city.
Continue reading “Not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic”
I translated at the Nuremberg Trials. I looked Hess in the eyes’¦.I still didn’t know what had happened to my family. David Goldberg
The World Kitchen multicultural brunch at Out of the Blue on Sunday 1 April was inspired by the unforgettable stories in Jock Tamson’s Bairns Exhibition. If you saw the words and pictures on display during Previously, Scotland’s History Festival you will know why.
Continue reading “Jock Tamson’s brunch”
Thanks to Clara Massie we are ending the year with words and pictures from an inspiring exhibition celebrating the great contribution migrants make to the cultural wealth of Scotland. The exhibition is over – for the time being anyway – but the impact remains.
Continue reading “We’re All Jock Tamson’s Bairns”
Apple pancakes with cinnamon butter, a variation on a traditional Scottish theme, went down well at World Kitchen in Leith events this year, here’s the recipe from Fay Young.
Ok, I know dropped scones are really meant for teatime. But they can be good at breakfast too – perhaps, sinfully, fried with bacon and served with maple syrup as a Scottish variation on the Canadian theme.
Continue reading “Pancakes for breakfast, tea…any time at all”So near to winning. The ambitious scheme for the Portobello and Leith Wind Turbine will succeed if enough people vote for it on theEnergy Share Fund website. Right now it’s in second place and it’s beginning to look very close indeed. If we can all encourage friends to vote before 3 December Edinburgh could gain the first community-owned wind project in a UK city. You just need to click here.
According to Al Tibbitt of Greener Leith, the award would mean £80,000 for the Leith scheme and it would not be the end of the story. But the money would help to pay for essential research (bird studies, wind monitoring and so on) as well as the cost of submitting planning and grid connection applications. All working towards the goal of a handsome turbine capable of supplying energy for up to 1300 local homes. But of course there is much more to a windmill than electricity.
I may be biased, but I feel the turbines actually add to our skyline, rather than detracting from it. [The Island of Gigha website]
There are all sorts of myths and plain old fashioned lies about windmills, but you just have to look to the success of community schemes like Gigha to see how well-designed projects can bring new hope and pride as well as real tangible benefits to local neighbourhoods. On Gigha, The Dancing Ladies (more prosaically, the first community wind project in Scotland) have generated enough income to build new homes and bring people back to live on the island. What’s more they paid for themselves within six years. In fact the scheme has been so successful the Isle of Gigh Heritage Trust is now raising money for a fourth turbine.
Leith and Portobello are not an island, but these urban communities could share the same benefits of regeneration; the renewed pride and hope that goes along with investment in homes, jobs and opportunities for young people.
And, given pride of place, windmills have a way of winning hearts, minds and tourists! On Gigha a walk to see the Dancing Ladies is now a popular tourist attraction.
At World Kitchen in Leith events, Alice’s beans in coconut disappear off the plates in record time and everyone wants to know how to make them. Well, here Alice Musamba shares the secret and a little extra tip: the coconut sauce can be adapted to suit many other vegetables. In fact at last night’s World Kitchen meeting she brought a pot of delicious mushrooms in coconut. They soon disappeared off the plate too.
Continue reading “Alice’s famous beans in coconut”The trail ends beneath a thick and prickly holly bush in Rosebank Cemetery. It’s an unmarked grave which seems odd and sad for a man who made such an impact when he was alive. His portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, a plaque honours his birthplace in Peebles and, perhaps most importantly of all, his name lives on in the sweet and crunchy apple known as James Grieve.
Continue reading “James Grieve, in seach of a local (hidden) hero”
When Agnes Ngulube Holmes goes shopping for World Food Day she finds herself transported from an Edinburgh street to the African continent. This is what she found.
Continue reading “Finding Africa in Edinburgh”