Updated recipe for whole wheat bread
This time, no dairy, instead soy milk and olive oil!

This is the recipe for the whole wheat bread pictured in the post on FB and Instagram.

- 300g of whole wheat flour (I mixed 270g of normal whole wheat flour with 30g of something called 'Graham', a type of course whole wheat grain product (brand of Graham I bought was imported from Canada))

- 80ml of soy milk

- 130ml of water

- 10g of dark brown sugar

- 3g of salt

- 30g spoons of honey

- 17g of virgin olive oil

- 30g of walnut

- 25g of raisins

- 4.5g of dry yeast (instant dry yeast ok)

Note: Apparently, the honey and olive oil help to make the bread to rise since whole wheat flour does not have much gluten in it.

The mixing and kneading times are from making it with a home bakery machine worked out as follows. It should not be difficult to translate into doing it by hand. It might be possible to take short cuts with experience. Total time is about 4 hours and 50 minutes.

- Add soy milk, and then water, and then the whole wheat flour into a mixing container.

- Next add the sugar, olive oil, honey, and salt

- Mix these ingredients lightly until combined (5 minutes).

- After mixing is complete, knead for 15 minutes.

- After kneading is complete, wait for 40 minutes.

- Add the yeast, but don't mix.

- Wait 30 minutes.

- Mix in the yeast for 8 minutes.

- Wait for about 3 minutes.

- Add the raisins and walnuts.

- Wait for 3 minutes.

- Mix the complete ingredients lightly for 1.5 minutes (90 seconds).

- Knead the ingredients for 3.5 minutes.

- Wait for 2 hours and 25 minutes (yeast will do its work).

- Bake for 30 minutes at 175 degrees C.

- If it comes out right, pat yourself on the back!

Recipe for the whole wheat bread.

 

 

 

This is the recipe for the whole wheat bread pictured in the post on FB and Instagram.

- 300g of whole wheat flour (I mixed 270g of normal whole wheat flour with 30g of something called 'Graham', a type of course whole wheat grain product (brand of Graham I bought was imported from Canada))

- 80ml of milk

- 120ml of water

- 10g of dark brown sugar (15g if you do not use the honey below)

- 3g of salt

- 2 spoons of honey

- 2 spoons of butter

- 45g of walnut

- 25g of raisins

- 10g of dried mandarin or dried orange (optional. It's better to exclude this at the beginning since citrus affects flour rising. I do not use this ingredient any more. Just an idea. Instead, you can increase the raisins to 30g).

- 4.5g of dry yeast (instant dry yeast ok)

Note: the honey and butter help to make the bread to rise since whole wheat flour does not have much gluten in it.

The mixing and kneading times are from making it with a home bakery machine worked out as follows. It should not be difficult to translate into doing it by hand. It might be possible to take short cuts with experience. Total time is about 4 hours and 50 minutes.

- Add milk, and then water, and then the whole wheat flour into a mixing container.

- Next add the sugar, butter, honey, and salt

- Mix these ingredients lightly until combined (5 minutes).

- After mixing is complete, knead for 15 minutes.

- After kneading is complete, wait for 40 minutes.

- Add the yeast, but don't mix.

- Wait 30 minutes.

- Mix in the yeast for 8 minutes.

- Wait for about 3 minutes.

- Add the raisins, walnuts, and dried mandarin.

- Wait for 3 minutes.

- Mix the complete ingredients lightly for 1.5 minutes (90 seconds).

- Knead the ingredients for 3.5 minutes.

- Wait for 2 hours and 25 minutes (yeast will do its work).

- Bake for 30 minutes at 175 degrees C.

- If it comes out right, pat yourself on the back!

"We Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot"

 

2020-09-10:

I visited an energy industry exhibition in Osaka Bay. Before I took the train home, I rested at a seaside park. Although human beings march confidently and blindly towards engineering a world of their imagination, they are unable to block out the beauty, glory, and vitality of that which already exists.

Look up the song: "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell.

"What's it All About...?"

"When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you'll find love any day"
- the song Alfie by Hal David & Burt Bacharach, famous performance by Dionne Warwick.

Will the Widespread use of Robots bring Peace?

In the end, the robots will help bring peace...

I had this epiphany about two nights ago. It goes like this: in their greed for market share, major robotics companies are compelled to accept a global robot safety standard. For policy makers, they will be told and asked to contribute to the rules of robot behaviour, the details checked and implemented by geeks. It will have to be transparent, checked across countries, across continents. Robots cannot diverge from programming rules. Robots gain (monitored) responsibility as intelligence increases. Number of opportunistic evil acts and mistakes go to almost zero. Waging war against any nation, and thus against a global network of robots dedicated to ensuring safety becomes futile.

I haven't had time to think and find the weak point in the argument, but it seems somewhat compelling.

Be Inspired

I saw this (iPhone customer photos) advertisement in an underground corridor leading to the subway train line in Kawaramachi, Kyoto. There is indeed nothing like looking at cross a vast grassland wilderness, and taking a deep breath, as a native of Africa should know. However, this picture nonetheless does lift one to a better place. In fact, while the photo series was placed in a busy subway passage, as soon as I saw it, I stopped and looked around as if in an art gallery, like a child in a sweet shop. I forgot life's little concerns, not to mention the souls in a 'rush' around me.

In your daily life, whenever you think you might be able to inspire even just one person by putting just a little more effort into your work, go ahead and do it. Someone like me might walk by and say,
I am indeed moved and, thank you!

Whispering into the Future

It looks like just another Formula 1 race. The difference: these cars are whispering around the track. No neighbours upset about the noise here.

As I write, Saturday September 13th, 2014, the first FIA Formula E race is on in Beijing. Why is that something to write about? While the racing cars look like ordinary formula 1 racing cars, they are powered by electric motors. The benefits? Less noise, less car parts, and more importantly, the energy used to charge the batteries could come from any source that can be converted into electricity: wind, solar, hydroelectricity, fossil fuels, and even what is currently perhaps the darkest sheep of the family, nuclear energy.

About a hundred years ago, internal combustion engine (petrol/gasoline) and electric vehicles were equally crude, but the internal combustion engine option was chosen for various reasons. It appears that the planet has taken an environmentally costly 100-year detour around electricity powered vehicle technology and that detour is now literally running out of fuel: crude oil extraction is no longer cheap, and the environmental impact can no longer be ignored. Liquifiable fuel alternatives to crude oil have similar environmental issues attached: in the face of the increasingly difficult to ignore global climate change, carbon dioxide emissions associated with the use of crude oil, natural gas, shale gas and coal appear nothing less than a death sentence for many in vulnerable places around the world.

The detour may be coming to an end, but before it does, a couple of improvements are required as far as the current standard motor vehicle is concerned: lower battery cost and higher battery capacity. Both are improving steadily. As far as lighter vehicles are concerned however, the sun of a new era has risen into view. Examples: electric bicycles in Japan, and bicycles and motorcycles in China already ply the streets in increasing numbers in this silent revolution. For many, the detour is over.