Another big event coming up in October is the 10:10:10 Global Work Party day being coordinated by 350.org. Amazingly there are over 4,000  events happening in 171 countries – that means that just 17 countries in the world don’t yet have an event planned; they’ve got a week to sort that out though!

In Dalson, Green Sundays are organising a fun day of activities at two sites. The festivities kick off at the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden in the afternoon and then migrate over to the new Arcola Theatre site on Ashwin Street. Here is the full programme:

Arcola Green Sundays 10:10:10 Global Day of Doing, in Dalston
10 October 2010, 1:30 – 8:45pm

FREE – Drop in anytime, All Welcome

Programme:
Afternoon Workshops
@ Dalston Eastern Curve Garden (Dalston Lane, Entrance via the wooden gate by the peace mural, opposite Dalston Junction overground station)

Delicious food provided all day by Mighty Veg Delight including Veggie Strips, Spicy Curry and ginger beer.

1:30 – 4:30pm
Give or Take (with Forest Recycling Project)
Bring what you don’t want and take what you do. What can you give? Baby equipment, books, toys, children’s bikes, kitchenware, paint (reusable), plants, garden tools and equipment and even small electrical goods and furniture (side tables, shelves, cots etc). What can you take? Anything you need. And you don’t have to give to take.

Please do not give clothes, hazardous or toxic items or second hand child car seats.

2.30-4.30pm
• Bike MOT service
• Crafty draughty with Transition Highbury
Make your own door snake / sausage dog / friendly household monster draught excluder using recycled materials.
• RefurbN16 – Energy efficiency in the home
Come and find out how easy it is to draught proof your home and sign up for one of our draught busting workshops
• Hackney Harvest
This new project is working to raise awareness about the huge supplies of delicious fresh fruit that is growing all around us in Hackney. Come a try some fresh Hackney apple juice. If you have a tree with too many apples, bring them a long and we’ll juice them for you!

Carbon Conversations with the Carbon Literacy Forum
• ‘Food Footprints Game’ with Alison Thorpe. Learn about the greenhouse gases in the food we buy. (2 – 3pm)
• ‘The Great Carbon Show’ Theatre workshop with Fiona Hoppe suitable for adults and children aged 6+. (3 – 4:30pm)

Early Evening
@ The Arcola Ashwin Street, 24 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL

4:45 – 6:15pm Film Screening No Impact Man, dir. Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein, 2009, USA, 93 mins; Cert 15
Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshiping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.

6.30 – 7.30pm Live Music session hosted by Shane Solanki, Last Mango in Paris.

• Camilo Menjura
• Sam Lindo
• Rebecca Tantony
• Hattie and Elly

7.30 – 7.50pm 10:10:10 Open mic session

8:00 – 8:20pm Pete the Temp verses Climate Change! Award winning performance poet, Pete the Temp employs comedy, satire, performance poetry and audience participation in an effort to capture hearts and minds on this most crucial of issues.

8:25 – 8.45pm Live Music with Last Mango in Paris

The good people at Growing Communities are organising a wonderful day of apply fun on Saturday 16th October at Stoke Newington Farmers Market.

Apple Day is an annual festival set up by Common Ground, that aims to celebrate the amazing variety and quality of apples produced in orchards and gardens around the UK.

There’s lots of entertainment planned for the day including games, food tastings and apple juicing. There’ll also be an apple expert on hand to identify your apples so if you’ve ever wondered what kind of cultivar you have growing in your garden, this is your chance (at Brogdale we were told that you should bring three good examples of  apple so that it can be identified).

The day runs from 10 til 2.30 at William Patten Primary School on Saturday 16th October. We’ll be there and hope to see you there too!

Check out the lovely poster for the event:

This Saturday we’re going to go and harvest crab apples for jelly making. The UK Turkish Islamic Trust has very kindly let us harvest the trees at the Ramazan-i Serif Camii on Shacklewell Lane. I checked them out on Monday and they’re looking great.

There’s a slim chance we might be able to nab some pears on a different site as well which would be great as we’d like to take them along to the Stoke Newington Common Fun Day the day after.

If you’d like to come and help out with the harvesting, we’ll be meeting at the Jolly Butchers at midday.

You can get directions to the Jolly Butchers by using this widget:

I know plum season is nearly over but I’m still getting plums through in my Growing Communities fruit bag which makes me suspect there may still be some out there on the streets of Hackney. Keep your eyes peeled.

Much as I love just eating plums raw, especially when they’re as soft and juicy as the ones I’ve been getting recently, I was keen to try something different with them.  It struck me it would be fun to try a savoury dish with them and last Sunday I had bit of a morning epiphany that lamb and plums would make a great combination.

A bit of scrounging around on the internet told me that lamb and plums are often combined together in dishes from Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan. I was aware that prunes were a common ingredient in stews in Persian food and related cuisines, and I read that a lot of Iranians in South Africa use fresh plums instead because they have such an abundance of fresh fruit there. So in the end I went for the sort of ingredients that work well in that kind of food and just gave it a go. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients – serves 4

• 3-4 small onions, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic crushed
• teaspoon of cumin, cinammon, ground coriander (I’m one of those liberal sprinklers with spices so I may have put in more than this – it really depends on how spiced you like your food)
• 1/2 tsp of cardammon
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• lamb shoulder with the bone in
• 400 ml lamb stock (I used chicken stock because I didn’t have lamb)
• 10 small plums pitted and chopped (this was how many I had available but I think the more the merrier)
• Salt & pepper for seasoning

Brown the lamb in a pan on the hob. Remove from the pan, add a bit of olive oil and gently fry the onions and garlic until the onion is translucent. Return the lamb to the pan, add the spices, tomato paste and plums and transfer to an oven proof casserole dish. Add the hot stock – I’ve recommended about 400 ml but it depends on how big your cut of meat is. You don’t want the stock to cover the meat because it won’t boil off that much and I found you end up with too much juice. Place the casserole in the oven at 180 degrees and leave to cook for about an hour and a half, turning the meat occasionally. If you have the patience and the time you could turn the oven down to 150 and go for a slower cook. The stew is ready when the meat is tender and falls off the bone.

I served this with couscous cooked in vegetable stock with sultanas and flaked almonds.

It was very much a trial and error recipe and I think it would be fun to play around with. A veggie version with butternut squash might work. Whatever your taste, I recommend trying plums in a savoury dish because they really do add something special.