Here in the Middle East, the mash-up between religious beliefs and human rights can be breathtakingly surreal. Take, as example, baffling contradictions within modern Iranian culture that rigidly restricts gender co-mingling, yet supports gender transitioning.
No “Balls” allowed in Iran’s female soccer league
5 ways to eat iron-rich nettles
Why would anyone want to eat plants that sting? And iron rich raw nettles do sting. But nettles – best foraged in fall or spring depending on where you live. They are a tasty, nutrient-dense food. People have been eating them since antiquity, and probably since pre-history. Their easily-metabolized iron rich content is so high that nettles tea is a natural remedy for anemia.
Their protein content is among the highest of all vegetables. And, like wild chicory, they’re free. See Karin’s take on wild garden edibles here.
Nettles are in season now in the Middle East. I go nettle-foraging every day, roaming the neighborhood empty lots and neglected gardens with a pair of scissors and a bag to put the green goodies in. When I bring my harvest home, I rinse the leaves, shake off as much water as I can and then gently roll them in kitchen towels. Part of the nettles stay out for cooking right away. Mostly, though, I hang them up by their stems in my laundry area, where I’ve hung an old broomstick up for that purpose.
My harvesting method is to snip the stems off and not open the scissors until I’ve deposited the plant, head-down, into my bag.
My legs are protected with a long denim skirt and my arms, with a long-sleeved blouse. All the same, the dedicated forager must resign herself to getting stung at least a few times, even if she wears gloves. A sensible precaution in the field is to take note of where mallows or dock grow, usually close to the nettles.
Gather a few leaves; crush them between your palms and apply the crushed mass to the inevitable sting. At home, kitchen gloves provide protection while rinsing and sorting the fresh nettles.
I’ve been collecting nettles for so many years, I don’t even wear gloves anymore. The sting is oddly welcome. There may be something to the old theory that nettles sting relieves arthritic pain; certainly it encourages blood circulation.
Nettles should not be picked after they’ve fruited. Their green seeds are fine to eat, but the mature fruit, and older leaves, contain a substance that can irritate the kidneys. The photo below nettles gone to flower. Its stringy, leggy, stringy condition indicates old plant.
Nettles can be cooked in 5 ways:
1. Nettle Soup: Make one 4 cups vegetable stock. Add add 500 grams – 1 lb. of chopped fresh nettles 15 minutes before serving. Blend. For a hearty soup, make sure your stock has a chopped potato in it. For a creamy dairy soup, add 1 cup of sour cream to blended soup, stir well and heat the soup once again, without boiling, before serving.
A more detailed nettles soup recipe here.
2. Omelet for Two: Saute a small onion in olive oil. Add a small, chopped tomato. Add herbs to taste: za’atar is very good and so is basil. Stir in 1/4 cup chopped fresh nettles; cook over medium heat until they wilt. Beat 2 eggs and add to the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Flip the omelet over to cook top side; or finish cooking it the way you’re used to.
3. Nettles in rice. Serves 4. Rinse and drain 1 cup rice. Fry in olive oil until heated through and coated with oil – about 3 minutes. Add 2 cloves crushed garlic. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped fresh nettles; stir again to distribute. Season with 1 tsp. salt. Add 2 cups boiling water. Cover the pot and cook over low heat until rice is cooked – 15-20 minutes for white rice, 30-40 minutes for brown rice.
A variation: cook quinoa with nettles the same way, using 1-1/2 cups water per cup of quinoa.
4. Puff pastry pie filled with nettles and potatoes: Make a filling of diced potatoes, onions, a touch of garlic and plenty of nettles, all fried in olive oil until potatoes are cooked through but still firm. Season. Roll puff pastry out into a rectangle and cut it in half. Place pastry in a greased or parchment-lined pie dish. Spread potato/nettles mix on top. Place second half of puff pastry on top and crimp edges together.
Brush top of pastry with a beaten egg. With a sharp knife, cut a few slits in the crust. Bake at 350 F – 180 C for 45 minutes or until the crust is a rich golden brown and a smell of done-ness fills the house. May be made dairy by mixing a container of sour cream and an egg into the vegetables before spreading on bottom crust (check for seasoning again).
Replace spinach with nettles in any recipe. The taste is not like spinach; nettles have their own, characteristic flavor. It’s earthy and herby and rather dark.
5. A medicinal nettles tea: 1 teaspoon dried, or 2 teaspoons fresh nettles per cup of boiling water. Cover and allow to steep 4 hours – overnight is better. Strain and drink. May be sweetened to taste. Dose for children: 1/2 cup three times daily. Dose for adults: 1 cup three times daily. Because of its easily-metabolised iron content, nettles tea is especially recommended for tired adolescent girls, pregnant women, and women after birth.
More on foraging and eating wild things:
Photo of Nettles Soup and photo of flowering nettles via Shutterstock; photo of nettles drying by Miriam Kresh.
Menasol Dubai answers key financing questions for Middle East CSP solar projects
Key investors in renewable energy for the Middle East and North Africa regions will be on hand to discuss the criteria for securing project financing. They will present the case studies of the Shams 1, a 100MW plant in Abu Dhabi and the Noor 1, a 160MW (being constructed in Morocco).
Wind-powered Tumbleweed robot rolls back encroaching deserts
Desertification has gobbled up huge swaths of the Middle East and North Africa, a fact that Jerusalem-based industrial designer Shlomi Mir knows all too well. So he designed Tumbleweed Desert – a rolling robot capable of spending many solitary years in the desert gathering data aimed at slowing encroaching deserts.
Danish zoo kills healthy giraffe to avoid inbreeding [video]
![Danish zoo kills healthy giraffe to avoid inbreeding [video]](https://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/marius-lion-copenghapen-shot-zoo.jpg "Danish zoo kills healthy giraffe to avoid inbreeding [video]")
In the latest tragedy for animal rights, and it happened in Europe, a Danish zoo has reportedly shot and killed a perfectly healthy giraffe which was given to the lions as food. The reason why Marius the giraffe was shot and killed:
Nitrates and the dark side of intensive organic agriculture
Public awareness of healthy food products that are free of chemical additives, along with a worldwide demand to reduce industrial pollution, has led in recent years, to the development of organic farming. It is commonly presumed that organic agriculture causes only minimal environmental pollution.
Broken trees from epic storm sprout public art at Jordan University
If a tree falls in the woods, it will be immortalized as amazingly clever artwork if Fu’ad Khasawneh is anywhere nearby. The Assistant Dean and his colleagues at the University of Jordan transformed the detritus of a powerful winter storm into a remarkable display of public art.
Syrian conflict and broken roads opens new business channels for cycling
A Facebook campaign called “She Wants a Bicycle Now” led by Syrian college students is getting young people on bikes in impressive numbers.
Morocco’s Berbers take on Africa’s richest silver mine – and the king
Africa’s largest silver mine has been operating in the Atlas mountains since 1969, but the Berber people living in the surrounding villages remain among the most poverty-stricken people in Morocco. Now Movement on the Road ’96 are living in an “occupation” camp to protest a silver mine’s water use and pollution.
Beirut bike messengers deliver groceries and parcels by cycling
I did the best part of my growing up in Toronto, a cold and somewhat bike-crazed city. It’s there where I met a champion bike courier from Berlin and had my first long-distance love affair when he moved back to Germany. Joern, god bless his heart, used to deliver love letters by international courier!
An electric bike getaway “car” used by Israeli bomber
In an attempt to settle a business dispute, an Acre-based man from Israel placed a bomb on his enemy’s car and fled the scene using an electric bike.
SodaStream stock rises as Scarlett Johansson’s banned ad sizzles (video)
Israel’s do-it-yourself (and environmentally friendly) soft drink maker SodaStream may go down in the record books as having created the most provocative Super Bowl commercial that never aired on TV, but it’s having a hell of an afterlife on YouTube, racking up over 11 million views since its Monday release.
Camel domestication research challenges Bible’s origins
Camel milk and camel burgers are attracting attention in the west, but these desert dwellers have been long-loved in the Middle East. Camels are the horses of the Middle East. Their domestication helped people in the region travel, build and communicate. But when did camels come to the Holy Land?
$9 billion in 2,000 MW solar investment streams into Morocco
The bone-dry plains of the Western Sahara may be no place to plant a garden, but their extreme solar irradiance values render them ideal for solar farming. Morocco has persuaded foreign investors to underwrite a $9 billion solar power project.
Hybrid solar electric oven SunFocus cooks with or without the sun
Solar ovens are great, and we’ve seen a lot of them. But they are limited since they only work when it’s actually sunny. Sun BD Group has bridged that shortfall with a new hybrid solar electric oven that can whip up a great meal at any time of day and under any conditions.
When the sun is shining, the SunFocus uses that energy to cook up to 12 pounds of just about any food imaginable – cakes, bread, meat (if you must), more or less anything that you can cook in a conventional oven.
But thanks to its hybrid technology, it doesn’t lose functionality when a cloud slips in front of the sun, when its overcast, or after sunset.
Even though the SunFocus can be used as a grid-connected item, it still boasts high energy efficiency thanks to its low 465 wattage, which means that it uses about 75 percent less energy than the oven in most homes, according to the company.
Other great features include portability, which is especially important if the oven is to be used out in the field, and at just 30 pounds, it is lightweight enough for just about anyone to carry.
The three reflective panels are made from high grade aluminum and because they are double pane they retain heat for longer, increasing the oven’s overall energy efficiency.
Reaching up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, the oven has a built in thermostat that switches off the electricity when it isn’t needed, and it is easily converted to DC power with an inverter.
Sun BED Group has spent two years perfecting and testing their hybrid solar ovens, which not only performed well in the center of the Pentagon in 2011, but engineers from Chevron (yup!) have tested them in the field as well.
The results have been good, although the company is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to have their product certified by both EU and USA electrical certification bodies and it is unfortunately unlikely to meet its goal to raise $40,000. Update: it did not meet its goal and raised only about $2000 USD.
Said to be the first hybrid solar oven built in the United States, the SunFocus will eventually hit the foreign market as well, provided that the company is able to raise the necessary funds. Which we think they will.
And if they do, despite the oven’s relative high price of $489, we expect to see a fairly significant uptake by wealthier families in the Middle East region, where the sun shines bright almost all year long.