Alexandria’s newly-appointed governor, Mohamed Atta Abbas, ordered security forces to dismantle book kiosks in Egypt last week. A mainstay of local culture, al-Nabi Daniel street booksellers posted images of ransacked kiosks on their Facebook page. The Minister of Culture has vowed to investigate the incident, according to Egypt Independent, but activists and writers are duly alarmed. We recently lauded the Bibliotecha Alexandria as a model for sustainable development in the region; has the new governor stolen that thunder?
Booksellers in Egypt Targeted by Security Forces (PHOTOS)
Honey Cookies for Rosh Hashannah
Bake a batch of honeyed cookies for the Jewish New Year.
Symbol of all things sweet and good, honey is part of many Rosh HaShanah recipes. Here at Green Prophet, we use only chemical-free honey.
Our popular honey cake (see below) is based on a traditional recipe, and so are these honey cookies. German immigrants brought the recipe to Israel in the nation’s early years, and now all ethnic groups regard them as standard Rosh Hashanah fare. Kids especially love these cookies, maybe because they fit into the hand comfortably and can be eaten on the run.
Honey Cookies – The Recipe
24 cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1 cup shortening
1 cup honey
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup shortening
1 cup honey
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Confectioner’s sugar to dust over cookies – about 1 -1/2 cup
Mix sugar, shortening and honey in a pan and cook over low heat till blended. Cool the mixture.
Mix eggs, vanilla, baking soda and ginger. Gradually add to cooled honey mixture.
Add flour to mixture, 1/2 cup at a time. Stir well between additions until you have a smooth dough.
Add flour to mixture, 1/2 cup at a time. Stir well between additions until you have a smooth dough.
Form teaspoon-sized balls and roll each one in confectioner’s sugar.
Drop onto cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.
Bake at 350° F – 180° C 12-15 minutes or until a golden brown.
Enjoy!
Lamb Kebabs Marinated in Pomegranate Molasses
In the Middle East, grilled meat is king.
This recipe calls for marinating lamb cubes overnight in pomegranate molasses, a sweet, thick reduction of pomegranate juice. We have a recipe for it here. Then it takes only 15 minutes to cook. Have ready rice, a variety of salads, hummous to spread on your challah, and one holiday meal is ready to set on the table.
Lamb Kebabs in Pomegranate Molasses
6 servings
Ingredients:
1/2 cup pomegranate syrup
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 kg. – 2 lb. boneless lamb shoulder, cubed into pieces 1-1/2 inch large. Read our post on visiting a family ritual slaughter in Jaffa, Israel.
How to make lamb kebabs
Combine pomegranate molasses, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic, bay leaves and thyme in a large container. Add the lamb, tossing it to coat with the marinade. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.
Remove lamb from marinade and reserve the marinade. Skewer the lamb.
Grill kebabs over medium heat, turning often and basting with reserved marinade until the meat is brown on the outside and medium-rare on the inside, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Enjoy!
Recipes to round out the menu starring lamb kebabs:
- Boukhari Rice
- Baba Ganoush
- Potato Salad with Middle Eastern Flavors
- Syrian Tomato Salad
- Honey Chiffon Cake
Tel-Aviv Bike Sharing: Green Prophet Hits the Road (VIDEO)
Two weeks ago Green Prophet decided it was high time to put Tel Aviv’s bicycle sharing program to the test, since we are such fervent advocates of cycling. We hired two bicycles from a station at the corner of Ehrlich and Yefet streets in Jaffa, a predominantly Arab neighborhood just south of Tel Aviv, but only after struggling for more than half an hour to get them on the road.
We didn’t have a camera with us at the time, so we invited Tel Aviv native Daniel to join us at the same station about two weeks later in order to put the system to the test again. His experience was much better than ours. Hit the jump to watch our small video clip of Daniel hiring a Tel-o-Fun bicycle and find out how his experience compared with ours.
Inflatable Solar Canopy to Power the Arabian Peninsula?
MIT student Otto Ng proposes to solar-power the Arabian peninsula with more than 10,000 square kilometers of Powerscape – a tensile solar-collecting canopy comprised of inflatable mirrors. The problem with solar power, says Ng in a TED presentation, is the great amount of space required to produce the same amount of energy as a conventional power plant.
So, unless we’re making beautiful power stations a la the Land Art Generator Initiative, we’re sapping up precious land with ugly, resource-intensive solar collectors du jour. Ng proposes instead to cover the desert with an energy-generating canopy that also provides shade and a comfortable microclimate.
How Unsustainable Water Policies Crippled The Assad Regime (INTERVIEW)
We speak to Shahrzad Mohtadi about the devastated drought that crippled Syria’s food centre and shook Assad’s political stability
The link between climate change and political instability may still be ambiguous, but recent research is uncovering a connection between sustainable water and food policies and the survival of governments. Shahrzad Mohtadi found that whilst a prelonged drought in Syria may not have caused the political uprising, the Assad regime’s failure to deal with it effectively certainly did. “Assad promoted water intensive crops such as cotton, while not providing efficient methods of watering such crops. There were many such policies that created a scenario where the drought’s effects were even more devastating than they otherwise would have been,” say Mohtadi.
“So one can’t say climate change will create a domino effect of instability and migration whatsoever – but Syria’s case is a warning that developing nations… should create sustainable agricultural policies.” I spoke with Shahrzad Mohtadi to find out more about the devastating drought in Syria and what other Middle Eastern nations need to do to protect their dwindling water resources – and their political stability.
Google Doodle Salutes Razi – the Persian Father of Modern Bedside Manners
Google does it again: sliding big history lessons into my idle internet surfing.
This week in Jordan, the Google image was of Middle Eastern pharmacist, physician and alchemist, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, the preeminent man of science of his time, and beyond. If Guinness doled out world records in Razi’s day, this 9th century Persian would best swimmer Michael Phelps in a stack of “firsts”: but Razi’s events were in the pool of medical research, clinical care and chemistry.
Razi dabbled in alchemy and discovered numerous compounds and chemicals, including kerosene. An early proponent of experimental medicine, he was one of science’s most prolific authors and arguably the most original of all the world’s physicians. The Encyclopedia of Islam said,”Razi remained up to the 17th century the indisputable authority of medicine.”
Educated in music, mathematics, philosophy, and metaphysics, Razi chose medicine as his day job. He differentiated smallpox from measles, and made distinctions between curable and incurable diseases.
Camels for Milk and Look Who’s Buying
Dubai’s dream of exporting fresh camel milk to the rest of the world will soon become reality.
Green Prophet’s been doing alot of yakking about camels lately. Prepare to hear a lot more as the camel products go commercially global. Camel milk is a healthy alternative to cow milk; Camel milk is for good for diabetics. Camel milk’s been sold in supermarkets throughout the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for several years, and it may soon be approved for export to the European Union, but this means that the UAE’s two commercial dairy camel farms must quickly gear up to meet expected demand. Extracting camel milk is tricky business. These “ships of the desert” are rock-star temperamental.
Israel’s Sol Chip adds Solar Power to Microchips
Sol Chip’s technology will allow small devices to run indefinitely without replacing and disposing of those silly lithium batteries.
A tale of two wafers: Both begin as 99.9999999 percent pure silicon, one of the basic ingredients in desert sand. A furnace melts the silicon and controls the cooling and growing of a mono-crystalline cylindrical ingot which is then sliced into standard 100 to 300mm (4 to 7.5 inch) wafers. Infinitesimal quantities of doping materials are added to change the wafer into a semiconductor with the correct properties to become either a microchip or a photovoltaic solar cell. From this point these two types of wafers go their separate ways and give little indication of their common roots. But now a company named Sol Chip of Haifa Israel intends to combine these two silicon-based technologies to make solar-powered microchips.
It All Grows In Kuwait – One Bloggers Green Fingered Journey
Alzainah Albabtain, a 22 year old student, is growing her own food in the scorching heat of Kuwait and wants others to give it go too
A green fingered student from Kuwait is taking the blogosphere by storm with her ‘It All Grows’ blog. Filled to the rafters with gorgeous photos of lovely fruit and veg, recipes, and gardening tips, Alzainah wants to prove that “good fruits and vegetables don’t have to travel across the world to make it to your plate.” I caught up with her to find out how she got hooked on gardening and her insider tips for growers in the Middle East.
Revolving Crystal Ball Predicts Qatar’s World Cup Ambitions
A giant revolving crystal ball provides a glimpse of Qatar’s 2022 world cup ambitions, which aren’t looking so sustainable after all. Apriori Communications commissioned Vedran Pedišić (SANGRAD) and Erick Velasco Farerra (AVP-arhitekti) to design a technologically-advanced spherical structure that will play host to a new FIFA soccer museum.
Islamic Cemetery in Austria Reinforces Natural Connection to the End
An 8,400 square meter cemetery for Islamic burials in Austria reinforces humanity’s connection to nature until the end. A tranquil design flawlessly executed by Bernardo Bader with an applaudable combination of simplicity and reverence, the cemetery built in Vorarlberg features a series of variously-sized walls that not only separate the cemetery from the surrounding landscape, but also gently cordon off grave burials.
In its purest form, Islam (like most religious and spiritual ideological systems), calls for humanity to retain their connection to the earth. That we are custodians of the planet is an idea that is expressed in numerous Quranic tenets.
Bearing this in mind, Bader aimed to design a cemetery for Muslim residents living in Altach, Austria that would be a gentle reflection of this powerful and largely overlooked sense of responsibility.
Unlike some embarrassingly overdone monuments to the dead, a series of elegant walls depicting intricate designs very similar to the Mashrabiya screens that help to facilitate natural light and ventilation in mosques and homes in the Arab world.
It is at once a tasteful intervention that minimizes site impact while also creating intimate spaces that allow families to mourn their loss in a magical alpine environment.
See how this cemetery compares with Zoroastrian burials in Iran.
Cemetery blueprint
Images via Adolf Bereuter, Nikolaus Walter, Peter Allgäuer, Bernardo Bader
Hot Air Ballooning over Turkey’s Cappadoccia
Park those alternative energy cars and hybrid vehicles, hot air ballooning is my new green travel of choice. Can there be a more magnificent place to try my wings than over the Cappadoccian landscape?
Cappadocia is a region in Anatolia, largely in the Nevşehir Province, in the center of modern day Turkey. Together with Göreme National Park, these rock sites form one of Turkey’s eleven World Heritage Sites. Centuries of volcanic eruptions coated the topography with layer on layer of lava and volcanic “tufa”, volcanic ash turned to rock. Nearby, Erciyas volcano is still active with occasional minor eruptions.
Wind and water have sculpted the landscape into spectacular pillars and towers that could have sprung from the imaginings of Tim Burton or Doctor Seuss. Grass covered plateaus crack open, exposing terrifyingly craggy innards. Soft mounds of tufa look like melting ice cream. The variegated earth is set against unflinchingly blue skies. All perfect for a hot air balloon ride.
Tel Aviv Bids for Artificial Island International Airport At Sea
Fly into Israel? Land at sea first on this 250 acre platform runway proposed for international flights.
There has been talk for a couple of years already that Tel Aviv’s international airport will move to the sea, literally. A proposal has been submitted to create an artificial island off the city’s coast to replace the Ben Gurion Airport, one that services local, domestic and international flights. A couple months ago I interviewed a geologist helping to develop feasibility studies for such a structure. And according to media reports it looks like the crazy plan is going ahead despite environmental risks to the fragile Mediterranean Sea, and security risks of sabotage.
Tel Aviv Goes on Bike Impounding Rampage
Bikes blocking traffic or crosswalks are being impounded in Tel Aviv.
From the first time I visited Tel Aviv more than a decade ago, up until today so much has changed in the way the city’s residents accept cycling. Back then if you rode a bike you were either a migrant worker pushing fabric rolls across the city, a vagrant collecting junk and hobbling it to the side of your wheels, or a strange kind of hippy. Fast forward ten years and the middle and upper class of Tel Aviv has embraced bike riding – so much that the city has rolled out a Paris-style Velo bike program called Tel-O-Fun.
Although it has its aggravating moments (as some users complain), it’s a pretty neat way to get around the city while avoiding the stress of thievery. But now, Tel Aviv cyclists have more than vandals to worry about. Media reports say that the City is indiscriminately impounding bikes that aren’t chained to one of the city’s 3000 official bike racks. Like every story there are two sides, but the approach has the city’s bike riders up in ire.