Author: Wansteadium

Wansteadium reader Catherine writes: “There has been a film crew set up outside Wanstead Golf Club all day. Could you find out what is being filmed please?”

Answers on a postcard please. Or, actually, via comments or e-mail.

• The commander of Redbridge Police, Detective Chief Superintendent Sue Williams, is inviting residents to ask her questions via Twitter on Wednesday 14 March between 3pm and 4pm. Wansteadium will post some of the questions and answers here in case you miss the event.

• The supposed cinema at Snaresbrook Tube, which has been much tweeted in recent weeks, is likely to have been a touch disappointing to anyone who came to E11 specifically to see it. As hardened commuters from here will know, it’s not quite a cinema, and it’s only when it’s one of the station staff, Malcolm Parker, on rota. Wansteadium has wondered how long it will take someone in head office to notice, but the signs for this charming distraction continuing are good (literally, & thanks to Alan Perryman for the photo).

• Council Tax in Redbridge has been frozen for the third year in a row, following cost cutting by the council.

• While residents are celebrating the news that Wanstead CC’s Overton Drive grounds are not now to be used as a 500-tent campsite for Australians visiting the Olympics, the club itself is having to recalculate without the money this would have brought in. Also it will mean fewer Australians being around Wanstead, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

• Redbridge Book and Media Festival 2012 has been announced – programme here: www.redbridge.gov.uk/bam. This year’s speakers in Wanstead including Julian Clary, Sandy Gall, and Esther Freud.

• BBC Newsnight’s Paul Mason will be talking about his book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere at Wanstead Library next Saturday, 17 March, at 7pm. Tickets are £5 and available either from the library itself (020 8708 7400) or Newham Bookshop (020 8552 9993).

• There was a fire in Aldersbrook above a chip shop whose opening was celebrated in Wansteadium last year.

• Photo of the week, as taken by Wansteadium regular @nutterlane Dan.

Suki Orange, Wansteadium’s food blogger, writes: It’s time for another healthy seasonal Wanstead-based recipe from our own nutritionist Karen Poole. I’m pleased so many of you are appreciating her ideas – we’ve had really good feedback so far. Do let us know what you think. Mr Orange and the satsumas will eat crumble for Redbridge given the chance, and I suspect many families are the same.

Perfect pink crumble
Currently in season, rhubarb, once a regular Sunday staple, fell off the radar for a while but I am glad to report it is now firmly back on the table.

This glowing pink vegetable has many health giving properties and has been used in Chinese medicine for centuries. It is very easy to cook and although it only really offers one dish – thankfully it is rather a special one.

Many people are put off by the amount of sugar needed to counteract rhubarb’s notorious tartness but I can give you a few tips to lower the calorie load and up the healthy aspect. In this recipe, the grated ginger adds an extra dimension of flavour, contains vital minerals and is also an aid to digestion.

Please note as well – rhubarb leaves are poisonous – so dispose of them somewhere herbivorous animals can’t get at them.

Ingredients
• 750g rhubarb
• 3 tbsp water
• 12 tbsp caster sugar
• 1tsp finely grated fresh ginger
• juice of a large orange
• 90g butter
• 150g flour
• 100g demerara sugar
• 2 tbsp oats
• 1 tbsp ground mixed nuts

Method
Rinse and chop the rhubarb into two inch pieces.
Put it into an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with the water and the caster sugar and bake in an oven at gas mk4 or 180c for 10 minutes.
Add the ginger and orange juice.
Rub the flour and butter together into a breadcrumb consistency, mix in the sugar, oats and nuts and cover the rhubarb.
Bake at gas mk4 or 180c for 35 – 40 minutes.

Serve with vanilla organic yoghurt.

Healthy aspect
• Potassium – helps to maintain a normal water balance and a healthy heart
• Manganese – aids bone and ligament formation
• Vitamin K – blood clotting and bone density
• Calcium – facilitates muscle contraction and nerve transmission
• Zinc – can reduce lactic acid levels in overworked muscles and enables wound healing
• B3 – stimulates DNA repair and energy production

Tip
Xylitol is a sugar substitute made from birch tree extract with 40% less calories and a GI score of 8 compared to 65. Use it in the same quantity as regular sugar. Fruisana fruit sugar is sweeter than sugar so you can reduce the quantity by a third and has a GI score of 19. The Glycaemic index measures the potential to raise blood glucose and eating foods with a low score could help to reduce the overall glycaemic load of a meal and regulate your glucose levels.

Either one of these options works well in this recipe and both are available at Simple ‘N‘ Natural, 3A High Street Wanstead.

Rhubarb can aid digestion, although eating a lot may have a laxative effect and people on anticoagulants should be aware that vitamin K will be antagonistic to the drug’s purpose.

Nutritionist Karen Poole BA Dip Nutrition CNM MBANT can be contacted at k.e.poole@hotmail.com
www.karenpoolenutrition.co.uk

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Wansteadium’s gardening blogger, Ron, 90, has been cultivating his own little patch of Wanstead for well over half a century. Here he offers his thoughts on the summer to come.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be looking at the blue skies we’ve had over the past few days, rising temperatures and lighter evenings and you’ll be thinking that something within you is awakening once again. For one reason and another I’ve not been able to go into the garden very much over the past few weeks, but I can see the signs of Spring as well as anyone. I can’t wait to get back out there.

So this is a great time of year to be thinking and – literally – plotting what you’re going to do this year. Think what worked last year, what you wished you’d done, or think of something you’ve never tried before. Now’s the time to be planning.

And here’s a thing. I am still eating last year’s produce. These are the last of my parsnips which really need to be dug up now. Parnsips are the first things to plant, and the last things to dig up. They don’t mind the cold and snow, and taste just wonderful however you cook them. It’s best to sow them in soil where you haven’t put anything in the way of compost or fertiliser – you get much neater single roots that way. If there are lots of nutrients in the soil you’ll probably find lots of smaller roots all shooting off, not knowing quite where to grow.

If you are planning your garden this year, why not let us have a photograph of it now, and then send in another one when it’s in full bloom? I’d be really interested to see what my fellow Wanstead gardeners are up to. Our address is wansteadium@gmail.com. Do let me know what your plans are, if you have any.

Free-running, the kind of trendy yet suicidally risky sport where people leap like Spider-Man across enormous distances has apparently reached Wanstead.

Noel McManus of One Deko, a regular Wansteadium reader, took this photo on Tuesday evening and reports the following:

Have a look at this guy by the chimney in the photo. I was on the High St this evening at around 5.30 when I first spotted him on the roof of the opticians. Then about 10 minutes later I was in the traffic queue for the lights when I saw him on the street outside (the now closed) Cinnamon. Suddenly he shimmied up the pole supporting the canopy at the front of Cinnamon, ran up the edge of the glass roof and then climbed onto the roof of 149 (which used to be Randalls). I managed to get this pic. It’s all happening here.

Did anyone else see anything? Are you the mysterious Spidey? Will you clean Wansteadium’s gutters? Contact us at wansteadium@gmail.com