Category: Wansteadium

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

Wansteadium’s food blogger Suki Orange writes:

So my long-held desire for somewhere wonderful and useful and practical to eat in Wanstead, probably with the family, reaches another crunch moment tonight, Saturday. Our new restaurant on Wanstead High Street, Provender, is opening this evening. Let’s just hope it all lives up to its promise.

From the outside, Provender looks beautiful and funky and pretty cool actually. But of course I’m not quite as shallow as to judge by appearances. The menu does give us a few clues though. Here’s a picture of it (click on it to see a full PDF on the Provender website).

So what to make of it? At first glance, I’m just not sure that the aim of being a “bourgeois bistro” will entirely translate into something which means very much for the average consumer. But never mind – what about the food.

I’m afraid that the dishes all look a little too over-complicated, too grand. I mean check out that francais! I may be wrong, but the feeling it gives is of the kind of restaurant you might go to as a treat rather than the everyday atmosphere of a bistro. And the prices… well, we’ll see, but there doesn’t seem to be very much of le chic d’austerite about them. And that, mes amis, is surely le chose de la jour.

I do know, however, that since the departure of Kylie’s Kitchen a couple of years ago, there aren’t too many places in Wanstead that you take weekend visitors for breakfast or brunch. I know too that our much loved Larder seems to be operating pretty much at full capacity, especially at lunchtime. And I know that there is certainly a gap in the market for somewhere to go during the day, with free wifi, plenty of space, a welcoming atmosphere and plenty of filter coffee and tea.

Good luck to everyone involved, and I know I’m not the only one who is hoping Provender will succeed where Cooks and Seasons before it failed. And as is traditional here on Wansteadium, your reviews are extremely welcome.

Last month we introduced Wanstead photographers Marshal Gray and Claudia Carter’s project to chart a whole year in Wanstead. Here is the latest of their photos.

You can see more of their work on their blog.