Art of Manliness has called for recipes for their Man Cookbook <link>. Here’s my submission from Jamie Oliver’s recent book of Italian food, “Jamie’s Italy”. Buy it here <link>.

Spaghetti with prawns and rocket

455g/1lb dried spaghetti

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 cloves of garlic peeled and finely chopped

1-2 dried chillies crumbled (2 is more than enough I find)

400g/14oz peeled raw prawns

1 small wineglass of white wine

2 heaped tablespoons of sun-dried tomato paste/puree or 6 sun-dried tomatoes blitzed in a blender

zest and juice of 1 lemon

2 handfuls of rocket roughly chopped

Cook the spaghetti as per the packet instructions, circa 9-12 minutes.

Man tip: Make sure the water is salted and boiling before adding the pasta. Leave the lid off the pot once the pasta has gone in to avoid boil overs. Timers on microwaves are wonderful things.

While this is cooking heat three good glugs of extra virgin olive oil in a large frypan and toss in the garlic and chilli. As the garlic begins to colour, add the prawns and sauté them for a minute. Add the white wine and the tomato puree and simmer for a couple of minutes.

At this point Jamie recommends draining the spaghetti and tossing it into the frypan with the spaghetti, squeezing in the lemon juice, adding half the rocket and a little bit of the spaghetti water if the sauce looks a little thick. I did this the first time and it got a little messy; probably just me. What I’ve found is that it works just as well adding the lemon and rocket to the prawn sauce and then pouring it over the pasta.

Whatever approach you take, before serving sprinkle each dish with the lemon zest and the rest of the rocket.

Thanks Jamie for another great recipe. My family love it. It’s supposed to serve four people but there is never any leftovers with the three of us.

Adding the geography to this postcode map really adds value. Here’s my original post on the subject <link>

I’ll have some of these please <link>. And one of these.

<link>

Thanks swissmiss and girl in the green dress.

A collapsible, folding fixie. Innovation rules ok! Here’s what they say:

“We are hand-building bikes here in Missoula, Montana. All steel with S and S couplings. The frames break in half and fit into a bag. They can be checked on airplanes with no extra charge. One simple tool to put them back together. Ride to and from the airport. We designed these bikes for leaving the mountains to get some culture and hang with our friends in the city. Right now we are only making fixed gears. No brakes, No cables, No mess. Bikes come with a bag for travel. We’ll also make some product.”

And here’s the link to the site <link>

An advertisement for guide dogs. Think about it! See through dog.

This is just the cleverest ad I think I’ve ever seen. Congratulations UbachsWisbrun JWT, Amsterdam. Brilliant! It makes me feel all warm inside when I find such clever, creative work. Or maybe it’s the pinot noir and paella.

Thanks I Believe in Advertising <link>

Woohoo. I’m very impressed by the look of this bike. Leg Grenade is a great name too. Here’s the story behind it:

“The fruit of a joint project between Robert Squire of Weaponshouse and Sylvester of Brakeless bike shop in Montreal, the “Leg Grenade” is one slick track bike. Deciding to build a bike that rode tight and looked classic, minimal and tough, the primary components are a Large Affinity Marta frame with a Miche Drivetrain and a Surly lockring sitting on some all white Aerospokes. Unfortunately this one’s not for sale but a visit to the Brakeless or Weaponshouse website could open up a dialogue to customize your own bike!”

Thanks CoolHunting <link>. Posted on a Friday too.

The Tour de’ France is a great event. We went and watched the time trial in London last year and then the peleton head out through The City. This article has more commonsense about the Tour and drug testing than any other I’ve read <link>.

The story is that there are three teams in the race that are “clean” - Team Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle and Danish squad CSC Saxo Bank - and they have a new, but really simple and sensible way of testing.

“The new model relies on analyzing an athlete’s test results over time. That way, an athlete’s urine or blood sample on any given day will be compared with the most accurate control possible: himself. Any spike that departs from that baseline of biological values would strongly suggest drug use – without testers even needing to know what drug caused it.”

Brilliant. Don’t look for the drugs that are hard to find; just monitor the athlete against their own benchmark.

This quote is also a gem. “Don’t expect people to do unnatural things unless you want them to have to take unnatural things to do those things.”

The race is so tough that the temptation to do something to make it easier must be enormous. Maybe the organisers could make it a little easier and remove the need to take drugs.

Note also that Team Columbia has won four stages of the Tour de France this year. CSC also holds the yellow jersey (at the moment).

British Airway’s cost cutting has certainly reached the smallest room on the plane. It wasn’t as shiny as the loo paper of my youth (circa Burnside High School in the mid-70s) but what BA supplied on the flights between London and Seattle this week certainly wasn’t Andrex.  I expect the people who travelled closer to the pilot had a softer landing.

Ingenious <link>

Joining Mars Phoenix on Twitter is Cassini from the moons of Saturn. Here’s the first tweet.

“Launched in 1997 on a 2.2 billion mile journey to this jewel of the solar system. Arrived at Saturn July 2004. Now in 76th orbit of planet. 03:03 PM July 11, 2008 from web”

Here’s where <link>