Just imagine- bike for an hour and power the house lights for a week! This is a reality for a man who found a solution to stay fit and solve a power crisis.
Check out the free plans to design bicycle energy systems for your home. You may be able to save some money this winter.
Tiger’s Milk, an old naturopathic convalescent tonic for a perfect breakfast. A convalescent tonic was traditionally used to build people back up after an illness or stress, including childbirth.
Per person
2 x raw egg yolks (from free range eggs
½ - ¾ cup of milk, yoghurt or kefir
2-3 tablespoons of blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
First blend the yoghurt and berries until smooth, then add the egg yolks and coconut oil and blend until combined. It’s important to not over process the egg yolks so always add them last.
If you or a family member is allergic to dairy, you can replace the milk with almond milk or rice milk. To make either of these even more nutritious, culture them using Kefir grains or culture first. A less ideal option is to replace the milk with fresh or frozen orange juice – this works best as an afternoon snack rather than breakfast. You can also add some frozen banana for children (or fussy adults).
Matt and I love it. We find that the coconut flavor stands out the most. The shake has a beautiful purplish color, so quite appealing. We can hardly tastes the yolk. The natural yogurt and kefir give a tarty taste. If you like it a bit sweeter, adding some banana will do the trick, and I can imagine it going very well with the coconut flavor.
A good lemony muffin recipe by Pat Churchill to use up the excess egg whites and lemon rinds. Nothing goes wasted.
Lemon Friands
180g Butter
200g icing sugar
50g plain flour
pinch salt
1/2 tsp lemon essence
120g ground almonds
zest of 2 lemons
5 egg whites
extra icing sugar
Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease muffin tins.
Melt the butter, then set it aside to cool.
Place butter, ground almonds, zest, essence, sifted icing sugar and flour into a mixing bowl.
Lightly beat the eggs whites till frothy and stir into the other ingredients till combined - don't over mix.
Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake for 25-30 minutes till a toothpick inserted in clean when removed. Allow to stand for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
To serve, dust with icing sugar and accompany with whipped cream ans seasonal fruit.
Oops, I mean it's hailing down like dogs and cats. I was so exciting that I rushed out barefooted with my camera!! The next thing, I felt my feet hurting - it felt like I was walking on ice (which I was!!) I simply couldn't contain my excitement. Next thing I knew, I ran to my neighbor's place, and invited her out to play in the ice with me. Oh oh, I could see my footprints. I felt like a child jumping up and down in joy after receiving a most precious present!!
Not quite. But I love blogging so much that I have enrolled to learn about web design and writing for the web with the Open Polytechnics. A bit radical, you might say. Firstly, I feel strongly that my writing has tonnes of room for improvement and secondly I like to have more control over the template (the control-freak part of me is emerging here). And I really can't believe that there is JUST THE COURSE for me!! So, why wait??
Both papers (web design & writing) are online papers, work out quite well as I do enjoy sitting long hours infront of the screen especially in winter. If everything goes as per planned, I should graduate this coming November.
On top of that, the one year Plant Propagation Course is also starting this week. So, I'll be just a tat busy the next 6 months.
These activities should be enough to keep my out of winter blues!!
After months of research and personal success with the experiment, I've come to the conclusion that we should include a lot more lacto fermented foods in our diet. Now, I keep a microbial family going at home. The members include Water Kefir, Milk Kefir, cultured yogurt, Kombucha and other lacto-fermented veges especially cabbages.
For years, I suffered from severe constipation. Once I was packed for 8 weeks. Believe me not, it was nasty. I thought I was dying. In a nutshell that was the beginning of my health journey in search of a cure for my constipation. It then took me another 6 years before I stumbled over the answer (Thanks to Tara who introduced Nourishing Traditions to me). From juicing to consuming tonnes of fiber, taking probiotic tablets, and herbal laxatives, the answer for me is finally found in lacto fermented foods.
It has been six months, and I hardly needed the usually herbal laxative to get things moving. Since, I've also found a few things that are especially hard on my digestive system. Too much carbohydrates will pack me up too. At the moment, I'm experimenting with sourdough recipes as I would like to enjoy carb without the side effects.
We're planning for a family, and I'm confident these lacto fermented foods will
help with easing constipation during pregnancy. Yes, these lacto fermented foods are safe to consume during pregnancy.
We hosted 2007 Christmas lunch. Matt’s parents, his Nana and auntie and uncle gathered at our place for the occasion. My best effort for the day was a leg of ham, soft buns, salad and a pavlova from the supermarket. In any case the food went down surprising well.
For afternoon tea, I served up the zucchini pickle that I made the previous summer. It went down like a treat. Matt’s Nana loved it so much that she requested the recipe. The thought of the efforts I put into preserving it and how much harder it would be for her, I brushed off her request. Instead, she was supplied with a bigger bottle of pickle. A week later, a snail-mail came for me. It was from Nana. She thanked us for lunch but more importantly, she wanted the zucchini recipe. Sensing her determination, I wrote the recipe and snail-mailed it back to her. Later that week, there was a phone message from Nana. She had just made the zucchini pickle and was very pleased with it! Bless her cotton socks!! We celebrated her 90th birthday in May 2008!!
I love steam buns!! It’s one of my comfort foods! It’s the texture of the dough that determines the quality of the bun, at least for me. I’ve been seeking for a Chinese bun dough recipe and I think I might have it now. Three other keys for making great steam buns:
1) The ingredients have to be fine (achieved by using the food processor to cut the cabbage etc
2) Mix in ¼ cold galantine (make from boiling up chicken legs) and ¾ cold filling (mince/cabbages is preferred as it holds up well)
3) Steam in a bamboo steamer
Here’s the dough recipe to make 60 small buns:
6 cups flours
¼ cup sugar
1 packet yeast
1tbs baking powder
1¼ cups warm milk
¾ cup warm water
Mix all the ingredients together, let it rise for 2 hours and the dough is ready for making buns with filling of your choice!
We drink RAW MILK these days and use it to make yogurt. Why Raw Milk?
Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity.
Raw milk sours naturally but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk. Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods.
But times have changed and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. And pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria for Johne’s disease suspected of causing Crohn's disease in humans with which most confinement cows are infected.
Much commercial milk is now ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life. Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds. (Sources are listed on www.realmilk.com.)
