Asian Carrot Salad

Combine shredded carrots, green onion, and sprouts (alfalfa, red clover, daikon radish, and bean sprouts will all work). Dress with sesame oil and rice vinegar. Then sprinkle sesame seeds over the top. For extra kick, add a small amount of grated ginger or chili pepper.

What is this salad doing for you?

Carrots are antioxidant-rich foods filled with beta-carotene, beneficial to eye health. Sprouts are packed with many nutrients with a bounty of health benefits. And sesame oil, the oil most commonly consumed oil by Chinese centenarians, is rich in phytic acid, the antioxidant that may prevent cancer. Studies have also indicated that one variety of sesame oil, called lignan sesamin, radically reduced cholesterol levels in the bloodstream and liver of rats.
By Dr. Maoshing Ni
Taken from Health.yahoo.com/experts/drmao/19517/6-salads-that-help-you-live-longer/

Fennel and Dried Plum Salad
Combine sliced fennel, sautéed or raw, and dried plums on a plate. Drizzle with a ginger vinaigrette. (Olive oil, vinegar and minced ginger, if you are making yourself.)

What is this salad doing for you?
This salad soothes digestion and supports weight loss. Fennel helps digestion in two ways: It stimulates the production of gastric juices and also calms the nervous system, regulating the action of the muscles that line the intestine. Packed with vitamin C and essential minerals like potassium and magnesium, dried plums contain a perfectly balanced proportion of soluble and insoluble fibers, ensuring bowel regularity and preventing insulin resistance—making them a great ingredient for weight management.

Tomato Basil Salad
Cook whole cherry or grape tomatoes in olive oil over medium-high heat until they are lightly browned. Cool, and then toss with fresh basil. For dressing, combine olive oil, vinegar, and a pinch of fresh oregano.

What is this salad doing for you?
Cooking partially breaks down your food, making the nutrients accessible to your body’s systems; for example, lycopene, an essential carotenoid antioxidant that has been found to reduce the risks of heart disease, macular degeneration, as well as prostate and other cancers, is more available in cooked tomatoes than uncooked. Basil is filled with luteolin, a bioflavonoid that studies have shown to be the best protection of cell DNA from radiation.

The long, hot days of summer aren’t much encouragement for cooking in the kitchen over a hot stove. Instead, why not take advantage of the bounty of local seasonal fruits and organic vegetables (basically any good organic produce) and cool yourself down with fresh healthy salads?

Quick and simple to make, salads with the right ingredients  also bring you some serious health benefits.

Produce Pointers: Start with Healthy Ingredients
When making a fresh salad, be sure to use locally-grown, organic produce from farmers’ markets and health food stores. Fresh, local organic foods contains more nutrients and is picked when naturally ripe. Commercial produce, on the other hand, is picked unripe and treated with ethylene gas to ripen artificially late. Then it is shipped on a week-long, sometimes even month-long, cross-country trip before it is served on your dining table—how’s that for fuel efficiency? While the waste of gas is bad enough, studies regularly emerge about the hazardous effects of pesticides and herbicides used on commercial crops: cancer risk, inflammation, reproductive imbalance, among other dangers. So eat food grown close to home: it’s better for your health, better for the environment, and has an unbeatable taste!

Nature has the perfect plan in providing the right foods for the season and summer foods tend to be on the cooling side, helping prevent overheating. One item to note: Eating raw food all the time requires more energy for digestion and tends to put out the digestive fire, so don’t forgo the stove altogether.

Here’s an almost raw salad recipe (Dijon mustard you’ll get is probably not raw)

Cooling Cucumber Salad
Thinly slice cucumbers, removing the peel if you prefer, and toss with red onions. Let this sit for 30 minutes, then top with apple cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard.

What is this salad doing for you?
Raw cucumbers are a cooling food and also a natural diuretic, helping to hydrate you and lower the blood pressure in your arteries. The vinegar has antiseptic and antibiotic properties and may also help to reverse hardening of the arteries, as well as dissolve gall stones and kidney stones.

By Dr. Maoshing Ni
Taken from Health.yahoo.com/experts/drmao/19517/6-salads-that-help-you-live-longer/

(Part One of 6 Salad Recipes)

The close up picture of the dates

Here is my recent purchase, a box of fresh Egyptian fresh, raw dates (24 pieces) set me back just RM3.50 or USD1. I got them from a small Mamak newspaper shop at Section 17, Petaling Jaya. It’s really cheap isn’t it? So much cheaper than buying the dates from the nuts and dried fruit shops at KLCC or The Ikano shopping centers.

I just love eating raw, fresh, soft dates as opposed to those that are hard and dried to the point of being hard to chew.

The box in which the dates came from

There’s a lot of dates sold now, here in Malaysia, and so cheap as well. It’ll be even cheaper AFTER the Muslim fasting month passes, as the vendors try to unload their final goods.

There’s a lot of raw food recipes, recipe ideas, that call for the use of fresh raw dates as a sweetener, because sugar is not so good for our health. And they are so delicious and full of nutrients.

A winning raw recipe. Takes 5 mins to make.
My raw avocado pudding was my kids’ favorite when they were
weaning as babies

Here’s a recipe idea… If you like to make smoothies, try popping one or two dates (minus the seeds, of course) instead of honey or sugar into the mix to be blended. Or use dates when you make heavy cakes like fruit cakes.

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More on raw food

• Super pepper, better than popping multivitamins?
• Not enough healthy food around? Here’s my tips
• Small plate of soy sauce packed with good stuff
• Peach so cheap!
• Protocol For Pineapple Parasite Cleanse

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Even better, just pop them into your mouth when you have the urge to eat sweets. Much, much better for you, though, gotta admit, still not so good for your teeth.

I am a big fan of grey water recycling or any type of recycling, if you don’t this by now

And what better way to reuse grey water than to get the kids to bathe out in the open, having some fun playing with water.

Grey water, by the way, just means the water left behind after we use it to wash something else.

My water conservation method is to use the grey water my kids bathe in to water the plants with. Good thing is, my kids hardly use soap to clean themselves in, unless absolutely filthy, so this “clean” grey water used to water the plants is absolutely safe to use.

I’m kinda lazy so I don’t like to walk far to carry heavy pails of water to feed my plants with, and the vege plot is just on the right side of the picture, just beside where the kids play and bathe. It’s a fabulous garden. There’s green onions, some vegetable I’ve planted and don’t know the name cause the seeds were obtained from China, mint, Italian basil, Papaya, Lime, pegaga and some ornamental flowering plants.

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More on fruits and vegetables

• Gotu Kola heals the world!
• No garden? Plant vegetables in flower boxes
• Super pepper, better than popping multivitamins?

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The kids were bathing just outside the backyard where we can see them from the kitchen and the ironing room. And just right next to the back door, I have this big ass rain water storage tank. This means, I’m using rain water to water my plants when I’m not using grey water. You know, there’s nothing better than free stuff, and rain water IS free stuff. *grin*