Black and white pepper isn’t just for seasoning

Sprinkling a dash of black pepper does more than please your taste buds. The piperine in it increases the bioavailability of many substances through a bunch of cool processes, which results in more nutrients reaching your cells.  Not only that, but did you know piperine can act as an anti-depressant, pain reliever, and antacid, boost brain functioning, and help you sleep?! Can someone please pass the pepper STAT!

I’d advise to get peppercorns like the ones shown in the picture above, rather than grind-ed pepper from the supermarket. Once you grind, you’ll start to lose a lot of the wonderful volatile pepper oils.

Sarawak White Pepper.

When you’re going for nuance of flavor, Sarawak White Pepper, named for the Malaysian state where it is grown, is the top white pepper. In fact, I believe we Malaysians don’t really appreciate the Sarawak White Pepper. This pepper is actually very sought after by top chefs around the world. While other peppercorns are soaked, Sarawak corns are held under a constantly flowing stream of artesian spring water, yielding a smoother and whiter product. The berries are larger, brighter and more flavorful, with a mild, peppery, sweet aroma (somewhat reminiscent of allspice) and a robust, rich, winey/floral flavor. The finish is hot. The shell is thinner and more fragile.

Sometimes I forget how hard it is for farmers to grow the Sarawak Peppers. These farmers are not rich, dirt poor is more like it. I mean, just look at the house shown behind the tall bright green pepper plant in the picture above. It’s really a hard life, and it makes me feel very blessed that there are people out there who toil to bring me food to the table.

In most gourmet supermarkets around the world, the price is about double that of most peppercorns but this pepper is well worth it. We Malaysians get it dirt cheap, so we should use it more often! Perhaps because it’s cheap we don’t appreciate it. Perhaps if the farmers and the distributors were to jack up the price will we fully appreciate how truly wonderful this stuff really is.

The rest of the culinary world treat it with reverence. About time we do to.

Taken from feeds.killeraces.com/~r/wisebread/~3/9DA4_7HTm7Q/bioavailability-how-to-get-more-nutrients-from-your-food, mysarawak.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/sarawak-pepper/ and thenibble.com/zine/archives/varietal-peppercorns9.asp

The doggy’s master is in the background carrying two heavy bags of groceries

I was at the morning market yesterday when I was pleasantly surprised to see 3 dogs walking around with baskets in their mouth. As you can see in the picture above, I managed to capture an image with my mobile phone of one of the dogs carrying some raw uncooked vegetables. Isn’t this dog the cutest thing?

There they go, swishing their tails happily.
I had dogs before, so I know they are just
ecstatic to be out of the house

Since I work from home, my time is pretty flexible, and I’m blessed in that I am able to go to the morning open air market, maybe twice a week, to buy fresh ingredients for my meals. I thought I’d just show you readers, who are not from my neck of the woods , how my regular market looks like.

Although it’s not compulsory, people are starting to carry their own reusable shopping bags

Anyways, talking about using reusable bags, it’s good to know that the island paradise of Penang is now enforcing a “No Plastic Bags Day” every Monday. Ikea has gone much further and does not offer free plastic bags.  I try not to accept plastic bags unless I really can not help it. And I try to get the vendors to wrap the purchase with newspaper and raffia strings or just plain rubber band.

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More on plastic bags

• Plastic bags causing flooding problems
• No rush to ban plastic bags from MPs
• Plastic bottles vs paper cups at “More raw food at the night markets”

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The Panasonic carbon filtering, alkaline water machine
I’ve been using for several years now

If fishes are raised in an aquarium tank that is filled with pond or river water, they will live happily. Of course, we have to aerate the water constantly, or change it often. If not, they will die once the oxygen in the water gets exhausted.

If the tank is filled with tap water that has been treated with chlorine, the fishes would die of chlorine poisoning.

When we boil tap water, most of the chlorine would escape, and germs if present would die, leaving the water safer for consumption. However, in the process of boiling, the free oxygen contained in the water would escape, and that would make the water ‘lifeless’.

If such a lifeless water is used, all the fishes in the tank would die, for want of oxygen.

Drinking such ‘deoxygenated’ and ‘lifeless’ water on a regular basis will not be good for humans. This will deter proper digestion, in the first place.

A simple and inexpensive carbon filled filter should be good enough to remove several of the undesirable additions. Drinking such filtered water, without boiling it, should be the best way for good health management.

STARTLING REVELATIONS: MEGASERIES: PART-22 by Dr V.M.Palaniappan The Pioneering Founder of Ecological Healing System, a Complementary Medicine, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

I just read in the Sunday newspaper today that washing hands in public toilets is not such a hot idea. Bummer! Apparently, refillable soap dispensers have lots of germs inside the bottle, as well as the pump section where everybody touches to pump out the soap. According to the article, the hand dryer also has lots of germs in it, and the extremely powerful jet hand dryer is the worse culprit because the powerful gust of air can blow all sorts of awful germs right across the room. The article goes to say, if you need to dry your hands, then, use the disposable paper towels attached to the dispensers on the wall. Much safer, but I can’t say it’s better for the environment, can you?

Anyways, just like the next person, I don’t like germs, but that’s not stopping my little boys from putting all manner of germy stuff into their little mouth.

I have come up with a way to disinfect their hands and surface materials like shopping carts and restaurant tables at a moments notice. I just buy some rubbing alcohol from the pharmacy and pour some into a cheap small travel size non spill spray plastic bottle that I bought from the beauty store. Easy peasy and lightweight too. You can do the same, but do buy the bottle that sprays mists or liquid instead of streams of liquid.

Some people prefer gel type hand sanitizers. I’ve got the perfect homemade, el cheepo but highly effective recipe for that too. Mix equal parts of rubbing alcohol and aloe vera gel (get them from the pharmacy). Mix it all together and store it in old unused pump action liquid soap containers. Travel sized squirt bottles works too. But seriously, that’s it.

Me? I prefer the spray bottle to the gel because I can spray into all corners of any stuff like the shopping cart and not touch it with my hands. Or I just spray some alcohol into a tissue and clean away. Try making it. It’s really simple, easy to carry around and if it’s really true about what the article says, then, you don’t ever have to touch another public toilet tap in your life ever again. You can make bottles of it and keep them all over the place, like in the office, in your bag, in your kitchen, at the garage.

Yum? Artificially flavored Twinkies

At Appleton Central School in Wisconsin, student behavior was so out of control that the school required its own policeman. However, when vending machines and junk food were replaced by fresh natural foods and water bottles, the number of school dropouts, expulsions, drug use, suicides and weapons violations dropped to zero.

Page 69
Fed Up by Sue Dengate

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why are donuts popular snacks at the office?

Jasmin says

It’s amazing that again and again, studies have shown artificial colorings, chemicals and preservatives in food causes behavioral problems in people, and yet, these very products are allowed to be sold everywhere. And horrors, teachers are STILL giving out no-no sweets as a reward for good behavior for kids, not realizing that these very stuff is causing bad behavior, temper tantrums and so on.

one of the hotels offering free fresh raw apples to guests at the business travelers’ hotel room floor

So, ever wonder about what that nasty co-worker in your office eat daily? Maybe if nasty people eat all natural food, they might get mellow, more cooperative? Makes you think doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s time to ban junk food not only in school, but in offices as well. What’s the incentive for the big guys to do so? Higher productivity of course. And you know everyone loves to work in a pleasant environment, devoid of any combative atmosphere.

Dengue killer? Rubbish!

And now F&N Coca-Cola managed to somehow reposition the 100 Plus isotonic drink as a holy water drink that heals people who have dengue fever. Rubbish!

The many artificial ingredients in 100 Plus

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More about additives

• Malaysian Bread Statistics You May Not Know
• Is your bread bad for you and your family?

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Most of the time raw foodies have a tough time eating out because there’s not many or shall I say no restaurants that serve good raw food dishes around this area. So, usually they end up eating before meeting up with friends and family and ordering raw fruit juice (if they serve raw fruit juice) at the table.

There is one place that serves raw food that most everyone loves to eat at, and that is at durian buffets. This place shown in the picture is the very famous durian stall located at the corner of SS2 at Petaling Jaya, and they only open during durian season which is usually once or twice a year. It’s a really awesome place to go to, with large soccer size durians with dangerous looking spikes placed on shelfs and in bamboo baskets all over the place.

Except for my little toddler and my kids’ nanny, there’s basically no one else who dislike durians. Everybody can eat here. Vegans (who don’t eat meat), Muslims (who don’t eat pork or any meat from animals that live on land and water like frogs or ducks!), Hindus and Chinese buddhists (who don’t eat beef), carnivors, hmmm did I cover everyone yet? Very muhibbah (goodwill). This is one place, besides Indian Muslim restaurants where everybody goes to fill their bellys, no creed, nor race excluded.

It’s truly a perfect meal for everyone, especially for the raw foodists.

Please note that durians can not be eaten everyday. And one can not eat too much because durians can cause sore throats when eaten too many. This is because the Chinese believe it’s “heaty”, and the way to balance the yin and yang of the body is to drink some raw coconut water or eat some watermelon or eat some mangosteens to cool the body down after a heavy durian meal.

More on durians

• Health facts about durians and how hubby ate nothing but durians for a whole month! Burp!

• A totally different type of durian ... durian belanda also called soursop also called cherimoya

• Not enough healthy food around? Here’s my tips 

Here’s a real fun fact about durian. You can clean the smell of durians off your fingers. here’s what you do. Fill the white part of the durian skin with water and rub your fingers against the wet white section. My dad believes he can prevent sore throats by drinking some salted water from the white part of the skin. Dad also believes he can avoid durian breath by gargling with the very same salted water as well. That’s some serious advise, good stuff if you are currently dating.

Pictures taken from feedmelah.com/blog/2009/09/01/restaurants/selangor/petalingjaya/ss2ss3tamanmegasungeiway/durian-buffet-galore-ss2-petaling-jaya/ and kyspeaks.com/2009/06/24/durian-at-pj-ss2/