This is amazing.

Brad Pitt’s green and sustainable building foundation Make It Right will unveil a house that floats when it floods. The house is ready to move in and will be presented to a family that was displaced by Hurricane Katrina tomorrow.

According to Thom Mayne founder of Morphosis Architects, who was behind this incredible design explained in an interview how it was done:

The designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete. What does that do? It produces a raft; it floats and it’s thought about as a seat belt. I mean, hopefully it never gets used. But when it gets used, it’s important. The house is anchored to the ground by two vertical guideposts. At times of flooding, the house moves up the guideposts — up to 12 feet — to prevent it from drifting.

As if that wasn’t enough the home is able to break away easily from electric lines and plumbing allowing it to travel up to 12 feet during flooding. The floating house also contains enough batteries to keep everything running inside for as much as 3 days.

Info taken from cocoperez.com/2009-10-06-brad-pitt-makes-it-right-float

Jasmin says:

I think it is a wonderful initiative. I’ve been living in uncomfortably warm concrete / brick houses all my life, and my family is looking into building a green home in the near future. We think it’s great that other people are also making an effort to built sustainable homes here in Malaysia. Check this event out.  Matthias Gelber is chairing the Malaysian Green Building Conference http://greenevents.com.my/

In my previous post, I talked about the various types of raw food and almost raw food that can be found at the night markets. Think that’s it? Noooo. There’s more.

Hubby loves coconut juice and I love sugar cane juice. And both these fresh raw juices can be found at the night markets. In the picture, the juice in the white bottles are fresh coconut juice, and the ones in the green bottles are the freshly juiced sugar cane juice.

Another picture of a sugar cane and coconut juice stall.
It’s not the same stall as the one shown above, but boy,
they do look alike don’t they?

Fresh raw sugar cane do not store well for long due to the large amount of sugar in the juice. Therefore, it has to be consumed quickly. And since it doesn’t store very well, you can bet the juice you drink is really, really fresh. The one thing I’m not crazy about is the plastic bottles. They do serve up with paper cups too, and that’s what I normally request for. I’m going to go a bit further now and will try to start to bring my own water bottle, and will ask them to fill that instead to reduce land waste.

Hubby loves rojak. There are many versions of rojak, and the one he loves the most is the classic all raw fruit salad topped with thick gooey black sauce (probably cooked sauce) and sprinkled with toasted chopped peanuts . Recently, we flew to the enchanting Penang Island and there, he ordered 3 plates of rojak, from 3 different food stalls at Gurney Drive … at one sitting. Can you tell how much he enjoys this dish? If you want to butter him up, just buy a plate of the best rojak around for him. LOL

This is how the whole yummy mess looks like when served up!

More on sugar cane

• What would you bring to a pot luck party?

• McDonalds used to serve sugar cane juice

Pictures taken from what2seeonline.com/2008/05/tidbits-and-snacks-ojak/, woklessnomads.blogspot.com/2009/08/night-markets-petaling-jaya-vs-kaifeng.html and mooiness.com/2007/01/06/night-markets-pasar-malam-petaling-jaya/

I was talking to Seto, an old friend of mine (we were college mates way back then) who is also a raw foodie and she told me she usually brings her prepared food from home. We went on to talking about raw food and how it can be a challenge at times because you usually can’t just walk into some shop and ask for a raw food dish.

I do agree. Going out eating raw food can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, and requires planning. But actually, it can be pleasurable, and there are quite a few options out there for raw foodies and their friends and family.

FOOD AT THE NIGHT MARKET

This place is too huge, and this picture really don’t do
justice as you can’t see how enormous it is!!!

Every Wednesday, this utterly amazing night market would spring up in a housing estate called Taman Connaught (Connaught Garden). This is THE BIGGEST, LONGEST night market in Kuala Lumpur, and I would think the whole of Malaysia (if there’s a bigger one, please, email me as I, the consummate shopaholic, want to go see!). I love the crowded, noisy place. Organized chaos comes to mind! It literally takes 4-5 hours to really walk from one end of the market to the other side. And to really enjoy the shopping experience, you’d need to visit this place at least several times. Really!

The juice costs RM3 per cup (less than USD$1). Cheap I tell you.
They are using the Jack Lalane’s Power Juicer.
The fruits are thrown into the juicer whole.

There’s one thing I always like about the Kuala Lumpur city night markets is that there’s a fresh, raw juice stall at almost every corner. Taman Connaught is no exception. And the variety of raw juices …. exceptional. The raw cut fruit on the left are apples (helps aid digestion), the middle are custard apples or better known as jambu air (very good for people who feel hot), and the fruit on the right are the tiny, healing Kodondong fruit. Beside this type of raw juice stalls, there’s also the raw coconut water and the raw sugar cane juice stalls.

Technically, this “unfried” spring rolls called “popiah” are not raw, but almost raw. The reason is because the wrap is made of soft, delicate cooked rice flour pancake that looks like paper thin flat bread. They use cooked sauce placed in bright big bottles as shown in the photo. They also sprinkle some crunchy deep fried flour pieces inside for texture. But as you can see in this photo, there’s lots of raw vegetables like shredded carrots, lettuce, shredded cucumbers, shredded seng kuang (jicama root). They really do pile the raw vegetables in the spring rolls to make one delicious snack.

Pickled food if unpasteurized is considered raw food as well.

We Asians just loved our pickled food. Just look at variety available. There’s all sorts; sweet, pickled baby onions, salty, spicy pickled papayas, pickled sour young mangoes,  and so on. Pickled food is a great way to bring raw food for travel or to keep at the work place as snacks as it can keep for a long time without spoiling, and it does not need refrigeration.

Pictures taken from www.hot-screensaver.com/2006/12/10/taman-connaught-pasar-malam/ and ugwug.blogspot.com/2006/11/taman-connaught-pasar-malam-part-1.html

My almost 4 year old little boy loves to look at pictures, and one of the things he really like to look at is the juice menu. Parents often tell me that their kids don’t like fresh, raw juice. Maybe they need to try more variety? Or something attractive looking? Or just something from the restaurant, not from the house?  Kids! They are picky at times, aren’t they?

Hiding behind the McCurry menu

Anyways, we were at the McCurry restaurant. This, now, world famous McCurry Indian curry house is owned by Suppiah who is a friend of ours and one of Shaun’s first students in his very first Boot Camp on Internet Business and Internet Marketing way back in 1999.

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More on the McCurry vs McDonalds story.

Why did McCurry restaurant, the underdog,
going against an 800 pound gorilla (McDonalds) win the court battle.

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My toddler trying to feed himself.
I was debating to put this picture as it’s not one of
my most flattering moments, but what the heck.

Anyways, I like to bring my family to Indian restaurants, particularly those that serve vegetarian food because Ethan, my toddler is allergic to eggs and seafood. That pretty much eliminates most places he can eat out. I can be assured he’ll be ok if he ate some vegetarian food. You see, Ethan is the main reason why I started a blog on raw food, healthful food, health and the environment. Eco issues are a passion of mine. But I’ve never imagined I’d be obsessed with food matter until I realized his health problems stemmed from food. Poor guy had extremely bad, itchy, uncomfortable exzema from day one. Through proper diet and watching this little guy like a hawk so he won’t touch any no-no food, we are able to control it. So far, so good.

We were having breakfast at an al fresco restaurant when we happened to see this spiky purple plant popping out of the edge of the sidewalk. Hubby said, every time he see this plant, he is always reminded of the time when his sister healed after drinking tea brewed with this plant’s delicate flower.

Shaun was a young boy at the time when his sister, Florence, fell ill with very, very high fever. Try as they might, their parents could not get the fever down. It got so bad, they had to put her in an ice bath, and that didn’t help either. Then, someone told his mum that drinking a brew of this flower would help reduce Florence’s fever. The family immediately bundled the kids into the car in search of this plant. They would stop at the road curb, walk onto stranger’s neighborhood, … to pluck flowers. Hubby said, at that time, he was highly embarrassed at what they were doing …. plucking people’s flowers without permission. But plucked they did. That was his mum’s mission. And today, being a parent, he understands what lengths parents would do to save their children.

So anyways, they collected a handful of flowers, which his mum washed and boiled with some water. Florence drank the brew, and her fever went down.

I should try to get the recipe from her, but it’s past midnight and I could not wait to download this picture and blogged about it. So, the recipe will have to wait another time.

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Writer’s note: My sister-in-law who now lives in Sydney just told me it’s called “Pong fa” or Pong Flower’. I tried googling, but I still can’t find any info on this plant.