Jasmin’s random thoughts on health, life, environment and family.
Tonya Kay says “In Nacho Libre Jack Black ate watermelon before a wrestling match and with all his prize money, served the orphans at his monastery salad rather than porridge. In Wall-E the dream and hope of our entire race is tied to the survival and propagation of one little, green sprout.”
Tonya Kay is a professional dancer and raw food athlete. Read about her here
The Christmas holiday is when everybody eats, and eats, and eats. I’ve got my juicer and blender out for everyone to make some tasty raw drinks.
The cheap juicer I’ve had for at least 8 years now
In the meantime, do check out one of my favorite raw food blogs. She’s got the cutest raw food salad called the Berry Festive Wreath Salad. Read how she makes it.
Many of you know that my eldest son’s birthday is on Christmas Day. He turns 4. There will be a big party at my dad’s place. I’ll be buying a really beautiful hand painted Thomas The Tank Engine vegan cake made by this really artistic lady for the party. Actually, I’d rather make a raw cake, but I really, truly suck at decorating and piping so for now, I’ll leave it to the expert.
It’ll look like this except it has a pink background at my son’s request
Many of you probably will attend a pot luck party or two. Instead of bringing some unhealthy dish, perhaps you could consider bringing a healthier, artificial coloring free, additives free, preservative free, dish. Skip all the yucky stuff that can really make you sick. Try bringing fruits instead. People love fruit. And you cover all bases. Vegans can eat fruits. People on diets generally love them too. Ditto for parents of young kids. You also don’t have to worry about people who are allergic to certain food like eggs, peanuts or dairy.
Anyways, I just want to wish everyone a super fun holiday and a Merry Christmas.
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More interesting info to read
Buy Additive-Free Food As Gifts!
Regular bread is full of additives
What would you bring to a pot luck party?
Is food making people around you crazy?
Flowers, the natural food coloring
Typical Malaysian Wedding Dinner (usually 40 or more tables!)
From now until to the New Year, I’ve got parties and more parties to attend. A cousin is getting married on Saturday and my dad’s very close friend, we call him Uncle Cheah, is celebrating his 80th birthday this Sunday. My son’s preschool has this really fun 4 day Church camp, culminating with a pre Xmas concert tomorrow. Also, this coming Tuesday is the Chinese Winter Solstice Festival. This is the day when family members gather at the head of the family’s house, in my case, that’s my in-laws house for a big dinner. My little boy is also born on Xmas day, so we’ll definitely have a super duper party.
Parties and big family gatherings are so much fun. And there’s always an opportunity to bring all sorts of tasty food to share at these parties. For example, my kid’s preschool had asked for parents to bring some pot luck dishes for the kids to share. I’ll be bringing maybe 2 dishes to my in-laws house for the Winter Solstice Festival. My sister-in-law will probably bring a few of her fabulous dishes as well. My cousin’s wedding dinner probably calls for a Chinese sit-down affair that probably includes a 10 course meal. Uncle Cheah is having a huge buffet at his house. Meanwhile, let’s not even talk about Xmas party. It’s pretty much a food fest right here.
The problem with food, I realize, is that most of the time, when we buy food, especially pre packaged food, it’s all pretty much laden with artificial coloring, additives, preservatives, all the yucky stuff that can really make you sick; many nice holiday wrapped chocolates for example. How about soft drinks like Fanta, Coca-cola, Dr. Pepper? Yes, even those reconstituted juices at the cold section of the supermarket that tries to pass off as fresh juice. Fresh juice in my opinion is anything just juiced from a juicer or a blender. Anything else is not.
Can you believe this poison sugar water isotonic drink is recommended by doctors for those who have diarrhea?
El Fresco night market juice shop
So anyways, this holiday season, give everyone the gift of love by showing your concern for your friends and family. When you go out and buy food, do stop an extra minute and read food labels and buy safe food.
You could make your own food using natural products, which by itself is free of additives, as presents. What I mean by that? Look at the package labels the next time you go to the grocery store. Notice something as basic as flour has preservatives in it. The bottom line is, whether it is approved by the whatever government agency, we are still eating bad-for-you preservatives. Buy something that doesn’t have any preservatives if you can help it.
Alternatively, you can buy additive free cookies, cakes and any other food from a place you know serves good food, and I don’t mean, just tasty food. My friend Sui Wei sells preservative free, oh so good, choco chip cookies. I’m sure you probably know someone who does as well. Not only that, lots of gourmet specialty shops sell food that are free of additives, organic food as well.
You see, food is a great vehicle to get everyone closer. And if you show you are concerned about people’s health, they too will reciprocate and take care to feed you healthful food as well.
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More on
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Try this cook book that calls for preservative free ingredients
that has been garnering
rave reviews by home cooks all over
Impress Your Family and Friends With Exact Replicas of The
Following Famous Dishes Without The Excess Fat and Preservatives:
The Book Will Teach You the Jealously Guarded Secrets Behind Dishes
From Billion Dollar Restaurants Like The Cheesecake Factory®, KFC®,
The Olive Garden®, PF Chang’s®, Red Lobster®, Chili’s®…
(plus many others) and Show You How to Easily Make Them at Home!”
America’s Most Wanted Recipes in Your Own Kitchen…
-Kenny Roger’s recipe Page 75
- KFC Original Recipe Chicken Page 77
- Mrs Field’s Peanut Butter Cookies Page 91
- Pizza Hut Original Pan Pizza Page 125
- White Castle Burgers Page 157
So, ok. Today’s topic is not exactly about health, but I promise you, it keeps you sane.
What’s really gets me often times is when I can’t find things that are misplaced, things I use maybe once every few years. But here’s a useful tip I saw on the internet I’m pretty sure you’l love as well.
Tape small tools (like an Allan Key) to where you’ll use them.
Makes me wanna run out and take the Allen Key to my Ikea bed right now.
By the way, when I was a college student, I’d use to store my TV warranty card and receipt in a small, clear plastic bag and tape it to the bottom of the tv. You see, I would buy all my stuff from Walmart, and they had a superior return policy. I’d tape the same stuff to my table fan and a couple of other large items. That way, I’d remember where I kept it, especially since I kept changing accommodations every single year. Nowadays, I have a very, very large file for just warranties which I keep in one of the cabinets. Hope I’ll remember where I keep it when I move house! I’ve got a pretty bad memory, hubby will tell you.
So, where do you keep your important, hardly used items?
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Tips to reduce blood pressure
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My mum loves bread, and she loves butter and jam on it. We make healthful jam in my mum’s house. She’s just made a huge, huge batch of easy-to-do jammy marmalade about 2 weeks back. And our family loves coconut jam which is called “Kaya” which uses a simple combo of coconut milk, brown sugar, pinch of salt and an egg. So you see, there’s no preservatives involved.
I love Egyptian and Iranian dates
While I looked at the bottles of Marmalade jams my mum packed away to be given as gifts, I realise, there’s actually a healthier alternative to my mum’s super duper no preservatives jam. Raw, full of enzymes, fruit jam is what I recommend.
It’s so easy to do, and you don’t need a lot of fruit, just sulphite-free preservative dried fruits.
Just take a handful of dried fruits (I like sweet chewy dried mangos, dried apricots are great as well), soak in a bit of water overnight. Some of you may like to soak dried stone fruit in brandy or some other hoo hoo hoo alcoholic liquid, well, you can. Just let me turn away for a minute while you do that. Done? Ok. Then, whizz it in your mini blender with a little of the water you used to soak the fruit in. Add honey or some raw syrup of your choice to taste. That’s it. So simple and full of all the enzyme goodness not destroyed by heat.
Now, there’s actually all sorts of dried fruits sold. Most of the unusual ones are sold in exotic shops. Dried mangos can be found at Indian stores. Sweet whole dried oranges can be found at Chinese Medicine shops. Luscious dates are imported from the Middle East. Just be sure to ask if it’s been preserved with sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide has been used since the Greek and Roman times. However, this preservative has been known to cause problems for people who are prone to asthma so naturally dried fruit is still the best way to go. If you want raw dried fruits, not those that are dried in high heat, look for the word “dehydrated”. Look for the words “organic”, “preservative free” and “sulphite free” as well.
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More on raw food
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A friend of mine just came back from a 6 month travel cum work holiday in New Zealand where she worked on a Avocado farm. She worked at a Kiwi farm later too, but that’s another story altogether. She told me that the avocados there are heavily sprayed with chemicals before packing! Despite wearing gloves, all the workers complained that their hands felt itchy! That’s pretty scary! Cause I let my 2 kid eat so much Australian and New Zealand imported avos as baby food.
Raw avocado baby food, takes 5 mins to make!
So what to do?
Firstly, you don’t have to avoid eating avocados. They are packed full of good fats, full of minerals and vitamins. You just have to wash the fruit good before eating them, that’s all. There’s lots of organic fruit wash in the market for you to choose from nowadays. But if you are leery of that, a Facebook friend of mine told me that she uses baking soda to wash all her produce, so you can try that as well.
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More on baking soda
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ps Here’s a useless but interesting info about avos. Any avos with marks will be put on the local market and the misshappen or out of grade pnes will go to the oil factory. So now you know!
