There’s all types of sweeteners. Right now, white sugar, honey and raw agave are popular. There’s also raw cane sugar and maltose. The (liquid) maltose is very popular with the Chinese. It’s made by first grinding long grain rice into powder. It’s then cooked with malt and fermented. The final product has a golden light honey color and it’s less runny than honey.

Maltose benefits the Qi, moistens the Lungs and relieves coughs due to dry lungs.

You’ll be able to find Maltose in most Chinese grocery stores in major cities around the world, and thankfully, most have the English word “Maltose” on it’s label. If not, ask for Màiyátáng or 麦芽糖

Click on this link to see how it looks like. http://yeqiang.com/v-web/gallery/albums/jiayao/maiyatang.jpg

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More info on how to heal your body

• Should we drink chlorinated tap water?
• Lots of great raw or almost raw food here!
• “This plant healed my sister!” said hubby
• Gotu Kola heals the world!
• Iodine Tincture Heals Cancer Lesions?

I want to share Alton Brown’s recipe for a home made ginger ale.  I love Alton and his somewhat unusual cooking show called Good Eats. Part science, part crazy cooking show, it’s all in good fun. Big boys love it because he really gets down to the scientific reasons for why things done in a certain way tastes so much better.

Anyways, I don’t really drink frizzy drinks because it’s usually loaded with sugar and all sorts of chemicals and artificial coloring I can’t pronounce. And really, I tell you, if I can’t pronounce it, it usually can’t be good AT ALL! So when Alton came up with a home made frizzy ginger ale drink, whoa! it’s really something to try at home.

Home made ginger ale is not something new. People have been cranking up frizzy drinks in their back yards for years … (can I saw centuries??) now. Some have tried making sparkling apple juice and all sorts of other fruity drinks. If you’ve never had a home made frizzy drink, then this is a good recipe to start with.

Times:

Prep                     15 min

Inactive Prep  49 hr 0 min

Cook                    3 min

Total:                  49 hr 18 min

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 ounces finely grated fresh ginger
• 6 ounces sugar
• 7 1/2 cups filtered water
• 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Directions

Place the ginger, sugar, and 1/2 cup of the water into a 2-quart saucepan and set over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat, cover and allow to steep for 1 hour.

Pour the syrup through a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl, pressing down to get all of the juice out of the mixture. Chill quickly by placing over and ice bath and stirring or set in the refrigerator, uncovered, until at least room temperature, 68 to 72 degrees F.

Using a funnel, pour the syrup into a clean 2-liter plastic bottle and add the yeast, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups of water. Place the cap on the bottle, gently shake to combine and leave the bottle at room temperature for 48 hours. Open and check for desired amount of carbonation. It is important that once you achieve your desired amount of carbonation that you refrigerate the ginger ale. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, opening the bottle at least once a day to let out excess carbonation.

The young ginger gives a milder flavor than old or mature ginger.

Again though, the most important thing is to use FRESH yeast, and to expect the bubbles to be a lot softer than what you are used to with the commercial stuff.

This is how some of the UHT milk packets look like

I was thinking of how schools were given UHT packets of spoilt milk last year, thinking why was this happening. Milk is truly expensive in a country mainly exports it’s dairy products from Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The act of packing the milk in pricey UHT packages. The cost of transporting milk from packing factories to schools.

There are food just as good or better than dairy milk, and cheaper to boot too.

Why not make soy bean milk, barley water or red bean drinks instead for kids from poor families? Low cost, easy-to-make, full of protein and other minerals, filling, FRESHly made. Pay the canteen operator and skip the middle men who makes all the profit from distributing milk.

Just soak the beans overnight, dunk the beans into soy milk machine with water, sugar N pandan leaf. Fresh food in 1/2 hour.

While we are on the subject of healthy school food, why not ban sugary soda drinks like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and all those artificial drinks, hook up a water cooler machine and sell healthy drinks instead to kids and teens.

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More on school and food

• Mothers Cook Healthy Meals For Students
• Edible food colors for kiddo finger painting sessions
• Beautiful home made Bento box meals for school kids
• Regular bread is full of additives
• Is food making school kids crazy?
• Raw anise seeds, full of iron. Good for kids
• School shoes stink to high heaven?

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I just so love the banana leaf cups featured here. So gorgeous. And eco  friendly too. Just eat whatever that is in the cup and then, toss the biodegradable cups into your compost heap. And yes, the Thai snacks shown are delectable looking as well aren’t they? The Thai lady chef who took these pictures is Kasma Loha-unchit. Currently, she’s got a Thai cooking school at Oakland, California, across the bay from San Francisco.

The instructions to make the biodegradable banana leaf cups are at eThaiCooking.com page.

Can you believe this is really good looking reusable sandwich bag was once an old shirt, a piece of scrap cloth and a clean Ziplock bag?

How cute. I love it when old stuff are brought back to live as a new and so reusable item.

So gorgeous, you’d want to bring it to work Every. Single. Day.

The bag just folds up and snaps shut with a piece of velcro

The inside of the bag is a gallon size Ziploc bag (cut apart)

It’s a breeze to make, doesn’t take much time at all. Best thing is, you can just drop it in the washing machine, and then hang it up to dry in time for the next use.

Check out the tutorial at Salt Water Kids

Apparently, there’s a new strain of rice that does not need to be cooked at all. Super duper crazy stuff for all you lazy cooks out there! Downside is, you gotta wait for the agri scientists in India to sell it to ya! This soft rice is called the Agihoni Bora rice.

Apparently, it just requires a long soak (45 minutes), and that’s it!

Can you imagine? Finally, we are able to eat raw rice that has not lost all the great enzymes that might have been destroyed during the cooking process. Also, it’s definitely environmentally safer because we don’t have to use any fuel to cook it. It’s a boon to the poor who can’t afford to buy fuel, that is if the Indian farmers decide to price the rice grains within the reach of the poor.

Image taken from http:/macrocosm-magbook.blogspot.com/2010/02/rice-grains-that-need-no-cooking.html