videos to Explore
http://www.explore.org/videos/library/
explore is a multimedia organization that documents leaders around the world who have devoted their lives to extraordinary causes. Both educational and inspirational, explore creates a portal into the soul of humanity by championing the selfless acts of others.
explore’s growing library consists of more than 250 original films and 30,000 photographs from around the world. We showcase our work at film festivals, on over 100 public broadcast and cable channels, and on numerous online destinations including explore.org, Snag Films, Hulu and TakePart.
“At explore we are archivists,” explains founder Charles Annenberg Weingarten. “We strive to create films that allow the viewer to join us on our journey as we go on location and experience what unfolds. It’s like the viewers are traveling with the team.”
explore features a wide range of topics—from animal rights, health and human services, and poverty to the environment, education, and spirituality. Delivered in short, digestible bites, explore films appeal to viewers of all ages, from children learning about other cultures for the first time to adults looking for a fresh perspective on the world around them.
explore films include: a woman in Mumbai who has dedicated her life to rescuing young women from prostitution, a priest in Los Angeles who helps gang members reintegrate into society, a project to protect wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and an environmental university in Costa Rica that focuses on sustainable development.
Individuals and organizations featured in many explore films also receive explore funding in the form of Annenberg Foundation grants. To date, over $15 million has been awarded to more than 100 non-profit organizations worldwide.
explore.org, the online portal for explore, is a community destination where people share thoughts, engage in dialogue, view and email films and photographs, and embed their favorites on blogs and social networking sites.
Thai snake head fish recipe
I'm not sure you'll find snake head fish here, so we'll have to try this with any white fleshy fish I reckon. It's the typically Thai flavours of the sauce that are so important and the crispy fried skin of the fish that gives the deliciously satisfying texture on the tongue.
Ooh - and if you can find half a thing of bamboo you could use it as a plate!
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Fry the fish - veg oil - or why not try coconut oil if you have some - much healthier. Or olive oil. Make sure the oil's really hot before putting the fish in and be careful to not let the skin stick to the pan.
When it's fried, put it to one side.
Now chop up:
1 tblespn of galangal and another tblespn of ginger, or 2 of ginger (grated)
1 tblespn of lemongrass
2 shallots, chopped finely
2 red chillis, small - sliced then crushed in a pestle & mortar
2 tblespns of coconut milk
Then put a little more oil in a wok, and put in the mixture and fry until the wafting of lovely flavours begins. Then add 1 tblespn of soya sauce and a spoon of sugar. Then the Thais add monosodiumglutamate MSG) but we're not going to do that, we'll just add a bit of a crumbled stock cube instead. Not too much. Simmer all this for a bit then pour over the fish!
Amazing dairy-free milk
Hurray! I've finally discovered a non-dairy milk I actually like the taste of!
Kara Coconut milk - it's drinking milk, not the coconut milk you'd use for Thai curries. And, it's better than soya and rice milk as it's even healthier. It only got released on the market recently - it's cholesterol and lactose free, and contains the richest source of Lauric Acid of any kind of milk. Lauric Acid is a medium chain fatty acid, which is healthier than saturated animal fats and also helps control cholesterol.
http://karadairyfree.com/
Coconut milk is from the coconut flesh, not the same as the coconut water, which sits in the middle of the fruit, which is also full of electrolytes - a natural isotonic beverage. (see other posts)
http://www.talkingretail.com/products/product-news/14219-kara-dairy-free-the-...
Sprouting - the joys of
I've given up using the 3 tiered sprouter from Planet Organic as it didn't work - seeds went mouldy, water went stagnant, seeds all clumped up, etc. Turns out you just need a large jar anyway.
1) wash the seeds. Lentil, mung bean, alfafa, chickpea, fenugreek, try 'em all. Bigger ones take longer to sprout.
2) Fill the jar with an inch or 2 of water and leave the seeds in there for 24 hours.
3) Rinse out the water and leave the jar on its side with the seeds spread out. Cover with a teatowel - they have to germinate in the dark.Don't screw the jar lid on too tightly so a bit of air can escape.
4) Every 24 hours or so, rinse the seeds.
5) after 3 days, check to see if you can harvest them....
It's absolutely worth getting into the habit of doing this because they're so yummy in salads - and they are the healthiest food you can eat, full of living enzymes.
See these for inspiration:
http://www.sproutpeople.com/cookery.html
https://www.livingfood.co.uk/
Children of Laos
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Cleaning the colon - what I did in Thailand
The word detox used to make my heart sink, because I knew there was no way I'd have the will power to do it - even just the idea of eating salads for a week, delicious as they might be, made me cross! Cross because I knew if I had the desire to eat the chocolate cake, I would, because I lacked any will power to resist it. I didn't really believe that silly old herbal concoctions would work and it annoyed me that detox packages would be on sale for huge amounts of money in pharmacies 'cos I thought they're probably just a rip-off.
Why did I feel I even needed to detox? Quite simply, years of over-indulgence and lots of niggling, sometimes screaming, health problems. It was like a last hope, a wiping-the-slate clean idea but I just never got around to it, and just put up with the status quo.
So in 1998 I discovered a rather good value place in Koh Samui, probably I'd seen it on TV, and I stuck it in my brain section entitled Things I Will Definitely Do One Day.
This place attracted me a) because it was cheap and b) something about the hard-core nature of fasting for 7 days AND giving yourself an enema twice a day - made me believe that this was the best method I'd seen yet for wiping the slate (colon) clean, kickstarting a new way of living.
However part of me remained extremely sceptical - these things only work for other people not me, I won't be able to do it, I'll just go back to my old ways. So it took me 10 years to get round to going there.
Since this post is just a summary, I'll skip the gory details and just explain that it's very controlled; you take a special juice every 3 hours, herbal pills every 3 hours, (but not at the same time as the juice) and you give yourself two coffee enemas every day, morning and evening, all for 7 days. You eat nothing. It's all very strange at first. It's not pleasant giving yourself enemas, but there's a video and books to teach you and experts on hand (NOT with you in the bathroom) to ask; you learn as you go along, talking to fellow-guests in minute detail and picking up handy hints... you get a bit weak, you can do gentle yoga, chi-gong, steam rooms, massages, beach etc. Not as cheap as the rest of Thailand but all affordable - massage £6, yoga class £5. The aim, in a nutshell, is to give your body a rest from being stuffed with food, so that it can concentrate on getting the gunk out of you, helped by herbs and enemas. You can hear more about this in other posts but suffice to say... EVERYONE has this, (unless they've been vegan and only eaten raw fruit and veg all their life), it's yuk, and you need to get it out of you, because it clogs up the colon and leads to other, potentially serious problems.
Of course, I took photos - every time I did a colema. I emailed a couple of them to my father upon my return; he said he was almost sick and he promptly gave me strict instructions never to show these to any of my boyfriends. (Of course I wouldn't!) (well, not during courtship period anyway!) Honestly, why are some people so SQUEAMISH!? People are just not getting the fact that this stuff is inside THEM too and surely it's better out than in!!
It's funny to see different peoples' reactions. There is one end of the scale, my father and brother, who shut me up loudly and almost hysterically if I even opened my mouth to say the word "enema"; and there is the other end of the scale, my friends B, P and E for example who were fascinated, examining pictures of mucoid plaque, and immediately decided they might want to do this themselves. If you are more the latter, then good for you! Follow your intuition - you KNOW that cleaning your colon is the way forward!
I did mine at the Spa Village, Spa Samui in Koh Samui, Thailand. www.thesparesorts.com
I am currently investigating UK options for the same cleanse; there aren't many so maybe I will start one myself. Once you have done it and you know what you are doing, you can use www.ariseandshine.net to buy the herbs and psyllium husks and www.cleanse.net, find a colema board and do it at home, but I wouldn't advise if you don't know what you are doing. Yes, you need to take the herbs and drinks, and yes, you really should do the enemas, (no point cleaning your house without emptying the rubbish bin) and no, you really shouldn't eat anything except drink coconut water, carrot juice, wheatgrass juice, a liver flush, vegetable broth.
I've gone into more depth in other posts.
Khmer Chicken from Cambodia
Khmer Chicken with Bok Choi (serves 2, or 1 hungry man)
Chop these thinly and keep separately in piles:
2 cloves garlic
1 shallot (Onion if you can’t be bothered to buy shallots, but only a very small amount (1/5 th of an onion)
3 small lemon grass stalks but exclude the outer skin first – chop these as finely as you can!
2 pieces of fresh turmeric (hard to get it fresh in the UK?)
1 and a half kaffir lime leaves – roll them up first then chop thinly
Galangal 1 inch square, or ginger if no galangal
Mix and smash these in a pestle and mortar (or cheat with a blender)
But they must go into it in the following order..
lemon grass, kaffir, galangal/ginger : smash a LOT to a pulp
THEN the rest except shallots; smash smash smash, and the shallots must go in last, more smashing.
Now you're ready to spread this mixture onto the chicken - a large organic piece of deboned thigh preferably.
On to the chicken, which you have slathered in this yummy bright yellow spicy mixture, add 2 tablespoons of coconut milk, half a teaspoon of chicken stock. Here you are supposed to add 3 tablespoons of oyster sauce, but I say either add 1 only or none at all - I am suspicious that this is the Cambodians over-doing it a bit, making it far too salty.
Over this add a couple of tablespoons of crushed peanuts - you should seriously think about keeping a jar of these in your larder - crushed to the point where some are powdery and none are left whole. (beware of using salted, but roasted should be ok)
Now, heat some oil in a pan - by the way, the healthiest oil to cook with is coconut oil - if not, then olive oil, but you do not need any other oil in your kitchen - and make sure the pan has a lid or at least something you can improvise as a lid. When the oil's hot, fry the chicky with all of its yellow mixture but don't toss it around too much, you want it to go a bit crispy so leave it in place, turning it over once or twice. When it's gone much browner, possibly 10 minutes, it's ready!
You can serve with steamed rice and bok choi.
The bok choi can be literally steamed with a bit of water, lemon juice and oil in the bottom of a pan or wok. Remember the lid!! If you want to be more elaborate, you can toss over it a bit of crushed garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce, a ladle of vegetable stock and some black pepper. The Cambodians like to add cornflower mixed with water at this point too but I thing this makes it look gloopy, you want it fresh and green. Don't oversteam, you don't want it to lose colour.
Thai green papaya salad (Som Tam or Pok Pok)
One of my favourite Thai dishes of all time, but to make it in the UK you've got to find where they might sell green papaya and dried shrimps. Asian supermarkets will, but charging 10 times the few baht you'd buy them for in South East Asia - I just bought one green papaya for £4.80! AND it's flown by air so food miles and carbon footprint are huge, but just once in a while it's nice to have a treat. I guess you could replace the green papaya with rice noodles and prawns, but that makes it a different salad..
I learned this in Cambodia but I've changed the recipe since the Thais make it better I think. (The Cambodians were getting carried away adding oyster sauce and tomato ketchup into the mix, sorry but yuk!) There are loads of variations on this recipe, just fiddle around with the ingredients till it tastes how you like it.
You need a pestle and mortar if you want to do this properly really! Everything, even the shredded papaya, needs bruising in it. You'll also need a julienne stripper to shred the papaya, and v useful for other veg like carrot too.
Ingredients (serving 1)
A large handful of shredded green papaya A small handful of dried shrimps, chopped 1 small Thai red chilli, chopped Some green beans, chopped into 2cm lengths - can be lightly steamed or raw, in fact if you have a tendency to over-boil veg then don't go anywhere NEAR the saucepan with these! Half a clove of garlic, peeled and chopped 1 large handful of cherry tomatoes, halved 2 small handfuls of roasted peanuts (it’s fine if they’re salted) 1 tablespoon of palm sugar - ordinary sugar if you have none, but try and always buy unrefined 1 tablespoon of fish sauce lime juice - at least 1 lime if not two or 3 Thai basilMethod
peel the papaya, and shred with a julienne shredder into thin strips. Pound the green beans, red chilli and garlic in the mortar. Throw in the peanuts and dried shrimp and pound again, then add the palm sugar and tomatoes and pound again, lightly. Now introduce the lime juice, fish sauce and a large handful of shredded papaya. Give one last quick bruise and mix.Day 8, Detox and fast on Koh Samui: BREAKING THE FAST
Jeez, can't eat till like midday as still have special flora-gro "insertion" put inside me to replenish all the good bacteria. Will NOT miss the smell of coffee I can tell you.
Weight check: 135 lbs! (lost in total, 7lbs, half a stone) (the 4lbs I put on 2 days ago must have been water, but it went the next morning)
12: 30 yuuuuuuummmmmmmyyyy papaya and mango and goat's yoghurt and bee pollen for brek. In a small bowl, but I felt stuffed!
3pm: was a bit naughty as supposed to eat only veg but spotted someone eating delicious raw vietnamese uncooked spring rolls with chilli sauce so ordered them too. Ate them in restuarant on the beach. YUMMY! Stuffed. Was only 7 mouthfuls!
8pm; another raw salad but only ate 3 mouthfuls as felt no need for food at all. (Highly unlike me!!)
UPDATE: Straight after this detox/fast, I was able to cycle across from Northern Thailand to Laos for 11 days - sometimes doing 70 miles in a day! Didn't suffer at all. Was eating normally (but Thai food is healthy generally) - and drinking a beer a night. When I got back to England, I was still the same weight I was on the last day of the fast. I think this 7lbs was the weight of the GUT GUNK that is sitting in all of our intestines.
It's now about 12 weeks later, and I am STILL the same weight - (it goes up and down a little), and I haven't been neuroticly sticking to a raw food diet in the slightest. However, I have invented loads of new salad combinations and find that I get very excited by these. You can see these on my other blog Zizzie's Tahini. (eventually!)

















