Paypal: easy to be paid over the web

Paypal is really good if you are selling anything.  When you signup for PayPal, you can start accepting credit card payments instantly. As the world's number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way to open your doors to over 150 million member accounts worldwide. Best of all, it's completely free to sign up. To sign up or learn more, click here: https://www.paypal.com/uk/mrb/pal=GPTRGFD8DYZZ2

Salamongundi, Feasts and Big Lunches

The Big Lunch I really wanted to set this up in my street, like the Jubilee street parties of my childhood, where we played catch the egg and had slowest bicycle races. I am not really sure where my priorities lie at the moment so maybe I shouldn't start this new thing. LOADS of good ideas on this site, which inspires Big Lunches up and down the country on July 18th this year. http://www.thebiglunch.com/ideas-and-inspiration/ I also want to make a mental note to myself to research feasts and feasting from an anthropological point of view....many have done this, see below. I just want to put some time aside to go back to more academic studies of the world and food and how we relate to it. RADIO BBC radio 4's Food Programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnx3 (episode on Feasts:Last broadcast on Mon, 12 Oct 2009, 16:00 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts). Synopsis: Feasts have been a feature of human life since humans first mastered fire and climbed out of the trees, but what function do feasts have in today's largely urban society? Sheila Dillon visits the Thames Festival Feast, a modern urban harvest festival, bringing food back into the heart of the city and recreating a sense of community. Grape treading, sacred mayonnaise making and mobile food gardens make a vivid modern feast. Central to it a table spanning Southwark Bridge, its tablecloth printed with collections of Londoners' food stories. The traditional feast has been disappearing from rural areas, but the Welcombe community in Devon some years ago introduced a Christmas Salamongundi to bring the community together to celebrate. Poet and author John Moat explains how it came about. Sir Roy Strong, author of Feast outlines the social, political and religious subtext of historical feasting and, with Rev Richard Coles, comments on the dining TV reality show, Come Dine With Me. BOOKS Feast: A History of Grand Eating by Roy Strong, published by Jonathan Cape Ltd; ISBN-10: 0224061380,ISBN-13: 978-0224061384 Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, published by Profile Books,ISBN-10: 1846682851, ISBN-13: 978-1846682858 Food: The History of Taste, edited by Paul Freedman

Where can you educate and stimulate yourself easily and for free?

Open University videos on iTunes U

I've been working for the Open University for a long time now, re-organising their audio-visual archives so that they can be accessed free online through ITunes software, on ITunesU. It's a fantastic resource that hardly anyone seems to know about. Universities all over the world are uploading their visual content in the hope that potential students will be impressed and want to study a given course at that institution. Open University's material is the best of course. There are skillfully put together documentaries on all sorts of subjects (called albums), divided into short chunks or "tracks" . Open iTunesU on your computer and go to the Store. Click on the tab iTunesU and surf from there. Here's an example.

http://itunes.open.ac.uk/r/1vTBeR

The universities have the content, the videos and web provide the platform, and hey presto, a very useful service.

And here we have a San Francisco based company doing something similar - except, these are only filmed lectures, rather than professionally edited documentaries. Also, they're streamed, so you have to sit through their annoying initial student blurbs about when they've got to hand in their essays etc. Here's their blurb:

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education?  At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning. We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable. We invite those who share our passion to explore our website, participate in our online community, and help us continue to find new ways to make learning easier for everyone. http://www.academicearth.org/about and here's an example of a lecture: http://www.academicearth.org/lectures/sustainable-systems-in-sustainable-living (Gosh American uni students are pretty rowdy and excitable don't you think!)

Foodie Lurve Schools - reviews

Another idea I had recently was to combine two of my "interests" - Food - and Flirting. I should start a local food lovers' group for singles... anyway in the meantime, I discovered some already existing... so I'm going to set about going to them and over time, should have some reviews... GOURMAND LOVE SCHOOLSWhisky blending for singles. Glengoyne distillery, near Glasgow. Tel: 01360 550 254. • Flirting With Flavour cooking course. Caffè Caldesi, London W1. Tel: 020 7487 0750/9. www.caffecaldesi.comWine-tasting dating. National events, dates and prices vary. www.grapevinesocial.com Tried this once - quite a good revolving system but unfortunately it was a little bit lowest common denominator for us, even if it was in posh Fulham.. Parship dating classes. Leiths School of Food and Wine, London. www.parship.co.uk Leith's is no doubt brilliant but DO NOT TRUST PARSHIP, the Independent's dating site. Terrible - in fact the reviews are so bad we wouldn't be going too far when we say it's a scam. So not sure how the two would combine. I will check out. FEEL FREE TO ADD TO THESE BY COMMENTING BELOW - THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE IN LONDON OR INDEED THE UK!

Green Food

Green Smoothies For Beginners

Basic Balance

1 mango 1 cup kale 1 cup water Yields 1 quart

Rocket Fuel Smoothie

2 cups green or red seedless grapes 3 golden kiwis, peeled 1 ripe orange, peeled, seeds removed 1 small leaf of aloe vera, with skin 5 leaves red leaf lettuce 2 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Party in Your Mouth Green Smoothie

1 small pineapple, cored 1 large mango, peeled ½ head romaine lettuce ½ inch fresh ginger root Yields 2 quarts

Morning Zing Smoothie

4:½ bunch dandelion greens 2 stalks celery ½ inch fresh gingerroot 2 peaches ½ pineapple Yields 2 quarts

Parsley Passion Smoothie

1 bunch fresh parsley 1 cucumber, peeled 1 Fuji apple 1 ripe banana 1–2 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Savory Green Smoothies and Soups

Mediterranean Soup

3 cups spinach 3 stalks celery 1 sprig oregano 1 sprig thyme 1 red bell pepper 1 large avocado 1 cucumber 1 jalapeño pepper 1 lime, juiced 2 cups water Enjoy with dulse leaves or flakes. Yields 3 quarts

Soup Gazpacho

3 leaves kale, stems removed 1 bunch basil 3 large tomatoes 2 stalks celery 1 red bell pepper 1 large avocado 1 lime, juiced 1 cup water 2 cups love Yields 2 quarts

Thai Soup

2 cucumbers 1 large avocado 1 lime, juiced 3 cloves garlic 6 leaves curly kale, stems removed ½ teaspoon dried turmeric powder ½ inch fresh gingerroot 2 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Cucumber Dill-icious Soup

2 cucumbers ½ bunch dill 1 large avocado 5 leaves dinosaur kale, stems removed 2 stalks celery 1 lime, juiced 3 cloves garlic Yields 2 quarts

Green Puddings

Kent Mango Bliss

2 Kent mangoes 1 bunch chard, stems removed 1 pear 1 banana Serve with kiwi. Yields 3 cups

Green Pudding

1 bunch fresh parsley 5 grape leaves ½ pineapple 1 Abbot pear 1 orange, peeled 1 cup water Yields 2 cups

Persimmon Pudding

3 fuyu persimmons, peeled, seeds removed 3 cups baby spinach 1 ripe banana Yields 2 cups

The Pear-fect Smoothie

2 d’Anjou pears 7 leaves purple kale, stems removed 1 leaf aloe vera 1 banana Yields 2 cups

Applesauce

4 apples 1 banana 1 head romaine lettuce ½ teaspoon cinnamon 2 cups water Yields 3 cups

Green Smoothies for Body Care

Aloe Facial Cleanser

½ cucumber ½ avocado 1 large leaf aloe vera, with skin Apply on skin as a sunscreen, or after sunburn, or to improve overall skin health. Keep on skin 10–30 minutes, then rinse off. Yields 1 cup

Super Green Smoothies

Victoria’s Favorite Dark Green

1 bunch dandelion greens 4 Roma tomatoes 3 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Heavy Metals Be Gone

1 bunch cilantro 2 cups stinging nettles 1 bunch fresh parsley 3 stalks celery 1 lemon, juiced 2 mangoes 2 cups apple juice Yields 2 quarts

Green Smoothie Monster

4 leaves kale, stems removed 4 leaves chard, stems removed ½ bunch fresh parsley 1 leaf aloe vera ½ bunch dandelion greens 3 pears 1 banana 3 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Dark Green Love

1 bunch dandelion greens 1 medium cucumber 3 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Green Smoothies for Adventurous Souls

O-mega Aphrodisiac

3 cups wild purslane 1 small watermelon 3 limes, juiced Yields 2 quarts

Revitalizing Energizer Smoothie

6 young grape leaves (they contain resveratrol, which triggers longevity genes) 3 leaves dinosaur kale, stems removed 2 mangoes 1 pint strawberries 2 cups orange juice Yields 1 quart

Summer Splendor Smoothie

4 leaves chard, stems removed 3 stalks celery 1 head fresh parsley 6 apricots 3 peaches ½ vanilla bean Yields 2 quarts

“Bitter Delight” Cocktail

1 large leaf aloe vera, with skin 4 leaves chard, stems removed 3 cups chickweed 1 banana 1 peach 1 pear Yields 1 quart

Green Smoothies for Children

Miner’s Lettuce Smoothie

3 cups wild crafted miner’s lettuce (wild edible) 2 ripe pears ½ pint blueberries 2 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Coco-Tango

Thai coconut, meat and water 5 leaves kale, stems removed 2 nectarines 2 peaches 1 mango Yields 2 quarts

The Laughing Gorilla

½ head romaine lettuce 2 ripe bananas, peeled and frozen 2 oranges, peeled, seeds removed 1 mango 2 cups water Yields 2 quarts

Emerald Applesauce

4:5 apples 1 bunch fresh parsley ½ inch fresh ginger root Yields 3 cups

Green Smoothies for Pets

Poochie’s Gourmet Green Smoothie

1 cup kale 1 banana 1 cup water 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon kelp (granules or powder) Add some torn nori sheets; dogs love it!

Fluffy’s Delight

1 cup wheatgrass clippings (or any other grass, not sprayed) 1 cup water 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 capsules fish oil (pour on the smoothie, in the bowl) Pinch of catnip (optional) Yields 7 servings: You may freeze it in an ice-cube tray and serve it by the cube. Recipes courtesy of the Boutenko family

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! [caption id="attachment_664" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="Snake-head fish"]
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[/caption] 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/

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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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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.
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