Kitchen recipes

I came across Sabun Living while I was looking for alternatives to my fav beer shampoo (I can't find the all natural Beauty and the Bees series in Spore anymore).

They have a recipe in their kitchen recipes on how to make your own beer shampoo:

Beer shampoo

Beer contains proteins that coat the hair shaft, building up body and helping damage repair.

Ingredients

a) 60ml unscented shampoo base

b) 40ml beer (any cheapo brand)

Instructions

a) Bring beer to a boil in a saucepot.

b) Remove from heat and add in shampoo base, stirring in gently to avoid foaming.

c) Ready to use once cooled.

This looks really easy, and you can get the shampoo base from their online store. Ooooohhh, I'm really tempted, especially since Sabun is a Singapore-based store!

Embellishments on a jacket

I have an old jacket which is just too good to throw away..... have been adding embellishments to it from a scarf to update its look.....

Finished bag!

Finished just in time for Christmas! The bag is from my old black jacket, scraps from an old turtle neck and lots of buttons!

Something to do over the long wkend

This is a good and easy project you can do over the long weekend while you recover from all of the feasting. It's from the Kingdom of Style and it would be a great way to use the old T-shirts that you or your kids have :-)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all......

Edible Christmas Cards

A company called Oxygen Creative in the UK has designed cards made from potato starch paper and edible ink. The owner says they don't have flavour but they are thinking of having flavoured ones next year.... naturally flavoured, I hope!

There's more edible Christmas goodies you can make

Wish list

Do you remember the Singapore Acres Wildlife Rescue Centre? You may recall that they had some issues with their contractor over contaminated land on their premises. I hope it gets sorted out soon.

Anyway, because of the legal wrangling, they urgently need sponsorship for equipment and materials. If you're looking at giving to charity then check out the their wishlist.....

Natural dyes

On the subject of home-made stuff, what about dying your own clothes? Outsapop has given us some ideas on how to do it:

a) Shirt baked in the oven with blueberries!

b) Shirt cooked in salt!

c) Shirt dipped in coffee!

You can also dye with plant extract and a metal salts.

A useful table on how the colours will turn out using plant extracts.

Home-made treats

... for the face & body that is! Found this site "The Natural Beauty Workshop" which tells you how you can make your own soaps, bath bombs, creams, lip balms etc etc. They look delicious enough to eat. Yum! What's good is you can get most, if not all of the ingredients from the shops but I would probably have to share the ingredients with a couple of friends. I think these would make nice Christmas or birthday presents and making these goodies is a good reason to gather a couple of your good gal friends to your house :-)

What I like and would love to try:

a) Bath salts (pic at top, courtesy of NBW)

b) Lavender Lover's Kitchen Soap (pic above, courtesy of NBW)

Energy-saving Thermos pot

I have been doing thermal cooking since I was in HK. It's very useful if you are cooking soups (Cantonese style), cooking beans, making a veg/fish/meat stock, stews, congee etc etc. You don't need to watch over your cooking and you save energy. What's more, your kitchen won't be an inferno for 4 hours of the day!

Sorry, folks, my camera has died on me AGAIN! So, I can't give you a pic of mine in action. Hopefully, it will be up and running by this weekend as soon as I get it fixed. But here's a pic I got from the a thermal-cooking blog. The container keeps the heat in and it cooks by itself without additional heat. You can get it from any major department store. Mine is the Thermos brand, but there are others like Tiger. They are slightly price (>$150) but considering I have had mine since 2000, just imagine all the energy I have saved :-)

Books books books (did I say books?)

Oh, miss posting to Green Issues, I really do! I have been away doing a lot of other things, and hopefully will get on track with postings. I have got a few ideas in mind already for the next posts.

Anyway, to start, a friend was telling me about a book swap event that she had recently gone to. The organiser invited around 50 people, some through facebook and at least 15 people showed up. Idea is to bring a book and put it together in a pool and you could pick up any of the books in the pool for free. It sounds like a great idea! I have already blogged about this swappy thing dunno how many eons ago, and there are some online directories to get started, but an offline, or facebook facilitated one amongst friends sounds good. And there was food afterwards too! :)

I think this can extend to a lot of other things, and one can bring stuff besides books, like clothes, figurines, etc. that you don't need anymore. Apparently, the organiser of the said book swap decided that it was better than giving them to the thrift shop as she apparently (allegedly - this is not from the horse's mouth so take it or leave it) saw them disposing (burning? though we were skeptical) the books.

I think this idea can be had for any gettogethers that people have. The rest that are not taken are then donated. So, you having parties this season - start a swap!

There is also another idea, called Bookcrossing, which I think I have also blogged about, but haven't heard much about that recently. Hope it is gaining some popularity.

Now, why this book obsession thingy? I have been buying, because I can't find in the libraries, manga, to read. I'm getting buried with them and sob sob getting broke as well. So, besides curbing my book buying spree, I need to maximise their use. Have been lending to friends (but not everyone likes manga? ;p), and besides those, to make room, book swaps or finding secondhand buyers sounds like a good idea.

Update - Something's fishy 2

Just to update all of you. I emailed WWF asking about the Singapore version of the Sustainable Fish Guide. The nice lady from WWF (Amy Ho) emailed to say that she will send me a sneak version that was distributed at their event held on 22 Nov!!! Hopefully, it will be in my mail box by next week. Yipeee! Thanks, Amy!

Got the Sustainable Fish Guide sneak preview through the mail on Friday. Thanks, Amy! It fits nicely in my wallet ....



The fish we should avoid (over-exploited, caught or farmed in an ecologically unfriendly way) are:


a) Bluefin tuna
b) Chilean sea bass
c) High-finned grouper
d) Humphead wrasse
e) Leopard coral grouper
f) Red crab

The list will be updated and the actual guide will be released next year!

Preparing for Christmas

Doing any Christmas decorations? Have been pondering whether I should buy a Christmas tree from Ikea or the plastic ones from Metro. I think I might do without one this year, but for those of you who are planning on buying decorations, why not consider making your own :

a) with computer parts !! I like the motherboard but I think you would need a careful pair of hands and a saw.... not to mention an old motherboard

b) paper mache baubles (applehead)

c) Origami wreath using paper ( Domesticali ). This shouldn't be difficult (hopefully)

d) trees made from books!

Genesis

I have been on many visits to this really good vegetarian restaurant near Raffles Place MRT. It does great food at reasonable prices, and it is my fav. For 3 adults and a toddler, we usually pay less than $40 for 3 main dishes, 1 side and 3 drinks. It really depends on what you order cos it can be as low as $5 per person!

They do Singaporean dishes (the chicken rice, bak ku teh etc) and western dishes such as sandwiches and spaghetti. What is good is that there food is not oily and it's not full of flour (as would most vegy restaurants I have visited usually have). Also, one of the owners is a nutritionist :-)

So far I have tried:
a) almond cream drink - this is a MUST try and the kids will lurv it !
b) Japanese rice - this is brown rice with soy flakes, sesame, raisins and mango on seaweed. My son loves this too.
c) Steam dumplings with carrots and turnip stuffing
d) tuna sandwich - not actually tuna but they use mushrooms instead and a cashew spread. It's served with a salad.
e) Rice bake - also another fav of my son cos it is tomato based

If you manage to visit on one of the days their chef has been baking then you can try out their wholemeal bread and sweet breads .... yum!

#1 Lorong Telok, Singapore 049014
http://genesishealthfood.blogspot.com/
Note: they don't open on Saturdays

Yoga and sinuses

Was watching TV while TH (my son) was napping. This guy called Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey show was talking about using a neti pot to wash the nose with saline solution (nasal irrigation). According to him, it will reduce your reliance on drugs for things like sinuses and post-nasal drips.

I did a quick check on wiki and apparently nasal irrigation has been practised in India as one of the disciplines of yoga! I'm recommending it to my hubby. With the drugs that he takes for his post-nasal drip, I think he will be happy to find a natural alternative :-) Now I will have to hunt for one.....