In addition to the Peppermint Poppy soap, I also made another batch of hot process soap. It’s made with fresh goat milk and scented with a sweet floral scent of Bali jasmine blossoms.
This batch was much easier to work because there are no sea salt or other extra ingredients. It’s also a much smoother bar too.
Sometimes exfoliating soaps are nice, but some days you just want a smooth bar of soap. But each type of soap has their own benefits. And most of all, handmade soaps leave your skin well moisturized and clean.
Once the soap was done cooking, I poured them into my empty (clean) goat milk carton. After letting it cool down for 24 hours, I sliced them into medium sized bars.
The bars are pretty and a good size too. With fragrance, there are variations and difficult to describe. So I went with a lighter jasmine scent that is not overpowering. But it’s a nice sweet scent that reminds me of someplace tropical and breezy.
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When I think of Luang Prabang (in Laos), I usually think of clean and quaint streets. Along with sacred Buddhist temples and other beautiful scenery.
But then I came across this article. The author was talking about how plastic bags are becoming a polluting sight seen along roadsides to landing between crops.
There are also sight of rubbish mounds (mostly of plastic bags) being burn across many villages. Which only adds to more air pollution. It really saddens me to hear this.
A unique way to take cabbages from the market. Plastic or Rattan? Photo from EatingAsia.
An excerpt from EatingAsia:
Each item, purchased from a different vendor, will be placed into its own clear plastic bag –, and each of those bags slipped into another, larger one. Customers leave the market with their fingers dripping yellow, pink, black, red plastic bags.
Most of those bags will never see a second use. If you live or have traveled here you’ve probably seen where they can end up: alongside roads, strewn over hillsides, on beaches, blanketing land resting between crops.”
What ever happened to traditional market baskets? The nicely weaved ones that can carry loads of vegetables. Even heavy duty and reusable nylon bags and cotton bags would be a better choice.
To my surprise, not all hope is lost. As market vendors came up with this neat idea. Instead of “Paper or Plastic? In Luang Prabang, it’s plastic or rattan strips?”
Other vegetables that can be strung and carry this way are bamboo shoots, lettuce, and even small bunches of herbs such as peppermint. I think it’s a great idea!
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I was doing some cleaning recently and found that I have way too many magazines. I really need to simplify my life with less (papers).
Most of the magazines I save is because of some great article or photos. And I hardly ever get back to them again.
So this weekend I am going to do something about it. And I am going to start by using ScanDrop.
With ScanDrop, the scanned documents are uploaded as PDFs to Google DOCS, Evernote, or ScanDrop itself for free.
The bad part about this type of scanning is that you can’t search for contents there. But if you have the paid Evernote or ScanDrop account then it’s possible. What they do is convert the PDFs to text.
The neat part is that you can also share the scanned documents and paper with your friends or co-workers.
This is still a great idea and makes my life much more simpler. Hopefully this will release me from my huge stack of magazines as well as other documents.
Here is more info from ScanDrop:
“ScanDrop (beta) is simple - one simple, free scanning software application that helps you scan and upload your paper directly into Google Docs. Press Scan, then Upload and your paper is now available in your own Google Docs account! You can even select the folder you’d like your document to upload into.
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Here is my latest handmade soap: Peppermint Poppy. Because I wanted to use it within a couple of days, I went with hot process soap making. With traditional cold process, the cure time would have been at least three weeks or longer.
When I was pouring hemp milk into my cereal, I immediately thought about making hemp milk soap. Hemp oil seem to be more common for soap making then with hemp milk. To make sure I didn’t mess up, I also added equal amounts of goat milk.
The hemp milk I got was from a natural health food store. Hemp milk taste a little like soy milk, but creamier and nuttier. It is naturally rich in omega 3, 6 and 9. It also contains minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, high in vitamins A and E.
Besides the hemp milk, I also added other stuff to this batch. There is fine Brazilian sea salt, peppermint essential oil, and poppy seeds. It’s going to be one difficult to name soap. So I just decided on “Peppermint Poppy Soap”.
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La Indita Michoacana is one of my favorite ice cream because it’s made with one of my favorite tropical fruit - mamey.
These are not the usual mamey (or sapota) I’m used to eating. The mamey used in this ice cream is from the large variety grown in the Caribbean and Mexico.
The packaging looks great, the fruits looks delicious and the little Mexican girl trademark is nice too.
My only shocker was the color of the ice cream was much more brighter then the one pictured in the carton. It’s more like freaky fluorescent in color. And almost the same color as the fabric on my table.
I’m not saying the artificial color is all bad and can eat stuff like this once in a while. But for something I eat often, I prefer a more natural color.
Just because of the surprising bright orange color, I won’t be buying any more mamey flavor ice cream from them. Instead I’ll buy frozen mamey and make my own ice cream shake.
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From nature’s world of cactus, we have sisal. It is part of the cactus family of agave (Agave sisalana).
It’s not only used to make sisal rugs, but also other products such as hats, bags, cat scratch post, and much more.
The leaves have very pointy looking tips. They also produce flowers too. Photo from Wikipedia.
The plants are grown in large plantations in such places as Brazil. Sisal prefer tropical warm climate and is drought tolerate. They are propagated from bulbils or rhizomes from mature plants. They take about 3 to 5 years to mature and can produced leaves for up to 8 years. And like hemp, chemical fertilizer is not used in growing sisal. So that is a plus for sisal farmers.
The top 3 sisal producing countries are Brazil, Tanzania, and China. Other countries that produce and export sisal include South Africa and Kenya.
In sisal production, the leaves are dried, then brushed with a machine, and finally pressed into bales to be exported. Pretty simple but I’m sure is hard work!
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I just found out a few cool new ways to send postcards from your computer or iPhone, iPod, or Blackberry. No more worries about finding a postcard at the tourist shop, searching for stamps or mailbox either.
For iPhone and iPod user, there is an app which lets you take a photo and send it as a postcard with a personalized message. But only for U.S. address. Check out goPostal.com
“Simply choose a photo, add your message, and select a mailing address. goPostal will automatically print and mail your postcard to your friends and family.
Each postcard costs $1.29 when using the iPhone application, which includes postage. goPostal also uses state of the art SSL security to verify that all of your information is securely transmitted.” - goPostal.com
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Since blueberries are in season, I am only buying the fresh ones. They are so good, I don’t even bother eating them with anything else.
These blueberries are from British Columbia blueberries. I found them at our local supermarket. Very plump and tasty.
According to the BC Blueberry Council, British Columbia has close to 17,000 acres of rich fertile farmland ideal for growing blueberries. This makes British Columbia the largest producer of high bush blueberries in Canada and the second top producing region in the world.
Blueberries have gotten lots of attention since being named as one of “superfruits”. Blueberries can help slow down the aging process and reduce cell damage. They are also beneficial to your heart health and brain function.
Here is a list of studies on the benefits of blueberries:
According to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry - wild blueberries are higher in antioxidants than it’s cultivated cousin.
1998 Rutgers University study found blueberries (like cranberries) help treat urinary tract infections.
I’m starting to think any fruit with the deep dark skin or color are all very for your health. Especially purple Acai, purple plums and purple grapes.
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A long while back, I was thinking of getting a new car. And I almost got myself a little VW Golf TDI (diesel). It was a fuel efficient car getting about 40 mpg highway. The key point being TDI: Turbocharged Direct Injection.
But that was a long time ago and California car dealers could not sell the TDI. It was due to the state’s diesel compliant law. Luckily that is not the case anymore for Californians.
Here is the new VW Golf TDI. TDI vehicles is marketed by VW as “high-performance, fuel-efficient, and environmentally conscious”. Unfortunately the hybrid version is still only a concept car.
Photo from The Car Connection. The car was reviewed last year for the 2010 market starting at $23K.
I would love to own a hybrid electric vehicle. But even if I did need a new car, the price range of some of these hybrids are still too much for me.
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“There came a Day at Summer’s full/ Entirely for me.” - Emily Dickenson
It’s August and I am taking in all the beauty of this season. The sun is always shining and flowers are in full bloom.
And one of the most unforgettable flower I saw in bloom are water lotus. It was just a few weeks ago when I took my mother to the local Buddhist temple and got to witness this for the first time.
So on my next visit to the temple I had my camera ready to capture some of the blooms. But sadly it looked like all the flowers were gone. But what remained was something just as interesting. There were pods after pods of water lotus seeds.
Here is a photo of the youngest pod. During the life cycle of the water lotus, the flower blooms, the petals die out and then the fruit pod grows. Eventually the dried pods drops off and float on the surface of the water flat side down. This way the seeds can sink to the bottom of the pond and a new cycle begins.
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