Vegan Seafood :)

This is what I consider SEAFOOD!

Seaweed is so good for you, it's all the goodness from the sea minus the fats and other toxins found in fish. It can be grown easily, without any harm to the environment (in fact it absorbs carbon dioxide!) and is known for cancer prevention and treatment.

Seaweed is good for:

Detox - it binds to toxins in your body and allows their elimination, these include lead and mercury.

Blood alkalisation - its alkalinity is one of the reasons why it prevents cancer

Your brain - it contains a sugar called fucose which improves the brain's ability to create long-term memories

Your immunity - fucose also kills bacteria and strengthens the immune system

Your thyroid - due to its high content in iodine

Your digestion - alginate strengthens gut mucus and slows down digestion, so you del fuller for longer and the food energy is released more slowly. It's low in calories and has a low glycemic index.

It is not only abundant in fibre but also contains vitamin A, B12, and C (more than oranges).

It is full of minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium

It is also high in protein (up 70% protein in Spirulina)

Plus, it's anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory.

EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT! :)

I just ordered some dried seaweed Amazon. You basically just place a handful, not more, in a bowl of water and watch it expand as it soaks it up. Then sprinkle some rice vinegar, sesame oil and sesame seeds… yum!

The Abundance in Nature

One of the most beautiful things in this world is a plant: 

It grows from sunlight and 'waste' in the soil, bearing so many fruits which upon their fall will deliver a multitude of seeds to the ground. Surely, not all the seeds germinate to become plants themselves, but the possibility is always there, and usually more than one succeeds. It may then be eaten by an animal or destroyed by climatic conditions, but there is still a multiplication of life and an abundance of second chances.

A plant gives you a fruit, and a fruit gives you one or more seeds. Only humans are smart enough to harvest those and do their best to make every seed suc/seed :) 

Just as long as we respect the laws of Nature regarding soil and water quality...

Here is a very inspiring video that really pushed me to order hundreds of seeds so I can start greening my balcony, and one day my city!

Rice-less Vegan Sushi

I decided to challenge myself again after yesterday's pizza: this time we made vegan sushi, and without rice!

All ingredients, even the rolling mat, were bought from Gourmet, but you can get them from anywhere else.

Here's what you need:

Maki rolls:
Nori sheets
Sweet potato (this is the rice substitute, you can just make sushi rice instead)
Carrots
Cucumber
Bell Peppers (all 3 colors were used here)
Leaves of your choice (we used lettuce, mint, basil)
Spring Onion - optional
Radish -optional

Sesame Oil

Sauce:
Soy Sauce
Wasabi

You can also add garlic or ginger, or both, to your sauce :)

  

First of all, boil or steam the sweet potatoes to save time. Then slice up all the veggies.

Once the potatoes are ready, peel and mash them.

Place your nori sheet shiny side down, and start applying a thin layer of sweet potato. You can cover the whole sheet or just one part, depends on how much you made. Then add the veggies in a nice order, try to make them fill as much space as possible while keeping them as flat as possible...

Roll roll roll...then slice it up and you get sushi! :D

We also tried making raw spring rolls with rice paper, and decided to cut it up like maki :)

Voilà! Bon appétit :)

FLOURLESS VEGAN PIZZA!

Vegetarians kinda have it easy, sure they don't eat meat and they can't really participate at barbecues (unless they've got bell peppers).. but unlike vegans, they get to enjoy pizza anytime anywhere!

As I have written about before, baby cows get taken away from their mothers soon after birth so that she can be (ab)used for milk/cheese production and the baby gets eaten a few weeks later. Not nice..

Thankfully for Asians, TOFU solves not only the protein problem (soy has all 8 essential amino acids) but it also has a consistency very similar to cheese! :)

So with a bit of herbs and olive oil... you can make it taste like any italian cheese!

We made this "ricotta cheese" yesterday:

And with a grain-based (my secret!) crust, we made pizzaaaaaa! :D

They were so good, but we put too much cheese :P It was so much fun making, it was actually the first time I make pizza! I highly recommend trying this, I think tofu cheese is much better than cashew cheese, but I'll have to try that too, very soon!

Reacting!

When I stopped eating meat and most dairy, I decided to have my last omelette right before turning 100% vegan. I felt so sick afterwards, as if I had eaten a rock and really regretted it.

Ever since, whenever I'd eat something cooked (like lentils or peas) I'd get that same feeling of heaviness. So I decided I'm going to switch to a 99% raw diet. It's more colourful, it's crunchy, it's alive!

But today..  I thought it would be okay to have cake. Gluten-free, low-fat, made with white beans and cocoa... and I feel HORRIBLE. My body is reacting to it so badly.. I hear the food travelling in my tummy, I'm bloated, I feel nauseous...

And I found out why! Wikipedia just saved my life (I hope):

"The toxic compound phytohaemagglutinin, a lectin, is present in many common bean varieties, but is especially concentrated in red kidney beans. White kidney beans contain about a third as much toxin as the red variety; broad beans (Vicia faba) contain 5 to 10% as much as red kidney beans.

Phytohaemagglutinin can be deactivated by boiling beans for ten minutes; the ten minutes at boiling point (100 °C (212 °F)) are sufficient to degrade the toxin, but not to cook the beans. For dry beans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also recommends an initial soak of at least 5 hours in water which should then be discarded.

If the beans are cooked at a temperature below boiling (without a preliminary boil), as in a slow cooker, the toxic effect of haemagglutinin is increased: beans cooked at 80 °C (176 °F) are reported to be up to five times as toxic as raw beans. Outbreaks of poisoning have been associated with cooking kidney beans in slow cookers.

The primary symptoms of phytohaemagglutinin poisoning are nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Onset is from one to three hours after consumption of improperly prepared beans, and symptoms typically resolve within a few hours. Consumption of as few as four or five raw, soaked kidney beans can cause symptoms.^"

^"Poisoning can be induced from as few as five raw beans, and symptoms occur within three hours, beginning with nausea, then vomiting, which can be severe and sustained (profuse), followed by diarrhea. Recovery occurs within four or five hours of onset, usually without the need for any medical intervention."

"PHA is known to be an insecticide, and plants probably developed it to keep their seeds from being destroyed by pests. In humans and other susceptible mammals (those of us without compound stomachs) PHA attacks and disables the epithelial cells lining the intestine. The body reacts to the threat by emptying the entire digestive tract as rapidly and completely as possible, to rid itself of the toxic substance"

BEWARE OF UNBOILED BEANS!!!!!!

The Shiny Things

This is little bullet-point rant because I can't make coherent sentences about things (mainly injustice) that anger me so much.

- I was reading an article yesterday about this guy who's been living without money, and he so perfectly stated that "The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means we’re completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ we buy."

Full article here.

- And then this pops up on my newsfeed:

"Congo is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country and one of its richest on paper, with an embarrassment of diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper, tin, tantalum, you name it—trillions’ worth of natural resources. But because of never ending war, it is one of the poorest and most traumatized nations in the world. It doesn’t make any sense, until you understand that militia-controlled mines in eastern Congo have been feeding raw materials into the world’s biggest electronics and jewelry companies and at the same time feeding chaos. Turns out your laptop—or camera or gaming system or gold necklace—may have a smidgen of Congo’s pain somewhere in it."

Full article here.

- This is only the extraction of raw materials. Then what happens when the consumer gets bored/wants a new toy?
 It goes to countries like Ghana, India or China where they're just left to rot in a bath of toxins:

"Some of the samples contained toxic metals including lead in quantities as much as one hundred times above background levels. Other chemicals such as phthalates, some of which are known to interfere with sexual reproduction, were found in most of the samples tested. One sample also contained a high level of chlorinated dioxins, known to promote cancer."    Read more here.

- Mining is such a disgusting business. Most of it is illegal, with children being employed, health and safety measures not respected, not environmental management... etc. It's also one of the most dangerous "professions" with an annual average of 50 deaths. For a job!? That's not right. Your job should not be a death threat, your job should not be unsafe at all, on the contrary, it should be pleasant yet demanding.

- So even if you're vegan, there is most likely going to be blood on your hands. Every item we own seems to involve slavery, in one form or another. You can stop it, you just need to stop buying and start making! and I mean making using locally (preferably personally) sourced raw materials like clay, sand, maybe glass, bamboo, cotton, etc.

Here's a cool (but sad) survey that tells you what your 'slavery footprint' is:

http://slaveryfootprint.org/survey/

I can't support our industries anymore... only organic farms, and I mean it.

 I am ashamed to own so many things that were produced exploiting people and the planet so much, but I'm scared of throwing them (well there are e-waste recyclers, but I want to do art with waste) and I just never want to buy anything again unless it's made of plant cells, and only plant cells!

- On the bright side, check this out:

We need more people like him :)
 Inhabitat article here.

And here are some amazing examples of art made of waste:

Nick Gentry made this stunning portrait using disks; I saw it in person at Opera gallery in London

Susan Stockwell's World map using motherboards:

Leonardo Ulian's mandala:

And to conclude, one of Brenda Gruyton's sculptures, but there are so many great artworks out there:

So please recycle your e-waste, there's always a company that specialises in this somewhere because they DO make money out of it! There is valuable gold and platinum and copper in circuit boards, lots of copper in wires and these ca be recycled and resold! There are even environmentally safe ways of retrieving them.. using bacteria!

The Sitting Disease

It really surprises how we went from nomadic tribes, travelling all year round, to a sedentary mass, sitting on a chair, in the midst of a concrete jungle.

If it weren't for gypsies, the 100+ uncontacted tribes left and passionate travellers in this world, I would've lost hope.

Thank you TripAdvisor, and thank you Couchsurfing!!

It is estimated that 30% of American adults are inactive, meaning they walk less than 30 minutes/day. The problem doesn't end here, children are also very affected by our 'modern lifestyle'. Parents have replaced "Go outside and play" with "Go watch TV". TV?!! With the amount of sugars kids are fed, the last thing they should be doing is sit there and watch TV! Kids are meant to play, run and come back to bed exhausted! With the amount of sugar they ingest (white bread, sweets, candy, fried foods, soda, etc) they develop hyperactivity, they can't sit still - yet parents would rather have them sitting 'calmly' watching... OK enough complaining.

Here are some facts:


"Researchers found that the least active, essentially those who sit all day, had a:

147-per-cent increased risk of heart attack or stroke;

112-per-cent increase in the risk of developing diabetes;

90-per-cent greater risk of dying from a cardiac event;

49-per-cent greater risk of premature mortality."

This is not okay. It's not okay to just SIT, when you have gardens, lakes, rivers, beaches, farms, mountains, hills...

It's ironic how people became more sedentary after the invention of mechanical transportation! Well maybe it's not ironic, given that we just SIT on airplanes. Imagine a gym plane - fun! Imagine you had to pedal to keep the plane flying, that would be awesome.

The study I quoted earlier also mentioned the following:

"Activity really matters – to your heart, to your brain, to your bones and to your sexual health.

It’s important too to recognize what activity means. It’s about moving. You don’t have to run a marathon every day to derive health benefits.

Ideally, you should be moderately active – the equivalent of a brisk walk – 30 to 60 minutes a day, every day.

Very few people are meeting that minimal standard. According to Statistics Canada, only 15 per cent of adults and 7 per cent of children meet the minimum recommended physical activity guidelines every day. Those are the most active people in modern society, and they’re not that active.

Exercising like a maniac for an hour a day isn’t going to offset 23 hours of being sedentary. But breaking up your sitting with activity, even very light activity, can have a significant impact."

It seems like third world/developing countries have it better: they can't afford to be sedentary! Manual labour requires energy and so does walking to the nearest well (sure it must suck to have to walk to get potable water, but hey at least you're walking). But I guess even here in Egypt, where people are somewhat lazy, you see that strong contrast among social classes: the rich that sit in their offices or homes all day, and their housekeepers that don't sit for a second. The construction manager that spends most of his time in his air-conditioned office, and the poor workers that lay bricks and put their lives at risk at least 10 hours a day...you get the picture. 

"Manual tasks in the home have also largely disappeared. We vacuum instead of sweep; we have dishwashers instead of washing dishes by hand; we have tractors to cut the lawn. And so on.

Almost all our transport is now by car. Fewer than 10 per cent of people walk or take public transport to work. The same is true of kids – 90 per cent are transported to school; they don’t walk or bike."

I stopped taking the elevator (unless I'm carrying something heavy, or I'm really tired). I used to go up 10 floors at my previous job, and it was the best part of my day. Elevators are such a waste of energy for the Earth, and exactly the opposite for us.

I hope this inspires you, cause it's the only thing that keeps me going :) Check these out!!

How I Paid For 12 Years of Continuous Travel

How I Can Afford My Life of Constant Travel