Tonight I really feel the need to rewind & de-stress.

Here is a great way to prepare a very de-stressing bath using oats & honey.

Put some oats into a muslin, clean sock, or any type of cloth bag & tie this to the hot tap, so the hot water runs through the bag as the bath fills. Oats are fantastic for the nervous system & great for combating stress.

Then put some milk,  maybe about 1/2 cup, into a saucepan & warm on the stove ( don’t allow to boil). When the milk is warm pour in some honey, about half the amount of the milk that you used.

When this is warm pour it into your bath & enjoy a relaxing soak. You can scrub your skin with the cloth bag of oats too, this is really good if you have dry conditions such as exczema.

If you have any achy muscles add some rosemary too. Either add a few drops of essential oil into your milk & honey, or you can put fresh or dried rosemary into your oat bag. The milk helps to disperse essential oils throughout the bath. I would use 4-6 drops in a bath.

I’m off to run my bath, warm my milk, light some candles, turn off my computer & switch off my phone & have a long relaxing soak with a nice cup of camomile tea.

Good night

Sweet dreams

Tx

Comments on this bath, the day after:-

Well it definately was relaxing & de-stessing. It is a little mucky though, but I decided not to have a shower after so I could see how good the skin felt from the benefit from the honey & milk & oat soak. ( yeah I didn’t use soap either ) Well the whole point of this bath was for deep relaxation, I was already clean!

The best thing about this bath was squeezing the oat bag, extracting the  glupy hot, white, starchy juice and rubbing that on my skin. It was like a warm wax or dead sea mud treatment & it felt great. I lay on a towel on the bed to air-dry my skin & for the rest of the night my skin was literally glowing. I have had milk in the bath before & used oats in the bath but, this must have been more oaty & hotter as the gloop was great. I think next time though, I will put an oat bag & warm milk & honey in the sink to do a hot wax on my face or feet then have a soak in a slightly cleaner bath after. Boy, did I sleep well though. Very relaxed.

I read an interview last night with Dr. Batmanghelidj on naturalnews.com .  Dr. Batmanghelidj was a student of Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin.

I found this conversation between Dr. Batmanghelidj & Mike Adams very interesting.

We all know that water is the most important thing that we need to put into our bodies each day, but some of the things mentioned in this conversation really made me stop & think. Most people probably recognise some of the more obvious signs of dehydration e.g. yellow urine or maybe a headache & then drink a couple  of glasses of water, but with asthma or severe stomach cramps is water the first thing we try to relieve our symptoms?

Does the body manifest dehydration in the form of pain?

Dr, Batmanghelidj mentioned a situation that made him look deeply into the answer to this question. He said that he gave 2 glasses of water to a patient who was doubled up with abdominal pain, as he had no other medication to give at the time. Within 3 minutes the pain had diminished & within 8 minutes the pain had totaly gone. He then tested this on 3,000 patients with similar conditions and the water worked as a pain reliever every time. He notes that the pharmaceutial industry  would give  antihistamines for this type of condition and histamine is a regulator of water, but water is free & drugs are big business. He had created an organization called National Association for Honesty in Medicine & his website is http://www.watercure.com

 To read the full conversation on the water cure go to http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_water_cure_0.html

Simply add some salt to warm water, let the salt dissolve & when the water is cool, dip your toothbrush in and brush your teeth as normal. A good, simple yet effective way to give your teeth a brighten up.

Minor kitchen burns:-

Even if you do not like the taste of it one ingredient I think you should always have in a kitchen is HONEY. After working for years in commercial kitchens, I swear by the use of honey when a minor burn occurs. The amount of burns suffered in commecial kitchens is huge. The first time I was offered a jar of honey after a burn I thought they were joking, but I tried it and have used it every time since. Applying a thin layer of honey to the skin & leaving it on for a while first takes out the heat of the burn, but it also helps to prevent blistering. You can have a special burn treatment jar of honey by adding a few drops of teatree oil to the jar to make it even more effective. I have also heard of this being used for healing a dog bite inflicted on a lady who said the healing of the bite was clean & rapid by using honey & teatree to treat it with.

Potato poultice:-

Well, if you don’t like or don’t have any honey, try this remedy. Peel a potato & grate it. Grab a handful of the grated spud, give it a gentle squeeze and place it upon the effected area. This poultice again draws out the heat from the burn, but as always with minor burn treatments, including the one above, running the effected area under cold water is the first thing to do. You can wrap some cloth over the potato poultice and gently tie it around where your skin is burnt to be able to leave it on for a longer period.

Sunburn:-

I think that using Aloe Vera for sunburn is very well known & there are lots of products available for sunburn which include this great plant as it’s main ingredient. If you do get sunburnt & you do not have any Aloe products to hand or an Aloe plant close by to pick your own skin soother than this one is much easier to find.

 A good, old fashioned, simple teabag.

A used teabag, cooled and dabbed onto the skin, helps to take the heat out of the burn & prevent blistering. This, I think, is due to the tannins in the tea but it does work & you should never be too far away from a nice cup of tea.

I tried making this for the first time tonight. It’s quick, tasty & nutritious plus has the added theraputic benefit of a forrage in the woods to pick the nettles.

Ingredients:-

About 6 oz stigging nettles

2 big cloves of garlic

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 cup pine nuts

approx 100ml olive oil

salt & freshly ground black pepper

Method:-

Rinse the nettles, then blanch in boiling water for about 1 minute.

Strain the nettles, decant ont a chopping board & roughly chop.

Put the nettles, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil & seasoning into a bowl & blitz with a hand blender or put all the ingredients into a food processor & blitz away.

Simple, tasty dressing for pasta, fish or salad & ready in 2 minutes.

Well, the festival season is nearly upon us & decent weather here at last.  There was a lot of talk  & enthusiasm amongst my fellow campers last year about making Elderflower Champagne.  Of course I tried to make some & yes it was worth it. Bucket loads of Elderflower champagne for just a few pence a bottle.

To make approx 2 dozen bottles, all you need is the following:-

About 30 Elderflower heads, picked in the prim of their blooming ( End of May- beginning of June is usually a good time ) by July most are starting to die off.

2kg Sugar

6 litres water

4 lemons

2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar

Bucket & a muslin cloth or an old, clean t.towel or t.shirt. I used an old dress and parcel tape to secure it to the bucket.

Then Simply:

Heat  4 litres of water & put into your ( spotlessly clean ) bucket along with the sugar. Let the sugar dissolve, then add annother 2 litres of cold water.

Zest & juice the lemons & add to the bucket, add the vinegar & pre rinsed Elderflower heads.

cover with muslin & leave in a cool, airy position for 2-3 days.

Check the brew for signs of fermentation, i.e is it getting foamy? Elderflowers should naturally ferment the brew,but if there are no signs of fermentation add a pinch of yeast at this stage.

Leave the bucket alone for 4 more days, then strain through your muslin & bottle up. Do make sure you sterilise the bottles first! Seal & leave to ferment for 8 more days & serve chilled.

These do not have a long shelf life, but if you drink it within the first few weeks you should enjoy some refreshing, tasty & cheep home brew champagne.

There is an increadible book that I first read a couple of years ago. The book is NOT ON THE LABEL by FELICITY LAWRENCE. Reading this book WILL make you think twice about what you buy to consume & may put you off eating some things completely, for life.

I re-read the chapter on chicken this week & want to share some of the information given in this book. Felicity exposes some of the grossly unethical conduct of the meat industry, by doing undercover investigations & even taking low paid shifts in meat production factories to gain the inside knowledge of what actually happens to the meat that we eat. So often blissfully unaware , we often are, of what has happened to our meat before it goes anywhere near a packing factory or supermarket shelf. Felicity is /was a reporter for The Guardian Newspaper & writes very factually about her investigations.

In the early stages of poultry processing, the birds are put into a scold bath. 180 dead birds a minute are dipped into this to make the plucking process easier. The water in the scald bath is changed, just once a day so try to imagine if you wish, the amount of excrement & feathers that float around in the bath for hours. The temperature of the bath is 52 degrees, which is an ideal temperature for salmonella & campylobacter contamination.

During the next stage our  chickens are ridded of what feathers are left by a rubber fingered plucking machiene. Lots of faeces gets squashed out of the carcasses during this process. If just one of these birds is colonised with campylobacter the rest will be contaminated also. Organic & free range birds go through the same process, same machienes, same day, no less at risk of contamination than mass the produced, cheap, factory chicks.

Felicity went undercover, on shift, at a family run, Devon factory whilst doing a report for The Guardian. This factory supplied to Sainsburys & also produced West Country &  Organic Poultry for supermarket sales. Their website quotes ” total control & traceability “. Word had gotten out that chicken breasts from Dutch crates had been seen there, re packed, labeled with new use by dates & sent out for a Sainsburys special offer. A Brittish red tractor logo stuck onto them to identify the meat for un suspecting shopper to buy. Under UK food labeling law it is NOT ILLEGAL to label foreign meat with a Brittish red tractor logo as long as the meat is from the EU.

Annother company, Denby Poultry was annonymosly tipped off to Derbyshires Chief Envorionmental Officer. The caller reported that Denby Poultry was taking condemned chicken, diseased & contaminated birds ( which should have been sent for rendering or for pet food production ) . Denby Poultry was trimming it, washing it with bleach and selling it back to the human food chain. Denby poultry products was a pet food processing plant. It sold, cleaned up, waste meats to annother company who applied illigitamate health marks before selling it again to other companies. The owner of Denby poultry was found guilty in his absence at Nottingham Crown Court ( suspected of having fled the country ).

The tumbling industry is even more scary. Tumbling is the process where the ” bulking up ” of a chicken takes place. Most of this takes place in The Netherlands as chickens arrive their from Thailand & Brazil via Dutch ports.The chickens are often salted, as the tarrif on salted meats is significantly lower than that of unsalted. Tumbling helps to dilute the salt. During the tumbling process chickens are defrosted, then injected with additives & water & tumbled in huge, concrete mixer type machienes. Then they are re frozed and shipped for further processing. Tests conducted by Hull City Council & The FSA have found chicken breasts that have contained pork & beef waste & hydrolyzed proteins. Hydrolyzed proteins are skin, hyde, bone even ligaments and feathers, where the proteins are extracted through exposure to high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis. Yep! then it’s injected into a chicken. Yum! By the way, adding proteins from other animals is NOT ILLEGAL either. Some of the concerns & implications of this are, with alduterated beef waste in our chickens, could that spread BSE ?   With antibotics being injected into our chickens, is that lowering our human tollerance to antibotics ?  And with pork being added to chickens that have even been labeled ” halal ” is that not an outragous abuse & insult to Hindus & Muslims?

We have the right to know what is in our food. The governments do not protect us on this issue and despot supermarkets have outragous levels of control.

 The chapters in this book are: 1) chicken, 2) salad, 3) beans, 4) bread, 5) apples and bananas, 6) coffee & prawns 7) the ready meal. All the chapters listed have raised my eyebrow several times at what the food industry gets away with.

An essential read.

O.K,  So some people, infact lots of people give the likes of Christmas presents to their pets.   Sharing the Easter chocolate binge with your furry friend is not such a good idea.

This link was todays yahoo news article on a dog who got pretty sick on an Easter egg binge http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090409/tuk-easter-warning-after-dog-scoffs-12-e-45dbed5.html

Human chocolate contains Theobromine which is a bitter alkaloid from the cocao plant.

Theobromine is used medicinally as a diuretic, heart stimulant ( more effective on the human body for this than caffine ) &  as a blood vessel widener.

Theobromine levels in chocolate are low enough that humans can safely consume it. That’s assuming non rediculous amounts are eaten. Anything comsumed to ludicrous levels can be a bit dodgy. I recall a case not so long ago where a woman died from eating too many carrots. If you eat a few sackloads a day of the same thing, no matter how healthy it would be it normal dosages, it may cause some bad reactions in the body. Dogs metabolize therobromine slower than humans & can get theobromine poisioning.  This can cause excitability, digestive issues, dehydration, seizures, it can cause the heart to slow down & in the worst case of theobromine poisoning can cause death.

 Death by chocolate  …..   not for my dog!

Ever faniced a BLT for lunch but didn’t have a lettuce?

What to do then /  Go and buy a lettuce or some limp, tasteless, clinically bagged salad.?  And how much is a little gem or lollo rosso down the shops these days? Anything from 60p - £120 at a guess.

Why not… ( at this time of year ), step into the garden and pick a few, young dandelion leaves. They are free, they have a taste, you just pick what you need, saving on unnessesary waste. At the same time weeding your garden.

Dandelions whip the pants of most supermarket bought lettuces nutritionally too!

You might as well pick a dandelion flower too, put it on the side of your plate for a garnish & feel pampered & extravagent by swerving commercialism and enjoying the riches of your garden.

A few weeks ago I was cycling from Vietnam to Cambodia.

One of the things I really, really wanted to fit into this trip was swallowing a beating snakes heart.

Unfortunately I did not get the chance as I started cycling from Saigon & was told that I would need to head north to Hanoi or other northerly regions of the country to have the full snake eating experience. There was one hotel in Saigon that I was told  of that had snake on the menu, but not prepared in the way that I was looking forward too. I have been to Hanoi before, briefly, and on a previous cycle from Danang to Saigon I did buy, consume & bring home some snake wine. It does not exactly taste pleasant but is said to be exceptionally benificial to people who have problems with their backs & I do fall into that catagory so drunk it dispite the petty awful taste. The bottles of wine contain several dead cobras & the more you drink, the more the snakes are exposed to air & the worse it gets. I ended up having the last few drinks of the bottle added to blackcurrant & raspberry teas to enhance / discuise the flavour.

Earlier this year there was a television programme called ” could you eat an elephant? ”

In this show two of the UK’s top chefs showed us & tried to stomach some of the worlds most taboo foods.

The chefs were Fergus Henderson & Jeremy Lee who both believe & promote ” nose to tail eating “.

In Fergus Hendersons restaurant  ( St, John ) you are likely to see dishes with pigs trotters, or marrowbone on the menu as the main ingredient of a dish. TV chefs such as Jamie Oliver are really promoting offal & the cheaper ( & sometimes most versitile & tasty ) cuts of meat. I wholeheartedly agree with this & feel that if an animal is killed to eat we should use as much of that animal as we possibly can in the dishes made from them.

On ” Could you eat an elephant? ” Fergus & Jeremy travel to Tuscany to eat dishes made from birds that are native & commonly seen in Italian gardens. This is fairly hard core as they are served whole & the brains sucked out by the participating diners. I actually found this personally the least likely thing on the show that I would be able to consume within my own comfort zone. Also in Italy they sampled Marcetto, a maggot infested cheese. Sounds awful but the maggots themselves are almost 100% cheese themselves once the cheese has matured, so that I possibly would try. Their travels gave them the chance to experience locals eating rats, monkeys, horse, elephant, dog & a paste made from jewel beetles. They declined both the ras & the monkey as the rats were from sewers & the monkeys just too human like. In Hanoi though, they did partake in and really enjoy the experience of eating snake. Below is a clip from youtube on that section of the show, but the clip does not include the first part that was televised & that is when the live snake is cut lengthwise and the beating heart put into a glass along with the blood and drunk, and the next part of the snake eating ceremony being a glass of the snake bile, which according to those who have tried it is surprisingly palletable. The rest of the snake is then prepared into 13 different dishes in 7 minutes. I must do this if lucky enough to return to Hanoi. Here is the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FVG3awKq8

 This clip shows tourists consuming a beating snake heart which is sometimes added just to rice wine or in this clip vodka, or just in a glass of the blood or both. Bottles of the snake wine with the dead cobras in the bottles are also in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3W62bQj9A&NR=1

If you want to buy some snake wine & are not travelling to Asia, you can purchase bottles from www.asiansnakewine.com