Go Green on Paddy’s Day

St Patrick’s day came and went in my world without much recognition until my daughter Tammy came back to South Africa to join Healthmakers, after a 10 year stint in Ireland. So this year we will see how St Patrick’s day can be celebrated in a small and healthful way on this great big island of Africa.
The original reason for celebrating Paddy’s day is to commemorate the feast day of St Patrick who was a Christian missionary and who was later made the patron saint of Ireland. Today however it has become a colourful and lively joyous celebration marked by musical performers, floats in all the countries where the Irish have made their mark including, the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, New Zealand, and South Africa.

 

If you would like  your friends to be Green with envy this St Patricks day then get going on growing some micro-greens.  With the versatile Easygreen you can grow anything from smallest alfalfa sprouts to large sprouts and micro-greens. You won’t need the luck of the Irish when you have an EasyGreen micro-farm. I placed some mung beans and clover seed into the Easygreen sprouter just 18 hours ago and already they are celebrating St Patrick’s day!

The clover is used as the Celtic tradition of honoring “3′s” has been around in Ireland for millennia.

Here are some things in life that come in three’s

3 leaf clovers

faith, hope and charity

past present and future

land sea and sky

the religious trinity and then there are So many things that are represented by 3′s like

3 cheers

3 blind mice

3 is a crowd

3 R’s

3 muskateers

There are just so many of these 3′s  See how many more you can think of.

Getting back to the Easygreen Micro-farm, remember that at the end of the rainbow of your Easygreen mist sprayer you will find your pot of green gold.  Your family will be going through the sprouts and greens so fast that you might think that the tokoloshe are helping you to eat them but today, to be sure to be sure you can blame the leprechaun. On St Patrick’s day, if you are sprouting clover be sure to look fo a four-leafed clover and perhaps this year to celebrate Paddy’s Day swop your Guinness for a Green Smoothie.

Happy St Patricks Day!

Choose BPA-Free Drinking Bottles

Take note of the dangers of BPA

What is BPA?

It is a chemical known as Bisphenol A (BPA)

Because I do not drink carbonated drinks, and I’m not that fond of bottled and canned fruit juices, because they are high in sugar and have been cooked and pasteurised, I always carry water with me. As I am reasonably fussy about the water I drink, preferring not to drink tap water, I carry purified water with me from home.
Some years back we became conscious of the fact that storing water, in any old plastic container, did not appear to be a healthy practice as chemical substances could leach from plastic into the water. We really went out of our way to find ‘safe’  containers which, at that time we were informed should be made of polycarbonate. One only has to look at the collection bottles, and processing jugs that were used by most manufacturing companies, to confirm that this was the right route to take. It came as quite a shock to find out that the polycarbonate bottles that we had been carrying our water around in, all contained Bisphenol A, which, is an endocrine disruptor that can actually mimic the body’s own hormones, interfering with oestrogen and other reproductive hormones.

Listen to what Mike Shelby, PhD. of The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (US Govt) has to say about Bisphenol A

 

So, not only was the Bisphenyl A leeching from the polycarbonate water bottles that I had chosen to save my water in, but also from carbonated drink tin cans, making the high sugar, caffeine laden, acidic, carbonated drinks much more dangerous to human health than I had imagined.

I proceeded to research Bisphenol further and was surprised to find out that babies bottles and drinking cups were commonly made of this type of plastic.
See http://www.plasteurope.com/news/PLASTICS_AND_HEALTH_t218796

Next, I was lead to how you can identify the type of plastic that a plastic bottle is made from by the number in the Recycle Symbol, that is usually moulded into the bottle.  Initially it appeared quite simple to be able to judge the safety of the plastic bottle by the numbers but I soon realised that the interpretation of these numbers was more complicated.  Polycarbonate that leeches BPA would be marked number seven, and that seemed clear enough, until I found out that the replacement for polycarbonate, that was BPA-free, and known as co-polyester is also labelled with recycle number seven. However, you will find that plastic bottles that do not contain Bisphenyl A are now marked BPA-free.

So, what are the safe options in choosing a drinking water bottle? My research shows that a good quality aluminium bottle that is well lined with a non-leaching substance would be a good choice, as would a stainless steel bottle ,which, would be a bit heavier, and finally a standard old-fashioned choice is a glass bottle but this is not always practical, especially for children as it is subject to being broken if dropped.

The common attitude,  that I’ve been doing this for years and hasn’t killed me, prevails, and I would agree with you, however, it is not the single contaminants that is the problem, but the multiplicity of contaminants that ,when added up, produce life-threatening diseases. When this happens, we find it difficult to pinpoint the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I  invite you to take this seriously, and to try to avoid consuming Bisphenyl A  by drinking out of polycarbonate bottles and containers, tin cans, cold drink tins and checking that babies bottles and cups are BPA-free.

Below is a list of health issues related to the absorption of Bisphenyl A taken from http://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/bpa/bpa_side_effects.php

“More than 200 lab animal tests to date strongly suggest that BPA exposure, even at very low doses, creates risks of dangerous developmental, neural and reproductive health effects in infants and children. Exposure to BPA, even at low and short-term doses, is linked to a staggering number of health problems, including:

Life threatening illnesses are created, often not through the one toxin, but the combination of one and one and one and one.

Suggestion: Eliminate this One from your life and that of your children.

Alternative safe drinking bottles are available at: http://healthmakers.co.za/store/water-bottles/

 

Green Smoothies in India

Gee I never realised that i would miss my green smoothie as much as I did. It went something like this. Before we left for India I had to consider just how I would make a green smoothie without my Hi-Blend or my Vitamix super blender. We were going to be away for the whole month and I knew without any doubt that it would be difficult to survive without my Green Smoothie for all that time. First was how to replace the super blender to produce something that would resemble a Green Smoothie I also knew that I could Never achieve the level of creaminess of my regular smoothie but that was still an acceptable compromise. I did a test drive on various stick and personal blenders and finally settled on taking a powerful 400 watt stick blender and a seed grinder to pre-grind the seeds and nuts.

The smoothie package looked like this:

A pack each of almonds, cashews, macadamia, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds.
Barley green powder, raw cacao powder, hemp seed powder, and maca powder that I decanted into enough single smoothie packs for the anticipatednumber of smoothies that I could make.
A packet of dehydrated kale in case of emergency where I could not get any greens.
A sharp knife (had to remember to put it into the suitcase going into the hold otherwise it would be confiscated, just like another 2 pen knives that I forgot to transfer).

We stayed in Mumbai one night so breakfast was a milky tea and a rubbery parathas. The next breakfast was in Delhi where the selection for breakfast was sweet milky tea, porridge and milk, toast and butter or toast and jam. Mmmm, to eat or not to eat, that was the question. I chose the toast and jam and tea.  I am a firm believer that the benefit or the detrimental effect of what we eat relates to our state of mind and intention, so, being wheat and dairy intolerant, I had the choice of focusing on the problems of the wheat bread and the dairy in the tea or to see it as great food that my body would lovingly accept to nourish me and remove the pangs of hunger. So, before taking the first bite, I waved my hands over the toast and said “Green Smoothie, Green Smoothie”. This was a bit like looking for a miracle similar to Aladdin saying A b r a c a d a b r a!

Our next breakfast offering was a simple Indian breakfast of wheat porridge, buffalo milk, brown sugar, toast, butter and jam. It was now 3 days without a Green Smoothie and I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms. I had managed to accumulate a bit of fruit so was contented with a fruit , nut and seed smoothie knowing that I would be into my greens Very soon.

DAY 4 A Green Smoothie at last! We found green leaves in abundance and the limited variety of fruit was fresh and of good quality so we made some simple Green Smoothie combinations such as:

Pawpaw, Banana, Naartjie, Apple, Lime, seeds and nuts and one of the additives and a load of spinach leaves. It was pure heaven! For 6 days we delighted in a big jug of Green Smoothie where flavours were altered by increasing and reducing the quantities of fruit and the variety of additives

DAY 10 The train journey to Delhi certainly did not offer Smoothies in the menu and no, please don’t ask me what we had for breakfast.

Day 11 Another bread and jam and milky tea which means another day without a Green Smoothie and more Abracadabra

DAY 12 The first day at the Ayruvedic Centre and guess what? Not even an Ayruvedic Smoothie for breakfast. Well that didn’t last long, I quickly convinced the Doctor that I REALLY needed Green Smoothies

DAY 13 Request for green leaves were met with general confusion about what I was looking for. The kitchen manager agreed to go and bring back green leaves from the market. Based on this, we enjoyed a fruit smoothie, upgraded with some raw cacoa, seeds and nuts.

DAY 14 To my absolute amazement the trip to the market proved unsuccessful. Can you imagine no green leaves! I mean absolutely No Green Leaves!! After some investigation I established that the Indians in the province of Kerela do not eat green leaves. So, what now? How do you make a Green Smoothie without green leaves? Oh yes! I remembered that in my bag of tricks was a bag of dehydrated kale – not truly a green smoothie because quantities were limited and these had to serve my salad upgrades too.

DAY 15 Today I added some Barley Life to the smoothie which gave it a definite green tinge. It wasn’t really a Green Smoothie, but that green tinge just made me feel better.

DAY 16 Great excitement today! I established that the leaves from the ‘drumstick’ tree are edible so guess what? Today I was in celebration, the first Green Smoothie in 5 days. Mmmm, it looked like a green smoothie and tasted like one – Just So Delicious. How can I explain the passion.

DAY 17 Another delicious drumstick smoothie. And I am told that drumstick leaves are very nutritious.

DAY 18 What a shock! Today my Ayruvedic detox started in ernest and Green Smoothies were no longer on the menu.

DAY 19-26 NO GREEN SMOOTHIES – Say no more!

DAY 27 Intense persuasion convinced the Doctor that I Really needed to get back to Green Smoothies so this morning I found some more drumstick leaves and savoured my first Green Smoothie in 9 days AND today we took an auto-rickshaw to the nearest town of Kottayam and low and behold, in a little vegetable shop I found and bought a bunch of one of two bunches of green leaves.

DAYS 28-32 We enjoyed not only Green Smoothies with green leaves
and our usual additives but now we had a Kerela
touch to things with the addition of what is known as tender coconut.
Oh, it’s great to be back home with my Vitamix Super Blender and enough home grown greens to make all the smoothies I like.

If you have any stories of passion about your green smoothies please share them, we would love to hear them.

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