I was an adorable child. No, really. I have photos to prove it. There I was, age four at the pool in the afternoon sunshine, in a cute bathing suit and gettting really, really sunburned. I got sunburned every summer of my life. Nobody took “suntan lotion” very seriously back then. Since those careless times, I’ve learned that sunburns continue destroying skin cells even years later, so our previous post about protecting children’s skin from the sun struck a note with me. I wasn’t surprised when my dermatologist told me I had two basel cell carcinomas that had best be removed. Skin cancer from those old sunburns? Probably, says the doctor.

Naturally, I never risk exposing my skin to the sun anymore, unless I slather on plenty of sunscreen before leaving the house. But commercial sunscreens are so far from natural – see the scary list of chemicals that they contain – that I was happy to find an inexpensive and effective natural sunscreen I can make by myself.

I can’t say how much sun protection factor this lotion has. I can say that I’m quite fair-skinned and burn easily, but  using the lotion, I stay burn-free – as long as I re-apply it every couple of hours, which is true of commercial sunscreens also.

The lotion initially feels greasy. But once massaged on, it withstands water and sweat. It nourishes the skin, too, leaving it supple and soft.

Inexpensive, effective and all-natural sunscreen. Gotta love it.

All-Natural Sunscreen Recipe:

Equipment:

Pyrex bowl or measuring cup that holds 2 cups volume, or two cooking pots that fit one inside the other

Pan big enough for the bowl/cup to sit in

Spatula

Blender

If using stick blender, a clean towel to rest stick blender on

For storage and use: Very clean, very dry small jars, or ziplock bags, or empty, clean, and dry re-used shampoo bottles.

Ingredients (choose organic if you can):

1/2 oz. – a well-filled tablespoon – of natural beeswax. I use beeswax pellets, but you may simply chop up a natural beeswax candle and measure the wax. When the wax melts, you simply fish the wicks out.

1/2 cup boiling water

3 black tea bags

1/2 cup sesame oil, no other

Optional: 2 drops lavender essential oil. Lavender is healing to skin itself, but it’s included here mostly to perfume the lotion. Don’t go overboard with the essential oil, especially if you mean to apply the lotion to children. Essential oils are powerful.

Make a strong tea infusion with the teabags and water. Cover and allow to steep at least 20 minutes. Remove the bags before proceeding, squeezing them out to extract as much tea as possible.

Place the bowl in a pan with water in it, or if using pots, fill the bottom pot halfway up with water. Place the smaller pot on top. Heat the water over medium heat.

Put the beeswax and oil in the bowl (or top pot). When the wax has melted, remove the bowl or pot from the heat. If using Pyrex, place it on a folded kitchen towel to prevent shattering.

If the tea has cooled down completely, warm it over a low flame. It doesn’t need to boil, just be warm.

If using a stick blender, start blending the oil/beeswax mix. If using a standing blender, pour the mix in.

Very slowly, pour the warm tea into the oil mix, blending at high speed. Keep blending while the lotion takes shape. It will become somewhat paler as it cools down and eventually become quite thick.

Add the essential oil if using, blend again thoroughly, and spoon into storage containers.

Fill a squat lotion tube, like the one in the top photo, or a small shampoo bottle, if you want to take the lotion out with you.

Keep the lotion refrigerated. It will last 3 months. Extra may be frozen – just label it with contents and date or someone may mistake it for dulce de leche. If you are looking for another sunscreen recipe to try, check out this one for organic sunscreen.

More natural skin care suggestions:

• Going Green At The Beach?
• Moisturize Your Skin With Hand-Made Herbal Cream

Image of sunscreen tube via Shutterstock; Photo of sunscreen in the making by Miriam Kresh

With the hot days, the desire to spend time cooking in the kitchen dwindles, although the desire to eat remains. This past salad recipe works for hot summer days. Here at Green Prophet, we publish at least one hot-weather recipe every summer, like this easy and delicious potato salad. And of course, summer’s wild herb, purslane, is popping up in every windowbox and garden, like, well, a weed, for you to nibble on or stir into dishes. If you need more inspiration, here’s an entire summery menu plan for you to choose from.

Broccoli is in season now. Combined with tricolor pasta and other quickly-cooked vegetables, it makes a salad that satisfies fickle summer hungers but doesn’t leave the diner uncomfortably full.

Pasta Salad With Summer Vegetables

More easy, summery salad recipes:

• Vegan Chickpea and Artichoke Salad
• Easy Moroccan Orange Salad
• Freekah, Feta and Fig Salad

Vegewarian is a phrase used to indicate awareness of eating less meat and more sustainably produced foods like vegetables.

Miriam also blogs at Israeli Kitchen.

Image of pasta salad with broccoli via Shutterstock.

Karin plucks mulberry leaves from her backyard and serves them to her family.

Long ago, mulberry trees were planted all over the Middle East to feed silkworms. The cottage silk industries have died out, but many ancient mulberry trees remain. Strolling with Karin in her garden this week, I remarked that the big mulberry tree there was so loaded with leaves, it was a pity not to eat them. Karin asked for the recipe, and made stuffed mulberry leaves the same night. She reports that the dish was a hit with her family.

Old people, those who keep the tradition alive, may be seen picking the new leaves early in the morning. Dried, the leaves make a pleasant-tasting medicinal tea.  Another way is to stuff them with ground meat while they’re still young and tender. In Israel, the it’s the Iraqi community that still knows to eat mulberry leaves. As they know to eat sour green plums.

At this time of year, the mulberry’s fuzzy, light-green berries are just turning rosy. Wait a few weeks for them to ripen and you’ll be able to eat them right off the tree, or cook them down into jam or chutney.

In traditional Chinese medicine, leaves from the white mulberry are regarded with respect as a medicine. It’s said that the dried, powdered leaves, infused as tea or taken in capsules, lower high blood sugar and high blood pressure. Being full of antioxidants, they also decrease irritation at the cellular level, thus lowering cancer risk. If a mulberry tree lives near you, it might be a wise thing to pick several handfuls of the young leaves and dry them for tea.

Or, as Karin did, stuff them with ground chicken and roll them up like grape leaves. Traditionally, the leaves are stuffed with ground lamb, but any firm meat will do. Yum.

Stuffed Mulberry Leaves

Serves 4 for dinner, or makes 35 appetizers

Pick 40 tender, medium-sized leaves. Rinse the dust off them and check for insects. Dry gently.

Ingredients:

1 kg. ground chicken,  lamb or other firm meat

1 egg, beaten

1 medium onion, chopped fine

2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped fine

1 teaspoon fresh oregano or za’atar, chopped fine

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1- 1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

juice of 1 large lemon

2 tablespoons olive oil

More sliced lemon for serving

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350° F, 190° C.

Mix all ingredients except lemon juice and olive oil. Knead the seasoned meat with your hands to mix everything very well.

Line a baking tray with parchment. Place a leaf shiny side down. Take a tablespoon of meat and roll it into a patty in your palms. Place it on the wide end of the leaf. Add a little more meat if it looks skimpy; pull some out if it looks like too much for the leaf to cover.

Roll it up.The patty will become slightly elongated in rolling. Secure the pointed top with a toothpick if needed.

Mix the lemon juice and olive oil in a little bowl. Drizzle it generously all over the tops of the stuffed leaves.

Bake for 15 minutes if you want them juicy. There will be a certain amount of natural drippings in the pan – pour it into a bowl when you’ve removed the stuffed leaves, and pour it over them.

If you want a crisp wrapping and somewhat drier filling (good for handing around at a party or for a snack), bake 20 minutes.

Serve with sliced lemon for squeezing over the hot or cold leaves.Couscous is nice with these savory little packages. Beer or a chilled white wine are too.

More seasonal foods:

• Great Guacamole
• Scrambled Eggs With Purslane And Feta

Summer’s arrival brings out all kinds of fruit to simmer up into jam – including tomatoes.

Tomatoes as jam? Yes, indeed, and delicious it is, too. I love to make up small batches of tomato jam when lots of different tomato varieties appear in the markets. In the full swing of summer’s harvest, when prices are at rock bottom and big, fat  tomatoes are lusciously mature, it’s time for stirring pots of tomato sauce like the one featured in this recipe. But just now, it’s fun to pick and choose the loveliest of the different young tomato crops for this very Mediterranean jam.

The sweet tomatoey taste is surprising, but the palate becomes used to it immediately. You can really appreciate the native sweetness of the fruit when it’s cooked like this. And the jam makes a delicious topping to toast first spread with labneh or any soft white cheese. Serve this as a snack, with coffee.

Sweet Tomato Jam

Yield: approximately 1/2 kilo – 1 lb. jam

Ingredients:

1 kg. – 2 lbs ripe  tomatoes, any variety

1 – 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cup water

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Peel and chop the tomatoes, scraping away as much of the seeds as you can.

In a large pan, heat water and sugar together stir until the sugar dissolves. Add the lemon juice and zest.

Add the tomatoes. Bring to a boil, without covering the pan. Lower heat to medium. Add the vanilla.

Cook until the mass is jammy and semi-solid, stirring once in a while.

Process as usual for canning, or allow to cool, and store in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Celebrate early tomatoes with a couple more of Green Prophet recipes:

• Shakshouka, Tunisian Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce
• Syrian Tomato Salad

 Image of tomato jam via Shutterstock.

We’ve posted about the Cafe Clock blog here, including the recipe for its famous camel burger. In this delightful cookbook, Stevens includes recipes from the Cafe Clock as well as some traditional Moroccan dishes that she discovered  herself. Her warm, frank tone and the stories that introduce many of the recipes almost bring the reader to the Café and the alleyways of the medina.

The photographs by Julius Honnor tend to be dark and moody, with a still-life quality that highlights Fez ambiance rather than the food. But if you’re interested in getting a good look at  the day-to-day of the medina, your armchair curiosity will be satisfied, and your appetite will probably wake up too. The plain blue cover with swirling Arabic calligraphy only hints at  the color and richness of this Moroccan recipe collection. With tongue in cheek, we suggest that it might have been richer for another version of Moroccan Love Potion.

The collaboration between the Cafe Clock and Stevens come through Mike Richardson, British ex-pat weary of a career as a successful London maître d’ and searching for a new life in Fez:

“Mike…was determined to create something new. Little did he know…that what he would end up creating would become one of the most important social centres in the city, a true hub for Moroccans, expats and people passing through. Today, Fez without the Café Clock  is unthinkable.” So writes Stevens in her introduction.

Richardson hired  Moroccan cooks and acquired a business partner. With the cafe’s roaring success in camel hamburgers and seasonal specials based on ingredients from the medina, the time came to put a book together. Stevens, with an idea for a Moroccan cookbook already in her head, considers it serendipitous that Richardson invited her to write it.

The eleven recipe chapters cover breakfast and brunch; burgers and sandwiches; soups; fish; poultry; meat; salads; snacks; desserts; breads, and preserves and condiments.

When the recipes call for very localized ingredients – like camel hump or eggs scrambled with desert truffles from the sub-Sahara – Stevens sensibly suggests Western substitutes. While it’s unlikely that the Western reader will take the trouble to make the paper-thin trid bread, the engaging story and photographs are fun to leaf through. On the other hand, there are four entirely doable ways to bake and eat the basic khobz bread. The recipe for roast lamb mechouia style calls for few ingredients and looks simple to make, but according to the author, it’s dangerously seductive:

“The smell alone of this dish is enough to get you salivating, and by the time it emerges from a slow oven it’s maddening. No wonder it’s traditionally torn apart with the fingers and eaten with no embellishment.”

To waken love, the author recommends adding plenty of dried rose petals to food – even to the camel burgers. To rouse  the taste buds, there are recipes for herb and flower-infused salts, charmoula spice mix, and other Moroccan pantry staples.

No less an author than Claudia Roden recommends Clock Book as “delightful” and “evocative.” I add, it’s a foodie’s treasure.

Clock Book by Tara Stevens

Publisher: 33 Books Ltd., England

160 pages

Moroccan dishes on Green Prophet:

• Chickpea and Spinach Soup
• Baghrir, Moroccan Crepe

Images from Café Clock cookbook courtesy of 33 Books Ltd.

Miriam sees Israel’s most famous open-air market through new eyes.

When I lived in Jerusalem, the Machane Yehuda shuk (market) was my grocery store. Vegetables, grains, fruit, chicken for Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. There were nuts and sweets…everything we ate came from the shuk.  (Read about 5 Israeli shuks here.)

My kids grew up eating the freshest, most colorful and flavorful food in the city, and since prices are lowest at the Machane Yehuda shuk, I was saving money.

Intent on my shopping and on getting home, I never gave the mixture of imported and local foods a thought. While I happily observed the growing number of tempting new fruits and vegetables, it didn’t occur to me to ask if they were grown locally or flown in from far away.

As eco-awareness became part of the way I think, I began to make more conscious choices. But a tour of Machane Yehuda with Rabbi Yonatan Neril of of the Jewish Eco Seminars organization showed me what “globalized food” means. And how organic food struggles to compete in Israeli markets.

The bustling Machane Yehuda shuk isn’t a farmer’s market. The produce is trucked in from nurseries and farms around the country. Some of it is flown in from Europe or the States. Although historically it’s the biggest food supplier for the Jerusalem working class, in recent years hip eateries and fancy stores have sprung up inside the the shuk, attracting the spendier middle class.

The Machane Yehuda’s shuk’s  a wild, crammed mix of traditional ethnic and western-style modern foods. And people. Neril pointed out the contrasts. We watched affluent folks selecting French and Dutch cheeses at an upscale fromagerie, while across the way an Ethiopian woman calculated the cost of green beans with a worried frown.

A young worker hoisted a tray of hot pitas, while on the next corner, we could take our choice of breads at a “natural” bakery. The shelves loaded with organic whole wheat, rye, and spelt breads seemed like a miracle of abundance.

Indeed, Neril asked us to think about this abundance. We eat more, and more kinds of foods today, than humanity has ever known before. But are we paying attention to where our food comes from?

To drive his point home, Neril asked us to name Israel’s iconic food – the dish everyone associates with eating in the street while standing up.

Falafel, of course, the portion of fried chickpea balls covered in tahini sauce and crammed into a split pitta with chopped tomato and cucumber. Falafel is touted as “nature’s junk food,” for its healthy combination of protein-rich grains and vegetables.

• The wheat milled into Israeli bread flour is flown in from Kazakhstan.
•  The chickpeas come from Argentina.
   The sesame seeds ground into tahini come from Turkey, in spite of the political disagreements between the two countries.
   The spices are imported from India.
  Only the chopped vegetables come from local farms.

Surprise! Falafel is nowhere near as green as you’d think.

Right outside the bakery, we almost walked past a machine that compresses cardboard boxes for recycling without noticing it. Neril made sure we saw it – and noticed the produce waste getting dumped, ultimate destination a landfill, right next to it. On one hand, modern eco-awareness; on the other, more methane gas in production.

Settled on a stoop, an elderly man sold fiery home-made pickles and relishes he makes himself, using recipes his Iranian grandparents brought to Israel on donkey back, one hundred years ago. One more contrast we wouldn’t have noticed except that Neril pointed out:  the vendor was selling pickles the same way he’s been doing for the last 40 years, right in front of an upscale clothing boutique.

With today’s bewildering choice of tempting edibles, it’s the easiest thing in the world to overbuy, overcook, and throw lots away in the end. We need to consider how our food choices contribute to the load Earth sustains to feed us.

The choices are to eat more modestly; that is, forgo the fancy imported goods, even if they’re “healthy.” Cook at home rather than eating out or sending out.  Go vegewarian as often as possible. As Rabbi Neril said, the greatest single act that an individual can do to affect the environment is giving up meat.

Think about it. Our food choices are having a direct effect on how much our children and grandchildren will have to put in their mouths.

And it would be great if someone would set up stands selling reuseable eco-bags in the shuk, to replace the  plastic bags.

More on Israel’s open-air markets:

•  How To Eat Your Way Through Machaneh Yehudah
•  Tasty But Elitist In Tel Aviv’s Farmer’s Market
•  Gleaning The Shuk

::Jewish Eco Seminars

Photos by Miriam Kresh.

It had never occurred to me that if I were to go camping on Mt. Meron for the upcoming Lag B’Omer celebration, that I’d actually be on pilgrimage. I never thought of my  visits to the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a pilgrimage. But during the days I attended the First International Symposium on Green and Accessible Pilgrimage, I realized that these these trips are in effect, pilgrimages.

An astounding 300 million people leave their homes and travel on pilgrimages every year.This is an unprecedented historical migration, and the effects on the environments where pilgrims pass through are becoming disastrous. Huge numbers of pilgrims put a huge strain on local water, energy, transportation, food and waste disposal resources. Basic issues like sanitation become unpleasant, and even dangerous challenges.

“Everyone has their own belief system, but we have only one earth that we’re trampling on,” said Fiona Kanter, producer of the Symposium.

What ecological issues are there for the individual traveler to consider?

Water issues become personal if you think of all the pilgrims and tourists walking around and drinking water out of plastic bottles. How, and where to discard the bottles has to be considered. A local system where pilgrims pass through could install places where water bottles can be re-filled and used multiple times, finally to be recycled.

The hospitality industry welcomes religious tourists, but the green pilgrim should compare more than just prices when checking hotels out. The green hotel will have a policy against water and food waste, and that’s a factor in a green pilgrimage. But more and more, pilgrims are ignoring hotels and asking to stay with local hospitality; not only to share a roof with local people, but to get to know them and share something more human with them than only money.

Kanter continues,

“For example, there are 200,000 people living in the Kidron Valley. This is an underdeveloped area on our Jerusalem doorstep. It’s a magnificent way of entering Jerusalem, with many beautiful monasteries and heritage sites on its route that should be preserved. Religious tourism could make a great economic change in this area, where the population has specific cultural issues. Women there aren’t encouraged to go out to work, but could be providing home hospitality for the pilgrims coming through. And many travelers today would prefer home hospitality to staying in hotels.

“However, the Israeli water authorities have to work to create an infrastructure dealing with raw sewage flowing through the Kidron Valley. (see our post on the Kidron Valley pollution here.) Sewage, like birds and water, doesn’t know boundaries. It’s approaching Jerusalem and Palestinian authority boundaries. Somehow it dissipates before it gets to the Dead Sea, but it’s flowing through villages and people’s back yards. It’s a disgrace.

“Issues as simple as timing your travels can make a major ecological impact. For instance, I book my flight to England early in the morning or last thing at night, because I know that my flight is shorter during those hours. I’m not adding to the burden of air traffic in the middle of the day. When I get to the airport, which method of transportation do I chose to get to the city or pilgrim site I want? Do I take a bus with another 49 people, or do I use the train, or take a private taxi?”

The Symposium included lectures on equity and freedom of worship, nurturing urban ecology, and infrastructure challenges in historical cities. Lecturers shared their personal experiences in interfaith work, as Rabbi David Rosen recounted of his efforts in South Africa during the height of the apartheid era.

An urban designer showed the audience exactly whose needs have to be met when planning cities – everyone’s. Two pilgrims spoke who crossed Europe and the Middle East to reach Jerusalem – on foot.

And since food crosses borders without needing words, eight top chefs were invited to present their greenest dishes.

Kanter concluded, “When you reach out to people inspired by faith leaders, you are reaching out to these leaders.”

It seemed to me that the dozens of faith leaders at the Symposium came away educated and inspired. I’m looking forward to a greener world as a result.

More on greening the world’s pilgrimages:

• Green Pilgrimage Network Supports Sustainable Pilgrimage
• Interview With Green Hajj Expert
• SARS-Like Virus Appears In Saudia Arabia, Alerting Hajj Pilgrims
• First Hajj Safety Guide

Photographs by Miriam Kresh.

Science puts a new view forward in the anti-brassiere argument. 

Women have bound their breasts since antiquity, for modesty’s sake or to conform to an aesthetic ideal. Exposing the breast for human survival in breastfeeding is supposed to be kept politely minimal, even with the known multiple benefits of breastfeeding.

In the Western world, women avoid the free-swinging breast, a point of view encouraged by the multi-billion dollar brassiere industry. That began to change in the 1960s, when the Women’s Liberation movement proclaimed brassieres to be as oppressive as the corsets our grandmothers wore. Still, the majority of today’s women continue wearing the bra, conforming to societal norms and to fashion. Recent research conducted in France may influence women to change their minds again.

Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon, professor at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, recentlt concluded, after a 15-year study of 330 women, that supporting breasts in a bra helps not at all, neither “medically, physiologically nor anatomically.”

Rouillon argues that chest muscle and ligaments that support the breasts atrophy over time if the breasts’ natural motion is restrained by a bra. He claims that the women under study actually developed stronger supportive muscle while going bra-less. (Breast ligaments, which give the breast elasticity, do not regain tone as muscle does; like rubber bands, once they stretch out, they remain limp.) Rouillon proved his claim by the research participant’s nipples lifting 7mm towards the shoulder in one year. According to Rouillon, the women’s breasts became firmer and stretch marks faded.

Apart from wishing to improve the silhouette, women should be asking questions about bras versus female health. Some defenders of the no-bra cause  claim that bras restrict the drainage of the axillary (armpit) lymph nodes. Lymph nodes help move bacteria, dead viruses and other blood toxins out of circulation. The implication is that these toxins simply stay in the armpit and breast area when a bra is worn, degrading health.

Others say that bras retain the heat naturally generated by the breast during movement, thereby increasing the chance of inflammation of the breast tissue and subsequently, cancer. With breast cancer rates rising almost visibly, it may be worth investigating that idea.

Although these issues are valid and deserve more research, there are no definite answers to anti-bra arguments based on health concerns. Respected institutions like the American Cancer Society invalidate the theory that bra-wearing increases chances of getting breast cancer. Proponents retort that as parallels between lung cancer and smoking were vigorously denied for decades by bodies with big financial interests in tobacco, so does the brassiere industry have interests in squashing that theory.

In the meantime, Rouillon is reluctant to advise all women to take their bras off. He said that the research participants didn’t represent the population at large  – his study was conducted on women between the ages of 18-35. Further, he says that older women who have worn bras since early adolescence would gain nothing from removing their bras.

Presumably, Professor Rouillon means that if it’s too late to rebuild breast-supporting muscle, a woman might as well look good in her clothes and wear a bra.

More on breast health on Green Prophet:

• PIP Breast Implant Warnings Hit Middle East
• Are Hormones In The Environment Making Women’s Breasts Larger?
• Natural Herbs For Breast Health And Enhancement

Image of woman removing bra via Shutterstock.

Nawal Nasrallah, a food historian and author, writes about Iraqui cuisine in a warm, rich style that beautifully highlights each recipe’s  historical and cultural background. Her newly revised cookbook, Delights From The Garden Of Eden, is about to be released in a new edition, and I can’t wait to read it (and cook from it).

Nasrallah’s blog offers some traditional Iraqi recipes, as sort of a preview of the book. Here on Green Prophet, we’ve got a weak spot for Iraqi cooking, like this Fesenjan recipe (chicken with walnut sauce.)

I liked Nasralla’s surprising watermelon rind jam especially because the recipe ensures that there’s no food waste. Even more than that, it’s an old-fashioned, slow-food recipe that promises to taste simply delicious.

Nasrallah introduces the watermelon rind jam:

Enjoy!

More Preserved Fruit On Green Prophet:

• Locavore Strawberry Jam
• Baked Apricot Jam
• Mulberry Chutney

:: In My Iraqi Kitchen: Recipes, History And Culture

Miriam also blogs on Israeli Kitchen.

Faith and community leaders from around the world will be speaking on ecological, urban and social development as influenced by mass pilgrimage.  Our report on the massive urban sprawl that Mecca is becoming illustrates the ecological impact of the Haj, for example. Efforts like this one to make the Haj green need to be supported, and we look forward to hearing encouraging developments along those lines as a result of Jerusalem Symposium on Green Pilgrimage.

Over 200 million people go on pilgrimage each year and the numbers are rising. These pilgrims create additional stress on the water, sewage, waste disposal and food supply systems of their pilgrimage destinations and often cause some form of environmental damage.

In cities which are inundated with pilgrims, the role of the residents is often not an easy one, and they should be encouraged to be engaged in the challenges, as well as the opportunities. In some instances, the stress is seasonal, but in many cities and sites, there is a constant burden on the local infrastructure.

The sanctity of pilgrimage sites is often enhanced by the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape. The influx of large numbers of pilgrims constitutes a threat both to the beauty of the ambiance, as well as to the flora and fauna that form part of each heritage landscape.

The Green Pilgrimage Network brings together representatives of major world faiths who will be working together and learning from each other how to green both the journeys and the destinations undertaken by pilgrims everywhere.

The program covers topics as diverse as freedom of movement for the physically challenged pilgrim,  green mapping pilgrim routes and sites, and the always-controversial topic of women’s empowerment in the world’s religions.

There will be  two days of eco-tours. Special events include  a showing of solar-powered cinema inside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, a hands-on workshop of the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind, and even a culinary competition where top Jerusalem chefs present their Green Pilgrim Jerusalem dishes.

Read more about the Jerusalem Symposium on Green Pilgrimage on the event’s website.

And to view the event’s jam-packed schedule, click here. Green Prophet will be there!

The symposium will interest environmental activists and professionals, faith leaders and faith-based communities. Also welcome are non-profit organizations, academics, elected officials and tourism and hospitality industry entrepreneurs.

More on faith, pilgrimage and the ecology on Green Prophet:

• Baptizing in the Jordan’s Holy Sewage
• Sewage Flows Where Pilgrims Once Trod
• SARS-Like Virus Alerts Haj Pilgrims
•  Saudis Approve Haj Safety Guide

“Don’t you think I know how hard it is, honey/To get some “sugar” from the phone,” sings country singer Bonnie Raitt, vividly summing up the difficulty of maintaining a long-distance romance. Sugar represents all that’s sweet and desirable, but in the light of recent studies, sugar may come to stand for poison.

Especially toxic to the human metabolism is high-fructose corn syrup, the evil lurking under the sweetness of popular drinks.Stevia, a naturally sweet green herb, will hopefully replace it in commercial drinks and foods.

The historical statistics are startling. The  average sugar consumption in 1700 was 4 lbs – a little under 2 kg, yearly. Compare that to the yearly sugar intake of as many as 50% of today’s Americans:  180 lb. (81.647 kg.) of sugar per year. That’s half a pound – 250 grams of sugar, every day. Looking at the numbers of obese people on the streets in many other countries, like in the Middle East, it’s easy to see that the rest of the world isn’t far behind.

How much harm can one little candy bar, one little can of soda, one little handful of cookies do? We’ll brush our teeth right afterwards – we know about sugar and tooth decay. And OK – empty calories, we know about that too. But today’s research argues that sugar – and especially high fructose corn syrup – isn’t just an inert substitute for nourishing foods, it’s a toxin in and of itself.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, is one of the pivotal figures in the campaign to bring this controversial topic to the public’s attention. His aim is to get sugar recognized as a substance as dangerous to human health as tobacco and alcohol.

The body metabolizes glucose from starches like bread and potatoes in a different way than it processes straight  fructose: for example, the sugars in juices and sodas. These sugars reach the liver quickly, so it has to work harder and faster to metabolize them. Too much sugar, too fast, and the liver turns these sugars into fat. In the meantime, the pancreas, trying to pump more and more insulin to deal with the sugar, eventually gives up: this is insulin resistance.

This, put in the simplest terms, is the basis for the rampant obesity, heart disease and diabetes that plagues the Western world today. Even scarier, research analyzed by Lustig indicates that excess insulin produced by an overworked pancreas feeds cancerous cells. In other words, it’s not only about the fat around the tummy, a tired heart (now even in kids that drink soda) and a daily insulin injection – it’s about the ever-higher cancer rates in our society. In our communities and homes.

While the sugar industry tries to convince the public that their product is actually a weight-loss tool, the public is getting savvier about the real dangers represented by sugars of all kinds. More people are reading labels critically before taking products into their kitchens. Yet there’s still lots of sugar that goes unnoticed because labels hide it under names that are hard to understand.

Hidden names for sugar

Any word ending in “-ose” (maltose, dextrose, lactose, fructose), and including malt, rice syrup, treacle or panocha mean sugar in one form or another.

And just because the word “sugar” is paired with another word, as in “inverted sugar,” it doesn’t mean that the sugar has been refined enough to become harmless. There is no harmless sugar – not even agave syrup. Those words on the labels are all red flags for the consumer who wants to control how much sugar goes through his blood. See our previous post about the hidden “natural” sugar in your food.

Lustig’s campaign against sugar, once thought of as the radical fringe in health care, is becoming more and more widely accepted in medical circles. Now it’s up to the consumer – you – to carefully eliminate foods containing sugar from the daily diet. It’s not likely that people will go back to 100% food cooked at home like Grandma used to serve.

But if you want to make a difference in the quality of the foods you buy, show the food industry that you mean it, with your power of purchase. Don’t eat or buy sugary junk foods. Drink much, much less soda. Demand stevia-sweetened drinks (not drinks sweetened with the abhorrent aspartame).

To your good health.

You can watch Dr. Lustig’s lecture, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” here. Be prepared for an hour and a half of new and startling information.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More about sweet, sticky sugar on Green Prophet:

• GMO Beets Coming To A Sugar Supply Near You?
• Energy Drinks And Five Really Good Reasons To Avoid Them
• Sodas and Juice Cause Long-Term Liver Damage

Image of woman checking food labels via Shutterstock

Except in some South American countries, the Western world doesn’t give lupines much regard. Chickpeas get much more publicity  (like our vegan chickpea and artichoke salad). Maybe it has to do with the long soaking and rinsing that the beans have to undergo in order to lose their bitterness and become edible. Real slow food. But with every food that’s good for you, the effort is worth it. Yes, and lupines are tasty and have high nutritional value. Not to mention that they are an eminently sustainable crop, fixing nitrogen into the soil and (so far) having escaped the clutches of GMO ideology. And of course, eating more pulses and less meat benefits you and the planet.

In North Africa and the Middle East, the tradition of eating cooked lupines, well salted, has never quite died out. If you’re already in the Middle East, you can buy some pre-cooked lupines in any open-air market.

The photographs accompanying this post were taken in the open-air markets of Ramleh and Ashdod, Israel. But assuming that you’re nowhere near a Middle Eastern open-air market, you may buy the beans dried and cook them, as in the recipe below

Lupines were known by the ancient Romans and Greeks, although considered the food of the poor. Odd how “poor folk’s food” is so often based on delicious, healthy grains like beans, which are also inexpensive.

Lupines are rich in essential minerals, iron, calcium and incomplete protein. They are gluten-free.

Only the commercial varieties are edible, so don’t give into temptation to pick them off the flowering plants in your garden unless you’re 100% sure it’s safe.

Three ideas for serving cooked lupines:

Most people just eat them as they are, hot or temperature, with a good squeeze of lemon juice and some ground cumin stirred into them. Folks who are fond of relaxing in front of the TV with a glass of beer say that lupines are particularly delicious at those moments.

A handful of cooked lupines makes a hearty addition to a vegetable or meat-based soup.

Mash them slightly and pile them on slices of toasted baguette that have previously been brushed with a little garlic butter. Serve with a chilled beer.

Add a few tablespoons to a salad.

How To Cook Lupine Beans

Ingredients:

500 grams – 1 lb. dried lupine beans

6 cups water

Salt

A drizzle of olive oil

Lemon juice and/or ground cumin and black pepper to taste

Cover the beans with fresh water and set aside for 24 hours. During this period, drain, rinse, and replace  water four times. They will swell and some will lose their peels.

Drain and rinse the beans one more time and then cook them, in plenty of fresh water, between 2-1/2 to 3 hours. Remove a few and taste. If they are tender and absolutely not bitter anymore, they are ready to salt.

Add salt to taste – start with 1 teaspoon. Cook a further 15 minutes.

Drain, season with olive oil, lemon juice, pepper and cumin.

Serve hot or at room temperature as you would olives.

Lupines will keep for weeks in the refrigerator if packed into lightly salted water and tightly covered.

Enjoy!

More delicious bean-based snacks on Green Prophet:

• Chickpeas For A Crunchy Snack
• Sambusak, Spicy Middle Eastern Turnovers
• Fresh Green Fava Beans

Photos by Miriam Kresh.

Miriam also blogs on Israeli Kitchen.

The origins of kombucha tea are veiled in ancient history. Some say that man first brewed tea with a “mother” kombucha culture in Korea. Others say it was in China, or Japan. While one website authoritatively states that it was first made in 415 AD, another just as firmly says that the brew was first noticed in 221 BC.  Nobody really knows when that first time occurred, nor how it happened that someone made sweet tea, plunked a piece of pale, rubbery “mushroom” into it, and observed that the tea made them feel better. To learn more about conventional mushrooms and cancer research, click here.  But it is known that the taste for kombucha spread by the Silk Road to Russian and from there across to Europe. In Israel, kombucha tea is mostly appreciated by the large Russian immigrant community.

Legends apart,  if millions of people have been drinking tea fermented with kombucha over the centuries, there must be something to it.  Kombucha is said to detoxify the body through improving liver and pancreas function. The outcome is relief from arthritic pain, improved digestion and gut health, higher immunities, and mood improvement – among many other good things. Another little-known natural remedy for arthritis is turmeric.

The more extravagant health claims (cures cancer! kills gout!) should be taken with a grain of salt, but modern studies show that kombucha actually is very rich in probiotic substances, beneficial acids and anti-oxidants. Drinking 4 ounces every day does encourage growth of friendly flora, and if you want to consider bacteria as fauna, that too.

Of course, it’s not a miracle drug. Anyone wanting to improve their health has to make other lifestyle changes. There’s hardly a need to repeat what everyone is tired of hearing and few seriously pursue: a healthy diet, adequate exercise, fresh air and a positive attitude (or at least regular stress-reducing activities like meditation, singing, etc.). And drinking more kombucha than  your body is used to can bring on a good attack of diarrhea.

The sensible way to get your body acquainted with kombucha is to start with 2 oz. (1/4 cup) every day for a week, then move up to 4 oz. (1/2 cup). This is also true of other richly probiotic foods like kefir.

(Related: 4 recipes for making your own aloe vera juice)

To brew kombucha at home, you need a mother culture, a clean glass jar, tea, sugar, and a thin dish cloth to cover the jar while the tea ferments. English-speakers refer to the mother culture as a SCOBY – a Symbiotic Culture Of Bacterias and Yeasts. You may obtain a SCOBY via the Internet, or put out a query on your neighborhood e-list. The process is truly a slow-food experience, as it takes a week until the first kombucha batch is fully fermented and ready to drink. But once you start a cycle of brewing, you won’t be without.

The following links are the ones I’ve found to be the most useful. Enjoy!

How To Make Kombucha At Home via The Kitchn

Double fermentation method using fruit juice via FoodRenegade.com

More on natural health remedies on Green Prophet:

• Bee Sting Therapy In Israel
• Black Cumin: Islam’s Miracle Cure Seed
• Natural, Organic Cough Medicine
• Grow 7 Healing Herbs At Home

Image of kombucha tea by zeeweez via Flickr.

Miriam also blogs at Israeli Kitchen.

Matzah balls, the only Eastern European food that crossed over to Sephardic cuisine.

While Ashkenazic Jews have enthusiastically adopted the spicy foods of Israeli’s Sephardic communities, there hasn’t been much culinary exchange from the other direction. Ordinarily, Sephardic Jews (Middle Eastern and North African origin) wrinkle their noses at the foods of Eastern European Jewry. Too bland, too sweet, too overcooked! We know this isn’t always so, but admit that  Sephardic cuisine fits into Israel’s hot, dry climate perfectly.

There’s one Ashkenazic food that everyone in Israel loves, though, and that’s matzah balls. Come Passover, you can walk into a Yemenite or Moroccan housewife’s kitchen and see, floating in the soup pot, a batch of matzah-based dumplings made from a recipe that any Polish grandmother knows by heart. Your haroset may be based on dates or on fresh apples; you may chose to drink toxic kosher-for-Passover coke  or healthy Syrian mint lemonade – your very matzah may look and taste different from your neighbors’ – but matzah balls are pretty much the same all over.

Traditional Passover Matzah Balls

This version uses olive oil instead of the traditional fat, shmaltz – rendered chicken fat.

Ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 scant cup matzah meal

1/4 – 1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger (optional)

Combine the beaten eggs, oil, and matzah meal.

Add 1/4 cup water, salt, and ginger.If the mix seems stiff enough to roll into a hard ball, add more water by tablespoons till it’s a stiff batter, not a firm dough.

Cover the batter and put it in the fridge for 2 hours. This step is important if you want light matzah balls. The batter can rest, refrigerated, up to 8 hours or overnight.

Have a medium pot with plenty of boiling, lightly salted water ready. With wet hands, form walnut-sized balls of dough, and drop them in.

Cover and cook the matzah balls over a medium flame for 30 minutes. Lower the heat so that the water simmers after the initial boil.

Remove the matzah balls from the water and either set them aside for later or put them in your soup right away. They may be drained and frozen.

Matzah balls may be cooked directly in the soup, but the result is heavier.

Enjoy!

Eco-Passover hints on Green Prophet:

• 10 Tips For Greening Your Passover
• Avoiding Food Waste On Passover
• Jewish Passover And The Environment

Image of matzah ball soup via Shutterstock.

Available for only a short season, green favas are considered a delicacy in the Middle East.

Springtime in the shuk, and lots of prime greens have made their once-yearly appearance. Fresh green peas and artichokes, which I love to eat stuffed. Fresh green garlic to hang up and dry for the year. And fresh green fava beans, meaty, yet far more delicately flavored than the dried version.

Green favas may be cooked with herbs and spices, added to meat, mashed, puréed, or stewed. But I’m most fond of eating fresh favas in simple dishes, so that their green flavor shines. Here is such a recipe – Iranian  favas with rice and yogurt, from the fabulous cookbook author Claudia Roden.

It’s true that preparing the beans is a bit of a process. They must be removed from their pods and then cooked enough to remove the stiff outer skin off each bean. If you’re lucky enough to find the fava beans peeled away from their pods in the market, half your work is done.

I choose a quiet time in the kitchen to do the manual work of peeling the skins off – which is necessary, because it’s a little bitter and tough. Listening to music and thinking my thoughts, peeling favas is a meditative task, an excuse to be quietly by myself and let the busy world go by for a while.

This is how you do it. Once the beans are out of their pods, boil plenty of water in a pan and add the beans. Cook for no more than three minutes and then transfer to a bowl of cold water with a slotted spoon – or drain in a colander and put in cold water. The flexible grey skin must be slit open with a small, sharp knife (or your nail) and then you can pop the bean out.

Of course you can bypass the procedure by using frozen beans, but that won’t capture the light flavor of fresh.

Fava Beans with Rice and Yogurt

1¼ cups  long grain rice

4-5 tablespoons mild olive oil

Bunch of dill or mint, finely chopped

White pepper to taste

14 ounces shelled fava beans, fresh or frozen

2 cups plain whole milk yogurt

1 clove garlic, crushed

Salt

More seasonal Middle Eastern Recipes from Green Prophet:

• Pea Pod Soup
• Majadra Lentils and Rice
• Vegan Chickpea and Artichoke Salad

Image of fresh favas via Shutterstock.

Miriam also blogs at Israeli Kitchen.

Sustainability in the kitchen is our creed, and camel is a far more sustainable meat than beef (which the world was horrified to discover may be contaminated with horse meat). We have posted about camel milk and its health benefits. And where camels are as much a part of the landscape as native trees, people know how tender and tasty camel flesh is.

Looking further into camel as food, we discovered Café Clock, a blog authored by Mike Richardson, proprietor of a famous eatery in Fez by the same name. The Café Clock eatery flips hundreds of camel burgers every day. According to Richardson,

“One camel will produce on average, 150 to 200 kilos of kefta (minced meat). As our burgers are around 180 grams, that works out at 1000 burgers per camel.”

Considering that camels need less feeding and produce so much meat, it makes economic and sustainable sense for Westerners to get used to eating camel. In Morocco and Australia, it’s as acceptable as any other meat – and far easier to get than, say, locusts.

Richardson and his chef shared the secrets of their delicious camel burger with cookbook author Tara Stevens. She has written a well-received cook book, Clock Book, with traditional and modernized Moroccan recipes. The rose petals in the meat mix are said to be aphrodisiac…but we think that the hash fudge recipe would probably do the trick better.

Camel is permitted in halal kitchens, but kosher-keepers must only cast their eyes over the recipe, possibly extracting the tomato sauce called Taza Ketchup to accompany kosher burgers at home.

Camel Burgers

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 kilo – 2.2 lbs. ground camel meat

1 tablespoon fat from camel hump, or butter

4 tbsp finely chopped red onions

6 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tbsp chopped cilantro

tbsp chopped parsley

2 tbsp chopped mint leaves

2 tbsp chopped dried culinary rose petals

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp red paprika

1 tsp cloves, ground

Lemon juice to taste

Salt  and pepper to taste

For the Taza Ketchup:

5-6 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped

4 tsp ground cinnamon

4 tsp honey

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Enjoy!

More on camel meat and milk from Green Prophet:

Camel Meat Catches On In Canada

Camels For Milk And Who’s Buying

Grand Caml-ccino, Anyone?

Image of camel burger by Julius Honnor, from Clock Book by Tara Stevens.

When does a plague of insects become a healthy snack? When locusts descend on earth. Free food!

When Egyptian skies darkened with tiny whirring creatures bound for tender field crops, Israeli farmers went on high alert to ward off the cloud of locusts heading north. Foodies, on the other hand, recalled that chef Moshe Basson served locust several years ago at Eucalyptus, his high-end Jerusalem restaurant, as part of a special Biblical feast. Why not exploit the food falling from the sky? Especially as these locusts are kosher and halal.

Old-time bars used to serve pretzels and hard-boiled eggs to encourage drinkers to order more beer. With the sudden abundance of free, high-protein food, it seems logical that Middle Eastern eateries should offer the locust as a crunchy, salty snack. At home, instead of offering the family junk food  poured out of an obnoxious plastic bag,  consider a bowlful of yummy fried locusts.

More advantages to eating locust:

• You can season them any way you like.
• Locusts are an ecologically-logical. There are no greenhouse emissions involved in raising them, because they’re not raised, they’re foraged.
• They’re much healthier alternative to industrially produced junk snacks.
• No packaging to fill up landfills, and it comes in a convenient bite size.
• Not to mention how much cheaper a kilo of locusts is, compared to the same weight of, say, potato chips. Can’t get cheaper than free.

We asked Moshe Basson for advice. How does one cook locusts? Fried, stewed, cooked into soup? And what taste do they have?

“Locust has a taste reminiscent of quail, somehow,” said Basson thoughtfully. “And sunflower seeds. Those familiar with the taste of shrimp will recognize that flavor, also.”

Basson added, “Poor people have always eaten insects in India, the Far East and Africa. They’re an excellent source of protein, but they’re poor people’s food – people are ashamed to say they eat them. Now insects are much more than a culinary curiosity. There’s even talk of an upcoming congress in London where influential chefs will meet to discuss, and cook them. I’d like to present the kosher side of this food.”

We asked how to lower the, well, the eeeuw factor.

“They’re more appetizing if you pull off the head, the short legs, and wings. The long legs are relatively plump, like chicken legs,” said Basson.

Moshe Basson’s Crisp Grasshoppers

About 25 locusts

Have ready about 2 liters of vegetable stock with a little turmeric added to it.

Throw the locusts in the boiling stock, whole. Cook for about 3 minutes.

Drain the locusts and let them cool somewhat.

Twist off their heads: this will also pull out the black, threadlike viscera.

Remove the wings and small legs.

Make a seasoned flour with 4 tablespoons any  flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, a little pepper and chili powder, a shake of ground coriander, and dried garlic granules.

Roll the precooked locusts in a beaten whole egg, then roll them in the seasoned flour. Shake excess flour off.

Fry in olive oil for 1 1/2-2 minutes, till color turns golden brown.

Alternately, use prepared “shnitzel” crumbs, or fry in tempura batter.

Serve with a lemony tahini sauce, or a za’atar pesto made more lemony than usual.

Crunch! Enjoy!

Convinced? Good. But we are obliged to report two problems with serving locusts.

First,  you’ll probably have to tell your family a fat lie and claim it’s something else, or they probably won’t eat it.

Second, Israel’s agriculture ministry has sprayed insecticides on the little creatures. So by this time, the cloud of edible visitors has succumbed to a cloud of toxins.

Worse luck.

More local and sustainable eating on Green Prophet:

• Download Moroccan Argan Oil Recipes
• Salt-Preserved Lemons
• Go Wild With Edible Weeds

Image of fried grasshoppers via Shutterstock.

Miriam also blogs at Israeli Kitchen.

Major health institutions, restaurants, and company canteens in Israel now opt for a vegetarian Monday.

Proud of its environmental initiatives, Israel created an interactive map showing Israeli green influence around the globe. Israelis can legitimately talk about grass-roots projects like turning a huge landfill into an ecology park, too.

Now Israel has embraced the Meatless Monday movement with enthusiasm. Established in Israel only a few months ago in November 2012, it’s taking off like wildfire.

The Meatless Monday movement began in the U.S. in 2003, at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Monday Campaigns.  It gained more popularity when promoted by celebrities Sir Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono in 2009.  Tel Aviv University caught on to the meatless day as far back as April 2010, and late in 2013, three women and a few volunteers formally launched the movement  in Israel.

Miki Haimovich, Maya Zuriel and Liat Zvi  are  development and managing partners of the Meatless Monday campaign in Israel and strategic consultants by profession. They are pictured above. Their efforts have had an amazing success in a short period of time.

So far, the Bnei Zion hospital, the Israeli Dieticians Society, and the Israeli Cardiology Foundation have turned their lunchrooms meatless on Mondays, while over 24  restaurants and catering companies have done the same. Large companies like Intel Israel, with over 8000 employees, the national electric company, and Motorola Israel serve meatless Monday meals in their cafeterias. The influential foodie magazine, Al HaShulchan, promotes meatless eating on the second day of the week, reporting many positive responses from readers and restauranteurs.

But it’s hardly surprising.The culture of big, meaty meals never had much of a chance in Israel. Meat was an expensive luxury  up until recent years, a splurge for the holidays or weddings. And Israelis of all ethnic streams love their vegetables.  A festive meal must always start with at least six, if not a dozen, mezze salads. Falafels and other street food sandwiches are always packed with tomatoes and cucumbers. Salad makes a regular appearance at the breakfast table, something that raises Western eyebrows but is one of the healthiest and most delicious ways to start the day.

Cutting meat out once weekly may not seem to make a great difference, but if enough people do it, the difference in world health and food security, not to mention slowing down the pace of climate change, will be great.

You can find out more about Meatless Monday in Israel here, on the movement’s website (Hebrew), or follow them on Facebook. The video below explains the Meatless Monday movement’s reason for being, in English.

More sustainable, meatless eating on Green Prophet:

• Eat Less Meat And Save The Planet
• 7 Sustainable Food Books
• A Living Wall of Herbs Within Your Reach

Wild marigold, sage and Palestine Oak?An international team sends researchers to Israel to forage medicinal plants.

Old grandmothers, herbalists and nature lovers of all ages have long known that green medicine grows everywhere, as we’ve posted about here on how to grow 7 healing herbs at home. Even many decorative garden plants like aloe vera have valuable healing properties.

But the Bioxplore project, funded by the European Union to the tune of Euros 2 million, has a goal with these plants that reaches much farther than home remedies.  The plants’ active ingredients are isolated and tested in laboratories against pests like bacteria, fungi and worms.  The ultimate aim is to develop new drugs, health supplements and cosmetics, exploiting the wild herbs’ medicinal properties. BioXplore hopes to develop local job opportunities and stimulate scientific, business and cultural exchanges between partner countries, based on these natural medicines and cosmetics.

The partners are are Israel’s Hadassah College, the Biodiversity and Environmental Research Center in the Palestinian Authority, the Leitat Technology Center in Spain and the Hellenic Regional Development Center in Greece. Rutgers University and North Carolina University are associates in the project as well.

Field researchers in Israel, Greece, and Spain have been actively gathering plant specimens since November 2011. In Israel, eighteen students from Hadassah College’s Biotechnology Department conduct regular hikes on plant-collecting trips. They have walked the ground  from the northern Negev to the Judean Hills, the Hula Valley and Mount Hermon – and many points in between.

President of the Israeli Herbalists Association, Dr. Mina Faran, wryly says, “The researchers need strong legs.”

The plan is to collect between 700 to 800 samples of native Israeli species.

Dr. Faran makes a number of skin creams based on medicinal plants (and indeed, this writer learned to make several kinds of creams in courses Dr. Faran teaches). She gives an example of a cream for atopic dermatitis based on purslane. Other products on their way to development and marketing might treat other major illnesses.

Among antibacterial herbs under research are:

1. The Palestine Oak

2. The Terebinth

3. The Mediterranean Stinkbush

4. Chamomile, which grows wild everywhere in the spring

5. Carobs

6. Sage

7. Nettles

8 Marigolds

All these plants have been known for centuries as wild edibles and medicine. Some destroy bacteria, others  work against fungus, others are anti-inflammatory and soothing, and yet others boost the immune system. New plants are added often to BioXplore’s list.

It seems that Israel’s climate encourages medicinal plants to produce strong medicine.

“The aridity of Israel’s climate allows the essential oils to develop inside the plants,” Faran explains.

Essential oils are the most medicinal part of any herb.

The medicine in plants is based on the mysterious interaction of its own chemicals. Isolating a few of a plant’s properties may exploit some of its healing potential, but to draw out the best, the all of plants’ medicinal parts should be used. Hopefully, when it comes to manufacturing natural medicines, Bioxplore’s researchers will remember this.

More from Green Prophet on green medicine:

• Natural Holy Land Healing Research
• Ancient Beduin Natural Cosmetics
• Pakistani Tea Extract May Help Heal Breast Cancer

Image of wild marigolds  and sage from Shutterstock

1. As halvah desert
2. Tehini cookies
3. In baba ganoush
4. Spread on fish
5. Drizzle over BBQ skewers of meat or vegetables
6. On kebabs
7. On rice pilaf
8. For creamy smoothies

Read on…

Halvah lovers know that tahini has a sweet face too. We recently enjoyed a light dessert created by chef Moshe Basson of Jerusalem, who squirted alternating threads of tahini and silan date honey onto a plate  to form a pretty pattern and a delicious treat.

And if you’ve never baked our techinah cookies, well, you’re in for a delightful surprise.

Tahini has a particular affinity for eggplant. Dining in the Middle East, you’ll enjoy salads like Baba Ganoush (recipe below). And a simple grilled eggplant drizzled with olive oil becomes a feast with a good dollop of tahini on the side. Chopped tomatoes and herbs round the dish out, and then all you need is good bread or a hot pita.

How to make tehini as a dip:
You’ll want to brighten your tahini with lemon juice, a little crushed garlic, salt, and if you like, a little cayenne. Thin it to your liking with water – but beware: when first adding water, it looks like it won’t incorporate. Then all of a sudden, your tahini paste has gone liquid. Add water slowly, stopping once you’re satisfied with the taste and texture.

Now that you have seasoned tahini, try drizzling it over these hot dishes, just before serving:

• grilled fish
• grilled kebabs, either meat or vegetable skewers
• quinoa pilaf

A typical Middle Eastern way of serving lamb kebabs is to surround them with humus and drizzle tahini over them.

Tahini seasoned as above makes a fine, simple dip for raw vegetable sticks.

Can you do anything with the floating layer of oil in a fresh  jar of tahini? Sure. Skim it off and use instead of peanut oil  in stir- fries. You don’t need much to add a subtle, nutty flavor to the dish.

Tahini substitutes for peanut butter in many recipes. Consider making your next smoothie creamy with a teaspoon or two of plain tahini.

Savory sweet, tahini adds a healthy dose of minerals, especially calcium, to your daily fare. It is rich, but sesame oil, unlike many other fats, has no cholesterol. So get that poor jar out of the fridge and put it to work for you.

Enjoy!

More about tahini on Green Prophet:

• Baba Ganoush recipe
• Eggplant with Tahini/Labneh Sauce recipe
• Tahini Fuels The Countries That Fuel The World!

Photo of hummus and tahini plate via Shutterstock. All other photos by Miriam Kresh. Miriam also blogs at Israeli Kitchen