Purslane recipe: Verdolaga con queso
Verdolaga con queso recipe made from foraged superweeds.
Health
Vertical Gardening Celebrated in Tel Aviv
This past weekend Yael Stav offered tours of her home and vertical garden as part of the “Houses From Within” Batim Mibifnim exhibition in Tel Aviv. Some of the garden was built using recycled materials and compost from her children’s eco-friendly diapers.
Pesticides Causing Brain Damage to be Banned by Israel
Down side of crop dusting is pesticides that cause neurological damage: photo by Alberto Denkberg/Haaretz Air and water pollution in Israel from insecticides, oil and other petroleum-based residues from older gas stations; and other chemicals are feared to be causing neurological damage to people according to new studies. Various forms of insecticides, especially the use […]
May’s Seasonal Produce: Sour Plums and Cherries
Sour green plums the size of large marbles are in the shuk now, a seasonal favorite of the Iraqi community. Eat them out of hand as a snack, sprinkling each bite with a little salt. The classic Iraqi way to cook them is to pair them with meat in a flavorful stew. And if you […]
Enforcing Smoke-free Workplaces in Jordan
I just spit out my coffee. About to move house for the fifth time in as many years, I take a day to escape the cardboard box Himalayas towering in the living room. Plus there’s heavy construction going on next door, and it sounds like all of Amman’s stray cats are in heat. I grab a laptop and […]
Jordanian Bank Sanabel Buys One Quarter of a Congo Forest
An Islamic bank in Jordan, Sanabel, has bought up over a quarter of a Congo forest for ‘sustainable projects’ When I first read about the acquisition of 500,000 hectares of high value forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo by an Islamic investment bank in Jordan, I thought one thing: land grab. Over the last […]
TIPA’s Biodegradable Packaging as Benign as an Orange Peel
Two Israeli women founded TIPA – the first company in Israel to offer 100% biodegradable and recyclable beverage packaging, which is a particularly difficult feat to achieve. Daphna Nissenbaum and Tal Neuman founded the company in 2010 in order to address the dire need for packaging that is genuinely ecologically-sensitive. And so far, they have […]
Israel Turns to Arab Neighbors to Avert Tomato Crisis
Tomatoes are staple to the Israeli diet; Israel looks to Jordan to augment its tomato supply. Last year a spike in cottage cheese prices helped spark the tent protests in Tel Aviv and inspired the worldwide Occupy movement. Cottage is a staple of the Israeli diet, so much so that it became a national symbol […]
Energy Drinks and 5 Really Good Reasons to Avoid Them
Energy drinks have come under renewed scrutiny in Dubai, but the Dubai Central Laboratory (DCL) responsible for ensuring their quality and safety has said that they do comply with UAE specifications according to a recent report in Khaleej Times. Last year the UAE banned the sale of drinks like Red Bull, Monster and Rockstar to […]
The Autism Threat and Where to Connect the Dots at Home
Autism is one of those worries that all new parents have to deal with at some point in the early years. The rise in diagnosed cases of over the past few years has been alarming to say the least. The search for answers as to what could be the possible cause or trigger has been […]
Going Green at the Beach? Use Natural Sunblocks
Sun bathing in Sinai is like asking for trouble if not adequately screened from the sun’s UV rays. Beach season is now beginning in Middle East countries sharing beach fronts on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Along with problems like beach littering; and increasing and even record high summer temperatures in the Middle East […]
Vegewarian Herbel, Moroccan Wheat Soup RECIPE
Eat breakfast the way a Moroccan grandmother might make it with this milky, slow-cooked wheat soup. Vegewarian (vegetarian- aware recipes like these) offer you an alternative to meat-based food. Here’s one for this week which brings Morocco into the kitchen. Home cooks in Morocco make a variety of cereal-based soups and porridge from millet, barley […]
Wild Grains And Our Daily Bread Threatened by Global Warming
Sturdy wild wheat and barley are essential for humanity’s survival. New study shows we are losing genetic diversity Israel’s wild wheat and barley are known to be the ancestors of our modern grains. When Man cultivated them, their genetic resistance to drought and disease carried over to cultivated varieties. This aided mankind’s struggle to grow […]
Junk Food for Kids Against the Law in the United Arab Emirates
Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell parents living in Gulf countries that their kids are getting fat because they’re being fed too many McDonald’s burgers, and have them respond by adding some greens to their diet? But this isn’t what happens. Even though a 2010 national school health survey in the United Arab Emirates […]
Sudanese Invents Artificial Pancreas to Eradicate Arab World Diabetes
Sudan’s Mohammad Baloola says his invention can eradicate an emerging Gulf disease: diabetes. As a biomedical engineering student at Ajman University of Science and Technology, Mohammad Baloola found homegrown inspiration for his final year project. Four members of his family are diabetic, a collective muse for his ingenious artificial pancreas. The pancreas is the body’s sole […]
Make your own toxin-free herbal moisturizer
DIY, make your own chemical-free hand and body lotion. At the end of our post on 5 natural ways to keep your skin beautiful, we note how important it is to moisturize. Now, take a good squint at the ingredients on your moisturizer’s label. There’s petroleum in one form or another. Alcohol. One or more […]
Robot Sex the CleanTech Future of Tourism?
Are android sex workers the future of tourism or an absurd use of clean technology? People will soon be having sex with robots as the latest in sex tourism, suggests a recent news report. This novel twist on ‘clean technology’ (the inventors point out that the androids will be made of bacteria-resistant fibers) is enough […]
World Centric’s Compostable Toothbrush Bites Into Dental Product Waste
450 million toothbrushes wind up in landfills every year in the US alone, says sustainable-products company World Centric. The utmost natural and biodegradable toothbrush is a twig from the Miswak shrub and about which we’ve reported. New York-based Lebanese designer Leen Sadder has even tried to make miswak twigs available commercially (read about it here). […]
Grande Camel-ccino, Anyone?
Camel milk joins the herd of new ingredients in milkshakes, cheese and ice cream. Laurie tells you where you can find camel milk products. Exotic camel milk is climbing to the top the menu in coffeehouse classics like cappuccino, latte, and the improbably named Americano (can someone tell me what’s so “stateside” about java with whole milk?). For […]
Garlic and Strawberries – April Seasonal Market
April’s biggest bargain is fresh, green garlic. If you love the odorous bulb – and don’t mind your house smelling like a salami for a few days – now is the time to head out to the shuk and snatch up braided ropes of fresh garlic. Or braid your own, or simply hang it up […]
Northern Israel Monitors Sewage Trucks By GPS
Is Big Brother watching your sewage? Israeli polluters can no longer dump raw sewage, lest they get caught. Drivers often dump collected waste into open areas to save on fuel and avoid paying authorized landfills. One incident occurred in 2009 in which drivers dumped the contents of 50 trucks worth of sewage food waste near the […]
Recycling for Earth Day
Just a few plastic containers that can be reused or recycled Another Earth Day is upon us, and for those of us living the Middle East the very origins of this ecological event have much to do a lot with fossil fuel based energy so prevalent in this region. Aside from the frequently discussed issues surrounding […]
Keeping Up With the Food Blogs
Recipes US offers a portal into hundreds of thousands of blogger recipes, many connected to the Middle East. There is no doubt that home cooking is a good thing for our planet. Forget about the packaging waste you save by cooking up a storm at home, but there is all that petrol going out to […]
Saudi Arabia’s Fast Food Boom is Finger Lickin’ Awful
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) fast food market is expected to reach $4.5 billion in gross sales by 2015, driven by growing demand from its young, western-influenced population, higher disposable incomes, and new financing arrangements, according to a report by Euromonitor, a leading analyst of global markets.Western coffee chains are less about catching a […]
Arsenic-Fed Chickens – Watch Out!
Arsenic and hormones? Until someone checks your chicken, be suspicious of what’s in it. Is this bad news for all those folk in America and probably us in the Middle East who eat factory farm raised chickens: When we wrote previous articles about factory farm raised chickens, such as those used by fast food chains like […]