Herbel, a Moroccan wheat soup which is like our porridge
Herbel is a wheat soup that dish reminds Moroccans of breakfasts during Aid El Fitr and Eid El Adha. A recipe that has probably crossed the centuries.
Health
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 […]
What’s in season April
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 […]
Thyme Is A Natural Acne Remedy
In Palestine no breakfast is complete without a small plate of oil and Zaa'tar, a special herb mix of thyme, sesame seeds and salt. New research has now found that herbal preparations of thyme could be more effective in treating acne than prescription creams.