Vegan Ice Cream without sugar

This is very easy to make, without ice cream machine.
Take 4 small bananas, very ripe, so the peel should look brown, but the inside not too brown.
Peel the bananas and put them in a bag in the freezer for a few days.
Take 250 ml 100 % coconut milk, I use Chaokoh, and a bag of  amasake (fermented sticky rice, available in every supermarket in Thailand under the name "kow maak"{ข้าวหมาก}, it is the best form of natural sweetness, 40% maltose). Put both the amasake and the coconut milk 10 minutes in the freezer, and then put the bananas , coconut milk and amasake in the food processor, add 3 table spoons (or more, depending on personal taste) of pure cacao powder and blend for a few minutes till very smooth. Put in an airtight container in the freezer (the less air in the container, the better) for at least 5 hours. I did not use cacao here, I used carob powder as I had still left, so the color is a little bit lighter.  
Bon  apetit!
If you leave it overnight in the freezer, it gets a bit hard: move from freezer to fridge 4 hours before consumption.

Arrowroot: as a medicine

I promised someone of the Thai Health Food Society to write about arrowroot: you can buy it at Foodland and it is the only starch (except for Kudzu, what is impossible to find in Thailand) that belongs in a healthy kitchen. When you have stomach problems or a cold, just dissolve one table spoon in a cup of cold water, put it in a pot , heath it up, add umeboshi (for sale in Lemon Farm, they call it buay cheen, Chinese plum), add shredded ginger, and a table spoon of healthy soy sauce (I only use Sun Chaw Wong, you can find it in Fuji Supermarket  of at Lemon Farm).
You will feel much better soon :)

3-MCPD

We easily go for less healthier choices, not knowing what is in the products that we buy. Soy sauce is one of those choices, as when we shop in our supermarket, we rather buy soy sauce there than in our health food store. The "commercial" soy sauce has nothing to do with the "traditional" soy sauce from our health food store. Most commercial soy sauces contain sugars and also 3-MCPD. 3-MCPD or (3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol or 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol) is an chemical compound which is carcinogenic and has male anti-fertility effects. It is created in foods by protein hydrolysis by adding hydrochloric acid to speed up the reaction of the (soy) protein with lipids at high temperatures. It has been found far exceeding health standards by in some cases thousand of times in many Chinese and Southeast Asian sauces such as Oyster sauce, Hoisin sauce and Soy sauce, but Korean or Japanese sauces do not utilize hydrochloric acid in production and therefore do not produce 3-MCPD. This does not means that Korean and Japanese sauces are healthier, it means only that they do not contain 3-MCPD. I once had the honour to speak with the 85 years old cook of Hirohito, the former emperor of Japan, and he told me that at the imperial court, they only used Kikoman soy sauce, but not the commercial one, which is made in only one day, but a brew only made for the emperor, fermented for more than one year. Using hydrochloric acid is a far cheaper and faster method but inevitably creates carcinogens, which is why artificial soy sauce can sell for far cheaper than traditionally fermented soy sauce. One good soy sauce available in Thailand is the Sun Chaw Wong soy sauce, made from GMO free ingredients, rich in amino acids, fermented for up to one year. This brand has 3 different soy sauce , one is without sugar.

2) Toxins in our environment

I wrote in August :

In the coming weeks I will write a series of articles about toxins:
1) toxins in the air
2) toxins in our environment
3) toxins in our food
so soon I will try to find the time to publish some more about point # 2.

my best pickle ever!!! Papaya!!

2 weeks ago I got an email from Bill Hettig, my pickle teacher, about a papaya pickle.
http://www.perfectpickler.com/using-your-noodle/ . As I did not have the Rogan Josh, I mixed with the scallions, garlic, grated ginger, kosher salt, 2 crushed Thai chilies and a tablespoon of the unripe papaya seeds. Papaya seeds are very healthy and a little bit of peppery taste. They are anti malaria, can be used as an antibacterial agent for Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus or Salmonella typhi, and is nephroprotective (protect the kidneys) in toxicity-induced kidney failure.
Qua taste, this is probably one of the best pickles I have ever made :D
For your info, in Asia you ll find the ripe papaya with the fruits, and the unripe papaya in the vegetable section
The first week, the pickle is a bit slimy (can probably be solved by adding a crated carrot) but after 2 weeks the slime disappears. I can eat much more of this pickle , than e.g. from my kimchi and saurkraut, it is much easier to make, it is much more orginal, it is MY perfect pickle!!

With the orange tool, I peel my vegetables, with the blue one, I shred my vegetables.
Another variant: 1 kg shredded unripe papaya + 1 shredded carrot (160gr)+ 3 crushed chili's + 3 gloves garlic, crushed + 1 table spoon grated ginger + 70 gr finely cut scallions + 24 gr kosher salt (2%). Mix all with your hands, let it rest about 10 minutes and crush everything during 10 minutes with a mortar, in order to break the cells open , to facilitate the merger of tastes and the release of the natural juices. Put afterwards all in your pickle pot, if necessary add water till the pot is full, and close the pot. As I live in the tropics, I keep this pot 12 hours in room temperature (30 Celsius) and put then my pickle pot in a reversed "au bain Marie", in a pot with chilled water, and cover this with a lid. Twice a day, I add some ice cubes, to maintain the temperature (approx 25 degrees C), till I can smell clearly the fermentation, and then I put all the pickled stuff in a glass jar in my fridge, where it can stay up to one month.

Before I continue with toxins....

I want to present you Eric Lechasseur, one of the best macrobiotic Chefs of the moment.
Click here for his videos.

1)Toxins in the air

A recent study showed that the air inhouse is more polluted than the outside air.
Dust in homes, offices, and other human environments contains small amounts of plant pollen, human and animal hairs, parts of insects, textile fibers, paper fibers, minerals from outdoor soil, human skin cells, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment. Also be aware that there are gasses from paint, cleaning products, possible radiation from building materials, etc. And as dust is always in motion, we inhale this dust, so it finds a way into our lungs.
This dust is not easy to avoid, except by regular wet cleaning.
Another option is taking good care of our lungs: dried shitake mushroom, soaked and cooked, lotus root (cooked as a vegetable), daikon and ginger : all foods, which stimulate the removal of mucus from the lungs, and by doing so, also eliminate the toxins (dust) from the lungs.
The more mucus you have in the lungs, the easier toxins will stick.
Most mucus is made by eating meat and diary products, so avoiding those foods, will also help you heal.