Homemade Pure Aloe Vera Gel

How simple and easy it is, to make my own health products! Well, at least, when it comes to handling Aloe Vera.

This plant has become so infamous that I will skip the introductions, and simply say how great it is for the skin! It is well-known, for treating all sorts of skin problems, from acne & burns, to fungi & dryness.

About five leaves of this size, would make for a personal dose.
Photo from "Health Care After a Disaster."

1. Collect several Aloe Vera leaves. It has a spiky edge, so if you are sensitive to thorns, you might want to use thick gloves, or a knife. Personally, I just tore the outer leaves, by pulling them sidewards.

2. Use a kitchen board and your good knife, and remove the spiky edges from a leaf. Wash it quickly, so it has no dirt or that yellow goo, which is an irritant.

3. Then, press the leaf down against the board, and insert your knife between the skin and the gel. (The gel is the nice firm stuff inside the leaf, and not the liquid goo that comes out of it.) Carefully slice the gel away from the skin.

4. Make sure to remove leftover green bits, before you do the other side. It is quite hard to hold the gel down, without any skin. After you finished with one side, then do the other side, in the same manner.

Unless you've got a better idea,
throw away the leaves' skins.

5. Wash the pure gel in water, quickly, and put the gel into the blender! Do this for each leaf, making sure no leaf still has any yellow goo. It is very noticeably.

6. When done, activate the blender! Give it around half a minute, to make sure all the gel has become liquidy. The end result is a gooey liquid.

A bit foamy, after the blending.

It stays good for many months, inside a tight-lid box! By itself, it is anti-bacterial.

Wash your hands, before you apply it to your skin! Aloe Vera gel can be, usually, applied to any part of the body. Try a small dose, to see if it irritates any part of your body.

I use it on my face and hands! It helped me get rid of some unfriendly skin problem in the past. I also use it on my funky parts, when I feel more funky than usual. ;-)

How I Learned To Be Hungry

At the tender age of twenty(20), I started taking interest in my diet, as a particular. Before then, I mostly bothered with avoiding the "really bad" items, like Coke Inc. sodas and McBlurghs.

You see, it is a funny thing, but I was actually raised on those two seemingly friendly corporations. We always had Coca Cola in the fridge, growing up, and it was not a rare event for us to get eat at the local Burger King. Oh, memories...

(A couple paragraphs about my childhood... Skip it if you can't bother...)
Now, surprisingly, already as children, both me and my older brother started condemning our parents for smoking. We were raised on certain values, such as the nineties(90's) American television, and we did not really have other sources of acculturation. It did not take much, from that act, to turn against Coke. Such consuming habits (pun intended) were bad for people, and we saw the truth in that; even if it was coated with zeal and general morality on the TV.

Eventually, I noticed myself becoming more fat than I wanted to be, as a kid that watched a lot of WWF and NWN wrestling and valued physical aesthetics. I realized that it was not just "bad" consumables that were hurting people, but it was a greater issue to observe and examine. At that point, I started noticing my diet, and reduced specific items, such as Peanut snacks ("Shoosh") and pita bread (that extremely doughy bread, if you've ever seen one.) It worked.
(End of childhood bit.)

As an older teenager, looking for more excitement and understanding, I learned of vegetarianism and veganism. I took the time to experiment with different foods, that I would either reduce and avoid or introduce and increase. I decided to completely embrace a 99.9% vegetarian diet, and eventually vegan, at about twenty(20).

Joel Salatin knows how it feels like, to be a hungry farmer.

In recent years, after much learning from experience, I have come to the conclusion, that while I do support the moral issue of killing or mistreating animals for food (or otherwise), I do not feel that I would rather starve, than feed on others. A year with hippie anarchists in nature, with very little food, and also a lot of adventures, in both East and West, has taught me the value of eating what is available.

Only recently, have I really learned the meaning of being hungry. Do not get me wrong now, I had many occasions in which I was famished, but managed with the little bread and fruit that were available. But, that only worked when I was living an abnormal (and generally unsustainable) life style. I feel that the excitement kept me going, mostly.

So, to conclude, while a person can survive on less, at least more often than not; it does seem apparent, that living hungry is not pleasant or wanted. These days, at twenty-six(26), I am still 99% vegetarian, but I eat cheese regularly to keep full, and even some eggs.

Eating the flesh of animals is still not attractive for me, morally, so I avoid it; but, I do get those little tidbits here and there, when they are made available.

What about road kill and moral corpse consumption?

Honestly, I have to agree that it is moral to eat it, if you found it dead. However, it would not be so, if you know that its' death had anything to do with you being hungry.

I imagine a farmer, keeping an eye out for fresh corpses, to quickly process for eating and storage. It might not be sexy, but hunger does not seem to care about aesthetics.

Plants Can Talk

People can listen.

Syrian Rue

 

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Harding Grass

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Party

Broad (Fava) Beans Are Awesome

They grow so well.
Dozens of them growing in my garden.

Coming from the Middle East, I was confused about the difference between Ful (Fūl medammis) and Broad Beans. In the markets, the white broad beans are usually titled "Great Northern Broad Beans", while the common and local beige/brown colored broad beans are simply called "Ful".

Common and simple!

This is after the very common Arabic dish, which is basically cooking and turning the brown broad beans into a paste. Delicious.

FYI, I often take a dried bean and suck on it, until the shell is removed, and then snack on it raw. Buhahaha :=P

Lemon Water [FREE]

Slice a lemon in half. Prepare an empty and clean cup; preferably from glass.

Take saw-knife or fork, and grind the flesh of the lemon into the cup. Make sure you turn the lemon towards the cup, so you do not spray nor leak beyond the edges. Juice will flow - maybe some seeds as well. No worries, for the seeds drop to the bottom.

Add water. Not too much. Probably just a bit more than the amount of juice. Mix with the fork or knife. A sweet-sour drink is ready for you enjoyment! :-)

Greens Growing Gigantically Good.

The shock and awe of winter in the eastern regions of the Mediterranean sea. Morning light. Sitting on my bed with the laptop's webcam activated. Time to show the greens!

I recon some sort of fox or digging animal attacked my Turnip root. ><' The garden-bed was dug again, and all the new seedlings got buried. Lucky the root was not eaten.

Petting my strong growing Radish patch, showing other friends around and behind. I love mixed gardens. There is nothing more joyous than seeing my Broad Beans climbing up and covering the ground so well.

Lacking a three dimensional feel to it - this is my circle garden-bed, surrounded by the stones dug up from it. Heavily stoned place :-P This one is strictly mixed with everything I get - seed or root plant.

Eating Fresh And Low Sodium.

200mg Sodium per 100g
My choice of cream!

It took me a while to realize that our Human bodies can seriously get dehydrated by confusing certain foods that digest slowly and contain a lot of sodium - or salt in common language.

For example, for dairy eaters such as myself with an attraction to cream or yogurt cheese (spreadable), it is a mandatory action to check the sodium content listed on the package. I have felt the difference between choices in practice already, and recommend that you notice it as well!