My Halal Kitchen by Yvonne Maffei
Just in time for your Eid celebrations, a blog called My Halal Kitchen, with some of the most amazing and delicious totally halal recipes you can imagine.
Here is what the author has to say about herself:
Publisher Bio
Yvonne Maffei, MA graduated from Ohio University with a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies and a Master’s degree in International Studies, where she specialized in international education, journalism and health. She has lived and traveled abroad in various regions throughout Latin America, Europe, the southern Mediterranean and North Africa as well as the American foodie cities of San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Yvonne has been cooking and writing since she was a pre-teen and always wanted to turn her passion and hobby into something more. When one of her recipes was published in Cooking Light magazine, it was all the inspiration she needed to make a necessary life and career change. After years of being a school teacher, she decided to re-angle her teaching platform from the classroom to her blog where she began writing about halal food and cooking and thus began a new career out of writing about food, travel and healthy, halal living. Today Yvonne writes and publishes MyHalalKitchen.com, a blog about halal food and cooking. She currently teaches cooking classes, gives lectures on healthy eating, and consults schools on how to source healthy, halal ingredients and create tasty healthy and halal recipes for their school lunches. She resides in Chicago, IL.
Her recipes are clear and easily understood, and her illustrations are beautiful. She also provides resources for halal-standard foods, and fresh dairy and produce.
PARAPROSDOKIANS
PARAPROSDOKIANS are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.
1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.
3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hearr them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
6. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
8.They begin the evening news with ‘Good Evening,’ then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
10. Buses stop in bus stations. Trains stop in train stations. On my desk is a work station.
11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.
12. In filling out an application, where it says, ‘In case
of emergency, notify:’ I put ‘DOCTOR.’
13. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
15. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
16. You do not need a parachute to skydive.
You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
17. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery
easier to live with.
18. There’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t get away.
19. I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
20. You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
21. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and
call whatever you hit the target.(Sounds like a work strategy)
22. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
23. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
24. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian
any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
25. Where there’s a will, there are relatives.
And my favorite that I’m “resembling” more & more……
I’m supposed to respect my elders, but its getting
harder and harder for me to find one now.
Hotel Stay? Where to Use Your Sanitizing Wipes
Found this morning in the Bottom Line Newsletter:
As a person who stays in hotels, it never occurred to me to wipe down the main light switch (DUH!) or the bedside light, or that the most bacteria filled objects of all would be the sponges and rags used to clean them. Oh UGH! I think carrying sanitizing wipes sounds like a really good idea!
The Four Dirtiest Surfaces in a Hotel Room
When you enter a hotel room, you already know that it’s probably teeming with germs from the many strangers who stayed there before you.
But, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Spend hours cleaning every corner? Cover yourself in plastic wrap? Not travel?
Well, there’s a new (and much more realistic) strategy that you can try, because a recent study has identified the areas in hotel rooms that have the most bacteria.
And they’re not all spots that you would commonly think to avoid or to wipe clean.
So instead of worrying or just feeling uncomfortable, I’m going to focus on sanitizing these few hot spots—and you can, too. It doesn’t take long (there are only four!).
FOUR GROSSEST AREAS
Researchers collected samples from various surfaces in three freshly cleaned hotel rooms in three different states (a total of nine rooms), and then, back at the lab, detected how many bacteria were on each surface by conducting something called aerobic plate counts. The higher the surface’s “count,” the more bacteria it contained. The top four dirtiest surfaces (outside of housekeepers’ cleaning equipment, the toilet, and the bathroom sink and floor—all of which scored over 117 “counts”) turned out to be:
Main light switch: 113
TV remote control: 68
Bedside lamp switch: 22
Telephone keypad: 20
Most items (including the toilet paper holder, mug, bathroom faucet, room door handle, shower floor and bathroom door handle) had relatively moderate amounts of bacteria, with scores between 4 and 11. The two cleanest surfaces, both of which scored only 0.5, were the bed headboard and the curtain rod.
Yuck! Some of these top hot spots, such as the remote control, don’t surprise me, but I never would have thought about the bedside lamp! This news is definitely going to make me rethink the way I always turn on the bedside lamp (without disinfecting it first) while reading before bed. I’m also stunned that the bathroom faucet, the shower floor and the two doorknobs weren’t higher on the list!
You might be wondering which types of bacteria were identified. Unfortunately, the aerobic plate counts measured only how many bacteria there were on the surfaces, not which kinds.
WILL YOU GET SICK?
When I called study coauthor Jay Neal, PhD, a food microbiologist and assistant professor at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management within the University of Houston, he wasn’t overly concerned by the findings, because not all germs will make you sick. But exposure to any pathogens (germs that carry diseases) raises your risk for getting sick, especially if you are immunocompromised. For example, if you’re undergoing chemo…if you’re pregnant…or if you have HIV, you’re more susceptible to infection.
Of course, there’s no way to completely avoid germs, but, in my opinion, it doesn’t hurt to take the following basic precautions—whether you’re immunocompromised or not—to help reduce your risk of getting sick.
A TRAVELER’S BEST FRIEND: SANITIZING WIPES
While Dr. Neal does not believe that sanitizing wipes are necessary, I pack them whenever I travel. You, too, can slip a container of them into your suitcase to disinfect the bacteria-laden surfaces mentioned above the moment that you walk into your hotel room.
Don’t assume that a housekeeper cleaned those areas. Even if a housekeeper did, he or she likely wiped it down with a sponge or mop that was filled with bacteria. Of all the different surfaces that the researchers examined, sponges and mops were the most contaminated items of all!
And, of course, wash your hands when you’re in a hotel room as often as possible with soap and hot water (or use hand sanitizer)—especially before eating or touching your face.
Source(s): Jay Neal, PhD, assistant professor, Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, University of Houston. Researchers reported these findings at the June 2012 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Until the results are published in a peer-reviewed journal, they should be viewed as preliminary.
I always check out those who comment on my blog, to make sure they aren’t someone posing as a commenter, but really selling something. When I visited this visitor, I found posts about Americans and visiting America that cracked me up. Here is one on American greetings 🙂
LOL Olympics Commentary on NBC
Thank you, MomCat, but I am not sure – is this for real, or did someone spend too much time making these up?
And on a lighter side.
This and That
Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so far during the Summer Olympics that they would like to take back:
1. Weightlifting commentator: This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing.
2. Dressage commentator: This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.
3. Gymnast: I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.
4. Boxing Analyst: Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.
5. Softball announcer: If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.
6. Basketball analyst: He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn’t like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.
7. At the rowing medal ceremony: Ah, isn’t that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew.
8. Soccer commentator: Julian Dicks is everywhere. It’s like they’ve got eleven Dicks on the field.
9. Tennis commentator: One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them… Oh my God, what have I just said?
That Cheeky Woman At The Well
Today’s Gospel reading from the Lectionary is one of my favorites, and every time I read it, I am amazed. Amazed that this good Jewish boy would speak to a woman who cavorted with men, having five husbands, and being with a man now who was not her husband. It’s the middle of the day, and he is sitting by a well having a conversation with a woman most good Jewish boys would run from, a woman of ill-repute!
She must have had a rough life, five husbands, etc. but it hasn’t broken her spirit, and she is joking around with Jesus. She knows something about Jewish traditions, but has no idea who Jesus might be. Then, oddity of oddity, he reveals himself to her as the Messiah – to this woman. He reveals himself to a woman at the very lowest end of the social scale, a woman barely tolerated in her own society. This woman believes him; for all her sins, she ‘hears’ the truth of what he is saying in her heart.
John 4:1-26
4Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’
13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’
21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’
God Speaking – Are You Listening?
Last week I read an article about a correlation between having more friends and social connections and living a long life. Part of me thought “but what if you are sort of stuck in one place and some of those relationships are toxic?” Doesn’t the nature of the relationship matter? But the study didn’t comment on unhealthy relationships, just that having long standing relationships with people you could go to and trust was a healthy thing.
Then I started to feel a little sad, thinking how many times I have moved and how hard it is to build long-lasting healthy relationships. I thought of how little I participate with the social networking sites, and how my preference for privacy impacts on my socializing. Would this have an impact on how long I will live?
Then, some surprising things started happening. One far-away friend called, just to hear my voice. She had broken her leg, just after unpacking from yet another move, and had been incapacitated. Very shortly, I got a call from another Doha friend, and a chatty e-mail from another. We all lead busy lives; how was it they all thought of me the same week?
My best friend from college e-mailed me, and a friend from long-ago times in Germany e-mailed me to set up a telephone date. A newer friend called to ask us if we’d like to hit the Shakespeare Fest with them. I started to realize that I DO have a lot of healthy, loving, long-term relationships, some with people a lot like me, who have moved a lot and not lived too long in any one spot, and some just the opposite, with people who have lived lives entirely unlike mine, in one spot most their lives.
It made me laugh. Sometimes, God answers prayers you don’t even know you’ve prayed. If you keep your eyes open, if you pay attention, you can see the pattern. It’s one good reason to keep a prayer journal, because so many times our prayers are answered and we forget even to say thank-you; once the prayer is answered, we move on, forgetting even how important our request once was. God spotted my little pity-party and gave me the gift of a little shift in perspective. Thanks be to God.
On a similar train of thought, as I read recently a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think of how incredibly wealthy we all are, living in this day and age, and we live blithely on, unaware how very blessed we are. We worry about having ‘enough’ in terms of material comforts and goods, and never give a second thought to how good we have it.
I think of growing up in Alaska, where my Mother always had to order our annual snowsuits from the catalog so that they would arrive before the last boat could get through. I remember the pipes freezing up, and being sent to the creek to haul water into the house. I remember going with my Dad to the cold-storage locker, where they kept the frozen fish and meats from fishing and hunting season. (I also remember hating Moose-burgers, they were so game-y, but it was what was for dinner.)
AdventureMan laughs and says people were never intended to live in Florida, that Florida is a swamp, but with air-conditioning, it is bearable.
So you think of how the kings and emirs and caliphs and chieftans of old – even a hundred years ago – lived, and you look at how we live, and take it all the way down to border-line poverty. What I’m about to say does not apply to the homeless, or the transient homeless, sleeping in family basements or on friend’s couches. There is a strata of the poorest poor to whom this does not apply.
For the most part, we all have shelter, and most of it is climate controlled. We have some heat for when the temperatures are chilly, and some kind of fan or air conditioning to mitigate hot weather. We have windows with glass that can be opened and shut, and we have coverings for those windows. We have multiple changes of clothing that we can wear in various combinations.
We have toilets, and running water. We have ways to heat that water and to chill it. We have ways to heat food, and to keep it from spoiling. We have entertainment, books, televisions, phones and tablets to amuse us. We have exposure to places and ideas without ever leaving our homes. We can experience the athletes ordeals, frustrations and exaltations in London as they compete for medals. Ordinary people can train and compete on the world stage for these medals.
We have roads which stay stable in rain and heat, not bogging us down in mud and muck or snow, becoming impassable for months at a time. We can speak to friends and family anywhere in the world for a pittance. Anyone can; it’s affordable.
We have, most of us, enough to eat. Our problems are more those of excess than of want.
If Eleanor of Aquitaine were to come visit me, the Duchess of Aquitaine, the wife of the King of France and then wife of the King of England, she would be open-mouthed with astonishment at the luxury of our lives. She lived in palaces, places of great luxury for the times – for a very few. Even so, the palaces had no running water, nor bathrooms. No electricity, no heating other than fires in hearths or stoves. She would think our modest houses with our indoor bathrooms and cooking facilities and gathering spaces were miraculous, and she would be even more astonished that we common folk had such amenities. She would marvel at the privacy we have, rooms in which only one or two people sleep. She would look in our closets and be boggled at the amount of clothing we own which we never even wear, and the quality of the seams and stitching. She would look in wonder at our transport, and how the most common of people have cars, can fly to another city, or across the wide oceans.
She would be astonished that even the very poor and us commoners have rights, and judicial procedures protecting our rights against the rapacity of the nobles. She would marvel at our medical care, and that so many have access to it. I’m certain she would find us cheeky, and lacking in a humble acceptance of our station in life. I suspect she would be appalled at the idea of a person having the freedom to pursue an education and an idea, to create their own wealth by the work of their minds and hands.
She was an enormously capable and talented woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but once married, while she maintained ownership of her lands, her husbands controlled their use and revenues. If she could see women today, able to choose their husbands, able to attain an education and earn a living wage, supporting children, sometimes parents, and saving for retirement, controlling their own wealth and choosing their own destiny, she would blink in disbelief.
I would enjoy showing her modern life, the bad along with the good, and telling her about our trips to Africa, and our life lived in many countries in the world. I would show her my treasures gathered from here and there (and everywhere! 😉 ) and maybe take her to Pier 1 or World Market where she could pick up a treasure or two for herself. I would show her my fabric collection and watch her swoon with pleasure, and some of my perfume bottle collection, collected with glee from tiny stores in the Middle East. I’d take her to church with me, and out to lunch at Five Sisters. She could sleep in the guest suite, in a great big bed with soft covers and a walk-in closet and her own private bathroom with hot and cold running water and a jacuzzi tub and a shower. I would show her how the refrigerator works, and the microwave, and the oven, and the outdoor sprinkling system. She would absorb it all, and be full of wonder.
And yet every day, we get up and we live our lives oblivious to our riches . . .
Dust Storms and Diseases
I found this on AOL News/Huffpost this morning, and thought of the awe-inspiring dust storms in Kuwait and Qatar. Living on the tenth floor and watching the enormity of a dust storm rolling into Kuwait City was like being in the middle of a thunder-storm – there is nothing you can do to stop it. It can be terrifying. You realize your true importance in the larger scheme of things (miniscule) and the enormous power of God. You also realize that what you are seeing is just a tiny fraction of his true power.
We also all knew that the dust storms of any size carried contaminants and allergens that could trigger allergic reactions for weeks. This story claims the dust storms in Kuwait and Iraq are the most lethal of all.
Dust Storms’ Health Risks: Asthma Triggers, Chemicals, Bacteria May Be In The Wind
Posted: 08/11/2012 10:44 am
Lynne PeeplesBecome a fan
lynne.peeples@huffingtonpost.com
Scientists are predicting that the frequency of dust storms, on the rise in the last few years, will continue to increase. Some have also suggested that these storms might well be carrying a more hazardous payload than meets the eye. Among the dangers that experts say are blowing in the wind: asthma triggers, toxic chemicals and infectious disease.
“We are experiencing heat waves and drought across the country. And we anticipate more dust being blown into the air,” said William Sprigg, a dust storm expert at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. “Anything that is loose on the soil is going to be picked up by these storms.”
A look back 80 years to the Dust Bowl could offer a hint of what’s to come. According to a scientific study published in October 1935, Kansas experienced its “most severe measles epidemic,” as well as abnormally high rates of strep throat, respiratory problems, eye infections and infant mortality during the intense dust storms that struck from February to May of that year. The researchers highlighted the potential for both short- and long-term health troubles associated with the dust, but stated that they couldn’t find any pathogens in their dust samples.
The same regions that were affected then — from New Mexico to the Dakotas — may be at greatest risk from dust storms in the future, said Dale Griffin, an environmental health microbiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Griffin points to the unsustainable strip farming methods of the 1920s and ’30s, and consecutive years of desiccating heat and high winds that combined to devastate a large swath of the country. And he agrees with Sprigg that conditions today could favor more of the same. This July was the hottest month on record, which has worsened an already devastating drought that experts say has been exacerbated by poor farming practices.
“Because of climate change, it looks like we’re possibly shifting into a phase similar to what occurred in the 1930s, or worse,” said Griffin. “We may be seeing an increase in dust storms that could affect human health.”
Texas and Oregon are among the regions already seeing a rise in such events. Haboobs — severe thunderstorms that kick up massive amounts of dust — have blanketed Phoenix more frequently in recent years, including one headline-grabber last July.
The most well-understood health threat from these storms is the dust particles themselves. If small enough, they can slip past a body’s natural defenses — nose hairs, for example — to infiltrate and damage one’s respiratory system. Now scientists are learning about an array of harmful substances that may also hitch a ride: arsenic and other heavy metals, agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, as well as a laundry list of bacteria, fungi and viruses.
In the southwest, one airborne hazard gaining significant attention is valley fever. A debilitating and sometimes fatal infection, it is contracted from fungal spores naturally present in the region’s soil. Could dust storms send these spores into the air and into the lungs of residents? Sprigg is currently investigating a possible connection between last year’s haboobs and subsequent infections. Such links haven’t been well studied, he said, because people had assumed that the sun’s ultraviolet rays would kill any airborne microbes. But it seems that the dust particles themselves provide a shield for their passengers, explained Sprigg, who is collaborating on a system to predict when dust storms will occur in order to alert area residents, schools and traffic cops.
Other parts of the world are even more familiar with dust storms and their dangers.
The region of Africa between Senegal and Ethiopia has long been subject to severe meningitis epidemics, which research now suggests is at least partially linked to dust storms. In Asia, asthma and other children’s respiratory problems have been found to be more common the week after dust storms.
Perhaps most notorious for pestilent dust is the Middle East.
Navy Capt. Mark Lyles, of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., found high levels of aluminum, heavy metals, as well as bacteria, fungi and viruses in samples of the ultrafine, and therefore lung-penetrable, Kuwaiti and Iraqi dust. He suggested that parts of this cocktail may be responsible for the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome suffered by veterans of the Iraq War, as well as the high rates of health problems among soldiers returning from the dusty theater of war today.
“Baba, You Are A Terrible Driver!”
Our tiny terror, the Happy Toddler, is at that developmental stage where he says “No” even if it is something he wants to do, he says he doesn’t like things he loves and he is just compelled to be contrary. It is exasperating, and it is also hilarious.
Yesterday he dropped his favorite train as he and AdventureMan were on the long bridge en route back to the beach, and yelled for “Baba” to help him with his train.
“I can’t stop now; we’re on a bridge!” AdventureMan explained.
“I want a red light! I want a red light!” the Screeching Toddler shouted, knowing that red lights mean stop, and that a stop would mean his Baba might reach the train and return it to him.
“We’re on a bridge! There are no red lights!” AdventureMan explained again.
“Baba, you are a terrible driver!” Angry Toddler said.
When they finally reached a red light and AdventureMan rescued the train and restored it to the Terrible Two and a Half Toddler, everything was right again.
“Am I still a terrible driver?” AdventureMan asked him.
“No Baba, you are a GOOD driver!” the Happy Toddler grinned.
Surf’s Up at Pensacola Beach!
The surfer’s are out early this morning, taking advantage of the roaring surf:
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