Ich hab mich in die Nesseln gesetzt!

Stinging nettle is indeed the killer plant I have been trying to avoid. Fascinating actually: it has spines which contain histamine and some other things but once cooked, the stinging power dies and it is good to eat like spinach. I'll pass as I have no gloves right now. But if I'm ever out in the woods dying of hunger, I'll remember this.

Bild des Tages

I was adventuring around Rauschenwasser this afternoon and I discovered this adorable little abode. I think it's for a dog, but I could be wrong. It made me think of the little shrines in My Neighbor Totoro, and the effect was magnified by the fact that I was out in the woods and enjoying the natures and such. I think the resemblance of Miyazaki moves to old Europe makes me like the more and vice-a-versa.

Speaking of which!!! The Japanese trailer for Ponyo on the Cliff is out!! Of course, it looks adoreable and very Miyazaki-like. Can't wait to add this to my collection.

Ingwerbier!

So I'm trying something new this week: Ingwerbier!

That is, making ginger ale/beer. I figure I'm a chemist/biologist, I've worked with yeasties and other bugs, so I should be able to deal with these little guys. I guess I'm a little nervous because I've been so well trained NOT to want to eat what I'm playing with, but I'll get over it, I'm sure. I took some shortcuts on this recipe, but I think it'll turn out well. The quick and easy version is shown here, but I've seen more complicated versions resulting in more flavor or increased alcohol content (this stuff is essentially OH-free). I'm not sure how brave I am yet, but we'll see how things go tonight and I might get braver.

In other news, I love ginger and the way it makes the room smell.

kamera spaß

i might have been playing with my camera's fancy features.

ferienbauernhof

funny thing: http://www.hansa-milch.de/ferienbauernhof.php

the company i get my milk from (i was looking them up to see what the conditions are for the cows) has ranches that let you stay there. i wonder if tours of the milking facility are included?

mehr denken daran

and this. also a watcher

mehr TEDs

more good things to see: suburbia. this guy is hilarious. or maybe i'm just immature. everytime i hear the word 'clusterfuck' i can't help breaking out in hysterics. it's just perfect. he also makes fun of 'wineos'--presumably the audience and despots. i might have caused a stir by laughing out loud. 'theoretical pedestrians' and such. and nature 'band-aids'.

NO REALLY! what it. it's hilarious even if you don't care at all about the horrible rape of land and people that is suburbia.

also very good: green is the new black. this lady has a lot of attitude and is really convinced of her message. i kind of want to meet her. her delivery is rough, but i agree that she has the attitude and message to take on al gore and steve jobs.

really, all of these are good. i'm just going to sit here and watch them all day because my experiment time was gobbled up. sigh.

annnnd more: another TED talk. these are awesome.

gutes essen

michael pollan! interestingly, i think i've had this idea several times. most recently wondering why on earth cherries would put so much of their fruit out of reach if they wanted us to spread them around. also, in reference to why i'm willing to try some fruits i see randomly, but not others (not always sucessful however).

i'm a little obsessed! when you have an hour: see this! it takes a while, but it is quite awesome. props to google.

btw, people looking for birthday gifts... books are beautiful. michael pollan has many. i want them all :P.

also (via lisa): conservative organics? no matter what your pollitical alliance (although i'm fairly sure everyone here is more to the left), we can all find a reason to support locally-grown, non-industrial, non-Farm Bill-supported food.

speaking of which: barack obama's view. i'm not sure i like it or believe it. somehow i just don't think it's going to change anytime soon, although if he really wanted to target big industry and lobbists, the farm bill would get my vote for 1st on the chopping block.

wunderbares website

http://www.foodsubs.com/

that is all.

liebe portland

http://urbanedibles.org/

props to klavierspieler for finding this amazing site! i'm in awe of the awesome residents of portland, or who have compiled this awesome list of more-or-less free fruit. if only this existed in germany. on the plus side, i'm well on my way to making my own such list. more on that later.

Genetically Modified Color: GloFish

yep, you guessed it. i had one of these little guys in high school. me=nerd.

Sent to you by Michael via Google Reader:

Genetically Modified Color: GloFish

via COLOURlovers by evad on 7/13/08

I guess there weren't enough colors in the ocean. When scientist first started working to genetically modify Zebra fish, it was in the hopes that a small mutation would allow the fish to identify certain pollutants in waterways wherever they were introduced. In 1999, Dr. Zhiyuan Gong and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore extracted the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene from a jellyfish that naturally produced bright green bioluminescence. They inserted the gene into the zebrafish genome, causing the fish to glow brightly under both natural white light and ultraviolet light. Their goal was to develop a fish that could detect pollution by selectively fluorescing in the presence of environmental toxins. The development of the always fluorescing fish was the first step in this process. Shortly thereafter, his team developed a line of red fluorescent zebra fish by adding a gene from a sea coral, and yellow fluorescent zebra fish, by adding a variant of the jellyfish gene. Later, a team of Taiwanese researchers at the National University of Taiwan, headed by Professor Huai-Jen Tsai (蔡懷禎), succeeded in creating a medaka (rice fish) with a fluorescent green color. The fish were first introduced into the U.S. market in 2003 after FDA approval: Because tropical aquarium fish are not used for food purposes, they pose no threat to the food supply. There is no evidence that these genetically engineered zebra danio fish pose any more threat to the environment than their unmodified counterparts which have long been widely sold in the United States. In the absence of a clear risk to the public health, the FDA finds no reason to regulate these particular fish. - FDA

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weiße zähne

i just finished zadie smith's novel, white teeth. a friend shared with me a while back something smith herself said about the book in retrospect:

This kind of precocity in so young a writer has one half of the audience standing to applaud and the other half wishing, as with child performers of the past (Shirley Temple, Bonnie Langford et al), she would just stay still and shut up. White Teeth is the literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired tap-dancing 10-year-old.


i think understood vaguely what she meant by that, before i even picked up the book at bookman/bookwoman (7.95$ could be considered a bargain if i didn't love libraries so much--very much my father's son, i am.). by the end of the first chapter i didn't see anything remarkable about the storytelling, but it was interesting and i don't put books down. now in retrospect, it's pretty clear. rough, though it was, still a fun read. the past plays such a huge role in shaping every character's actions and reactions--sometimes it felt like more of the later was going on than the former, but i suppose that's real life (more on reactionism later)? also, every character was so very deep. compared to so many personalities, both real and fictional, none of the rest really seem to have such an extremely detailed history or carefully molded personalities. even the first, most boring character "whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things" is nicely summed up in the "familiar ratios:/ Pebble:Beach./ Raindrop:Ocean./ Needle:Haystack," is interesting in that he is just so vapid. it might have been around here when i first saw the awkward dance through the new book haze. much sarcasm, vulgarity, and some 25 years of painful family drama (maybe i can be 'nephew/cousin of shame'--maybe i already am! ...just imagine that said by margaret cho!) the end (evening 31 dec 1992--i was 7 and probably in bed already) finally comes. for a book that places so much emphasis on the past and everything leading up to the final climax (at least most of the 2nd half was building up to it), i was a little scared to see that there were only 5 pages left and no sign of the apocalyptic clash that was promised. but it came (and went) and turned everything over. in the end, i was pretty happy with it. felt good to end it though. in a relief kind of way. for the poor characters, at least.

there was one particular sentiment that i liked: homeland. "The well-wooded and watered place. Where things spring from the soil riotously and without supervision..."--talking here about jamaica, but it reminded me of a certain pastoral idealization of far-off places like europe and japan and hawaii that i might harbor and occasionally actively nourish (miyazaki movies anyone?).

"homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. ... And the particular magic of homeland, it's particular spell over Irie (angry teenager), was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page."

i think i really like that thought on homeland. a good portion of the book deals with an immigrant family from bangladesh who moved to london and an immigrant family from jamaica who was taken there. it's funny, because i feel like i identify with them sometimes, even though i've never (until last year) lived out of the state of tennessee. and it isn't just that tennessee doesn't feel like home. quite the contrary. as much as i loved california and i love germany, i genuinely miss tennessee, or at least the representation of tennessee i hold deep in my memory from around age 7. but there is that longing for a homeland. somewhere that feels more like home than land and a house. and i think for me a new beginning might be what it is all about. a place with no past, no legacy of sadness or grudges or regrets--a vague idea somehow imprinted in the genes, making it seem like a memory. my homeland is an eternal place of quiet refuge. no intruders or meddlers. just home. if you could have it, would you take it?

i'm still not done!! but for now i'm just going to post and let this simmer. more to come.

rote beet/rübe essen: gut für gesundheit und spaß

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeturia

fascinating. 10-14% of the population? guess i'm pretty special. so logically, most of my family should also have this trait.

The interest of the food industry in betalains has grown since they were identified as natural antioxidants^[6] which may have positive health effects in humans.^[7] Betalians may exhibit anti-cancer activity. Betalains from the prickly pear showed considerable free radical scavenger and antioxidant properties in vitro to protect endothelium from cytokine-induced redox state alteration, through ICAM-1 inhibition.

maybe since it isn't broken down, i get double protection or something?