Colors in my yogurt

Well, you know, camel’s yogurt. Because the camel’s yogurt came out a little watery, when I serve it, I mix it with half a regular greek yogurt to thicken it.

This is a recipe for the most beautiful natural pink coloring:

1 teaspoon of Beetroot juice into a bowl of yogurt.

Add red chilies because it goes well with the pink, and the taste, then make a little mountain of fried onion to place on top, and parsley for a nice contrast, and depth in the taste.

Serve with Bahraini Maslee

Other colors coming out soon! Stay tuned!

Green Bar Joins All for Bahrain Event

All for Bahrain

The event held at the BIC on the 4^th of June was fund raising for the destruction of the university of Bahrain during the recent protests, 10% of Green Bar’s proceeds went to rebuild a Public University, I’m excited about that!

We sold well! Sold out of the hair oil!

Some of my shopping in the event

The mug
When I see the quote “all for Bahrain” I hear an echo of someone’s voice…I hear him saying this:"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country". I’ll drink coffee to that!

Amaretto Biscuits

From Bon Bon Chocolate Boutique in Al Ali mall. We were lucky their table was right next to ours, we overdosed on hazelnut chocolates, and lots more. I got two bags of amaretto biscuits- almonds are naturally extravagant!

Olives and olive oil from Jerusalem, and hot sauce from Gazza

When I saw the hot sauce and learned that its from Gazza a place I only hear about in the news, I thought, “hmmm, so this is what their lunch time break tastes like, the sauce was not too hot for me, I found my self double dipping my fingers into it.

Yogurt at home

Our first adventure with bringing back cultured food at home was with homemade yogurt.

Ingredients

2 liters fresh full fat milk

1 full packaged yogurt

Use fresh full fat milk, warm it on the stove until when you stick your finger in the milk you find it warm- not hot- pour one cup of yogurt mix into the milk well. Pour mixture in a jar and stick it into a closed oven overnight- in Bahrain you can just place it outside your window if you want, let it ferment and eat the next day.

It will be a source of good bacteria for better digestion and good absorption of vitamins.

My personal observation about home made yogurt- it seems to be more cooling. Maybe it’s got a better aura or something but home made yogurt in my experience feels cooler.

Camel’s Milk

The pictures are of mama camel, the dessert herbs she eats, her being milked, and then pouring it into our glass bottle.

So in my search for my culture, I have been determined to look for camel’s milk, and finally have in Bahrain, fresh from the camel!!

I got a lot of grossed out people when I tell them this, and I am honestly so surprised, I thought there would be more cheering! It is amazing! It tastes better than cows milk, by the way!

I bought it to turn it into a yogurt- but guess what I figured out- its anti-bacterial quality slows down its fermentation process significantly -cultured food has a lot of bacteria (good bacteria)- so I decided to mix the fermentation I have with

Anyway, camels milk is alkaline (anti-aging), and has lots of amazing and healing qualities, like the following:

• Ten times more iron than cow's milk
• Three to five times more vitamin C than cow's milk
• Rich in B vitamins
• High in imunoglobins
• High in protein
• Minerals
• Low in fat - 1.8-2% fat compared to 3.5-4% in cow's milk
• Low in cholesterol
• Anti-bacterial
• Anti-viral
• Anti-inflammatory
• Six types of fatty acid including lanolin acid

The list is from wikipedia

Nahooth (Baby shark) Pickled Sauce

PART III

Look at what I found in Muharaq as well! According to the older folks, fishermen kept this tradition as their own because apparently the money making fish were more “normal” fish like Safee, so if they caught shark by mistake they would eat that and sell the popular ones, and it got popular among the fishermen, I guess the acquired taste made them cooler than everyone else!

I have not tried this sauce, I don’t know if I will, I’m not wired up to eat it like other food, so I THINK about it, and that makes it weird for me…

Connecting with my culture

Part II

According to Cure Tooth Decay by Nagel - to build teeth back up and get them strong we need to eat things that are cultured for good bacteria and foods that are rich in minerals, because teeth don’t decay from bad bacteria - washing 10 times a day wont help too much IF you are on a poor mineral diet. In my personal conclusion, after reading this book, to be creative you need to imagine anything that is bone material for minerals that will build teeth. For example minerals come from: bone marrow (i.e. Milanese Osso Buco from Oliveto’s, Adilya -AMAZING) I always say I would rather die from cholesterol than cancer. Anyway eggs because their eggshells have minerals, all sorts of seafood because- again- their shells have minerals. Broths with fish head, good fats from caviar, and oysters because their shells are full of minerals that the teeth need…etc… 

On my search for traditional Bahraini fermented foods my first step was to go to Muharaq and get the mehyawa, which is a fish sauce of white bait, the whole fish is used in this sauce with spices, so its rich in minerals, its dried and then left to ferment in the sun so that chemistry upgrades this mixture. Spread on bread from street bakers, and eat with a beautiful side salad.  

This sauce is salty. I am quite concerned about the quality of ingredients used to make this these days, the salt used has to be genuine for the build up of minerals rather than the depletion of them in our diet. Salt needs to be sea salt, not table salt because that’s made in a lab and doesn’t have the minerals.

 

Culinary adventure

Part I

I had this culinary adventure last year of doing just raw, and then I stopped I felt there was something a little off balance about eating only nuts and vegetables. This year it has been about fermented foods- more about obsessing over knowing about it, rather than actually eating it- because most recipes take 2-3 days or weeks!  So I exclusively just read the cookbooks without doing much of the cooking/fermenting.

My list of books to share:
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz
Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel
Living Raw Food by Sarma Melngailis 
Ani's Raw Food Essentials by Ani Phyo