by Fern Shaw | May 20, 2015 | Health and Hydration
I’m aware that you may sometimes feel that you’re being waterlogged with information about how important it is to stay hydrated by drinking sufficient water, so this month, the wonderful, glorious month of May, pre-cursor to high summer, I’m easing back on the water rules and have gone the fun, fruity and frivolous route to make sure you beat the heat – Island Style:
Saké Spritzer: Combine 1 basil leaf, 6 mint leaves, 2 lemon twists, 1 orange wedge, 1/4 cup diced cucumber and 1 1/2 ounces orange liqueur in a shaker with ice – shake. Pour into a glass and top with sparkling sake.
If you’ve ever drunk saké, you’ll know it’s either a love or hate type situation. Me, I loooove the stuff, so I’m sorted. Be brave, be adventurous, I’ve never heard of sparkling saké, so try it with me!
Honeydew Ice: Purée 1 cup each frozen honeydew melon and frozen diced cucumber with the juice of 1 lime and some sugar.
Elderflower Fizz: Fill a glass halfway with ice and cranberry juice. Add a splash each of vodka and elderflower liqueur; top with seltzer and garnish with mint.
Elderflower is so quintessentially English and readily available you know you have to go there.
Orange-Berry Daiquiri: Purée 2 cups crushed ice, 1 cup sliced strawberries, 4 ounces light rum, 1 ounce orange liqueur, 2 ounces lime juice and 1 tablespoon superfine sugar. Pour into 2 glasses.
For this to pass the scrutiny of the sugar content police, I’d focus on the fruit and the lime juice content. Yes I would.
Guava Green Tea: Pour equal parts guava juice and green tea over ice; garnish with lemon.
There’s something about guava that just screams ‘Tropical!’ to me, I can’t wait to try this.
Instant Horchata: Sweeten rice milk with sugar; add a pinch of cinnamon. Serve over ice with diced cantaloupe and pecans.
Don’t be asking me what horchata is. There’s a link already in there for you to use. *Clickety-click!* (I didn’t know what it was either, but I’d still drink it based on the ingredients).
Vir-Gin & Tonic: Crush 2 tablespoons juniper berries with 2 tablespoons fresh mint. Add 1 cup tonic; steep for 20 minutes, then strain. Serve on ice; top with tonic and 2 dashes bitters.
And we end off this refresh fest with a twist on a cherry cola:
Cherry Cooler: Purée 1/2 pound pitted cherries, 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup strong hibiscus tea. Serve over ice and garnish with cherries.
Roll on, Summer!
by Fern Shaw | May 19, 2015 | Health and Hydration, Water
Living in South Africa as *I do, but having lived in the U.K. for a number of years, I’m often struck by the differences when it comes to barbecuing in the U.K. versus braaing in South Africa.
One needs to understand that to a large proportion of South Africans, braaing is as essentially South African as going down to the local pub is to a Brit. It transcends cultures, ages, gender – it is the definitive South African past time. Braaing is taken so seriously that there is even a national day set aside for it. This day is really a public holiday – Heritage Day, 24 September – but in typical South African style, this has morphed into National Braai Day. Yep, we take braaing that seriously.
Some indications that a BBQ is not a Braai:
- In South Africa we braai pretty much all year round.
- If there is a way to make a fire and there is some type of grid to cook meat or fish or breakfast on, we will braai.
- There are braai competitions that run from small towns’ right through to a reality television programme where contestants are put through six weeks of gruelling challenges braaing everything from bread to puddings. Yep, really.
Braaing is pretty much a domain of the male in South Africa. Experience has taught me that when my family braai at home, the rules are clear: I’m not allowed to touch the braai, not allowed to light the fire and certainly not allowed to touch the meat. I am salad or sides regulated only.
The only time I’m allowed to encroach on this domain is when we’re having chicken on the braai. This is due to my secret recipe Chicken Marinade (a traditional South African recipe passed on from my Gran) which I’m encouraged to make. The funniest thing about this delicious marinade is that it has the most basic of ingredients: – tomato sauce (ketchup), fresh garlic and Worcestershire sauce – and it’s a total hit with everybody!
Other than the amazing marinade, the only other braai domain I’ve been allowed to commandeer are the refreshments. Braai time in our summer months can reach as high as 42°C, and as I believe there is more to quenching my thirst than with an icy cold beer, I have a few beat-the-heat and thirst quenching braai cocktails and mocktails in my repertoire.
I like my liquid refreshments to be pretty as all get out; colourful and very girlie – the more a cocktail tastes like a soft drink, and looks all Island style – the better.
My current favourite summer cocktail at the braai is The Watering Hole:
Ingredients
- Watermelon
- Vodka
- Sprite Zero
- A few Limes or Lime juice
- Lots of ice
Method: Scrape the flesh out of the watermelon, discarding the pips; add the vodka; a dash of lime; top up with Sprite Zero and lots of ice.
If you’re feeling more communally minded, you could always pour your combined ingredients back into your watermelon half, add straws and that’ll complete your ‘watering hole’ or; you can pour into chilled glasses, add garnish, a cocktail umbrella or two and heat beating hydration is on track.
Although the ice, fruit juice and heck, even the alcohol in the cocktails definitely contribute towards the water quotient of your drink, it’s always a sensible (tasty cocktails, hot summer’s day – sensible?) idea to match each cocktail drunk with a glass of water. Not only will the water keep you hydrated, but it’ll also help to keep you from drinking your cocktails like soft drinks and suffering from a bit of hangover-it is – a not so rare side effect of a braai.
Cheers everybody!
*Shelly Crawford heads up the AquAid Africa office in South Africa.
by Fern Shaw | May 5, 2015 | water cooler
I’ve been hard at work here at work, so my water cooler station lurking has been at a bare minimum for the last few weeks. Whereas I doubt that my absence has had a detrimental effect on any of my colleagues (I had visions of said colleagues’ grey matter rapidly dwindling without my pearls of wisdom to sustain them), I felt it was high time to get back into ‘cruise the cooler’ mode so as to help them hydrate their brains.
To ensure that I had plenty of brain fodder on hand, I tripped the length and breadth of the Woah Woah (my pet name for the World Wide Web) and read up about debunking various myths. I wouldn’t call these Urban Legends, as Napoleon’s height certainly was most definitely pre the Urban Legend catch phrase – you’ll see what I’m on about further down:
Great Wall of China visible from space
It’s not. Stop saying it is.
Bananas grow on trees
They actually grow on massive herbs that resemble trees. Ja-ha!
Vikings Horned Helms
The horned helm was actually created for a 19th century Wagner opera. (Less of the sniggering about the title, you!)
Different Taste Sections on the Tongue
There are no different sections on the tongue for tasting sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savoury/meaty).
Black Holes
Black holes aren’t really holes but hugely dense objects with massive gravitational pull.
Three second Goldfish Memory
Apparently not true. While goldfish aren’t the smartest, they boast a memory span of 3 months.
and finally;
Napoleon was short
A tall tale. At 5.7 (1.7 metres) he was actually above average height for a Frenchman of the time.
Now you know. Can you feel your brain plumping up already – full of fascinating facts? Oh, good!
by Fern Shaw | Apr 24, 2015 | Health and Hydration
Last week, we spoke about us having 2 brains – the one in our head and the one in our stomach. This week we continue talking about stomach and digestive system health and how having a happy tummy is vital to your general health and well-being: It’s all about balance...
by Fern Shaw | Apr 2, 2015 | Health and Hydration
There’s long been debate about how best to maintain and prolong your body’s health. Now it turns out, you don’t have just one brain to take care of so it takes care of you, but two. Who knew?!
This is the case, apparently:
Brain 1 is the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) that controls almost all voluntary and involuntary activities within your body. For example, a voluntary action would be slicing your veggies, while an involuntary action would be blinking, breathing or falling in love. The involuntary actions carried out by your central nervous system are constantly at work taking care of you.
Brain 2 is in your stomach. Yup, it has a mind of its very own. Your stomach’s ‘brain’ is known as the enteric nervous system. This system is home to 100 million neurons within your intestinal wall. These little neurons transmit important information throughout your body. They also control digestion and send status updates to the brain, letting it know how things are going in your digestive system.
Your two nervous systems have an intricate relationship that’s just now being explored by scientists through the field of neurogastroenterology (try digesting that easily). While the enteric nervous system initiates and sustains digestion on its own, signals from the brain, such as stress and anxiety, can have dramatic effects on how well it works.
About sixty to seventy percent of your immune system lives in your stomach. When pathogenic bacteria (bacteria that can cause infection) visits your GA tract via food or your environment, specialised immune structures called Peyer’s patches that are filled with immune cells, such as B cells and T cells, trigger your immune response to prevent them from passing through the gastrointestinal wall.
Before you stress out (not good for your stomach health, by the by) worrying that you now have two brains to take care of, don’t.
The important thing here is to remember that both brains are very much connected, so that by eating a balanced diet (more about this in Part II), keeping hydrated and your good bacteria levels up, this should pretty much ensure two happy, healthy and balanced brains.
Oh, and because both of my brains are pretty scattered, the blog title stems from that rather catchy ‘It’s all about that Bass’ song. Do yourself a favour and go and have a listen – I guarantee that it’s happy brain food for both regions.
