Yummy Wakame Weblog

For Laura Ling and Euna Lee, these past days since their return to America have been filled with great experiences and love from their family, friends and supporters. Laura has written a brief message that she would like to share with all of those who signed the Care2 petitions. Thank you again for helping to build the grassroots movement calling for the release of Laura and Euna!

lauraandeuna.com:

Dear Friends,

While in detention in North Korea, isolated and scared, one of the things that gave me strength and sustained my faith was hearing about the groundswell of support for Euna and me. You were a part of this incredible movement and for that I will be forever thankful.

Through the letters that I was able to receive, I learned about the many beautiful vigils, the LauraAndEuna.com website, the petition, the Facebook group, and all the other grassroots efforts to bring us home. I am deeply humbled.

In times of extreme darkness and depression, I thought of all of the people, united together, sending us messages of love and hope. I envisioned the light of the candles at the vigils and it brightened my soul. (more...)

I discovered the ultimate recipe today and just made a fresh batch. Want to make kombucha from a mother/mushroom/scoby? Check. Make it from scratch using store-bought kombucha? Check. Make delicious fizzy kombucha? Check. Make flavoured kombucha? Check. Bottle and maintain your kombucha? Check! It's all here.

Kombucha Tea - via Green Eggs & Dirt

My own tip: I find that oolong tea whitens up browning mushrooms nicely.

This great news is 4 years in the making! Since 2004, Greenpeace and countless activists and petitioners like you have asked Kimberly-Clark to save the Boreal forest. Today, the company that makes Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle announced a new policy that places it among the industry leaders in sustainability.

Today Greenpeace announces the successful end of their Kleercut campaign!

"This is a tremendous victory for ancient forests, including the North American Boreal, and it would not have been possible without dedicated activists like you. So take a minute to congratulate yourself and your fellow activists. Just as importantly, please take a minute to thank Kimberly-Clark for its new policy that helps protect ancient forests!

Kimberly-Clark has set a goal of obtaining 100 percent of the wood fiber for its products — including its flagship brand, Kleenex — from environmentally responsible sources. By the end of 2011, the company will no longer use any pulp from the Boreal Forest unless it is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified. The policy also prevents the company from cutting endangered forests, and increases the company’s use of FSC-certified pulp and recycled fiber globally.

With this announcement, Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue company in the world, becomes a sustainability leader. Now it’s time for Georgia-Pacific and Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark’s main competitors, to create their own policies to protect ancient forests."

This is a sad sad discovery, as my father-in-law Rich pointed me to this New York Times article:

An Underwater Fight Is Waged for the Health of San Francisco Bay

"Every year the damage wrought by aquatic invaders in the United States and the cost of controlling them is estimated at $9 billion, according to a 2003 study by a Cornell University professor, David Pimentel, whose research is considered the most comprehensive...

...Many scientists say that San Francisco Bay has more than 250 nonnative species, like European green crab, Asian zooplankton and other creatures and plants that outcompete native species for food, space and sunlight.

“Here you’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of habitats from shallow and muddy to deep water,” said Lars Anderson, a lead scientist with the United States Agriculture Department. The Oakland port ranks as the fourth busiest in the nation, and ships bring in tiny hitchhikers from across the globe to take up residence in the bay...

...Native to the Japan Sea, wakame has now spread to the Mediterranean and elsewhere along European coastlines, and to New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, where the fetid smell of rotting kelp has kept beachgoers from parts of the coast.

Wakame harms native kelp, mucks up marinas and the undersides of boats, and damages mariculture like oyster farming. "

It surprises me that with such an abundance of wakame we are still being sold the farmed stuff. If the whole of Asia started using wild wakame, imagine the dent it could make.

There could be another side to this phenomenon. It is well known amongst herbalists and especially pharmaceutical companies, that plants, fruits and vegetables that are needed at particular times to cure diseases or for boosting immunity always tend to spring up at the exact times when you need them and in the regions where the ailments occur. It is a mystifying phenomenon that has gone on for centuries and possibly longer than we've been recording. For example recently teasel root was recently discovered as a powerful treatment for Lyme disease that has even cured many, and it just so happens to grow along the sides of the road as a weed in the very areas where you get bitten by the Lyme carrying ticks.

Wakame is a well known "superfood" rich in rare minerals and vitamins that our bodies are often depleted of due to our strange western diets. It wouldn't surprise me if pharmaceutical companies suddenly find a use for them as they often use exotic plants (particularly from the Amazon) as the main ingredients to some of the most well known powerful drugs.

It will be interesting to see what develops from here...