-A Japanese Homestyle Cooking recipe –

10 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined and cooked
1 cup (250 ml) water
3 tablespoons avocado mayonnaise
1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
1 Plain Sesame Omelet.
1⁄2 teaspoon fish sauce
4 sprigs watercress

Slice the shrimp into small chunks and mix with the mayonnaise and black pepper.
Put the plain sesame omelette on cling film sheet on a flat work surface spread the shrimp mixture across the the centre. Sprinkle the fish sauce over the shrimp mixture and place the watercress sprigs in line across the middle.
Carefully roll the omelette in the plastic wrap put in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to help retain its shape before slicing in 10 to 12 pieces.

Nutritional data

Plain Sesame Omelette

By patoftheshire

On 28th February 2019

In A hobbit cookbook & pantry

-A Japanese Homestyle Cooking recipe –

Ingredients :

2 large eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp avocado oil
2 tbsp white or black sesame seeds

Steps :

Combine the eggs in a bowl with the salt and pepper do not over mix.
slightly oil the pan with a pastry brush, put on medium heat and pour the egg mixture.
when the omelette is practically set sprinkle the sesame seed, flip the omelette and cook for 1 minute.

Nutritional data

On the difficulty to find a good cocoa powder

By patoftheshire

On 27th February 2019

In A hobbit cookbook & pantry

Cocoa powder is not the cocoa powder we use to make hot chocolate, which I have already found, but the raw cocoa that we can use to cook dessert and dishes.

The one I found up until now were too bitter so i had to add a lot of coconut nectar so it could taste more chocolaty but that totally voided the point of using it. Others have a lot of unknown chemicals or too much ingredients overall. I want a chocolate that is 100% cocoa. So after a lot of try, I found it in the Inverness Health shop.

Equal Exchange Fairtrade & Organic Cocoa – 250g

Four day water fasting

By raphyduck

On 25th February 2019

In A hobbit life

Today I broke a 4 days water fast started on Thursday.

Up until now I only made 3 days water fast. I had symptoms of lightheadedness and muscles pain yesterday, and discovered that adding salt to the water I drank helped A LOT.

So the lesson of the day: During fasting, drink a lot of water with added salt. Adding magnesium could be a good idea too.

This is what I broke the fast with:

Followed half an hour later by 1kg of mince beef with 400g of kimchi. Yumi!

The Nexus Trilogy – Ramez Naam – 2012 – 2015

By raphyduck

On 22nd February 2019

In A hobbit life

The Nexus Trilogy is a postcyberpunk thriller novel trilogy written by American author Ramez Naam and published between 2012-2015. The novel series follows the protagonist Kaden Lane, a scientist who works on an experimental nano-drug, Nexus, which allows the brain to be programmed and networked, connecting human minds together. As he pursues his work, he becomes entangled in government and corporate intrigue. The story takes place in the year 2040.^[1][2][3]
Nexus tied for Best Novel in the 2014 Prometheus Awards given out by the Libertarian Futurist Society.^[4] It was also shortlisted for the 2014 Arthur C. Clarke award.^[5] Nexus was published in 2012. Its sequel, Crux, was published in 2013.^[6] The third volume of the trilogy, Apex, was published in 2014, and won the 2015 Philip K. Dick Award. The film rights to Nexus were purchased by Paramount in 2013.^[7]
The Nexus trilogy – wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nexus_Trilogy

Somehow this introduction from Wikipedia doesn’t do justice to this trilogy. This trilogy was among the many sci-fi books on my to-read list. After finishing the Foundation universe from Asimov, I was interested in the idea of connecting or merging mind and other mind-to-mind technology, so this book Nexus seemed look a good read. And boy it was.

Nexus describes the world as it could be in the near future, and how society and people around the world would react to various human enhancement technologies.

First, I found that the author did a great job trying describing these technologies without embellishing them too much. The “headlight” technology of the book, Nexus, is a computer made of nano-“processor/antenna” sitting in and interfacing with the brain, able to wireless communicate to the near surroundings. The potential for abuses are great, mind control, slavery, rape, theft,… All of this are part of the plots in the books, and all these technologies brings their fair shares of sufferings and violence especially in the last one.

With that said, the author does make the point that the benefits outweighs the costs. I am biased in that I already think humans should enhance themselves by any means (in fact I think this is the only way out for us as a species), but still I think the arguments he presented are convincing. The main take away is that all this technologies are about connecting more deeply. And when you think about it, language and speech is a way to communicate more deeply, to transmit more ideas to one another; in this light, telepathy is just a step up speech, and it is not a fundamentally different change. Of course some could argue that one change is natural and the other artificial but this doesn’t actually hold against rational scrutiny.

So these books do an excellent job at convincing us that human augmentation, and especially mind to mind communication, is desirable (especially in the first book in which the author explores the argument again and again.

But what took me by surprise was the place taken by meditation in the story. Meditation is everywhere, and actually a crucial and necessary piece of the final resolution of the story (spoiler spoiler). And this is what made this trilogy so special to me. It is clear that the goal of transcendence, the goal of the Buddhist Nirvana, of tearing apart the illusion of the self, is what we should all look forward to. And the nexus nanites are presented as just a more efficient way to bring the masses to nirvana, and a way to merge individual consciousnesses into one “global mind”, a consciousness that is “more than the sum of its parts”, as Naam insist on throughout the story. Buddhist monks play important roles throughout the books, and with them, and through the eyes of the main protagonist, the author allow the reader to discover what meditation is, what it means, what it can bring. Having recently “discover” mindfulness myself and been slowly transformed by it, I particularly appreciated this marriage between mindfulness and transhumanism. The 2 should go hand to hand together. In fact, if we don’t want to get lost by technology, we want them to come together, to stay on an ethical path that doesn’t leave behind (or worse) any humans.

So the Nexus trilogy is describing a violent future. But this violence is a childbirth pain to a new state of humanity, with less suffering, more intelligence, more beauty. And while I very much hope we never come to the violence depicted there, I do wish to see humanity embrace transhumanism, go to its next step in evolution, and take the whole planet with it toward Gaia.

Somewhere over the rainbow 🌈

By patoftheshire

On 17th February 2019

In A hobbit life

Shirataki aka Konjac noodles

By patoftheshire

On 16th February 2019

In A hobbit cookbook & pantry

Shirataki (白滝, often written with the hiragana しらたき) are thin, translucent, gelatinous traditional Japanese noodles made from the konjac yam (devil’s tongue yam or elephant yam). The word “shirataki” means white waterfall, referring to the appearance of these noodles. Largely composed of water and glucomannan, a water-soluble dietary fiber, they are very low in digestible carbohydrates and calories, and have little flavor of their own.
Wikipedia free ENCYCLOPAEDIA

And what is particularly good and interesting about konjac :

Konjac has almost no calories, but is very high in fiber. Thus, it is often used as a diet food. The Omikenshi Company has developed a process that mixes treated wood pulp with konjac to produce a fiber-rich flour that contains neither gluten nor fat, almost no carbohydrates, and has just 60 calories per kilogram, compared to 3,680 for wheat.
WIKIPEDIA FREE ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Interesting…. hum hum… no carbs at all… versatile (aka little flavour…)…what !? That would make it the perfect side 😮

Would that be the perfect side, no carbs high fibre.. let’s try it !!! So here tis is on the worktop ready to be cooked 😛

Instructions are straight forward, just boiling water really easy !

So it look like that a kind of translucent plastic not too hard a little flexible, it smells nothing at all.

So that’s it after adding boiling water and waited for 5 min, it’s feel like actual pasta, soft texture, it looks really versatile, tastes nothing special but i’m gonna need to add salt as I would do with pasta because it’s really bland.

Added to my normal mince/chorizo meals taste amazing, the pasta I haven’t had those last years. viva bolognese and emmental topping ahead Yummmmmmyyyyy !!!! 😀

To be fair about the digestion, my body actually doesn’t like vegetable and fruit, fibre is really not my best friends so that’s wasn’t the best digestion but I have known a lot worse but gratefully no pain just a small swelling of the gut (this is not my most romantic side :roll:)

So I would eat once or twice a week as a very special and yummy meal, but the taste is here, pasta are back in town… and that a hell of a comfort food 😎

Tandoori Chicken casserole

By patoftheshire

On 16th February 2019

In A hobbit cookbook & pantry

-A keto diet blog recipe –

This recipe is a free interpretation of the Low-Carb Tandoori Chicken Kebabs from the keto diet blog, as I don’t have skewers I’m gonna do it the casserole way. It’s a long recipe, because the chicken need to be marinated over night.

Ingredients :

2 medium chicken breasts (340 g)
1 small courgette, cut into ribbons (100 g)
1 small red onion, cut into wedges (60 g)

Marinade:

1 + 1/2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 small red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp fresh lemon zest
3 heaped tbsp full-fat Greek yoghurt (90 g)
1/2tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp saffron strands
1/4 tsp sea salt, or to taste

Steps :

Shred the ginger.
Cut the red chillie and peel the garlic cloves.
Crush all the wet spices, in a mortar.
Add the crushed spice to the lemon juice.
Combine greek yaourt and all the spices. The marinade is ready.
Cut and dispose the chicken in the marinade bowl, let infuse over night.
Cut the courgette in ribbons and onion in wedges and put it in a casserolle dish.
The day after, combine the vegetable with the marinated chicken.
Cook in the oven for 10 min @ 200 degres. Serve and enjoy !

The rest of the marinade can be use as a sauce with a totally amazing taste with Shirataki rice, and surprisingly not that hot. See below with the rest of the stuffed flank.

Nutritional data

Stuffed flank steack

By patoftheshire

On 16th February 2019

In A hobbit cookbook & pantry

This week, for sunday, as every sunday are supposed to be an out of the ordinary sharing meal, on the table big plate of specially cooked food (could saying graces could be the same lol).

So this is it i bought my 600 gr flank steak at the butcher, hoping that i’m not going to waste it because that’s a hell of a piece of meat :p

~ 4 Servings ~ Time 1h ~ 5 Days in the fridge ~

ingredients :

600 g flank steak
100 g roasted red peppers (see recipe here)
200 g feta cheese in cubes
50 g (1 cup) baby spinach leaves
Salt and pepper

Steps :

1- Preheat oven to 170 °C/ 340 °F. Remove the steak from the fridge. Lay some baking paper or cling wrap on your kitchen bench and place the flank steak on it. Cover with another sheet and pound the meat until it is thin enough to roll easily, about 1 cm.