Happy Herb Discoveries

This week has been a good week in many ways, but I feel like sharing the parts that I think you will benefit from hearing about: My local food discoveries!



Today a gardener at the Plant Science Lab, the greenhouse at Seattle Central Community College, just told me they now have Lovage!!! An exquisite herb, that taste of my childhood summers when it's wrapped around or stuffed into a chicken, served with (Danish, almost skinless) summer potatoes w butter and lovage. I have been missing that herb insanely during the three and a half years I have lived in the US - I'm a happy girl :-9




On top of that, this past Sunday I found what smelled and looked like elderflowers (before the elderberries on an elderbush) A MUST try for homemade lemonade. If you have a bush in your garden or some other place where car traffic isn't too intense, I'll give you the simple and ABSOLUTELY yummy recipe for elderflower lemonade :-D

Lemonbalm is another herb I haven't seen over here that I hope to come across at some point. It's so good w any type of ice cream, on top of most cakes, or as a fresh herbal tea (can be mixed w fresh mint leaves/stalks, too)

As usual I'm happy when people like my cakes, and it appears that especially the poppy seed cake made people happy at the STEM event at the Plant Science Lab/Greenhouse today :-)) Should I consider starting a baking company after all? ;-D

Egypt - a new member of the democratic club?

I get happy chills whenever I see a people rise for the sake of democracy. I felt the same when I saw the youth of America in 2008 and 2009 caring and daring to hope for the first time since the student revolutions in 1968. I couldn't believe for how long too many Americans sat idly when faced with so much injustice that would make any European take to the streets in anger!

NYT Egypt theme
P.S. Funny that the top hitter when searching on Egypt and Mubarak on Google is a Xinhua article. That can only mean tht China is loosening up its tight grip on the flow of free information, and that a huge amount of Chinese are following the democracy movement in Egypt with great interest: Egypt news article from Xinhua

Republican attempts to kill public media is a threat to US democracy

NPR and PBS are the only quality radio and tv stations left in the US that bring unbiased, relevant information to the US citizens. The commercial tv stations no longer bring relevant news or in depth information about issues that have an impact on the lives of American citizens. It's mostly reduced to chatter about celebrities and cooking now. A functioning democracy needs an informed population. I do acknowledge that with voting rights comes the duty to keeping yourself informed about the issues that the democratically elected representatives vote on, but it would be a much more difficult task for the average voter to do without the existence of PBS and NPR. Save public media - save democracy in the US!

Sign the petition

The Capitolist, Politics Daily: "Jim DeMint Introduces Bill to Defund NPR

The Leadership of NOW: Leading With Kindness

A tv -program on PBS about good leadership calls attention to companies of all sizes that succeed by practising good, human leadership. They prioritize openness, inclusion, encouragement and health for their employees, who in return are glad to reciprocate by giving all they've got for their workplace.

The most interesting example is the fashion company Eileen Ford. Instead of rewarding the staff with a raise, she gives them access to yoga, pilates and massage. This in turn leads to the employees being less stressed, healthier and thereby having less absence due to illness. I hope that this will be the norm at all work places in the very near future!

Another interesting example is Google. Here the employees are encouraged to take chances and risk failure, in contrast to the work principles of other big companies, such as Google's competitor Microsoft. This is not a principle uniquely used at Google, admittedly. The new and interesting element of Google's leadership methods is that they incite the staff to spend 20% of their work week on a project they are passionate about, and the rest of the time working on the tasks their boss tells them to work on. Not only does this boost motivation and loyalty; it also gives the management a higher quality of work and thereby a better return on investment on each employee.


The tv-program is based in the book "Leading With Kindness"