made of green ingredients

France, afternoon

I am a big, big fan of The Body Shop.

I love some of their shampoos and air conditioning (e.g. the honey one and the olive oil), all the things of the white musk, the new grapefruit body butter and shower gel, I like the philosophy (e.g., the products are not tested on animals, a lot of products support community trade). Every time I visited a The Body Shop magazine, I always find a way to buy something. I consider it my way of spoiling myself.

But, because I started looking at each ingredient of some product of another "green" brand, Yves Rocher, I got to do the same for The Body Shops products I have. And I realized something, these products do contain botanical ingredients, but they are also full of chemicals. I am not sure what all these chemicals do to our health, but their names are scary. So, just as an experiment, I took one of these products, and checked on internet a few of the chemicals ingredients contained in there. Of course, as quantities of each compound are not indicated, there is no way to actually know what it is the percentage of botanical ingredients versus purely chemical ingredients. Fortunately, my research on internet revealed that the chemicals ingredients of the products I have at home (from Yves Rocher and The Body Shop) are not toxic or dangerous (more or less) based on current available data.

Here a few of the chemicals I have been looking up on the web:

Cyclomethicone: While silicons such as cyclomethicone do not appear to have adverse effects on the human body, there are many concerns regarding the harmful effects it may have on the environment (i.e. marine life). For this reason, many countries like Canada have requested the silicone industry to provide more information and scientific data regarding its safety.

Methylparaben and propylparaben: used as antimicrobial preservatives in foods, drugs and cosmetics for over 50 years. Readily absorbed via the gastrointestinal tract and dermis. There is no evidence of accumulation. Acute toxicity studies in animals indicate that they are relatively non-toxic by both oral and parenteral routes, although mildly irritating to the skin. Not carcinogenic, mutagenic or clastogenic.

Butylphenyl methylproprional: it is a skin irritant and there have been tests that found that skin applications of this product at high concentrations in animals caused sperm damage.


PS. If you know a website where to find all the info about chemicals substances used in food and cosmetics let me know because I am very interested on the topic.

a nice sunday

France, afternoon

It is sunday and I am at home working. But it ok. I am actually doing something relaxing. And I went running today. I should get running into my routine. I ran only 16 minutes today. So, I could basically squeeze 20 minutes of run in my every day schedule, as it doesn't take so long and I could just get ready in a few minutes, leave my place and run. Not big preparation necessary.

I can't run every day, as my back would give me hard time. But I could try to run at least two times at week....but when I come back home from work, all what I want is to collapse on my couch and remain in a vegetative stay for a while. Of course, after that I don't feel for sure like running. And there is no way that I could wake up earlier in the morning to run before work. It is already hard for me to get up at 8am to get to work at a decent time (10 am).....no way that I could fit running in.

So, I should run every sunday and once a week. That would already do something. I mean, I move, I walk a lot, rollerblading when I can, doing yoga sometimes, but nothing regular...and for my mood (and the safety of my co-workers and my friends) I strongly need to exercise regularly, otherwise I have too much energy that I risk to release in not good ways.

Anyway, after running I got back home, showered and had a very good lunch. A friend of mine made some hummus for the evening together I had on friday and she left the left-over here. I had it today on bread with some avocado. So good!!!!!

Now a bit more work and then I will go to watch a movie with some friends.

PS. I put a picture of Gary Oldman here, a very sexy man, because today is his birthday.

baking on friday

France, night

I normally bake on sunday morning, but since I invited people to come over to my place, I decided to bake two cakes for this evening. I made brownies and a cake with carrots and apples (very little apples). They were very good. But I was especially surprise by how delicious it was the cake with the carrots and apples. You should try it!!! I highly recommend it. I can't find a good picture to put it here. I should have got a picture of my own cake.
My mom sent me the recipe for this cake (I think she found it on the web):

Ingredients:
150 grams of flour, 5 eggs, 200 g of carrots, 180 g of margarine, a packet of baking powder, 125 grams of granulated almonds, 120 g of sugar, an apple, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, two full spoons of brown sugar.

Grate the carrots and place on a kitchen towel. Cover with another towel and let dry for one hour. Work 150 g of margarine with the sugar (mix very well till you get an homogeneous compound). Stir in four egg yolks and one whole egg (save three egg whites). Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, almonds and carrots. Beat 3 egg whites till they are very firm (I still don't know to say this in English. In Italian is montare le chiare a neve). Grease a round mold hinged, pour the mixture and sprinkle the surface with plenty of sugar cane. Bake at 180 degrees for one hour. Peeled and sliced apple. Cook for few minutes in a pan with the remaining margarine, and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Take the cake from the oven and distribute the apples on the surface of the cake. Put it back in the oven for just a couple of minutes.

Ready to eat!!! Enjoy it!!!

Sliding

I love trying anything that slides, rollerblades, skates, ski.......But I don't think that I will try this. Just watching it, it made me sick.....I would like to meet the guy and ask him what he had in mind when he decided to do that...

Video - Descente de cote en BuggyRollin

On my way to Paris

France, morning

I am on my way to Paris. I will take the TGV, the fast train, from here to Paris in a couple of hours.

My feelings for Paris are growing slowly. I have never been crazy about Paris until I started to have to go there already a few times for work. Then I met some friends and we found some nice cafe' and places to see and to try. I don't think that Paris is good for me as a tourist. Too expensive, too much. But then when you know someone, when you start to get familiar with the little cute corners here and there, then it hits you....at least, it did it with me.

So, I will be there just for a quick working stay, but tomorrow I plan to meet with a friend and go together for an early dinner in a part of the town that I don't know yet. This is the thing of Paris, you can always find something new and nice to discover.

I should definitively travel more here in France, since I live here....I saw so little of this country so far....

Unbelievable

France, evening

I went rollerblading today for a couple of hours. It was a nice sunny day. Not warm, but sunny. In the couple of hours in which I was outside it went for not too warm, but sunny, to very, very cold and windy to snow.

It started to snow on my way back home from rollerblading (fortunately, it started when I was very close to home) and it didn't stop so far. I live close to the sea in the South of France and today is March 7....and a couple of days ago it was spring and there were already people in t-shirt and shorts outside.....and now, it is snowing very seriously. I just got the picture that is on this post. I absolutely can't believe it!!!

I strongly hope that this will not create problems to the transport and circulation, as I have to travel a lot in the next days.

Sunday baking again

France, morning

Beautiful day outside today. A bit cold, but beautiful. I hope to go rollerblading for a couple of hours later, even if I also have to work a lot for my two job interviews......

I started my morning today baking a cake, a marble cake. It is in the oven right now (the picture on this post is not from my cake), I hope it will turn out to be good. As I did for the brownies, I will bring half of the cake to the office tomorrow for my colleagues, otherwise I would risk also to eat the entire cake myself in a day.....

Here the recipe if you want to try it too:

-250 gr flour
-100 gr sugar
- 350 ml milk (I used soja milk, so that the cake is cow milk-free)
- 100 gr margarine (you can use the butter too, but I use the 100% vegetable margarine, so that the cake is cow milk-free)
- 2 eggs
- 15 gr baking powder
- a bit of lemon skin sliced very thing and in small pieces
- 3 full spoon of cacao powder (I like the one without sugar)
- a pinch of salt

Mix the eggs with the sugar and a pinch of salt. Add the lemon skin and the margarine melted. Mix well and add alternating them, a bit of flour and a bit of milk, a bit of flour and a bit of milk. Add the baking powder.
Divide the mixture in two bowls and add to one of them the 3 spoons of cacao powder. Mix well.

Grease a cake tin (of course, I did it with the margarine) and spoon the compound of each bowl (cacao and white one) one after the other alternately, till you used them all. Bake it in the oven at 180 C for 45 minutes. My mom always bake it in a ring shaped cake tin (but I don't have one, so I baked it in a simple cake tin).

Enjoy it!!!

PS. The cake turned out pretty good.
This morning my dancing routine started with the great song of Michael Jackson "they don't care about us"

Spring is here

France, morning

I slept late this morning. I am even later for work.....I have to prepare for two jobs interviews in the next weeks, so it is also ok if I take it a bit easy with myself and try to get to the interviews not amazingly stressed.

It is official. Spring is here. I am in the part of France that has not been touched by the storm and the disaster and here we have sun every day, a minimum temperature of 10 degrees already, flowering plants with the first flowers and insects that start to come out.

It is official also that with the spring all the senses wake up and I see all these couples around to bill and coo. And it is some days already that every morning when I wake up, I can't stop myself from thinking of how nice I was living with the olandesino in Germany. Our lives there were pretty miserable, but our life together was wonderful and I remember it as one of the happiest moment of my life. We were not "officially" living together, as both of us had an apartment, but we were in fact almost always living together at his place. I loved waking up next to him and see his smile first thing in the morning. I loved when he was going to the bakery to get fresh bread in the morning. I love when some other mornings he was going to buy fresh fruits for breakfast and coming up with the fruits but also with some flower or a plant for me. I loved laying down on his hammock on his large balcony in the sun, while he was reading next to me or doing his things. I loved making fresh pizza on sunday. I loved watching all the animals that he had at his place and seeing him taking care of them. I loved when we fed the little prey mantis that were just newly born. I loved our week ends together. I loved when he was taking me in his arms making me feel home. I loved when he was singing songs of Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin, feeling completely comfortable with me there. I loved planning our holidays and sharing our dreams. I loved being and feel not just a couple, but a strong team. I loved immensely all that, and I miss feeling that way and having the chance to live all these things again.

Some people after years or even months complain about the routine of being a couple. I never had that. For me what others call it routine was all the little things that made living with the olandesino so special. All this happiness was years ago. All these happy memories are far happy memories unfortunately. I miss feeling that way. I miss feeling a team with someone. I miss sharing my life with someone. I miss growing stronger with someone. I miss the feeling that it doesn't matter what can happen in my life, I am not alone.

I never had that anymore. After that my relationships have been full of drama, living in different countries, and tears, and happiness too, but not in such a light way, there was always something else.