shak-shuka

Rugs made from the Goodweave

I'm sure by now you're exhausted of hearing how we need to replace things in our home. Well, here's another one, but maybe you have to get a new one too, so here's more food for thought: we need a new rug. And did you know that many rugs are made using the labor of children who should be in school instead of working? It's hard to imagine that something under foot that should be so beautiful is made in such an ugly manner.

I've known about the Rugmark organization for many years, and it took me a while to re-discover them under the name of Goodweave, which is an organization created to stop child labor in the rugmaking industry. Goodweave is also a certification label that signifies that the rug you are buying is ethically sound, meaning no children have been used to create it, and the conditions of the workers is as close to fair trade as possible (fair trade is in and of itself it's own label). When shopping, this is another label to look for to guarantee ethical behavior on the companies part that you can trust. 

Going through the Goodweave website, you can find a store in your neighborhood which carries rugs that have the Goodweave label, or you can also shop online (you know that's my favorite!). Looking through the list, I am in absolute LOVE with the notNeutral brand of rugs and even though we need an area rug for our living room, I just love the kid-like designs! My daughter I'm sure would be very pleased, but not quite sure about everyone else. Whichever one we choose, I'm so pleased to have (re)found the Goodweave label so that I know how to be an educated and ethical choice when buying something cushy for under our feet. 

Shak-Shuka's Top Ten List

We're going to take a detour from our usual Friday posts and share with you some shopping tips. If you didn't already know, yesterday was Thanksgiving, a holiday in the States filled with turkey, football, parades with gigantic balloons floating down NYC streets, and of course, gratitude. The other thing that Thanksgiving signifies is that the day after, everyone goes SHOPPING! There's even a term for it - Black Friday - as it is the busiest shopping day of the year as retailers entice shoppers with sales, long hours, and well, encouragement to buy! Forgive us for our feeding this frenzy, but we thought it would be a fun alternative to create a "Shak-Shuka Top Ten List" so you can get a head start on shopping without having to face the hoards of people in the stores and shop in the convenience of your own home, and well, pyjamas! Best of all we're offering a 15% discount on all the items in this list with the code "BLOG" that you enter as you checkout. But hurry, like all good things, this will only last until midnight Friday, December 4th!!

A Shak-Shuka bestseller from the start, these Wobbly Towers are a gorgeous take on a traditional stacking ring has beautiful colors, non-toxic paints, and of course the best part - the weeble-wobble feature!

There are very few things that I see that I would love to play with still today. Totem Nature is one of them. Funky colored recycled cardboard pieces linking together to build the structure of your choice, this is a Shak-Shuka cult favorite. 

In our opinion there is no finer organic skincare maker for women and children than Erbaviva. You don't need to be a mama to enjoy this Back Rub Oil, with it's heavenly scent and of course, it should come with a massage therapist as well (partners and friends apply). 

We were the first ones to carry Smiling Planet in Europe, and we have sold out of nearly every batch that we have. Our favorite is the Fairies Fly (we currently use this one in our home). Smiling Planet plates are made from recycled and recyclable BPA free plastic, and are so gorgeous they might end up in your china cabinet on display instead of to use! 

We had an idea of how cute Dabbawalla Bags were, but no idea how they'd fly off our shelves! Always one of our top sellers, the Doggy Backpack, made from machine washable Neoprene is PVC and lead free, making it a safe choice for both mamas and kids alike. 

Barefoot Books are a great way to introduce children to different cultures and themes that they wouldn't get from the standard kids book. The Whole World Mini Edition is great for little hands to hold and of course, the whole family can boogie to the CD that's included!

Since the weather is more frightful than fun, we have been doing a lot of arts-and-crafting in our house, and these stunning Maya Beeswax Crayons are smooth, vibrant, and of course sturdy enough for little hands to use easily! Best of all their made from natural, non-toxic materials which are Oko-tex Certified. 

Soft dolls are our weakness. Although we wouldn't settle for just any doll, and searched high and low until we found one large enough to cuddle with, made from recycled and natural materials, and was made under fair trade practices. Zid Zid's Handmade Dolls fit the bill and currently my daughter is in love with her Imma doll who is just gorgeous.

A great gift for a friend, a new mother (great as a breastfeeding reminder) or yourself, Kris Nations' Charm Cord Bracelet is an easy way to update your look alone or by stacking them! Made from recycled metals, this true eco-chic.

It may seem strange that an eating tool is on our favorite list, but this Thinkbaby Feeding System is one of the most used items in our house. I love that I can use it at home and when we're out and about, and I have to admit that I even use the bowls and mug for myself when I'm running around!

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Congratulations to Hiskia for winning last week's recycled plastic giveaway by sharing her tips on recycling and winning the Smiling Planet plate of her choice! Thank you to all of you who participated and shared your tips to keep the planet smiling!

Modern Genealogy for the Whole Family

 

I read a post recently that really took my breath away by the lovely blog Junior Society, which posts all things quirky and inspiring for both young and young at heart. The post was about a new take on tracing your genealogy using a "family tree" but rather than the usual, standard tree-branch format, these family histories are downright breathtaking. Now I know I'm getting my hopes up by drooling over these, as my family tree looks more like a stump (we're a tiny family), but I can dream that I have a Brady-bunch-length family with all the lines feeding one into the other all the way from Great-Grandma-Esther to Little Baby Zac. 

The masterminds behind the new modern twist on genealogy is the company My Tree & Me. They have numerous styles to choose from, of which I am a huge fan of the non-traditional-looking charts (the eye chart, or "Slice of Life" is my fave!). You can either choose to do-it-yourself or have them customize it, and they are all printed on acid-free watercolor paper. Clearly these family trees are a labor of love that will require a bit of homework on your part too, but what a wonderful gift to give your family - the gift of/to themselves! Even if you can't get this in time for the holidays (there is a wait depending on if you choose to DIY or have them do it for you) I highly recommend this as a most unusual but welcome addition to any member of the family. 

Beachy Green Tomato Pilaf

photography by RussRoca.com 

I am a very lucky girl. I've been able to do most of the things that I've wanted in my life, including following my passions. Having always loved cooking, I was always intrigued by the idea of going to culinary school but never had the guts to do it until I moved back to NYC and was able to attend the Natural Gourmet Culinary School which specializes in organic, whole foods cooking. One of my fellow classmates, Aliye (see pictured above), is an amazing chef, globetrotter, mama, and amazing belly dancer(!). Aliye not only does all this, but also runs BeachGreens, an organic vegetable delivery scheme in Long Beach, California. If only I lived a bit closer I could take advantage of BeachGreens amazing service (and wonderful cooking!), and also their cooking classes! Even if you can't make it to Long Beach to take a class or get your veg box, Aliye has been so generous to share with us one of her favorite recipes with a nod to her Turkish heritage. Her Tomato Pilaf is so buttery soft and fluffy it'll virtually melt in your mouth! This is a great dish for both young and old alike......

Aliye's Tomato Pilaf

This method of cooking onions causes them to practically disappear, and adds more flavor than texture to the dish. 

Serves: 3-4

Preparation Time: 45 minutes

 1 small onion, sliced into half-moons

water

1cup basmati rice

1½ cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water

½ cup tomato puree (see note)

salt and pepper

unsalted butter (or oil)

Place onion in a saucepan, and just cover with water.  Cook over medium heat until water is gone.  Cover onions again with water, and repeat this process 8-10 times until the onions are very soft.  Add the rice, stock, tomato puree, and a pitch of salt and pepper.  Cook, covered, at a simmer—generally for about 20-30 minutes.  When rice is cooked, turn off heat, put 1-2 Tablespoons of butter in the pot, and cover with a clean kitchen towel and cover with lid for 10 minutes.    This will help to melt the butter, and fluff the rice a little bit.  Mix in the butter, and serve! 

Note:  Making tomato puree is a great way to use up an overripe tomato, or any extra tomatoes you may have. Core them, and if the tomato seems to have a thick peel, immerse in boiling water for a minute, and then shock in cold water.  The peel should come right off.  Cut them in half, and squeeze them over a bowl to remove a few seeds.  Sometimes tomato seeds can be bitter, and this helps to get rid of some of them.  Puree in a blender, and use, or store in refrigerator.

Mamas & Babies on Board

Having moved from big city to small city life (or at least that's how it feels coming from NYC to Rotterdam), we have grown accustom to driving. Although we use our bikes more than any other form of transportation, since we've become parents, it's been essential (not to mention a godsend) to have a car. It makes me cringe to even think of having to have taken public transportation, or my bike (!) when I went into labor to the hospital.

I remember the day we brought my daughter home from the hospital, I felt as though we were carrying cargo more precious than the Wells Fargo wagon. I wished that I had one of those cute "baby on board" signs for the back window so at least people would realize what we had inside and drive more carefully.  Alas we didn't have one when we were driving around, but now we do - at Shak-Shuka! Thanks to the beautiful artistic mastermind Nicole from Ocechou, we have both the "Femme Enceinte a Bord" (pregnant woman) and "Bebe a Bord" (baby on board) stickers that you can place in your car, or anywhere I suppose! These are not your run-of-the-mill stickers: unbelievably cute design of a plump and radiant mama-to-be, or a plump and edible new baby, all gorgeously wrapped in eco-friendly recycled paper. Even though I missed the "Femme Enceinte" phase, I'm still well within the "Bebe a Bord" phase! Drivers beware - exceptionally cute sticker and baby on board!

(Eco)washa-washa-wash

I am a self-confessed laundry addict. I just love doing laundry. Now that I've had a child, my laundry load has increased by about 4x, so that makes me one happy, but WAY behind, camper. There is something oddly rewarding about the "before" and "after" of it all, and I think I'm still in awe of putting wet clothes on a clothesline that somehow end up drying in about 24 hours despite the fact that it rains all the time where we live. (I was originally brought up as a "everything in the clothes dryer" baby, so clothing racks are still a new phenomenon)

A product that continues to present it self to me is a laundry product that I have an unusual curiousity about. EcoBalls are a set of 3 laundry cleaning balls that you put in your laundry machine (with the clothing) and use instead of laundry detergent. The EcoBalls claim that they are just as effective, and more gentle to your clothes than regular detergent (and they last up to 1000 washes which I doubt my bottle of detergent can do). Add in the fact that they are 100% natural, don't require any plastic bottles, and they are refillable - making them one of the most eco ways to go in the laundry department. Only catch for me has been that I just adore the smell of my detergent. I think I'll give these EcoBalls to myself as a holiday present and report back later on the efficiency....for now I'll just keep dreaming of more laundry!!

Beautiful Recycled Giveaway

Let me first start off by saying how challenging it has been this week on our "Plastic is Not-so Fantastic" pledge. As I've already made a decent commitment a long time ago to try to minimize my plastic use, I didn't think I had that far to go. Boy was I wrong. I collected my plastic trash for the week which I will post on Fake Plastic Fish, and it was sad to see how much I accumulate even when attempting to be plastic-free. I've highlighted here some of the pitfalls that I ran into:

1) always shop with many different sized reusable bags. I found that being prepared was my best defense. 

2) when buying cleaning products, buy bulk whenever possible, as it minimizes the amount of plastic bottles needed. 

3) snack foods were really my Achilles tendon. We love snacks around this house, and it was hard to give up some of our old favorites during our plastic-free week. I wasn't able to find a suitable bulk foods replacement, as I usually try and replace plastic-laden treats with bulk food ones. It was a not-so-fun sacrifice that my family wasn't happy with!

4) meat and dairy foods are also nearly impossible to get not wrapped in plastic. I tried to purchase larger pieces of cheese, as that seemed the most logical in getting the amount of plastic to a minimum. The meat was a totally different story as I went to the butcher completely unprepared and without a glass or reusable container. 

More than anything, I think that's the key: be prepared. Have many bags in your purse or bag that can do double duty to shop, and buy things packaged in recyclable or biodegradable packaging. But being a parent, I understand that it's almost impossible to feel 100% prepared and ready for everything. We all have so much going on in our lives that it's hard to remember everything in order to be green. Try and be conscious of what you're buying, and what you're buying it in (plastic, glass, or other). I found this week to be really enlightening, and I'll take what I learned from this week into consideration every time I shop now. Just hopefully I'll be prepared and remember all my own tips!

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To mark our plastic-free pledge, we will be giving away one of our gorgeous Smiling Planet plates to one of our readers. If you haven't already heard (from all the international press raving about them) Smiling Planet plates are made from recycled and recyclable plastic and are a stunning reminder of our beautiful planet and a way to bring peace to mealtime - or so we think!

So what do you have to do to win the Smiling Planet plate of your choice? Simply leave us a tip here of what you're doing to minimize your plastic use, or a tip to reduce your plastic consumption. As usual, we'll choose a winner at random on the 27th November - good luck! 

The Better Building Block

As a child, I was a building block kind of girl. Funny that I ended up with an architect - maybe he's living my dream job (not really now that I see the ins-and-outs!). Since opening Shak-Shuka, I have been waiting for the very best building blocks that we could find. Some too thin, some too thick, or too wobbly or unshapely. Then we met the perfect building material: Kapla planks. They are the perfect combination of beauty and brains: gorgeously packaged planks made from sustainably harvested French wood just begging to build an amazing structure that will stand the test of time (or until it's scheduled destruction time!).

How do they do it? Unlike other buliding blocks, each plank is cut identical in size, making them more stable when building up up and away! The idea for these unique building planks came from when a Dutchman moved to France and noticed the beautiful structure of the beams in French farmhouses, and how they maintained their structure after all those years. Even though your little girl or boy might not be able to keep a structure up for years (or even minutes), these planks will surely get their imagination flowing and encourage their creativity and confidence as they try new shapes and dimensions.

Available in both single and mixed colors, Kapla planks are really in a league all their own. They surely stand out in the crowd of your average buliding block - TIMBER!!!!!!

Secret Chocolate Brownies

I have a deeply rooted secret: I really dislike root vegetables. Unless you count carrots, I am not a fan of the winter vegetable set: parsnips, turnips, celeriac, beets. No, no, no and more no. Yes, I will eat them if they are the only thing available, but no matter how many times I try I am tried-and-true-anti-roots. Sorry! I know many of you love'em, so good for you! You can have mine!!!

You can imagine then that I am less than happy at the veggies that are arriving in my weekly veg box delivery, most of which are cabbage (forget beans: this is the real "Toot" champ!) or as of late - beets. Each week those poor little things sit all alone in the bottom of the veg drawer just waiting to be....ignored. But not this week! I remembered one of my favorite things to do with beets is to make a dessert out of them! I couldn't find the exact recipe I used, so instead I searched online, and found a re-make or an original, and then I re-made that one. Does that then make it my recipe? Probably not, but this recipe is so delicious, you will tweak one ingredient so you too can have bragging rights that this is your own. Perfectly sweet, moist, and scrumptious!

Secret Beet & Chocolate Brownies (as adapted by La Tartine Gourmand, a great foodie website)

1. 3 oz (90 g) dark chocolate (I used a 72% cocoa dark chocolate)

3.5 oz (100 g) flour

3.5 oz (100 g) almond powder

3 oz (90 g) Sucanat or sugar

3 oz (90 g) fat: you can choose butter, margarine, or if you use a neutral oil, reduce by 20%

4 eggs

 7 oz (200 g) shredded raw red beetroot

almond extract

*Start by peeling and shredding the beets. Set aside

*Melt the chocolate in a double boiler - put a small pan over a pot of hot water, and melt over the heat

*Mix together (using a food processor) the butter with the eggs, then add the sugar

* Mix until lighter, then add the chocolate, flour, almond powder, the beets and the almond extract, and mix

*Grease a small square pan and pour batter in, flattening it by knocking it around the pan

*Bake in the oven for about 30 mins in a preheated oven, 350 F (180 C)

Note: Your brownies are cooked once the blade of a knife comes out dry after you insert the blade. 

Ecocentric Body Care

Conveniently one of my favorite organic body products fits in perfectly with my "non plastic motto" this week. I've raved before about how I prefer bar soap over bottled body soap (one less pesky plastic bottle to throw in the trash), how I prefer to buy (vegan, non-tallow) soap that isn't made from palm oil so that I don't endanger the lives of jungle creatures (like the orangutans) but this soap is really above and beyond the eco call of duty.

Pangea Organics was first introduced to me when I was perusing the aisles of a Whole Foods back in NYC. I was really hit by the fragrance, as the packaging of the soaps is so permeable you really get a sincere whiff of what's inside. The best part is - the fragrances are not your usual "chamomile" or single scents, instead they're interesting combinations, like my favorite Pyrenees Lavender with Damiana Tea. And they smell divine! One of my favorite aspects of the soap, besides the scent and the fact that they last an insanely long time, is that the packaging is super eco-friendly as well. Just like plantable cards that we've talked about before, the packaging for this soap is plantable! Last soap I had burst into some lovely wildflowers for us to enjoy until our dog got a hold of them. But it was bliss to enjoy them while they lasted!

Pangea Organics makes a slew of other organic body products, but given that most of them are packaged in plastic, I usually try and find another more eco-friendly alternative. But the soap is a sure-fire winner, and a great way to introduce yourself to this great line of beautifully and uniquely scented body care. Oh, and forgot to mention that the soaps are also palm-oil free!!