Month: April 2016

Barbie’s got Curves

Published by

In the absence of interesting personal experiences, I’ll just write about Barbie’s. The iconic doll Barbie not only got a large array of accessories, careers, relationships, style, she has also been critiqued widely for her ‘far from average’ body negatively influencing body image and for over all distorting the world view of the little children playing with her. In reaction to declining sales rates, with Disney’s Frozen Elsa and Lego taking over market shares, Mattel gave her designers the freedom to do whatever to make Barbie more relevant. The outcome? In 2015, a larger variety of skin tones and hair textures were added to the mix of blondness. These dolls will all be wearing the name Barbie, instead of having different names and being Barbie’s friends What’s more: Barbie got Curvy! In January 2016 three new body shapes got released: Curvy, Tall and Petite! You can learn more here on TIMES. More interesting is this article on TIMES titled ‘What I learned watching moms and kids meet curvy Barbie’. Apparently, the kids really liked the …

Canola Corn Bread

Published by

This fluffy yellow ‘canola corn bread’ may as well be called a cake, but then there would have been too many Cs. To make it, I used a corn bread recipe from one of the many cookbooks named ‘cooking vegan’ (Veganistisch koken by Parragon Books LTD). The main ingredient is corn flour, the others are white wheat flour, canola oil, lots of soy milk, apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, baking powder and some salt. The recipe is pretty similar to this one of The Post Punk Kitchen. The canola oil contributes its distinct taste and I’m still undecided to whether I like it. (I don’t know whether corn bread always has canola oil, but in The Netherlands the oil isn’t commonly used.) So it tasted a bit sweet-ish from the corn and maple syrup and canola-ish from the canola. The structure was really soft and fluffy! Maybe I put too much baking powder, but I felt like finishing the package… So it was a perfect cake, except it wasn’t so sweet like most cakes. It …

Confessions of a Social Media addict

Published by

My previous posts about sharing insecurities reminded me of the following. In the end of last year, Facebook and Instagram famous Essena O’Neill radically quit what she had been doing full-time for the past three years: she has been living for taking pictures in which she looked good, altering them, posting them on social media and receiving likes and followers. Now, all of a sudden, she had decided to quit social media, and for good reasons. This time she posted a video titled ‘Why I am REALLY quitting Social Media’ in which she tells her followers how her life has been, on  how she let herself define by numbers, by followers, likes and views, which became the only things that made her feel good. On how on the ages of 16 to 18 she spent her whole days proving herself online, trying to be that perfect person. On how she feels about it now, now she’s quit. She acts incredibly courageous. In the video she gets very emotional when she talks about her 12 year-old …

Mung Bean Soup with Roasted Kale

Published by

I was inspired to make a mung bean soup by this recipe for Healing Mung Bean Soup of Plants and Balance. How could I not? The recipe title really makes you feel as if you’re doing something right. The mung beans had been present for some time; earlier I had only used part of the pack for sprouting. But now I learnt you can soup them too! So I didn’t follow Trish’ recipe out of fear of not meeting my housemates’ strict vegetable intake preferences. I’m partly joking, but I’m mostly serious here. However, in the end the mung beans grew so much that the balance might have been a bit off after all! Difficult things. Dried mung beans don’t need to be soaked before usage. I used the onion, garlic, courgette as suggested and added carrot as well as an awesome topping of kale crisps! Have you tried roasting kale? Kale gets such a funny crispy structure, you have to try! The procedure is to dry the kale if you find a way to …