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A Passion for Organics

Bulk organic herbs, spices and essential oils. Sin

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Black Wood-ear

On Mountain Rose Herbs' facebook, someone posted an inquiry on blood thinning herbs:
I'm inquiring about an herb that will help thin the blood from blood clots. Tired of the 4 aspirin a day thing. Anybody know any good herbs?
Here is my answer, though not necessary to be scientifically correct. Posted are pictures of black wood-ear in both dried (left) and expanded (right) forms.


Try black wood-ear, which is available in any Chinese grocery store. Chinese believe that eating black wood-ear can help in thinning the blood.

The black wood-ear is a kind of edible fungus, like mushroom. Since the most common form available is the dried one, what you need to do is first soak in water for half hour, rinse and pinch off the black "root" or anchor points, then soak the black wood-ear for another half to one hour until they are fully expanded to its original form. Drain the water before cooking. You can stir fry the wood-ear with vegetables and/or meat. My favorite way of cooking is boil a cornish hen with black wood-ear in half to 3/4 full pot of water for one hour. Add ginger root and cooking wine to shimmer at medium heat. Add salt and pepper five minutes before cooking is ready.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

25 Most Important Alternative Energy Companies

Recently I have been doing research on green energy companies and their stocks. The following article is the one I came across today while DOW lost 165.07. The solar energy stocks especially suffered a loss because of selloff for profit and run!

Alternative energy is big business — and getting bigger. The industry includes hundreds of companies that make a piece of the continuously expanding jigsaw puzzle that is the alt energy space. Rather than trying to pick winners and losers — which at this point is probably impossible — we’ve tried instead to identify the 25 companies we think will shape the alt energy industry for the next three to five years.

Here is the list:

1. First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR)
2. SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWRA & SPWRB)
3. Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP)
4. Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL)
5. Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. (NYSE: YGE)
6. LDK Solar Co. Inc. (NYSE: LDK)
7. Solar Millennium AG (OTC: SMLNF.pk)
8. BrightSource Energy (privately held)
9. General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)
10. Vestas Wind Systems A/S (OTC: VWSYF.pk)
11. Siemens AG (NYSE: SI)
12. China Longyuan Power Group Corp. Ltd. (Hong Kong)
13. ABB Ltd. (NYSE: ABB)
14. Iberdrola Renovables SA (OTC: IRVSF.pk)
15. Sociedad QuĂ­mica y Minera de Chile S.A. (NYSE: SQM)
16. Molycorp, Inc. (NYSE: MCP)
17. Cosan Ltd. (NYSE: CZZ)
18. Advanced Battery Technologies (NASDAQ: ABAT)
19. A123 Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: AONE)
20. Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MXWL)
21. Itron, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI)
22. American Superconductor (NASDAQ: AMSC)
23. Cree Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE)
24. Bloom Energy (privately held)
25. Areva (France-CEI)

Read more: The 25 Most Important Alternative Energy Companies - 24/7 Wall St.

http://247wallst.com/2010/10/19/the-25-most-important-alternative-energy-companies/

Monday, October 11, 2010

Fern Fiddleheads - Wild Harvest, Pure Organics


The brown plants are dried fern fiddleheads. They are harvested from the wild in China, called Jue Cai or Mountain Lobster. They are edible and pure organics. A good source of vitamins A and C.