I Shop, I Use, I Review! (An Online Shopaholic's Blog)

Is there any way to make Enzyme Drinks without sugar? Like a diabetic friendly recipe?

Some one asked me this question when I posted about enzymes drink on a blogging site, Virily.com.

I thought it was a fantastic question! Because it was written in the book clearly that there is a way to make enzymes diabetics friendly.

And that is to use Oligo to replace sugar or for some recipe (like Cherry enzymes and ginger-lemon enzymes), you can make it with wild or natural honey.

While there are "debates" over whether wild honey is sweet (sugar) too, some says they can be taken in moderation for people with diabetics. But do check out more about it before consuming.

Hence, Oligo would be the better choice here.

Possible 'Side-effects' of Drinking Enzymes Drink!

I've made the enzyme drinks and according to the book, it's best to drink it daily (3 times a day would be best but once is fine too).

You can mixed it with any drink that is NOT hot, or less than 45 degree Celsius or you might "kill" the enzymes.

However, there will be some unpleasant effects INITIALLY due to the fact that your body is cleansing up and getting used to the "healthier" way.

You might experience one or more of these symptoms that should go away after while:

Vomiting and nauseous
Slight discomfort in stomach/gastric
Slight "Hotness"/Dull pain in Chest
Slight lower abdominal discomfort
Softening of stools
Bloating
Very slight dizziness
Slight race in heartbeat
Rashes/itch
Spotting (for ladies)

I've taken 2 days of enzymes and I haven't had any of these YET ...

Apple Enzyme Drink Recipe

Well, I said I'll share My own experimental recipe and preparation if my first Enzyme drink making turns out well, so here we have it!

Ingredients

Glass Bottle
Apple
Sugar (brown or white or Rock sugar) (1.1 times the weight of the apples)
Note: brown sugar gives you a black liquid/solution.

Preparation

Wash the fruit thoroughly!
Soak the apples with fruit wash for at least 15 minutes. Then rinse it and then soak in clear water for another 15 minutes. The book say to do this twice or thrice but I got lazy and did it once only but I make sure to rub/scrub the skin hard when I rinse it.

If you don't have fruit wash, just soak the apple for longer time, saying 20 minutes.

"Disinfect" the Glass Bottle
Disinfect the bottle with boiling water.

Drying
Leave everything to dry overnight. Water(especially non-distilled water) and oil would pollute the enzyme and destroy everything. Remember to cover the apples to prevent pests from crawling on it.

Cutting

Then without washing the apple, cut them into small pieces (about bit size). With a knife that is being "disinfected" with boiling water.

Put everything in the glass bottle in layers.

Apple >> sugar >> Apple >> Sugar. Basically it's recommended to have the sugar as the top layer as the "shield" to prevent oxidation.

DO NOT cover the lid tightly, just leave it on or use a cloth/kitchen tower and tie it with rubber band.

Place bottle in fridge, wait for 14 days. You can open and stir or swirl the bottle gently starting the 4th day.

*Note: I waited for only 11 days, leaving the bottle in room temperature. But I believe I got lucky.

German OUT OF WORLD CUP!?

(Picture: Getty)

I can't believe Germany lost the match!!! They're out of the World Cup!!! NOOO!!

But even though as a supporter of Germany, I think their performance was BAD. They're sloppy and doesn't show too much team-work... Especially in their last match against South Korea.

The decision to leave the goal post and have the goalkeeper down kicking with the team with around 5 minutes left is well risky too and Koreans too advantage of that and scored an easy goal. This is just not the Germans' year, Lady luck is not on their side...

Well... hope they don't take it too hard and try again 4 years later.

DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 11 (Final Day)

I've decided to cut short the process because I've discovered a mistake I've made (2 actually), which I'll be talking about later. However, after tasting the liquid, it was OK though too sweet.

The leftover apple

So I'm going to share my mistakes now.

Mistakes:

- I've said the ratio of fruits to sugar is 1:1.1. So I lazily did 1 cup of apple to 1.1 cup of sugar, however it doesn't work this way! It's weigh ratio > 1kg/g:1.1kg/g! Lol. So I've lots of leftover unmelted sugar and the enzyme drink turned out too sweet and too thick. It's like syrup. So we need to dilute it A LOT just to drink it. It'll be good in dessert though.
The ideal temperature to ferment fruit enzymes is 18 - 23 degree Celsius (which is the fridge), but I left it outside at about room temperature. So it kind of speeds the process. But oh well, it still works.

Smell/Taste

It smells slightly like beer plus a little bit of fermented sugar. It's fragrant. I can't really tell the taste because it's overpowered by sweetness but I can still taste a little "beer" in it. It'll be quite tasty if less sweet and a little more sour. I think I should get a kitchen scale.

DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 4 - 10

There are some great changes starting the 5th day! There are bubbles as the sugar ferment and released gas.

It is recommended to swirl the bottle gently and open up to stir the mixture gently starting the 4th day. However, do not stir or swirl too hard till it bubbles too much.

The apples got all oxidised and looked pretty disgusting! I'm pretty sure I won't be eating any of them when it's done (even though the book said that they could be eaten).

4 more days to go!! Hope it'll be successful!!

Frustrated with blogger's paging system!

I've been trying to place Helplogger numbered paging system on my blog and I'm extremely frustrated by the limitation, probably put down by blogger's internal script/settings.

I've set the number of posts to show per-page to 8 in the Settings >> Posts, Comments and sharing but still only 6 - 7 posts were being shown. So I've to set the number of posts per page to a dynamic number which is equals to the number of posts blogger decides to show on the homepage.

Well, any post shown less than 8 (show per page) will be "eaten" and will never appear, even if you go through the pages...

That is not the only problem! Another problem is that blogger will always decide what posts to show by date (or month rather) instead of by order. As you can see from the screenshot above, only 1 post was shown on page 2! (So I get some posts eaten, depending on how many posts were shown on the homepage)

Well, there was only 7 posts for the month of June (before this post) and 6 of them were shown on the homepage, so the only post left was the only post shown on the 2nd page! What!?

Shouldn't it be showing the next 6 posts instead?

I've worked days on this and I can't solve it anyway. Instead, I've faced more problems as I posted more posts...

I don't think the problem is with the script, I've seen others used it on their blogs and it worked pretty well. I just think that blogger has their own ways to decide how and number of posts they would show... which is just annoying!!

Anyway, I've decided to pull the numbered pagination out ...

DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 3

Not much changes on Day 3, except for some small little "bubbling" occasionally.

It still smells pretty good now.

Messy Cable Solution!

Sick and tired of messy cables? Well, I might have the solution for you!

I've always been a messy person and my cables are all over the place. However, my mom hates messy cables. In order to stop her from excessive nagging, I decided to get some cables solution - some works, some not so much. I'll be sharing my experience with you...

Don't let my mom know I posted this photo, she'll kill me!

Baseus Pea Cable Clip

It came with 3 magnetic cable clipper and a magnetic "base". The base came with a self-adhesive tape, so you can stick it easily to any surfaces. The magnet are very strong so it won't come off by accidental tags.

My verdict:
Not too bad, design is vert attractive but doesn't work well with my charging hub. I used it in my room with my PC instead.

Cable Coiler/Winder/Twister

Got these from Taobao for a relatively cheap price. I've been using them for a while now. The design is pretty nice and looks good on the table.

My verdict:
To be honest, they aren't the best solution because they're pretty "bulky" themselves. But they do work well in coiling and reducing the mess, that is if you're not lazy to coil them manually.

Cable Coiler/Winder/Twister - Portable Version

These are good for bringing cables out with you. They coil the cable easily without you having to manually coil them. They comes in 2 sizes (small one for earphones and bigger ones for longer/thicker wires like charging cables) and many colours.

To coil the able around, you just have to "fold" the cable in half, hook it at the hook, pull and let go. It'll coil itself automatically.

My verdict:
Really useful for bring long cables out. However, some says it MIGHT hurt the cable due to the folding. I've used this for a while and the cable is still working well.

Storage Box

This is my favourite "solution" to the problem. Because well, they hide what is not to be seen.

I can't say much about what is inside the box... lol. I'm not a neat person, I've admitted to that :p

My verdict:
I've to say the storage box reduced the messiness at my charging hub by A LOT!! It is one of the "better" and more accepted solution by my mom.

DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 2

On the second day, there are obviously more liquid and some of the apples seems to have "wrinkled up" a little. The sugar have also pretty much melted.

Problems: I've faced with Ant-problem! A few hours after I started the process.

The book said that you're not suppose to cover the lid tightly. As gas will be release during fermentation, pressure might build up and cause the jar to explode.

However, the sugar and fruit attracts ants, so I've got ants all over the jar and even INSIDE the jar!

I've to manually kill/remove them.

In the end, I placed a plate of water below the jar to avoid ants from getting to the jar! I've also added a layer of tissue/kitchen towel below the lid for better protection.

I've no more ant-problem now!

DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 1

I've long heard of enzymes being beneficial to the body and I've bought some to drink in the past. They work in helping improve my always jammed digestion but they are expensive. So I stopped drinking them. Recently, I came across a book at a 2nd-hand store about enzymes and how they're beneficial for health.

Like:

Improving digestion
Improving immunity
Anti-ageing
Cleansing the body

Recipes and preparation process were also included. The book is pretty detailed but the downside of it is that it is written in Chinese. I can understand Chinese, but still took me a while to read.

Anyway, I've decided to try making some enzymes following the instructions using some apples.

Because it's my first time making it, I decided to start small and I only use 2 apples - 1 small, 1 medium.

The steps to make the enzyme drink are simple, just cutting the apples into small bits and then adding sugar. The ratio is about 1:1.1. However, it is the preparation that is more tedious and important. I won't go into the details here. I'll share them if this turns out well.

However, I realised that I've ran out of sugar (you'll need lots of sugar!) and so I added some rock sugar as substitute. (Yes, all kind of sugar works, even brown sugar).

Now, I just have to wait for about 14-20 days for it to ferment.

You might be wondering, isn't it a Drink? But there is no liquid?

Well, water will be produced during the fermentation process and as you can see, I've just started the process and liquid is already produced.

Anyway, this concludes Day 1 of the DIY Apple Enzymes Drink - Day 1. I'll be updating the process (daily, if possible), so you can see how the process will be like.

Orico BTA-403 Bluetooth 4.0 Adapter Review

I've recently updated my computer and I'm finally able to install Citra, a 3DS emulator! However, I realised that using the keyboard as controller is as fun as playing with a real game controller!!

I do have a Bluetooth controller - 8bitdo NES30 Pro, which I hardly use because it doesn't work so well with my IOS devices.(It's not MFI)

Aren't it gorgeous? Sorry I just have to... I love it!!

I wanted very much to play wirelessly but my PC doesn't have Bluetooth, so I decided to get a Bluetooth dongle. After much searching around, I found the Orico BTA-403. It's really cheap, it's less than S$8 after shipping!!

*My review covers mainly on this dongle for gaming (connecting with game controller) purpose only.

Packaging and Design

Well, it just came in a simple plastic packaging but works well with the product. There are some specifications printed on the packaging with a link to download the driver.

The dongle itself is really mini and portable but I can assure you the finish is good! The dongle feels solid and stylish.

Installation

No, this dongle is not plug and play for Windows 8 and below! (although the packaging says plug and play). Since I've a Windwos 7, I followed the link (the 2nd one for English, 1st link leads to a Chinese Website) on the packaging and landed on a website. Fishes through the list of drivers and found the file "Driver_for _BTA-402_BTA-403_BTA-406".

The downloading was SUPER SLOW!! Can you imagine over 2 hours to download a 400+MB zipped file?

Installation was fortunately fast and easy.

Scanning and Syncing

You need to restart your computer after installation, it was not stated anywhere but I learn it from my own experience. I spent an hour trying to syncing my game controller to the PC, only to meet with errors. In the end, a simple restart fixed everything!

Subsequent syncing requires you to run the installed program. The program does remembers device previously linked with the PC but it's down to luck whether it would auto connect the next time you tried pairing them again. Most of the time, I end up having to scan and sync my devices all over again.

Also, the dongle would flash non-stop when its scanning or communicating with a device, it's a good indication but can sometimes be a little annoying.

Connectivity and Response

I've no complain about the respond and connectivity of the dongle. I tried playing some games and I like the respond. I've also tried walking away from my computer to test the connectivity and there is still no delay.

However, you'll run into problem when you let the device "sleep", like when you sudden need to do something halfway through your game... Say your mother asked you to help with housework or your girlfriend called.Once again, there is a 50% chance you need to scan and sync all over again.

Conclusion

You probably noticed from the photo (of the NES30 Pro) that I had it on USB. Well, it's because I don't find the dongle that user-friendly. I am one of those people who would stop halfway through a game, watch some TV or take a bath, so I ended up disconnected and have to reconnect again.

To make things worst, Citra doesn't have the ability to reconnect with lost controllers, so I've to restart Citra too!

Side: I tried connecting with my iPhone 6Plus via Bluetooth and the syncing is extremely difficult. I tried 5 times and only manage to connect it once. I played music from my iPhone to my PC and it works pretty well, no delay or distortion.

Pros:

- Mini and portable
- Good built and finish
- Gold plated USB connector
- Plug and Play for Windows 8 and above
- Comes with driver
- Covers quite a huge range (at least 5-10 meters)
- Easy connection

Cons:

- Slow downloading of driver
- Have to run program every time you want to connect a device
- Does not always auto sync with previously linked devices
- Sometimes not able to reconnect by itself with devices that went to sleep
- Constant flashing can get irritating
- Syncing to iPhone is difficult

Score: 3.5/5