THE BEST FOODS IN THE WORLD.

The best foods in the world are herbs, as it turns out. If you are interested they are turmeric, sage, marjoram,cinnamon, oregano, pepper,cloves and then a mixture of Jamaican spices and a mixture of Italian spices, under what name and brand, I’ve promptly forgotten. Then following the herbs are ginger root, and honey. Maybe they should be the best foods in the world for your health. I’m not sure who decided these things but they make for a god-awful breakfast.
I shouldn’t complain, since I’ve  eaten grubs, ants, grasshoppers, snake, rat and other weird fare. The difference is, I don’t eat them as a steady diet.
The foods on this best foods list are purported to have healing qualities, and are  therefore recommended as a preventive. Despite my upcoming carotid surgery, even my surgeon agrees I have a healthy diet and have exceptionally good health. But, it isn’t the grasshoppers, or grubs. I do faithfully eat five to seven fruits and vegetables each day. I enjoy unsalted brown rice with sea weed and whole grain breads and cereals.
And, according to some of my friends, I have bizarre taste. I happen to love parsley in my unsweetened, whole grain cereal every morning. I clip it with a scissors and I l\enjoy the texture and the taste. I know, everyone thinks it is strange.
My sister and I were discussing bizarre eating habits in our family. She claims she loves pickle relish with potatoes and gravy. She also likes sliced cooked potatoes with raw onion and baloney in a sandwich with plenty of  mayo.  We normally don’t tell anyone what strange stuff we eat. One of my brothers eats pickled pigs feet every day and happily devours the cartilage around the ends of chicken bones. Whose to say what foods are right or wrong? A friend of mine eats sweet pickle and peanut butter sandwiches. And, my brother who lived many years in Alaska, developed a taste for whale blubber.

But, this guy, Andrew Zimmern, roams the earth to taste things like dung beetles, tarantulas, scorpions, and rooster testicle soup. He is the host of the travel channels Bizarre Foods.

Here he is shown with withered frogs. He reminds people that most of his programs are devoted to all the wonderful foods you see only in other cultures, many of them poor countries, where absolutely nothing goes to waste. Like in Bolivia where an old women with nothing but an oil can for a kiosk, serves thinly sliced calves liver that barely touches a hot grill. She adds a homemade sauce with peanuts, chili, garlic and vinegar. People stand in line for it because it is ridiculously good. He thinks Americans are squeamish and afraid to eat little fish with the heads on them, and chickens feet. It bugs him that the hot dog and hamburger are king. (Information and pictures taken from Sierra Magazine.)

We are so fortunate to have great food, wholesome and clean. And, we can enjoy the health benefits of herbs and spices as well and make lovely dishes if we just step up to diversity.

I’m appreciative that my parents never introduced us to fast food nor soft drinks. We ate close to the garden, what was in season, whatever was available. I cringe when I see a cooking show and the participants leave half the tomato sauce in the can, they don’t scrape or rinse every bit out. We didn’t waste.  My father was a survivalist and I like to think I’m a survivor, no matter what happens in this economy. I could live off what I can find in my yard. Thinly, but I could do it with a couple of chickens and a goat.

RIGHT OUT OF DICKENS

PBS programming has featured Charles Dickens programming  this month in honor of his 200th birthday, or some such hallmark of accomplishment, and they’ve proved to be very popular programs indeed. Maybe because there are parallels to today’s social and political system? From the early 1600′s, in merry olde England, destitute people were cared for with money raised by a tax on their neighbor parishioners. A parish was a unit of combined religious and political authority. The parish distributed money or food to the poor, who were allowed to remain in their homes and maintain some dignity. Parishes recognized that caring for their poor people was a public responsibility and that it was in the best interests of all to look after their poor neighbors.

Large estate owners always had the upper hand in things from Napoleonic times,  passing laws that favored the rich, keeping peasant people in control enough to just let them get by. (Middle class).  Even though wealth and avarice controlled  the legal system and always had, during the Industrial Revolution  the ranks of the poor grew steeply and the growing poor became an outrageous nuisance. Thus The Poor Law of 1834  was passed, and instituted  debtors prisons, and being poor became  a crime. (Not unlike our homeless today).   Dickens’ father, who temporarily fell on hard times, was dropped out of the middle class and locked up in a debtors prison along with thousands of others.  Oh, the wonder of   government at work. It didn’t reduce the number of poor, of course, but the cost of caring for them was reduced by 36 per cent. A great accomplishment!   Our prisons are full, too, but not from the ranks of  “white collar” criminals. That designation of  “white collar” is interesting. It is a division of class, where the rich and powerful are treated differently than the common man.  Not much has changed. Our prisons are mostly  filled with uneducated, poor black men.

The rich really didn’t care about the abject misery they had created, then.  And our current political climate is determined to stomp the middle class into the ground and make laws to keep them there. I know many people who vote against their own best interests. The purveyors of wealth and avarice can make you believe we can run this country today, on the same amount of taxes we paid thirty years ago, while our infrastructure is falling apart, our educational institutions can’t find enough doctors, nurses and teachers to fill our needs,  and immigration is blamed for our problems instead of the rich, congressional shareholders.  Americans pay billions of dollars over cost for their health care,  and our political system runs on a steady stream of corporate money. That money never trickles down to our pockets. The 99% are desperately trying to change that, but without a free press (you only think it is free), the battle they are waging is a drop of water in an ocean of contempt. Not much about government has changed since Dickens.
But, there was a time of honorable intentions, insisting that all men were created equal. Unfortunately, they aren’t, and they weren’t treated equally, either. Despite the fact the preamble to our constitution states in part that our government was organized for:  “…the general welfare of the people.”

VISIT TO A CHINESE CEMETERY

We leave Kunming on the bus headed for Guilin. On the way we stop at a poor Suni Yi village that  still functions much like it has for hundreds of years. It has been insulated from tourists until recently when the village and its cemetery were designated a UNESCO site.
Most of the houses are ramshackle. Some have tin roofs, some have straw. Some keep pigs next to their houses.

Raw sewage runs into a ditch down the street; garbage is strewn on the ground everywhere.  You understand very quickly what life was like, and still is,  for some ethnic minorities in China.

The Suni Yi believe spider webs are good luck and they don’t remove them from doorways, alleys or houses.

The women work together to remove corn from the cobs. The crop is shared among the families. It appears to be the major crop in this area. Front right is the village adobe mixer.

They have many uses for the fibrous husks and don’t throw them out.

Clearly visible on this building, the many layers of time. On the right, is a slap dash repair. The center is from an earlier time. Above and on the left are different materials.

Here, too, you can see the different style of adobe bricks and stucco that went into repairs over the years.

Like all Chinese, they adore their children. During the enforced one child per family policy ethnic minority people are allowed two children per family. The Chinese government enforces this with ostracism. An unregistered child is shunned by neighbors; he cannot get work as an adult, no one is allowed to hire him.  His parents also suffer; they lose jobs and get punished in many, small ways. Farm people didn’t exactly have “jobs” like city people before collective farming. And now, collective farming  has been discontinued.   At one time they gave out free condoms and demonstrated them by showing how to use them by slipping  them on their fingers. So the farmers put the condoms on fence posts, tree branches and anything but their privates thinking they would work.

The people here are not used to big noses parading through their village and they are a bit shy. Vicki asked us not to give them money and turn them into beggars. But, you can see the dollar bill in this little boys hand. One of our group “forgot”.  It won’t be long before tourism will negatively and positively affect their  lives.

We barely give the above ground  cemetery a passing glance. It is unkempt and overgrown with weeds.

From past experience,  UNESCO sites usually have some great beauty, but this site was chosen for its historical significance and rarity. Above ground cemeteries have not been allowed in China for several centuries. By law,  bodies must be cremated.

As we leave the village, this woman is headed for the fields with her child on her back. You can tell the dog has had recent puppies and we wonder…

Happy children play on the street. They don’t know they are poor when they get enough to eat, have loving parents, and adequate shelter.

CHRISTMAS CATALOGS IN THE MAIL

A bounty of Christmas catalogs wend their way to my mailbox. Retailers are hoping to have a better Christmas season this year than last. And, there are signs all around that the economy is picking up. I always loved the Christmas season, except for the shopping. Shopping for my kids was fine, but for siblings and various friends or special aunts and uncles, it became a chore. Its the type of gift that is hard to choose, something you can afford but still likely to please. A hassle, to put it mildly, especially when funds were short. When my kids were college age, they couldn't afford buying for each other and we decided collectively to stop giving gifts. Instead we donated a set amount to charity. It turned into a form of freedom that we enjoyed so much, we've continued the process to this day, with one exception.  The new younger set, the grandchildren, that still have sugar plums in their heads, are still entitled to gifts. It was kind of fun to reveal to each other what charity we chose and why, no matter how meager the donation.
For several years we read poetry. One year the kids sang the rock song that annoyed me the most when they were growing up and I loved the tease. We know the best part of Christmas is family, sharing food, and each other.Which brings me back to the catalogs.

Our economy may be shaky, but this is still the land of plenty. Two charities stand out in my mind because they do so much for others. One is: http://actfast.oxfamamerica.org/
They are on the ground in every country, including America, for every disaster, for every kid who is hungry, finding solutions. And the other is Heifer International. www.heifer.org/gift
They make it simple to make a difference. Buy two chickens and supply plenty of eggs and protein for a family. A goat provides milk. A sheep, milk, meat and wool. Help dig a pond for  fishing and a couple of  ducks. Or buy fruit trees, a sack of seed, or life saving mosquito nets.  925 million people are hungry when they go to bed at night.
Heifer International is also partnering  with project POTICO, a NewPage paper manufacturer cooperating to save virgin rainforests.
You can find a very basic, very satisfying way to make a gift that counts.