#the quality of the food is so high. all our meals were incredible and fresh

[daddy-long-legssss]

coming back home to canada after vacation is so disappointing lol.

[hearthandheathenry]

14 Ways To Live A Healthier Life That Anyone Can Do

Use cast iron, stainless steel, glass, and ceramic cookware/dishes. Use wooden and steel for the utensils. Ditch the plastic and chemicals! They are even finding microplastic in the blood of newborn babies! If you can't afford to switch, switch slowly and buy second-hand! These materials will last through generations!

Buy and cook more fresh, high-quality food. Stop buying premade and processed garbage! The hidden massive amounts of fake sugar and additives in everything is far more damaging than a little bit of extra grass-fed butter or grass-fed meat on your plate. You can find local and even organic produce and meat for cheap at your local freshmarket, mexican grocery store, or asian grocery store. Aldi and Trader Joe's are also healthy yet cheap stores! You will also be surprised how little time it takes to cook versus having something pre-made, and with home-made food you'll have control over exactly how much sugar, fat, etc you have in a given meal. Neither of these are bad in moderation, but the key is moderation!

Prioritize your health and try to create less stress. Brush and floss your teeth, take care of your skin, eat as well as you can, move more, and sleep enough. These are things you should be doing AT MINIMUM to stay healthy. Stress also has a huge impact on health, so it is important to do your best to lower everyday stress and balance your hormones.

Do things that make you feel good. This ties into the less stress philosophy and the rule of everything in moderation, and this looks different for everyone, but generally focus on hobbies and habits that are good for you overall and dont cause addiction or mental health issues. The more things you incorporate into your life that you enjoy, the more you will enjoy your life.

Be aware of your feelings and honor them. No ignoring how you feel deep down! Notice what makes you smile and what makes you sad. Feel it all and try to see what your brain and body are trying to communicate to you about things. Your emotions and thoughts have a purpose, try to see what they're saying.

Try to wear or use more organic materials. Try to use cotton, linen, wool, etc for your clothes, sheets, and more. For jewelry try to use gold, silver, steel, copper, etc. Drop the acrylics and plastics. Invest in your clothing and wear quality materials - your health and wallet will thank you.

Try to kick any drug or alcohol habits. We only have one body in this lifetime and these things WILL catch up to you healthwise. The short-term dopamine is not worth the long-term consequences. Ask anyone who's suffered from their decisions from when they were younger.

Spend more time in nature. Being outside has many health benefits and it does incredible things for mental health. Find a place you can visit outside that brings you peace. Try taking a daily walk.

Learn to set boundaries for yourself. Including towards yourself! If you are pushed past your limits of exhaustion, honor your body and rest. It is okay to have soft, flexible boundaries, or hard boundaries, but they are rules we put in place in regards to ourselves to keep ourselves safe and happy! IE - "If I need sleep I will not keep pushing myself and I will go to sleep" or "I will not put up with being yelled at and I will remove myself from that situation".

Walk as much as you can, while you can. Try to opt out of convenience when possible and walk a little further to the front door of the store or try incorporating a daily walk into your routine. Moderate exercise is great for our health!

Do something daily that will exercise your brain. Whether it is a fun crossword puzzle or just something in your daily life you need to problem solve, do something that is going to flex that brain power and keep those pathways firing. If we don't use our connections, we literally lose them over time!

Talk to at least one person a day for at least 5 minutes. We are social creatures that thrive off community, so it is extremely important for our mental health to find connection with others and feel seen and heard and like we matter. Not only that, routinely reaching out to others will help you make and maintain relationships of all natures!

Educate yourself. Learning shouldn't just stop after you finish schooling. You should continually be trying to further your knowledge about yourself and the world around you. You live in the age where information is readily available all the time, so make an effort to use it to better your life, and learn how to sift through the misinformation as well. Not knowing how to do something is no longer an excuse as an adult when you can easily look it up or ask for guidance.

Consume more positive media and less media overall. What we watch and listen to really affects our thoughts, moods, and subconscious. There is a reason upbeat music motivates us! Try to keep your media exposure to uplifting and feel-good things rather than ones that cause anxiety or sadness.

[msfbgraves]

Food, glorious food

I had family over for lunch twice in a short time.

Now lunch is an awkward meal in Holland. Were this my German side, I simply would have cooked. But lunch in the Netherlands is, to the chagrin of many, a simple, bread based meal, and serving a full course meal is overwhelming to some. But I am too foreign to put a bread basket on the table, put out some cheese and a few apples and call it a day. But bloody hell how do you make something that simple as a concept- the Belgians mock us for this practice enough as it is - into something even slightly festive?

My solution was to up the quality. Serve bread I'd gone to an organic bakery to get, and some of their insanely expensive pastry. Organic smoked salmon, high end honey, several organic meats. Freshly made soup. Salad. Fresh juice. Good organic cheese, fresh butter. I will not be one of those people that the rest of the world mocks for being a terrible host.

And I noticed something.

They're putting something in the food.

Fresh, high end foods taste completely different.

I knew this, sorta, because I'd been on a self-imposed diet during chemo and I stopped because I didn't want to think about cancer every time I made a meal. I got refamiliar with standard supermarket taste, which was fine, you know?

But.

I read that people weren't eating significantly more than they did pre-fifties. Yet obesity wasn't that much of an issue before then.

And of course, I was also raised with the idea that cooking 'from scratch' is incredibly difficult and you need all kinds of products for the 'hard' things.

And yes, cooking is a skill. But I made a cake 'from scratch' yesterday and I don't see what about that would have been so much easier if I had used a box mix, time and energy wise. Not having to add the baking powder myself?

I also cooked semolina and milk into a pudding myself in January and again the taste was markedly different. Not even sure I prefer it. You know, how people tell bakers nowadays that they prefer the taste of a box mix to something made from scratch?

...what are they putting in our food?

In our service economy, certain skills are definitely undertaught. Man, why couldn't they have combined chemistry and cooking when I was 15? And that would make sense, if what we were being offered was fresh, made with quality ingredients.

But it isn't now, is it? High fructose corn syrup? There's ingredients on sale to make your own good things, but mass produced foodstuffs? Not really now, huh? If it is altered so significantly as to have a completely different taste?

Again I'm not saying I'll never have smarties again but what, pray, is in this stuff?

And also cooking "from scratch" is barely harder - I am a crip with impaired fine motor skills and impaired depth vision. But what it is, is undertaught. If my school thinks it is essential for me to read Satre in the original French by 16, well, why shouldn't it be essential for me to know how to make at least my national dishes? How to do small home repairs? I was made to study the same Greek mythology from two different teachers in two different contexts. I love telling you about Hestia, but that was overkill. And we did get taught some medical knowledge at 14, but why didn't that include cooking with fresh ingredients?

So now, many don't have enough routine not to effectively very slowly poison themselves in an effort to stay alive.

I mean, iced tea is tea that has cooled off and may have had some lemon juice and sugar added to it. Why would I pay lipton to put it in a plastic container mixed with goodness knows what else and charge me €1.99 for the privilege? And I know that this is impossible without some form of kitchen (dafuq), but Dutch homes come with kitchen areas so that isn't the issue.

Because what are they putting in this stuff to earn more profits? Methinks it is very, very weird.

[thequeenofsheba-blog]

Foodie adventures in southwest and southeast Sweden

We traveled from Gothenberg to Kullaberg to Kivik to Malmo in late July 2024. The areas we visited were stunning and we were lucky to get lots of sun. Here are our foodie tips-

Hoze sushiya in Gothenberg: The sushi here is excellent. The chef has an incredible level of understanding of Japanese history and sushi technique. His rice and shari are excellent, as are his selection of fish and his plated dishes. One of the best dishes of the meal was a simple bowl of rice with some cured egg yolk- his rice is that good. This is a sushi meal worth having outside of Japan.

Knystaforsen: This restaurant feels like a dream, like you enter an enchanted garden for the entirety of the night. The food was very good, the space stunning, and the overall experience really, really magical. Some stand out bites included a charred strawberry, a tart with smoked cheese and trout roe, rainbow trout in a strawberry broth, a rhubarb jelly with smoked eel, a ‘waldorf salad’ dish that was really a 3* dish, and duck heart with a burnt oil sauce. The smoky element of each dish really makes it an excellent meal. The only major issue I have with the place is their bread and pastries, which are really no good, which also made the cheese course less enjoyable. They need a new pastry chef. I would recommend staying the night at their hotel, so you get the full experience. Breakfast the next day is expensive for what it is, but also very nice.

Holy Smoke BBQ: The place is hip and a great vibe. The food is darn expensive though, and though the short rib and spicy bacon were great, everything else really wasnt- the brisket was too chewy and not juicy enough, the jalapeno sauce had no real flavor, the mac and broccoli was dry and no good at all, and the creamed corn was fine, but nothing exceptional.

Flickorna Lundgren på Skäret: This cafe is oh so cute and lovely, especially on a sunny day. Their rhubarb juice is delicious, as is their princess cake. Sadly their cinnamon buns are nothing to write home about.

Talldungen Hotel: The hotel is lovely, especially in the summer with the gorgeous flowers in the garden, and the restaurant is excellent- the meal was incredibly reasonable priced, and the food was so bright and fresh. They served one of the best gazpachos I have ever had.

Kivik's Musteri: A great place to buy very high quality cider and all sorts of apple products.

Vollmers in Malmo: This is not a 2* meal. The pacing was off, the service wasn’t great, and many of the dishes weren’t great, or weren’t well executed. There were a few good dishes- a potato foam dish, a squid dish that was very delicious, complex, punchy, highly technical and well executed, and sweetbreads with beets that were very good. But many of the other dishes tended towards the overly sweet side, and there was an overuse of vanilla in multiple dishes. I sent feedback to the chef, who wasn't there the night we eat there, and he refused to concede any issues re pacing or execution of the meal. Total and utter waste of money. 

Surf Shack in Malmo: this place makes a damn good smash burger. I wouldn’t recommend the garlic fries, they are over-fried so a bit too greasy. 

Kold in Malmo: Really, really good ice cream.

[bigworldsmallbusiness]

Bangkok Spice: Bringing Authentic Thai Cuisine to the North Shore

Tucked between Atlantic Framing and Reading Eye Associates on Haven Street in Reading, MA, lies the unsuspecting Bangkok Spice, a small, Thai restaurant that you would probably just walk by if you did not know it was there. If you were to continue walking on the sidewalk and heading toward the train station straight ahead, you would miss some of the best Thai food on the North Shore.

Owned by the married couple Ott and Awn Chen, Bangkok Spice was opened in 2002 and has stayed in the same location ever since. If you were to peek back into the kitchen, you would see Ott, every night, cheffing away over a large wok, preparing each customer’s meal himself. Awn spends most of her time serving customers, but occasionally, on busy nights, she straps on her apron and helps Ott to cook. Most of the customers at Bangkok Spice are regulars who are loyal to the Chen’s Thai cuisine. If you go in on a weekday night, you will find lots of people waiting in their business clothes and work attire ready to bring home their takeout after a long day in the office. The restaurant is located right across the street from the commuter rail in Reading, making it a perfect spot to grab a quick and easy dinner. On weekends, you would find families, couples, and friends, seated at tables laughing and talking while enjoying their food and drinks.

One of the wonderful things about Bangkok Spice is that almost every entree on their menu is under fifteen dollars. Despite the inexpensive prices, it does not take away from the quality or portion sizes of the entrees.  The menu is carefully crafted with a wide range of Thai dishes that cater to everyone's taste buds. Whether you are looking for a spicy or mild dish, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, you'll find something that suits your preferences. 

Pad Thai and Drunken Noodles are the restaurant's most popular dishes. The Pad Thai is made with stir-fried rice noodles, peanuts, bean sprouts, and a choice of protein. The Drunken Noodles, on the other hand, is a spicy dish made with flat noodles, vegetables, and a choice of protein. My personal favorite is the Basil Pad Thai with chicken. Vegetarians will also be impressed with the variety of dishes on offer at Bangkok Spice. The Thai Basil Tofu is a popular option, as is the Green Curry Vegetable, which is made with an assortment of fresh vegetables in a creamy green curry sauce.

Bangkok Spice also offers a range of drinks to complement the food, including Thai iced tea and coffee, selling for $1.75, which are a must-try when dining here. The restaurant's ambiance is another highlight, with its warm and welcoming decor, and Thai-inspired art on the walls. Little figurines are scattered about the walls, serving as coat hooks dispersed in between framed posters of traditional Thai art, like dragons, Lotus flowers, and people dressed in bronze armor. The staff is incredibly friendly and knowledgeable, and they are always happy to make recommendations or accommodate any special requests.

Wonderful food, service, and atmosphere aside, Bangkok Spice is a momentous space for me and my family. I was raised in Reading until we moved to Cape Cod the summer before I started kindergarten. Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting in a high chair in our small kitchen with my mom serving me Ott’s red curry. For many years, my parents were the customers in Bangkok Spice waiting for their takeout in their work clothes accompanied by me running around the inside of the restaurant, impatiently waiting to go home. Awn would always come out of the kitchen when she heard my mom come in, and excitedly say, “Jennifer, it is so good to see you.” She always had crayons ready for me to use, and I would scribble all over the back of the paper place settings to preoccupy myself while time passed. 

When we moved away, we took every opportunity we could to visit Bangkok Spice. If we were visiting Boston, or my cousins who live in Lincoln, MA, we would always make the detour to stop in for dinner. My mom kept her job in Wilmington when we moved to Cape Cod, which meant that she stayed overnight in Lincoln on Tuesday and Wednesday nights so she could go into the office. Tuesday night dinners for her consisted of Basil Pad Thai, and if we were lucky, she would bring home her leftovers that we would have to portion out equally between me, my sister, and my dad because all of us wanted a piece of her meal. Now that I go to Endicott, and I am fortunate enough to have my car on campus, every Tuesday night when my mom comes up for work, I meet her at Bangkok Spice for a yummy meal and a weekly catch-up. Seeing my mom every week is one of the things that I look forward to most, and to make it even better, we get to spend it at a place that means a lot to both of us. On Tuesday nights it is always the same young woman, Melissa, who is working and knows us as soon as we walk in. Melissa doesn’t even give us menus anymore because she knows that we both always order the same thing. She says, “The usual?” to which we simultaneously respond, “Yup.” 

I never expected that a small, Thai restaurant would hold such an important place in my heart, but it symbolizes the fact that through all the change that has come over the last 20 years of my life, some things unexpected parts of life stay consistent. Bangkok Spice brings a little piece of Thailand to Reading, MA. With its authentic cuisine, warm ambiance, and friendly staff, it's the perfect spot for a night out with friends, a family dinner, or a romantic date. So, the next time you're craving Thai food, be sure to head over to Bangkok Spice!

[tinytourist]

Two More Skip One

On the morning of the 3rd, we awoke to grey skies and the threat of rain. We were meant to go to Mt. Aspiring National Park, stay in the hut, then head to the West Coast, but there was a severe weather advisory for the rest of the week. Evan’s friend got trapped in Franz Josef for 2 weeks last year around the same time and had to get helicoptered out. We weren’t so keen on that so we decided to call an audible and go towards the nicer weather in Mount Cook.

Before leaving Queenstown, we had to make one last stop at Ferg. Greg had just bought new climbing shoes and was itching to try them out, so we went to the QTN location of Basecamp and did a mix of bouldering and top roping. Afterwards, we grabbed an early dinner and a few beers at Altitude Brewing Co before hitting the road again.

We got to our campsite on Lake Poaka late at night. It was right past Twizel and had minimal light pollution, so we were able to see the Milky Way. We played a few rounds of Spicy before bed.

The next morning, we got up and drove straight to the base of Mount Cook where we found a cute cafe with the most incredible view of the mountain. We sipped our coffees as we took in the sights. Then, we took off on the Hooker Valley Track which follows the Hooker River, crosses over 3 suspension bridges, and ends at a glacial lake. It was a crowded trek, but understandably so. The effort to reward ratio was off the charts.

We pulled off the main track and sat by a secluded alpine tarn to eat our smooshed PB&J’s. Greg spent a while getting the perfect pictures & time-lapses. I’d say he succeeded.

When we finished, we set up camp at the White Horse Hill Campsite at the bottom of the mountain where we had a quick snack and then tried to find a crag nearby to climb. This was an unsuccessful journey consisting of a sketchy bush hike lined with spear grass. We ended up turning around and heading back to camp before reaching the crag.

We threw together a random dinner with whatever leftovers we had in the van. It turned into a pretty solid rice noodle stir-fry which we took turns eating out of a big metal bowl. The irony of doing this in a pandemic world is not lost on me. We had yet another night of playing cards in the van before we went to bed.

The next morning we drove to the carpark for the Blue Lakes and Tasman Glacier Walks. Al showed me how to make pour over coffee while the guys slung the frisbee in the parking lot. Once we were caffeinated, we went to the not-so-blue lakes walk. The lakes are no longer blue because instead of being fed by glacial melt like they were when they were named, they are now fed by rainwater which hosts green algae. It was a bit sad to observe such a distinct consequence of climate change.

We did another short walk to the Tasman Lake which actually had the crisp blue glacial water we were hoping to see. Unfortunately, this glacier is shrinking by about 480 to 820 m a year. I felt lucky to see it at this point but disappointed that it wouldn’t be the same for future generations to observe.

Next, we got in the cars and drove to Lake Tekapo. Along the way, we stopped at the alpine salmon shop to pick up some sashimi and smoked salmon. When we got to the lake, we walked around and looked at the sheepdog statue and the Church of the Good Shepherd. I got carried away building my first rock cairn on the beach.

Eventually, we made it to Christchurch and got to take showers! For dinner and drinks, we went to Cassels & Sons Brewing where they had a 2-for-1 pizza deal. The pizza was quality and the vibes were hip.

The next morning we had brunch at another super hip spot called Addington Coffee Co-op which had a quaint shop attached to it. Once we were well-fed, we headed to the Cattlestop Crag for outdoor climbing with Evan and Al’s friends, Ryan and Kath. I struggled on some overhanging walls with tough starts but eventually completed a few (if you don’t count stepping on Ryan’s knee as cheating...).

Everyone was keen on getting Greg and I to try lead climbing. We were both terrified, but intrigued. It felt like we couldn’t say no so we went for it and it was a success! I’m so glad I tried it. It felt like such an authentic way of climbing. After leading the 10, Greg went and lead climbed a 13! So much progress in one 4-hour session.

For dinner, we all went to Ryan and Kath’s beautiful house for a BBQ. The night consisted of frisbee slinging, kitty petting, gear discussions, and chess playing. Shoutout to the Queen’s Gambit for being an inspiration.

The next day we had some smoked salmon on fresh Alourdough before hitting up a frolf course. Later, we went to Hagley Park and explored the botanical gardens. For dinner, we went to Eruption Brewing in Lyttelton and shared laughter and and good burgers. We popped into Wunderbar afterwards and what do you know, they had chess boards! We played a few rounds before going back to the house for our “two more skip one” night of spicy uno.

For our last meal of the trip, Evan and Al took us to the Mediterranean Food Co., which is a store and Italian restaurant. This was heaven to Greg. If only we brought bigger suitcases! We enjoyed some high quality pizza, pasta, and gelato before we said our goodbyes and made the trip back to Auckland.

[script-a-world]

I really want to create new foods and recipes for one of my worlds, but I have no idea how I would go about doing research for something like that. Do you guys have any resources or advice that might help? To be more specific for this world, most ingredients are incredibly low quality (but they are in abundance) and any imported ingredients are only used for the rich. I was thinking their food would use a lot of seasoning to mask the quality, but I'm not too sure. Thank you!

Feral: We could actually do with a few more specifics to answer this question as fully as you would probably like, but I’ll do the best I can.

First, I’m not sure whether you want to create recipes using real world ingredients that would in fact be cookable to release on your blog as some kind of companion for your audience or you want to conceptualize some recipes to be able to describe taste, texture, etc. If it’s the first option, creating recipes from scratch is pretty difficult. You might want to consider taking some cooking classes to learn techniques, reading cook books for a lesson in combining ingredients, and doing a lot test cooking to nail down the flavor profiles. If you don’t want to go completely chef-y, you could also take recipes and then tweak them by substituting an ingredient or using a slightly different technique (baking instead of broiling, etc). This would also be helpful in the second case. If by "low quality" you mean "low cost," try looking at food preparation that developed in poorer, underprivileged, or minority communities, like American immigrant cuisine and soul food (the original styles, not the bougie, hipster, “elevated” styles).

For example, understanding how immigrant cuisine differs from motherland cuisine can be particularly helpful in determining how your world’s “rich” food can be adapted into “poor” food. In America we often think of corned beef and cabbage as being a traditional Irish food, but in reality, no one in Ireland really eats corned beef and cabbage - it’s a traditional Irish-American food because poor Irish immigrants could not afford the lamb they would have eaten at home (which was more readily available in say rural Ireland than in New York City and therefore at an affordable cost), and they often could not source any bacon or cured pork products because the butchers who would sell to them were often the Jewish immigrant butchers. So, the cheapest cut of cured meat they could get was corned beef and replaced the traditional proteins they would have used at home.

Second, I’m working off the assumption that your world has the same ingredients as we do, but it’s unclear. When you mention creating new foods, that could mean food preparation or it could mean edible plants and animals. If it’s the latter, then the easiest way to do it would be crossing real world things.

So, for example, everyone’s favorite vegetable on your world may be a cross between a cucumber and a lemon (the flesh is cucumber like but grows in segments in a thick skin that wouldn’t be eaten straight but could be zested, and the flavor is like a very watered down citrus). This also gives you the ability to create recipes by using the two ingredients you crossed.

Also, I’m assuming that you’re using actual food rather than powders and extracts (very common in scifi settings where "real" food is incredibly scarce), which I don’t have too many ideas on how to create recipes that way. Firefly has a pretty good method of just obliquely referring to “protein powders in every color” and showing cans of things but only really showing food prepared and being consumed when it is in fact real food provided to the crew as payment.

Finally, seasoning is a good way to hide low quality ingredients, whether it’s a cheap cut of meat or slightly wilted vegetables. Especially sauces. Especially, especially cream sauces (providing that milk of some kind is one of the ingredients generally available). Sauces make spices go further. Also, keep in mind preservation techniques (salting, smoking, drying, pickling); in the real world what has often made something the “cheap” version is that it is preserved and not fresh (with the common exception of salted foods when salt is an expensive import). But those preservation techniques also infuse additional flavors into the food.

And speaking of the real world - have you ever heard that England conquered most of it in search of spices and then decided it wasn’t going to use any of them? Spices were the purview of the very very wealthy for a very long time. The common folk did not have much access to anything they couldn’t grow in their own backyard. So, the working class dishes we commonly associate with England are not particularly spicy. As you’re deciding how the poor disguise the low quality of their food, whether it's less costly trying to appear more costly or slightly less fresh than one would prefer to eat or whatever, keep in mind what they are able to grow in the soil and climate they have (spices are typically tropical while herbs are more often temperate).

A helpful guide in food experimenting:

Cook Smart: How to Maximize Flavor Series

Part 6: Guide to Adding Flavor with Aromatics

Brainstormed: Low quality how? Like, the bakers put sawdust put in bread to save flour low quality? Our teeth are worn down by forty years old because we live in a desert and the sand gets into our food no matter what we do and grinds our molars to nubs? We only get the worst cuts of meat because it’s all we can afford or the best stuff has to be sacrificed or tithed? Salt is expensive because we don’t live near the sea or any salt deposits so trading for it is pricey? There’s been plenty of cheats, circumstances, and shortcuts throughout history that may decrease what we would call the quality of food, and all of those examples really did happen.

Your idea of quality may be a hoity-toity five star restaurant, or an enormous home-cooked fresh meal, or the tastiest dish with all the seasonings on it. Instead of describing the food as low quality, think about what your people would consider high quality. What do they love? What flavors are common, and what’s rarer and therefore richer? How available is plant-based food, meaning are there herbs and fruit trees in everyone’s garden or is agriculture and import the only way of obtaining them? How available is animal-based food, meaning do these people live as herdsfolk and eat a whole sheep every week including the organs or do fishing boats bring in dozens of kinds of seafood or is the entire population practically vegetarian until traders arrive with preserved meats?

Think about where your people are situated geographically to figure out the resources available to them, and their neighboring countries for trade. Also think about how developed your people are. This website is a timeline of food throughout history, and may help you pin down some barebones basics.

Tex: Both Feral and Brainstormed offer excellent advice, and I’ll be reiterating most of that in my own opinion.

Cooking techniques are cumulative skills that reflect a culture’s technological progression. We started with a plain old fire, so cooking food with that meant techniques like spitroasting - with the invention of pottery, we could put things in containers over, on, and even under said fire, which would bring us “new” techniques like broiling, boiling (comestibles in a liquid), roasting, sautéing, searing, and blanching (comestibles scalded in boiling water and then removed into an ice/cold water bath).

These cumulative skills are also exponential, in that most of these adapted techniques can be combined with other skills. Take, for example, a stew. The base ingredients - meats, vegetables, grains - can be cooked with direct heat (e.g. grilling over a fire), then added to a cooking container (e.g. pots of different compositions) with a fat (e.g. oil, butter) to further cook the ingredients until it’s a desired texture (e.g. “spoon tender”).

This would be a “complete” meal by itself, of course - but it’s a cook’s decision to continue on to a stew because… well, because they think it tastes good, and there could be social/cultural reasons to continue expending effort into their food. Adding a liquid - it could be water/milk, but also a composite liquid (more cooking!) such as a broth - and simmering (low indirect heat over an extended period of time) would turn this dish into a stew.

Stews (and soups, the less dense predecessor) are popular in a great deal of cultures for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s relatively easy to make - Medieval European pottage could be tended over a fire throughout the day, portions taken and the dish stretched with minimal fuss. For two, such dishes are filling, with minimal concentration on the type or number of ingredients - the basic recipe is usually water + grain(s) + vegetable(s), and can be dressed up with whatever extra ingredients are on hand. Vegetables are resource-cheap foods, as they can be grown in family/shared gardens, and grains provide the lion’s share of carbohydrates (glucose, necessary for cell function; see: cellular respiration) as well as other things like protein and fats that vegetables are usually unable to provide in significant quantities.

Soup is, in itself, preceded by gruel. Originally, soup was nothing more than something to dip your bread (or other grain-based, dry food) into, and expanded into more than just a glorified sauce. Gruels are liquid + grain, and even simpler than soups or stews. They’re very easy to make, and often invented when a culture experiences their transition to a sedentary society (marked by the shift from hunting/gathering to agriculture). Breads of some sort usually accompany this because someone will figure out indirect heating (our first baking!).

Bread-beers (Ancient History), as a side note, frequently accompany breads and gruels in terms of cooking technique epochs. The Ancient Egyptians had one, Eastern Europe another (Kvass). This is a cousin, sort of, to gruels and breads in terms of technique, and utilizes the introduction of fermentation (another skill! Possibly discovered by accident via “oh this spoiled food didn’t kill me, neat”) from ingredients such as yeast. Alcohol that doesn’t start from a solid base such as bread is the refined version of this technique.

So far, everything I’ve mentioned is made from staple foods. It is the application of technique that creates such a wide variety. There is some degree of social hierarchy when it comes to what techniques are picked by a cook, if only because some of the more refined (a term I use as a concentration of technique, not an indication of quality) ones are costly in terms of time and sometimes also available tools (e.g. it’s simpler to make a bread-beer than vodka, especially if you don’t have a distillation set-up).

Seasoning is… a thorny topic. Most ingredients that get called “seasoning” - especially in the modern, North American sense - are just plants used in lower ratios than others in a dish. Take basil, for example. When it’s used in low proportions, it’s a seasoning (e.g. tomato sauce with basil). When used in high proportions, it’s an ingredient (e.g. pesto).

Now, there’s significant overlap in which plants are called “seasonings” and which are called “herbs”. This would be because plants designated as herbs are frequently prized in cookery as adding aromatic or savoury elements to a dish - too much can be overpowering (e.g. rosemary in small amounts can be delicious, but in large amounts can be too bitter to enjoy), so they’re often relegated as a component towards flavour profiles. Their physical quantity available to a culture does not necessarily designate “high” or “low” quality, merely the ratio that is culturally-accepted in recipes. (E.g. Italy uses basil in many dishes, but does that make either the dishes or the basil low quality? No.)

Herbs, as another side note, are frequently also used in medicine - hence herbal medicine. The medicinal plants wiki is less biased than the herbal medicine one, and offers some greater anthropological context.

Quality in terms of food is… usually more the ratio of preferred to not preferred qualities. In meat, this would mean things like fat, tendons, and gristle. Food, or rather ingredient, quality is a benchmark of how much time needs to be invested in preparing a dish. It takes significantly less time to cook bread when the grains are already hulled (and oftentimes polished), than if you had to go out to the field and do it yourself. Higher quality = higher convenience.

(Despite what Apicius might claim, spoiled food is not actually edible, and is different than purposefully fermented or cultured foods.)

Higher-quality ingredients means time saved, and that time could be allocated toward more complex cooking techniques. This isn’t always true in practice, since something like a cut of meat is better for one type of dish as opposed to another for practicality’s sake (i.e. if you’ve trimmed your meat so much it’s cubed, you’re not going to get a steak out of it). There’s some debate as to the idea of ingredient quantity vs technique complexity, where touted “high quality” foods (e.g. Sachertorte) use few ingredients, and “low quality” foods have many ingredients - usually seasonings, to mask the subpar flavour of something like a cut of meat.

Like Feral said, sauces are a great carrier for flavour, as well as helping to stretch the usable lifespan of an ingredient. A cut of meat ordinarily good for a steak that’s close to expiration might not be a good steak, but it could make for a decent stew or sausage, both of which could have sauces added to them to increase the complexity of the flavour profile. The food timeline which Brainstormed mentioned also has a timeline on sauces, which I think might interest you.

You mention “all the imported food is for the rich”, and I’m curious about that. Feral gave the example of the British upper-class restricting usage of some spices to the wealthier - and thus upper - classes of their society; is that what you’re referencing? What spices are you using as a base for your world, can they be domesticated? (For that matter, do greenhouses and the accompanying opportunistic entrepreneurs also exist? Or just a general opportunistic individual.)

The economic context of spices can’t be readily dismissed - there’s a weighing of amount of resources against amount of diplomatic tensions, so even if there’s an abundant amount of a given product, the providing nation could well make a money-based rude gesture in the direction of their client and increase the prices to artificially restrict supply. (Take tea, for example. Many, many economic wars have been fought over that [Abstract].)

The fluctuations of class-availability can include a factor of a nation’s influence on the global stage, and they could demand a good at a lower price and in large enough quantities to satisfy - at least temporarily - multiple social classes. This often comes at the cost of quality (here, in terms of purity of ingredients) - you can see this with tea, black pepper, olive oil, and many other class-oriented comestible goods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I will stress that quality grades aren’t precisely the same for single-source foods and multi-source foods (e.g. sirloin steak vs curry powder), because a drop in single-source quality is more noticeable than multi-source quality due to fewer things to hide an ingredient’s quality behind.

Foods can still be heavily seasoned on both ends of the class spectrum, but there would be differences in local vs foreign (domesticated vs imported), and whether it’s a specialty dish (e.g. foods made for holidays, see: stollen) because infrequently-made dishes on a cultural basis are more likely to have fewer differences in ingredient quality and technique complexity.

There are also some dishes that have artificial class restrictions, because the upper classes have a habit of refusing to eat dishes from the lower classes as a means of social division. This is especially apparent in something like bread (1, 2), but fluctuations of technique complexity and ingredient quality availability can mean that the classifications of bread types can shift (1).

Further Reading

(PDF) Evolution – Culinary Culture – Cooking Technology by Thomas A. Vilgis

History of Cooking by All That Cooking

Feral (again): Modern History has a four part series on food in Medieval England broken down by social class with commentary on how it compares to food today, which may elucidate some of what we’ve been talking about in regards to the culturally variable meaning of “quality” in food.

[lowcarbnutrients]

11 Foods for Better Sleep

Life is a whole great deal brighter when you wake up from a restorative night's sleep. Without those deep zzzs, energy, mood, wellness, work performance as well as lifestyle all experience. If you locate sleep elusive, whether it's problem dropping or remaining asleep, you might be thrilled to uncover that what you eat can play a massive duty in calming the stress and anxiety that maintains you awake. Integrating these 11 foods for much better rest can help.

You may be surprised to find out that planning for a successful night's sleep starts when you awaken. What we consume in the early morning, in addition to what we eat throughout the day, all add to an effective night's sleep.

The Best Method to Beginning off the Day to Help with Better Sleep

Protein especially plays an essential function in guaranteeing we take the deep study peaceful oblivion. Tryptophan, an amino acid from protein, is necessary to have in adequate supply so it can be exchanged serotonin, the feeling calm natural chemical. In the existence of darkness, serotonin is converted into melatonin, the hormonal agent regulating our sleep/wake cycle. Beginning the day with lots of protein aids the chemical cascade along. Avoiding breakfast in fact enhances the chances of insomnia. Below are 3 excellent anti-inflammatory breakfasts to obtain you motivated, in addition to 12 vegan breakfasts that aren't grain or toast.

The Best Way to Consume Throughout the Day

The glycemic index is a measure of a carbohydrate's effect on the blood. Consuming low glycemic index (GI) foods like vegetables, avocados, nuts, meat, fish, eggs and beans aids to balance blood sugar levels throughout the day and also improves your ability to sleep well.

When you consume extreme high GI foods like fruit juices and also breads, at some point blood sugar degrees go down, and also you experience inflammation as well as stress and anxiety as your adrenal glands (the battle or flight control centre) launch adrenaline and cortisol to handle what the body regards as a dilemma. The body can't identify in between various forms of anxiety, whether that's from bad vehicle drivers, a hefty work, psychological distress or also blood sugar crashes.

If the accident takes place in the center of the night, our sleep is interrupted. Consuming healthy protein, fat and fiber with each meal helps to balance blood sugar. Conserve healthy and balanced greater GI foods like steamed potatoes till later in the day when they collaborate with the all-natural sleep/wake cycle in the body.

11 Foods For Better Sleep

Chickpeas

Besides being a low GI food with high fiber as well as healthy protein, chick peas are immune carbohydrates (RC), which implies they shed gradually and also keep blood sugar levels consistent. Consuming RC with their healthier greater carbs prior to bed really collaborates with your sleep/wake cycle stopping blood glucose from leaving in the middle of the evening. Green bananas and Cannellini beans are a pair of various other sources of RC.

Boiled and Cooled Potatoes

Potatoes typically have a higher GI particularly if they're refined or warmed at heats, however steaming preserves a few of the resistant carbs (RC) that balances blood sugar level. If you go one step additionally as well as cool those potatoes overnight, you acquire back several of the RC in a procedure recognized as starch regression. Sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips and rutabagas include some RC too as well as take advantage of the very same preparation. Eating RC a couple of hrs prior to bed allows the carbs to slowly launch for balanced blood sugar level throughout the night.

Seeds

Seeds have a specifically high quantity of tryptophan. Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure, makes the instance that people don't take in enough tryptophan-containing healthy protein and also their sleep experiences. Natalie Turner, author of The Carbohydrate Level of sensitivity Program, calls pumpkin seeds the brand-new "cozy glass of milk" due to the high web content of tryptophan.

Tart Cherry Juice

A study from the College of Rochester in New york city discovered tart cherry juice has an extremely little quantity of natural melatonin-- an ideal quantity for starting rest. In one more research study, Montmorency cherry juice raised the availability of tryptophan, the forerunner to serotonin. The juice hinders an enzyme that weakens tryptophan, which can bring about sleeping disorders. Consume alcohol 1-2 ounces in the early morning and night, but take in with a little bit of protein, fat and fiber to regulate the greater GI of the juice.

Dark Leafy Greens

Magnesium, located in dark leafy greens, is essential for appropriate nerve transmission and controlling blood sugar-- 2 important duties for sleep. Mark Hyman, chairman of the board of the Institute for Functional Medication claims magnesium "is a remedy to stress and anxiety, one of the most powerful leisure mineral available, as well as it can help improve your sleep." (" Magnesium: Satisfy the A Lot Of Effective Leisure Mineral Available.' A current research study located that rest quality enhanced when individuals added magnesium to their diet regimen as it helps reduce supportive nerve system activity.

Nutritional Yeast

Nutritional yeast is rich in the B vitamins that sustain the anxious system as well as aid transform trypophan to serotonin to melatonin. B12, particularly, assists to normalize rest by promoting the pineal gland to launch melatonin quicker.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are a fantastic superfood. B5 from mushrooms, particularly shiitake, can help regulate making use of tryptophan and sustain the adrenal glands.

Eggs

Eggs are high in inositol, an additional participant of the B vitamin household. Our brain cells are lined with inositol so when we eat foods with it, the cells come to be extra immune to cortisol thereby enhancing sleep.

Red Peppers

Red peppers are an incredible participant of the foods for far better sleep since they are really high in Vitamin C, which rapidly diminishes when we're stressed. Vitamin C also aids to reduce cortisol so melatonin can be produced.

Salmon

Anxiety as well as anxiety are strongly connected to reduced degrees of Omega-3 fatty acids. In one research, Omega-3 fats from fish oils showed a 14% reduction in pro-inflammatory chemicals and a 20% decrease in anxiety. When we really feel a lot more loosened up, we are much better able to drop asleep.

Bone Broth

Besides being delicious, bone brew or "fluid gold" as I like to call it, includes glycine, an amino acid which has actually been revealed to improve our rest. It's simple to make your own bone broth and it's a delicious, low-glycemic and also fat-rich snack.

Foods to Avoid For a Better Sleep

Processed Juice

Processed fruit juices generally consist of very little fruit and also a great deal of sugarcoated, plus they do not have fiber to reduce down sugar's launch right into the blood. The result is a sugar collision that can cause increased stress and anxiety and lack of ability to rest. If you do sometimes consume high GI fresh pushed juices, like orange, carrot, beetroot and apple, eat with enough healthy protein, fat and also fiber to reduce down glucose's influence on the body. Newly pressed "environment-friendly" juice, made with kale, celery, cucumbers, lemon and also parsley as an example, permits optimum absorption of nutrients and won't have the same blood glucose effects.

Alcohol

Even though alcohol is a sedating representative, it leads to raised stimulation later on in the sleep cycle. Sugar from alcohol is conveniently soaked up as well as triggers a significant blood sugar action. Alcohol also subdues melatonin as well as raises cortisol.

Coffee + Chocolate

Caffeine is stimulating to the adrenal glands as well as can lead to stress and anxiety and sleeping disorders. In the short-term, it may give you a power boost, however that will lead to impatience and also rest issues later. Instead of coffee as a pick-me-up, attempt a beneficial dairy-free elixir.

Dairy + Gluten

A solid association exists in between food allergic reactions and also anxiety, with dairy products and gluten being both most likely perpetrators robbing you of beneficial sleep. In one research study, infants who had unexplained resting problems were able to normalize patterns after removing milk from their diet.

Summary: Nourishment For Better Sleep

Eat a beneficial breakfast with lots of protein to provide the raw products to make ample hormonal agents for sleep.

Eat healthy protein, fat and fiber with each meal to maintain blood sugar level levels balanced and avoid the sugar crashes that inform the adrenal glands to a crisis.

Save higher carbohydrate foods with immune starches for the evening when they collaborate with the sleep cycle.

To cap off the day, diffuse lavender essential oil which will assist establish the phase for an amazing night's sleep.

[bryonysimcox]

Spring has Sprung and Life Continues: Week 11, Spain

Another week spent in the Catalunyan countryside as coronavirus lockdown continues. Here are my reflections on the arrival of spring, broad beans, ecological economics and the launch of ‘The Hundred Miler’.

This last week has seen the welcome face of April - signalling that spring is certainly here along with the arrival of Easter. It’s a time associated with new life, new starts, sunny days and longer nights. Even though we remain in full lockdown here in Spain, it feels as though we can draw upon the changing season as a source of assurance.

The week started with something rather special. I finally got to drive Suzi!

When we first bought the van in Summer 2019, I was still only 24, and it was really expensive to get me insured on it. There seems to be a transition point for insurers at age 25, so George and I had always agreed that after my birthday at Christmas, we’d get me on the insurance. But we never got around to it, partly because of the additional expense, and partly because it wasn’t a huge priority, until the start of March. And then of course, we were in Valencia and the lockdown hit, so we had nowhere to drive to even once I was insured!

My first drive here in Catalunya was pretty fun, even though it was just a trip to the supermarket. Because we’re in lockdown, the roads are super quiet which has been great, and the roads around the cottage aren’t tarmaced, so I could do some offroading as well. I’ve since driven a couple more times to and from the supermarket, and it’s so nice to be behind the wheel again. I haven’t driven since we owned our last van, Casper, back in Sydney!

(Images, left to right) My first time driving Suzi the HiAce, and a throwback to driving our last van Casper.

On the topic of Sydney, I have been doing some serious reminiscing. It’s almost coming to exactly a year since George and I flew back to the UK from Australia, and anniversaries always tend to bring on waves of nostalgia. It’s mad to think that a year ago, we didn’t own a van, not least have a clue about where we’d be living in the van! And of course, there’s no way I’d have imagined that we would be stuck amid a pandemic-induced global lockdown. Oh, to have the gift of foresight... 

The year that ensued after we left our friends, jobs, and security blanket of Sydney was an absolute rollercoaster. We naively aimed to have the van built and prepped in a matter of months, and when the van-build rolled over towards Christmas 2019, I felt like an absolute failure for not having finished it sooner. And yet now, upon reflection, I guess it’s not such a bad achievement to have managed to buy and build Suzi the HiAce, both of us get jobs in Manchester and move into a flat there, launch our documentary channel ‘Broaden’ and set off for Europe all in a year.

We can all benefit from a bit of self-reflection to put progress into perspective.

(video) Broaden’s latest video; an overview of who we are and what we’re about. It’s helped me to reframe some of the successes of this last year.

I feel like a stuck record, but food is a wonderful experience which punctuates the repetitive days of lockdown. Last week I wrote about calçots, a deliciously sweet spring onion special to this region and eaten with Romesco sauce. This week, it’s all about broad beans. The garden here is full of them, so I’ve been tasked with picking and podding. Most of them are fat enough to be podded, and are even better if you go the extra mile by blanching them and removing their skins. The smaller ones can be eaten as they are, and make for a lovely crunchy stir-fry ingredient too.

Preparing broad beans can be time-consuming, but also a wonderfully cathartic activity. My granny in Scotland used to have plenty of these beans in her garden, and I remember summer days spent picking and podding with my mum. We’ve stored plenty here in the freezer but have also kept some fresh and I am continually finding ways to incorporate them into our meals. A quick call to my well-resourced mum also resulted in her sending pages and pages photographed from Jane Grigson’s vegetable book: not only with plenty of recipes but incredibly detailed descriptions of the vegetable’s history and qualities too.

(images) Beautiful fresh veggies from the market were a highlight of the week, as well as picking these broad beans straight from the garden. The bowl on the right is what was distilled from podding four huge bags’ worth.

The resurgence in cooking and baking whilst in lockdown is inspiring, but I’ve been thinking about how it affects our supply chains as well.

Just this morning on BBC News I saw an article about dairy farmers having to throw away vast amounts of milk as cafes, hotels and restaurants remain shut, and another article about how there’s been an insane increase in demand for flour, as everyone takes to home baking. Many mills are now working around the clock to meet the demand in the UK and I was especially interested to read that even if there’s enough flour that there’s a shortage of packaging, because usually only 4% of flour produced goes into the smaller bags that we see on supermarket shelves.

Coronavirus has triggered so many changes in how we live and how we behave, that it's wreaking havoc on supply chains like this, and of course, the economy. That said, whilst the negative effects are hard to deny, scientists, economists and ecologists alike are suggesting that we should leverage the situation as an opportunity to reflect on how we all live, and how we might return to ‘normal’ life without just returning to business as usual. I agree: this is a unique opportunity to reassess production and consumption, how we assign value to things, and the economic and political models that we use to govern our world.

The connection between global lockdown, coronavirus, climate change and our economy has really got me thinking.

I recently read an incredible article by ecological economist Simon Mair in Singularity Hub which looked at this relationship. The article pulled together disparate strands that have been on my mind for a while, each related to various books which I’ve been reading, and which I can now see are interconnected. Simon suggests that the Covid-19 crisis could be a chance to “expand our economic imagination”. He explains that coronavirus, like climate change, demands a type of downscaling, counter to the ‘wartime economy’ mentality and massive upscaling of production. 

“If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood”, says Simon.

The article is full of gems, and Simon explores things such as our current addition to economic growth and productivity, the transfer of healthcare and labour goods out of the market and into the hands of the state, and the social forms that could come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy. It answers some of the questions posed by George Monbiot in ‘How Did We Get Into This Mess?’, echoes some of the radical economic theories proposed by Kate Raworth in ‘Doughnut Economics’, and parallels ideas of democratic market socialism put forward by ‘How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century’ by Erik Olin Wright which I’m currently reading. Simon’s article has really got me so fired up, in fact, that I’m working on an idea for a new video which explores the topic, so watch this space.

(images) Three fantastic books which I highly recommend.

On the subject of videos, Broaden has been one of the only things keeping us sane! I am eternally grateful to have a creative outlet in times like these, and one which involves a collaborative partnership with George too. Whilst we aren’t able to explore places in the van, or capture footage for new films as we’d love to be doing right now, we are at least able to edit from the cottage and work on promoting the content that we are already releasing.

It feels so tricky to get the right tone when releasing videos during a global pandemic.

We are both conscious of remaining sensitive to the severity of the health crisis, whilst balancing that with the reality that life goes on, and that people still want to see pictures, watch videos and read articles that engage with other topics too. As Broaden, George and I obviously made the decision to launch our documentary ‘The Hundred Miler’ during this time, and I hope that people see it as a celebration of running, the natural world, and human resilience, and perhaps even an escape from the daily news of the virus, rather than something insensitive or badly-timed.

(video) Trailer for ‘The Hundred Miler’

‘The Hundred Miler’ comes out this Saturday 11th April, and we have been overwhelmed by the response already. People have really got behind the project, helping to share it on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and widen its potential reach. George has been making this film for well over three years, so it feels like an immense milestone to finally have it shown to the world. I don’t think I know many people who hold themselves to such high standards as George, and so to have so many positive messages and people planning to tune in for the live premier on Saturday is the best affirmation of all his hard work that I could wish for. It has been a pleasure to see him create this documentary, and also to have been involved in the production and final stages of its creation.

The Hundred Miler is a film about three Australian guys, taking on the biggest race of their lives; UTMB.

‘Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc’ is renowned in the trail-running world, as one of the most challenging and scenic ultra marathons. The Hundred Miler is an attempt to bring this story to the masses, and we hope that it appeals to non-runners and runners alike, for its underlying themes of companionship, commitment and strength. It premiers live on YouTube at 10am in the UK, which is 7pm in Australia on 11.4.20, and after that the video will be available to watch as a normal video. You can find BTS footage and more information about the film on our Instagram here, details of the launch on the Facebook event here, and the link for the video itself here. You can also subscribe to Broaden’s YouTube channel and set a reminder for when the film goes live.

(video) ‘The Hundred Miler’ which goes live on Sat 11th April.

 It goes without saying: I am really missing the open road and living in a van. And I’m not immune to fear of the future either. But as the days and weeks pass, we learn to adapt to changing circumstances and continue to find hope among them. In a way, it helps to know we are all in the same boat, facing a topsy-turvy life full of roadblocks and revelations. Thanks for tuning in to read my weekly ramblings and I hope you’re all keeping as well as you can be. Until next week!

[southeastasianists]

Russ’ first day on the job, and everything is amazing. There are lots of people around and plenty to investigate: fingers tapping on tables; mobile phones with their bright, colourful screens; aunties who gesticulate and chuckle. He darts from one side of the table to another, his eyes bright, drawing laughs from the assembled group.

Cat therapy might be for the benefit of humans, but it also appears to be great fun if you’re a two-month-old black-and-white kitten.

Once a month, the residents at the Ren Ci Nursing Home in western Singapore enjoy a visit from the volunteers of the Love Kuching Project and their therapy felines. Elderly residents, some in wheelchairs, cluster around a large table on which docile cats sit, ready to be petted and cooed over.

It’s part of an ongoing arrangement between the nursing home and the cat welfare group to liven up the residents’ days and give them more opportunities for interaction and stimulation. Love Kuching Project isn’t the only group to bring animals to Ren Ci, either – they also have regular dog therapy sessions with local dog shelter SOSD (Save Our Street Dogs).

“We’re one of the early ones to partner with these [animal welfare] groups. The elderly benefit because there are studies that show these interactions help,” says John Tang, Ren Ci’s manager of corporate communications.

Animal-assisted therapy, or pet therapy, refers to the use of guided interaction with animals to aid in recovery from or to help cope with mental or physical health issues. Research has suggested it can help reduce blood pressure, release endorphins and alleviate loneliness, pain and stress. It has also been found to encourage socialisation and empathy.

“Our nursing home residents have shown to be more alert and smile more often during and after the cat therapy,” says Ding Xin Yi, an executive in Ren Ci’s administration department. “During the visit by the volunteers and their cats, our residents are more relaxed. They also have the chance to speak to the volunteers who accompany the cats.”

A resident named Valli cracks a wide grin when asked about these monthly sessions. “I like cats,” says the 69-year-old. “I’m happy [when they are here].”

For 80-year-old Mainam Binte Mahmood, the therapy cats trigger memories of a time long gone. “I’m happy because it reminds me of the old days when I had cats in the kampong,” she says in Malay, referring to the days of her youth, when Singapore still had village communities where cats roamed with abandon. “[It makes me] reminisce about the time when I would boil fish for the community cats.”

The Love Kuching Project also brings therapy cats to special-needs schools and care centres. But it’s not just about the elderly or people with disabilities – pet therapy and animal companionship could be helpful to many of Singapore’s residents.

The wealthy city-state is replete with the creature comforts available to developed countries: air conditioning to cope with the tropical climate, high-speed internet connectivity, shiny malls packed with products and cuisines from around the world and a reliable electricity grid to support it all.

But those comforts come at a price: living costs in Singapore are far higher than those of its neighbours, and much is demanded of young and old alike. A 2016 report by recruitment consultancy Morgan McKinley found that although Singapore’s employers are offering more flexible work arrangements, the majority of working professionals said they felt obliged to work beyond their contracted hours. Meanwhile, the rigour of the education system puts pressure on parents and children; tuition centres even offer preparatory classes for six-year-olds fresh out of kindergarten simply to get them ready for the demands of primary school.

“In my line of work, I see a lot of individuals who are struggling with depression, stress and anxiety, from school-aged children to working adults,” says clinical psychologist Marlene Lee of Solutions 4 Life psychological services in Singapore. “I would attribute this to the fast-paced, competitive society that we live in, where material success is emphasised, at times, at the expense of mental and emotional wellbeing.”

Despite these stresses, seeking help can be difficult. According to a study spearheaded by the city-state’s Institute of Mental Health in 2010, major depressive disorder, alcohol abuse and obsessive-compulsive disorder were the most common mental illnesses in Singapore. The study also found “a large gap in help-seeking behaviour”, meaning that the majority of Singaporeans struggling with mental illness were not seeking professional help.

Pet therapy isn’t a cure-all, of course, but having some animal companionship could be helpful for many stressed-out city dwellers. “Pets can help to alleviate loneliness and calm fears and anxieties. Studies also show that people who own pets tend to have lower blood pressure, heart rate and risk for heart disease,” says Lee.

Owning a pet isn’t always easy when one works long hours or lives with family members who might not want an animal in the house. This is where cat cafés come in, which first appeared in Singapore in 2013. The idea is incredibly simple: customers pay to spend time with cats while enjoying coffee and snacks.

Neko No Niwa, the country’s first cat café, is next to the Central Business District, on the top floor of a shophouse by the River. Towering skyscrapers housing banks and offices surround it. Inside, 13 cats – all of them adopted rescue animals – lounge, play, doze and cuddle in a calm environment that emphasises their wellbeing above all else.

Tan Sue-Lynn, the café’s owner and founder, says many of their regular customers are locals who can’t keep cats at home or expatriates who miss the pets they’ve left behind. For such people, a trip to Neko No Niwa is a chance for some animal fun and companionship, a break from the non-stop demands of the city.

The café also holds cat care workshops every quarter, providing cat owners (or potential cat owners) a crash course in how to evaluate the nutritional content of cat food, understand cat behaviours and provide cats with the best home possible. “By doing so, we hope to encourage cat ownership, especially through adoption, and also improve the knowledge and quality of cat care,” Tan says.

Back at Ren Ci Nursing Home, a cat named Mickey, a long-haired 14-year-old, lies flat with his head on his paws. He’s unfazed as people take photos, scratch behind his ears and stroke him. Although the volunteers admit he’s not always so well behaved, they say his mostly relaxed nature makes him a good therapy cat.

“They don’t need training, they just have to be well socialised with humans… Kittens are easier [to introduce to therapy sessions] but when it comes to adult cats, you have to observe how they are beyond their comfort zone,” says Fizah Ishak, a volunteer with the Love Kuching Project. It’s also up to the coordinators of the therapy sessions to understand each cat’s personality – some who might be comfortable around sedate seniors might not take so well to sessions with children.

But even the most placid cat has its limits. Gizmo, a handsome brown-haired boy, sits calmly as residents in Ren Ci’s dementia ward stroke him, but suddenly hisses when someone tugs his fur the wrong way. He’s been on duty for more than an hour by that point and is finally getting weary. A little later, even tiny Russ is done; he’s curled up in his fosterer’s arms, hugging a soft toy, all tuckered out.

It’s a sign for the volunteers to herd their precious cargo back into their respective carriers and head home, where all the cats will be rewarded for their service with a delicious, well-earned meal.

[epacer]

SDUSD Connection

Global Flavors Taking Center Stage in K-12

It started with their parents.

Millennials, well known for their love of global cuisines, have passed on their food-savvy, adventurous palates to their kids. And given the growing diversity of K-12 students (only 46% were white in public schools in 20201), many kids are coming to the cafeteria with a taste for the traditional dishes they enjoy at home.

“We listen to our customers. We ask the students what they want, and a lot of times, it’s Hispanic in nature,” says Fred Espinoza, Director, Food and Nutrition Services for the San Diego Unified School District. His district serves 150,000 meals a day across 220 schools within a community that is nearly half Hispanic.

“So what do we do? We roast whole pork butts overnight and turn them into things like carne asada burritos. We turn it into burrito bowls. We turn it into nachos with local cheese sauce and whole grain chips. We use chili lime spice to season our vegetables on our salad bars,” he says. “The kids love it.”

Watching what's trending on restaurants' kids' menus

Espinoza also takes inspiration from local restaurants. “We do things like spicy carrots that the kids get in some of the famous local taco shops,” he explains.

Like many foodservice directors, Espinoza pays close attention to what kids order when they eat out. Nationwide, kids’ menus in restaurants tend to be heavy on the old standby’s.

But many of the fastest-growing items on kids’ menus are globally inspired.

Given that kids’ menus in restaurants tend to cater to the tastes of younger children, it’s a safe bet that the desire for global flavors gets stronger with age and additional experience.

K-12 students enjoy more than just Mexican food

That’s the case in San Diego. Between the build-your-own nachos, scratch-made salsas and fish tacos, Hispanic items are well represented on Espinoza’s menus. But the requests for global flavors goes well beyond much-loved Mexican favorites.

“We get pressed from a lot of different angles, not only Hispanic but Asian, Mediterranean, halal, kosher, vegan, vegetarian. We have stakeholders who are interested in ebony—almost every ethnic food out there—because our base is so large and we have almost all ethnicities,” says Espinoza. “It’s important to have culturally relevant food.”

Jodie DeFrancesco, Assistant Director of Nutrition Services for Pasadena Independent School District in Pasadena, Texas, agrees.

“I think it’s incredibly important because the generation we have in our school system right now is very globally focused,” she says. “They’re technology focused. They have the world at their fingertips, so you know their palates and preferences are global. Just look at the restaurants that are around us. We are culturally diverse, but every student is a global eater.”

How to serve global flavors in K-12 when labor is scarce

DeFrancesco’s district lies south of Houston and serves 50,000 students across 66 campuses. Like Espinoza, her menu is well stocked with global flavor options that she knows her students will like.

“Whenever we’re doing any sort of menu planning, that is definitely front of mind,” she continues. “We do a lot of student testing. We get as much feedback from our student population as we can.”

While her preference is for scratch cooking, competition for labor from the many nearby commercial restaurants has led to increased turnover. So “scratch plus” cooking—using some premade and frozen ingredients in addition to fresh ingredients—is the order of the day.

“’Scratch plus’ cooking is our bridge to scratch cooking someday,” DeFrancesco says.

With labor hard to attract and retain, high-quality frozen products can help K-12 operations nail the global flavors they want with far less prep and food waste. *Reposted edited article from Simplotfoods.com blog for September 15, 2022. **No author credit for story listed.

[thesilverdawns]

The Man Named Lion (P6)

To whom it may concern, which would only ever really be the recipient of this letter:

As you may have already guessed the town is alight with activity with the constant and active dribble that is news from the northeastern front. How much of it is true I can scarcely say, but I pray for your safety all the same whenever I’ve the time.

The military has ever dared to even commission me to tailor some of their newer uniforms for them and I’ve accepted but a few, as I do not have the time nor energy to address every new recruit who demands his trousers be hemmed or made an inch or two smaller around the waist.

Naturally this leaves little time for proper prayer during the day, but you out of all these fresh-eyed mackerels would understand and not mind terribly.

Vsevolod smirked faintly as he held the slightly wrinkled letter directly above his face. He was far too comfortable to get out of his bed and he had finally had the entire barracks to himself. This side of it at least. Lev lay on his own bed with his feet sticking straight in the air and the upper half of him draped over the edge and upside down, flipping through a magazine (one Vsevolod cared not to mention.) The blood had to have been rushing to his head, but he seemed fine.

He read on.

Seeing that you are perhaps in dire need of some much more light hearted news, I am pleased to report that the rigid stalemate between the matriarch Zeenon and the smallest of the bunch, Chai, over the dish chair in the foyer is now over. They decided to sort out their differences amicably. Chai gets her chair and Zeenon has located a perch high above the bedroom on top of the armoire. I had to move some things around, but despite all, I am quite proud of them.

As per usual, the youngest Kazoo (and perhaps in the running for the largest) has been pestering Zeenon for play when she very much would prefer otherwise. This of course does little to stop him, until Cecile has had enough of his shenanigans and puts him in his place for a while once Kazoo decides to turn his attentions elsewhere.

Typically, the second eldest, Lev, who shares the name ‘lion’ with your companion and embodies more of the qualities of one in my opinion, consoles Kazoo with a session of lying in the sun thereafter.

Mayflower naturally prefers to remain on her own as she is extremely independent, but that does not stop her from the occasional grooming that she and Zeenon both enjoy with one another.

During the time I spent making all of those socks I packed for you and your friend, the cats made sure to assist in any way they possibly could by sitting in the box with the packaging paper and what have you. Apologies ahead of time for the copious amounts of cat hair that will have no doubt arrived with them.

Miss Lumi was right. Some of the socks were so covered in cat hair that Vsevolod could have peeled them off and made a new pair all on his own.

“Are you still reading that??” Lev asked aloud, pulling himself into an upright position at last.

Vsevolod had forgotten Lev was still there. He had been so quiet (save for the occasional whistle or giggle) while ogling the magazines he had managed to get a hold of.

He ignored him.

I cannot begin to imagine what it is that you are going through during your time at the front. War changes people, typically not for the better. But I’ve faith that you will remain intact for the most part. And if not then you are always more than welcome to return to my home to assist in many a craft I’ve been unable to tackle in recent times.

“Sevka!!!”

Please, when you respond to this letter, let me know if your lion-companion appreciated the small ear-like designs I put on his socks especially.

He needs to listen more than he does speak. I also know he will not bother to write his own letter out of sheer laziness.

The shadow of Lev’s hand came from behind the paper as he pushed it away from Vsevolod’s face. “You must have read the letter fifty times over by now. Why do you not write back already??”

Vsevolod swatted at him in annoyance with all the strength of a turtle who’d been placed on his shell upside down. So what if it WAS the fiftieth time he’d read it? He’d read it fifty MORE times if he felt like it.

“Do not look at me so like that.” Lev hovered directly over him, nearly laying on top of him. Only his elbows really kept him propped up somewhat.

“How am I supposed to look at you.”

“With deep, sensual longing in your eyes?”

Placing a hand on his chest Vsevolod pushed Lev off firmly (but gently) and sat up. “No.”

“Huh! Fine. Well I do not know about YOU, but I am getting HUNGRY.” Lev rolled onto his back and laid sprawled out beside him.

Vsevolod looked back at him, and then towards the nearby window. The weather outside was gloomy looking again. Not that it ever changed.

It had been two weeks and he never wanted to go back out there ever again.

Turning back to look at Lev again, he scowled. “Miss Lumi wanted to know how you liked the socks.”

Lev cringed and made a whining sound. “Warm, but peculiar. You know ,with the design. I am afraid to even ask. Ears do not belong on your feet and clearly these are not ear-warmers. So why are there ears on my feet?! And they are incredibly itchy!!!”

“She made them special for you.”

“WHY!?”

“I also had forgotten to ask her for bread. When I write her back, I will be sure to do so. The only thing I am unsure about is whether or not food sent through the mail would make it to us without becoming spoiled.”

“Yes, because molding bread as hard as a brick is what I want to carry with me at all times. Augh…” Lev clapped a hand to his stomach as it gurgled. “Let us go and have dinner ready… I am starving from a whole day of doing absolutely nothing.”

The ONLY good thing about being on base were the kitchens. Hot meals were being served all day long, and the camp itself was not lacking in supplies and other comforts the soldiers so desperately desired, and needed. Everyone had their turn. The troops would rotate out once they had rested up, and the next batch of demoralized souls would enter and rest, and so on.

“With how much you have been drooling over your obscene pictures I almost thought you would have eaten the pages.”

“Sevka when we arrive back in the city I VOW to find one such individual for you that you will indeed eat. And enjoy.”

“I am no cannibal.” He didn’t even wait for him and left Lev to grab his coat off a nearby coat rack.

“Your passion-less life has left your romantic tendencies absolutely RAVENOUS Sevka. Trust me!!! Now tell me what you like-”

Before either of them could leave the barracks for any kind of sustenance, one of the officers came jogging up to them, looking like he was in a hurry. In his hand he held a list. “Nevolin, Kuznetsov, you two signed up on the waiting list for the planes correct?” Vsevolod couldn’t help his eyes widening quickly at the sheer mention of the word ‘plane.’ But it was Lev who vocally jumped to that confirmation. “Yes!! That is us!” “Come with me. You are to be assigned to one immediately before we push from our position at the edge of the woods and make our way towards the beachfront.”

The two looked at each other as though the holiday season had come early. Though it did not come without a slight bit of queasiness.

“QUICKLY!” And without any further delay, the two raced after him, with their hearts no doubt racing in their chests.

Nevertheless, please write back whenever you are able to. Provided your heads are not soaring high above the clouds, carrying out Death’s work for him.

Though I suppose that would make for quite a fantastic tale to tell.

P.S. The paw prints at the bottom edge of this letter are from Kazoo. He wishes you well.

[nextdaydeliveryflower-blog]

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