Last Commented Food Blogs (316)

Jamaican Rice and peas

Ingredient:

2lbs rice
1/2 pint kidney beans or Gungo peas
1 large coconut or tin coconut or powder coconut
1 glove garlic
5 stalk escallion
3 sprigs thyme
2 table spoon sugar (optional )
Salt to taste
1 green pepper
pieces of ginger to add taste


Preparation and cooking:

1. Cook peas and garlic to an almost tender state.
2. Grate coconut and extract the milk through a sieve (strainer).
3. Add this prepared milk cream to peas
4. Allow to boil for 10 minutes
5. Add pepper, thyme, salt, sugar, ginger, escallion
6. Boil for three minutes
7. Taste your pot, does it need more salt, set desired taste
8. Then you add rice
9. Allows to boil for 3 minutes high heat
10. Now min the heat
11. Allow to steam for twenty minutes or until rice is tender
12. Alright rice is done!

I was shocked to read on the second page of Wall Street Today to find that for:

"every American about 429 pounds of food was wasted in 2010"

Now this is terrible. United Nations reported that about 87 percent of the world live in poverty, devastation and hunger and the first and second world are so wasteful.

I have personally taught my children not to be joining this bad habit of being insensitive to wasting food.

but I have worked in refugee camps and the videos of the guys stealing the food from the van, I have seen this before in other camps. The operative word is gangs.

They take the food, horde it and give it out only to those who pay for it. They do the same thing for clothes and other stuff. They can be violent too. Any person going into a refugee camp has to recognize the camp is basically without laws. The strong rule. The weak beg on the sidelines.

In America how many remember the Hearst family food giveaways when Patty was captive? The same scenario. That was street gangs seizing an opportunity. Nothing more. Quite literally at the US refugee camps I have worked in each delivery truck came with a second truck full of MPs with big truncheons they used to keep the gangs off the food truck. Of course this was a wasted effort because the gangs would stay outside the circle and just steal the food from the women and children and weaker men when they exited the crowd. I have a friend who worked with OAS at the camps in Somalia and he told me the behavior is the same.

In any country where the government has collapsed or a civil war rages, one of the standard tactics of criminal gangs and rebels is to free all the prisoners in local jails (except for a select few they kill in the cells along with the guards) who then merge with the general population and later become refugees, if profit is seen in doing so. Except they arrive off the boat as an already organized gang mixed in with the innocent. If it is a civil war driving them, rest assured, mixed in with the women and occasional child you may find a whole company of fighters wearing refugee clothing but only pretending to be refugees. They will see to it that they eat first and that they are the ones who decide who else gets to eat. Such is the reality of life in refugee camps and shelters.

Don't look to the camp staff for help. They are usually terrified. At Ft. Chaffe, Indian Town Gap and Ft. Mcoy (3 I worked at) many of the staff lock themselves inside their little office with barricades on the door. Those who ventured out were often beaten and sometimes killed. I know of one case at Indiantown Gap where one of the camp workers had witnessed something. She had time for one panicked phone call before the gentle refugees ripped down the phone line on the building outside, smashed the door open and dragged her out. Many months went by before her dried out corpse was finally found in a barracks attic on the other side of the camp. Jimmy Carter's DOJ declared everything that happened in his Refugee camps to be Secret, but I saw it. Many of the refugees are not good people, although some are. The reality of life behind the barbed wire is not pretty in the least.

Just talking to a buddy who says he doesn't cook any more. Now, I'm not a great cook (and say so in my profile because I am So Honest) but even I have 3 or 4 fallback recipes which are easy and even better can usually be kept in their various parts in the pantry or fridge until needed.

Anyone want to start the ball rolling here with suggestions to get us all drooling or at least experimenting?

Cat - there's no porcupine in my pantry, no likelihood of anything closer than a road-kill hedgehog either.

............................................

I have been suffering from acid reflux GERD for many years now. The doctors have been pumping me with Acid Blockers for years. When my body gets immune to one, than I have to on to another. When that one no longer works than what. After many years of suffering with Chronic Fatigue Low Immune System, and a whole host of illness, I have recently learned it is what I put in my body that`s the culprit. I have been researching the natural remedies and proper eating habits to clean my system of the junk accumulated through out the years to improve my heath and stamina. I am finding out that it affects not just your body, but also your mind. It can cause you to make poor decisions, and have broken relationships. I`m now just starting the new lifestyle, and I will keep you posted in how this changes my life. Thanks for listening, and have a wonderful day.

... .. .. .....anyone one can tell me any other oil for cooking?.... .. ..

Ilove one restaurant in beijing a lot. I had the gongbao prawns. they used big prawns together with pepper and garlic, peanuts as well as some garlic stalk. I think they need first stir fried the garlic and pepper, ginger and spring onion stalk,they need add some sugar in the pan too, and then fried everything in, then add soya sauce and sichuan pepper. Then they will add the big prawns in. and they could add in some chicken stalk to make the dish more tasty. Then add good quantity of salt, and add a bit of oil.

This spicy gongbao prawns has very special taste. Ilike it a lot.

Again while mowing down meadows yesterday my eyes noticed something ripening. The black raspberries were mostly gone by now of course. But plants that bore nothing of interest in mid June now attracted me with a splash of red. Could it be?



Yes, Red Raspberries. I resolved to pick some today, but alas although warm, it rained most of the day. Finally at 7:30PM it stopped raining and with only an hour and half of sunlight left I grabbed my coffee can and went picking.



I beat the deer this time as many plants still have immature berries. However, I could hear the deer walking around me and snorting hust out of sight nearby. Also heard were the clucks of a Tom turkey herding his flock nearby.

Sadly it began to rain again almost as soon as I started picking, so I retreated to the house with what I got.

Spice for my Cheerios. Addendum for my protein shakes.



Psst, don't tell Tomato Girl. She likes these more than she does tomatoes.

Success. It was hot yesterday about 88 F, but I threw on a welding shirt, long pants and boots, strapped on a bear pistol (I have encountered them before picking berries here. They love eating berries too. I leave them alone, and so far they leave me alone, but one should be prepared for bad days. Noting almost every critter on my place loves eating berries, from fox and deer to birds and bears, so it is a race to see who gets to them first, me or them) grabbed a hat, leather gloves, a canteen and a clean 27 ounce coffee can) and I waded into the raspberry bushes.

It truly is one of America's favorite pastimes for many I think. It is just a shame so many get to do it so rarely.

These berries, being of the black raspberry kind, v. the commercially raised ones sold in many stores, are not yet ripe.



These berries are ready and calling you to come get them.



I have it down to a science I think. I taste sample from each new plant. If it isn't sweet, I usually just go to the next plant. Variations in soil and sunlight produce different sugar levels. Also different sizes of berries. I usually just hold the pail under the cluster and lightly stroke the cluster with my thumb. Truly ripe ones virtually leap off into the pail. Yes, sometimes they miss the pail and go to the ground. No matter. A new berry bush will come of that next year. I usually don't actually wear the leather gloves. Rather I just hold one and use it like I would a pot holder on a hot frying pan, to pull back the thorny branches so I can reach the fruit. Some of the older raspberry bushes have thorns almost an inch long. When one thinks they have picked a bush clean, the thing to do is walk around to the back side of that bush. Often you will spy another hundred berries you just couldn't see from the front.

I finished the cluster of bushes I was playing in, then wandered around a while and found another huge cluster. The second cluster was frayed around the edges with obvious indications the deer had found it, but as with the other one, the plants one to five feet inside the cluster of bushes were untouched. So, sheathed in my heavy clothes, I waded in again and ignored the sound of thorns grasping at the thick clothes.

Of course during this process I ate almost as many (if not more than) berries as I picked. That's always a problem here. I have the same problem with the wild asparagus if I can catch it at the young shoot stage. Later on this month I will (now that some areas are mowed) go check out the places where the wild strawberries grow. I find mowing the area so more sunlight reaches them encourages them to grow much sweeter.

Eventually of course, in that heat, my canteen ran out of water, so since I had a good load I returned home. Taking a different route home I saw several other berry clusters and I am expecting to see some fat deer this fall. :)

This can is about half full. I got over a pound of black raspberries before the deer, birds, et al did.



Only after I returned home with my treats did I remember most of the traditional uses for raspberries and the other fruit growing here are now closed to me. No more raspberry pie. No more raspberry wine or raspberry brandy. So I put them in my refrigerator while I pondered this new problem. Truly, old habits die hard, raspberry pie with a good syrup (yum) and a few Mason jars of fresh home distilled raspberry brandy, is what I was thinking about when I went out.

Yes, of course today I threw several handfuls into my Cheerios. The good news for diabetics is according to online sources a full cup of the black raspberries is only 10 grams of carbohydrates. Three guesses as to what I am nibbling on now as I write this..