A man who later would be accused of ruling the Ivory Coast with a firm "paternal" hand, was a rebel who stood up to the French colonialists in 1944, founding the country's first union for African cacao farmers. Félix Houphouët-Boigny pushed for independence from France, having established that indigenous plantation owners had the right to hire migrant workers for their own spreads. He himself was a cacao farmer who became the first President of independent Ivory Coast, after holding several offices in the French government.
Of course the French had established the cacao, coffee and cashew plantations that contributed to the Ivory Coast's vibrant economy. ( Only coffee is native to the African continent.)
But at what cost? Child slavery is endemic to cocoa production in West Africa even today. In the late 1990's, the issue finally came to global attention. ( Another source of information re slave labor and cacao is Chocolate Work.)
The finally-ousted-today Ivory Coast politician Laurent Gbago clung to power by nationalizing his country's cocoa and coffee plantations. Those opposed to him halted export of the country's production of cashews--second largest producer in Africa--in an effort to cut off financing for Gbago.
Food--it's always there, underpinning everything.
( Thanks to Raw Living Food for photo of cacao pod with beans.)
Well, yes, but I am paying close attention. Not just to the pie/ice cream combo, either. I like the speech, the " we are not doing this alone," theme. The world as a group of nations may finally be getting together to stand up to the bullies.
The ice cream, back to that, is a combo of vanilla, pomegranate, and fruit called ( I did not know this,) Freedom!, and it's produced by a company called Sheer Bliss, out of Florida, of all places. ( Did not know that, either.) My favorite flavors are pomegranate dark choc chip, and dark choc itself. SB declares it is the first ice cream company ( real) to produce pomegranate ice cream.
And--get this--this is Ultra Super Premium ice cream, my friends! ( Whatevah, it is fab....) And the most unique unique-tude of this brand is that the i.cream is sold in tins. Yes. We hover over them, debating whether to save for leftovers, or recycle. It's a nifty tossup.
Now, as to the pie. There it was, with no nasty additives, unbleached flour, punkin, calling to me from a display at Whole Foods. Reasonably priced! Maybe the baker suddenly went all pumpkin pie-y, during the March Madness/Mud season, not your usual p. pie season, and the Whole Foodsians had to flog the pies as best they could. So, I bought one.
And now, having eaten a slice with Freedom! a la mode, and having approved the Prez' remarks, noting his oddly fatigued-looking right eye---Michelle?---I am a happy patriot, a peacenik in favor of Special Ops, the targeting of bullies, and the American public library system.
From npr:
"In an essay published last November in Canada's Maisonneuve journal, physician Kevin Patterson described his experiences working as an internist-intensivist at the Canadian Combat Surgical Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
One detail he noticed: The Afghan soldiers, police and civilians he treated in Kandahar had radically different bodies from those of the Canadians he took care of back home.
"Typical Afghan civilians and soldiers would have been 140 pounds or so as adults. And when we operated on them, what we were aware of was the absence of any fat or any adipose tissue underneath the skin," Patterson says. "Of course, when we operated on Canadians or Americans or Europeans, what was normal was to have most of the organs encased in fat. It had a visceral potency to it when you could see it directly there."
( Patterson, pictured in the Canadian Arctic, is also a novelist. More on him and his work at the National Review of Medicine website.)
Listen to Terry Gross interview Dr. Patterson on Fresh Air here:
From the bbc: "Every day at 1400 (1200 GMT) on the dot, our neighbour's 15-year-old son, Mohamed, delivers a bag full of bread to us: a ritual of "help thy neighbour" that seems to give comfort in these confusing and scary times in the capital.
He tells us he gets the bread for free because he has been volunteering at the bakery every day for the past three weeks.
Egyptians and sub-Saharan Africans once sweated in these local bakeries as they churned out loaf after loaf, but they have long since fled the country's unrest in fear for their lives - or are stranded at the airport seeking a way out. Now local residents have had to step into the breach."
( At right, a traditional sand-baked Libyan bread, most likely not like that baked in Tripoli. Thanks to Temehu, a Libyan tour operator, for the photo, and for superb information on Libyan foods here. )
A young U.S. Marine died recently in Afghanistan. You may have read about him, in this AP story. His name was "Bernie" Bernard, and he was from Maine.
You might have missed that he died in a pomegranate grove. The Taliban, so we are told, were deeply hidden there, among trees whose fruit is symbolic of fertility to Hindus, but, more aptly, a prized specialty of the Gardens of Paradise in the Islamic tradition. The prophet Muhammad was said to be a fan.
A native of Asia--some say India, some Iran--the pomegranate is a key ingredient in the Persian dish, fesenjan, a rich sauce also containing walnuts and oranges, that is often served with chicken.
We well recall the destruction of numerous ancient date palm groves in Iraq, during the current and previous war. A recent film, The Lemon Tree, tells the tale of how a citrus grove literally comes between a Palestinian and an Israeli woman.
I have been nurturing a foot high pomegranate plant, started by a friend of mine. It's doing well, in the semi-tropics of Florida, though it is a plant that thrives in arid conditions.
Alas, the 21 year-old from Maine, with little experience of the wider world, is not thriving as his parents expected he would. He was blown apart among trees whose flowers delight and whose fruits sustain health and bring pleasure.
( Thanks to http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/organic_pomegra.php for photo above.)
According to this from the UK, 17 Israelis, of them nine civilians, were killed by Hamas rockets in 2008. That's in one year. In the past 10 days, about 512 people in Gaza have been killed by Israeli air raids.
Can you say "disproportionate response?" According to many international politics gurus this has always been Israel's military policy.
Naturally, after the lengthy blockade and current events, people in Gaza are hungry. This report from the United Nations is dated January 02, 2009:
"No wheat grain (has) entered Gaza since the beginning of the hostilities resulting in the closure of all mills. Mill owners confirmed that the Ministry of National Economy in Gaza ordered them to allocate the available wheat flour to bakeries and distribute it under its supervision (instead of them selling it on the market). As of today, fewer than 20 bakeries throughout the Gaza Strip are operational, due to lack of flour and cooking gas."
As I read about Hamas rockets and Israeli war planes, setting aside who is right and who is wrong, I picture medieval soldiers catapulting huge stones, darts and spears at fortified castles. Why are we still engaged in this sort of nonsense in the 21st century?
Apparently it is unthinkably harder, more complex, and more time consuming to sit down around a table and talk over differences, possibly fortified with tasty powerful food, than it is to slaughter people and destroy property. ( Mind you, I know that professional diplomats and peace keepers have tried to do this, off and on, for decades. )
But without the support of the world's leaders, the diplomats' tortoise-like efforts will make little headway against the weaponed-up hares.
( Photo of Palestinian baker thanks to BBC-UK, http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_5375000/5375686.stm)
Yes, I've been away, and not able to update this blog. And yes, there's a distressing new war winding down in a small country, in addition to those other wars in the Middle East, plus assorted conflagrations elsewhere.
Closer to home, an espresso brownie created by the Chocolate Maven from which I had nibbled only the tiniest of layers, was found and devoured by the resident terrier. Said animal was in the car with me, on the way back from puttering and sniffing and chasing lizards in an enclosed garden I care for periodically. Normally the lively and ever-alert Lillian J. Russell is restrained ( gently) in the backseat. But as there were no shady parking places when I stopped to run an errand, I
( foolishly forgetting the baked good) set her loose in the vehicle, windows open, so she could seek out the least sunny spot.
Friends, within seconds she had found the brownie. Now I know chocolate is supposed to be dire for dogs. But thus far in our acquaintance this one has survived, nay thrived, after eating half a bag of dark choc Hershey Kisses at Halloween, two squares of Belgian dark chocolate innocently left on a low coffee table when the would-be snacker had a phone call over Christmas, and today, the brownie.
The balm of Gilead that brownie was meant to be, soothing me after my perusal of the global news of violence and mindless destruction, unavailable. Sigh.
I think I'll go read about the 12,000 calories per diem the waterlogged Mr. Phelps must stuff into his elongated Olympian frame. Presumably some of those are likely to be, must be, from chocolate.
( Having stayed on the ball all day, the brownie thief collapses, CD cases as her pillow.)
Grateful that I do not have 150 feet of intestines tucked inside, as do manatees, I see that the current crop of free healthy product magazines are recommending a huge roster of "cleansing" items this winter, none of which would be needed if the magazines' audience were eating as advised in the first place, right?
But I digress---a slaughterhouse video from Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, CA, has prompted Los Angeles schools to withhold meat products from a company called Westland that buys meat from Hallmark, on the grounds that the "downer" cattle unable to walk towards their deaths were being dragged or pushed in, and thus might be suffering from diseases that could render their meat iffy for human consumption. Westland provides ground beef to the USDA's National School Lunch Program. Many school systems around the US have chosen to reject meat from Westland, including some in Oregon and Florida.
( Meanwhile, rival groups in Kenya have been killing one another not only machetes, but also with bows and arrows. )
Japanese whalers, despite concentrated efforts to stop them, continue to slaughter whales with impunity, though Australian authorities now claim the video evidence they have will bolster their case against the spurious legal claim of the Japanese that they are taking whales for "research purposes."
Apparently The Teapot Museum of Sparta, NC, was the recipient of a $500,000 grant from the Federal Transportation office back in 2006, a fact now revealed to all and sundry with great derision. This report from 2007 says the planned new museum idea has been scrapped. Now as one who applauds any museum effort directed however tangentially at the subject of food, the stuff that sustains us, rather than at yet another monument to war and destruction, I must say that chunk of change would have been a fine first step towards the creation of the National Museum of Food & Farm on the Mall in Washington, DC. Read more about The FOOD Museum's proposal here.
