The growing worldwide refugee crisis is now clear to see

 

I've posted warnings from Michael Yon in these pages over the past few months, warning of what he terms PANFAWAR (Pandemic, Famine, War) and its consequences.  More and more knowledgeable people are picking up on the same clues he's seeing, and coming to agree with him.  Most recently, he stated flatly:

Famines always create enormous HOP: Human Osmotic Pressure.

OGUS — Occupation Government United States — is down here in Panama increasing the migration flow to the United States. As the other continents go into famine, millions of people will dump through this artery to America. During famine. This is an act of war by OGUS.

There's more at the link.

I've seen what Yon calls "Human Osmotic Pressure" in action in the Third World, and I agree with him:  it's an inevitable consequence of societal disruption, whatever the cause.  It's already happening in the Horn of Africa, and spreading from there to central Africa, as a drought-caused famine dries up local food supplies.  The loss of Ukrainian and Russian grain means those dried-up supplies are suddenly far more difficult (and expensive) to replace - impossibly so, for poorer countries.

Now politicians in Europe are beginning to sit up and take notice.  For example:

Italian League party leader Matteo Salvini has warned that if the war in Ukraine does not end soon, chronic food shortages will cause an immigration wave that will lead to 20 million African migrants trying to enter Europe.

If Ukrainian grain supplies continue to be impacted, Salvini cautions, “Significant hunger is expected on the African continent, which will be a humanitarian, then a social, and finally an Italian problem.”

“Without peace there will be famine in the autumn and 20 million Africans will be ready to go,” he added.

Again, more at the link.

The Conversation points out that the loss of Ukrainian and Russian grain production will have crippling consequences.

Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’ve got a real issue on your plate.

The total world production of cereals is about 2,200 MMT per year, which is quite a bit more than is needed to feed the caloric needs of every person on Earth. Those 2.2 trillion kilos of cereals would be over 7 quadrillion calories if they went straight into human mouths, which is 20% more than the 5.8 quadrillion calories that the nearly 8 billion humans need to survive the year.

. . .

The international cereals market remains stubbornly international, and there is no such thing as a problem that belongs completely to someone else. People in France or Italy were never expecting to have any Ukrainian wheat shipped to them, but they are now competing against Egyptians and Moroccans who are now suddenly looking for new sources of bread.

More at the link.

The Conversation claimed that Indian wheat exports would help make up for the shortfall.  Unfortunately, Indian production won't be available:

India has banned exports of wheat effective immediately, citing a risk to its food security, partly due to the war in Ukraine.

. . .

India ... had set a goal of exporting 10 million tons of the grain in 2022-23, looking to capitalize on the global disruptions to wheat supplies from the war and find new markets for its wheat in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Much of that would have gone to other developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

More at the link.

India isn't the only nation blocking export of foodstuffs;  it's a growing phenomenon, and it's affecting more and more food-importing countries.  Iran appears to be the latest country to see internal unrest as a result of food shortages and rising prices.

Protests over soaring food prices continued in several cities in Iran on Saturday, according to postings on social media, while an Iranian lawmaker told local media one person was killed in a demonstration in the south-west.

The protests were triggered last week by a cut in state subsidies for imported wheat that caused price hikes of as much as 300% for a variety of flour-based staples. The government of President Ebrahim Raisi also raised prices of basic goods such as cooking oil and dairy products.

More at the link.

We're seeing the effects of these shortages on our own grocery shelves as well.  Shortage of supplies, a lack of choice, and product substitution (buying what's available, instead of getting what we really want) are going to become the norm for almost all of us this year.  (Old NFO blogged this morning about an issue we encountered during breakfast on Sunday.  When restaurant chains start holding back on basic commodities like this, you know it's getting bad.)

We've already seen riots over food price and availability (as well as other problems) in Sri Lanka, Peru and other nations.  We're going to see a lot more of them around the world as the grain shortage bites harder and harder.  As things get worse, more and more people are going to decide that they have no hope where they are;  so they're going to take to their feet, and any other transport they can get hold of, and make their way to richer countries, where they hope to find food for today and a better tomorrow.

We're going to see refugee flows that make our current southern border problems look trivial by comparison.  They're going to affect every First World nation, and most likely all Second World countries as well - and, as Michael Yon correctly points out (see above), the powers that be in the United States are going to use the crisis for all they're worth, in an open attempt to swamp existing Americans beneath a tidal wave of illegal aliens.  If we let that happen, our constitutional republic will be gone beyond redemption, rescue or recall.

Peter

Hungry fishies!

Following yesterday's post about the diver who got rather too up-close-and-personal with a whale shark, I found this video clip of people feeding 300lb. grouper fish in Florida.

Y'know, if I were invited to do that, I think I'd insist on chain-mail gloves, thank you very much!





Peter

Feeding frenzy!

The Daily Mail published an article today about a giant bait ball off the Florida coast, which attracted thousands of sharks to feed on it. The photograph below accompanied the article.




That's got to be the biggest bait ball I've ever heard of! Intrigued, I looked for more pictures, and found these two videos of bait balls on YouTube, including underwater photography of the feeding frenzy around them. They make fascinating viewing.

At least I now know what yesterday's tuna salad had been eating before I chowed down on it . . .



Peter

OK, that's big!

I'm amazed to learn that a complete Megalodon jaw is to be auctioned in Dallas, Texas in June. I didn't know that complete jaws of these prehistoric monsters were still available outside museums. The Daily Mail reports:

It makes the Great White shark in Jaws look like a goldfish.

But this giant prehistoric shark jaw comes from the largest predator ever to have existed on Earth.




The 16-metre long Megalodon shark, which died out 1.5million years ago, was once the true king of the ocean, weighing an awesome 100 tons.

It took famed fossil hunter Vito 'Megalodon' Bertucci almost 20 years to reconstruct the jaw, the largest ever assembled and which measures 11ft across and is almost 9ft tall.

The late Mr Bertucci found fragments of the ferocious species in the rivers of South Carolina.

The jaw set is composed of 182 fossil teeth, some over seven inches long and is expected to sell for $700,000 (£436,000) at a sale by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, on 12 June.

There's more at the link.

Now that's an impressive bite! Here's a clip from a BBC documentary about these beasts.

Not the sort of thing I want to think about, swimming beneath me . . . I reckon I'd be nothing more than an hors d'œuvre to that monster!





Peter

A food crisis in the making - or an Internet rumor?

A post at Crucis' Court this morning mentioned a report that FEMA had just ordered a billion dollars' worth of dehydrated meals, disrupting normal supplies of these foods. This made me wonder, as I hadn't read any reports of this in the mainstream media, who normally cover FEMA affairs fairly thoroughly; so I decided to read further.

Crucis' post linked to an article at Examiner.com, which in turn linked to an article in the Beaufort Observer, which linked to an article at Forbes.com from October last year, and another article dated February 15 from Yahoo! news. Both the latter articles appeared to support the Beaufort Observer article's contention that a food crisis might - might - be imminent.

In response, a Beaufort Observer reader responded with the claim about FEMA's billion-dollar purchase of dehydrated meals. She alleged it had been reported in "Off The Grid News Letter" - but I haven't been able to find that specific report on the Web, despite coming across any number of "Off The Grid" Web sites, newsletters and groups. However, a Web search revealed that the same rumor of massive government purchases of dehydrated meals was widespread.

Curious, I went to the Web sites of a number of manufacturers and vendors of freeze-dried and dehydrated meals, and found no shortage of supply. However, I did find this notice on the home page of the Mountain House Web site (bold print is my emphasis):

As you know we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily. The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.

Currently we are able to meet demand for Mountain House pouches and most of these products are still available for purchase on our website. We do have a small number of dealers that we will continue to make and ship #10 cans to and you will need to contact them directly to place an order. For a list of dealers, please contact us at MH-Info@ofd.com

We want to clarify inaccurate information that is being said on the internet, news and radio. This situation is not due to sales to the government domestically or internationally. We do sell products to this market, but we also sell other market segments, including Ingredient and Private Brand markets. The reason for this decision is solely due to an unexpected sales spike in #10 cans sales.

We expect this situation to be necessary for several months although this isn’t a guarantee. We will update this information as soon as we know more. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We sincerely hope you will continue to be Mountain House customers in the future.

So it looks like the reader's response to the Beaufort Observer article was based on misinformation . . . but how many people have been led astray by that misinformation? Look at how many other sites on the Web are repeating it!

There are approximately three hundred million residents of the United States. If only one per cent of them (three million people) believe such reports, and decide to stock up on (say) a year's supply of emergency rations, that's three million years' worth of individual rations being taken out of circulation - all at once. It may be more than that, if they decide to stock up for their families as well as themselves. What will that do to already low stockpiles of food? Do you think this might actually manufacture the very crisis that rumor-mongers are talking about? Can you say 'self-fulfilling prophecy'?

Please note that I'm not criticizing Crucis in the least for his blog post. I think it's one of our functions as bloggers to highlight interesting news that comes to our attention - matters that the mainstream media might not cover adequately. (Witness the current ATF scandal, which has been brought into the limelight almost exclusively through the efforts of two bloggers, the latter also a news correspondent.) It's just that there's so much 'news' out there that's actually false, put out by people with a hidden agenda, that one has to be very, very careful about what one chooses to believe!

Peter

You'd better be hungry to try this!

I've heard of - even seen - some of the monster dinners offered by a few US restaurants. Typical is the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, offering its 72-ounce (4½ pound) steak, which is free if you eat the whole thing (including side dishes) within one hour, in accordance with the rules.




The speed record for eating this monster steak is held by "a 500-pound Bengal Tiger owned by Benjamin Heiple of Florida. His meal was limited to the steak only and he dined in the front of the building. The technique was the simplest we've ever seen: sniff, lick, gulp! It took him less than 90 seconds."

There's also Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, with its 6-pound "Olde 96'er" burger, featuring "6 pounds of meat, one large onion, two whole tomatoes, one half head of lettuce, 1 1/4 pounds of cheese, top and bottom buns, and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, banana peppers and some pickles".




If you finish it (plus the side dishes) within 3 hours, you get it free, and your picture goes on the restaurant's Wall of Fame. (I daresay you also go to hospital shortly thereafter - for a heart transplant!)

Now it seems an English restaurant wants to get in on the act. The Daily Mail reports:

This might make you feel sick just looking at it... especially if you are a vegetarian!

For here is a plate of meat that has over twice the recommended daily intake for a grown man.

And you are supposed to eat all 5,300 calories - or 3lbs - of it in one sitting, if you can.

If you do finish the 'If You Dare Grill', you'll be given a T-shirt... and a free dessert!




The plate comes with the full rack of ribs, the steak, an 8oz gammon steak, two lamb chops, two pork loin chops, four home-made sausages, two eggs, two pineapple rings, four onion rings, four mushrooms, a grilled tomato, coleslaw and chips.

Restaurant owner Andrew Danniells [shown above] insisted it is all about having fun.

He said: 'I smoke but could that cause a heart attack? They say red wine is bad for you too. Red meat is good for you and if someone wants to eat all that, it is going to be a big bloke anyway.

'We are ordering the T-shirts in extra large and above as if someone is not that size when they sit down to eat, they certainly will be afterwards!'

There's more at the link.

Y'know, looking at those pictures, suddenly I'm not hungry any more . . .





Peter

I wonder how many applicants they'll get?

Domino's Pizza in Japan has come up with a novel idea to advertise its products. Reuters reports:

Take-out pizza chain hiring. Aged over 18, no experience required. Uniform provided. Salary: $31,000 an hour.

As part of a series of events commemorating the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan, Domino's Pizza Japan is set to hire one lucky person at the rate of 2,500,000 yen ($31,030) for an hour's worth of work in December.

A company spokesman declined to provide further details until November 10, but the company's website said that anyone who wants the job will need to file an application. Those passing to the next stage will undergo an interview.

"Basically it's anybody over 18, no questions about education or experience," the spokesman said. "We're actually a little surprised by how much of a response it's getting."

Hourly pay for part-time jobs in Japan averages just under 1,000 yen ($12.41).

. . .

In another of the promotions, anyone born on September 30 this year -- the actual date the first Domino's opened in Japan -- will receive a free pizza on their birthday until they turn 25.

There's more at the link.

If you think about it, that's a darn clever advertisement! Domino's will probably earn a return of hundreds of times more than that 'hourly rate' through the publicity generated by its offer. Someone had their thinking cap on over there! Full marks for ingenuity to whoever thought this one up.

Peter

A posthumous Thriller?

While we're in the Far East (see previous story), it seems that a Taiwanese farmer has found a novel way to protect his crops.

A farmer in Taiwan has come up with an Off the Wall way of scaring away birds who eat his crop at harvest time - scarecrows dressed like Michael Jackson.

Lee Ping-hsing has installed two wooden models of the King of Pop in his rice fields and covered them in the singer's trademark clothing.

One of the scarecrows has been given Jackson's iconic white sequined gloves and a black fedora hat, while the other wears a red jacket similar to the one famously worn in the Thriller video.

Both models are set in the fields in different poses copied from the dead singer's signature dance moves.

Lee told local reporters: 'During harvest, my dad would go to the fields every day and chase the birds away.

'And I thought, since Michael is good at 'grabbing his bird', I'm inviting him to grab ours.'

The 30-year-old claims the scarecrows have been such a success that he's building a third for his father's farm in Changhua county, central Taiwan.

Not everyone thinks the idea is a Thriller though.

'I was yelled at by my grandfather, who said Jackson's spirit could come and haunt us,' Lee added.

'But I think it would be nice if Michael could come over.'

There's more at the link, including a video clip of the farmer dancing Jackson-style.

Dare I say that this might give Michael Jackson's music a bad rap?





Peter

Edible art?

A new world record has been set for an artwork made of bread.

When you're trying to come up with a really unusual birthday present, it pays to use your loaf.

In the case of Laura Hadland, she used 600 of them.

The 27-year-old museum curator turned a photo of her mother-in-law, Sandra Whitfield, into the world's largest toast mosaic - comprising 9,852 slices.




Mrs Hadland roped in 40 friends to help her make the tribute, which she describes as 'a treat made with love and a sense of randomness'.

They used a battery of nine toasters to brown the slices of bread to varying degrees before arranging it to make the 32ft 8in by 42ft 3in picture at an arts venue in Mrs Whitfield's home town of Warrington, Cheshire.

After spending six hours painstakingly perfecting the image, Laura surprised her husband Mike's mother with the unusual portrait to celebrate her 50th birthday.

The enormous picture was confirmed yesterday as having set a new Guinness World Record as the largest toast mosaic.

There's more at the link.

I suppose it's logical that the toast portrait should have been made in England, traditionally regarded as the home of class consciousness. After all, the artist can certainly claim to be well bread!





Peter

Containerized crops?

I've written before about the use of surplus shipping containers for housing. It seems they can serve as small, self-contained hydroponic farms, too. Discovery News reports:

Shipping containers have been redesigned to become housing, offices and even health clinics, but now a startup in Tucson is transforming them into sun-free, soil-free greenhouses. Leaf lettuce from their test system shows they've got dark-green thumbs.

Verdant Earth Technologies has a plan to retrofit standard 20-foot shipping containers into mini farms. Each of their controlled environment agriculture systems -- or CEAs -- is fitted with five shelves, where the plants live. Instead of sitting in soil, however, the plants sit in a nutrient-rich solution that also works to irrigate them.




Cofounder and CEO Josh Hottenstein says they're experimenting with different artificial lighting options, including one that uses solar concentrators and fiber optics to distribute light from LEDs. "Plants don't need the full spectrum of light," he says. Solar concentrators allow them to get the right wavelength and direct it.

. . .

"It's resource-efficient," Hottenstein says of the system. "It's getting the most out of the limited resources you have."

The idea came together about a year ago when Hottenstein and his grad school classmate at the University of Arizona Myles Lewis sought a way to combine advanced greenhouse mechanics and hydroponics in an enclosed structure.

Hottenstein has an IT background and Lewis specializes in horticulture. Their savvy business plan won a competition at the university's McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship last year. Verdant Earth was just chosen as a regional semifinalist in the Cleantech Open, a national competition to identify promising clean- tech startups.

All that tech packed into a shipping container sounds expensive, but Hottenstein says that because the process maximizes resources, he expects the cost to be competitive with commercial greenhouse structures, around $20 to $30 per square foot.

The cost of the produce will be competitive with organics, Hottenstein adds. Currently the startup is between the proof-of-concept stage and prototyping, working on getting test systems to several customers. From there, they plan to begin manufacturing the systems.

. . .

One thing I never considered is that in an enclosed, controlled growing space that has no sunlight or soil, the need for pesticides dips to zero. If this kind of tech can be scaled up for vertical farming in urban environments, perhaps we'll see a new kind of labeling that has more of a ring to it than "organic."

There's more at the link.

This is really interesting! If this can be made to work on a large scale, it might be a major step forward for many Third World families who are utterly dependent on farming to stay alive. In drought-stricken environments (such as much of Africa), the minimal water requirements of this system would be a Godsend; and it wouldn't be affected by natural disasters such as dust storms, monsoon rains or hail. It would help deal with the limited availability of arable land, and there are certainly plenty of surplus shipping containers available (although getting them converted and moving them to where they're needed might be costly at first).

The system might also be a very cost-effective solution for First World families who like home-grown produce, but don't have the space or time to grow it in the conventional way. A half-size, 20' shipping container can fit into most suburban back yards, if necessary, and could probably grow enough in the way of fruits and vegetables to feed at least one family, if not two or three. Also, it would use a lot less water and fertilizer than the average backyard garden, and would be secure against animals, birds and other pests that might steal or infect the produce.

Peter

Incipient heart attack in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

I thought I'd heard of most of the more unhealthy varieties of food out there, particularly after reading the warning literature given to me after my heart attack last year.

I was wrong.

Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise: The Wisconsin State Fair is all about food that's battered and fried, dipped in chocolate, stuck on a stick, or slathered in decadence.

. . .

Just two days after a sobering report about obesity was released by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fair opened its 11-day run with a bevy of traditional high-calorie favorites and new hot-sellers, including a Krispy Kreme cheeseburger packing 1,000 calories.




The Machine Shed expected to sell about 3,500 salty-sweet Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers over the first three days of the fair. Roughly a fourth of the $5 burgers sandwiched between two halves of a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut were ordered with chocolate-covered bacon for an extra buck.

There's more at the link, including the widest variety of battered, deep-fried vegetables I've ever heard of!

If the thought of a cheeseburger sandwiched between two halves of a grilled glazed doughnut isn't enough to harden your arteries at 20 paces, how about this for dessert?

Even the most fervent chocoholic would have trouble tackling this beast - the world's largest brandy truffle ever created.

Weighing in at a whopping 253.9kg [about 560 pounds] and made using £1,600 [about US $2,544] of ingredients, the mega sweet treat contains a staggering 433,330 calories and 22,941g [almost 51 pounds] of fat.

The creators of the truffle are celebrating after their chocolate masterpiece, smashing the previous world record by almost 60kg.




. . .

Owner of The Queen's Head Inn, in Bromsgrove, Worcs, Gianni D'Aniello and head chef Chris Long spent five and a half hours constructing the truffle from a traditional recipe of chocolate, brandy, double cream and cocoa powder.

The truffle, in accordance with the official guidelines, was created in the correct proportions and prepared in the same way as a normal size truffle with a ganache centre before being coated in cocoa powder.

Evidence of the attempt, to mark the start of National Chocolate Week, will now be submitted to the Guinness World Records so it can be formally verified as an official record-breaker.

Again, more at the link.

I'll be in my bed, groaning and holding my aching blood vessels . . .





Peter

How potato chips are made

This may be a familiar subject to many, but I'd never seen a video depiction of how potato chips were made. This one has satisfied my curiosity.

What annoys me is the number of chips that can be cut from a single potato. If you look at the cost (by weight) of the raw materials, and compare it to the cost of the finished product, it's quite sickening!

Peter

Would you like purple fries with that?

Yes, you read it correctly. An English supermarket is set to offer purple potatoes, including all of their related products such as fries, mash and crisps (chips).

It might seem a challenge to make chips even more popular than they are, but Sainsbury’s is having a go.

From today, it is selling purple potatoes which carry their deep hue to the core.

The colour survives the cooking process to provide purple chips, baked potatoes and even roasties and mash - which all taste the same as the familiar creamy white type.

As a bonus, the spectacular potatoes are packed with healthy anthocyanin, which gives blueberries, blackberries and aubergines their distinctive tints.

Anthocyanin is a powerful antioxidant which protects cells from damage and so may prevent cancer. Consumption of it is also thought to have many other beneficial effects.

In nature there are thousands of varieties of potatoes, many having deep red and purple flesh. The new Purple Majesty has been crossed from these original strains by a team of experts at Colorado University.

It is being grown in Scotland by the Albert Bartlett company.

Only 400 tons have been grown this year, which means supplies will be limited, but a bigger crop is planned next year.

There's more at the link.

Visually different, certainly . . . but I hope the color doesn't run. Mothers everywhere have had to clean up their kids after ketchup, mustard and other condiments have dripped from fries onto their clothing (to say nothing of the fries themselves ending up tracked into the carpet!). If they now have to put up with purple fry-splotches on top of everything else, I predict a short and unsuccessful sales career for Purple Majesty!





Peter

Living - and dying - on bread alone!

There's a bakery in Ratchaburi, Thailand that produces some rather . . . er . . . unconventional loaves of bread. Inventorspot reports:

Imagine running up to the bakery around the corner and coming across bread shaped like body parts. Sound yummy? Artist Kittiwat Unarrom creates just that; gruesome works of art out of bread.




Kittiwat Unarrom has a master's degree in fine arts and creates bruised and battered heads, feet and other internal organs at a bread shop in Thailand.

He started using his skills and made sculptures out of bread. This came naturally to him because his family runs a bakery. The bread is made out of dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate. He just adds his own touch to the finished product.




This makes me wonder how long the line wraps around the bakery in order to purchase this finely crafted delicious bread.

I would love to go over to my parent's house with one of these. Carefully setting the concealed bread on the table, I would wait until all of the food was served and innocently ask my mom if she could pass me the bread. Imagine her surprise when she lifts open the cover and comes face to face with one of these gory delights. Okay, so I'd never be invited over to dinner again, but I think the look on her face would be so worth it.




I think this could be an excellent idea for restaurants. They could use one of these heads as a bread bowl and serve spaghetti in it. It would kind of be like eating brains, don't you think?

There's more at the link. Here's a video clip of the bakery and its products.

Not quite the sort of thing for a church social . . . but it might be a lot of fun to introduce it there!



Peter

The stove of the future?

A designer, Greg Beck, has come up with an intriguing prototype of what the stove of the future might look like. Digital Trends reports:

Though it shares the same flush design as other modern ranges, the William [stove] does away with the old concept of circular burners by replacing them with 1,500 individually heated ceramic tiles across the entire surface.




By sensing where you place a pot or pan, the stove intelligently heats up the areas under it, no matter where you happened to place it. Besides accounting for different shapes and sizes of cookware, the design would allow 85 percent of the stovetop for heating, as opposed to just 25 percent on a conventional stovetop, and could support up to 21 unique signatures, or heated items.

There's more at the link. Here's a video showing how the concept would work in practice.

That looks a whole lot more useful than our present stove tops. I hope we'll see it in appliance stores before long.

Peter

Men in the kitchen

So that's how you peel potatoes!

Peter

The perils of processed pet food

I've known for some time that there's a growing movement to reject prepared, pre-processed pet foods, which are being blamed for a great many illnesses and deficiencies in pet health. Trouble is, there's a great deal of rhetoric and not much empirical evidence in the debate. It's hard to make an informed choice when verifiable, objective fact is hard to come by.

However, an article in the Daily Mail sheds some light on why this may be the case. The author points out that pet food manufacturers have secured the right to provide input to veterinary training, which directly influences those trusted by pet owners to give them the right information. There's a lot of other detail as well, certainly enough to give me pause for thought.

If you own a pet - not just a dog, but any pet - I highly recommend reading the entire article. Food for thought indeed!

Peter

Feeling hungry?

In that case, watch how hot dogs are made.

I must confess, after seeing that, I'm no longer all that much of a fan of hot dogs . . .





Peter

Feel-good story of the day

I'm a sucker for feel-good stories, particularly when they happen to older folks who might be struggling with physical ailments, poverty, and the like. When one of them strikes it lucky and becomes a success, it's always a heart-warming thing for me - like the lady in this report from the Daily Mail.

When Christine Munroe revived her grandmother’s jam-making recipes, she simply hoped the results would prove popular with family and friends.

They turned out to be much more than that.

The recipes have been such a runaway success they have turned the 72-year-old into an accidental entrepreneur inundated with requests for her creations – including chilli jam and orange and malt whisky marmalade.




Based on 100-year-old recipes handed down from her mother and grandmother, her range of jams, marmalades, pickles, relishes and mustards have won a string of awards from the Guild of Fine Food and are being sold by the National Trust.

They are so popular that Mrs Munroe, a retired personal assistant, now spends 15 hours a day making 200 jars of condiments for her business.

Last night she said she owed her success to her mother, Dorothy, and grandmother, Ellen, who taught her how to make jam as a young girl.

‘I’m absolutely delighted these jams are a big hit, but I’m only using the old recipes my mother and grandmother used all those years ago,’ she said.

‘My mother learnt how to make the jam from her mother and it’s likely she learnt it from her mother before that.

Mrs Munroe began making jam again as a hobby following her retirement 12 years ago.

But it wasn’t until last year, when she was asked to make a batch of orange marmalade for a local farmer’s market, that her jam came to the attention of food lovers nationwide.

The 17 jars sold so fast, and she was inundated with so many requests for more, that she decided to set up Christine’s Cheshire Preserves, in February 2009.

. . .

Now her son, Hugh, 40, has given up his job as a maths teacher to help his mother run the business.

‘You don’t really have a day off. At the weekend it’s the farmer’s markets and during the week it’s the jam - making it and delivering it, but it’s good fun,’ Mrs Munroe added.

‘I would just be bored stiff putting my feet up. I love it and just enjoy meeting different people.'

There's more at the link.

It's nice when good things happen to good people, isn't it? I see from her Web site that mail order is available, although I don't know whether the company will ship to the USA. If they do, I must get a jar of her orange marmalade with malt whisky. I've had one jar like that in my lifetime, and it was gooooood. I want another!

Peter

Obesity epidemic? What obesity epidemic?

Via Dustbury, we learn of what must be one of the most calorie-rich desserts ever created.

The Cherpumple is the dessert version of the Turducken. It’s a three-layer cake with a pie stuffed in each layer. YUM! Cherpumple is short for CHERry, PUMpkin and apPLE pie. The apple pie is baked in spice cake, the pumpkin in yellow and the cherry in white.




The inspiration for the Cherpumple came from the typical desert table selection you would find at one of my family’s holiday celebrations. Seems there’s always cherry, pumpkin, and apple pie and a cake that’s a family tradition. It has a layer of spice and a layer of yellow. Since I always want to have a piece of each of the pies and the cake I figured why not make that waaaaaaaay more convenient. So I baked them all together as one and the Cherpumple was born.

There's more at the link, including a recipe for those adventurous (and skinny) enough to want to try it! There's also a video showing how it's done.

I'm long past the stage where I could afford to try something like that, I'm afraid. Even watching the video of its creation was enough to add ten pounds to my waistline!





Peter