jZepp

White on White

annual pomegranate shot

By Digiteyes

Oh, so many category choices. Food, drink, culture?

I like to take pictures of pomegranates at this time of year. For some reason or another, I associate the fruit with Christmas. This year, I heard about pomegranate martinis -- I guess they're one of the latest drinks out there (who can resist? a drink with antioxidants, ooh, aaah). So I took a juicy pome apart and plunked some seeds around and in a martini glass (Bombay Sapphire in the glass -- yes, I drank it when the photo shoot was done. Yes, it got warm).

Fire-Walking Ceremony

By obachan

Many people attended the “fire-walking ceremony” at a temple to get rid of their sickness and worries, and pray for the happiness of the coming year.

December 4, 2005
Kohoji temple, Kochi, Japan

Gifts from the Bounty: Breadfruit

This beautiful cannonball shaped fruit with the bland taste and versatile use of a potato is deliciously included in this recipe to prepare crab rolls with a twist! To make it even more delectable, serve it with a colorful guacamole salad.

But, first, lets go through some very interesting facts to uncover the beauty and wonders of this unique food from the tropics:

When the crew of the H.M.S. Bounty mutinied in the South Pacific, it was carrying "breadfruit". Captain Bligh's goal had been to transport the seedlings from Tahiti to the Caribbean, so that natives there would have a substantial source of food.

Breadfruit seeds, leaves, and blossoms are also eaten. The seeds have a pleasant nutty flavor. Only very young leaves may be eaten. If the blossoms are picked when just ripe, before they are brown and hard, they may be eaten also.

Traditional methods of preparing breadfruit include baking in ground ovens or roasting over hot coals. It may be fermented by burying it in layers between leaves. The fermented breadfruit is removed from the pit, mixed with coconut cream, and baked into a sour bread.

Today, it can be prepared by traditional methods, or baked, steamed, or fried. The fruit is pricked with a fork before baking or roasting it, so that it does not explode. Bake it in a moderate oven (180°C or 350°F) until soft, about 1½ hours. When steaming or boiling breadfruit, peel it first. Mature grated breadfruit may be used instead of wheat flour in some recipes.

All varieties can be divided into two classes:

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Edible Flowers: The Red Velvet Rose of Love

By Melissa in Panama

I discovered flowers were edible back in my early pre-chef adventures, when I had the perfect height to hide in my great grandmother's garden and eat her favorite miniature white roses without being found. Those were great days full of pure innocent adventure and joyful rewards from mother and father nature.

The diversity and mystery of our tropical rainforest always captured my attention. Learning the value of natural medicine through my life, the healing benefits of plants and flowers, have helped me develop a natural instinct to preserve the traditional knowledge that has been carried by our cultures over the ages.

In the kitchen, this beautiful flower has a very important roll. It might sound a little odd because of the rose's romantic connotations, but in fact, roses have been eaten since ancient times. Romans were used to sprinkle rose petals on food, the table, and all over the banquet hall.

Rose petals, fresh, dried and crystallized can be added as a garnish to a salad, made into an infusion for tea and other beverages, desserts, as well as prepared into candies, marmalade, sauces, rose sugar, and soups. Rose petals, rose water and rose syrup are still widely used in the cuisines of the Middle East. Greek baklava, for instance, is originally served with a drizzle of rose syrup.

The best quality flowers for consumption are the young and fresh. Consumers have to be cautious to eat only flowers that were produced for that purpose and to avoid flowers from retail florists where they may have been treated with modern systemic pesticides and chemicals not intended for consumption; they have made the flowers highly toxic.

For some edible flowers, it is important to eat only the petals to avoid the bitter taste found in the rest of the flower. But, when it comes to roses, petals from all varieties are edible as well as the leaves which are used in some concoctions with curative properties that are prepared in Latin America.

The following excerpt has been extracted from "Rosita Arvigo's: Rainforest Remedies, One Hundred Healing Herbs of Belize":

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The Chopstick Chronicles: Ten to the Dozen

Taiwan's produce markets sell eggs loose. You can buy as many fresh chicken or duck eggs as you like. The supermarkets, like supermarkets everywhere, sell eggs in cartons. I must have brought eggs from the supermarket twenty times before I realised that a Taiwan egg carton is exactly two eggs short of a dozen. Eggs are sold ten to a carton.

The association of dozen with eggs is so strong in my mind that the two words almost seem glued together. I certainly never questioned this, until the day came when I needed exactly ten eggs. After I had prepared whatever dishes I was making, I went to put the remaining two eggs from the carton into the fridge but found they had vanished. What followed was five minutes of utter confusion before I decided to count the cavities in the empty carton. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten … ten?" No wonder a dozen eggs had always seemed cheap.

by Stephen, Taiwan

Late Fall Hike

Early morning hike 25-Nov-05, Cedar Mtn. (Utah)

Daikoku-sama Festival

by Obachan

Local kids performed traditional dances on a river bank to entertain Shinto gods.
November 23, 2005
Sugimoto Shrine in Ino town,
Kochi, Japan

Original post

The Chopstick Chronicles: Book Review

The Food of China by E. N. Anderson

One of the Key Works on Chinese Food History

Published in the late 1980s, The Food of China remains one of the key modern works on Chinese food history. This was the first book I read on Chinese food. That was a mistake, if only because the book is so dense with information that the reading experience was quite overwhelming at the time. So if you are a novice like I was, start with something lighter such as Francine Halvorsen's The Food and Cooking of China before taking the deep plunge with this more academic book. But E. N. Anderson remains on of the two or three authoritative references in my bookshelf that I know I will be reaching for many years to come.

by Stephen, Taiwan

d.i.y. art

Try your mouse at art
A _Javascript application, simply use your mouse to draw, and clear the screen with a click.

http://eigelb.at/HP/Links/SpecialEffects/Grappa/BlueRandom/index.html