Globalization
Or what I had for dinner last night -- it dawned on my last night after dinner, as I was munching on some grapes after a not too shabby dinner that I had made, that the world really is a small place. A lot of people have taken to the streets to protest globalization, big business or world trade -- or something like that. You can keep the protest. I rather enjoy the world becoming a smaller place, and if it isn't for trade, why else would the world be a small place? Think of the foods! Which was exactly what I was thinking about last night -- great foods! My dinner last night was an international concoction. While I was cooking, I was munching on grapes from Chile. To prepare the meal, I first placed some shrimps (from China) in a bowl to thaw, then started peeling the Eddoes (from Africa) -- when that was finished, I used spices -- ginger, garlic, garam masala, jeera -- all from India or somewhere in Asia, and of course, I had to add the British spices: black pepper and salt. While that started to cook, I started on the Eggplant -- from the West Indies. To accompany the meal, I purchased some mango juice -- from South Africa -- there was a mango juice in the grocery store from Canada, but it had a little mango and a whole lot of artificial flavours and preservatives -- I skipped it. Now where would dinner have been last night if it wasn't for global trade?
The first chef
First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...
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