Moving

We have planned to move at the end of this month and the first question we get from most anyone is: to where? Interesting to hear people’s understanding of moving implying moving in, as moving out is automatically included.

In our case, we are just moving out, which intrigue our friends and family to the point of frightening some of them. I can concede that moving entails a destination, unless one would create a perpetual movement...

OK, no worries, we are going to be embracing the Gypsy life only for a while, until we have a clear understanding to where we want or need to be. Our friends the Roms have been on the road since the 11^th century; we will make it shorter, I promise!

I remember a trip through Spain in 1964. We were so tired that we parked the car along the road and slept for a short time during the early hours. A caravan of Gitanos went by, almost silent and respectful of our condition. The carriage was older than the first American’s wagons, with two enormous plain wood wheels of about 2 yards of diameters, covered with a rudimentary canvas to protect the travelers and an impressive hitching ox. No barking dogs! Once they were ahead of us, I felt in peace, as if we had connected our souls for a moment.

Today, I would opt for an old VW camper, preferably with a peace sticker at the back. I’ve never wore tie-dye shirts but I might try, just to complete my new image. 

On Health and Education

While politicians are debating whether or not and how the USA should follow the established and experienced lead of Industrialized Countries in covering all their Citizens with Health plans, we keep missing the enormity of the fact that we have, by far, the biggest Jailed population in the world.

It is certainly legitimate to look at how to care about the health of the Constitutional People when a system such as ours is now letting lobbying Corporates dictating laws in the background, as our reflection to the world is surely not on health as we bear the heaviest population in the World with 66% of declared obese and life expectancy ranking only 42 on our planet.

Bad food and bad nutritional habits leading to a sick and overweight population needing to be treated by the Health network including drug companies; it is as if people’s healthiness is an upsetting subject for the striving 17.5% of the US Gross Domestic Product dedicated to what we call ironically health industry, as it should be re-baptized sickness industry, although not as appealing, one might say!

Health is a priority, not only in healthcare coverage and management but also in food quality, as factory mass production processed food is predominant on our market, as well as the prevailing fast food industry, both dispensing the foundation of health problems, whether by lack of vigorous quality or potential for abuse through pressing marketing and behavioral manipulation.

Nevertheless, if health concern is of essence, the lack of Education is the source of the encompassing problem of our Society, as learning should connect to knowledge in healthy conducts and Societal behaviors, and its deficiencies are leading us back to the American jail population.

Near 7.5 millions Americans are imprisoned or nearly 2.5% of the US citizens. If this is not bad enough, our jailed residents represent about 25% of the World jailed population as we make only 4.6% of the Earth inhabitants.

After taking care of the people’s health, we certainly need to press on education, although it is important to understand that it represents a very long term investment in future generations to promote better integrated Americans with a wider knowledge of subjects such as world history, national and international ethics as well as languages.

This more opened and diversified knowledge should lead to a greater understanding of Self Discipline, Respect and Responsibility as individual and collective concept on all subjects and Freedom as a variably circumstantial idea.

Who are we stepping on this time? 

Food Stroke

It is as if a third of the United States population has a stroke. Strangely, not all the time… thinking of it… yes, I am almost sure… it is when people are eating. I can see them…eating and, yes that’s it… they talk at the same time, stiffening one side of their lips to keep the food in, while trying to talk from the other side. I got it now! It is not the consequence of a severe collective embolism, only people wanting to talk while eating.

Of course, I was joking or unless I have had a recent ischemic stroke myself, which is thankfully not the case. But that was also an introduction to this ugly habit that seem to have received some educational, I mean TV commercial recognitions to become a sort of fashionable behavior.

Frightening to think that commercials are so pervasive that they literally became the point of authorization for collective behaviors, such as the stereotypical food tasting: our foodie pointing frantically downward 4 to 7 times at the food source with the utensil used to fill up his oral cavity, at the same time hastily frowning his face upward while trying to gulp some food, as time is ticking away, to finally and invariably saying “h’as greah't”. Anyway, how many performances have we seen on commercials setting strange protocols being suddenly acknowledged and followed by a large public proudly wearing the "as seen on TV" stamp of approval.

Eating and talking at the same time, besides great risk of involuntary food redistribution… if I can say so... is reducing the potential for understanding what the food, I mean the person is trying to say, taking a chance of having to repeat all over the painful mouth contortion and the peekaboo food viewing. I think another point of greater importance is that the act of eating becomes an accessory to our need to voice our opinion at any cost and anytime.

Eating is very important and highly respectable. Marginalizing the primary role of food sustaining our life is a bad communication to ourselves, as if we were reluctant to be treated right by our own conscience.

I have learned a long time ago that the so called good manners have a superior meaning as to conform to some kind of unwritten rules that grand-parents were trying to impose on our freedom of doing anything we want the way we want. Eating with respect for the food we absorb is the primary reason of not talking at the same time, not the concept of having to portray some attitude or adhere to a predefined idiosyncrasy.

Bon appétit and now shut up and eat!

No taste like Licorice… or not.

Few people seem to know that a drink tasting what they call “Liquorice” is in reality Anise. Most Americans would know about Ouzo but should know that the taste is from Anise essential oil used in the confection of the drink. No Liquorice root!

The Arak found in Lebanon and many other Countries in that region, is made with grape and Anise seed, not the Liquorice root.

The French Pastis is made with Star Anise and the forbidden Absenthe was made with the Artemisia Absinthium herb. No Liquorice.

The Sambuca found in Italian bars is made with Star Anise essential oil. When served in a restaurant at the end of a dinner, the drink can come with 3 floating coffee grains, representing health, prosperity and happiness. No Liquorice here either! 

Let’s keep Liquorice for the root stick to chew, for a Liquorice infusion and for the black twisted candy… please!

Anise is the world!   Say after me: Hmm! Taste like Anise!

Just for the sake of avoiding a monster headache next morning after drinking Ouzo like drunken sailors, let’s fin out a little more about the drink and its traditions. First of all, it is a 40 to 45% alcohol beverage. It can be served as an aperitif, generally cut with water and ice which turn the drink into a milky white color, to accompany appetizers. Interesting to know that it is considered to be a poor form of drinking to absorb Ouzo without eating food in Greece. The shot of ice-cold Ouzo is not a Greek tradition. No wander!  Maybe it was not made for that, or unless one is on a WW2 Kamikaze mission with a Greek drink...

A Mediterranean Cuisine Chimera

I hear and read more and more often about Mediterranean Taste or Mediterranean Cuisine, as if the Sea had created a universal gastronomic region, a sort of steaming exotic soup with Italian tomatoes, Lebanese chickpea, Spanish olive oil and a blend of Far East palate blazing spices, served with flat bread baked in the burning sand of Libya and a spiky looking grilled fish of an unknown name, transporting anyone tasting to a scenes of “Laurence of Arabia” with “Zorba the Greek” music theme in the background, dogs barking at the shadow of gypsies passing through in the moonlight and sudden timbales preceding a belly dancer with veils swirling like a whirlwind.

I wish it was that simple!

If one dares to look at the various Countries, Ethnicities, Cultures and lingering History to find the different cuisines around Mediterranee, one might be surprised to see the variety and diversity to be found on any of the hundreds of beaches, villages, towns and cities around the big Sea.

And so we will go around.