foods and cooking
Some Ju/’hoansi Children Lack Sufficient Food
A primary school, attended mostly by Ju/’hoansi, serves as the major source of food for many San children who only are able to go when they are fed. The shortcomings of the sporadic school lunch program at the Omatako Primary School near Tsumkwe, the major community of the San in northeastern Namibia, was described in […]
Semai Uses of Forest Foods
The Semai have been gathering plants in the forests for generations and have profited from their knowledge of the wild foods, widely referred to as “ulam.” The Star, a leading Malaysian newspaper, published a story last week in which the reporter interviewed Rachel Thomas Tharmabalan, a researcher who specializes in analyzing the edible foods, especially […]
Semai Foods in Malaysian Restaurants
The Semai and some of the other Orang Asli societies have been introducing to Malaysian chefs tasty wild foods which the latter are starting to incorporate into the dishes they prepare for their restaurants. An article published in Aljazeera.com on November 1 explains that the original people of Malaysia are experts in finding and using […]
Thai Monks Are Too Fat
The Buddhist monks in rural Thailand have a serious problem: they are gaining too much weight. According to a news report by AFP on November 22, the problem is that they are gifted with too much fatty and sugary foods by well-meaning Rural Thai. Their weight, and their health, are suffering. The journalist writing for […]
Hutterites Cultivate Business Relationships Based on Friendship
National Public Radio broadcast a feature last week about the cooperation between a Hutterite colony in Montana and a dude ranch/resort complex located five hours away. The complex, called The Resort at Paws Up, has a long tradition of friendly cooperation with the Cool Spring Hutterite Colony that predates some of its present employees. The […]
Semai Foods Help Keep the Peace
The fact that the Semai cherish the foods they prepare from the forest was the topic of a Malaysian TV program and, last week, a brief newspaper article. According to the newspaper report in The Star, chef and TV host Nurilkarim Razha, in his documentary series “The Local Kitchen,” showed viewers an obscure forest fruit […]
Inuit Students in Ottawa and their Community
A student club in Ottawa allows Inuit teenagers to get together and share foods from the North as they try to keep their culture alive in the city. The activities of the Inuit Culture Club at the Rideau High School reaffirm the Inuit heritage of the young people as they hang out together one afternoon […]
Foraging at the Town Dump
Some Ju/’hoansi families from Tsumkwe, in northeastern Namibia, have been migrating to Grootfontein hoping to find a better life, but all they have found for themselves is suffering. Grootfontein, a town of 27,000 people in northcentral Namibia, is 250 km (150 miles) west of Tsumkwe. The Namibian, in a story republished by AllAfrica.com, reported on […]
A Famous Chef Preserves Zapotec Cuisine
Abigail Mendoza Ruiz, a well-known chef, is trying to preserve and enrich traditional Zapotec cuisine through the foods she serves in her restaurant, Tlamanalli. Her insistence on celebrating Zapotec customs impels her to serve only traditional foods in the restaurant she runs in Teotitlán del Valle, a town in Oaxaca that is also renowned for […]
Celebrating Elders
On Friday and Saturday, September 30 and October 1, a Tahitian group organized a contest to see who could prepare the best traditional feast celebrating elderly Tahitians, particularly older women. A group called the Fédération Te Ui Hotu Rau No Pare Nui and the town of Pirae, a part of Papeete, the capital city of […]
