Witnessing the catching of aliment illnesses such as Mad Cow, and now Bird Flu, I can anticipate a association afterwards the accumulation produced meat industry. It will arise to canyon - annihilation but your bounded acreage will be accustomed to advertise meat because the big acreage industry cannot agreement assurance of the aliment supply. Meat will become abounding added big-ticket because aback they can no best accumulation aftermath it, there is boilerplate for prices to go but up. So do we beef and cry and beef about our accident or do we alpha to anticipate of meat as article to flavor and get pleasure like the Sunday roasts we had years ago? We never ate meat every day afresh - and we weren't so fat either. We artlessly didn't eat as abounding candy foods. Best of us had moms at home affable us dinner, authoritative our lunches and alike acclimation our breakfasts.
Yes, advance marches on, but aback it comes to your body, accepted faculty rules the day. The Accepted Faculty Diet! Try it on for admeasurement today.
Table manners are a murky subject. We all remember our mothers telling us * * something over and over at dinner time. "Mets ta main sur la table!" was my Mom's refrain (French for "Put your hand on the table!"). Would a Chinese, Iranian or Nigerian child hear the same thing? In many American homes I've heard, "Chew with your mouth closed," and "Do not talk with your mouth full." If you asked me what good table manners encompass French, I would probably be able to come up with about a dozen rules. The other 150 I could not tell you until I saw you breaking them. What's considered appropriate and polite is ingrained in each of us. It's stored in our subconscious and we do not even know it. The only way we find out is when we have a gut reaction to what someone else is doing and just know it's "wrong." Especially at the table, our visceral reactions tended to be and we're quick to judge something as "disgusting." Imagine you're preparing for your first trip to a new country. You can make yourself understood in your new language, at least you can order your food. You know you have a few business meals scheduled - do you know how to be polite? Here are a few points you want to be clear on before you go: 1. Seating arrangements Are there seats around the table that are reserved for the guest of honor, or the host? Do you wait to be seated or are you supposed to know where to sit? Do couples sit together? Do men and women eat together? What about children? Sitting in the wrong spot might be rude and make your host uncomfortable. 2. Eating utensils One of my favorite things to do with my German class is to take them to a German restaurant and show them how to eat with the fork in their left hand, the knife in the right and ask them not to switch hands. Awkward They realize how it is, and we've had many a good laugh at seeing someone missing their mouth with the fork because the student could not find it with their left hand! I'm sure that if you are from an Asian country, you have a great time watching Frustrated Westerners handle their chopsticks and Chasing a piece of food around the plate ... I remember my first few meals in India. We were in Chennai (Madras) and getting used to eating with our (right!) Hand. A waiter took us on as an education project and showed us just how this is to be done: stay close to your banana leaf, do not tilt your head back, move the food into your mouth swiftly ... and do not make a mess. It's easier said than done! Sometimes, the utensils used vary with the food that's being served. Can you eat fruit with your hands? Is there a dedicated knife for eating fish? A glass for just one type of beverage? Find out about the placement of eating utensils, too. There are particular ways of placing chopsticks before and after the meal, the Teapot should not point in specific directions, a knife and fork should be placed parallel when you're done eating, the napkin (or lack thereof) can be problematic to prop - the list is endless and varied. 3. Noise or no noise? As much as Europeans consider noisy eat
Banana snack industry goes stale
Not so long ago, the Central Java town of Majenang was famous for being the home of sale pisang, a unique snack made with bananas, but recently the market changed and the local snack industry faded to a fraction of its former success.
Majenang, one of 23 districts in Cilacap regency in the far west of the province - bordering with Banjar and Ciamis regencies in West Java - has about 30 small factories producing the snack.
Before the 1998 economic crisis, there were around 100 such producers, leading Cilacap administration to come up with the idea of making the snack the icon of Majenang.
But with the crisis, the plan hit snags and many cottage industries were forced out of business. More than a decade later, the situation has yet to improve.
"Before the crisis I could sell 2 or 3 tons of fried banana sweets to Jakarta. But things are difficult now," Yayat, a 61-year-old sale pisang business owner, told The Jakarta Post in Majenang.
Today, Yayat produces only about 200 kilograms of sale pisang a month, and 99 percent of this is sold in Majenang. The snacks are sold in 250-gram packages, each costing around Rp 25,000 (US$2).
Another snack producer, Juremi, said that before the crisis she could send 2 tons of sale pisang to Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya each month.
"Now we only sell sale pisang for the local market," the 60-year-old said.
Juremi said most of the snack producers were struggling to survive.
"What's important is that business survives. If there are buyers in the city, that's enough. Sometimes we get an order from outside the city, but this is unreliable," she said.
"Once, a distributor from outside the city wanted to place an order, but the price he offered was too low to cover our production costs. Rather than suffering losses, we preferred not to take it."
Making sale pisang does not take long. Ripe bananas are cut into slices and dried in the sun.
"If the sun is bright, the bananas will dry out in two days. But in a rainy season like this, it takes about four days," Juremi said.
The dried bananas are then smeared with flour and deep-fried. After being drained, the banana chips are ready to be packaged and sold.
The sale pisang business has supported many, including farmers and traders who sell raw bananas to cottage industries in Majenang, as well as banana snack makers such as Juremi and Yayat, and the vendors.
Majenang district head, Heru Susedyo, said he was aware of the stagnant business situation.
"Sale pisang was once so popular that the Cilacap administration planned to make it the icon of Majenang city, but the plan could not be realized because sales keep decreasing."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/06/
Sunday 30 November 2008
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