Children of The Universe

Wild Mixture of Substances Created by Plants and Animals

"Back in the seventies, a New York food additive manufacturer called International Flavors & Fragrances used its annual report to defend itself against the rising threat of "natural foods" and explain why we were better off eating synthetics.  Natural ingredients, the company pointed out rather scarily, are a "wild mixture of substances created by plants and animals for completely non-food purposes -- their survival and reproduction."  These dubious substances "came to be consumed by humans at their own risk."  The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

What are You Eating?

"Imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost..."

Michael Pollan - "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals."

Feeding Rose Tang

Havng Rose Tang over to eat?  She'll eat anything!

Here's a great dish she describes having before lunch in Yunnan:

The highlight of the meal has yet to arrive. I sneak into the kitchen to watch a Dai woman in a sarong prepare sa pie.

She uses a big ladle to break up clots of a dark green, porridge-like substance. She then scoops a black soup out of a plastic bucket and mixes it with the green porridge.

Yao explains that the soup is secretions from a cow's gallbladder. The green porridge is regurgitated grass taken from the cow's intestines just after the animal is slaughtered. The art is to remove the right part of the cud before it turns into excrement and then mix it with mysterious substances.

Did this dish save Rose from being kidnapped?