Continuing With The Green Legacy

PM Abiy With an elder in the Amhara region of Bahir Dar,
continuing with his Green Legacy
Source: [PM Abiy's Facebook Page]

More news here: Ethiopia Plants 5bln Tree Seedlings within Two Months

Update: Kidist Foods - Some Background on Implementation

Presentation at the United Nations
NGO Committee on the Status of Women Conference 61, New York, 2017
Kidist Foods Cookbook Presentation for
Economic Self-Sufficiency of Young Ethiopian Women

I presented a paper at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women workshop: "Empowering African Women to Lead with Renewable Energy: Training for Homes and Community-Based Enterprises."

My topic was under the general heading: "Key Terms in the Human Effects of Changing Environments: Fostering Greater Economic Empowerment for Women and Girls." and a sub-theme - "Women's Economic Empowerment in the Changing World of Work."

My presentation centered around Ethiopian urban women. I discussed the potential of these urban, poor, women to engage in cooking enterprises. And I also discussed a small Ethiopian cookbook as part of a means to fund these enterprises.

This all eventually became the Kidist Foods project, which includes the book and other proceed-generating items (an apron, for example).

My presentation simply recounted a "story" of a poor, Ethiopian woman from Addis Ababa, and how through her skills, she could start to become economically self-sufficient for herself and her family. I also presented my ideas on the cookbook project.

As a side note, the workshop was almost cancelled because of an unexpected snow storm, which left many "international" travelers stranded, and the workshop room empty. The audience that grouped together was from the rounds the programmer made to the various rooms, and those waiting for their event to start. We had Afghani and Indian women in our "African" event.

I braved the elements, and didn't cancel my trip from Toronto.

It was interesting that a few young women (one Indian, another if I remember correctly, from Kenya) came up to me after the workshop to ask me some questions.

The room was receptive to my presentation.

Sheger Bread Factory: Food for Ethiopians

The Sheger Bread Factory we inaugurated today and which took 10 months from conception to finalization is symbolic of our path to prosperity. Producing 80,000 pieces of bread per hour, availing it affordable prices will contribute to food security.

(Click on "more" to read PM Abiy Facebook post on the Sheger Bread Factory)

The Personal god Touch

Jamie Oliver's restaurant, Jamie's Italian, in the Square One Mall Luxury Wing


The Personal god Touch

The image above is from the Instagram page of the Square One's Jamie's Italian,
in Mississauga. It is one of the bartenders. She has a large tattoo
of the Buddha in the inner arm of her right arm.

I went yesterday to placed an order at Jamie's Italian, one more of the first class Square One Mall's (Mississauga) shopping "experiences."

Just a little background. Jamie is the British chef, Jamie Oliver, who has made an international name for himself with his working class accent and sophisticated dishes. He is somewhat the antidote to that very posh British-sounding American chef Julia Child who brought French cooking into American households. Jamie also has a steakhouse Barbecoa (named after Mexican and American barbecued meat dishes), a diner, and his own cooking show on television which loops silently on the big screen in bar area of Square One's Jamie's Italian.

The waitress at the door told me I should place my takeout order at the bar.

I waited a while for the bartender, who was mixing some fruity cocktail while chatting to a waitress, to take my order. She either didn't see me (not likely) or was biding her time, which often happens to me. I don't look very important.

I watched for a while the big screen tv above the bar which had Jamie's Fifteen Minute Meals on Gusto TV explain how he pounds chickpeas to make hummus, using his very own special Jamie's Olive Oil and canned chickpeas, all products we can buy at Jamie's Italian.

My wait also gave me a chance to observe her. She had yellowish skin and smooth hair. She looked like a hybrid, a mulatto of some kind of Chinese and Indian and white. And she had a very large tattoo of a buddha's head just below the elbow, on the inner arm. She had no "foreign" accent. She was swishing the drinks like an expert. She was no apprentice.

"Are you ready to take my order?" I finally ask with a tone of irritation.

"What would you like?" No apology.

"The focaccia to go."

I was going to ask her about the tattoo but I wasn't too friendly with my order.

I paid and pulled myself up a bar stool to wait some more.

But I got my chance when she handed me the order package that a waitress brought over.

"Thanks!"

"I wanted to ask you about your tattoo. Are you Indian?" She looks more Indian than Chinese.

"No."

(I look Indian so I often get away with that question.)

"Oh. I wondered about your tattoo of the Buddha."

"Oh. That's just a personal touch."

"I've probably asked you this before." Which I remembered just then that I had.

"Lots of people ask me about it!"

"Oh!"

I smiled. "Thank you. Do you have a bag I can put this in?"

And I left the restaurant with my bag in hand.


Jamie's Hummus Live Demo


Jamie's very own Every Day Olive Oil

French Patisserie

I finished baking these late last night. It didn't take long: about 20 minutes for preparation and another 15 for baking. They are supposed to be turnovers but I can't quite get the shape right so I just "turn over" the pastry to adequately cover the mixture inside.

And the inside is:
- Thinly sliced pears
- Lindt hazelnut chocolate
- Liqueur St-Germain, an elderflower liqueur from France.
I got a 50ml bottle at the liquor store for about $5. They often put items at 50-60% sale which they want to get rid off (sitting in their stock room for too long?) In any case it has a slightly pear/citrusy taste.
- The juice of one clementine
- Sugar

I mixed the pears, clementine juice, two teaspoons of the liquor and the chocolate and the sugar in a bowl and heated the mixture for about 1 minute in the microwave.

I mixed the heated mixture well and put about a tablespoon in a triangular piece of puff pastry and "turned over" the dough to cover the mixture. Then into the oven for 15 minutes (until golden brown).

The house smells like a French patisserie!

And the pastry? Delicious!

Fall's Fruit

Fall's Fruit
Farmer's Market (Back View)
[Photo By: KPA]

C-Cafe Circles

C-Cafe Circles
[Photo By: KPA]

Coffee at the Mississauga Civic Centre's C-Cafe with a different view of the giant circles.

C-Cafe Lights

C-Cafe Lights
[Photo By: KPA]

This is the dramatic interior of the C-Cafe in Mississauga, which is inside the Civic Centre.

Daily soup's by skilled chefs and coffee directly from Starbucks.

Davids Tea and A Summer Filled with Delicious Teas

To whom it may concern,

I am a frequent shopper (and visitor) at the Square One, Mississauga Davids Tea.

I am an avid coffee drinker but Davids Tea's delicious and abundant teas have made me into a tea-convert.

I have introduced DT to friends near and far.

And recently I informed sales people in Square One (Walmart and Whole Foods) of DT's promotions and sales items when they commented on the lovely blue DT bag with my Alpine Punch Tea.

I will always remain a loyal and eager customer. But it is with regret that I have to report a saleswoman who consistently behaves contrary to DT's first class employees that provide me with great service.

The saleswoman is at the Square One Davids Tea. Her Employee Number is 10006670, which I obtained from a receipt of our latest interaction, which was today, 7/20/2018, around 10:25 am (Transaction: #0000364983, Store: #00097, Terminal: #00097-R1). This is the third unpleasant incident I have had with her, which all boil down to her unwillingness to provide me with proper service and attention as I shop in your store.

I was planning to buy an ice tea pitcher on a 1/3 off sale ($28 to $19). I had seen it yesterday and stopped by to pick it up today.

I walked to the front of the store to look for it. But couldn't find it. While I was searching, 10006670 called out "Good morning" from the back. I wasn't paying attention and continued looking. The employee then shouted out in a more aggressive manner as though demanding my attention "Good morning!" I smiled, turned around and replied "Good morning," and continued searching.

Then I went to the back of the store where the employee was located. She was going through some kind of book which looked like she was doing inventory or bookkeeping. I waited a while, then asked her if there was any tea to sample for today. She gave me a cold tea but I asked what was the hot tea. Again she reluctantly looked up from her task and said something like "What can I do for you?"

By this time, I was angry and said that I have been repeating myself all this time.

We went back and forth for a while. Then I said "Are you going to keep this up? Is this customer service?"

"Employee are people too!" she said rudely and nonchalantly.

"I don't know about that," I rebutted.

At which point the woman has tears in her eyes and says: " I take offence at that!"

Another saleswoman had come in by that time, perhaps hearing our interaction and to relieve the woman now in tears. This second woman is Asian, who I am sorry to say had provided me with a similar distracted service just the day before and had in fact misinformed me about the pitcher sales until I put some pressure on her for more concrete information.

By then I had paid for my pitcher, and as the first saleswoman handed me my receipt, I simply walked out of the store.

Davids Tea is a great place. I am reporting these two incidents because I believe they are isolated. I hope the company can resolve them if indeed I have made the correct assessment and that there was some deficiency in customer service, at least towards me.

Thank you for your attention. And I look forward to a summer filled with your delicious teas.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

"Les Anglais"

The contemporary thinking about foreigners turns them into moral, cultural or social issues, but downplays the most important one: actual logistics.

Foreigners are people who travel to lands which are not their own, with cultures and social structures different from theirs, with languages they don't speak or speak without the fluency of their own languages.

In less progressive eras, when a foreigner came to a country other than his own, he had to understand the country he came to and subjugate himself to these different circumstances, and behave accordingly. He would always remain a foreigner, however many years he has lived there, and however many obstacle tests he has passed (and with distinction even).

There was an intriguing and endearing time in my life in Paris.

When we just arrived, our apartment was in a neighborhood which had its own boulangerie, patisserie, cafe, tabac and all the other accoutrements of French neighborhood life. It was like a mini-village within the large city, as all Parisian residential neighborhoods are (our next neighbourhood was slightly more cosmopolitan being near the Tour Eiffel and the shopkeepers were friendly but too busy to ask for details, although they always greeted us familiarly).

I went to a French bilingual school for the first six months and later we went to the first of two boarding schools in England, in Kent.

We had always been English speakers, having had our elementary education in Addis Ababa at what was then called The English School. I was fluent in English at a very early age.

As is always the case, neighborhood merchants, especially those one frequents regularly and with a Mom & Pop management style, make an effort to know their clientele, and even their names.

This particular French boulanger and his wife would greet us in a familiar way and I'm sure, when we (the kids) no longer came accompanied by their mother, asked: "Ou sont les enfant?"

By then my mother knew some French and no doubt told them as best she could that we were at school in England.

This was an instinctive association by country. If this Arab-looking family sent their children to a pensionat in England, then they must be of the English cultural persuasion and therefore they are English. Most Arabs in France have a French - colonial - association, and they would have kept their children within the French culture.

On a side note, this was the argument - the debate - used to say that North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians mostly) were French because of this colonial past, and that the huge numbers of immigrant North Africans can live in France as Frenchmen. Of course Arabs feel differently: they ARE NOT Frenchmen!!! They would always be Arab.

Back to my Parisian neighbourhood. We became known as "Les Anglais!" The patriotic neighbourhood baker and his wife (his wife mostly because she was the one who ran the storefront and communicated with the customers) associated us with their perennial and historical antagonists, the English, those most foreign of foreigners!

But she loved us! Who wouldn't! This cute threesome, with their coats and hoods in the winter rushing to school early in the morning, or coming in for their favorite "Kim-Cone" ice cream in the summer which they bought with long-saved pennies, now going across the seas to learn things! How brave they are!

"Quand viennent-ils, les enfant?" she would ask my mother those long months when we were away.

But we always remained "Les Anglais."

My Local Walmart: Chinese With "Money"

I shop at Walmart. Right now I don't really care about the "monopoly" Walmart has over other stores. If people were strong enough and voted for the right things and people, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Walmart started as the middle/lower income Americans' store. You can really find everything. American and Canadian fruits and vegetables DO make the cut. You don't have to buy those Mexican peppers you now!


The cashiers are doing their job. They are admirable. They must see a lot of sh*t here in multi-culti Mississauga. They would be great witnesses for the decline of Canadian society.

Yesterday, I was buying cream (for my morning Starbucks coffee) and paper towels (I "recycle"). In front of me were two tall Chinese men. They were busy talking in their guttural Cantonese.

The cashier was passing their items through the sensor. There was A LOT!

"$80" she told them. I mostly saw chips, soda and mostly non-essential foods. Maybe they're having a picnic!

On the counter, they had a large LCBO paper bag (Liquor Control Board of Canada - yes this is Canada!). The paper bag was tall so it must have been several bottles of wine. Canadian wines now cost around $12 a bottle. But I doubt they went local. California is where to go! (And maybe France). In any case bottles are about $15 (unless you went really international and got an Italian wine for $7.95) That would make their alcoholic beverage cost around $60.

So $160 at one shot! And for non-essentials. And at Walmart too!

I wonder when all that Chinese money will run out? And people will get tired of their "we own the world" attitude. Not long , I guarantee you. Shopping at Walmart is already the tell-tale sign. There is a big and fully-stocked Whole Foods Market just up the road. I go there once in while to get some of their fruit (it about the same as the Farmer's Market and, I think equally good).

Why are they not there if they're so rich?

You see?

Conspiracy on a Chef

Bourdain in Ethiopia for hs CNN show taping with another "celebrity Chef" Marcus Maya Samuelsson

I can't remember what exactly I was watching when I had this "flash" about Bourdain's "suicide."

Of course Bourdain looks creepy with his tattooed arms. And his super skinny body (especially his legs) indicates a drug-addict's appearance. But cooking for one's job is tough. Cooking is tough, period. The heat, the slippery floor, all that washing, setting the timer, and setting it right, so food doesn't burn, or worse over-cook (you can throw burnt food out), tasting, and finally the verdict (too much salt will get the frying pan out!) A "celebrity" "international" chef is not a glamorous career. Traveling is very tiring. You get sick in foreign, third world, lands which even the best of treatment and the most sophisticated "anti-malarial/anti-bacterial/anti-everything" medications cannot prevent.

But Bourdain was a good sport. He enjoyed traveling despite its grueling schedule. He sat down and ate with the "natives." He went beyond the food and really tried to understand the cultures. He was professional and kept up his CNN reportage diligently.

But. No-one was able to report on the "suicide note." We don't know what it said and even to whom it was addressed. Presumably it is to his young daughter. He split up wth his wife (or she split up with him more likely), and was with a new girlfriend, who also split up with him recently! These professional feminists just cannot stand the idea of supporting a man with a super busy life who would have time for them only during brief "down times" and when all he wants is a comfortable and familiar home with a wife and family who can welcome him full heartedly. Think of soldiers and warriors who, if they didn't have their stable homes and loving wives, COULDN'T fight dedicatedly. Who would they be fighting for?! Who would Bourdain be cooking for?

Asia Argento, his new girlfriend, used to travel with him, but I guess the exoticism wore off when she was left in empty luxury hotels as Bourdain went off into the common quarters to find that special local dish. She was seen wandering around with a new boyfriend.

The conclusion by journalists is that Argento's new affair was what triggered off Bourdain's suicide.

Maybe so. The account I have written certainly can explain it.

But I don't think so. A man dedicated to his work, a kind of a chef-warrior, seasoned, experienced and who has probably been through all kinds of social and professional obstacles, doesn't suddenly kill himself because his new girlfriend split up with him.

Others say that he contemplated suicide for a long time because of a nihilistic streak of "is life worth living?".

No. If you have travelled at all, you know that traveling, and with a cause (like finding great recipes) can be invigorating. And Bourdain was with people all the time. Helping people. Talking and joking with people. Showing the world in his globalist liberal way that we are all one big close-to-happy world. A bit like his close-to-happy chef's life.

Maybe if he had built his career solely in a big city (like New York) and was a drug addict in his super-luxury enclave (like Kate Spade), abandoned by wives and girlfriends and pushed to go on by his heroin and other drugs, he might have become that white male suicide victim.

Perhaps. But how many alcoholics and drug addicts commit suicide?

The statistics of white male suicides is apparently on the rise. But is it really an epidemic? Does Bourdain fit that profile other than "middle-aged white male?"

Here is an interesting video which suggests that his shift towards more conservative ideology may have ignited the wrath of his globalist liberal followers. The youtuber - goes on to say that Bourdain might have been privy to all kinds of illicit and illegal international activities, like pedophilic sex trafficking, prostitution rings, border-crossing guides for illegal migration, etc. etc.

Alex Jones at Info Wars: Learn What Anthony Bourdain Was Planning To Say Before He Died



This makee complete sense. If he talks to village henchmen in an African village, they will TELL him things surely. If he cooks with the local chef in some South Asian town, he will reveal the next river crossing on the way to Australia. He cannot enter into these Third World countries without the special permission of the top leaders of these countries. And so on.

This fits with Bourdain's do-gooder personality. His missionary-chef zeal. Hs one-world ideology.

Before we jump on to band wagons that white men are killing themselves off and dying like flies, let's not put every suspicious death into the same basket.

The what male is still strong, clever, curious, intelligent, an adventurer, and an inventor.

The anti-white anti-West pushers will push this angle to make this curious, and charmed species appear to be on the wane, to be dying out.

If they repeat it enough times, he will begin to believe it. Some in fact do believe it.

Once the white man's psyche is weakened then all kinds of other things can be rammed in. And, then the final demise of the western world will have been achieved.

I say NO. Bourdain - chef-warrior - should receive a plaque at the very least. Make him into a cult figure, I say to all young men. Learn from him! He may be full of faults, but who isn't? He's one of the best examples you have in this white-loathing world. He's one of yours.

A Simple Easter Meal

Roast Lamb and Vegetables
(Following the Williams Sonoma Recipe)


Easter Eggs in a Limoges Basket

Spring with a Harp

Spring With A Harp
at Failte
[Photo By: KPA]

Review of "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience"

Master of the Munich Golden Legend, 1400-1460
The Tower of Babel
Folio 17v from the Bedford Book of Hours.
Illumination (10 in × 7 in), 1415-1430

Genesis 11:1-9
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

It is fascinating that Melanie Kirkpatrick should start her new book Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience with the chapter headed Newcomers. She writes in the chapter of her visit to Queens, New York to give a presentation on Thanksgiving to sixteen-year-old new immigrants in a public high school especially constructed for "new comers" and aptly called Newcomers High. She could have at least called it "New Americans."

She writes, as though it is a good thing: "If the Tower of Babel had a contemporary earthly home it would be located in the corridors of Newcomers High." Yet this biblical tower, which was intended to reach God, was never completed since he "confound[ed] their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" and thus couldn't communicate with each other. Their lofty and arrogant goal collapsed.

But what is fascinating about Kirkpatrick's account is not this usual glorification of multiculturalism, which all westerners are now doing, but how she rewrites the history of Thanksgiving to fit this multicultural ethos.

Thanksgiving dinner was created out of a specific historical context. The foods describe the original historical event and thus a specific time in American history. Re-structuring the menu changes this history and makes Thanksgiving something else.

Kirkpatrick recounts their Thanksgiving meals students described to her:

There would be non-traditional food on the menu too as their families initiated their own Thanksgiving food traditions by incorporating favorite home-country dishes into the classic American meal.

If Kirkpatrick wants immigrants to contribute their thanks with their own particular histories and backgrounds, then she should advocate for a different holiday: Multicultural Thanks to America perhaps. Changing the foods changes the holiday. Kirkpatrick is not directly (or consciously) advocating for a new Thanksgiving narrative, but in her desire to be "inclusive" she is boldly rewriting American history. A less generous critique would be (given that she is a seasoned researcher and historian) that she is provoding a false version of American history to fit her ideology of inclusiveness.

The rest of the book offers nothing new or no new insights. There is the mandatory chapter on the "tragedy" of the Native Americans, who have wrung the sympathy tears out of contemporary Americans for decades, the same way that blacks have picked at the wounds of slavery even when they now have been infinitely compensated by the collective guilty conscious of whites. In an interesting but long chapter on turkeys, Kirkpatrick appears to refute the historical presence of the bird on Americans' Thanksgiving dinner tables by weaving in substitutes (oysters, geese chicken) but finishes off the chapter by acknowledging the importance of the bird in celebrating the holiday.

She also writes of the generosity of Americans in holding out their hands to the poor. Churches and communities provide food and dinners for the poor to celebrate the holiday, with some collecting their turkey from food banks, and other sitting together at communal tables for a Thanksgiving meal in church basements. Thanksgiving, in the peculiar history of American christianity, is a quintessentially American Christian holiday, coming close to Christmas and Easter. She gives no account of parallel charitable outreaches by those multi-faith, multi-cultural Thanksgiving co-celebrants she writes about.

What could have been an interesting re-counting of the American Thanksgiving story becomes tarnished by its ode to multiculturalism and its attempt to make Thanksgiving, inacurately, into a multicultural event. It might be excusable if Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience were an innocent attempt at inclusveness. But its agenda is bigger than a generous inclusion of all "Americans" and becomes a subtle movement toward changing America instead.