How's that for a tricksy heading, well I am not going environment after all. Though eating does play a part. But as words dominate the computer so we should record them.
Well in the hours of the night when I wake up I read whatever is on my tablet. Last night it was the Smithsonian news letter. It had a story about an island off Alaska called St. Matthews, uninhabited, bleak and treeless it was one of those stopping off points for sailors and I believe American soldiers camped there during the second world war to keep an eye on the world from this vantage point. Russian hunters killed 900 polar bears for their fur early on, and of 1500 reindeer who lived on the island, it went down to only one remaining lame female who outlived the terrible weather but eventually died. It was written with the dash of the explorer spirit and was a good read.
Yesterday Yorkshire Pudding revealed that he had been to Easter Island for a holiday, and the selfsame fate of course also befell this island, the inhabitants ate themselves out of food and chopped down the trees for wood, so that was eventually no wood for heating their food or for building their boats. Think about it.
Is it not a parable for us at the moment, as we use every last resource this planet has to offer in a vain attempt to gain everything we desire? The book this information came in was written by Jared Diamond - Collapse, I had read it years ago and the fate of Easter Island had caught up in my memory, especially the hens they kept in small stone chicken sheds!
Food: we went out for a meal yesterday to 'Honest Joes' the three of us and our 'handsome male guest'. It struck me how many different cuisines we can eat in this country, my daughter had Ethopian food the other day. But at the restaurant two had an Italian pasta dish, I had Greek Meza and the HMG had a kebab. Which came on what looked like a swanlike thin stand. Hanging there was the threaded meat and underneath was all the other food.
Strangely it made me think of fondues, the thick creamy cheese sauce, always without the Kirsche Liquer, for I never found it in the supermarkets. The small squares of baguette for dipping and the range of' sour things to cut the richness of the cheese. Nostalgia plays a great part in food, what about raclette, the melting of a special cheese over potatoes, both meals have to be accompanied by wine. But I haven't seen a Swiss restaurant in England, although I have cooked a pancake mixture of eggs and vegetables in Japanese style on the table with a hot plate and eaten real sushi by London's best Japanese chef, yes I wasn't impressed but smiled sweetly and ate my first bite of raw tuna.
I see Marks and Spencer are doing well in the share prices, food as always, clothes a notch up from drabness. We don't get 'posh' Waitrose around here but my daughter says the richer sides of Manchester, where the top knob footballers live, they are two a penny, Waitrose that is.
I am missing my spinning and my books.....
Edit; it is an interesting chapter from Collapse by Jared Diamond