Native American Food

My friend and I were talking the other day. He lives in Sweden and we often take advantage of the internet, and more specifically the magic that is googletalk. Just as often as we talk, we get into silly as well as, at least in my mind, fairly intelligent conversation. This was one of the first kind. I was hungry and told him so. He asked me what I was going to eat, and as usual, I said that I did not have a clue. My fridge is basically always on E, and lately I have been spoiled by my girlfriends cooking. This leads me to have a great debate every time I feel hungry, about what to do.

I told him about foodler.com, this food ordering service, and said I might order some Indian food. When I say Indian food in Swedish it means Native American, so he asked if there was such a thing. Now this is both sad and, well, questionable ignorant. Is it? (After I wrote this I found out that it was not only questionable ignorant, but plainly ignorant.) But I don’t really know what the traditional Native diet is. They never taught us that in school, or maybe they did but I wasn’t paying attention. That is possible, but never the less, I do know we eat corn and turkey, which the Natives gave the pilgrims, and we celebrate this as Thanksgiving so I presume they ate that. I also know that the natives ate buffalo. (I’ve seen Dances With Wolves.)

The Natives must have eaten more than that though, because even eating buffalo, corn, and turkey, will get old in the long run. So why are there no Native American themed restaurants? We have any other ethnicity; Jamaican, Egyptian, Algerian, etc… but no Native American. Even Swedish, Pickled Herring is sold at an IKEA store near you.

I have never seen a Native American food-serving restaurant. It cannot be that me and my friend are the only two ding-dongs to have been thinking about this. Someone must have, and someone must have tried a Native-American-themed restaurant. Maybe they tried, but allowed patrons to go out and get their own scalp, catch a turkey, or kill their own buffalo, and eat the heart while it’s warm and pumping, like in Dances With Wolves, because that is what makes you a man. (There’s no problem with corn.) But that could not be the case. Even if it were possible, common sense and political correctness would be its destruction. Can’t let people go out and kill their own food. There are processing plants for that. Also, there are actually farms where people of all ages are welcome to attend where the sport is to shoot buffalo, which are fenced in. (a la Bless the Beast and the Children which assigned to read in high school, and actually did.)

I was thinking about writing something writing that I have never seen a cannibal restaurant, or at least one that has the theme, but I am now afraid to inquire.

Enlightenment! After having this post up for a few minutes to show my friend what I was working on I got a post from a fellow blogger informing me that there certainly is such a thing as Native American cusine. It is good to see. I was informed about a site that lists a whole gang of Native American restaurants, along with recipes and other kinds of Native American food related things. Check out http://nativechefs.com/ and you too will be enlightened.

I was thinking about writing something writing that I have never seen a cannibal restaurant, or at least one that has the theme, but I am now afraid to inquire.

The Stranger - Albert Camus

I finished the Stranger today. It's a book by Albert Camus, who apparently died in a car crash years before I was born. I borrowed the book from my father and he told me that it is a classic. I have to agree. The writing style is great. Short, concrete sentences and not a whole lot of fluff. It is one of these books that can be read in one sitting, and it is quite possible because it is not that long. The book provokes thought, and it is ironic in a sense because the main character is not a thinker. His outlook is that most things that happen doesn't really matter, and one should live in the now and not think too much about it, or the future. This is a great book and I strongly recommend it.

Dog Man

Talk about a bizarre pic. It looks like someone loved their dog a little too much, and this is the result. Let this be a warning to all dog lover out there.

Babylon by Bus

Babylon by Bus is a book about two Red Sox fans who quit selling "yankees suck" t-shirts and went to Baghdad to help nation build and to find meaning. This book is nothing like the Bob Marley album with the same name, except for that it's good and is worth reading. (Obviously you'd have to listen to the album, but I recommend doing that too.)
My friend turned me on to this book, as he is a friend of the authors Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann. It is both interesting and relevant and reads like a guide of what not to do when living in a combat zone. That might be a little exaggerated, but these guys do what most people would like to do, but don't have the guts, stupidity, or smarts. I'm not sure what these the guys are, but one thing is for sure and that is they are rich in experience and have a hella story to tell.

The book is about Jeff and Ray who decided that going to Baghdad to help out with nation building seemed like a good idea, so they went. Once there, they started working for the U.S. government “fielding complaints and requests for aid from a city of more than five million people.” This proved to be a great job for meeting good people in a bad location. People who are willing to put their lives on the line to help others, which some in fact did. Their story plays out in Baghdad and gives the reader a good insight of what it was like there in early 2004, before the kidnappings and what is now called the civil war. It foreshadows what was about to come, but at the same time it gives the reader hope. I recommend reading it.

another day

still writing my paper, but now I have to break. I have to take a shower and eat brunch, well it is almost lunch, so I'll call it lunch. I already had my coffee so technically it is not brunch. In order for it to be brunch, breakfast cannot be had. The purpose of brunch is not to skip breakfast and lunch, but to combine them. Having breakfast, brunch, and lunch would be overkill, but I imagine that some people would not have a problem with this. I however, I am not that big so I could not do it even if I wanted to. That being said...now it's time for lunch.

Welcome to my blog. I just ate some Chex Mix, and set this thing up, but I must now get back to working on this paper I am writing about negotiating. I will post excerpts from this once it is done.