I had a fabulous lunch with my friend
Debbie at Archie Browns, a vegetarian café (and health food shop) in Truro last Thursday; we shared a tasting platter and it was wonderful.
Telling the chaps I “work” with about this
the next day one guy said how could I be so pleased with “just a pile of
vegetables?” Well really, just look at
it …
Another of the guys, however, is a
vegetarian and knows of Archie Browns so, of course, agreed with me. He also made the important point that in a
world of diminishing resources, a growing population, greenhouse emissions,
climate change and what have we, it makes no sense to feed an animal much more
food and water than we get out of it! This brings me to the second point of
this post, have you seen this?
It’s Meat Jim – but not as we know it!
Scientists have been working on producing
meat from stem cells rather than from dead animals and recently tested and
tasted a lab-grown meatball.
This meatball was produced by Memphis Meats
who grew animal muscle tissue using stem cells of cows and pigs fed with nutrients
and oxygen. Based on the current price of lab-grown beef which is about $18,000
per pound it probably cost about $2,000 (plus, of course the trimmings!) but
hopefully will become cheaper as they get better at it.
Some people apparently think the idea of
growing lab-grown meat is yuk but then again some people don’t like the idea of
eating dead animals and think that is yuk. What do you think?
If (a big if) this really works and has no
hidden side effects – what a good idea! Watch a video about it here and see what you think.
Of course if you can’t wait for the price
to come down but would just like to make yourself a delicious real beef burger see here.
In Other News …
Having reviewed quite a few books I am now a member of the Legend 100 Club and will be sent books from Legend Press to review, but not necessarily foodie ones.
To be honest I was a little discombobulated with the first one; Fracture by Clár Ní Chonghaile, to review as this is really not my normal style of reading matter.
How wrong I was, as soon as I
read the first page I was hooked. The story is of a journalist held hostage
in Somalia told from his own perspective plus that of his mother and of Abdi, a
young guy recruited by the terrorist group to “take care” of the prisoner.
The
book is topical, realistic and makes one look at Islamic fundamentalism and
terrorism from a different perspective. It taught me a lot I didn’t know about
Somalia. The writing is excellent the characters believable and I felt sympathetic
towards them. I heartily recommend it.
And speaking of reviews ... just look at this
a comment on my last post.
“Hi there, just like to say that I purchased your 4 genius books for kindle yesterday - ice cream, sorbet, scones and soup. They are great! Wonderful simple recipes and a delightful writing style that made me laugh out loud at times.”
Thank you Rikki!
