About fish and supermarkets

I made some lingonberry herrings. And here is a photo of it. It’s a traditional recipe. Also everytime I mention lingonberry to dad he will tell the story about the hundred year old woman in a village close to there he grew up. That hundred year old woman said eating lingonberries every day was one reason she had gotten so old.

I have another eating fish tale (not fish tail) from last week. I was at a Surströmming party. Surströmming is the old way of preserving baltic herrings by fermenting them, and get a dish sometimes found on “most disgusting food in the world” lists. The bacteria that ferments fish produce a lot of bad smelling sulfur compounds. Or, in other words, “It’s a bloody stink bomb”.



Wikipedias pic of the fish.

Then people say that the Icelandic fermented shark, smells even worse. Also there’s other people that ferment fish too. One time I got a link to a video about the Japanese version of fermented fish. Watch it if you want to see that not everyone likes it.

Watch on YouTube

 

On the other hand, they now say fermented food is healthy. Builds up good bacterias in the stomach and so. (Ok, the real health thing with Surströming is that it’s made from baltic herrings, and that sea is full of dioxins.)

Food is always interesting. The way supermarkets have developed the last decades. It’s so much more products now. I remember going to a supermarket, ask for tofu and get the answer: “What’s that, I never heard of it?”. Now supermarket not only sell several types of tofu they even sells miso paste, not instant miso soup, that come at least ten years ago, the past itself. And if anyone think this sad that the culture of the world becomes standinaced, that supermarkets all over the world sell the same thing, for example miso paste. The same supermarkets selling miso, still sells Surströmming. Do your supermarkets sell that?

Thinking about how supermarkets have changed also makes one wonder how they will be in like ten years. Climate smart protein sources like insects och jelly fish? Those tomatoes genetic engineered to have as much resveratrol as 50 bottles of red wine in them? If it sounds far stretched, ten years ago no one could have guessed that they in 2017 would sell vegan chocolate with quinoa or amaranth in it.



My pic from Munich, train station.

(no subject)

 “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”

George Orwell. 

I have lived my whole life not knowing there's a different between nationalism and patriotism. Nor did I know that George Orwell hated nationalism and loved patriotism.