Cool Barbecue Foods images
Check out these barbecue foods images:
2005BBQ 006
Image by dawgfanjeff
What Delicious looks like
Cool Diet images
Some cool diet images:
South America 2024 – with Brazil’s Xingu people – the Javari festival
Image by 10b travelling (sorry: glitch, so resubmitting)
In June 2024, I travelled into the Xingu Indigenous Park, Brazil’s first demarcated indigenous territory. To get there, I flew from Sao Paolo to Goiania and then took a bus overnight to Querência, in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, where we were picked up by men from the Xingu village of Afukuri.
The Indigenous Park is host to a large number of villages in the Upper Xingu area, the inhabitants speaking fourteen different language (of five different language families). In Afukuri, where I stayed, Kuikoro / Kuikuru is the indigenous language (identified as part of the Cariban group). Villagers also communicate in Brazilian Portuguese with varying levels of fluency. While I speak and read French and Spanish, and can make therefore headway with written Portuguese, my spoken Portuguese is limited, so my ability to converse with the villagers relied on translation.
The Park was the world’s first ever dedicated indigenous national park (established in 1961 through the hard work of the Villas-Boas brothers). When the various ethic groups settled along the Xingu is not fully determined – generally believed to be predominantly between the 12th and 16th centuries but one ethnic group, the Trumai, for example, only settled there in the 19th century, perhaps seeking refuge from settler incursions. The Xingu area, not having great rubber or mineral assets, had a lower priority during Brazil’s expansion, which helped protect the park, but various areas directly outside have now been deforested.
Culturally, one thing I found interesting was the philosophy of adapting to the modern world while retaining their identity. Xingu leaders will often be seen in traditional costume e.g. when outside on political mission. The option apparently is either to work hard to maintain their unique culture or to ‘become just another Brazilian in poverty’.
The village structure is typically a circular plaza with houses – ocas – on the perimeter and a central meeting house / men’s house (where traditionally the long sacred flutes that only the men can play are kept). In Afukuri we saw the meeting of the old and the new – the ocas, their roofs traditionally made from thatched layers of sapé grasses, becoming ever more challenging in the era of deforestation, were not being repaired with grass, but with plastic tarpaulins. One reason for this, we were told, was that following the death of the chief, the village would normally move to another location once the funerary festival (Kuarup / Kwarup – the most famous of the Xingu festivals) had taken place, but that would require financial resources that the village did not yet have. Therefore, all the current ocas (which can stretch to 30m in length and 10m in height) will in due course be abandoned, with entirely new structures erected in their place in the future village, leading to a decision not to undertake cost- and labour-intensive thatch repairs. In Afukuri, the men’s house was not an oca (which historic photos from other villages led me to expect) but a columned shelter without walls, which provided us with shade as we watched life in the village.
The modern world was evidenced not just by the blue plastic roof-sheeting, but by the existence of small modern buildings outside the oca perimeter – one structure to host visiting medical/dental professionals. A second, a shower/toilet block (I think built because of these visitors, but available also to us). A generator powers a water pump / electricity for several hours a day. Solar panels were being delivered during my time there – and I did wonder what would happen to the water pipes and solar installations when the village moved, a very modern problem.
Our visit was chosen to coincide with three village festivals – the Javari / Yawari (a war/peace ritual with men mock-fighting), the Taquara / Takuaga inauguration of new urua long flutes (often connected with a girls’ coming of age ritual) and the Yamurikuma women’s festival, where women take on make roles, such as being permitted to wrestle against each other in the traditionally male huka-huka.
The more famous (and larger) Kuarup festivals draw visitors from Brazil and around the world, but in Afukuri, it was just our small group of travellers, allocated a section of on oca for our tents. I enjoyed watching the preparations as much as the festivals: body painting, feathers, and colourful textiles around ankles and knees (especially for the huka-huka). Important among the body paints was the red urucum pigment (similar in colour perhaps to Venetian red or Indian red oil paints) from the achiote plant (known in some places as the ‘lipstick tree’).
Villages have their specialities and Afukuri is known for fishing. The staple meal in dry season is mashed fish with a manioc/cassava flat bread (the flour toasted in large circular breads that are then shared). The pequi nut, important to the Xingu, is usually harvested in Jan/Feb and I therefore didn’t see any and don’t know how much is used for diet and how much for ceremonies.
One thing I will never forget is an unexpected aspect of the Yamurikuma festival: in it the Xingu women fight off males. I (and the other men in our group) looked forward to watching this, but had not been warned that the only men to be attacked would be our little band of travellers. On the evening when the Yamurikuma took place we were bemused at the unhappy look on the women’s faces and what seemed to be a premature end of the festivities. The next morning we learned that the village chief had discovered that we had been unaware of our role as victims – and he had wisely, seeing us fully dressed, with camera gear, glasses and mobile phones, decided that a surprise attack might not be appropriate. The women were disappointed at losing their opportunity. Fortunately, we were willing to accommodate them, and two days later, we awaited our fates by the mens’ house in the middle of the plaza. We had mostly reduced our clothing to underwear and disposable tee-shirts (to protect myself from the sun, I used an old cotton sleeping bag liner as a toga). When the women arrived, they poked and pinched us, and covered our faces and bodies in a resinous orange-yellow that later took great effort (scrubbing with river sand) to remove. The Afukuri women’s Yamurikuma honour restored, they completed their festival by paying visits en groupe to the village’s ocas.
Podiumsdiskussionsteilnehmer Dieter Heinze
Image by CAMPUS OF EXCELLENCE
Dieter Heinze, Vorsitzender des Stiftungsrats der Hans-Viessmann-Technologie-Stiftung und Mitglied des Kuratoriums des COE.
Eröffnungsveranstaltung des CAMPUS OF EXCELLENCE 2009 an der Hochschule Hof
Cool Diet images
Some cool diet images:
Dieter tomb
Image by daveynin
Bonaventure Cemetery @ Savannah, Georgia
The Heart Truths, Diet Coke Coca Cola supports Women’s Heart Health Programs. 12/2014
Image by JeepersMedia
The Heart Truths, Diet Coke, Coca Cola supports Women’s Heart Health Programs. 12/2014, by Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on YouTube.
Cool Diet images
A few nice diet images I found:
cauliflower week
Image by Gabriel Li // StudioGabe
blogged on 4417
Cool Cookbook images
Some cool cookbook images:
Books for frugal days
Image by moccasinlanding
Pauper’s Cookbook by Jocasta Innes from Abe Books came from the UK. I had no idea Innes, author of several decor titles, was known there for this cook book and its frugal recipes.
The .00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America is a shocker to read….I never heard anything about it before I ran across it also on Abe’s website. “Families in extreme poverty” are mentioned in reviews as being well documented. A small book with a big impact.
Crazy for Cookbooks: Meet the Cookbook Connoisseurs
Image by Princeton Public Library, NJ
On December 2, 2015 the library hosted panelists that included area food writers, chefs and publishers for a discussion of what makes a good cookbook and where they also revealed their personal favorites.
Additional topics discussed included the future of cookbooks and top holiday gift picks.
Panelists for the night were: Faith Bahadurian, Packet Group food columnist and NJ Spice blogger; Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton co-founders/creators of "Canal House Cooking" and the daily blog, "Canal House Cooks Lunch"; Alex Levine, chef at Princeton’s Whole Earth Center and bibliophile; and Pat Tanner, longtime food writer, restaurant critic, and blogger.
Rachel Weston, culinary educator and author of “New Jersey Fresh: Four Seasons from Farm to Table” moderated the event. A Q&A and book sale/signing followed the discussion. A fun part of the night was a snapshot photo booth where participants shared their favorite cookbook.
