The world is a fantastic, wonderful place filled with great food, sights, and people. Get outside your comfort zone and try what you've never tried, dance to what you've never danced to, taste what you've never eaten, and throw your view on the world to the wind as you see the world anew. Everything is fair game here, so enjoy the ride.
Today, I wanted to share a link about local farming. Basically, back yard gardening. If you know how to grow food, you know how to feed your family when money/work/lack there of won't. Russians are doing this on large scale and feeding their country in excess. If you think about the amount of land we as Americans have individually (those who owns houses, of course) and how much of it is used on growing lawns that don't provide us anything, it becomes interesting. What if all that land were used to grow vegetables? Really, why are there starving people when we have land we've cleared out and is just sitting there growing vegetation we can't eat that we keep cutting away at for fear it will become unrully?
It's bizarre when you think about it really.
But that topic can go pretty deep. On the surface though it makes sense, and I personally think when I have a lawn of my own or land of my own, I will maximize it to grow all kinds of fruits and vegtables. Hell, I may even get to growing barley and hops to brew my own beer as fresh and natural as possible.
Second is a link talking about mixed cropping, or growing multiple plants in the same area to aid each other in growth and maximize the utilization of land for better yeild. An interesting idea I plan to look further into.
Finally is a interesting little video I found here about making an African style raised bed garden. I think the idea is pretty interesting and could make an interesting focal piece, as well as growing more veggies. Another thing I plan to try out
So I've occasionally been going to Waba, a local Korean restaurant on Hillsborough st here in Raleigh. From time to time they add new items that aren't on their normal menu. Yesterday, I was informed of one such new item that hadn't been posted or anything, a Miso stew. It had a load of vegetables including cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic, zucchini, and tofu, as well as beef. So I figured I'd give it a shot. When it came out it had a really weird smell to it.
But when I ate it, it was absolutely delicious.
Apparently the staff was worried that Americans wouldn't like it because of the smell. I guess, knowing how finicky other Americans are, that would make sense. But to me, if it's supposed to taste good I can get past the weird smells or looks. And this didn't disappoint.
So the above video is the closest aproximation to the one done at Waba. obviously there's some differences, like shrimp instead of beef and no cabbage from what I can tell, but for those willing to try out a weird smelling food that tastes great, this should be worth it.
I'll go soft with the beer recommendations here and say it would go well with a pale ale or a IPA because it's a bit of a spicy stew. In fact, might not be bad to try with a Rye PA like Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye.
This I figure is an interesting read. It deals with a government's attempts at price fixing, and how it has horribly went wrong.
I mean, there are many comments that can be made about this, mostly in the political field of view. My purpose here is not to make political posts, but perhaps bring a current event to the forefront of people's minds, and perhaps to ask "How could this have been avoided?" or "how could this have been done better?"
For my own input, I would like to say that this is a lesson that there are many facets that need to be taken into consideration in politics, and the nature of economics is one of the most important that is most sorely overlooked.
Beyond that, I think one should look at this very objectively. Not from their own perspective or beliefs, but rather very analytically to try and understand why this didn't work and how this could have been done better to ensure the desired results while also not harming others in the process.
So when I showed the Psy video "Gangnam Style" and theorized about how it, being an international song not in English, managed to do so well here in America when many others do not, I knew there were other songs that have done remarkably well in American charts that were not in English. Most notably German songs.
The first song that came to my mind was Rammstein's "Fuer Frie". It was featured in the opening of Vin Diesel's xXx and became a huge success, making them one of the biggest international industrial metal bands.
I don't listen to the radio that much, but as recent as a few years back I remember the rock radio still playing "Du Hast". I still listen to their albums from time to time.
What surprised me, though, was another song, also in German, beat it to the punch by somewhere around 20 years. It's a song most people have heard, but probably few people know what it's about.
99 luftbaloons
Apparently, the German version of this song was a chart topper in the 80's and was more popular than the English version in America. Mind you, this is according to Wikipedia so take it as you will.
I never really thought much about this song until I heard a punk cover of the song in English
Given the time period, if you know anything about the cold war this song makes alot more sense in English. It just goes to show how tense the cold war was, how close to nuclear war we all were, and how popular the anti-war sentiment was.
I intend to make another few blog posts (food review and some music), however studying is getting in the way. So until then I decided to look up a recipe from Nepal to share.
This one I cannot comment on as I haven't had it this way, however I will make this recipe one day. When I do so I will make a modified version of this which excludes alot of the hot spices (some members of my family have health problems with hot spices) and share that version with you.
Beer recommendations will follow with that recipe.
Today's shared recipe is Pollo a la brasa, or Peruvian style grilled chicken. Now, my father is from Peru, and he grills some tasty chicken. It took a while for us to coax him into cooking more, and it's still a bit of a rare treat to get him to do so, but when he cooks his home specialties, it's rare to have leftovers.
This style of cooking, he explains, is common in Peru. Rotisserie chicken in this style is served fast food style there. Interestingly enough here in my local city a few places serving this kind of rotisserie chicken have popped up over the years and become quite popular.
The key is marinading the chicken overnight, cutting it into pieces so it's easier to pack together into the marinade. Marinading it overnight allows for all the meat to absorb the flavor, and even the chicken breasts tend to be amongst the most flavorful parts of the meat at that point. Then you either grill or bake the chicken (I recommend charcoal grilling myself) until done. It is absolutely some of the most flavorful chicken you will have. I guarantee.
My family uses a store bought marinade called "Inca's Food", found at a local Hispanic market. However, this recipe provides a home made marinade alternative I intend to try for myself. I also, when I have made a homemade tandoor oven, intend to try skewering the meat and cooking it tandoor style to see how it turns out.
When I do (this recipe that is), I will provide a followup post with a review and any changes I would suggest making to the initial recipe. Until then, follow the links at the beginning of the post for the recipe. Give hits where hits are due.
As for beer recommendations, this is a meat rich in spices and flavor, but is not in and of itself spicy. therefore my first recommendations would be a rich, malty beer that doesn't push the pallet too hard, something in the category of a rich amber, a red or imperial red, or a mild porter. Lagunitas Imperial red and New Belgiums Red Hoptober are both great seasonal reds rich in malt character, but with both being seasonal are not guaranteed to be found when you're looking for them. So for all year New Belgium Fat Tire or especially an Oscar Blues G'knight Imperial Red ale. A Sierra Nevada Porter would also be a good choice, having a smokier flavor but still mild and smoother than a stout.
Regularly on this blog I want to share recipes with people. Usually I want to really share recipes I've tried and created myself, but I also want to share recipes I find too because, well, I enjoy cooking and love the food that gets made in the end.
I figure I'll sure the titles and tags "Recipe Time" for my own recipes and demonstrations of the recipe and "Shared Recipe" whenever I just want to share one. So for today are going to be two takes on the Indian recipe "Tandoori Chicken".
First is an oven baked take on it. Let's be honest, most of us don't have a tandoori, and getting one is impractical. An actual one at least. So this is an alternative. I figure when I make this I'll put it on a foreman grill get get that nice charring at the end he describes. Most likely this will be how I will try it.
I also wanted to show a video of how to make a tandoor oven as featured on Alton Brown's "Good Eats", but well copyrights and all appears to keep it off of Youtube. So instead is a link on making one of your own. Something I'd love to do one day. The main difference here would be instead of baking it you'd just skewer the chicken legs and place them in the tandoor to cook.
And with these recipes and food review I like to include a beer recommendation. Wine would be nice as well but I'll be first to admit I'm not aficionado with wine.
So for beer, alot of Indian foods and other similarly spiced foods do well with hoppier beers, and this is one of them. I'd recommend at minimum a nice pale beer such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or New Belgium's Shift Pale Lager. IPAs and Belgian IPAs also do well (IPA of course standing for India Pale Ale. That history well tied to the East Indian Trading Company), so I'd recommend Heavy Seas Loose Cannon IPA, Dogfish Head 90 minute Imperial IPA, or New Belgium's Belgo Belgian IPA.
I figure alot of people are probably on a Korea kick right now, which when I think about it doesn't seem too surprising. From my perspective it almost felt inevitable, although it seems to have occurred in an unexpected manor. To be honest America has a weird influence on culture, and reacts quite interestingly. Skipping the long story, let's start with how after the post WWII conflict and we helped to rebuild Japan, they took a shining to our culture. A nation raised on the warrior class (there's a history lesson here, I'll avoid it) found its identify conflicted as it continued trying to modernize as much as possible, and a few issues eventually left it to seek out its own identity in this modern world, obviously influenced by both America and its own past. Jump some decades later and you find the Japanese instead being the influence on American culture, challenging our craftsmanship, our production, our cuisine, our culture, and our entertainment. Funny how culture works that way around here.
Why am I talking about Japan when I'm supposed to be talking about (South) Korea? Well, there's a reason. And it's due to an article on Kotaku I read the other day.
But before I get to the article at hand, I want to start out with a different article, at the BBC.
To summarize, while Gangnam Style is hitting it big here in America (and around the world for that matter), Korean pop culture has already been big in Japan for a while. Korean music, drama, and food have all been making a leap across the sea to Japan and making it big. The video at the BBC explains the phenomenon, but there's a bit more. While I am no substitute for someone living in Japan first hand, I can say my background provides for good perspective on the matter.
Again, foregoing the longer explanation, the simpler explanation deals with "otaku". The simplest translation would be 'nerd' or 'obsessor'. In America, primarily in the Japanese Anime fandom, the term is seen as a badge of honor, something that identifies them as a true fan of Japanese Anime culture. However, in Japan, the term is quite more complex. The wiki link included does a good job describing the complexities of the word's usage, but there are other aspects not considered. In relation to the BBC article are two points I'd like to point out. First is in relation to 'stars', which are referred to in Japans case as 'idols'. Essentially, there are Otaku in many genres and fields, and can get as specific as being a highly devoted fan to an individual actor or singer (or both). With this, there are certain ideals as to how the idol is to behave (mannerisms, purity, chastity, appearance, etc.) and certain words created to describe these traits. 'Tsundere' and 'moe' are two terms that come to mind right now, but there's more that I am not familiar with. Relate this to say a Beiberite, or whatever they're called, but on a more vocal level any time that he stepped 'out of character'. With new idols appearing alot in Japan, there's a push to change their tastes and Korean pop culture has taken cues from Japan's idol culture, which allowed for this cultural gap to be bridged.
I also have some desire to address the commentary about "wishing they were Korean", but I feel that it's inappropriate, even with having some understanding of the viewpoint here. I think perhaps that's a better question for everyone to ask themselves than to postulate on.
I have a turbulent love/hate for Gawker. Their tech blog Gizmodo has great tech and sciencey news blogs, but my lord avoid it when there's a hint of Apple news or rumors in the air. They need to surgically remove their lips from Steve Jobs rear with him being six feet under. Regardless though Kotaku has still been great. Their primary focus is on video game news but their secondary focus provides a great insight on Japanese pop culture and anime, with a much better inside view than I have exposure to regularly (with writers that live in Japan providing articles).
The article does a perfect job to summarize every reason I could imagine possible as to why PSY didn't make it big in Japan like he did across the rest of the world. He's quite the opposite of say Korean pop star Rain
both before
and after Ninja Assassin
America is perhaps more receptive of their stars being anything from fit and pretty to portly and round, white or black (maybe not so many other colors in between just yet though), average, or anything else. Japan though expects their idols to be a certain way, a certain chisel. Perhaps you could say they expect the entertainers standing before them to be carved from the same marble as that of Michelangelo's David. While it would be a great thing to see a more open view in this regard, one has to understand Japan a bit better first to understand why it's not such an easy thing to do.
Politics between the two nations aside, I don't foresee the Korean craze in Japan to simply die off because of some harsh words this year. I think it'll stabilize more and perhaps they'll be more able to share culture between each other. I hope PSY's dominance here recently though allows for the same to happen in America, where we can have more entertainers from other countries sharing their own tastes of their homeland with us, especially without the strings of it having to be in English attached.
So to start out a new blog about "around the world" in however I feel like it, I feel like it should be customary to start out with a bit of a bang. So what better way to do so than to start on the topic of "Gangnam Style" by the Korean artist 'Psy'?
It almost seems like this video needs no introduction. It's an insane, overnight sensation. In 3 months it has garnered (at the time of writing) 415 million views and counting, and does not look to go away any time soon. Now having more views than the population of America is spectacular in and of itself, but even more impressive when you consider that it's not American. It's not in English. It's Korean in fact.
One could argue so many things here, but let's get some generalizations about the American populace out in the forefront. The average American doesn't like things that are not in English. There's usually every few months a major political argument about why we shouldn't be teaching Spanish to elementary kids despite an ever growing Mexican and Central American influx of immigrants into our nation who all speak Spanish. Additionally, besides liking things in English, we like things to be familiar, and usually the furthest we'll go out is England and Canada, since perhaps we have more culturally in common with them than we do the rest of the world.
Perhaps though the latter is the more important point here, as I theorize its success is due to this. Even though it's not in English, it rides on the coat tails of another popular dance club song from last year, and I dare say uses it as a base reference. It became such a hit, I figure, because its rythmic beat has a catchy similarity to another song, perhaps could be looked at as a tribute with a Korean twist; and that's LMFAO "I'm Sexy and I Know It".
I do not at all mean to imply that Psy is copying or even ripping off LMFAO, not at all. I love both songs equally because they're both catchy, both humerous and neither taking themselves serious in the least. I'm saying Psy found a formula to overcome the language barrier that usually restricts Americans: speak to them with music they can understand.
This was certainly not what I expected when friends told me about it, but I'm glad that they did. Perhaps America will stop worrying about whether the lyrics are in English or not and just start enjoying the sound of music for what it is.
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