History
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The Soul is unbound
Ever since we have been traveling this globe, our exposure to the exotic or merely to the other (individual, culture, tradition, belief), has left us impressed, influenced, at least touched. Henry F. Gilbert was born 1868 in Somerville, a town in the Boston metropolitan area where I lived in the mid 1980s. He attended the…
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Deliciousness makes us human
Once upon a time we ate raw, then we cooked. Later on we began adding herbs, spices, parts of flowers, seeds, and other tiny parts of nature to our food. Our palate and our knowledge expanded as a result. It is this expansion and refinement on basic products that made us the demanding and complex…
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February 13 1883
Around three in the afternoon, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, Dr. Friedrich Keppler established that the great master did not survive a heart attack. Friedrich Nietzsche completed the first part of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the “sacred hour of Wagner’s death”. After reading the news in the papers the next morning, he…
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Significance
On a hike in East Africa 2 million years ago, you might well have encountered a familiar cast of human characters: anxious mothers cuddling their babies and clutches of carefree children playing in the mud; temperamental youths chafing against the dictates of society and weary elders who just wanted to be left in peace; chest…
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Hummus — himmas kassa, part #2
There is a special physical and spiritual state which arises when an experience occurs through the palate, while the mind finds a romantic bind to the past. Call it joy. Looking to experiment, and build on that state, today I continue to the next step in the process of making a hummus, based on an…
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Friedrich the Great on Coffee
“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee consumption. Everybody is using coffee. If possible this must be prevented. My people must drink beer.” Friedrich the Great (1712-1786)
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A Good Morning is… that the Sun has not come up for nothing
A good morning is a warm meal for comfort in a hearty plantain purée; a noble joy to the palate and to the soul, reviving the memory of a wonderful Indonesian rain season; accompanied by the glance at a book that spells out who we are, and revitalizes being, beyond what we have believed to…
Sila Blume 