10 Links for sharing!

[readera]

Merry Christmas too all celebrating today, and Happy Holidays to all. I am at work today, but as you may expect it is very slow. I don't expect to get any calls today, so I am browsing online. I thought I would share some links for your reading pleasure!

Christmas related

1. 7 Global Food Traditions
2. Christmas cake in Japan
3. Tamales. One of my favorite holiday Foods. We had turkey tamales for thanksgiving this year.
4. Hygge Holiday Party A relaxed holiday party, where you eat food and chill with friends sounds Great!
5. Hot Chocolate 5 ways
6. NORAD Santa Tracker.  As a military brat this was super cool. My dad & I watched this during Christmas Eve. The article includes history of how it got started with a wrong number.

Not Christmas

1. Black Farmers Are Sowing The Seeds Of Health And Empowerment
2. How The Negro Traveler’s Green Book Helped Black People Get Around in the 1950s  This article does have a link to the book in question
3. Home cured Salmon. Yum!
4. The Cleanest Village in India is a tourist attraction because of it s cleanliness.

Comments

[zesty_pinto]

Thanks for the links! To be honest, I feel like Japan adopted a TON of American traditions because a lot of it has to do with commercialism. I know Valentine's Day is a much more Western thing, but White Day just screams to me "we need to sell more candy but only one half of the people out there are buying our product, we need another day to sell more. I'm cynical as all hell, but I imagine quite a few candy companies would not complain if White Day was adopted here.

All the same, doesn't change that the things they do co-opt still aren't amazing. I mean, can you complain when those products include a hundred and one varieties of kit kat?

I saw someone post something on tamales the past week (I swear, everyone's in the tamale zone or something) and I have to admit I feel like I'm constantly missing out, ha.

We have an Alexa and apparently they also adopted the NORAD Santa tracker. We tested it out and it gave some amusement.

I'm glad in general that the black American movement towards vegetables has been more and more adopted these days. Reading up on African cuisine, it just feels like so much of the cuisine could catch up coming here and also influencing our dietary intake in the process. Plus, the whole food desert dilemma in non-gentrified areas was always worrisome (though I am aware it also is a sign that folks should find some new ways of cooking to really adopt these as well so people can try to adopt them more often). Probably also doesn't help that so many of these reclaimed areas that people are pushing into garden areas are places that may still have traces of a day when leaded gasoline and paint were still embraced.

The Indian village article reminded me of when I had to take care of Chinese kids who were here for secondary education. I remember their time in NYC often had them complaining it was too dirty. In comparison, Boston was too small. Go fig!