What's in our kitchen?

OK.. here's a quick rundown of what's in the kitchen at the moment..

Bare in mind, Kveta's out of town at the moment, so all this yummy stuff is just for me, for the week..

Here's a pic of the fruit currently in stock:


Fruit in our kitchen
As you can see, there're 2 rock melons, a box of oranges and grapefruit, about 6 pineapples, the cucumbers are home grown from our little garden (I generally eat about one a day of that size, normally somewhere between 16:00 and 18:00) ..

OK.. what else've we got.. local grown organic avos, local custard apples, tomatoes from ravenshoe (probably less than 50kms as the crow flies).. Passion fruit from the garden (actually, from next door's garden, but they can't eat them all, so they kindly share them with us)...

1 organic watermelon I picked up from the market on saturday, a few 'nanas, some beautiful red fleshed pawpaw from our pawpaw man.. and a handful of persimmon fruit.. End of the season for them, so they're the last ones left..

There're also about 6 medjool dates left, sitting in a bowl on our "oven". (Yes! we have an oven.. or stove, or whatever those things are called.. It was in here when we got here, and has to still be here when we leave, so we just use it as a table top, and have bowls and a blender piled up on top of it (and the 6 medjool dates too!)..

There's also a box with about 15 to 20 mandarins, and with a finally quick look around I spot 3 lemons too.. but they won't get eaten, the lemons we use to wash our hair with..

In our garden, we have fruiting tomato and cucumber plants, and they get eaten daily.. the tomatoes are tommy toes, the little cherry sized ones, they seem to be the easiest to grow, although one of the plants has grown from the seed of a conventionally grown tomato, and is doing pretty well..


freshly picked cucumber from our garden
We also have now quite a few pawpaw trees that are about thigh high.. grown from seed when we moved in here in february, so you can see how quick things're growing here (you can see one pawpaw tree in the picture above, growing up between the tomato plants)..

Τhen there're a great many fruit trees of all sorts coming out of the ground (we bury our compost in small holes and then cover it with soil and mulch and continue our garden on top of it, thus wherever there's garden, there's fruit tree seedlings sprouting out too..

Still dreaming of being far more rural, and planting out garden everywhere. (unfortunately we have a lawn here now, and we're not really allowed to do much with that except cut it..)..

peace,
mango.

Crazy World News - 7 - Smoking 2 year old..

Recently I ran across a story about an Indonesian toddler, hooked on cigarettes..



Not only hooked on cigarettes, but hooked on a massive 40(!) a day.. And not only 40 cigarettes a day, but a diet that has him, at just 2 years old, weighing in at 4 stone (.. I think that's about 25 kilos!)!

My initial reaction was "how sad", followed closely after by feelings of "this is child abuse, why don't the authorities step in and do something about this!"..


2 year old smoker
But then, I thought some more, and started questioning whether or not I really thought it was right that a child in this situation should be forcibly removed from their family.. after all, that's what it would probably have to boil down to if his parents were unable or unwilling to make changes..

His father is even quoted as saying he doesn't know what the problem is as he believes his son looks healthy!!


Smoking Ardi Rizal with friends and family
Clearly there must be many people out there, (maybe even the majority?), that would agree to him being removed from his current environment, and taken into care by those that are wiser..  But I'm just not so sure..

Naturally I find the whole situation repugnant, but the truth of the matter is, if I had a child, and it became public common knowledge that I was only feeding it fruit, which would be the case, make no bones, there would most definitely be a good proportion of people out there, that would want the authorities to step in and stop me/us abusing the poor malnourished baby..

And in the, God-forbid, scenario where such a child were removed, I would be, frankly, devastated.


smoking and playing with guns
I look around and see children being abused everywhere. toddlers eating salty chips and crispy golden cheesy fat saturated chicken nuggets.. lollies, bread, ice cream, pasteurized milk saturated denatured sugar enhanced cereals and greasy chocolate soda pops, and nobody thinks to remove them to a cleaner healthier environment.. In fact, child food abuse is mainstream and pretty much everywhere you turn..

I think despite the ignorance with which this particular child is being raised, it's still quite possible that the parents and family are loving and supportive, with mutual attachment from all sides..

Which is why, I guess, when all's said and done, I would not intervene, other than through education and leading by example...


Sad smoking 2 year old
What do you think?

You can read more of this story here.

Peace,
Mango.

Breatharian - 1 - Prahlad Jani

I recently stumbled on to this news article about an 83 year old Indian fellow, called Prahlad Jani..

Apparently he has gone the past 7 decades without food or water...

Now, I'm fully aware that the skeptics will be up in arms screaming hoax!, and frankly I don't blame them .. After all, the evidence does tend to point toward an inevitable outcome of starvation should we prematurely cease nutritional nourishment..


Prahlad Jani
However, I've read about enough of these cases to believe (perhaps falsely) that this need not always be the way things work..

Certainly, I believe that as far as nutrition goes, and our apparent physiological dependence on it, I really don't think science has done much more than scratch the surface, and should even just one case such as this of Prahlad Jani, be truthful, then clearly what little understanding we might think we already have, would most obviously be flawed..

Prhlad Jani was observed by a team of military doctors who confirmed that he neither ate nor drank, nor, naturally, needed the bathroom. He was under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics, and also monitored by cameras and closed circuit television.

I especially liked one of the medics closing statements:

"As medical practitioners we cannot shut our eyes to possibilities, to a source of energy other than calories."

You can read more about this here.

Peace,
Mango.