Baking a better world.

The French have one and the Lebanese, despite all their problems have one to.
Bread, every country has it so it must be a great source of pride to a nation to have a type of bread named after them. Kind of like the way a town feels when they get their first university. But there are a lot less breads named after countries than there are universities.
Good on you France I’m glad my great granddad and his mates and my granddad and his mates were able to help you out twice last Century. And thank you Lebanon. It wasn’t enough for you to send out thousands of your most highly trained kebab makers to feed the late night drunks of the world. You also gave us your bread. It might not be much in the way of thanks but I have written a letter to the United Nations suggesting that France and Lebanon get a 5% discount at the UN cafeteria.

Gaza Strip business opportunity

As I fancy myself as a bit of an entrepreneur I am always on the look out for new ways to get filthy rich and watching young Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers on TV for the millionth time the other night gave me an idea. Business is all about supply and demand and it seems to me that in the Gaza strip it must be getting really hard to find hand sized rocks because they have all been thrown at the Israeli soldiers by Palestinian youths. But just across the border the Israelis have the opposite problem. So here is my cunning plan. I am going to go to the Israeli Army and offer to clear up all the rocks that are littering their positions and generally making things look messy and then I am going to truck them over to Gaza and sell them back to the Palestinians who will pay good money for throw able rocks. I know what you’re thinking they are used rocks the Palestinians would pay more for new rocks. But I will market them as ‘Pre tested’ thus being able to charge a premium for them. Maybe I will put little pictures on them and make them collectable thus increasing there value even more. The Israeli army could set up a scheme where if a soldier gets hit with the same rock more than once he wins a prize like a drink holder for his jeep or a little glow in the dark star of David. Take a fresh look at the conflicts happening around the world folks. There are plenty to choose from and if you don’t make money out of them, an oil company or an arms dealer will. So get in there.

Religon and booze. And why they wont serve chicken in church.

Where can a sober well dressed man or woman get a drink at 9am on a Sunday morning with other respectable people? Church. It’s called communion and it is served with a snack. But there is a catch. The only booze on offer is red wine and you have to pretend it is the blood of Christ. And you have to imagine that the snack. A small wafer of dried bread, is Christ’s flesh. I was thinking about this because I am working on a book at the moment. The working title is ‘Christianity. The bollocks behind what probably started off as one guy with some not entierly original, but decent and simple ideas about how we can all get along better if we are nice to each other that got twisted and distorted by power and money hungry bastards who took advantage of the fact that man is basically a gullible creature who can easily be controlled by fear…… Yes I realise the title is a tad long. That was kindly pointed out by my publisher. I did it on purpose. That way when I change it they will feel like they had some input.

Anyway. Back to Communion. My parents dragged me along to church on a semi irregular basis as a kid and my early understanding of communion was that it was like halftime at the movies. A chance to have a quick drink and a snack during what seemed to be a very tedious and drawn out process. Kids I noticed were never given a drink or the chips just a hand on the head. When I asked dad why I didn’t get a sip of what I thought was cordial, he explained it was red wine. Even back then I remember thinking it seemed a little early to be hitting the hard stuff. So I wasn’t allowed the wine. What about the chip? Dad explained the chip, which was actually a wafer of bread and was impossible to swallow without the wine to help wash it down. It was only later I discovered the ghoulish back story behind the wine and bread. The wine I get. It’s red. And like xmas morning it is a legitimate excuse to drink booze in the morning. I get it. But the bread thing has always confused me. The bread represents the flesh of Christ but is that really the best they could do? Why not chicken? Isn’t that what human flesh is supposed to taste like? OK so maybe chicken isn’t a breakfast meat. Fish then. Jesus could make that appear at will so it would tie in nicely. And you could serve it cold. Churches could buy it from local Japanese restaurants. They could make it on a Saturday night and leave it for the church people to pick up on a Sunday morning. There would be a problem if there was any left over. Fish wouldn’t store as well as dried bread wafers. But I used to watch with amusement how at the end of communion the priest would finish up the last of the wine in the expensive goblet himself. I noticed he never bothered to gobble up all the left over bread. Funny that. Guess he was more of a blood man than a human flesh man. But perhaps the fish would be more to his liking. He could take the sashimi home each week and have it for Sunday lunch.