Blog 5-7: where does it all come from?

yes its late but here is Blog 5. according to Wikipedia.com, the fish itself is the Atlantic Cod that is gray-ish in color when it is fully matured and it is in the "vulnerable" stage which is about half-way to extinction. most schools of cod are located in the Northeastern Atlantic. cod can also be found along the coast of Greenland, which is currently melting, according to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. several European nations caught hundreds of thousands tons in the 1970s. for more information on the Atlantic Cod, click on the words.

rice is a plant that mainly grows in Asia and Africa. this crop came to the Untied States in 1694 in South Carolina when the US brought over the slaves from Africa. the Spanish brought it to South America in the 18th century, which could explain why Hispanics eat rice almost every day. but different types of rice are grown in different places. wild rice, which is what i like best, originated from the island Sulawesi of Indonesia. forests have been cleared on the main island of Java for rice cultivation.
wherever rice is grown, its always originally brown. that is the husk that the rice grows in on the plant. the Japanese used a funny machine to "polish" the rice, which is the process of removing the husk and he germ from the brown rice and making it "white" rice.

onions grow almost everywhere. in acident Egypt, onions were buried with the dead because it was believed that the strong smell of the onion would "bring breath back to the dead" (wikipedia.com). in the Middle Ages, people used onions to pay their rent and doctors then prescribed it to infertial women to help start a family.
i know everyone is wondering why onions make you cry. the reason why someone would tear while cutting onions is because onions have large cells and when they are broken, they release a liquid which kind of makes your hands sticky and it has a smell that when it gets in your eyes it makes you tear. my eyes were immune to that for a good 3 years. i remember i took culinary arts in high school and we cut onions a lot.

what does it come in?

the packaging for the fish is a plastic bag that is sealed to keep the salty smell inside the bag. the brand i believe is "Alaskan Cod Fish", but i think thats too fake for the name...thats the name of the fish and what confuses me more about the brand is that there a picture of the Sydney Oprea House printed on the front of the package. to be honest, i don't think thats the brand my mother buys--this "Sydney" fish happens to be the default brand that is sold in the supermarket i work in.

for the onions, i really don't know what farm there are grown in. the produce manager at my job is only there in the mornings. so i can't really ask where all the produce is grown. there are like 10 different types of onions there. and they're all the same to me :-)

as for the rice, the brand is Carnola (i think) and they come in different sized bags. my mother always buys the 20 lb bag since there are 5 people living in my house and rice is eaten like EVERY NIGHT AND I'M SICK OF IT!

how much my meal cost

i looked around in the C-Town i worked in to find out how much each ingredient costs for "Bacalao". first, the salted cod fish costs $3.99 for a 1 lb package. the rice is $8.89 for a 20 lb bag and the onion that is put in it when sauteing the fish is $1.29 a lb. a set 2lb bag is either the same price or $.99. i guess it pays off to work in a supermarket sometimes. :-)

AMNH

here is another post about the AMNH. i kinda got some imformation wrong in the last post, so im here to fix that. from that one film on the melting glacier named Russell, which is located in Grennland, not South America, is still melting from global warming. that limestone that is located in the Florida Keys, is mainly made of coral bc it was under the ocean 125, 000 years ago.

i was in the exihibit of the African Mammals to find pathos, logos, and ethos. the Lion itself said a lot when it came to ethos. in that little showcase, there was one male lion and about 4 lionesses--that told me a lot bc im a heavy believer in the Zodiac and men born under Leo the Lion have a tendecy to attract the women...i know its silly. the Giant Eland is similar to an Antolope, and they live in similar areas. each showcase gave a good amount of information.

the AMNH trip

this is my little report on the trip we had on the 24th (my birthday). the American Museum of Natural History is a good place to go to when u're a tourist in New York (n i've seen a few of them asking for train directions---i know the NYC transit system too well to give wrong directions), or when u haven't been the a lot or not at all. my father took me there when i was a kid A WHOLE LOT and thats probably why i look so upset in that pic on Mary's blog.
but other than that, i got quite a few good notes to do this, but i may have to repost because i forgot my notes at home. this is what could remember off the top of my head:

THE GOTTESMAN HALL OF PLANET EARTH SHOWED ALMOST EVERYTHING ABOUT THE EARTH THAT MOST PPL DONT KNOW ABOUT. IT SHOWED THE EARTH'S EVER-CHANGING CRUST AND CORE AND ALSO SHOWED EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING. I VIEWED A SHORT FILM DISCUSSING HOW GLOBAL WARMING IS EFFECTING THE RUSSEL GLACIER AT THE TIP OF SOUTH AMERICA. ALMOST EVERY DAY ANOTHER PIECE OF IT FALLS OFF AND DROPS INTO THE WATER WHERE IT LATER MELTS CAUSING THE SEA LEVELS TO RISE--TO ALMOST WHERE THEY WERE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO.

i may repost about the trip again later.

My Favorite Meal

My most favorite meal of all time is a traditional Puerto Rican dish called bacalao con arroz which is a salted cod fish that is usually eaten with white rice or potatoes. It is kept refrigerated in the supermarket, but when purchase it is sometimes kept frozen at home. It doesn’t really have a “fishy” smell which means it will not stink up your house, but it has a smell that in unforgettable once you have tried and enjoyed it.
This dish is only for people who can take in a lot of salt in one bit because that is how salty it is. The fish is boiled in water for about an hour, I believe. That is when the smell comes out. While the fish is cooking, the rice in put into aluminum pot with water and assorted spices. My mother usually makes this when we have not eaten for a while, or when we have Puerto Rican friends come to our house for dinner and the father of that family will voluntary make it himself. So, usually I would eat it at home. One of my best friends in this school sometimes brings some bacalao that both she or her mother makes it and brings it to school and she always makes sure she brings a lot to share. This dish varies from family to family and she makes it with yellow rice instead of white. She also keeps the burned rice from the bottom of the pot which all of our friends love, but I don’t. I cannot really say if my mother’s bacalao or my friend’s bacalao is better. I haven’t had either in a while, so I don’t know.

the source of food part 1

There is usually a variety of foods that I eat day to day. It all depends on what is around me. Since I was raised Hispanic, by default I will rice every other day (please forgive me if I’m stereotyping). The kind of rice that I eat is wild rice or a wild rice "blend" which is a mix of brown rice, wild rice, and other healthy grains. I started seeing a dietion in June of this year and she gives me really good advice on what foods are good, like the wild rice and raw chocolate, and what foods to not necessarily avoid, but to eat less of, like white rice and milk chocolate. Each day, I prepare a small lunch for myself with whatever meat my mother made the night before, my wild rice that I made the night before, and a big salad. The purpose of the big salad is to fill me faster but to not have the feeling of being stuffed like it was Thanksgiving. But this pattern varies when I don’t have time to cook for myself, low on funds to find my own lettace, or a random time during the month when I want something like a Philly cheese steak, which is what I ate yesterday for lunch.
For the past few days, its been pretty much the same thing. I started keeping a detailed track of what I eat on Monday, September 17th. On that day, I had a Swiss cheese egg white omlete sandwich on honey flax wheat toast with a cup of tea. For lunch, I packed myself some pernil, which pork shoulder that is traditionally made in Puerto Rican and Dominican families, with some baked macaroni-n-cheese that my mother made the night before, which is a typical Sunday night dinner for us. I also packed myself a spinach salad with grape tomatoes, which I was planning to eat at work later that day, but I ended up eating a mini meatball roll with some Arizona pomogrante green tea at work that was from a pizzeria across the street from my job. My boss sent me there to get him a chicken calzone and whatever I want for myself, which was that mini roll. I also had a cup of tea while I was there because my throat was hurting a bit. Before I left for the night, a friend of mine that I work with and is also a student here at La Guardia gave me an Almond Joy and I ate that on the train with a bottle of Poland Spring water. Since I’m getting sick, I drink a lot of lemon-honey tea, which I had when I got home.
It is the morning of September 18th, and my throat is killing me. It is so sore, I can barely speak without my voice cracking like a 13-year-old boy going through pubity. I ate a bowl of oatmeal with a cup of lemon honey tea. That Tuesday was our trip to the Filmmakers Conference and I drank a .5 L bottle of Poland Spring that I could of bought at a newsstand in the train station for $1 and not $1.75. When it was over, I went back to school to buy my books and bought a Philly cheese steak sandwich from one of the Thomson Ave street venders and a Tazo iced green tea from 7-11. I also bought some lemon tea for my throat and that was about 16oz. At about 6 pm, I went home and had a breaded pork chop with some left macaroni-n-cheese with a spinich salad. I had yet another cup of lemon honey tea. For dessert I ate a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream bar and the flavor was "Half Baked". Then I snacked on one chocolate covered prezel.
I wake up at 7 am on the 19th of September to eat yet another bowl of oatmeal and lemon honey tea but I added two slices of honey flax whole wheat bread and several strawberries. After that annoying treasure hunt in the library, I ate a piece of grilled chicken and some macaroni-n-cheese that I brought from home with yet another cup of lemon tea (I ran out of honey) and a buffolo chicken "Big Bite" from 7-11. When I got to work, my supervisor was complaining that he was hungry and was really craving Taco Bell. I eventually had some of the nachos that he ordered. Later that night, I took a Halls because I had no money to tea and it was the first thing available that helps sore throats. When I got home, I had a real dinner which was chicken stew with some mashed potatoes and broccoli.
This pattern really depends on what my finacial state is that week. I’m a couple of private debts that I’m paying pff slowly. There are days where I’m lazy of what I eat and there are days where I’m extra careful.

About Me

My full name is Hope Elizabeth Lawrence, but most people don’t know about my middle name. I was born and raised in Queens New York on October 24, 1988. Most people that I meet for the first time think that I’m Hispanic, Puerto Rican for example, when I’m really half white and half black. Though I’m not Puerto Rican, or “Boricua”, I do like to represent it during the month of June when the Puerto Rican Day parade comes to New York. My parents divorced when I was very young; it was 1991 or 1992, I believe. Between the years 1992-1993, my mother went into a new relationship with my step-father and he raised my younger sister, who is two years younger than me, and me. My step-father also has daughter who is three years older than me and I have always called her my older sister throughout life. Then in August 1994, my mother gave birth to my annoying brother. I have a rather large family and it keeps getting bigger. In 2004, my older sister gave birth to a baby boy whom I love as if he were my own son. On my father’s side of the family, I have about five or six aunts and uncles and about eleven or twelve cousins. One of my female cousins has a six-year-old son while another female cousin has a four-month-old daughter. My grandmother is in her late 80s and my father is the oldest out of eight children at age 60.
When I was younger, I hated my name. Other kids in school would poke fun at it. My mother told me that my father gave me that name when she wanted to name me Sarah. My father decided against that because there is an all African American female college named Sarah Lawrence and he decided to name me Hope. Even now, sometimes I don’t want to tell people my real name because the ones who asked me my name is stranger in public who wants to hit on me. My mother always taught me not to talk to strangers so I would tell the stranger that my name is Elizabeth, which is my mother’s middle name as well, or that my name is Sarah. But I do have nick-names like Hopie, which is what my family calls me, or Josephine, which is what one of my supervisors at work calls me.
I do have a job while I’m I school. I work in C-Town Supermarket on 29th and Broadway in Astoria, Queens as a bookkeeper. I started there as a cashier on September 24, 2006 and I was promoted to bookkeeper sometime in February 2007. I love it there. I picked that place to work because I needed a job and I was familiar with the neighborhood since my old high school is in that area. I do see a few old high school friends and teachers shop there. I even got my older sister to work there since she needs to support herself and her 3-year-old son. C-Town has had its bad times and its good times. Though I live in Elmhurst, Queens, Astoria is a wonderful place to live and work. But Astoria isn’t the only wonderful place in Queens, for those who live in other boroughs like Brooklyn. Another nice place is Middle Village simply because there is a huge cemetery and a crematory. St. Albans is nice and quiet and I love going there on Christmas Eve since it is family tradition for all the Lawrences (that’s my family name) to go to the house where my father, aunts and uncles grew up in and to walk around the neighborhood to see how other residents decorate their homes.