The Balkan Chronicle

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled "honey."

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies.

"Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as easily made as your Persian's."

So wrote Lord Byron longingly in 1813, after he had tasted the drink during visits to Istanbul.

In The Thousand and One Nights, sherbet appears as a refreshing and medicinal drink. Sir Richard Burton's translation reads:

Turkish coffee is coffee prepared by boiling finely powdered roast coffee beans in a pot, possibly with sugar, and serving it into a cup, where the dregs settle. The name describes the method of preparation, not the raw material; there is no special Turkish variety of the coffee bean.

This yearlong writing assignment has taken me into some pretty strange places.

Last week I was in Albania.

This might seem like a strange stop on a 30-country tour of Europe, but there is rhyme to the reason.

Ferdinant Balla is one of the chefs at our new Italian restaurant, Tabella. He is from Albania, and as soon as he heard we were making this European journey, he began lobbying for a stopover in his country to meet his family. I'm not sure who's heading the Albanian Tourism Department, but they'd do well to bring Ferdinant back home and give him a job. He is very knowledgeable and proud of his country.

Imagine history, a magical wonderland, and gypsy music in the background, throw in a great portion of hearty meaty food, and there's a good chance you're thinking about Hercegovina.

No, I'm not referring to the region in the Balkans, but to a restaurant that brings Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian tastes to your palates in the centre of Copenhagen within the sacred borders of Tivoli. And once you've been there, you'll never forget it. From its belly dancers to its giant leg of lamb or suckling pig cooking over the open coals in the centre of the restaurant, it has been providing Copenhageners with memorable dining experiences for over half a century.

Last week and the week before, my articles focused mostly on the effects of fasting on the digestive tract and how it reactivates the detoxification systems in order to cleanse organs, tissue, nerves, cells, neurons, blood vessels, joint and more. Today, I shall discuss an unexpected bonus resulting from Ramadan fasting. Because scientific findings indicated that body detoxification also affects the brain, clarifies the mind, improves mental conditions and behaviors, instills in the person patience, tolerance, compassion, altruism and intensifies spirituality; I decided to probe into these aspects today.

Since we are still in the fasting month of Ramadan, I would like to continue discussing the multi-faceted benefits of fasting. Last week, I touched on the subject, but not in a profound manner. However this time, I will provide more details on the effects of the practice on the human body.

Because the intestinal tract is the most battered and exposed system in the body to microorganisms and toxins, it needs to be addressed appropriately in order to relieve it from the heavy tasks of digestion and cleansing. When it is blocked by toxicity like undigested foods, accumulated mucus, pathogens, yeast infections, dead cells and tissue debris, medical drugs (especially antibiotics), and ingested chemicals and environment pollutants, it fails to do its proper functions, hence disorders start emerging.

As usual, I find it appropriate to elaborate on one aspect of Ramadan, to celebrate this holy month and to appreciate the spirit of fasting with its many rewarding facets.

Very few realize that the practice comes with multiple and diverse benefits to our bodies, spirits, emotions, characters, well-being, health and even society.

The previous years, the emphasis was mostly on how fasting stimulates spirituality by relieving bodily functions in order to refresh energy, based on Islamic and traditional principles.

Until recently, halal foods were defined only by ritual slaughter and mass-market production. But today's ethical consumer trends are making the industry take a second look at what halal really means.

Ask any number of Muslims about the meaning of halal (when it comes to food) and you're likely to get as many answers as there are cuisines. While the methods and conditions under which halal meat was prepared were relatively uncontroversial or unchallenged a generation ago, increasing consumer awareness has resulted in a demand for greater transparency in standards and production.

Everybody today knows that Brown rice is good for the health. Brown Rice is not only better for you, it is also better for the environment than white rice, too!

Just like some people have a preference for brown bread, the production of brown rice is cheaper and, therefore, eco – friendly. Once you have acquired a taste for things brown, it is likely that you will never revert to the white commodity.

Rice goes through a variety of processes before it is ready for our dining tables. After harvesting, the seeds are run through a rice huller for milling to remove the outer grain husks. This process produces brown rice. Nice and simple!

If you go to most kitchen cupboards in the World, you will find a box of “Iodized Salt.” Indeed, most salts commonly sold in supermarkets bare the label, “This salt supplies iodine, a necessary nutrient.”

Tiny amounts of several different iodine-containing salts are added to table salt due to the fact that the common American diet provides very little amounts of this necessary nutrient. However, most people do not know how damaging Iodized Salt can be.

Denmark's Noma restaurant was named best in the world for a second year running Monday in an international poll dominated by European establishments but with new entries from Peru, China and Russia.

The Copenhagen restaurant of chef Rene Redzepi was voted number one in the S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants 2011, a list compiled by more than 800 international restaurant industry experts for Britain's Restaurant Magazine.

In recent months it's come to light that a number of supermarkets have been selling Halal meat without telling unsuspecting shoppers. The Supermarkets included Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose and M&S.

Halal food is a new concept for many in the UK. Halal literally means permissible. To make meat Halal, it has to be from an animal killed and prepared in accordance with Sharia, including Islamic prayer over the meat by a Muslim butcher.

Last month, the website Débat Halal claimed it had evidence that a popular brand of halal-certified poultry sausages marketed in France by a giant international food producer actually contain pork, rendering them forbidden — or haram — to Muslims.

The report led many French Muslims to question how they can be sure that any of the halal food they buy meets certification standards — only to discover that no single set of standards exists for determining which products are halal and which aren't.

Toddlers who have a diet high in processed foods may have a slightly lower IQ in later life, according to a British study described as the biggest research of its kind.

The conclusion, published on Monday, comes from a long-term investigation into 14,000 people born in western England in 1991 and 1992 whose health and well-being were monitored at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half.

Stress is constant feature of our lway of life nowadays. Many of us try to relive t by eating. In fact, a friend of mine recently told me that stress was her biggest dietary villain. “I eat when I’m stressed,” she said.

Broccoli could hold the key to the fight against breast cancer, scientists believe.
A component of broccoli could help combat breast cancer, scientsts say
The vegetable, already hailed as a so-called "superfood", contains a chemical capable of targeting the cells which fuel the growth of tumours.



The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.

One morning at the Cookery School, one of the students was whipping cream for pudding. She left it to whip merrily in the food mixer while she went off to put the finishing touches to the rest of her meal. Suddenly there was a sloshing sound. The cream had overwhipped and she was astonished to see what was essentially butter and whey in the bowl. She was just about to dump it when I came around the corner, and just managed to save it before it went into the hens' bucket. I gathered the other students around and showed them the miracle of how cream turns into butter.

Another way to ask the same question

in this article's title is to say:

Are you drinking raw unprocessed milk or pasteurized, homogenized milk?

Well, let's first illustrate the difference. Which of the following is the more natural, healthier and wholesome food? One is a raw apple, the other is an apple strudel.