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prime minister of nepal
[ "the government of nepal the prime minister is the head of the council of ministers of nepal he she should be member of the house of the representative pratinidhi sabha the prime minister is the senior most member of cabinet in the executive of government in a parliamentary system the prime minister selects and can dismiss members of the cabinet allocates posts to members within the government and is the presiding member and chairperson of the cabinet the federal cabinet headed by the prime minister is appointed by the president of nepal to assist the latter in the administration of the affairs of the executive the prime minister has to enjoy the confidence of a majority in the pratinidhi sabha and shall resign if they are unable to prove majority when instructed by the president the residence of prime minister of nepal is in baluwatar kathmandu the seat of the prime minister is singha darbar since the time of chandra shamsher jang bahadur rana the basic monthly salary of prime minister of nepal is npr 77 280 the prime minister of nepal does not have a term limit the current prime minister is kp sharma oli since 15 february 2018", "he was a long time leading member of the unified communist party of nepal maoist prior to founding a new party naya shakti in 1996 the maoists started the nepalese civil war which had a huge impact on the political system in nepal the decade long civil war in which more than 12 000 nepalese died had a major role in the transformation of nepal from a monarchy into a republic bhattarai was elected to the constituent assembly from gorkha as a maoist candidate in 2008 and became minister of finance in the cabinet formed after the election bhattarai became prime minister in 2011 as a way out of the political deadlock since the dissolution of the first nepalese constituent assembly in may 2012 he was replaced by chief justice khil raj regmi as head of an interim government that was to hold elections by 21 june 2013 he was a senior standing committee member and vice chairperson of the maoist party until his resignation from his post and all party responsibilities on 26 september 2015 he was until recently the coordinator of the naya shakti as of 2019 he is the chairman of the federal council of the newly", "nepal announced his resignation as prime minister on june 30 2010 he was previously the general secretary of communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist for 15 years he is also one of the only prime ministers in the world whose name features the name of his country i e nepal madhav kumar nepal was born into brahmin family to mangal kumar upadhyaya and durgadevi upadhaya he graduated in commerce from tribhuvan university in 1973 and worked in banking and civil service before turning to full time politics he has two brothers binod kumar upadhyaya and saroj kumar upadhyaya and three sisters kalika bhandari indira neupane and basudha pokharel he is married to gayatri acharya he has a son and a daughter saurav and suman nepal nepal joined the communist movement in 1969 in the underground struggle he used party names such as subodh sunil ranjan and bibek in 1971 he became a district committee member of the nepal revolutionary organisation marxist leninist at a conference held in biratnagar june 7 8 1975 m k nepal was elected as a bureau member of the all nepal communist revolutionary coordination committee marxist leninist when the ancrcc ml founded the communist party", "the kot meeting was called upon by queen rajya laxmi devi after the same night murder of her confidante kaji gagan singh bhandari while performing worship at his prayer room the kot meeting turned ugly and eventually jang brothers and their supporters led an open court full fledged assault on all his rival participants in the meeting this massacre led to the loss of power of political clans such as chautariyas pandes thapas and basnyats and that of king rajendra bikram shah and queen rajya laxmi devi and ultimately the establishment of the rana autocracy in nepal at the peak of instability in nepalese politics a coalition ministry was formed in september 1845 headed by fateh jang chautaria but the real power behind the throne was general gagan singh bhandari who controlled seven regiments in the army compared to the three under the prime minister abhiman singh rana magar and jung bahadur kunwar also served as commanders each with three regiments it is occasionally alleged that general gagan singh bhandari had an improper relationship with queen rajya laxmi devi but this is unlikely given the mores of the age and society since the king was mentally unfit to rule it", "he was also president of the nepali congress party from 2010 to 2016 koirala was elected as prime minister of nepal by the parliament on 9 february 2014 koirala joined the nepali congress in 1952 and served in various capacities prior to becoming its president in 2010 sushil koirala was born to bodh prasad koirala and kuminidi koirala on 12 august 1939 in biratnagar second largest city of nepal koirala was unmarried and known to live a simple life a member of the politically prominent koirala family he was the cousin of former prime ministers matrika prasad koirala girija prasad koirala and bishweshwar prasad koirala a heavy smoker koirala was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2006 and lung cancer in june 2014 he died on 10 february 2016 at 12 50 am of pneumonia in kathmandu nepal at the age of 76 he used to be known as sushil daa it is said that koirala had a formal education of i com from a college of india according to his sister in law although he always mentioned his qualification as informal education koirala entered politics in 1954 inspired by the social democratic ideals of the nepali congress in 1958 he", "he was born in siraha district nepal in 1926 tulsi was a minister in the congress government of 1959 1960 before its dissolution by king mahendra he became the first prime minister following the two year period of mahendra s direct rule he studied at the suri vidyasagar college when it was affiliated with the university of calcutta he received a medical degree prior to entering politics tulsi was married 3 times and had 2 sons and 4 daughters as of 2005 to sarah giri a deaf rights advocate as of 2013 they had been married 34 years as an adult tulsi was baptized to his wife s faith jehovah s witnesses he resigned as chairman rastriya panchayat in 1986 and moved to sri lanka where he stayed for two years and then finally settled in bangalore india until 2005 he died on december 18 2018 at his home in budhanilkantha kathmandu aged 92 from liver cancer", "he was born as seventh son of kaji bal narsingh kunwar from his second wife ganesh kumari thapa daughter of thapa kazi general nain singh thapa as per the family roll of succession ranodip singh succeeded his elder brother jang bahadur following his death in 1877 chautariya colonel ambar bikram shah son of general h e sri chautaria pushkar shah and his gorkhali aide attempted a coup d tat at teku in january 1882 they were killed by the ranas for their part in the attempted assassination of ranodip singh ranodip singh was assassinated by his nephews khadga shumsher bhim shumsher and dambar shumsher during a coup d tat in 1885 he was succeeded by his nephew bir shamsher", "he is remembered as a statesman who made important reforms and infrastructure improvements bir shamsher jung bahadur rana was known as kailay in his childhood this name was given by jung bahadur his mother died as soon as he was born and he was taken care by putali maharani wife of jung bahadur he spent his childhood at thapathali durbar bir was born to the chief of the army dhir shamsher jung bahadur rana younger brother of jung bahadur rana he then served from 1885 to 1901 and was invested as tung ling ping ma kuo kang wang in 1889 during his tenure he received prince albert victor duke of clarence and the ill fated archduke franz ferdinand his successor for three months at his death in 1901 was his progressive brother deva shamsher jung bahadur rana there were many reforms during bir shumsher s time water pipes were laid english was taught in schools and hospitals were made he reorganized land tax and created a better administrative body he sent large number of troops to the british the british gave him the title of knight grand commander of the order of the star of india on queen victoria s", "he served in this capacity from 27 june 1901 to his death in 1929 after he successfully disposed his liberal and reformist brother dev shamsher although generally perceived as despotic and conservative he is credited with several reforms including the abolition of slavery and the nepal britain treaty of 1923 which recognized nepal as an independent nation and an ally of britain chandra shumsher was the sixth of the seventeen sons of dhir shumsher rana the youngest brother of jung bahadur rana through his thapa wife nanda kumari of whom he was the third son he was educated in kolkata and thus became to be the first nepalese prime minister who had passed matriculation examination in the convocation address of 1884 the then vice chancellor of calcutta university praised him as a gentleman who has shown he can handle pen as efficiently as sword seto bagh a historical novel set on the early days of chandra shumsher depicts him as an ambitious and cunning young man with an excellent command of the english language he along with his brothers khadga shumsher and bir shamsher orchestrated the murder of his uncle sri teen maharaja ranodip singh in order to rise in", "thapa had split away from the rastriya prajatantra party in november 2004 the party is registered with the election commission of nepal in march 2005 the party is led by a central working committee thapa is the chairman of the party prakash chandra lohani is the vice chairman of the party rjp emerged from a split in the rastriya prajatantra party as thapa left rpp on november 4 2004 thapa had been a founder of rpp in 1990 on november 19 2004 thapa and his followers opened a contact office in balutwar kathmandu to organise a broad political conference and coordinate the construction of a new party on december 27 2004 the group formed a 320 member organising committee for the holding of the conference of the new party thapa was chairman of the committee lohani vice chairman and buddhiman tamang secretary other prominent members of the committee were kamal thapa hari bahadur basnet sarvendra nath sukla and renu kumari yadav kamal thapa left the committee in january 2005 the rjp was founded on march 13 2005 the broad political conference was however postponed due to the imposition of emergency rule by king gyanendra on february 1 2005 rjp had", "he was the chairman of the communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist cpn uml and leader of the constituent assembly parliamentary party of the cpn uml born in sakhejung in the ilam district khanal was a member of the communist party of nepal marxist leninist and was its general secretary from 1982 to 1986 later he was a member of the cpn uml khanal served for a time as minister of information and communication in the 1997 coalition government khanal won the seat of the ilam 1 constituency in the 2008 constituent assembly election he led the cpn uml as general secretary from 2008 to february 2009 and was elected as the chairman of the cpn uml on february 16 2009 on 3 february 2011 after seven months of political gridlock in which no candidate could muster enough votes to be elected as prime minister jhala nath khanal was elected as prime minister by the constituent assembly khanal received 368 votes in the 601 member parliament while his nearest rivals ram chandra poudel of the nepali congress and bijay kumar gachhedar of madhesi people s rights forum democratic got 122 votes and 67 votes respectively nepal had no proper", "his brothers were bishweshwar prasad koirala and girija prasad koirala who also served as the prime minister of nepal and politician and journalist tarini prasad koirala matrika prasad koirala was politically active in india where his father krishna prasad koirala was living in exile he stayed in the house of dr rajendra prasad the first president of free india and was influenced by the indian independence struggle he participated in the indian independence movement with his brother bp koirala both brothers were arrested and imprisoned by the british raj for three months in 1930 he was made president of the congress party in bihar by dr rajendra prasad for a while as all the other senior indian leaders were jailed during the quit india movement he later joined the nepali national congress led by tanka prasad acharya and fought against the rana regime koirala became the first president of nepali congress when it was formed as a result of the merger of nepali national congress and nepal democratic congress in april 1950 koirala became the first commoner prime minister of nepal after rana rule ended in 1952 he was expelled from the nepali congress for violating the party principles and", "he was the son of tika prasad acharya and tika devi acharya tanka prasad acharya was an anti rana pro democracy politician under the influence of freedom movement in india five men acharya dharma bhakta mathema dashrath chand sukra raj shastri gangalal shrestha founded the nepal praja parishad in the late 1930s with acharya as chairman their motive was to overthrow the rana regime and establish a democratic government in nepal tyranny debauchery economic exploitation and religious persecution had characterized rana rule acharya was the first person to bring the printing machine into nepal he brought it from banaras to publish four leaflets advocating overthrow of the rana empire he along with four other activists were captured for opposition and sentenced to death by the ranas in 1940 but acharya was never executed as the then nepali law influenced by hinduism forbade the killing of brahmins the movement later led to the overthrow of the rana oligarchy acharya was released from the captivity in 1951 when king tribhuvan returned to power he went on to become prime minister in 1956 during his premiership the first 5 year plan was started nepal rastra bank was established and the supreme court was", "he was the first mukhtiyar to title himself as a prime minister as per the british convention he was the nephew of bhimsen thapa who was falsely sentenced for imprisonment for the death of king rajendra s six months old son mathabar singh thapa fled to shimla after the execution of bhimsen thapa to avoid his own execution as he was bhimsen s nephew four years later the second queen of rajendra queen rajya lakshmi called him back and installed him as the mukhtiyar paving the way for him to eventually title himself as the prime minister mathabar singh however enraged the queen by refusing to make her son ranendra bikram the king the queen in turn had him shot by his own nephew janga bahadur rana and thereby making him the last dynast of the thapa dynasty not much is known of mathabar singh thapa s childhood he was born in borlang gorkha he was the son of kaji nayan singh thapa who was killed in the war against the kingdom of kumaon he was a nephew of bhimsen thapa and also the maternal uncle of jang bahadur rana through his mother s side he was the grandson of", "he is the chairman of the nepal communist party ncp oli previously served as prime minister from 11 october 2015 to 3 august 2016 and was the first elected prime minister under the newly adopted constitution of nepal k p oli was born on 22 february 1952 in a brahmin family at terathum he was the eldest child of mohan prasad and madhumaya oli oli was raised by his grandmother rammaya after his mother died of smallpox when oli was four he did his primary school education in tehrathum and later his family migrated to the south eastern district of jhapa he resided mostly in jhapa during his early political life oli started his studies at himalaya higher secondary school in damak municipality of jhapa district at the age of 12 he left school in grade eight he migrated to jhapa district in 1963 ad oli met his wife radhika shakya a fellow communist after coming out of prison they first met in the course of party activities and married later oli began his political career in 1966 in opposition to the party less panchayat system in place at the time he joined the communist party of nepal in february" ]
[ "ali akhtar mikrani was an advisor of the prime minister of nepal at the tenure of prime minister madhav kumar nepal from may 2009 to february 2011 he is architecture engineer by profession as well as involved in several social works throughout the nepal he was recommended as the ambassador of saudi arabia for nepal during k p oli government but later he was withdrawn due to fell down of government he has been worked as member construction and planning of kathmandu valley under the government of nepal he was born at kattarban village of rajdevi vdc of rautahat district in the year of 1956 in one of the well established muslim family of nepal he did his schooling in his village and later studied in india his grandfather maula bakhsh mikrani was once jailed for 6 months at nakhu kathmandu at the time of rana prime minister chandra shumsher jang bahadur rana his grandfather was also a well known social activist in the area of sarlahi and rautahat district his grandfather maula bakhsh mikrani was honored by chaudhry title by that times rana government of nepal as his ancestor died by fighting with british force at samanpur of rautahat", "he was one of the main leaders involved in transitioning nepal from an absolute monarchy to a democratic multi party system bhattarai became prime minister of nepal in april 1990 after a popular democratic movement referred as jana andolan bhattarai was twice the prime minister of nepal once heading the interim government from 19 april 1990 to 26 may 1991 and then as elected prime minister from 31 may 1999 to 22 march 2000 bhattarai was the officiating president of the nepali congress for nearly 26 years from 12 february 1976 and was elected to the post of president of party in 1988 till 1992 he participated in the democratic movement of nepal from its inception the constitution of nepal 1990 was promulgated while he was interim prime minister and he was credited for successfully holding the parliamentary election in 1990 a milestone in nepalese political history in his youth bhattarai was a journalist he was also one of the foreign journalists to interview the general secretary of the communist party of the soviet union nikita khrushchev bhattarai had participated in a long struggle to modernize the nepalese political system aiming to transform a society that was isolated for centuries", "the embassy was established in march 1961 after diplomatic relations were established between the two countries in june 1960 under the leadership of david ben gurion the first prime minister of israel and b p koirala the first elected prime minister of nepal israel opened its embassy in kathmandu in march 1961 nepal opened a consulate general in israel in november 1993 and then the embassy of nepal in israel on 17 august 2007 israel has inked cooperation with nepal in the following sectors a protocol of cooperation between the federation of nepalese chambers of commerce and industry and the federation of israeli chambers of commerce was signed on 25 june 1993 in tel aviv during a visit to israel by prime minister girija prasad koirala of nepal a memorandum of understanding mou between the governments of nepal and israel relating to a scholarship program 16 february 1995 was signed by the joint secretary ministry of finance of nepal and the ambassador of israel a framework agreement on cooperation in the field of agriculture was signed in march 2010 between the governments of israel and nepal activities of israel s agency for international development cooperation mashav in nepal started in", "despite the nepali congress securing more votes in the popular vote than the communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist the latter secured 88 seats to the former s 83 neither party was successful in forming a coalition to hold a majority of the 205 seats after failed coalition negotiations however adhikari became prime minister of a minority government acquiring the support of the rastriya prajatantra party and the nepal sadbhawana party adhikari only served as the prime minister of nepal for nine months and was the first democratically elected prime minister from the communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist during his time in office then chief of the world bank paul wolfowitz rejected funding the arun iii hydro electric project also the adhikari government promoted programs such as the build your own village program prime minister adhikari also enhanced the relationship with mongolia in june 1995 the rastriya prajatantra party and the nepal sadbhawana party who helped to form a minority government supported the nepali congress s call for a vote of no confidence in adhikari s government in a special session of the house of representatives adhikari attempted to dissolve parliament and call elections in an attempt", "he is the current member of parliament from rupandehi constituency no 2 he won the election with a margin of 22 000 votes in the parliamentary election of 2017 during the second constituent assembly election in 2013 he defeated the former prime minister baburam bhattarai from rupendehi constituent no 4 paudel was appointed as the minister for finance in 5 november 2015 to 1 august 2016 in kp sharma oli s first prime ministership he got the responsibility of a defense minister from 6 february 2011 to 29 august 2011 during the prime ministership of jhala nath khanal he was the minister for water resources from 18 august 2008 to 25 may 2009 under the prime ministership of puspa kamal dahal at the age of just 37 paudel got the responsibility of cabinet minister for the ministry of youth sports and culture in 12 march 1997 under the ex prime minister lokendra bahadur chand s cabinet bishnu prasad paudel was born to devilal paudel and devaki paudel on 20 november 1959 in syangja nepal he joined politics in 1978 during the panchayat system in nepal he faced jail time in 1977 he passed the slc examination and moved to rupendehi", "he was born in 1942 in khalanga bazar salyan nepal he served as prime minister of nepal from 15 june 1986 to 6 april 1990 prior to that he was speaker of the national assembly of nepal he was a member of the newar community and was the first member of that ethnic group to become prime minister in his office he braved the sixteen months long ordeal of economic blockade march 23 1989 imposed on nepal by india he was responsible for the mass suppression of democratic forces during the mass movement of 2046 bs 1989 ad and this act highly degraded his status he was dismissed by the king birendra during political tensions in which protestors called for multiparty elections subsequently a draft constitution was introduced which allowed for direct elections to a bicameral parliament shrestha was brought to the kathmandu from new delhi based medicity hospital where he had been undergoing treatment and was on ventilator support he told family members that he wished to die in his own country and was air lifted to kathmandu shrestha died of lung cancer at 3 00 on 15 august 2013 at norvic hospital kathmandu", "the treaty was signed at kathmandu on 31 july 1950 by the last rana prime minister of nepal mohan shumsher jang bahadur rana and indian ambassador to nepal chadreshwar narayan singh and came into force the same day as per article 9 of the treaty rana rule in nepal ended just 3 months after the treaty was signed the treaty allows free movement of people and goods between the two nations and a close relationship and collaboration on matters of defense and foreign policy after an abortive attempt in 1952 of the communist party of nepal to seize power with chinese backing india and nepal stepped up military and intelligence cooperation under treaty provisions and india sent a military mission to nepal the india nepal treaty of peace and friendship was signed by the last rana prime minister of nepal mohan shamsher jang bahadur rana and the indian ambassador to nepal chandreshwor narayan singh on 31 july 1950 and came into force the same day it has ten articles the treaty provides for everlasting peace and friendship between the two countries and the two governments agree mutually to acknowledge and respect the complete sovereignty territorial integrity and independence of each", "he is former deputy prime minister defence minister of nepal in oli cabinet 2015 and former minister of home affairs of nepal in madhav nepal cabinet he was the vice chairman of communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist he was taken as prospective future prime minister and cpn uml chairman by his cadres during 2017 nepalese legislative election campaign he won the election from achham 1 defeating bharat swar rawal was born in achham nepal he is from chhetri cast and has a wife and two sons he obtained both master s and bachelor s degrees from the tribhuwan university and in the 1980s became a lawyer who specialized in legal awareness for the nepal bar association rawal began his political career when he began serving as jhalanath khanal s adviser in 1990 from 1992 to 1993 he served on the united nations s cambodian elections panel and later allied himself with madhav kumar nepal in 1994 he was elected into parliament following by being its minister for commerce tourism and civil aviation till 1995 from 1998 to 1999 he served the same positions for second term and also was minister of science and technology in april 2008 he", "is a nepalese politician and former deputy prime minister and minister of poverty alleviation of nepal he is the chairman of the rashtriya jana morcha and the general secretary of the all nepal peasants association linked to rjm chitra bahadur k c belonged to the communist party of nepal fourth convention in the 1983 he sided with mohan bikram singh and joined the communist party of nepal masal chitra bahadur k c contested the baglung 2 constituency in the 1994 election he finished second with 15089 votes he was elected to the pratinidhi sabha in the 1999 election as a candidate of rashtriya jana morcha the electoral front of the communist party of nepal masal 2006 in the constituency of baglung 2 with 24124 votes when janamorcha nepal was formed in 2002 through the merger of rjm and samyukta janamorcha nepal chitra bahadur k c became a member of jmn when jmn split in 2006 he sided with communist party of nepal unity centre masal the parent party of jmn general secretary mohan bikram singh in rejecting participation the seven party alliance government effectively jmn was split a conference of the jmn led by chitra bahadur k c was held", "he was the first brahmin prime minister of nepal ranga nath poudyal was born in 1773 a d at makhantole kathmandu to pandit brajnath a who was prominent courtier in the palace who was later exiled to benaras he was a bahun by ethnicity ranga nath poudyal spent his childhood years in benares where he mastered sanskrit he was granted the title pandit raj by the then king of benares ranga nath poudyal met bhimsen thapa in benares varanasi he was deeply influenced by bhimsen thapa and thus he forged his path to power by establishing himself as the prominent supporter of bhimsen thapa after the execution of mulkaji chief kaji damodar pande paudyal was appointed as raj guru royal preceptor along with ranajit pande as appointed as mulkaji bhimsen thapa as second kaji and sher bahadur shah as mul chautariya he became prime minister of nepal at the time of utmost political turmoil he is remembered as a clever brahmin rather than an able administrator although he was the prominent supporter of bhimsen thapa he is also characterized by his loyalty towards brian houghton hodgson the then british resident to nepal his political career was doomed after the downfall", "she resigned as minister of foreign affairs of nepal on april 16 2008 she also served as deputy prime minister of nepal within the coalition government of prime minister girija prasad koirala from 2007 to 2008 pradhan was married to communist stalwart pushpa lal shrestha and was a leading figure in his communist party of nepal when pushpa lal died in 1978 balaram upadhyaya became party leader in 1986 pradhan became the leader of the party in 1987 the party merged with manmohan adhikari s faction forming the communist party of nepal marxist when the cpn uml was divided in 1998 pradhan sided with the break away faction she became chairperson of communist party of nepal marxist leninist however in 2002 cpn ml merged back into cpn uml at the 2003 7th conference of cpn uml pradhan was reelected to the central committee pradhan was the number two candidate of cpn uml in the proportional representation list for the april 2008 constituent assembly election pradhan died of a brain hemorrhage on 22 september 2014 at the age of 86 in at vayodha hospital in kathmandu", "he was the son of the 5th rana prime minister of nepal chandra shumsher and bada maharani chandra loka bhakta lakshmi devi he became prime minister at a time when the king tribhuvan was attempting to assert himself tribhuvan wanted to establish a stronger monarchy and some democracy which mohan shamsher opposed in 1950 mohan shumsher s policies against the monarchy forced tribhuvan and his son mahendra to flee to india with the help of the indian residency and the indian government which led mohan shamhser to proclaim mahendra s three year old son gyanendra the king of nepal later in the revolution of 1951 tribhuvan returned to nepal after signing the delhi treaty between mohan shamhser tribhuvan and nepali congress thus restoring his throne and bringing the stately power back to the monarch by the end of 1951 the king and his allies the nepali congress had triumphed and mohan shumsher and the rest of the rana family lost power the ranas were deprived of all the hereditary offices and privileges conferred by king surendra bikram shah on jang bahadur even though mohan shumsher still held the office of the prime minister for until several demonstrations by ranas in", "on 6 may 2019 the party merged with federal socialist forum nepal to form samajbadi party nepal baburam bhattarai was a senior vice chairman of the unified communist party of nepal maoist and was involved in the party for over two decades including during the nepalese civil war he became the prime minister of nepal while a member of the ucpn maoist as prime minister he dissolved the 1st nepalese constituent assembly to pave the way for new elections after the constitution of nepal was promulgated on 25 september 2015 by the 2nd nepalese constituent assembly he resigned from the newly formed parliament of nepal and quit his party to form his own political force on january 21 2016 he announced the formation of the naya shakti nepal interim central council which he said would develop into a political party finally on june 12 2016 he announced the establishment of naya shakti party nepal under his leadership the party gained its first parliamentarian after the tharuhat tarai party democratic merged into the party on february 14 following this ganga satuwa chaudhary was announced as the parliamentary party leader of naya shakti the 2017 nepalese local elections were the first major", "he is also a member of the standing committee of the unified communist party of nepal maoist on april 12 2007 janamorcha nepal of which he was then a vice chairman nominated him as the new minister of health pokharel was appointed to the said position on april 29 2007 in april 2008 he won the mahottari 1 seat in the constituent assembly election as a candidate of janamorcha nepal people s front nepal he then served a second term as minister of health and population in the government formed under the leadership of the communist party of nepal maoist after it won the most seats in the constituent assembly election pokharel s second term as minister of health and population was from 31 august 2008 until 4 may 2009 when then prime minister pushpa kamal dahal prachanda resigned along with his cabinet and dissolved the government pokharel began his second term as the sole representative in the government of his party janamorcha nepal however in january 2009 janamorcha nepal and its parent party the communist party of nepal unity centre united with the communist party of nepal maoist to become the unified communist party of nepal maoist pokharel completed", "the present defence minister is ishowor pokhrel the origin and evolution of the defence administration of modern nepal dates back to the unification of nepal in 1770 from the foundation to until popular movement the defence administration was directly overseen by the crown itself before 1950 there was no division of duties between the ministry and the army headquarters the commander in chief and the senior commanding general between themselves dealt with the whole range of administration and policy regarding defence for the first time in the history of nepal a separate ministry by the name of defence ministry was set up in the interim government of 1950 headed by prime minister mohan shumsher the first defence minister was babar shumsher the organizational structure of the defence ministry at the time was quite simple having only two branches viz i general and ii budget the ministry had a secretary two deputy secretaries and two assistant secretaries since then the ministry has undergone continuous evolution and assumed the present structure the ministry of defence was established to protect and defend the nation and the people from internal instability and external threats by ensuring the sovereignty national independence and integrity of the", "k i singh was prime minister of nepal for four months in 1957 he was known as the robin hood of the himalayas after initiating an extensive land redistribution scheme in the early 1950s he was a member of the nepali congress in 1981 he joined the breakaway nepali congress subarna he was a former first aid attendant for which he was called dr k i singh dr k i singh is also the first known doctor of nepal known as dr k i singh he also played important role for revolution against autocratic rana rule of nepal his full name is dr kunwar indrajeet singh and birth name is indra dhwoj shahi but is popularly known as dr k i singh he worked in india and burma myanmar in the japanese occupied areas during 1932 34 in 1946 he joined the nepali national congress party and actively participated in the 1950 51 revolution against the ranas to establish democracy in nepal because of his strong opposition to the 1950 agreement he was arrested and jailed for 6 months he escaped and fled to china but returned later after amnesty by king mahendra he also served as the prime minister", "at the time of the shah dynasty the mulkajis chief kajis or chautariya served the function of prime ministers in a council of 4 chautariyas 4 kajis and sundry officers these bharadars officers were drawn from high caste and politically influential families such as pande dynasty basnyat dynasty thapa dynasty etc the nobility of gorkha was mainly based from chhetri families and they had a strong presence in civil administration affairs all of the prime minister of nepal between 1768 to 1950 were chhetris with the exception of ranga nath poudyal being a brahmin the executive power allocation was fluctuating between kajis and chautariyas in 1804 a single authoritative position of mukhtiyar was created by rana bahadur shah which carried the executive powers of nation mukhtiyar held the position of executive head till adoption of title of prime minister on november 1843 a d by mathabar singh thapa who became mukhtiyar as well as prime minister and commander in chief of the nepalese army during the rana dynasty the position of prime minister was hereditary and the officeholder held additional titles maharaja of lambjang and kaski supreme commander in chief of nepal and grand master of the royal orders of", "in the 2008 elections cpn m emerged as the largest party with dahal becoming prime minister in august of that year he resigned as prime minister on 4 may 2009 after his attempt to dismiss the army chief general rookmangud katawal was opposed by president ram baran yadav dahal is also widely known by his nom de guerre prachanda in nepali and other indo aryan languages the word prachanda is an adjective that translates as fierce prachanda was born into a brahmin family in pokhara a city in kaski district some west of nepal s capital kathmandu prachanda spent much of his childhood in the chitwan district he received a diploma of science in agriculture isc ag from institute of agriculture and animal science iaas in rampur chitwan and was once employed at a rural development project in jajarkot sponsored by usaid witnessing severe poverty amongst nepalis since his youth prachanda was drawn to left wing political parties he joined the underground communist party of nepal fourth convention in 1981 he became general secretary of the communist party of nepal mashal in 1989 after several iterations this party became the communist party of nepal maoist prachanda lived in secret even", "the party was established on april 5 2017 after merging with the madheshi jana adhikar forum democratic the rastriya janamukti party democratic and the dalit janajati party on october 16 2017 nepal loktantrik forum merged into the nepali congress the nepal democratic forum underwent a series of frequent mergers between april and june 2017 first the tharuhat tarai party led by bhanu ram chaudhary merged with the nlf on april 20 2017 three weeks later on may 7 the rastriya janata party nepal people s party united nepal republican people s party and shanti party nepal all merged with the nlf as well on june 2 the liberal democratic party merged with the nlf and on june 10 the citizen socialist party also joined the party joined the pushpa kamal dahal led government on may 8 with bijay kumar gachhadar as deputy prime minister and minister for federal affairs and local development jitendra dev as minister for tourism and civil aviation and gopal dahit as the minister for land reforms and management on june 3 the party chairman bijay kumar gachhadar supported the proposal of pushpa kamal dahal to endorse sher bahadur deuba as prime minister then he joined the", "in 2008 nepal was proclaimed a federal republic and old administrative units restricted after adoption of new constitution on 20 september 2015 formerly nepal was divided into 5 development regions 14 zones 75 districts 58 municipalities and 3157 village development committee kingdom of nepal was formed in 1768 by unification of nepal before the treaty of sugauli in 1814 16 the territories under nepalese control included darjeeling to the south east whole of sikkim to the east nainital to the south west and the kumaon kingdom and garhwal kingdom to the west after the sugauli treaty in 1814 16 nepal came to existence in today s shape during the time of king rajendra bir bikram shah and prime minister bhimsen thapa nepal was divided into 10 districts during the time of prime minister bir shumsher jang bahadur rana 1885 1901 nepal was divided into 32 districts and doti palpa and dhankuta were 3 gaunda english meaning cantonment hilly region had 20 districts and terai had 12 districts even after bir shumsher jang bahadur rana to the end of rana rule in nepal in 1951 and till the proclamation of new constitution of kingdom of nepal in 1962 nepal remained divided", "he was a diplomat who served king prithvi narayan shah of gorkha two of his diplomatic missions were with dolakha and kathmandu while the latter remained unsuccessful he also served as the national military commanders in the forces of prithvi narayan shah he was the patron of the gora pande clan a minor faction of the gorkha based aristocratic pande family some of his patrilineal descendants became influential politicians such as ranajit pande and dalabhanjan pande in the nepalese history through their marital ties with the thapa dynasty his matrilineal descendants became significantly influential queen tripurasundari of nepal went on to become queen mother of nepal and mathawar singh thapa the prime minister of nepal and jang bahadur kunwar ranaji the latter period ruler of kaski lamjung and prime minister of nepal he was born to father vali pande or baliram pande around 1782 vikram samvat the pande family tree published by dr dilli raman regmi shows him a patrilineal descendant of ganesh pande tularam s lineage can be traced through the inscription installed by his son kapardar bhotu pande on the bishnumati bridge the inscription explains his patrilineal relationship to ganesh pande minister of drabya shah the first king", "the election took place after the previous nepali congress government collapsed and king birenda called new elections the results saw the communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist win the most seats in the house of representatives and man mohan adhikari became prime minister at the head of a minority government king birenda agreed to introduce democracy in 1990 and to become a constitutional monarch after increasing protests by the 1990 people s movement the 1991 multi party elections saw the nepali congress party win a majority with 112 of the 205 seats girija prasad koirala was chosen by the nepali congress as their leader in parliament and was appointed prime minister by 1994 the economic situation in nepal had worsened and the opposition accused the government of being corrupt divisions had also arisen within the nepali congress after prime minister koirala was accused of helping to ensure that the president of the nepali congress krishna prasad bhattarai was defeated in a by election in february 1994 these divisions led to 36 nepali congress members of parliament abstaining on a parliamentary vote in july 1994 leading to the government losing the vote as a result koirala offered his resignation as", "the office was created in may 2008 after the country was declared as a republic the first president of nepal was ram baran yadav the current president is bidhya devi bhandari elected in october 2015 she is the first female nepali head of state the president is to be formally addressed as the right honourable sam m nan ya under the interim constitution adopted in january 2007 all powers of governance were removed from the king of nepal and the nepalese constituent assembly elected in the 2008 constituent assembly election was to decide in its first meeting whether to continue the monarchy or to declare a republic during the suspension of the monarchy girija prasad koirala then prime minister of nepal acted as head of state on 28 may 2008 the assembly voted to abolish the monarchy dr ram baran yadav won the historic election from the constituent assembly and was sworn in as the nation s first president ending a 247 year old monarchy the president is elected by an electoral college comprising the parliament of nepal and the members of the provincial legislatures a law shall determine the weight of each of their votes whoever receives a majority", "he is the son of five time prime minister of nepal surya bahadur thapa he has recently won in the constituent assembly of nepal sunil thapa worked with united nations high commission for refugees from 1988 2012 a career that spanned twenty two years and took him to disaster prone countries for the protection and reparation of refugees early in his career after returning from united states of america where he was pursuing his degree in public administration and government thapa worked in center for economic development and administration as a consultant in addition thapa was also a lecturer at kathmandu s tribhuvan university sunil thapa joined joined politics in september 2012 by taking active party membership of rashtriya prajatantra party in the general convention of rpp in may 2012 thapa garnered the second highest votes and was elected to the central working committee of rpp in november 2012 during the elections of the constituent assembly thapa was elected mp through the first past the post system from dhankuta district subsequently thapa was appointed as minister of petroleum commerce and supplies from april 2014 to september 2015 thapa then played a critical role to facilitate the unification of rpp and", "it hosts the office of the president of nepal the main palace building was and still is known as sital niwas it was built by rana prime minister chandra shumsher jbr in 1923 the government of nepal decided to make shital niwas the presidential residence at a cabinet meeting on july 4 2008 bidhya devi bhandari the incumbent president of nepal currently resides in this palace the palace was built by chandra shumsher jbr for his youngest son krishna shumsher from his first wife lokbhakta lakshmi devi in the year 1924 krishna shamsher because of political pressure from his brothers handed over sital niwas to the government of nepal in 1948 and later fled kathmandu to bangalore in 1961 after the fall of rana regime sital niwas was used by government of nepal as stately guest house and later converted into ministry of foreign affairs after the fall of monarchy in nepal the government of nepal decided to make shital niwas the presidential residence at a cabinet meeting on july 4 2008 bidhya devi bhandari the incumbent president of nepal currently resides in this palace it is located adjacent to central investigation bureau cib headquarters and a military barrack", "the party was formed in 2007 through the merger of three groups the general secretary of the party is ram singh shris rajbir the party had two members in the interim legislature of nepal pari thapa and navraj subedi in april 2013 the party merged into the communist party of nepal the party presented its manifesto for the constituent assembly polls on march 10 2008 the party proposes making nepal into a federal republic with 11 states and 2 sub states based on ethnicity language and geography it proposes having a ceremonial president and resting executive powers in the office of the prime minister according to its manifesto there would be a limit of two mandate periods for the prime ministership both prime minister and president would be elected by the parliament the party won two seats through the proportional representation vote but no seat in the first past the post system the communist party of nepal unified nabaraj subedi fraction has formally merged with the unified cpn maoist on april 2010 maoist chairman pushpa kamal dahal and cpn unified leader nabaraj subedi signed a memo on the unification between the two parties at a programme in the capital katmandhu", "the election was held alongside the first provincial elections for the seven provincial assemblies a political deadlock between the governing nepali congress and the winning left wing coalition over the system used to elect the upper house led to delay in forming the new government following the announcement of final result by the election commission k p oli of communist party of nepal unified marxist leninist was sworn in as prime minister on 15 february 2018 by the president according to article 76 2 of the constitution he passed a motion of confidence on 11 march 2018 with 208 votes the previous house of representative elected on may 1999 was dissolved by gyanendra on advice of prime minister sher bahadur deuba on may 2002 in order to hold new elections elections could not take place due to the ongoing civil war which eventually led king gyanendra to stage a royal coup on february 2005 after dismissing four prime ministers following the democracy movement of 2006 the king reinstated the earlier legislature on 15 january 2007 the house of representatives was replaced by an interim legislature the interim legislature consisted both of members appointed by an agreement between the seven party", "he was the overall commander of the nepal army in the conquest of western provinces and authoritative ruler of kumaon garhwal and its west in the kingdom of nepal he was referred by the king of nepal to have been deployed as mukhtiyar equivalent to prime minister of western provinces of kumaon garhwal and its west he is often hailed as living lion of nepal jy m do b gha and was posthumously regarded as one of the national heroes of nepal who led the anglo nepalese war for the gorkhali army he was grandson of ranjai singh of sirhanchowk and son of bhim sen known as umrao bagh bhim singh thapa who commanded and died in the battle of palanchowk in 1759 ad he belonged to bagale thapa clan his family members were added to the royal court by mukhtiyar of nepal bhimsen thapa also a member of bagale thapa clan his eldest son ranadhoj thapa was deputy to mukhtiyar prime minister bhimsen thapa sharing the authority while other four sons namely bhaktabir singh narsingh ramdas and ranjore singh all of them were kajis at some point his youngest son ranajor singh thapa fought with him in the anglo", "he is also involved in literature and have won madan puraskar for his book bisarjan in 2054 b s chand was born in kurkutiya village baitadi district nepal in 1940 he is a major supporter of the nepalese monarchy during his first two terms as prime minister he did not belong to any political party but by 1997 he was a member of his current political party the conservative rashtriya prajatantra party rpp he became prime minister on october 11 2002 a week after the king launched a coup against the nepali congress government of sher bahadur deuba chand was the head of the 2002 cabinet chand was forced to resign in 2003 after massive protests and an intensification of the civil war with maoist rebels ahead of the 2008 constituent assembly election chand is the top candidate of rpp for the closed proportional representation list he has four sons and three daughter sons jayant chand arun chand binod chand and bhupenn chand jayant chand is in politics and became minister twice and is active in his father s party arun chand is a businessman binod chand is a computer engineer and the youngest son bhupenn chand is an actor", "it was formed by former prime ministers surya bahadur thapa and lokendra bahadur chand the party has had two prime ministers thapa and chand serving two terms each since the end of the rastriya panchayat the rastriya prajatantra party was formed by the ruling elite of the panchayat era on may 29 1990 the party split in 1991 over technical differences and two parties bearing the same name ideology and statute came into existence the two parties one led by surya bahadur thapa and the other led by lokendra bahadur chand contested the 1991 elections the two parties did not perform as expected thapa s party winning 1 seat and chand s party winning 3 seats and the two parties decided to merge again the party held its first general convention on 1992 in kathmandu and unanimously elected surya bahadur thapa as its chairman lokendra bahadur chand and rajeshwor devkota were elected leader and co chairman respectlively in the 1994 elections the party received 18 percent of the votes and won 20 seats to the house of representatives making them the third largest party in the parliament no other party got a majority and the party joined coalition governments with", "he served as high commissioner of nepal to the court of st james uk and as ambassador to the united states france and the netherlands his father chandra shumsher jang bahadur rana was the prime minister of nepal from the rana dynasty born 1909 at singha durbar katmandu 4 june 1976 general gbe c 16 11 1949 kbe m 24 9 1946 he was son of bada maharani bala kumari he was educated at durbar high sch katmandu in 1927 rana was appointed maj gen from 1930 to 1931 he was acting head shrestra kousal from 1931 to 1934 he was head of madesh report nixari and 1947 1949 kothamahal from 1936 to 1943 he was dir gen pwd in 1946 he was a member of the special diplomatic mission to confer the order of ojaswi rajanya and the rank of commanding general to george vi from 1946 to 1947 rana was dir gen roads railways dept from 1947 to 1949 he was dir gen police dept in 1948 he was promoted to the rank of general from 1948 to 1949 he was adc general chief of staff to the prime minister from 1949 to 1954 rana was ambassador at", "around 1873 thapa son in law of prime minister jung bahadur rana was on a tour of darjeeling he was impressed by the sight of the young tea plants and the taste of the drink he was offered everywhere he went upon his return to nepal he set up two plantations the ilam and soktim tea estates each and so began nepal s tea industry colonel thapa was then the governor general bada hakim of the eastern region of nepal translation of various signposts placed in ilam shown below reads that the very first tea saplings planted by thapa was received as a gift from the government of china it was gifted to his father in law prime minister jung bahadur rana according to the signpost the genus of tea planted in the estate were camellia sinensis camellia assamica camellia assamica sub sp lasiocalyx or cambodensis thapa was born c 1830 to hemdal singh thapa in 1860 he married maharajkumari badan kumari rana of kaski and lamjung the eldest child of sri teen jung bahadur rana they had one son and four daughters the son was colonel harka jung thapa" ]
which river runs through union station in toronto
[ "Don River" ]
[ "A River Runs Through It", "Chicago Union Station", "Run Through the Jungle", "Toronto", "River Run, Ohio", "Run Run Run", "St. Louis Union Station", "City of Toronto", "Over the River and Through the Wood", "Let the River Run", "Union Station in Los Angeles", "running", "Run", "In the Running", "the Six Rivers Running Club", "runs", "Run Fatboy Run", "a run", "that which burns", "that which purifies", "On the Run", "Run It!", "the Toronto Marlies", "Scarborough, Toronto", "Run, Baby Run", "Toronto area", "Ubisoft Toronto", "Toronto Rifles", "The Run", "Toronto, Canada", "Run Rabbit Run", "running an electric current through salt water" ]
American Southern Flavor In Berlin
[ "Monika Mueler Kroll stopped by the American bluegrass bar \"SIN\" in Kreuzberg to see how how a couple country musicians ended up so far from home." ]
[ "Anthropologist Sydney Mintz once said, \"The mystery of food taboos is a test case for exploring a culture's gustatory selectivity.\" The traditional German street food known as \"currywurst\" provides such a case, allowing outside observers an opportunity to taste something unique, indulge in a little post-war history, and discover how the universal need for food can bind individuals and groups together. The currywurst's origins are attributed specifically to the German capital. In 1949, a resourceful German housewife, Herta Heuwer, traded some spirits with British soldiers for ketchup. The trade created the dish - composed of German sausage, or wurst, sliced and doused in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. An odd and unforeseen match, currywurst became an overnight success and eventually a staple, mainly amongst construction workers who valued its high protein content, hint of exotic flavor, and low cost. At first it maintained this function as a substitute for a poor man's steak, but soon it extended beyond the proletarian palate and became a popular meal amongst Berliners of all social apparati. This simple street food, with origins stemming from a combination of post-war hunger, resourcefulness, and openness to new flavors, may seem like a culinary contradiction in a city like Berlin, with its large sprawl of bio and organic markets and its renewed interest in supporting local agriculture. (Berlin is one of the greenest cities in Europe, and Germany as a whole has one of the highest followings for the international movement known as \"Slow Food.\") However, its simplicity, accessibility, low cost, and large following of movie stars, businessmen, and high-profile politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schröder and Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, reflects Berlin's egalitarian attitude towards food. Although it rivals New York City hot dog stands and carries the qualities of fast food, currywurst has managed to escape mass-manufacturing. There is no McCurrywurst, nor is each stand the same. The difference in taste is particularly evident whether you're in East or West Berlin. During the lifetime of the Berlin Wall, the East had no access to casing for the sausage, and, therefore, the currywurst in the East tended to be softer than its Western counterpart. Today, it remains the same. At its core, currywurst is a simple street food - something you can eat while standing up, on-the-go, or late at night after a few too many beers. However, its gastronomical growth remains its best ingredient, providing a window into Berlin's post-war mentality. Its ability to move beyond a terrible past, to embrace new flavors and make them its own, reflects a food culture that is both traditional and still evolving.", "Not too long ago, certain attention-getting molecular gastronomy cookbooks just dared you to go buy xanthan gum and a sous-vide machine. But now the summer cookbooks have arrived, and they evince a plainspoken, blushing charm that puts that prior fuss and fanfare to shame. Single subjects and simple preparations dominate the summer list this year. Whether they focused on whole grains, summer produce or seasonal ingredients, authors found ways to craft memorable recipes revolving around just a few well-chosen flavor elements. And while I saw contenders from all the usual warm-weather cuisines (especially Italy and Mexico), the standouts this year were in American regional fare. There are, it goes without saying, enticing Southern books — but also coastal ones, and, in what may be a first, a book that splendidly and unironically praises the culinary traditions of the American Midwest. As spring closed its breezy doors, I missed, for a moment, the high-spirited summer staples that so stood out in years past — the grill books with their macho flame decor, the funny little cocktail or ice cream books. But not for long, for while this summer's books may be basic and uncluttered, they are anything but austere. Amber Waves, But Also So Much More Heartland: The Cookbook, by Judith Fertig, hardcover, 304 pages, Andrews McMeel, list price: $35 There are two views of the Midwest which Heartland sets out to defy: 1) that nothing grows there anymore except vast tracts of soy and wheat; and 2) that the food is traditional, bland and purged of ethnic flavor. The Midwest, Fertig counters, is the home of a burgeoning small-farm movement, a culinary heritage enriched by decades of immigration, and a host of artisanal producers: La Quercia's smoked meats, Maytag blue cheese, Minnesota wild rice. The photographs are expansive, the recipes farmhouse-earthy — but also just a trifle chic, like a Farm Girl Cosmo made with rhubarb syrup. A Rainbow Of Flavors, All Of Them Southern Sara Foster's Southern Kitchen, by Sara Foster, hardcover, 416 pages, Random House, list price: $35.00 It's no surprise that in a summer full of American regional standout cookbooks, there are two Southern books worth rushing out for. Sara Foster has a thriving Piedmont enterprise (gourmet stores in Durham and Chapel Hill), but her cooking is more pan-Southern than not. She'll cook Cajun, Tidewater, Low Country — any idiom, but always looking for the deep layers of flavor that give food tourists the feeling that Southern cooks really care. Yes, you have to work a little sometimes, but it's always for a reason. I mean, you don't have to make the buttermilk biscuits for pork tenderloin with roasted tomato-thyme gravy , but how else are you going to make sure you get every last drop of that goodness off your plate? Let Me Tell Y'all A Story A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home, by Martha Hall Foose, hardcover, 256 pages, Clarkson Potter, list price: $32.50 A Southerly Course has glorious photography and quirky, unexpected recipes (a souffle with day lilies and apricots! Cold soybean salad with cucumbers and sesame seeds!) but for me, it's all about the stories. As in her previous book, Screen Doors and Sweet Teas, Foose has an anecdote for every occasion — profiles of local characters, stories from her footloose childhood, and completely random observations. Every time I read a Martha Hall Foose book I try to pin down its elusive charm, but I just end up sitting there mesmerized until some mouthwatering suggestion about asparagus drives me to the kitchen. The Catch And The Harvest, Down East-Style Maine Classics: More than 150 Delicious Recipes From Down East, by Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier, hardcover, 320 pages, Running Press, list price: $30 Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier might come across as upscale chefs, but the Maine restaurateurs have turned out an elegant, close-to-the-source cookbook that anyone can enjoy provided they can get the pristine ingredients Maine is celebrated for. \"Mark & Clark,\" as they're affectionately known, systematically trawl the foodways chapter by chapter: from Shore (shellfish galore!) to Sea (lobster, but also familiar Atlantic finfish, as in Bacon-wrapped cod with Hominy Cake). They stroll through Forest, Garden and Farm — even Bakery (blueberries, maple, rhubarb). The pair work in a fervently eat-local idiom, which makes one suspect that in the end, the best way to enjoy these dishes (as easy as they are to cook in a home kitchen) may be to simply travel Down East oneself. The Cold And Flavorful Pacific Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast, by Becky Selengut, paperback, 288 pages, Sasquatch Books, list price: $29.95 It seems unfair to include an East Coast book without also including a West Coast one, and fortunately this year there's a doozy -- Good Fish from regional publisher Sasquatch Books. Although not everyone will be able to get Arctic char and sablefish, there ", "Few dishes showcase Southern tradition more perfectly than a slice of pecan pie, with its dark custard filling and crunchy, nutty topping. Sweet and buttery, the pecans that figure so prominently in that iconic pie are America's only major indigenous tree nut. They're native to the Deep South, where the long, warm growing season provides an optimal climate. And they're the third-most-popular nut in the U.S. behind peanuts and almonds, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center. With 10 million pecan trees producing over 200,000 tons of pecans in America today, the nut hardly needs bolstering. But recently, it has become the focus of experiments by Southern farmers, chefs and craft breweries. Inspired in part by the fast-growing farm-to-table movement, which sets a premium on local products, they are giving the pecan new opportunities to shine in the form of cold-pressed oil, gluten-free flour and even beer. Toasting or roasting brings nut oils to the surface, and pecans are practically overflowing: 75 percent of the nut is pure oil. Compare that with the peanut, which is 50 percent oil, and the almond, which is around 45 percent oil. As with all nuts, roasting not only intensifies the pecan's flavor but also it adds to its richness. At Oliver Farm, an award-winning producer of artisan oils in Cordele, Ga., Clay Oliver uses an old-fashioned screw press to produce several thousand bottles of delicate pecan oil a year. He sells to Southern chefs, specialty stores around Georgia and online. \"Pecans have that mysterious extra-something and an unforgettable flavor that renders the oil and flour delicious,\" says Oliver. Native Georgia chef Steven Satterfield, a James Beard Foundation Award finalist in 2013 and 2014, uses Oliver Farm's oil for everything from frying food to crafting pecan pesto vinaigrette at his Miller Union restaurant in Atlanta. \"I love traditional Southern food,\" he says, \"but I want to experiment just enough to keep it fresh and interesting and new.\" Oliver Farm's defatted, gluten-free flour has earned such a big following of Southern bakers that it quickly sells out. Dede Wilson's Bakepedia, a baking and dessert recipe website, offers a recipe for pecan flour buttermilk pancakes with an added drizzle of pecan oil. Georgia chef Jennifer Booker, author of Field Peas to Foie Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent, uses the pecan oil in traditional southern shrimp and grits, and for sautéeing collard greens. But perhaps the most surprising new venue for the pecan is a craft beer called Southern Pecan Brown Ale, produced by Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company in Kiln, Miss. Founded by husband-and-wife team Mark and Leslie Henderson, it's the state's first brewery since the Prohibition. \"Our pecan ale is our flagship beer and the first one in the world made with whole roasted pecans,\" says Leslie Henderson. The beer won a Bronze Medal in the 2006 World Beer Cup and is now available in 17 southern states. \"We were initially worried the oils would kill the foam on our beer,\" says Henderson. \"But the pecans ferment just like a grain and provide nuttiness and flavor unmatched in other beers. There's still a lot of hops and malt, but the nutty flavor shines through.\" What inspired the beer in the first place? \"Comfort foods like pecan pie and pecan pralines give us that old, charming, Deep South romance,\" Henderson says. \"We wanted to hearken back to that hospitality yet create something new. Our beer is complex but really approachable.\" Pecan pancakes and beer for breakfast, anyone? Jill Neimark is an Atlanta-based writer whose work has been featured in Discover, Scientific American, Science, Nautilus, Aeon, Psychology Today and The New York Times.", "Hailing from Murfreesboro, Tenn., Glossary has persevered as an underdog for more than a decade. After releasing albums independently and self-financing tours throughout its career, the quintet was finally picked up by a label, which released Feral Fire earlier this month. Named after a line in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Feral Fire expands upon many of the ideas in Glossary's previous album, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Describing its style as \"American rock 'n' roll,\" the band plays soulful Southern rock, but with an accessibly pop-flavored hum.", "Known for freeways more than forests, Los Angeles isn't the first place one thinks of when it comes to foraging for food in the wilderness. But for Pascal Baudar, the city is a treasure trove of hundreds of varieties of wild plants and insects that he uses in unusual culinary creations. Thirty years ago, Baudar moved to Los Angeles from a small town in Belgium where, as a child, he spent much of his time in the forest. \"You pick up plants, you munch on [them], walnuts, hazelnuts. ... And sometimes you ask the old people ...'Can I eat that? What can you do with it?' So you learn,\" he says. These days, he's passing on that knowledge to the public. Baudar holds classes every weekend that usually end with a tasting of his wild-sourced cuisine. A couple of months ago, I joined a group of about 20 students who followed Baudar on a foraging expedition in a pocket of private land in the Angeles National Forest. Hunting and gathering for your supper is an age-old idea, of course. But the rise of restaurants like the world-acclaimed Noma, in Copenhagen — renowned for its menu scavenged from the Nordic Coast — has made foraging fashionable in haute cuisine. Baudar has been working with Michelin-starred restaurants in the Los Angeles area, like Niki Nakayama's n/naka. While many foragers provide wild foods to restaurants, Baudar also contributes his culinary expertise on the wild plants he forages. \"I'm not interested in providing wild food to restaurants. It's not fun. My passion is to work with the chef,\" figuring out which techniques and flavors fit best with the menu, Baudar explains. Baudar experiments with a wide range of culinary processes, inspired by everything from medieval cookbooks to Native American preservation techniques. He says his passion is to rediscover the lost flavors of Southern California. \"If you ask what California cuisine is, practically every chef will give you a different definition,\" says Baudar. For instance, acorn is an abundant nut that was a staple food for California's Native Americans for thousands of years. He uses ground acorn to add a nutty flavor to meat. On our trip into the forest, he cooks up a sweet treat for us — a dish called \"pears cooked in forest floor.\" The fruit is cooked in a solar oven on a bed of wild grasses and herbs. We also sample what Baudar calls \"trout pickled in its own environment,\" which involves brining trout in vinegar and plants local to the area in which the fish lived. Later, he tells me he is experimenting with cooking in sea water and candying leaves. Baudar bridges the gap between plant identification and cooking in his recently released book The New Wildcrafted Cuisine, which deals with \"what you can actually do with wild plants.\" Still, Baudar wishes foraging was quite a bit less popular than it's become. In parts of the world, the country, and even nearby in Northern California, foraging is turning from the hippest way to spend the weekend, to an inconsiderate trampling of local plants. Baudar shakes his head, \"That's not cool.\" The foremost rule of foraging, he says, is that \"you don't take more than 10 to 20 percent of what you find.\" And more importantly, mindful foragers must also be well educated about the habitats in which they forage. Knowing the habitat's ecological history, which plants are native vs. non-native (and invasive), and what the local animals rely on are all essential considerations when foraging. Baudar says he is well-versed in identifying plants not only from research in books and on the Internet, but through developing his own senses. \"You see it, you smell it, you taste it.\" But, he warns, \"you have to know what you're doing before you taste it.\" He laughs, \"Poison oak, for example.\" When I asked Baudar about the threat of over-foraging in Southern California, he says there are few plants that are susceptible to this. He has seen local sellers over-forage white-sage, however. But he is quick to report such people. Baudar tells me, \"A true trained forager is someone who will take care of the trees. I'm going to prune them, go to the waterways and remove blockages. ... You kind of become a steward of the forest.\" I leave Angeles National Forest feeling worlds away from the fancy restaurants and buzzing streets of Los Angeles, with the taste of those wild-cooked pears still lingering in my mouth. Baudar assures me that there are many more flavors to explore. \"In Southern California very, very few people are using wild plants in cuisine,\" he says, adding, \"There is so much more to experiment with!\" Like white sage, mallow — an herb with an okra-like flavor — and even an insect secretion called lerp that he uses as a sugar. As Baudar says, \"So many wild plants! So little time!\"", "There is perhaps no Sunday morning pastime more beloved by Berliners than das Frühstück, an extended brunch that permits bleary-eyed morning diners to linger over a glass of Bavarian beer and neutralize a pleasure-saturated weekend with a hand-rolled cigarette and an almond milk, double-shot cappuccino. Lucky Leek, a recently opened vegan eatery in Prenzlauer Berg, provides such an experience, infusing the Berliners' tradition of leisurely breakfasting with a plant-based twist. With a kitchen nestled inside a snug, half-basement building with small windows, eye-level to the yawning, pedestrian-plenty Kollwitzstraße, Lucky Leek's smattering of outdoor picnic tables and benches are marked by massive, mandarin-colored umbrellas. German-born co-owner Seb Happe says brunch-goers might not find the restaurant, which is indicated with a nondescript sign; \"Lucky Leek\" is stenciled and painted directly onto the exterior in cursive script. \"We didn't want to create a place that was trendy or pricey-looking,\" Happe says of his and co-owner Jojo Hartanto's aesthetic inclinations. \"Just a good, clean, honest space where our guests can feel cozy.\" Seb and Jojo (pronounced yo-yo) opened Lucky Leek in April of this year. The two are business partners, as well as a couple, and they have an endearing, punkish air about them. Blue-eyed Seb wears a backwards ball cap and has stretched ears accessorized with onyx-black plugs, roughly the size of a 2 Euro coin. Jojo, with tousled pigtails and fork-and-spoon medallions on a chain dangling from her left ear, wears boyish clothes and beat-up sneakers-what a woman wears when she is a chef who oversees a busy back-of-house. They are a perfect pair and a seemingly unlikely fit in Prenzlauer Berg, whose closest micro-cultural analog might be New York's Park Slope, a neighborhood inhabited by the artsy-gentry demographic. Seb and Jojo live in the decidedly less-manicured Neukölln district, where they visit their neighborhood's local markets to procure the seasonal produce that is the centerpiece of Lucky Leek. At their restaurant, there is no set menu; just as local harvests vary, so do the fickle whims of Jojo's gastronomic inventions. \"I bore easily,\" she says, \"and I object to recipes.\" Her culinary process is intuitive; she simply senses what farm-fresh ingredients will combine to please diner's palates and forges ahead, developing dishes in medias res. This isn't to say her laissez faire approach is naive. Not only are her variegated, literally irreproducible dishes flavorful and often astonishing in their simplicity, (think California-style cuisine) but they are also born of the technical expertise she cultivated during her formal training at culinary school in 2000. At the time, Jojo says, \"I prepared meat, and I ate it.\" Then, laughing, she went on to explain that she became vegan in what she describes as the \"classic\" way: One day a trigger was pushed in my head. Jojo and Seb named Lucky Leek by riffing off the name of the classic cartoon character Lucky Luke, first created mid-century by Belgian comics artist Rene Goscinny. Lucky Luke is a cowboy whose adventures occur in America's fabled Wild West, and the eponymous hero is known for his lightning-quick draw: Lucky Luke can shoot faster than his own shadow. Abigail Wick is an American freelance writer living and working in Berlin. She is the founder of the food blog Eating With Abs, an in-house editor for Unlike international city guides, and a weekly love and relationships columnist for EcoSalon magazine. For the NPR Berlin Blog, Abigail will be writing \"Berliner Veg,\" a city-specific culinary arts column that highlights plant-based gastronomy in Europe's vegetarian capital.", "A year ago, NPR's Uri Berliner decided to take his money out of a savings account that was losing value to inflation and turn it loose in an investing adventure. A series of stories in 2013 described his newly acquired assets and sought to shed light on how the markets for them worked. I had up to $5,000 of savings I was willing to risk. I ended up investing around $3,600. (For a breakdown of the investments, click here.) I separated the investments into two distinct categories: Plain vanilla, which were the kind of low-cost, diversified funds we ought to have in our retirement accounts. More flavorful assets that I chose primarily (OK, exclusively) for their storytelling potential, like buying a painting online, making a bulk haul at Costco as a hedge against inflation, and betting on coffee futures. A number of my colleagues have said, \"Hey, whatever happened to your investments, Mr. Business Editor?\" So here's the scorecard. Fair warning 1: My idiosyncratic portfolio was assembled for a reporting adventure. It's not meant to be investment advice. Far from it. This in no way, shape or form resembles how I've invested for retirement. Do not copy my investments. It could be an epic mistake. You've been forewarned. Fair warning 2: All strong returns were entirely the result of luck and/or fortuitous timing. As they say on Wall Street, past performance is no guarantee of future results. All disappointing results were well worth it in pursuit of a good story. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Next we have the story of a colleague who put his money where his mouth is. NPR business editor, Uri Berliner, helps us to understand business, so he decided to do some. The cash he was keeping in a savings account was not keeping up with inflation, so he bet on assets - ranging from stocks to a painting bought online. Here's his update. URI BERLINER, BYLINE: I had up to $5,000 I was willing to invest. A chunk of it would be heading to the stock market. What mattered to me was diversification and keeping my fees and expenses as low as possible. So I reached out to Miranda Marquit, a personal-finance blogger. We went shopping together for low-cost ETF's - funds that match broad portions of the market. MIRANDA MARQUIT: This has an expense ratio of .04 percent, so that's really - that's low. BERLINER: I didn't want my basket to be filled entirely with U.S. stocks. It needed an international flavor. MARQUIT: Yeah, that one would be a good one. So you can get most of the total world stocks. BERLINER: How am I doing? Since I put together my little stock portfolio last spring, it's gone up 20 percent. What hasn't done so well is a fund I bought that invests in commercial real estate - it's up 4 percent. So that's the plain vanilla chapter of my investing story. Let's move on to a much more speculative bet - coffee futures. Last spring, coffee futures were in a rut at a three and a half year low. I went to Chicago to meet Jack Scoville. He is a futures broker and I asked him - what was keeping prices down? JACK SCOVILLE: We've had a significant uptick in production. When you look at Columbia, their production's increased. And Brazil has just had a whopper year. BERLINER: But a year later, the situation has changed. The excess supply of coffee beans - it's gone, and my coffee futures fund is up 21 percent. So I check in with Jack Scoville again and ask him, what's been happening over the past year? SCOVILLE: What's really sent prices higher is a draught in Brazil, which is threatening to really curtail the production there. BERLINER: My next investment is a lot more tangible than the future price of coffee. It filled up an entire shopping cart at Costco. BERLINER: All right, toothpaste, pecans, big bag of onions - we're getting my items run up here. My strategy - bulk buying. Buying in bulk is cheaper than purchasing items one at a time. And if prices are rising, those bulk purchases can be a good hedge against inflation. Last year, I asked economist Russ Roberts to come along while I shopped at a Costco in Washington DC. RUSS ROBERTS: So it's certainly true that cash, if you can spare it, to convert your cash into real goods, whose price is rising, that's not a bad idea. BERLINER: A little more than a year later, I put the idea to the test. Here I am at Costco. This is round two, the update. Again, my bet only pays off if the prices on last year's bulk purchases are now higher. OK, last year I bought 3 pounds of pistachios for 14.89, his year they're 18.99 - a lot more expensive. Pistachio inflation - I never would have guessed that. How about a four-pack of toothpaste? So last year this toothpaste went for 12.99. This year, 8.99 with a rebate. So it's a lot cheaper. And so it goes. Trash bags are up in price but tuna fish is cheaper. All told prices from last year's haul have climbed only around 1 percent, making my hedge against inflation a bit of a bust. For my last investment, I took to the Internet - all the way to Vilnius, Lithuania.", "After another week of financial turmoil in Europe, there was little hope that the Eurozone debt crisis is any closer to being resolved. NPR's Eric Westervelt in Berlin and Sylvia Poggioli in Athens join host Scott Simon to discuss how northern and southern Europeans differ in their attitudes to the debt crisis in Europe.", "From a concert at Victoria Hall, in Geneva, conductor Pinchas Steinberg leads the Orchestra of the Suisse Romande in music from the L'Arlesienne (lar-lazy-ENN) Suite by Georges Bizet. The music was written for a play set in the south of France called \"The Girl from Arles,\" and Bizet made sure it reflected the flavor of southern French countryside.", "This week marks the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, the great Allied victory over Hitler's forces in Europe during World War II. What you may not realize is that the war helped forever change the American palate, as returning GIs brought home a craving for a pungent, fragrant herb they had encountered overseas: oregano. It's hard to believe that an herb now so ubiquitous was practically unheard of in American cooking before the war. For instance, in How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher's legendary 1942 cookbook on preparing simple meals during a time of privation, oregano gets just one mention: a teaspoon for the Minestrone soup recipe — as an \"optional but nice\" ingredient. Little knowing how Italian food would take off in the next decades, Fisher patriotically offered a \"green garden soup\" as an alternative to minestrone, because, as she noted, \"I know several earnest, thoughtful women who would rather see their children peaked than brew something with the foreign name minestrone, because in this year of 1942, the United States is at war with Italy.\" But there's no escaping oregano today. It is found in breadcrumbs and salad vinaigrettes; garlic bread is speckled with it, meatballs are loaded with it, and billions of slices of pizzas are smothered with it. Americans consume more than 14 million pounds every year. Of all the herbs the U.S. imports, oregano is No. 1 in terms of both quantity and value. It's safe to say that oregano, whose name is derived from the Greek words oros (mountain) and ganos (joy), can rightfully stake its claim to the title of America's herb of choice. The first time a large and diverse group of Americans came into contact with oregano was during the grueling Italian campaign fought from 1943 to 1945. On the stormy morning of July 10, 1943, a massive influx of 150,000 British and American troops made air and sea landings on the island of Sicily. The plan was to invade Southern Italy, which Winston Churchill called \"the soft underbelly of Europe.\" But the region also had other belly enticements in store for the invading soldiers. Southern Italy is the region where oregano grows abundantly. It perfumes both the air and the food, where it is used liberally, unlike in Northern Italy, where it is hardly used at all. It was here that many soldiers first encountered oregano and fell in love with the way its sharp, woodsy flavors transformed their pizza, another rustic food many of them were tasting for the first time. As it happened, one of the food suppliers to the U.S. Army was the Italian immigrant Hector Boiardi, who later Americanized his named to Chef Boyardee. During the war, thousands of GIs ate his tins of spaghetti in tomato sauce. When they got back home, they began to look for the same kind of food, but this time they wanted it flavored with their new favorite \"pizza herb.\" \"It's my understanding that the American soldiers brought [oregano] back from Italy with them after World War II,\" Italian-American celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich told me in an email. She adds, \"When I arrived in America as a young girl, over a decade after the war, oregano was definitely in most of the Italian-American restaurants, pizzerias and family homes that I visited. Of all the aromatic herbs, the only one I like and use dried is oregano. Its aroma and flavor seems to intensify when dry, but still bring a freshness to the palate.\" Between 1948 and 1956, sales of oregano in the U.S. rose by an astounding 5,200 percent, says food writer and historian John F. Mariani in his 2011 book, How Italian Food Conquered the World. From an herb the Department of Commerce didn't even bother to list separately in its import records, oregano became one whose imports zoomed to 1.5 million pounds a year by the 1960s. Even Peg Bracken's delightful 1960 I Hate to Cook Book, which takes a perverse pride in shunning exotic ingredients and sticking to stuff available in the average kitchen cupboard, lists oregano as a staple, along with curry powder and chili powder. As food writer Mariani rightly points out, the use of oregano in the U.S. predated the war — it was a central part of the food of New York's immigrant Italians, who were predominantly from Southern Italy. New York was the nursery of Italian food in America. By the time the GIs went marching off to fight Hitler and Mussolini, Italians made up close to a fifth of the city's population. But Italian food was still a distinctly niche affair, Mariani tells me. While some Americans around the immigrant hubs of New York, New Orleans and California were adventurous enough to sample this new fare, the larger populations in the Midwest and South remained ignorant of pizza, as did many city people. So much so that in a 1939 column, the New York Herald Tribune's food writer felt it necessary to explain what a pizza pie was and that it was pronounced \"peet-za.\" The war changed everything. By 1951, the jazz saxophonist Art Pepper had composed a sharp, sibilant number called \"Ar", "Monika Mueller-Kroll has lived in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and Berlin, filing radio reports for German Public Radio, including MDR, BR and Deutschlandradio Kultur. She has worked for the BBC World Service and contributed to American radio programs, producing reports for \"Studio 360\" and NPR's former midday program \"Day to Day.\" In 2005, she won the RIAS Berlin Kommission Radio Award for her essays \"Berlin Impressions.\" For NPR Berlin, Mueller-Kroll produces short features for the \"Life in Berlin\" series. She currently lives in Berlin.", "Vanilla, chili, garlic, soy. We’ll taste the “Eight Flavors” that writer Sarah Lohman says now define American cuisine and culture. This show originally broadcast on December 15, 2016. Flavor is a sensation that goes deep, to taste and smell and memory. The flavors that hold and tell the American story go deep, and all over the world. From the black pepper that Yankee sailors brought back from the East to exotic vanilla, to chili and garlic and soy and the Sriracha sauce brewed up in California by a refugee from Vietnam. Historical gastronomist Sarah Lohman finds America in eight defining flavors – and great stories behind each. This hour On Point: the defining flavors of America. — Tom Ashbrook Guest Sarah Lohman, writer, food historian and blogger. Runs the gastronomy site, Four Pounds Flour. Author of the new book, “Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.” (@FourPoundsFlour) From Tom’s Reading List NPR: How Just 8 Flavors Have Defined American Cuisine — “She made a list of common flavors from many historical cookbooks, and used Google’s Ngram viewer to count how often the various flavors were mentioned in American books from 1796 to 2000. Eight popular and enduring flavors emerged: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG and Sriracha.” The Atlantic: How American Cuisine Became a Melting Pot — “Early on, she establishes her argument that food is much more than nourishment: It’s an intrinsic part of human culture. ‘The physiological signals of flavor are interpreted in our brain’s frontal lobe,’ she writes, ‘the part of the brain where emotional reactions are processed and personality is formed. Personal experience, our memories, and our emotions all inform the experience.’ No Thanksgiving dish is an island; each one carries its own weight of memory and emotional connection before we so much as take a single bite.” USA Today: ‘Eight Flavors’ is a tasty history of American cuisine — “When Sarah Lohman describes herself as a “historic gastronomist,” she is being too modest. She is, in addition, an accomplished writer, an intrepid traveler, dogged researcher and pundit. She knows what Americans eat, what our ancestors ate, and why.”", "I first got to taste Blue Seal ice cream 13 years ago. I was 24 years old and teaching English in a tiny mountain town called Furukawa, which means \"Old River.\" One weekend, some Canadian friends and I flew to Okinawa, Japan's southern-most island. Once we arrived in downtown Naha, Okinawa's capital city, my friends decided to dine at a steakhouse. And as the only vegetarian in the group, I was on my own. As I wandered down Kokusai-dori, or International Street, I saw the welcoming orange and blue entrance of a Blue Seal ice cream shop. Inside, there were rectangular tubs of bright purples and greens, almost like an Easter egg basket full of pastel-colored delights. I soon realized these were flavors I'd never tasted before: the light purple beni-imo (a slightly sweet Okinawan sweet potato) and the darker purple ube (a hearty, tropical purple yam). I gorged on delicious scoops and somehow found comfort in these unfamiliar flavors in a shop that felt quintessentially American. I was surrounded by waffle cones, a spacious seating area, and bright lights that reminded me of after-school trips to Dairy Queen for chocolate dipped cones. That night, I ate ice cream for dinner, not an uncommon meal choice for an obsessive sweet tooth like me. For me, then a newbie in Japan, the novelty of Blue Seal's rare, enticing Okinawan-style flavors seemed to mix perfectly with the familiarity of an ice cream parlor that brought back childhood memories. I was hooked. And during many subsequent trips to Okinawa in the coming years, when I visited the island as a journalist, I returned to the same Blue Seal shop – to indulge my obsession with its flavors and learn about the brand's unusual history. Blue Seal ice cream's slogan is \"Born in America, Raised in Okinawa.\" It was originally created for American soldiers in the days after World War II, when the U.S. military established its first bases in Okinawa. The fledgling ice cream company opened its first factory in 1948 inside a military base, so American troops stationed there, thousands of miles from home, could enjoy dairy products, especially ice cream. In the post-war era, Okinawans had to ration food supplies due to shortages, and ice cream was considered a rare treat that few could ever try. In those years, Blue Seal was only available to the U.S. military. Okinawan Blue Seal factory workers were allowed to eat leftovers once in a while. It wasn't until 1963 that Blue Seal ice cream finally became available to locals. That year, the company set up operations at the site of the current flagship store, adjacent to one of the island's main highways. The brand later transferred to Okinawan ownership and over the years, added local flavors. I first visited the flagship location on a trip to the island in 2011. It's an American-themed diner complete with large, red vinyl booths, vintage Pepsi Cola ads, and a life-size statue of a U.S. military serviceman seated at the counter. On my most recent visit this past November, I found the shop full of Okinawan mothers with young children adding toppings to their ice cream bars, couples sharing a banana split, office workers treating themselves to slices of pie à la mode, and a cluster of mainland Japanese guys with dyed hair, low-rise jeans and hip street wear (the \"bad boy\" look, my colleague told me). These days, while tourists from mainland Japan and abroad are drawn to the uniquely Okinawan flavors such as Shiiquasa, an Okinawan citrus fruit, and Ryukyu Royal Milk Tea, made from locally sourced tea, it's the American flavors that appeal most to locals. \"They like the original American flavors like San Francisco mint chip, vanilla and cookies, and strawberry cheesecake,\" says Arisa Odo, a member of Blue Seal's marketing team. Soon after my conversation with her in one of the diner's plush vinyl booths, I see a group of Okinawan teen girls in a neighboring booth, their school backpacks lined up on the ledge around them. Each one is wielding a long spoon, eagerly awaiting an ice cream treat that's about to come their way. Soon enough, a mountainous 17-scoop sundae in a glass platter arrives at their table. Armed with smart phones, they begin to Instagram away before digging in. Turns out they're English majors at the nearby Okinawa International University, and have stopped by for an after-school ice cream outing. They tell me it's a popular place to hang out with friends and eat ice cream. And they find the American theme \"cute.\" \"Young people in Okinawa like Blue Seal ice-cream because they have eaten and become familiar with it since they were little,\" explains Odo. For the people over 40, she says it brings back a sense of nostalgia. Okinawa was under U.S. occupation up until the 1970s. American culture infused so many aspects of Okinawan life. Cars even drove on the right side of the street until the island reverted back to Japan. Despite the Okinawan movement to free themselves from U.S. control in the post-war era and ongoin", "Chef, former model and television personality Barbara Smith may not be from the South, but that doesn't stop her from cooking Southern style. \"If you're of African-American descent, somewhere along the line, you have family that's lived in the South,\" she tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen. \"The foods that my mother cooked in Western Pennsylvania were Southern foods.\" Smith draws on those Southern influences as the proprietor of three restaurants and the author of the new cookbook B. Smith Cooks Southern Style. The new book offers techniques for putting more healthful twists on traditional Southern dishes, including braise of black-eyed peas and greens soup and Southern-style collard greens. \"I love fat because it adds such great flavor, but in moderation these days,\" she says. Though she learned Southern-style cooking from her parents and her extended family in North Carolina, Smith says anyone can learn to cook Southern cuisine. But, she warns, some of the recipes in the book require quite a bit of effort. Take, for instance, Turducken (chicken, within a duck, within a turkey), which merits its own chapter in the book. Smith's Turducken recipe includes a different type of stuffing for each, and, the chef admits, the dish is not for amateurs: \"It might be something you want to try with a sister or a pal, where they do all the dressings, and you make sure you have the turkey and the duck and the chicken.\" Despite step-by-step instructions for the more complex recipes, Smith says it is important to add individual flair when cooking. \"That's what I like about recipe books,\" says Smith. \"Mine is a map, and then you take that map and go where you want to go with it.\" Braise of Black-Eyed Peas and Greens Soup Yields 6 servings Braising is a method of cooking that involves first browning an ingredient such as meat or vegetables, then finishing cooking in a liquid over low heat. This slow style of cooking allows you to create dishes with incredible flavor and tenderness. While this dish isn't a traditional braise, I use the term because there's a whole lot of slow cookin' goin' on in this soup of vegetables, black-eyed peas, meat, and greens. I like to use kale or collard greens in the recipe because they hold up well to this type of slow cooking. Serve this hearty soup with a loaf of crusty bread for dipping! 1 1/4 cups (about 10 ounces) dried black-eyed peas, or two 15-ounce cans cooked black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 cup diced sweet onion, such as Vidalia 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup diced celery 1/2 cup diced carrots 2 bay leaves 1 1/2 cups chopped kale or collard greens, stems discarded 1 cup diced pork, ham, or smoked turkey breast 6 cups low-sodium chicken stock or broth 2 teaspoons Creole seasoning 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste1 cup cooked barbecued rib meat, shaved off the bone and chopped, optional for garnish 1. The day before serving, in a large bowl, place the dried black-eyed peas. Cover with water and let soak overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly. Or, to quick-soak the peas, place them in a large pot or Dutch oven, cover with water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from the heat, cover tightly, and let stand for 1 hour, then drain and rinse thoroughly. 2. In a large Dutch oven or saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, celery, and carrots, and saute for about 5 minutes, until tender. Add the bay leaves, kale or collard greens, and meat to the pot, and saute, stirring frequently, for 2 to 3 minutes. 3. Add the chicken stock, soaked dried black-eyed peas or drained and rinsed canned black-eyed peas, Creole seasoning, and oregano to the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the peas are tender. 4. Remove the bay leaves, and season with salt and pepper. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve immediately, garnished with chopped rib meat if desired. Southern-Style Collard Greens Yields 8 servings Collard greens are one of the oldest members of the cabbage family. This recipe is reminiscent of my mother's. She seemed to let her greens simmer away for hours! I make mine with ham hocks, which help tenderize the greens and add flavor, along with a little brown sugar to take away any bitterness. A lot of Southern families serve their greens with a side of bread to dip in the cooking broth, known as pot-likker. The broth is packed with vitamins and refers to the leftover \"liquor\" in the pot, after your greens have cooked. It not only tastes good — it's really good for you! 4 smoked ham hocks 1 large onion, thinly sliced 3 bay leaves 4 pounds collard greens Chicken stock or broth, or water, as needed 1 tablespoon brown sugar 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1. Rinse the ham hocks and score the skin in several places. In a heavy 8- to 10-quart pot, co", "Every day at noon, Berliners are reminded of the American ideals of freedom and democracy as the Freedom Bell rings out from a tower of the government building where U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his famous \"Ich bin ein Berliner\" speech in 1963. Modeled on Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, the 10-ton bronze bell arrived in 1950 as a gift from the National Committee for a Free Europe to the people of what was then West Berlin. At the beginning of the Cold War, it served as a symbol of U.S. solidarity, a sentiment already shown in the years following World War II with the Berlin airlift and the United States' Marshall Plan aid funds. Even today, many of those who remember the Second World War and those born after hold an appreciation for the legacy of America's commitment to West Berlin. So last week's violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., has particularly shocked those who grew up in West Berlin's American sector. German politicians have condemned the Capitol siege and President Trump's role behind the actions, which U.S. Democratic House members charge as \"incitement of insurrection.\" Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called for a \"joint Marshall Plan for democracy\" and warned that \"without democracy in the U.S., [there is] no democracy in Europe.\" Jürgen Siegismund, a 63-year-old retiree, agrees with Maas, although he's not so sure about naming it after George Marshall's European recovery plan. He says he was appalled by the events in Washington last week. \"Trump has created a huge chasm in American society, and it is a threat to U.S. democracy,\" he says. Siegismund is waiting for a friend on the steps of Berlin's Rathaus Schöneberg borough hall, home of the Freedom Bell, in a public square called John-F.-Kennedy-Platz. As the bell tolls, he thinks about its meaning and how he felt growing up in West Berlin's American sector. \"The commitment of the Americans to West Berlin was always very clear and strong, and their notion of liberty is something that shaped me from an early age,\" he says. Siegismund's friend arrives ready for their Sunday stroll in the nearby park. Martina Pachaly, 59, works in the energy sector and describes herself as an \"Urberliner\" — not only was she born in the city, but her parents were too. Her mother was 11 years old during the Berlin airlift and remembers waiting for the U.S. \"Candy Bomber\" to drop sweets to the starving kids below. Pachaly says the news footage from the Capitol siege looked like scenes from a civil war and not like the democracy she has always understood the U.S. to be. \"I also grew up in West Berlin's American sector, and it was a very positive experience. You always had a good feeling with the Americans,\" Pachaly says. Pointing to Kennedy-Platz, Pachaly says it will always symbolize freedom for her. Her mother was at the square when Kennedy spoke, and Pachaly came here shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, when politicians gathered to give speeches about freedom and democracy. Clara Rienits, a 44-year-old high school teacher, was also born in West Berlin. Her father held a seat in the Schöneberg hall when it housed West Berlin's government. Rienits teaches politics and has been discussing the events of last week with her students via Zoom. She says that Germans know better than most what the demise of democracy means. \"I always tell my students that we have to learn how to live and participate in a democracy again and again,\" Rienits says. \"Everyone must be given the right, the space and the time to participate. If democracy becomes so gridlocked within its own structures that you can only play along but not take part, then you must question the strength of that democracy.\" Rienits says she learned about political participation initially from her parents, who were part of the 1968 West Berlin student protest movement. They denounced the U.S. war in Vietnam and stood up to their own parents' generation, asking what they did during World War II, heralding Germany's long-term reckoning with its Nazi past. Rienits says this reckoning with the past instructs how she views the present, adding that Germans have as much reason as the United States to be concerned about the rise in far-right extremism. Walking his dog nearby, 55-year-old Pejram Tahmasbi agrees that political participation is essential, adding that it doesn't now fall upon President-elect Joe Biden alone to fix the reasons behind the deep divisions within society. \"Americans need to be politically more active,\" says Tahmasbi, a small-business owner. \"They need to open up and switch on their minds.\" Tahmasbi was born in Iran and came to then-West Berlin as a teenager in 1985, after claiming asylum near Nuremberg in what was then West Germany. He used to play basketball with U.S. military officers' children, who used to sneak him into the canteen at the nearby barracks where their parents were stationed. The memory of the welcome he received as a refugee from the", "Recently during a phone call with my mom, I mentioned that I was going to make broccoli rabe for an upcoming dinner party. \"Oh, no, honey, you can't serve broccoli rabe,\" she said. \"Why not?\" I asked. \"Because, you know, broccoli rabe has a distinctive flavor,\" and she whispered \"distinctive\" like someone would whisper \"cancer\" at the dinner table. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone not liking broccoli rabe, a green vegetable known for its distinctive bitter flavor. Growing up in Italian-centric Rhode Island, broccoli rabe was everywhere -- at markets large and small, on restaurant menus and in most people's refrigerators. Broccoli rabe was a staple at every Sunday dinner and appeared at least one other time midweek, topping pizza, smothering a veal cutlet or nestled inside a crusty Italian roll with grilled Italian sausage. My mom made it all the time for our family but not for company. It was too risky. Broccoli rabe originated in the Mediterranean and China and today is grown throughout the world. It features prominently in both Italian and Asian cuisines, particularly in Southern Italy and Hong Kong. It has taken a while for Americans to embrace this full-flavored vegetable, but thanks to popular chefs such as Lidia Bastianich, a grande dame of Italian-American cooking, broccoli rabe has become more mainstream in the past couple of decades. Once people start cooking with broccoli rabe, they realize it's remarkably versatile. As well as making a delicious side dish, it's a robust addition to sandwiches, pizzas, calzones, crostini, pastas, frittatas and soups. Although broccoli rabe is in the same genus as broccoli (Brassica), it's more closely related to the turnip, so its flavor is akin to turnips, mustard greens and kale. It does resemble broccoli, though -- or, rather, its more attractive cousin: Svelte, dark green stalks are topped with small, tight clusters of green broccoli flowers and dramatic, spiky leaves. Perhaps more than any other vegetable, broccoli rabe is known by various names, including rapini, broccoli raab (pronounced rob), raab, rape, rapa, broccoli di rape and rappi. In the U.S., it is most commonly called broccoli rabe or rapini. It is not, however, the same thing as broccolini or baby broccoli, which are much sweeter. Broccoli rabe's peak season runs from late fall through late spring, though it's available at most major supermarkets year-round. When selecting broccoli rabe, look for richly colored dark green leaves and firm, green flower clusters. Avoid bunches with yellow- or brown-tinged leaves, yellow flower clusters or woody stems, all signs that the vegetable is old. All parts of broccoli rabe are edible, but stalks should be trimmed. Broccoli rabe can be steamed, boiled, sauteed and roasted. I generally prefer to parboil and \"shock\" broccoli rabe before sauteing it. Simply boil the broccoli rabe for two minutes. Drain and plunge into a bowl of ice water for three to five minutes. Drain and squeeze to release excess water. This helps maintain its vivid color, reduce bitterness and make it more tender. To balance broccoli rabe's bitterness, do not add sugar, which creates an unpleasant flavor. Instead, pair it with salty, sweet or acidic foods that naturally reduce bitterness and enhance flavor. Salty foods such as sausage, pancetta, anchovies and olives have an affinity for broccoli rabe. Sweet currants, raisins and cherry tomatoes are natural pairings, as are tangy vinegars and lemon juice. Broccoli rabe is also wonderful with various meats and seafood, such as chicken, veal, sausage, sardines and halibut. Perhaps the simplest way to serve broccoli rabe and appreciate its assertiveness is to saute it with olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. My family's favorite recipe for sauteed broccoli rabe includes kalamata olives and toasted pine nuts. Sun-dried tomatoes, raisins and fennel seeds are also flavor boosters. The next time you're planning a dinner party, be bold and serve broccoli rabe for even your best company. Just don't tell my mom.", "Bad news if you like cheap wine: California’s drought could affect production of low-cost bottles. But, if can you shell out for the more expensive stuff, you might be in for a treat. Grape growers on the West Coast are facing a trade-off. If they want the best flavor, they use as little water as possible, but a reduction in water use means they can’t grow as many grapes and have to sell fewer bottles. Ben Bergman from KPCC reports in Southern California. \nRead more via KPCC\n\nReporter\n\nBen Bergman, reports on business for KPCC/Southern California Public Radio, with a focus on media, tech and sports business. He tweets @thebenbergman.", "There is no escaping artificial flavor. It's everywhere, and the people who invent it argue that it will enhance your experience of a food — making it more tropical, more floral, or more bitter, in a good way. Artificial flavors of familiar favorites also have long tricked kids into eating things they think they don't like. That's part of the idea behind the Grapple (pronounced gray-pull), an apple product sold in grocery stories. The Grapple wears an aromatic disguise, thanks to \"a relaxing bath\" in natural and artificial Concord grape flavors. That is, it's an apple that tastes like a grape. \"We're trying to increase apple consumption of kids and get a very healthy apple inside them,\" Grapple co-inventor and Washington state apple grower Todd Snyder tells The Salt. \"So we said, back in 2001, how can we make an apple more popular and fun to eat?\" Kids do seem to like grape flavoring — look no further than the grape-flavored dental floss marketed to kids. Snyder claims that he chose the flavor in part because \"grape is the number one flavor for kids.\" And some might ask, why take a perfectly good fruit, with its very own complex flavor and aroma, and douse it with something associated with Dimetapp and lollipops? Well, Snyder says, because the people, and especially the kids, want it. But it's not just the grape flavor. Snyder specifically chose Gala and Fuji apples, the two sweetest apple varieties around, to entice the next generation of apple eaters. But even though we couldn't find any evidence that most kids prefer grape flavor to apple flavor, one flavor expert we spoke to said she's not surprised some kids do. The apple with grape flavors \"becomes associated with candy and sugar,\" Marcia Pelchat, a psychologist and associate member of the Monell Chemical Sense Center, tells The Salt. That might be why the heightened scent would be more appealing than plain fruit. \"It would seem sweeter to them.\" Continue Reading Whatever the reason, Snyder seems to be onto something. In the last two years, he says he managed to sell about 20 million of his gussied up apples, for between $3 and $6 for a 4-pack. They're not so easy to find, though; we discovered you can't buy them in Washington, D.C., proper, only in the distant suburbs, which we couldn't get to during our lunch hour. And what's up with that \"relaxing bath\" the website speaks of? Snyder won't divulge much, because it's a patented technology, but he wants to be clear that his apples aren't injected — the flavor seeps in through the fruits' pores. That doesn't produce a soggy apple, he says. Its shelf life is about the same. These apples kind of reminded us of Y Water, a flavored water line aimed at kids, with such varieties as \"immune water,\" \"bone water,\" muscle water,\" and \"brain water\" because of their respective added \"functional ingredients to boost performance.\" We wondered whether adulterated water and apples are just a way to get parents to spend more on what is essentially cheap and accessible sustenance for kids — plain apples and plain water. Lars Perner, assistant professor of clinical marketing at the University of Southern California, wondered this, too. \"There is a possible ethical issue if this encourages low income families to spend a great deal more on this product than what plain natural apples would cost,\" he wrote us in an email. Pelchat says, though, she's not sure it's such a bad thing. \"Once kids start eating these apples, they're not only going to cognitively see themselves as apple eaters, they're also more likely to try unflavored apples,\" she says.", "This weekend Viktor Orbán will try to win a third consecutive term as prime minister of Hungary, his fourth overall. Orbán is admired by Europe’s far-right for his anti-migrant policies, which include building a fence along Hungary’s southern border and refusing to take in migrants under the European Union’s quota system. Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson (@sorayanelson), NPR’s Berlin correspondent.", "Swedish art-pop singer Jens Lekman; distinguished country crooner Nick Lowe; Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew; the gentle voiced, poignant Jose Gonzalez; the political and passionate Steve Earle; Southern flavored story songs from Vic Chesnutt; brilliant psychedelic pop from Rotary Downs. Download this show in the All Songs Considered podcast. Sign up for the All Songs Considered newsletter and we'll tell you when new music features are available on the site.", "\"Feast\" is the name of a private dining club located on a quiet street in Neukoelln. The club is a former storefront turned into a simple, but elegant eatery by American Suzy Fracassa. “I am really attached to the name \"Feast,\" Fracassa says. \"It means a lot in just one word, about eating, celebrating and cooking - the whole bit.\" “Feast” is Fracassa's playground; she tries out new recipes, mixing different cuisines - pretty much the way her Italian grandmother cooked. \"Talking about fusion food. Italian cooking plus the...hills of the Ohio River, where she was raised as a little girl. Those two cuisines came together and it's definitely influenced my family, that’s for sure.\" Pigs Feet \"My grandmother loved pigs feet, chickens feet and all those things. When I speak to Italians here, it's the same. There is a lot of peasant orientated food. They are liking the same pigs feet, just on the other side of the world, maybe basted into a little different sauce,\" Fracassa says. Pigs feet is not something Suzy Fracassa eats, although the 43 year-old is into traditional cooking, which she calls \"good hillbilly food,\" but with a dash of delicacy. For her private dinner events at \"Feast\" in Neukoelln, she prepares dishes like ham and sweet potatoes with fried eggs, jalapeno cheddar burgers, gazpacho, and bittersweet chocolate waffles with strawberry sauce. It's simple, well-prepared American food with all its different flavors and influences. Food that, Fracassa feels, is rarely served in Berlin. \"I lived in New York City before, but when I came here I realized there is this huge gap in the food industry. There is just that pervading mediocrity in this section of the food industry here.\" \"There are some great ideas, but we came to the conclusion it could be the slacker mentality eventually brings things down again, because to make good food on a consistent basis takes hard work, discipline and a long run,\" Fracassa says. Fracassa never really cooked in the United States, but when she moved to Berlin in the late 1990's, she turned her passion for food into a professional job. For a couple of years she co-owned a restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg. Then in 2003, the self-taught cook started the catering service \"Fortuna's Table,\" which is now her main job. \"Feast\" is her place for experimentation and a more open approach to cooking. It opens every Friday as a private dinning club, by reservation only. It's also available for private gatherings and celebrations. Occasionally she invites guest cooks to prepare a menu for the evening. Most of the time it's Suzy Fracassa's stage. \"To have a platform, to always touch the heart of why I am cooking in the first place and that's how I enjoy myself immensely when I am cooking, when I am in that zone,\" Fracassa says.", "\"Primitive Rock 'n' Roll and Fine Food\" is the motto at Three Sisters. However, upon entering the restaurant, one senses there is nothing primitive about this place. With its lofty ceilings, whitewashed walls, and small stage featuring a grand piano, it feels more like an old-fashioned ballroom reminiscent of the American South. It masks its self-proclaimed primitive nature, exuding an elegant and distinct charm. Three Sisters is another example of the growing number of Berlin spaces where art and food happily collide. With its unique fusion of blues-style swing music and traditional German cuisine, this young venture is a testament to the city's ingenuity when it comes to the arts – including the art of eating well. Although the Three Sisters' menu is mainly German, serving a variety of traditional Bavarian style dishes, such as pork roast and breaded dumplings, spaetzle, and pickled herring, it's not overly patriotic. Head chef, Patrick Pecker, although a native of southern Germany, previously worked in a vegetarian style restaurant, and he incorporates this philosophy into the establishment's cuisine. Pecker seeks out the freshest ingredients, both within the Three Sisters' native neighborhood of Kreuzberg, and outside Berlin. Not everything is certified organic - take for example the apple-fed pig used for the roast pork dish, but it is the next best thing and evidence of the Three Sisters' attitude when it comes to food. \"We're young,\" explains Wolfgang Sinhart, one of the owners, alongside White Trash Fast Food's Michael Bohl. Only 10 months old, so we are just learning. But we make a concerted effort when it comes to quality ingredients. This goes for the music too. Our original intention was to have a space where things can happen naturally: encouraging artists to perform here, drawing in diverse and eclectic crowd - people who want to sit down and have a nice meal, as well as those that are younger and more interested in the music aspect. Interestingly enough, it works. The neat thing is this place supports that. The restaurant has some interesting associations too. Located in Mariannenplatz 2, it was once part of an old hospital; its name is hence a tribute to the nuns who once lived and worked there, as well as a nod to Bohl's favorite Chekhov play. But unlike the Russian tragedy, these Three Sisters have managed to push past the rubble and decay that once bound Berlin and find meaning in the modern world through fine food and rock'a billy tunes.", "As orchards go, truffle orchards are upside-down and backwards. The magic happens not on the branches of oak and hazel trees, but beneath them, where a richly flavored mushroom sprouts from fungal colonies laced about the trees' roots. This cultivated variety is the black Perigord truffle, or tuber melanosporum. These truffles are notoriously hard to farm, even in France, where Perigords originate. Now, in the rolling hills and clay soils of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, a growing number of farmers are hoping to establish southern Appalachia as the new truffle capital of the world. Tom Michaels, owner of Tennessee Truffle, says he was the first American to grow Perigords commercially in 2007, from trees inoculated with melanosporum fungus using a relatively new French technique. He tells The Salt that about 200 orchards are now in development in the U.S., but because it takes years before truffles appear, few are producing yet. \"The next few years are the moment of truth\" for the burgeoning industry, he says. Continue Reading Restauranteurs and gourmands are taking notice. Last weekend Michaels joined a roster of truffle experts at the fourth annual National Truffle Fest in Asheville, N.C. Similar celebrations of the truffle have sprung up in Oregon, where wild and cultivated truffles grow, and Napa Valley, in recent years. Although there are dozens if not hundreds of truffle species – some native to North America – most are not edible. Among palatable varieties, the Perigord is considered the crown jewel and, accordingly, is known as the \"black diamond\" truffle. It's prized for its pungent aroma, a delicate mix of fruit, musk, and earth. Michaels says each truffle has a unique flavor profile. He selects them individually to meet his customers' requests, and delivers them fresh the next day, which has earned him accolades from chefs like Momofuku's David Chang. European truffles can take ten days to reach American kitchens, by which time the flavors have already started to fade. Freshness doesn't come cheap, however: Even American Perigords can fetch upwards of $800 a pound. The long years of cultivation mean many truffle growers are still in the dark about how to squeeze the most from their trees. How far apart to place the trees, or what balance of minerals to maintain in the soil, are still very much open questions. Michaels says managing a truffle orchard \"is really art. It's not [yet] a science at this point.\" But truffle-gathering will probably always rely on old-world methods: specially trained dogs – or pigs, who find truffles irresistible – to sniff out the mature fungi. Between rapid growth and rising demand, the small American truffle industry could soon be big business. Michaels says he currently harvests just 3 to 5 percent of what his orchard could, in theory, produce. \"I'm supposed to be famous because I grow a few pounds per acre,\" he says. \"But if you look at what is possible, it's way more than that.\"", "Barbecued pork or fried chicken served with a heaping side of mac and cheese or creamy potato salad, sweet tea and peach cobbler — these Southern classics, loaded with as much history as flavor, have become comfort foods for Americans from all over. But a study published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Southern cuisine isn't serving African-Americans, whose ancestors imagined and perfected it, very well. The Southern diet may be at the center of a tangled web of reasons why black people in America are more prone to hypertension than white people. Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham crunched data collected from nearly 7,000 men and women older than 45 living across the U.S. — not just in the South — over the course of a decade. Their goal: to figure out why black Americans are at greater risk for high blood pressure. Over the course of the study, 46 percent of black participants and 33 percent of white participants developed hypertension — and diet seemed to explain much of the disparity. Black participants were much more likely than white participants to eat a Southern-style diet, which the researchers defined as one that heavily features fried foods, organ meats and processed meats, dairy, sugar-sweetened beverages and bread. And this diet was more strongly correlated with hypertension than any other factor the researchers measured, including participants' levels of stress and depression, exercise habits, income or education level. \"If you think about [the] disparity — African-Americans' life expectancy is about 3.5 or 4 years less,\" says George Howard, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who led the study. Hypertension — which can lead to heart attacks, stroke and kidney failure — is a big contributor to that, Howard says. Approximately 75 percent of black men and women develop high blood pressure by their mid-50s, compared with 55 percent of white men and 40 percent of white women of the same age. \"Figuring out why is sort of the holy grail of research,\" Howard says. \"And this study tries to take a stab at it.\" In some ways, the findings weren't terribly surprising, says biostatistician Suzanne Judd, also of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who co-authored the study. A diet high in fat, salt and sugar would increase the risk of hypertension for anyone, of any race. What does surprise Judd is \"how this one particular style of eating explained so much of the difference between the rates of hypertension for black and white participants.\" What it really came down to was the fact that while people of both races ate some amount of Southern-fried comfort food, African-Americans, on average, were eating much more of it — with the highest consumers eating something fried, overly salted or doused in fatty dairy every day. \"This has led me to wonder — what are we missing?\" Judd says. Could it be a matter of access to healthy options in minority communities? This recent study didn't measure that, nor was it able to calculate how several factors can work together to increase blood pressure. While higher levels of stress in black participants didn't seem to correlate strongly with hypertension in this new JAMA study, other research has found that the stresses of racial discrimination can affect blood pressure in direct and indirect ways. \"If you think about it, stress can, for example, affect how well people sleep, which can lead them to overeat or crave unhealthy food,\" Judd says. And then there's also the possibility that the food reveals something about the social history of those who eat it, Judd adds. African-Americans who eat soul food on a regular basis may be more likely to have descended from generations who suffered slavery, discrimination, poverty — and the health consequences. It's complicated. What it all comes down to, for Thomas LaVeist, a dean and professor of health policy and management at Tulane University, \"is the fact that diet is cultural.\" To truly untangle the relationship between disease and the Southern diet, he says, you have to start by understanding African-American foodways. \"See, the traditional African-American Southern diet was really designed for survival,\" he says. \"African-Americans were not able to access a balanced, nutritious diet during slavery and during Jim Crow. What they had was organ meats and parts of slaughtered animals that others didn't eat, and greens they grew themselves. And what they did is take those scraps and turn it into what's now an internationally renowned cuisine.\" That is, and should be, a matter of pride for the black community, LaVeist says. \"But the thing to realize is the food that once helped sustain African-Americans through a truly insane period of history isn't well-adapted to the food environment today, or the health challenges of today.\" Indeed, adds food historian Adrian Miller, \"Southern food, the way it's traditionally prepared, has been h", "Berlin is a favorite with many top American filmmakers and actors, and chances are you've seen landmarks from the German capital in movies — even when you didn't expect it. Take The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2. The film's fictional capital, Panem, was partly filmed at Tempelhof. This one-time airport was the focal point of a humanitarian airlift in 1948 and 1949 that helped break the Soviet blockade of West Berlin. One of the German capital's biggest Hollywood fans is Tom Hanks. He first came to Berlin four years ago when filming Cloud Atlas, and has been back many times since. \"I have been in the deserts of Morocco, I've been on the islands of Fiji, I've been in Moscow, London, Paris, Florence. I've been in some very glamorous world capitals,\" he tells NPR. \"But the affection I have for Berlin is much deeper than anywhere else.\" Hanks, who lived in Berlin last year during the filming of Bridge of Spies, says he's fascinated by the city's complex history, especially its frontline status during the Cold War between the Soviet Bloc and the West. \"The Cold War aspect of Berlin is something I grew up with,\" he says. \"It was in the news, it was part of our social studies.\" But Berliners themselves are also appealing, Hanks says. There's \"the most fabulous conversation to be had in your average coffee house or hotel lobby or cinema at 2 o'clock in the morning, as you are lining up to see an old movie that everyone else in the neighborhood is showing up to see as well.\" Such enthusiasm for Berlin, and Germany in general, from Hollywood A-listers is something the government has tried to nurture since 2008, says Die Welt newspaper's veteran film critic Hanns-Georg Rodek. \"The German culture minister said we must get big productions in order that German filmmakers can learn their craft, actually,\" he says. \"So you can get a percentage of your film's budget [from the government] if you do it in Germany.\" And American film and TV companies keep coming. Besides Bridge of Spies and the latest Hunger Games, the current season of the Showtime series Homeland recently wrapped up production in Berlin. A new spy series for American TV by Epix called Berlin Station is shooting at Studio Babelsberg now. The 103-year-old studio, which features Nazi-era architecture and sprawls over 40 acres on the outskirts of Berlin, is legendary among cinema buffs. Studio spokesman Eike Wolf says the concept for the V for Vendetta mask was created here, as was the countdown eventually used by NASA to launch spaceships. The countdown first appeared in the 1929 German movie Woman in the Moon, Wolf says. The studio grounds are chock-full of bits and pieces of Hollywood and TV productions, like the V for Vendetta mask and a Styrofoam recreation of part of the Berlin Wall. Studio Babelsberg \"is the full-service company for these film projects,\" Wolf says. \"We do location scouting, get all permissions. We take care of film funding, accounting, all the insurances. We set up the crew, we do set construction with our art department, so a film producer can get everything.\" But film critic Rodek says neither the studio nor the German government should rest on their laurels if they want to keep attracting American moviemakers. \"The problems for Berlin are not the technical capabilities, but the working costs,\" he says. Filming in Eastern Europe, for example, is far cheaper than in Germany. And Great Britain subsidizes a quarter of the costs of movie productions shot there, which is a lot more than the roughly $11 million maximum per film provided to American productions filmed in Germany, Rodek says. Hanks has another suggestion: \"If you want to attract the big motion pictures to your local film industry, the best thing you could do is probably build five or six very large, state-of-the-art sound stages that motion pictures can move into for their duration.\" Wolf says he agrees in theory, but that in reality, it's a costly proposition the studio can't afford without more big movie projects. Nor does Wolf believe sound stages can lure filmmakers away from the generous tax incentives and other funding provided in other countries. He says the studio is among those lobbying the German government to become more competitive. \"If we want to set up a really good film industry here in Germany,\" Wolf says, \"these subsidies must be so attractive that the American films are coming to Germany.\" SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Many top U.S. filmmakers and actors are choosing to shoot their films in Berlin. The capital of Germany provides the backdrop for the final chapter of \"The Hunger Games,\" in theaters now. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin on the rewards and the struggles that can come with being a favorite destination for Hollywood. SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: Tom Hanks is one American actor you'll often see working here in the German capital, a city he came to know four years ago when filming \"Cloud Atlas.\" TOM HANKS: I've been in the deserts of Mor", "Many people think of the seedless watermelons popping up at grocery stores and markets everywhere in the last few years as a marvel of modern scientific technology. In fact, more than 60 percent of watermelon shoppers seek this smoother pink flesh, and the numbers are increasing every year, according to a recent survey done for the National Watermelon Promotion Board. The seedless melons sure are easier to eat and cut up for fruit salads. But they somehow don't taste the way they did when seed-spitting contests were the highlights of our summers. So here at The Salt we wondered, are watermelons destined to go the way of supermarket tomatoes, where flavor has been sacrificed for convenience? Continue Reading Before we get to that, a quick science lesson: How do you get a seedless watermelon? In a word - colchicine. The chemical, derived from the crocus and developed to treat and prevent gout since ancient Egypt, has found a niche in plant biology because of the way it impacts chromosome development. According to North Carolina State University's research blog, The Abstract, when young watermelon plants are treated with colchicine, \"... the eggs in the flowers develop with two sets of chromosomes (2n), instead of one. When the eggs are pollinated, they create triploid cells ... These cells are capable of maturing into fruit, but the seeds in that fruit are not genetically viable – so they can't be fertilized and develop the hard, black [seed coat].\" Hence, you get the little thin white \"seeds\" that you see in seedless watermelon, as opposed to the hard black ones good for spitting into your sister's hair (not that I'm admitting anything here). Basically, \"it's the watermelon version of the mule,\" as our colleague Andrea Seabrook put it a few years back. And that's what the public demands, so that's what most producers are growing. That brings us back to the question of what these immature seeds do to flavor. The official word: If you think seedless watermelons taste bland compared to the seeded ones, it's all in your head. It's nostalgia, pure and simple, says Todd Wehner of N.C. State's horticultural science department. Who can blame us when Mark Twain's Pudd'nHead Wilson said it so eloquently: \"It is the chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented.\" What really matters with watermelons is when they were harvested and how far they've traveled, Wehner says. In a fair taste test between seeded and seedless watermelons picked fresh from a field, \"the triploids always win,\" he says. The triploids — the seedless ones — have three sets of genes instead of two, so any genes that affect sweetness, flavor, and texture are more likely to be expressed. And, he adds, some people prefer the caramel flavor of the Sugar baby variety, while others like the straight watermelon flavor of Crimson sweets. So the definition of \"sweet\" is variable. \"Think about where we started back in 6,000 years ago,\" Wehner says. \"Watermelons came from southern Africa - they were white, hard, late maturing, low-yielding, and full of seeds.\" While the supermarket may only have one or two varieties of the red seedless ones these days, seed catalogs and farmers' markets offer dozens more. I feel an experiment coming on.", "In 1963, Alabama was culturally closer to Brooklyn than it is now. The Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South created enclaves in cities all over the country, and the Civil Rights movement trained the eyes of the North on cities like Birmingham. Alabama native Naomi Shelton came to Brooklyn that year with the gospel in her heart and soul music turning her head. She found a place to sing, a bar on Flatbush Avenue, and a musical partner in keyboardist Cliff Driver. Flatbush Avenue rang out with the sound of her Southern blend of grace and grit. Fast-forward to 2014, when the South's seems to be moving back toward that old proximity with New York. As part of the Daptone Records family, Naomi Shelton has been a key player in the soulful revival that's been heating up for the past few years. Shelton's powerful personality connects her to Daptone labelmate Sharon Jones, but grit and sense of the groove also recall the music of younger Southerners the Alabama Shakes. Produced with just a touch of reggae flavor by Daptones boss Gabriel Roth, \"Sinner,\" from her new album Cold World, out July 29, unfolds as intense testimony, with Shelton confessing and expressing her determination to rise above the pitfalls of the human condition. You can feel the spirit of the great Alabama gospel queen, Dorothy Love Coates, and her Gospel Harmonettes shining down on this track. Not just for believers, but also for anyone who's shouldered a burden, \"Sinner\" simply tells the story of one soul's survival through life's inevitable changes. Naomi Shelton has crossed many boundaries in her long career, and here she brings the spirit home.", "It's a good time to be a craft brewer, as Americans are thirsty for full-flavored and local beers. But when small breweries grow, they can also risk losing some of the \"craftiness\" their fans love. And when they expand, many brewers have to rewrite their recipes — starting with the water. As we've reported before, there are now about 2,000 breweries in ­the United States — the most ­­­since the late 1800s. And while most craft brewers are tiny operations that sell beer in just a few towns, others are expanding beyond their home states — selling and producing beer far from where they started. For instance, brewers New Belgium and Oskar Blues are expanding from Colorado into North Carolina. California's Sierra Nevada is doing the same. And while that means Southerners could soon get fresher beers from those brands, it will also likely force the companies to adjust their recipes and even chemically \"tweak\" the water at their new breweries. Continue Reading Water is an essential part of beer. But its flavor is only part of the equation. Water also supports yeast, which then eats sugar and turns it into alcohol. Those are two reasons why a town's water supply has long determined what the local beer tastes like. \"People have always thought about the water, because if you went back 100 years ago, when maybe you couldn't do anything about the water — people put breweries where there were great water supplies,\" Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver says. \"The flavor of the beer would often be based upon the local water. And they would position the brewery in the right place to take advantage of that.\" Oliver tells The Salt that these days, \"everything's been cleaned up so much — in wine, in beer, in food. And a lot of what is going on in craft brewing, in natural winemaking, in food movements, is bringing flavors of real stuff back. And also, it's giving things back a character of terroir.\" (That's the French word for the flavor something gains when it's nurtured by a certain plot of land.) For instance, consider the famed \"Burton snatch\" — a term for the sulfurous quality of certain beers, especially those made in Burton-on-Trent, England. As Oliver wrote in his Oxford Companion to Beer, \"high levels of sulfate in Burton waters (up to 800 ppm) bring a hard dry mineral edge... and this makes the water ideal for the production of pale ales.\" Its unique water turned Burton into a brewing boomtown back in the 19th century, building such a solid reputation that just a few years ago, it was called \"the world's most important beer town.\" \"What could be more terroir than a particular aroma that comes from the fact that their water has come down through these strata of limestone?\" Oliver asks. Looking For A Pure Source So what happens when a brewery is perfectly happy with its water — but decides to make the same beer across the country? To answer that question, I asked some brewers. \"We're lucky here in Chico [California] to have a really great and pure source of water,\" says Bill Manley, Sierra Nevada's product development manager. \"We do very little to adulterate the chemistry prior to brewing (deoxygenation and filtration).\" Manley says that for some of its beer styles, Sierra Nevada hardens the water to enhance the hops' flavor. And he adds that the company's new brewery in North Carolina is \"also blessed with naturally great brewing water.\" Sierra's goal with the new brewery will be \"to match the finished flavor profile of every beer so that it is identical to beer brewed in Chico,\" Manley says. Matching flavors can be a long and painstaking process, even when you use the same water. Michael LaLonde, COO of Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Ore., says his company ran into a flavor challenge when it added a new brewery in 2003. \"We actually took five years to flavor-match our old brewery to this new brewery, before we could actually sell that beer brewed in the new brewery,\" LaLonde says. After a batch of beer has been made, brewers then have specially trained staff taste it, to be sure it matches the flavors the brand is going for. LaLonde explains how the process works. \"The way we do it is, we actually have a triangle test,\" he says. \"So, we'll have one beer that's different than the other two. Our sensory panel tastes them all, and if they can identify the different beer, then we know we have an issue. If they can't, then we know that we have a flavor match.\" Art And Craft — And Some Science Not every brewery is lucky enough to sit on top of underground water deposits that are secretly perfect for a certain style of beer. But in the age of filters and chemical manipulation, is the idea of tasting an actual \"place\" in beer soon to become ancient history? Craft beer expert Julia Herz, of the Brewers Association, says no. \"No, it's not history,\" she says. In fact, we've been drinking taste-manipulated beers a long time. \"I think that you have to look at New World brewers making Old World styles... when they're trying to", "Sarah Lohman has made everything from colonial-era cocktails to cakes with black pepper to stewed moose face. She is a historical gastronomist, which means she re-creates historical recipes to connect with the past. That moose-face recipe dates back to the 19th century, and it wasn't easy. She recalls spending hours trying to butcher the moose from Alaska in her kitchen in Queens, New York. She tried scalding the face in hot water to remove the fur, but it didn't quite work and her apartment stunk of wet moose. But \"at the end of the day, people showed up and ate it, someone actually liked it, and then we ordered a pizza,\" she says. Spurred by her friends' enthusiasm, she started a blog. \"Every time I made something, a conversation would start. It was just this gateway ... as soon as they were eating, they were asking questions,\" she says. \"They loved the good recipes and the schadenfreude of the bad ones.\" Lohman's work got her wondering about the flavors that represent American cuisine and where they came from. That's the subject of her new book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She made a list of common flavors from many historical cookbooks, and used Google's Ngram viewer to count how often the various flavors were mentioned in American books from 1796 to 2000. Eight popular and enduring flavors emerged: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG and Sriracha. \"I didn't so much choose the flavors that appear in this book, as discover them,\" Lohman writes. Researching the book \"really upended my idea of these flavors that always stood on the shelf in my kitchen,\" she says. \"I would always pick up a pepper grinder or a bottle of vanilla extract and would never think about what it was and where it came from.\" Many historical recipes don't exactly work now — like one for black pepper cake from Martha Washington. Lohman says the original recipe is \"really gross\" because it used as much ground spice as flour. She reworked it for our modern tastes, and says more people should be open to adapting recipes to taste rather than following instructions to the letter. \"I find when I'm teaching cooking classes ... my students are often afraid of doing something so massively wrong in the process of cooking that will be irrecoverable that they don't even try in the first place,\" she says. \"I would love to get back to a world where we can be a little bit more relaxed and confident in the kitchen.\" But Lohman quickly discovered there was much more than translating historic recipes for modern use: \"I didn't realize I was going to be telling the story of disenfranchised people in America throughout history.\" She says food study \"wasn't really seen as a real way of looking at society and culture\" until recently, because it's mostly a history of women, slaves and immigrants — \"the people that have been cooking for the people that have been enfranchised for the past 200 years.\" She hopes the book is \"a successful ode to these people that have affected our history in this country just as much as the establishment, but up till this point, have not gotten the attention they deserved.\" For instance, \"vanilla is here thanks to a 12-year-old slave who figured out a botanical secret no one else knew. Chili powder spread across the country because of entrepreneurial Texan-Mexican women who fed soldiers and tourists — and a clever German immigrant who was looking for a culinary shortcut,\" she writes. One story that stands out to her is the creation of Sriracha, which, according to the book, has \"seen a meteoric rise in popularity\" since its debut in 1980. Lohman notes sales of bottled Sriracha exceeded $60 million in 2014. She calls it a \"quintessentially American story\" — founder David Tran is ethnically Chinese, but he is also a Vietnamese refugee. He combined elements of French and Thai cuisine, using peppers grown on a farm north of Los Angeles to make a hot sauce produced entirely in Southern California. After the Vietnam War ended, the new government systematically targeted and forcibly expelled ethnic Chinese from the country, while charging each person $11,500 for the \"privilege\" of leaving. Tran, along with his immediate family and more than 3,000 refugees, boarded a Panamanian freighter called the Huey Fong. After arriving in the U.S., Tran needed to support his family. He was a hot-sauce maker in Vietnam, so he decided to try that in his new home. Now Tran's company is called Huy Fong Foods. \"This ... says immigrants are our culture; they are who we are,\" Lohman says. \"We have to broaden our idea of what an American is.\" She points out the Italians, who brought us garlic, were initially \"considered a separate race of people that were damaging to the climate of our country.\" She says that attitude is still playing out today. \"Food is something that is often accepted in this country before we accept the immigrants themselves. ... We happily buy hummus in our grocery store, but", "Barack Obama will give a major speech in Berlin, the site of famous speeches by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. Andreas Daum, the author of Kennedy in Berlin and a history professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, says though Obama's talk may lack a unifying theme such as the Cold War, it does come amid common global challenges. MELISSA BLOCK, host: Barack Obama is in a middle of a week-long overseas trip. On Thursday, he'll deliver a speech in the heart of Berlin. And in doing so, he invites historical comparison. Berlin, of course, has been the venue for now-iconic speeches by U.S. presidents. In 1963, President Kennedy spoke before hundreds of thousands of West Berliners gathered outside what was then city hall. It was the height of the Cold War, one year after the Cuban missile crisis, two years after the Berlin Wall was built, dividing the city and keeping East Berliners from fleeing to the West. President JOHN F. KENNEDY: There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. (Soundbite of applause) President KENNEDY: There are some who say, there are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. BLOCK: Kennedy asked Berliners to lift their eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, hopes of a free and united Europe. And he closed with these words. President KENNEDY: All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore as a free man I take pride in the words: Ich bin ein Berliner. BLOCK: I am a Berliner. Nearly a quarter century later, in 1987, President Reagan spoke at the majestic Brandenburg Gate in front of the Berlin Wall. And he addressed those in East Berlin who could hear his words. President RONALD REAGAN: For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. (Soundbite of applause) BLOCK: There is only one Berlin. Reagan spoke of the deadly threat of Soviet nuclear missiles, the economic failures of communism, and the tentative steps toward reform and openness being undertaken by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to these words. President REAGAN: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. (Soundbite of cheers) BLOCK: The crowd went wild, and Reagan went on. President REAGAN: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. (Soundbite of cheers) BLOCK: Two years later, the wall was torn down and the Berlin that Barack Obama will visit is a transformed city. Andreas Daum joins us. He's author of the book \"Kennedy in Berlin,\" and a professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Professor Daum, welcome to the program. Professor ANDREAS DAUM (SUNY, Buffalo): Thank you for inviting me. BLOCK: Let's start with the Kennedy speech in 1963. It seems that the estimates of the crowd at that speech range hugely. How many people do you think were there? Prof. DAUM: There were roughly 450,000 people assembled. Some had gathered on balconies of friends who were fortunate enough to have an apartment near the square. Others were literally hanging in the trees. So the estimates vary, but we can be sure that there were certainly more than a million people in the streets of Berlin following his tour from the airport through West Berlin, and certainly way over 400,000 listening to his speech live. BLOCK: What was the significance to Germans, whether in the East or the West, as a U.S. president coming and saying those words in Berlin in 1963? Prof. DAUM: Well, let me just start by saying the only president who had visited Berlin while in office was Harry F. Truman, when he went to the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945. There was a crisis in German-American relations and American-European relations. There were all kinds of policy differences. And yet the Germans were eagerly waiting for this man. He encapsulated, he embodied a new generation. Let's just mention that Konrad Adenauer, who was then chancellor of West Germany, was almost twice as old as John F. Kennedy. So Germans were eagerly waiting to see, to hear someone, almost to touch someone who was young, who was dynamic and who represented an intellectually sophisticated understanding of politics that seem to, and did - at least partially - depart from the old Cold War paradigm. BLOCK: Let's fast forward 24 years, 1987, to the speech by Ronald Reagan, and he's commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. He's also speaking in the midst of an arms race that's escalated in Europe - very different times, but many of the same issues. How were his words received in Germany? Prof. DAUM: Well, there wasn't that much fuss about his most famous line in his speech - Mr. Gorbac", "Thousands of people cross the U.S.-Mexico border everyday. An untold number buy tostilocos — chips loaded with toppings many might consider loco, as in crazy. The gastronomic marvel that is tostilocos involves a snack-sized bag of salsa verde-flavored Tostitos piled with hot sauce, pickled pork rinds, chopped cucumbers, jicama, deep-fried peanuts, tamarind candy, pickled fruit sauce called chamoy and a squeeze of lime. All those toppings go straight in the bag, and often spill out over the sides. This combination of salt, sour, sweet and heat will set you back about $3. And it is not for the faint of heart. \"I pride myself on trying everything at least once,\" says NPR photographer Kainaz Amaria, who crossed from Tijuana to San Ysidro, Calif., in March. But with the combination of the exhaust fumes at the border crossing, the \"electric pink\" fruit sauce and the pickled pork rinds plucked from a bucket, she says: \"I just couldn't do it.\" Amaria, Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep and several producers traveled 2,428 miles along the Mexican-U.S. border this spring to gather stories of the area's unique culture for the Borderland radio and Web series. (For a slowed-down look at tostilocos, go here.) They found Fidencio Rodriguez, 46, making tostilocos in a stall he's had for 25 years near the port of entry where pedestrians and cars line up to cross. \"I like working here. I have my own schedule, and it's good work,\" he tells NPR. He's from Querétaro state, and says the tostilocos craze took off in 2011. But Southern food expert John T. Edge puts the snack's birth date back farther. It probably began popping up in Tijuana about 10 years ago as a cheap, fun filler at soccer games and along the town's Avenida Revolución after the bars closed, he says. Now the unique flavor profile is attracting the attention of everyone from high-end American chefs to Taco Bell. As Edge sees it, tostilocos is quintessential border food. \"It's almost like a Mexican reclamation effort,\" Edge tells The Splendid Table. \"It's like if American companies took tortilla chips and packaged them and sold them to everyone, that would be Tostitos. Then Mexican-Americans and Mexicans from Tijuana are reclaiming Tostitos chips for Mexico by adding all these things to them and creating a new product.\"", "When American novelist Anna Winger moved to Berlin seven years ago with her German husband, she didn't have much experience with the culture and she didn't speak the language. Though she had traveled extensively before her move to Germany, she says it was initially difficult picking up the language. It wasn't until she had children that she really learned to speak German. \"I kind of learned it on the playground to be honest with you,\" she says. As she spent more time in Berlin, Winger also became increasingly familiar with the literary scene. She found herself meeting English-speaking writers all over the city. And though she says there isn't a particular scene for English speaking writers in Berlin, the numbers are increasing. \"I have met so many so many different people with so many different backgrounds, most are American, but some are English, or Irish or Australian who are writing in English, living here, that we are kind of creating a scene of our own,\" she says. Winger published her first novel in 2008. This Must be The Place explores the friendship between a German man and American woman living in the same apartment building in Berlin circa 2001. After her book was released, she was approached by NPR to write about her experiences as an American living in Berlin. Rather than focus on herself, she decided it would better to hear several different voices talk about Berlin. \"I thought it would be a lot more interesting to have a lot of different writers talk about their experiences of the city so that we would have a kind of kaleidoscopic view on one thing. I think there are few cities that merit that degree of attention, but Berlin is a place that has been changing really fast in the last few years and there's just so much to say about it on so many different levels that having so many different people write about their very specific experiences of the city paints a really interesting picture.\" Though she had never worked in radio before, she was a lifelong listener of NPR and thought it would make a great medium for the project. \"I remember, when I was in graduate school, saying to my father, I'd come out of eight hours in the dark room and I'd feel like I'd had the most interesting conversation that I could have possibly had.\" As Berlin Stories begins its third season on NPR Berlin, Winger says she's really happy about the diverse line-up of writers involved in the series. \"Some of our best pieces have come from totally unknown writers and we really like the idea of the mix: Old and young. Men and women. Well known and not well known writers. Up and coming writers. Some of the people that have written pieces for us, although few, are not professional writers at all.\" When asked if she'll ever do a Berlin Story of her own, Winger says there might be one in the future, but for now she likes to give other writers the spotlight. \"I have lots of things I could write about...it's kind of fun to do something that's not about me but rather kind of about a collective experience. The thing about this project is that it's really a collective sort of labor of love.\"" ]
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Big Hard Negatives Dataset

A dataset for training embedding models for semantic search.

TODO: add desc

A dataset in a nixietune compatible format:

{
  "query": ")what was the immediate impact of the success of the manhattan project?",
  "pos": [
    "The presence of communication amid scientific minds was equally important to the success of the Manhattan Project as scientific intellect was. The only cloud hanging over the impressive achievement of the atomic researchers and engineers is what their success truly meant; hundreds of thousands of innocent lives obliterated."
  ],
  "neg": [
    "Abstract. The pivotal engineering and scientific success of the Twentieth century was the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project assimilated concepts and leaders from all scientific fields and engineering disciplines to construct the first two atomic bombs.",
    "The pivotal engineering and scientific success of the Twentieth century was the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project assimilated concepts and leaders from all scientific fields and engineering disciplines to construct the first two atomic bombs."
  ]
}

Usage

To use with HF datasets:

pip install datasets zstandard
from datasets import load_dataset

data = load_dataset('nixiesearch/bfhnd-small')
print(data["train"].features)

License

Apache 2.0

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