MPJ

It was commonly believed that ancient hunter-gatherers, both Humans and Neanderthals, had a simple lifestyle in which most or all of their food was obtained by gathering from local sources or by hunting animals from their environment. We simply assumed that beside the meat they hunted, their diet consisted of only raw foods such as wild plants, edible insects, mushrooms, honey, or pretty much anything that was safe to eat. Well, according to the recent study performed by Ceren Kabukcu* and her team from the archaeobotanical department of the University of Liverpool, we couldn't be more wrong. Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations - the Shanidar Cave in Iraq and the Franchthi Cave in Greece. The food remains from the first cave, originated from both Neanderthal hearths, 70,000 years old and those from ancient Humans thirty millenniums later and also those from Greece consumed some 12,000 years ago by our modern ancestors under microscopic examination reveal ...

The 'X' is definitely one of the most important letters in the alphabet. Not only that it is the most valuable variable in all math equations and scientific chase for the unknown, but in the entire history of human riddles, and I mean not always related to math, it always marks the most interesting spot. Sometimes the one with the treasure. It was not coincidence that old Romans used it for the most important number of them all. 10. The very base of our widely used numeric system. But we are not here to talk about mathematics or treasure hunting per se. It will be more about age. Of ten. My son Viktor is turning this magic number on this year Earth Day (April 22nd) and I decided, in addition to our previous topic and post Interview With an Expert , to fire another set of questions for him to answer. This time more general and within various realm of life and .. well .. stuff... So let's start with favorites. I guess they say a lot about personality. And they don...

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show. Finally and after almost five years from my first glimpse into the most famous Serbian dish, our cooking thread matured enough to step into the adventure of making the royalty. The well known, the most popular and the most amazing of all BBQs in these parts of the world. And by that I mean many of Balkan countries, If you are resident here you probably know what I am talking about. If not and you are just a traveler visiting Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and/or other neighboring countries and stumble to some restaurant with a grill and hesitated what to order just say "ćevapćići' (pronounced 'chevapchichi') and you will experience one of a kind and one extraordinary dish. The quote from the beginning was from the Sci-Fi TV Shows "Eureka" that aired 2006-2012 a...

Cooking can be hard. Sometimes it's more than art and pure joy but if you add all the effort and 'sweat' into it, the very result never disappoints. It was just like that in our today's kitchen play. Making tacos only looks easy and cheerful, but if you are doing it for the first time.. Well I will just say there was three hours of preparing, shopping, cooking and filming that was all intense and on the edge of disaster, but we managed to go all the way through it, and at the end, our Saturday's lunch included these six 'extremely' edible tacos that vanished into tin air in a fraction of just couple of minutes. Making tacos includes several parallel tasks and one of them was watching the tortillas in the oven during their seven minutes burn and they should be monitored closely to avoid over-burning. The color of our lunch today might went little more brownish I was hoping for, but trust me, they were extra crunchy and delicious nevertheless. Frying b...

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention ar...

Well, I am still not hundred percent convinced that this weblog matured enough for it's own cooking thread, but anyway, here we are again, after couple of months from original ' Little Chef ' post, we now have two more videos in our channel - our ways of making Sushi and Pizza. It all started couple of days ago, with me passing by one of those 'healthy food' stores in the neighborhood where I usually buy Serbian, sort of, non-carbonated ginger ale juice that is very popular in this part of the world - especially mixed with lemonade and ice cream. Anyhow, I stepped in to buy a bottle and noticed a pack of nori sheets on the shelf. I didn't think twice, so I bought one and today we made sushi for the first time in our culinary history. This is how it looks. Well, looked. It is always fun when you start preparing a dish for the first time. To be honest, in the past, on many occasions, our first endeavors ended in complete failure. However, today, sushi surp...

I am not sure that this weblog matured enough for it's own cooking thread, but one thing is for sure - spending time in kitchen from time to time and making delicious meals is one of those creative activities that can make your day. Truly. When it is successful, that is. Couple of months ago, Viktor wanted to start filming our kitchen games and to be honest some of them weren't too bad. Actually, what we did on several occasions could be regarded as pretty delicious and worth repeating, especially for those we made for the first time. Anyway, I am really hopeful that we will continue with this thread and maybe in the future if we pile up videos it could be one more chapter on the blog. For the record, I will be the director of the short video clips and Viktor will be dish chooser and main presenter. That means I will be behind the camera while he will be in front. I will also do hard work when camera is off simply because long cooking video clips are not what we really ...

Approximately 15 years ago I was working as a lab assistant in the programming department of micro assembly and object oriented languages within " College of Applied Technical Sciences " in Niš, Serbia. I was engaged with all five semesters and was teaching students from their freshman year to the graduation and every now and again, along with board of professors, I was asked to attend their final exams followed by sort of social celebration in form of small festivity with table full of food and drinks. On one such occasion, student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb" which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known that he tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. Stude...

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45C (113F) degrees and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car and go to one of four nearby seas for couple of weeks to cool and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries which are always seriously depleted when summers come). Due to the shortest distance and good roads Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of drive. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those " gastarbeiter " people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long river of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way thi...

I have an old friend who couple of years ago made a decision to radically change his way of life. What he did is almost unreal for the rest of us. He simply stopped eating food we are all familiar with and instead he eats only fruits, vegetables and various grains and nuts. All that in its raw and natural form without any cooking, baking or frying. Of course as a practical man (he is a math teacher in my wife's school) he didn't do this over night and instead used methodical approach so his switch from "ordinary" food to this final stage of the most strict vegetarian diet possible lasted couple of years in order to adapt his organism better and to avoid potential dangers on the way. Contrary to other vegetarians I know he didn't do this because of some illness or because his organism is not capable of digesting meat and thermally processed food. Instead this was an act of free will and strong belief that he is doing a good thing. I strongly admire him for this and...

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show. The very last decade of the very last century of the previous millennium was very exciting in many ways. It won't be remembered by all meaningless Balkan wars flaming down here for many years, nor by the final end of communism era in this part of the Europe, nor even by the birth of European union idea or rise of the new world order we are all living in today. No, to me, it was the birth of the internet, email, world wide web, social networks, instant messaging, blogging, everything what we are using in our homes on daily basis the same way we do with television or radio or ... kitchen and all its appliances. Although the internet network and its services were invented many years before, it was the nineties where all started to go real worldwide and accepted by majority of people eve...