Food, Inc

Lately, Alister and I have been watching a lot of documentaries (partly because PBS and the history channel seem to be the only stations that don't foreign IP addresses).

Our latest find was Food, Inc. We had heard about the movie this summer, and after watching King Corn, and Super Size Me - we had it on our list.

It was excellent. The main thing that keeps going over and over in my head is this one scene where an organic farmer is outside butchering and packing chickens. He says that the big chicken factory tried to shut him down by saying his operations were unsanitary (well, we might think - he is outside!) So he had his chicken tested along with one of the supermarket packing plant chickens. His chicken was 1000 times cleaner!!!!!! than the packing pack chicken - and, he made the point, his chicken hasn't been through any chlorine baths.

While this makes me feel tremendously safer about shopping in our outdoor market - it also makes me thankful not to be in the US buying my food. Based on numerous articles I've been reading this past year - I've already told Alister that we can't eat ground beef when we visit the states unless it comes from my Uncle's farm - and now i'm afraid that I really will cave and go "organic" despite the cost. While food is generally more expensive here in Europe - and even while Ukrainian food doesn't have the best reputation in Europe - many things - such as Genetically Modified foods - have been banned. Here in Ukraine, there still are concerns about chickens who have been pumped up with steroids or whatever - people will tell you to buy beef or pork or buy from a babushka - but in general - I don't think there are the huge mega packing houses and meat plants that there are in the states. While a smaller scale may be seen as inefficient - right now i'm thinking "cleaner" and “safer”.
In the UK - Beef and other products are safer still - because of the Mad Cow scare - meat packages in the supermarket must be labelled with the farm from which the animal came - that means no mixed portions of cows from Uruguay, Texas and Timbuktu - You can even select a piece of meat that came from your neighbour down the road.

And that, I think, is pretty darn cool.

Getting Old

Finally finished packing for the trip at 12:30 am and cleaning house for the housesitter.
Woke up to get dressed and catch a taxi to the airport at 3:40 am. A good thing Alister's Alarm worked because mine (set for 3:30am- and yes the taxi had been waiting 5 minutes before we got down so we could have used the 10 minutes) - ended up being set for pm instead of AM. How accurate can you be at that time of morning with only 5 hours of sleep the night before and an action packed day full of preparations before departure?

Flight was great - we booked with KLM who coded the flight to Air France who apparently did a seat share with Ukrainian international. Amazing that the cheapest ticket was available with a company who we didn't even see the entire flight.

We flew to Paris. The flight was not full so Alister and I had a seat between us. Somehow - I can curl onto 1 or 2 seats like I used to. The short haul of luggage (50 lb, 48lb, 18lb, 12 lb, and whatever alister's weighed)- was exhausting - and I didn't even have to carry half of it! Nothing like the trip as a single woman from Osijek to Budapest - by train with 175 lbs of luggage that I lugged about the city by myself. (not recommended - Budapest has no elevators and lots of stairs). But somehow - this packing trip was much more exhausting then all of that. I don't know if it is having to worry about packing for another person - or just getting old.

Had a 4 hour layover in France. Terminal B isn't much to speak of, and wouldn't be a comfortable place to crash in - but Terminal E was luxurious - in fact a but TOO luxurious - The food court had 4 gourmet styled restaurants serving from a cafeteria style layout - a bottle of water cost 2.10 euro and the cheapest thing you could find to eat that was 150g. (a sandwich) cost 5.20 euro. One of the places sold Lebanese food and it was ridiculous what they wanted for a small potion of hummus (3.75) bread (1.75) and a roll of something the size of your pinky was being sold for 2 euro something. A Chinese portion of meat/veggie combo was 5.8 and then another 1.75 was asked for a portion of rice. Portions were not generous but adequate for 1. With no alternative - we got a sandwich and spent the rest of our meal watching the shocked reaction of the other patrons who wandered in - circling the place in disbelief over the prices. You could spot the Business people - they shook their heads at the prices and then filled up their plates with a decent meal anyway. We decided it must be the expense accounts.

Fell asleep in the lounge even after a coffee - woke up unable to feel my right side and with fuzziness engulfing me we stumbled to the gate - only to discover that Alister had not reset his clock so we were an hour early - better than an hour late.

Ever since personal entertainment centers have been installed on Aircraft - flying has become way more comfortable - but even without that i highly recommend AIR FRANCE - they give you a face mask, ear plugs, head phones, a yummy and generous meal - three passes through for beverages and then a "self-serve" invite for the back of the plane - and just excellent service. Fly Air France.

And while complementing France - Alister and I watched a comedy Envoyés très spéciaux on the plane. It was absolutely hilarious. LOL. Its about these journalists who are supposed to report on Iraq but get stuck in Paris - so they pretend they are in Iraq but are broadcasting from Paris. The plot thickens in the relationship between the two journalists - one who unknowingly slept with the other man's wife who then left him the day that he got sent to "Iraq" Clever, original, and just plain great - of especial note is the celebrity fundraising satire.

Finding a good movie to watch

The problem with living in another country and wanting to see a movie is that all of the titles are translated - sometimes drastically. While you can normally figure out what movie is playing in the theater, trying to find a movie and rent it later on it almost impossible.

In Costa Rica, for example - I remember we were there when U271 came out. Really - how can you translate that any different? Well they did, the changed the name (in Spanish) The Battle for the Atlantic.

The way i've found around this conundrum is to do a language specific internet search for one of the main actors in the movie I want to see. this means that if i want to learn more about a Russian movie, I can go to IMDB.com, type in a Russian actors name, like Nikita Mikhalkov, and find the English names and reviews for all his movies - or I can for an movie - like Hair Spray, doing a Google search for John Travolta ( Джон Траволта) and find that actually the translation of the title was great. (лак для волос).

Best of all, I've found the Russian version of the IMDB - and in case I don't want to go to all the effort of figuring out how to spell names in Russian - the Russian titles and names are connected to the original titles and name spellings.