Where extraordinary becomes eccentric

“[Ban Ki-moon] is recommending nations ‘improve vulnerable people’s access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities.’ That means increasing food aid, supplying small farmers with seed and fertilizer in time for this year’s planting seasons, and reducing trade restrictions to help the free flow of agricultural goods.” — The Wall Street Journal

Those are great but redundant and costly ways to spur the food production by 50% by 2030. Increasing food aid, giving out seeds or fertilizers is in the long run unsustainable policy, because will doesn’t take into account the basic market forces and because it hopes to build the future under the same conditions as we have now. While I don’t want to dispute U.N. Chief’s erudition, soothing the hungry of the world by making them believe in such unrealistic faith is wrong. Instead, the U.N. should focus more on the energy policies of all of its members — not only those facing problems; should make a shift from focusing on global warming towards battling the local pollutions; and should make the deepest efforts to encourage democracy around the world. The history proves us that it’s been the dictators and tyrannizers who drove the successful countries down.

Because my mother and my brother abandoned me for this weekend and left to visit my grandmother (and labor excessively around her cottage in the mountains), I have to prepare my own meals. Apart from the obvious problems I have to deal with that are related to making food, such as deciding what to make or when to sacrifice your limited time to do the cooking and subsequent cleaning, I found another conundrum I must address.

I am an economical person, especially when it comes to managing my energy (i.e. I am lazy), and thus selected the pre-cooked pasta with some sauce for my lunch. On the back, the package carried initially lucid, but on the second look puzzling, directions. In the second step they said that I should pour the entire content of the package to 0.5 liter of boiling water.

For few moments that rendered me visibly quizzical, because I didn’t know how much of cold water would later turn into 0.5 l of boiling water. Did the food companies take into consideration the basic principles of physics? When I was making a similar meal about a year ago, too much of the water vaporized and made the sauce more solid than liquid. This time I decided to add a little more (I know, not exactly a scientific terminology that would be appropriate in this case; I know I could do the calculations) than 0.5 I and hope the results would be more pleasing.

The outcome looked more like a soup rather than pasta with a cheese sauce. Once again I defeated by cooking.

The question therefore arises: would it be too hard for the food companies to adjust the amounts of potential food in the packages to fit the directions that would deal with exact amounts of cold water? “1) pour 0.5 liter of water into the pot 2) once the water starts boiling, add the content of the package and keep stirring it for 5 minutes” would certainly result into much better food at the end, at least for me.