From:  "shanlung9" <shanlung9@y...>
Date:  Tue Apr 6, 2004  1:13 pm
Subject:  OT - In praise of procrastination

Staying here in Taiwan and trying to get ingredients
to make Mike's Manna Mash for my Tinkerbell have some
inherent difficulties. Obviously the beans and stuff
sold here are known only by their Chinese names.
Since my own cooking , if ever I do that, consisted
mainly of heating stuff in cans or instant noodles, I
hardly know one end of a vege from another or a bean
from another..

Despite, or perhaps I should say, notwithstanding such
lack of knowledge of beans and stuff, over the last
two years I slowly accumulated a somewhat workable
knowledge of beans in both Chinese and English
language and I gotten almost all of the beans to go
into MMM.

There was one outstanding item, the Great Northern
White beans that I never manage to locate even though
hours of my time were exerted on this effort.

A month ago, while having my weekly vegetarian meal,
that meal included a big whitish bean. It was very
tasty and meaty with a nice texture that I liked.
That earmarked that bean as a potential new food for
Tinkerbell.

Using my warped rationalization that I have been
guilty of inflicting on Tink from time to time and in
my desire to find what I desire, I convinced myself
that must be the missing Great Northern White bean
that I was hunting for high and low. After all, the
bean was big and therefore `Great' and whitish and
close enough to `White' and it was obviously a bean.
3 hits out of 4 are pretty good and for all I know,
it may be Northern as well.

I also got the name in Chinese from my local
colleague. I was going to rush out to buy it. But
procrastination got the better of me.

I then remarked that I found that last elusive bean in
BCPlus, the list dedicated to MMM minions and diet for
fids and many other subjects that touches on our fids
or ourselves.

Yvonne (otak_2) from BCPlus in private email to me
offered to send me some of that great northern white
beans by snailmail that I accepted without any shame.

In due time, her long awaited letter arrived and I
have some of those beans physically in my hands.
Pictures of those beans in the Internet never showed
the scale. I was surprised that the beans were a lot
lot smaller than what I thought them to be. Much
alerted now, I checked that what I thought were my
missing beans actually turned out to be broad beans.

My wife went on to check and found that broadbeans are
listed among avocadoes as stuff you never should feed
your fids.

If not for my procrastination, I would have bought
that stuff and cooked and given it to my lovely
Tinkerbell. I came so close to nearly poisoning her.
I was in a state of shock for a while.

This was about 2 weeks ago. I somewhat procrastinated
a bit before getting this email out to you all. I am
sure you do understand. (I emailed thank you to Yvonne
immediately on arrival of her snail mail though).

WHATEVER YOU THINK, PLEASE MAKE POSITIVE
IDENTIFICATION OF ALL FOODSTUFF BEFORE GIVING TO YOUR
FID.

Thank you again Yvonne for your kind little act. I
owe you big on this.

With those genuinely great northern white beans in my
hand now, I went over to a shop that sell beans. He
took a cursory glance and turned back to rummage and
got me a kg.



=====
With warmest regards

Shanlung
Joy - wife, Tinkerbell - CAG & surrogate daughter

From:  shan lung <shanlung9@y...>
Date:  Thu Apr 8, 2004  11:04 am
Subject:  OT - Re: Broad beans are toxic??

--- In Bird-Click@yahoogroups.com, "acevenson"
<acevenson@s...> wrote:
> I looked at the links you provided Shanlung, but I
could only find a
> reference to uncooked beans and sprouts, what about
cooked beans? A
> lot of foods are toxic when raw... What about cooked
beans, in soup
> etc? I'm sure I have seen them in bird recipes...?
>
>
>


We are creatures of our own prejudices.

I am not an expert on nutrition be it of fids or
humans. I rely on what I get from the web or from
other people who established themselves in that field
of knowledge. Unless what they say run contrary to
what I do know.

There have been schools of thoughts that maintained
soy products are unhealthy and should not be feed to
fids, pets or even to humans as it adversely affect
fertility and other problems. But with the thousands
of years of soy beans and products in Asian/Chinese
history, I do disagree. Looking at the number of
Chinese and East Asians there are in this world and
their heavy consumption of soya products, fertility
and health do not seem to be a problem unlike what
those school of thoughts have said.

Soya beans are poisonous UNLESS properly prepared by
repeated soaking and washing prior to cooking. Even a
non-culinary chinese (but I love good food even if I
cannot cook) like me knows that. It must be
thoroughly cooked as well. Tink and so many other
fids are healthy as well on MMM which advocate soy
beans.

In areas I know less about or of food that I do not
care much about, I rather not take risks. Some people
said avocado flesh can be feed to fid PROVIDED the
parts adjacent to the seed or skin are not used. As I
do not care for avocados myself, I prefer to accept
convention and not use avocado at all for Tinkerbell.

Good diet for fid include papayas. I hate papayas and
for that reason, Tinkerbell never got any papayas.

I am ambivalent to broadbeans although I must confess
a recent conversion to the delights of lima beans. In
this case, I defer to conventional lore and accept
that those may not be suitable for Tinkerbell.

After all, I have already 9 different types of beans
(garbanzo, pinto, kidney, soy, blackeye, black, red,
green, white) 5 different cereals(rices, oats, wheat,
barley) and different veges and fruits in my mash for
Tinkerbell. She gets choice bites from my sashimi and
other food as and when we have dinner. She gets to
eat an oil palm date from time to time. Yup, Tink
also get her pellets and Nutriberries regularly and HT
and Zorro's fur now and then.

The absence of broad beans or lima beans from her diet
should not be significant. I am not that brave at
this point to prove the pundits right or wrong on fava
or lima beans or to wonder if they refer only to the
sprouted beans or not. I am a coward at such things.

I maintain my own peace of mind by not having that at
all in her current diet.





=====
With warmest regards

Shanlung
Joy - wife, Tinkerbell - CAG & surrogate daughter