Mountain/Ski Food

[randoskier]

Yikes, that canned bear meat…… might as well be chimpanzee meat which in turn might as well be human meat. Blah.

Yeah I thought that was pretty gross. I am quite sure it was for the benefit of tourists, I don't think karhu is widely eaten in Finland but don't have any information on their diet.

Bears- black fight back, brown lay down, white goodnight.

[randoskier]

Yikes, that canned bear meat…… might as well be chimpanzee meat which in turn might as well be human meat. Blah.

Yeah I thought that was pretty gross. I am quite sure it was for the benefit of tourists, I don't think karhu is widely eaten in Finland but don't have any information on their diet. I don't equate bears with the higher primates.

Bears- black fight back, brown lay down, white goodnight.

[randoskier]

This is typical mountain food from where I live in the Dolomite's foothills- this is polenta with venison in three versions. One is in plum sauce (the one that looks like a wet turd with pine nuts). The chees polenta is Asiago cheese. Took (err ate) these at a rifugio (hut) at our local Nordic ski center on the Asiago plateau (they have the world cup races there sometimes). Nice skiing there, but like everything in Italy, too crowded.

[DG99]

Polenta always reminds me of pellagra (the disease). Tortillas have lime-processed corn, freeing up the niacin. If you eat mostly polenta you don’t get your niacin and end up with pellagra…..

[TallGrass]

Polenta always reminds me of pellagra (the disease). Tortillas have lime-processed corn, freeing up the niacin. If you eat mostly polenta you don’t get your niacin and end up with pellagra…..

Depends on how the polenta was made and how much your diet relies on it per below:

As Europeans and Americans began to eat corn, they also began to be afflicted by a disease called pellagra, which starts with dermatitis, diarrhea and dementia and can end with death. It was clear that an overreliance on corn caused the disease; what wasn't clear was why Mexicans, many of whom ate practically nothing but corn and corn products, were not similarly afflicted.

What scientists eventually figured out was that the native American practice of soaking dried corn kernels with either lime or ash (naturally occurring alkalines) made corn much more nutritious because it freed the niacin in the grain. Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency.

Native Americans probably didn't eat a lot of anything that resembles grits as we recognize the dish today. This is because corn went hand in hand with the process of nixtamalization in Native American culture. ... Nixtamal is portmanteau of the word "ashes" and "flour" in the Nahuatl language, which is the language of the Aztecs.

Those of you who are familiar with hominy are probably wondering why the hominy you are familiar with is so not like flour. Let's forget about the flour part of nixtamal and concentrate on the ash part.

Nixtamal is created by changing the Ph of corn (enter the wood ash) to create (ostensibly) extensibility and nutrition. Unnixtamalized corn flour won't stick together for dough, and it also won't provide you with any niacin. Although it is impossible to know what Native Americans knew, since their culture was actively and passively destroyed by settlers, including numerous scrolls from Aztec literature, nixtamal was not uniformly adopted by the settlers, and it was never adopted by Europeans.

There was a price to pay for this ignorance. The American South, Italy, Africa, and all the places corn went were plagued by a disease called pellagra. A diet of corn and not much else will eventually result in death precluded by dermatitis, diarrhea, and dementia. Collectively known as "the four d's"

[randoskier]

Polenta always reminds me of pellagra (the disease). Tortillas have lime-processed corn, freeing up the niacin. If you eat mostly polenta you don’t get your niacin and end up with pellagra…..

Pellagra was a problem in two provinces in Italy (mine Veneto, and neighboring Lombardy) but has not been a problem since 1920 something. It was mostly a 19th century problem due to lack of diversity in agricultural peasant diets and the resulting lack of essential vitamins

Polenta is widely eaten and loved here, especially in the mountains.

[Crayefish]

This is typical mountain food from where I live in the Dolomite's foothills- this is polenta with venison in three versions. One is in plum sauce (the one that looks like a wet turd with pine nuts). The chees polenta is Asiago cheese. Took (err ate) these at a rifugio (hut) at our local Nordic ski center on the Asiago plateau (they have the world cup races there sometimes). Nice skiing there, but like everything in Italy, too crowded.

Nom nom. That's an approved mountain dish.

One of my favourite mountain foods is the stomach soup I'd always have in the Pirins in Bulgaria. Stomach lining in a milk soup with lashings of pickled garlic. Perfect after a long day in the snow.

[randoskier]

This is typical mountain food from where I live in the Dolomite's foothills- this is polenta with venison in three versions. One is in plum sauce (the one that looks like a wet turd with pine nuts). The chees polenta is Asiago cheese. Took (err ate) these at a rifugio (hut) at our local Nordic ski center on the Asiago plateau (they have the world cup races there sometimes). Nice skiing there, but like everything in Italy, too crowded.

Nom nom. That's an approved mountain dish.

One of my favourite mountain foods is the stomach soup I'd always have in the Pirins in Bulgaria. Stomach lining in a milk soup with lashings of pickled garlic. Perfect after a long day in the snow.

Pickled everything is great, except herring (I might be barred from Norway for saying that)

[mca80]

Pickled everything is great, except herring (I might be barred from Norway for saying that)

"Where there are pickles there must be vodka." - from a Russian cookbook I reference sometimes for various Russian and ex-Soviet dishes.

[mca80]

Not food, but it smells so good I want to eat it. Rivals the bay leaf for best smell on earth.