Just when you think you have seen it all...stir-fried stones.

[TicTac]

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/suodiu-china-eating-stone-intl-hnk/index.html

 

Listen, I get eating bugs, great protein source, renewable, low impact on the environment, etc.

 

But seriously....this is a bit of a stone's throw over the bloody line!

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, TicTac said:

 

 

But seriously....this is a bit of a stone's throw over the bloody line!

I agree.

[chromedome]

Shades of the famous "stone soup" of yore.

[heidih]

2 minutes ago, chromedome said:

Shades of the famous "stone soup" of yore.

But that at least got real food added.  A great con.

[FeChef]

To be fair, When i eat pistachio's i like to open the shells in my mouth and suck out the salt and pistachio skin.

[TicTac]

18 hours ago, FeChef said:

To be fair, When i eat pistachio's i like to open the shells in my mouth and suck out the salt and pistachio skin.

But would you PAY for a bowl of sauteed pistachio shells!?

 

🤣

 

 

[liuzhou]

I can't find anyone here who has ever heard of this.  

 

Idiots on social media are hardly news.

[liuzhou]

With nothing better to do in my hospital bed, I just searched Xiaohongshu, where these stones are supposedly going viral, and found a whole one video with 200 'likes'.  Hardly world news. 

[FeChef]

15 hours ago, TicTac said:

But would you PAY for a bowl of sauteed pistachio shells!?

 

🤣

 

 

Depends. Is it a pureed pastachio soup with the shells added back in to suck the pureed pistachios out? If im being honest, i think i would!

 

Would you pay for a bowl of clam chowder with the clam shells added back into the soup so you can use them as a spoon to slurp the clam chowder?

Edited June 24, 2023 by FeChef (log)

[liuzhou]

I first heard of this in the late 1970 / early 80s. It seems to have originated originated during Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'  (1958-1961) during which millions starved to death due to a man-made (Mao-made) famine. People knew it didn't help but maybe took comfort from some psychological effect. Estimates for the fatalities range from 30-55 million. Still in living memory so nothing really to LOL about.

 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-leap-forward.asp

 

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

This reminds me so much of a German fairy tale in a book that my grandmother had. One little old lady in a small village had nothing left to eat so she put a stone in a big pot of water and invited all the neighbors for stone soup. She asked everyone to bring at least one thing to put in the soup. One neighbor had a carrot, one  had a tiny piece of meat and so on. By combining everything they had they finally wound up with a nutritious soup. It was so successful that they continued until spring came and everybody survived through that winter. A beautiful uplifting fairy tale??

My grandmother cried every time she read that story to us. She was only 4 ft 8, the result of growing up on a starvation diet. For all the millions that died in China I'm sure that there are many more millions of people that were physically stunted and mentally traumatized the rest of their lives. There is nothing funny about hunger.

[liuzhou]

1 minute ago, Tropicalsenior said:

For all the millions that died in China I'm sure that there are many more millions of people that were physically stunted and mentally traumatized the rest of their lives.

 

Most certainly. I've met some of them.

[heidih]

Another "stone soup" popped up in EaterLA today. I've seen the technique in other countries. This refers to a Oaxacaliforia restaurant. " Cruz is the only one in LA doing caldo de piedra (stone soup). It consists of shrimp, fish, onions, chiles, tomatoes, cilantro, and epazote loaded into a jícara (gourd) and rapidly boiled by a hot river stone that’s dropped into the soup."

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

41 minutes ago, heidih said:

I've seen the technique in other countries.

 

This was a fairly widespread method of cooking for most Indigenous North Americans. Varied from being done in woven watertight baskets to sealed birch bark vessels to cured hide vessels to whatever worked.

 

[liuzhou]

There is archaeological evidence of heated stones being used as a cooking medium worlwide from almost as soon as early man learned to tame fire.

 

That however, is somewhat different from what we have here.