This is breakfast at HMC Westeinde hospital in The Hague, the Netherlands. Every morning, the ‘breakfast cart’ comes along to each patient’s bedside, where the patient is offered a choice of white, wholegrain or raisin bread with butter, margarine, cheese or jam. Alternatively, patients can opt for a cereal (only one choice, an off-brand cornflake) with milk. Alongside this, you can choose to drink tea, coffee (both with or without milk, sugar and sweeteners) or apple or orange juice. You are also offered one hard-boiled egg.

Nestled in the Western Ghats on the coastline of the Indian peninsula, is Goa- a small state that was colonized by the Portuguese around 500 years ago and became a part of the larger Indian State in the 1960s. The confluence of this Indo-Western heritage amalgamates into a fascinating melting pot of culture. Goa, which is now a renowned tourist destination, has always been for me, home.

Torvehallerne are food halls which are positioned in the center of Copenhagen which sell a large variety of food. This includes fresh vegetables, cheese, fish, and freshly baked bread. The prices are high and the focus is on quality and ecology, rather than price and quantity. The shops are specialized in offering a selection of products from their respective shops. In conversation with cashiers, they explained to me that the dialogue is what sets apart Torvehallerne from regular supermarkets. This is the conversation around the products being sold.

Dried tea leaf is mostly manufactured in March and April when enough sunshine is available. At that time, the leaves are saturated with oil. It is the best time to make dried tea leaf. It is known as Moe-ma-hmi, Shwe-Phi dried tea leaf. During the months of March and April, dried tea leaves become dry in a day. Then they are sorted out to be marketable. There are two kinds of dried tea leaf namely, hard dried tea leaf and soft dried tea leaf. The soft dried tea leaf is not curled up fully and leaf is thick. The hard dried tea leaf is fully curled up and the leaf is thin.

Genetic research into rice from the inlands of Suriname draws attention to the history of West Africans who were deported as slaves to this former Dutch colony. While there are many grains of Asian rice, Surinamese black rice, ‘Blaka aleisi’, turned out to be almost identical to rice farmed by Mande-speaking farmers in West Ivory Coast according to research by Tinde van Andel. This rice was rarely eaten but instead was sacrificed to ancestors and used in spiritual herbal baths.