Tag Archives: poppy

Thank you for your service

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Sorenne and I wore poppies to school today, as did Amy, after having a long chat about WW1 and what it meant.

poppy.remembrance.dayMy grandfather was too young to serve in WWI and too old for WWII, but he served in Wales, on local watch. My father was just a babe when Newport got bombed to hell in WWII and I still remember a pic of him in an astronaut’s helmet in a bomb shelter.

He was about 1-year-old.

On the way back from school, I had conversations with three different veterans, and thanked them for their service.

They were all headed to the local park, for a memorial service.

An Australian friend tells me, every little town and suburb in this country has parks and memorials like that, and it’s quite remarkable.

I agree, and have visited enough to know it’s true.

I’m sorta like Tony Soprano, who had a penchant for WWII documentaries, in that there’s an underlying feeing of inadequacy when compared to what our forebears did.

I’m grateful.

Sorenne is too.

Restaurants in China spike meals with opiates to keep diners coming back?

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Two south Chinese restaurants were found to be serving their food with poppy seed powder–which contains addictive substances like codeine and morphine–to ensure diners would come back for more.

Officials with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Guangzhou Province checked 70 restaurants last year, and found that two were using poppy-seedsmarinade sachets containing poppy powder, Yangcheng Evening News reported.

Zhan Ke, who works for the Guangzhou FDA Restaurant Division, told the paper that heavily seasoned or aromatic sauces may contain poppy seeds. In their spot check, the inspectors targeted soup base, home-made chilli sauce, brine, and curry sauce.  Tests revealed several substances, that could damage the digestive and nervous systems, including codeine, morphine, papaverine, noscapine, and thebaine.

In 2012, inspectors in Jiangsu Province sampled over 400 hotpot soup bases, and found 10 percent contained poppy seed ingredients, according to a report by Oriental Daily earlier this year.  Also, many seasoning stores in Beijing sell poppy seeds and many noodle shops and barbeque stands were big buyers.