Most Recent Posts

What's for dinner on World Food Day?

How about a humble meal of dried termites stirred into a sukuma wiki stew? With a side of sorghum couscous?

World Food Day was invented by the U.N. in 1979 and first celebrated the next year. One goal is to promote underutilized, highly nutritious foods for the 800 million people in lower income countries who can't easily prepare balanced meals.

We asked Action Against Hunger, a nonprofit group, to cook up a list of foods that could make a big nutritional difference. And yes, the list includes termites.

i i

Lynette Schimming/Flickr

Lynette Schimming/Flickr

Termites, Three Ways

Yes, the same bug that could destroy the wood in your home is a highly nutritious food: 35 percent protein and a good source of calcium, iron and zinc. Termites can be dried like beef jerky and then later added into any meal for a protein boost. These bugs are typically harvested from the mounds they construct and live in, says Muriel Calo, a researcher at Action Against Hunger.

If you don't want to take time to dry them, just toss them in a frying pan. They're really easy to cook: termites fry in their own fat. Daniella Martin, author of Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet, also recommends tossing them with olive oil, crushed garlic and salt before baking them at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

i i

Stacy Spensley/Flickr

Stacy Spensley/Flickr

Dip Into Green Gram

Green gram, also known as mung bean, is a high-protein legume that is native to India and is now grown across East Africa and Southeast Asia. The beans can be boiled in water until they are soft and then either pureed into a hummus-like dip or eaten as is. They can grow almost anywhere there's a bit of soil.

Sometimes You Feel Like A Groundnut

This root legume resembles its relative the peanut. The powerhouse groundnut is such a good source of nutrients that it's often turned into Plumpy'Nut, a nutrient-dense paste given to children suffering from malnutrition. But the high demand for this crop also means that many farmers who grow groundnuts are tempted to sell the harvest rather than eating it themselves.

Calo hopes that the more farmers and their families understand the value of these legumes as part of a balanced diet, the more likely they will be to eat them themselves. In Haiti, groundnuts are turned into a butter similar to American peanut butter, with a twist. The nuts are grilled and then ground in a traditional grinder, says Stephanie Armand, author of A Taste for Haiti, a traditional Haitian cookbook. The paste is mixed with salt and hot pepper.

Or you can just roast 'em and eat 'em.

i i

I Believe I Can Fry/Flickr

I Believe I Can Fry/Flickr

Sukuma Wiki aka Collard Greens

That's the Swahili phrase for collard greens, which are packed with iron, calcium, protein and all sorts of vitamins and minerals.

But that's only part of the reason greens are a staple dish in parts of Kenya and other East African countries. The literal translation of sukuma wiki is "stretch through the week" — a fitting description for a crop that's great for feeding families on a tight budget. In Africa's tropical heat, these leafy greens can grow 3 to 4 feet tall year-round. And families and farmers can periodically pick the leaves throughout the year without harming the plant. The greens often stewed and served alongside porridge, but for households with a some extra ingredients in their kitchen, it can be sauteed with onions, tomatoes and even meat and fish.

i i

Armin Vogel/Flickr

Armin Vogel/Flickr

Sorghum and Millet Can Make The Cake (And The Couscous)

Sorghum, an ancient grain that originated in Northeastern Africa is mostly used for animal feed and ethanol production in the U.S. But throughout Africa and in parts of Asia and South America, sorghum, and its cousin millet (pictured, left), commonly make filling and nutritious meals.

Sorghum and millet can thrive where "other more water-hungry crops cannot grow," says Tim Dalton, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University. So unlike corn, sorghum and millet can withstand the tropical heat and won't die if there's a drought.

The grains often eaten as porridge or ground into flour to make bread and cakes. Sometimes water is added to the flour, which is then shaped into balls and steamed. Voila – sorghum and/or millet couscous!

Not only are the grains rich in complex carbs, iron and vitamin B, but they also have a high glycemic index. "They digest slower, so they are good if you are living in a developing country where you're doing a lot of manual labor," says Dalton.

The Salt

Can Millet Take On Quinoa? First, It'll Need A Makeover

The Salt

Heat, Drought Draw Farmers Back To Sorghum, The 'Camel Of Crops'

He adds that it's not only good for people in lower-income countries, but also people right here in the U.S. In fact, he says, sorghum and millet could well become the next quinoa. For those looking for a new grain to try, there are lots of recipes to start with, including some by celebrity chef and sorghum enthusiast Marc Forgione.

groundnut

mung beans

millet

sorghum

collard greens

termites

World Food Day

Mexico's banking regulator slapped a nearly 30 million peso ($2.2 million) fine on the Citigroup subsidiary Banamex, for failing to provide sufficient accounting controls. The regulator said the lack of oversight allowed the Mexican firm Oceanografia to allegedly dupe the bank out of $400 million.

Banamex had loaned the money to Oceanografia, an oil services firm contracted by the state petroleum monopoly PEMEX, based on invoices that turned out to be fake.

Oceanografia has not been charged with any wrongdoing but is under investigation. The company's CEO and controlling shareholder, Amado Yanez Osuna, had been under house arrest for nearly two months. He faces bank fraud charges in Mexico but was released earlier this summer after posting $6.2 million bond.

Citigroup fired 12 Banamex employees after discovering the alleged fraud, which also led to the resignation of several high-level employees, including Chief Executive Javier Arrigunaga, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But the Mexican newspaper Reforma points out that the fine represents less than half a percent of Banamex's earnings during the first half of this year.

For its part, Banamex says it has paid the fine and has reinforced its internal accounting controls.

However, earlier this week Citigroup announced it had discovered a $15 million fraud. According to Reuters, the money was used by a bank-operated security company originally set up to protect Banamex board members from personal attacks, including kidnapping. But Citigroup said the security company also used the funds to offer protection services to some of Mexico's wealthiest families.

Banamex's troubles don't seem to be limited to Mexico. Reuters also reports that a source says that "Banamex USA is facing a U.S. criminal investigation involving possible violations of money-laundering laws."

banamex

Citigroup

Mexico

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

In a bit of a twist, the archives of the late, great crime novelist Elmore Leonard have come to rest at the University of South Carolina, the school announced Wednesday. Leonard, long known as the "Dickens of Detroit," chose Columbia, S.C., over the Motor City to house his collection after visiting the school last year, just months before his passing.

It was Leonard's tour of the university's literary archives — a walk among the original manuscripts of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and George V. Higgins — that persuaded him. And the choice came quickly: On the flight home to Detroit, Leonard made his decision, according to his son, Peter.

While Leonard was known for his spare writing style — he "had a contempt for putting pretty clothes on hard, direct words," NPR's Scott Simon remembered — he left behind his fair share of those words. More than 450 drafts of manuscripts, ranging from his early Westerns to his best-known novels, will join scrapbooks, typewriters and even a few Hawaiian shirts in the collection.

Samples of the archives went on display Wednesday, and The Associated Press reports that the whole collection is expected to be ready for researchers' eyes in about 18 months.

McSweeney's Makes A Change: McSweeney's is going nonprofit. Founder Dave Eggers says he hopes that the San Francisco publishing house — the force behind a number of books, the magazine The Believer and, well, McSweeney's (the quarterly literary journal) — will become a 501(c)(3) group within a year. Eggers tells the San Francisco Chronicle why: "You know, the taste of the editors and the staff ran toward really worthy books and worthy undertakings and anthologies and series that ... didn't necessarily indicate profit."

Stretch Break: Electric Literature has an infographic's bounty of useful yoga poses for writers who, really, are hoping mostly just to dodge the blank page. Stretches include "Navel-Gazing Poet," "Blurb-Begging Novelist" and, naturally, the "Plot Twist."

Klein's Prize: In a week thick with awards, it's best not to forget neglect our friends north of the border. Journalist and activist Naomi Klein has won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize, Canada's richest prize for nonfiction ($60,000), for her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein hopes the prize helps expand the book's otherwise "lefty audience," the writer told Publisher's Weekly. "It's all about having the debate, and you can't have the debate unless everybody is talking to each other."

Before The Afterlife: Oh, and you heard, right? Wolverine died Wednesday. But be calm, says Glen Weldon: He's not dead dead.

wolverine

McSweeney's

Book News

Elmore Leonard

books

"I'm just a hand liner. I put lines on," says Kevin Manypenny. He's been working here for nearly 40 years.

He twirls a plate, dips a brush in brown glaze and paints three delicate lines on the plate's edge. Fiesta is about half of Homer Laughlin's business — the other half is dinnerware for hotels and the sturdy plates and cups you find at chain restaurants. The plate he's working on is for a Boston restaurant.

Manypenny and seven of his eight siblings — and their parents — have worked at this factory. And there are dozens of families like theirs. Brothers founded the company: Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin — presumably a literary family — jumped on a new fashion for a whiter, more refined dinnerware.

"They were the young whippersnappers in the pottery world, and they were the ones who ended up successfully firing four kilns worth of whiteware before any of the other potteries could and then they won a prize of $5,000 ... and that's what launched the Laughlin brothers into pottery production on a big scale," says Sarah Vodrey of the Museum of Ceramics across the river in East Liverpool, Ohio, where Homer Laughlin used to be based.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the factory changed hands. The new team built a plant on the West Virginia side of the river, and those long low factory buildings are still in use today.

Then in the 1930s, the company created Fiesta: inexpensive, colorful, cheerful dinnerware. It was a hit even in the Depression. In 1948, Homer Laughlin really stepped up the production of plates and bowls. The company designed and built its own machine inside the factory. Dave Conley, a longtime employee and unofficial company historian, calls it "the big, flat automatic."

Credit: The "big, flat automatic" machine allows Homer Laughlin to mass produce multiple types of items at once. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

"You've got three machines here and each one has two heads on it, so theoretically we could be making six different items at a time," he says. Conley says that's 3,000 dozen pieces — or 36,000 pieces of pottery — every 8-hour shift. (People who make dishes talk in dozens.)

There have been improvements. Computers control the firing now. 3-D printers speed the design process. Ceramic engineers found a way to make glaze shiny without using lead — all in house.

"The people that owned our company have always put profits back into the plant to modernize, and we've always had state of the art equipment [like the big, flat automatic], and I call that state of the art even though that's as old as it is, it's almost 60 years old," Conley says.

Credit: Fiesta salt shakers are sent down the line to be glazed. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

Fiesta Revival

Inside the old buildings, with fog pouring off the Ohio River and drifting into the windows, the ware comes out of the fire, magically transformed — creamy orange, intense red, vivid turquoise. Bright pottery, stacked in bins and crates, are piled all over the place.

"I remember the first time I actually went to the facility and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, 'Boy am I back in the 1940s or what?' I mean, even the office it isn't all spruced up," says Bruce Smith, the head of the union representing the pottery workers. "It's the old look, and they're focused on making product and not being flashy." He says while nothing about Homer Laughlin is flashy, the workers do make decent money.

Calling All Fiesta Fans

Do you have a Fiesta collection or a favorite Fiesta dish? Take a picture, tag it #nprfiesta on Instagram and we may feature it on NPR.org.

"They're good jobs and they're making a living, being able to buy a home and raise a family and retire with some dignity," Smith says.

Both management and labor consider that an achievement.

"I'm very proud to have kept this business here in the Ohio Valley. That's very important to us," says Elizabeth Wells McIlvain, the first woman to lead Homer Laughlin, and the fourth generation of her family at the plant. Her immediate family now owns most of the business. Her daughter, Maggie, is an intern in the marketing department.

Homer Laughlin stopped producing Fiesta for a time beginning in 1973. A harvest gold color and an avocado green didn't sell. But in 1986, Bloomingdale's came calling looking for a retro china for its stores, and Homer Laughlin made a typical, practical decision: restart an old line and revive Fiesta for retail sale, along with its existing hotel and restaurant business.

"We have two sides of the business and that's helped us tremendously because it seems when ... the retail side of the business is flourishing, the hotel side is ... having difficulties, and vice versa," McIlvain says.

Palettes of Fiesta pieces are lined up in preparation for an upcoming retail outlet tent sale at Homer Laughlin in Newell, W.Va. Ross Mantle for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ross Mantle for NPR

It helps that Fiesta has a big fanbase. Collectors stand in line for hours to get into the factory tent sales. Fans meet, they swap, they critique the company's color choices. And they wait for the new Fiesta color unveiled each March. (The color for 2014 is poppy, a bold, saturated orange.)

"They always have suggestions. One year they all wanted fuchsia, and they all arrived to Homer Laughlin to go on their tours dressed in whatever fuchsia they had. That was their silent but very loud statement," McIlvain says.

But she offered no color clues for this coming March. "That's a very deep, dark secret," she says with a laugh.

fiesta

homer laughlin