As you might expect, a lot of the traditional Mongolian cuisine is optimized for nomadic living. For example, they didn't really have beer, vodka, or wine, as they didn't have easy access to grain, potatoes, or grapes and didn't want to ferment liquids for months or years on end. Instead, they made alcoholic drinks from milk.
> Kumis is a dairy product similar to kefir, but is produced from a liquid starter culture, in contrast to the solid kefir "grains". Because mare's milk contains more sugars than cow's or goat's milk, when fermented, kumis has a higher, though still mild, alcohol content compared to kefir.
> Strictly speaking, kumis is in its own category of alcoholic drinks because it is made neither from fruit nor from grain. Technically, it is closer to wine than to beer because the fermentation occurs directly from sugars, as in wine (usually from fruit), as opposed to from starches (usually from grain) converted to sugars by mashing, as in beer. But in terms of experience and traditional manner of consumption, it is much more comparable to beer. It is even milder in alcoholic content than beer.
> Traditionally, this fermentation took place in horse-hide containers, which might be left on the top of a yurt and turned over on occasion, or strapped to a saddle and joggled around over the course of a day's riding.
> Balls of qurt dissolved in water with flour and jerky made for quick camp dinners
The article mentions that qurt is rich in protein, but the fat is key. Jerky is very lean, and lacking carbohydrate rich foods, needs to be supplemented with fat for energy to be sustainable. The American aboriginals added tallow to jerky for this purpose, creating pemmican. Apparently dairy foods weren't part of their culture.
These foods are the closest thing we have to Tolkein's "lembas".
What. Lembas was nowhere neat pemmican. It was explicitly a form of bread, and most likely based on hardtack, that Tolkien would have been exposed to on the seas and while in service.
Pemmican as a specific "thing" came from the Americas, but the concept of mixing dried meats/preserved dairy and fats is something that is common in history
Pretty sure that the GP is referring to the effectiveness of lembas. It's described as being extremely nutritious so that one bite can fill a man's stomach and keep him on the march all day.
I'm fairly certain that Tolkien actually stated that lembas is a reference to the Eucharist. No doubt he had experience with hardtack, but IRL hardtack isn't really known for being nutritious or pleasant to eat.
> I'm fairly certain that Tolkien actually stated that lembas is a reference to the Eucharist.
I'd really want to see a cite for that. Tolkien was infamously hostile to any allegorical reading of The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes a fantasy epic is just a fantasy epic.
Tolkien both claimed that LOTR was allegorical and that it wasn't. Probably he was using the common definition of allegory in one context and the literary definition in the other.
When Tolkien said he disliked allegory, he meant he disliked literary works that map directly onto some external meaning that was necessary for understanding the story. He thought a story should stand on its own, and, further, it wasn't good writing to try to force a story into allegory rather than let it take its own direction. But we also know from his letters that he purposefully incorporated religious (specifically, Catholic) metaphors into LOTR, which most people would call allegory, including Tolkien on some occasions.
> From [Tolkien's] works one could deduce the Christianity but not perhaps the Roman Catholicism, except that one critic related invocations the Elbereth and Galadriel's character to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw lembas, which fed the will and became more potent when fasting, as derived from the Eucharist.
From your link (written in rather grammatically flawed English) it is unclear whether Tolkien intended that symbolism, or if he was only relating that a third party claimed that symbolism in his work.
While I admire the resourcefulness of the people who invented these sorts of foods, they aren't really the sort of thing most people like to eat when given alternatives, I think.
My coworker just told me it's her favorite. Apparently, if you like the flavor of kefir or salty lassi or parmesan chips or yogurt drops, you might also like these.
Just be prepared for them to be hard - “as hard as iron slag” isn’t far off it - first time I had one I nearly broke a tooth - they have the consistency of concrete.
Tasty, though. Great with a frosty beer after a day roasting in the steppes - which is where I first encountered them - mysterious spheres presented with a brew in dusty Aktobe.
They take some getting used to, but I absolutely loved them when I was working in central asia. I haven't been able to find a hookup back in the states though.
I just ordered some from a few sources, and hopefully one of them is good. Found one on Amazon, one on Etsy, and one from Bonanza. They're supposed to have great shelf life, so I guess they are well suited for e-commerce.
I felt like if I made them and didn't like them, I wouldn't know it was me screwing up the recipe or not.
I had these in Uzbekistan, they sell them everywhere, and people suck on them like it’s chewing gum. They were not to my taste, very bitter and very salty.
My mom, who lives in Shanghai, orders 'nai pian' on taobao as one of her favorite snacks. Apparently it's yogurt chips (not yogurt balls) and it's very popular, and people generally think of it as being from Mongolia, but eat it like potato chips that happen to be keto.
I'm pissed off. At how privacy is handled by most sites.
Should we consider banning, or flagging, websites on Hacker News submissions that offer a particularly painful, evil, approach to privacy?
This is what you get from the evil folks that run Atlas Obscura's website:
> Atlas Obscura and our trusted partners use technology such as cookies on our website to personalise ads, support social media features, and analyse our traffic. Please click below to consent to the use of this technology while browsing our site. To learn more or withdraw consent, please visit our cookie policy.
> Accept
"cookie policy" is a link, and from there, good luck trying to figure out how to NEGATE consent.
I support the cause, but the execution here is flawed. I have done professional museum work, creative writing 'zine illustration, and other cultural arts to try to make a living. This site and the people who publish it are not the ones to excoriate, or YNews the place to dramatically vent your own frustrations. Please adjust accordingly
At this point, I've just found it easier to block cookies and JS unless specifically needed. You get around all of these cookie warnings that shouldn't be there to begin with.
I think it’s a pretty big stretch to call them “evil”. You can block cookies if you want. But wanting analytics on your site or ad revenue from your publications isn’t exactly “evil”
Just block the consent dialog with the ublock element picker, they can't legally collect anything until you accept, that's why they make them so annoying.
> Kumis is a dairy product similar to kefir, but is produced from a liquid starter culture, in contrast to the solid kefir "grains". Because mare's milk contains more sugars than cow's or goat's milk, when fermented, kumis has a higher, though still mild, alcohol content compared to kefir.
> Strictly speaking, kumis is in its own category of alcoholic drinks because it is made neither from fruit nor from grain. Technically, it is closer to wine than to beer because the fermentation occurs directly from sugars, as in wine (usually from fruit), as opposed to from starches (usually from grain) converted to sugars by mashing, as in beer. But in terms of experience and traditional manner of consumption, it is much more comparable to beer. It is even milder in alcoholic content than beer.
> Traditionally, this fermentation took place in horse-hide containers, which might be left on the top of a yurt and turned over on occasion, or strapped to a saddle and joggled around over the course of a day's riding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis