My Family Traditions

A few weeks ago, one of my classmates did a wonderful presentation on Jewish Food and their holidays. After the presentation she asked my class to write a blog post about my religion and what food traditions we have. So I'm going to write about growing up Catholic.

Although my family weren't model Catholics, we still participated in very many traditions revolving around the church. One thing we did that I'll always remember was go to breakfast after Mass Sunday morning. Although not exactly a catholic thing, it was a time where my family would eat together and it happened to only happen after Mass. We would usually go to my favorite restaurant, Sero's, and I'd always get their chicken fingers, even though it was still "breakfast time". My family would complain and harass me about getting lunch for breakfast but I got it every time, despite their bereavement. And their harassing me also became tradition.

Another big tradition we had was eating dinners at Grandma's house. Typical Catholic families ate dinner as a family and a lot of the time, it was at their grandparents' house. It didn't matter what the occasion, dinner was always at their house. Throughout the school week we'd eat dinner at home due to time, but every Sunday and every holiday it was there. And everyone was invited. All the cousins, uncles, aunts, friends, friends of friends, new girlfriends or boyfriends, and everyone's pets. This went on for years as I was growing up. As I got older it didn't happen as much. My Aunts and Uncles started getting divorced, as did my parents, and everyone started drifting apart. It also didn't help that we were all starting to go to college as well. Nowadays we're lucky to even get a few relatives together. I miss the old days.

Shawarma House

Today I decided I'd pick a little something up from Shawarma House over on the corner of Howard and W. Michigan, behind Two Fellas Grill. Since I had no idea what Shawarma was, I decided I'd eat that. I ordered a chicken shawarma from the nice fellow at the restaurant. The man was very friendly and treated me like a friend he had not seen in years. He asked me how my day was, harassed me when I said I was tired by saying "You're too young to be saying that!", and was very cheery about his own day, saying it was "better than perfect". While we were talking he made my chicken shawarma which consisted of an assortment of condiments, pickles, cucumbers, and the shawarma itself. Shawarma is a preparation of the meat where they put it on a "spit" (Tall, vertical rotisserie) that slowly cooks the meat, in this case, chicken. It is of middle-eastern origin and leaves you with awful breath. I wish I could have talked to the main man in the kitchen more but he was quite busy with the customers they had. 10/10 would definitely go again.

Climate Change

I've been hearing about Climate Change ever since I was a little boy. Back then the only information I had on Climate Change was from the Al Gore episode of South Park, the same episode that featured ManBearPig. So obviously, my knowledge wasn't too vast. As I grew up more and more information became available to me and I learned about what has caused it, what can be done to "fix" it, and what will happen if we don't. But until we had our most recent lecture in English 1100, it never really struck me as a "top priority" kind of issue.

Dr. Karowe was invited to speak to our class this past Monday about Climate Change and how it is affecting not only the climate but our agriculture. Throughout my years of college I have been "molded" into a skeptic through the Psychology department, because skeptics make for good scientists. So obviously, I questioned everything Dr. Karowe had said (in my head, not out loud). However, his presentation was very well put together and answered just about every question. It also brought to my attention how big of an issue Climate Change really is. I never really thought a few degrees would make a huge difference. "Oh no, it's going to be a little hotter this summer! Better buy some stronger sunscreen or stay in my air conditioned apartment more!". But that's even close to the actual damage these few degrees could cause. Dr. Karowe mentioned that if the global climate were to raise five degrees (like it is predicted to in the next century), that agriculture would suffer tremendously. What really convinced me of these problems was the picture I've posted below in Figure A. This is a picture of the U.S if the climate were to drop five degrees. Can you find Michigan?

Figure A (The only figure) 

I don't know about you, but I'd rather not see what happens to Michigan, and the rest of the world, if the temps were to increase.