[Sca-cooks] Grains of Paradise

[Lilinah]

On another SCA cooking list, someone posted:
>thanks to the (US) boycott on Sumatra, we can't get grains of 
>paradise through "normal" channels... which is a shame...

Has anyone else heard of this?

Is anyone else having trouble getting grains of paradise?

It sounds strange to me because Sumatra isn't a country. Sumatra is 
the sixth largest island in the world, and just one island of many in 
the archipelago-country of Indonesia. Sumatra has ten 
provinces/administrative regions, including a number of small islands 
along its southwestern and northeastern coasts.

True, the province of Aceh (more-or-less pronounced "ah-chay"), on 
the northernmost tip, has potentially dangerous Muslim 
fundamentalists, but i'm don't see that as a reason to boycott the 
whole huge island.

Plus, i often buy Sumatran coffee and there has been no increase in 
its price, nor has it become unavailable.

Also, this makes me curious as to where most of the commercial crop 
of grains of paradise is grown. Grains of paradise is native to 
Africa, but i know that many spices are now grown far from their 
points of origin.

I haven't been able to find anything about it in a Google search, but 
maybe i was using the wrong search parameters.

Help!

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita