[Sca-cooks] Grains of Paradise

[Terry Decker]

Sounds bogus to me.

Sumatra is part of Indonesia and AFAIK there is no embargo on goods from 
there.

Gernot Katzer states that most imports of grains of paradise come from 
Ghana.  According to the CIA Ghana is stable with a freely elected 
government and not currently involved in the troubles in West Africa other 
than taking in refugees from Liberia.  Ghana, BTW, is increasing the 
production of grains of paradise, apparently in response to a slowly growing 
demand.

Bear

> 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
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