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"Brown foods" were usually meat and were the main food source during the winter, usually boiled and served with wild garlic or onions.

The Mongols had a unique way of slaughtering their animals to get meat. The animal was laid on its back and restrained. Then the butcher would cut its chest open and rip open the aorta, which would cause deadly internal bleeding. Animals would be slaughtered in this fashion because it would keep all of the blood inside of the carcass. Once all of the internal organs were removed, the blood was then drained out and used for sausages.[2]

Genghis Khan authorized the use of paper money shortly before his death in 1227. It was backed by precious metals and silk.[6]

During the winter sheep were the only domestic animal slaughtered, but horses were occasionally slaughtered for ceremonies.[3]

The Mongols rarely slaughtered animals during the summer but if an animal died of natural causes they made sure to carefully preserve it.

During the winter the Mongols would also go ice fishing

Meal etiquette existed only during large gatherings and ceremonies. The meal, usually meat, was cut up into small pieces. Guests were served their meat on skewers and the host determined the order of serving. People of different social classes were assigned to different parts of the meat and it was the responsibility of the server or the “ba’urchis” to know who was in each social class. The meat was eaten with fingers and the grease was wiped on the ground or on clothing.

The most commonly imported fare was liquor

The Mongols used Chinese silver ingot as a unified money of public account, while circulating paper money in China and coins in the western areas of the empire such as Golden Horde and Chagatai Khanate

Under Ogedei Khan the Mongol government issued paper currency backed by silk reserves and founded a Department which was responsible for destroying old notes.[7] In 1253, Mongke established a Department of Monetary affairs to control the issuance of paper money in order to eliminate the overissue of the currency by Mongol and non-Mongol nobles since the reign of Great Khan Ogedei.

A Medieval monastery received pilgrims and travellers, at a period when western Europe was almost destitute of innsA Medieval monastery performed many works of charity, feeding the hungry, healing the sick who were brought to their doors, and distributing their medicinesA Medieval monastery provided education for boys who wished to become priests and those who intended to lead active lives in the worldA Medieval monastery copied the manuscripts of classical authors preserving valuable books that would otherwise have been lost A Medieval monastery kept records of the most striking events of their time and acted as chroniclers of the medieval history of the Middle Ages

the lavatorium was a room which contained a trough with running water where monks washed their hands before meals Misericord - a misericord was the part of a monastery where monks were disciplinedNight Stair - A staircase used by the monks to enter a church directly from their dormitory in order to attend late night and early morning servicesRefectory - the refectory was dining hall of a monasterySacristy - the sacristy was a small building, usually attached to the chancel in which vestments and sacred vessels were keptScriptorium - the scriptorium was the room in a monastery used by clerics or scribes copying manuscriptsWarming-house - the warming house was the only room in a monastery, apart from the infirmary and kitchen, where a fire was allowed. Also called a Calefactory

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Lavatorium

Cellarium - store-house of a monasteryChapter-house - The chapter house was a room in which monks met daily, to discuss business and to hear a chapter of the monastic ruleCloister - the cloister was a covered walkway in a monastery often situated around an quadrangle A cloister often comprised of a plain wall or colonnade on the outer side and a series of windows on the inner side Dorter - a dorter was a monastic dormitory. Sometimes the monks slept in isolated rooms called cells

Frater - a frater was another term for a refectory (dining room)Garderobe - a garderobe was a lavatory in a medieval buildingGranary - A monastery storehouse for threshed grainInfirmary - the infirmary was the part of a monastery which housed the monks who were too sick or old to take part in the normal monastic lifeKitchen - The monastery kitchen where food was prepared and cookedLavatorium -

widely read among low-wage workers. In the last few years, hundreds of people have written to tell me their stories: the mother of a newborn infant whose electricity had just been turned off, the woman who had just been given a diagnosis of cancer and has no health insurance, the newly homeless man who writes from a library computer.

t things have gotten much worse, especially since the economic downturn that began in 2008.

earned less than a barebones budget covering housing, child care, health care, food, transportation, and taxes -- though not, it should be noted, any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts. Twenty-nine percent is a minority, but not a reassuringly small one, and other studies in the early 2000s came up with similar figures.

-- the skipped meals, the lack of medical care, the occasional need to sleep in cars or vans -

The economy was growing, and jobs, if poorly paid, were at least plentiful.

many of these jobs had disappeared and there was stiff competition for those that remained

a healthy diet wasn’t always an option.  And if I had a quarter for every person who’s told me he or she now tipped more generously, I would be able to start my own foundation.

and and was subsisting on occasional cleaning and catering jobs. Neither seemed unduly afflicted by the recessi

suicide a “coping strategy,” but it is one way some people have responded to job los

Media attention has focused, understandably enough, on the “nouveau poor” -- formerly middle and even upper-middle class people who lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their investments in the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed it, but the brunt of the recession has been borne by the blue-collar working class, which had already been sliding downwards since de-industrialization began in the 1980s.

were especially hard hit for the simple reason that they had so few assets and savings to fall back on as jobs disappea

cut back on health care.

e to moves and suspensions of telephone service

Food i

“food auctions,” which offer items that may be past their sell-by dates.

urban hunting. In Racine, Wisconsin, a 51-year-old laid-off mechanic told me he was supplementing his diet by “shooting squirrels and rabbits and eating them stewed, baked, and grilled.” In Detroit, where the wildlife population has mounted as the human population ebbs, a retired truck driver was doing a brisk business in raccoon carcasses, which he recommends marinating with vinegar and spices.

ncrease the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space -- by doubling up or renting to couch-surfer

“people who’ve lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent.”

g members of my extended family, have given up their health insurance.

- a government safety net that is meant to save the poor from spiraling down all the way to destitutio

The food stamp program has responded to the crisis fairly well, to the point where it now reaches about 37 million people, up about 30% from pre-recession levels.

? There is a right to food stamps. You go to the office and, if you meet the statutory definition of need, they h

elp you. For welfare, the street-level bureaucrats can, pretty much at their own discretion, just say no.

Delaware residents who had always imagined that people turned to the government for help only if “they didn’t want to work.

ace a state-sponsored retraining course in computer repairs -- only to find that those skills are no longer in demand.

44% of laid-off people at the time, she failed to meet the fiendishly complex and sometimes arbitrary eligibility requirements for unemployment benefits. Their car started falling apart.

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

TANF does not offer straightforward cash support like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which it replaced in 1996. It’s an income supplementation program for working parents, and it was based on the sunny assumption that there would always be plenty of jobs for those enterprising enough to get them.

When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”

40 jobs a week

miles a day to attend “job readiness” classes offered by a private company called Arbor, wh

were “frankly a joke.”

, “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.”  There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welf

fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime.

The most shocking thing I learned from my research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.

Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.

Most cities, for example, have ordinances designed to drive the destitute off the streets by outlawing such necessary activities of daily life as sitting, loitering, sleeping, or lying down. Urban officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about such laws: “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a St. Petersburg, Florida, city attorney stated in June 2009, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges...”

the criminalization of poverty has actually intensified as the weakened economy generates ever more poverty.

ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with the harassment of the poor for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering, or carrying an open container.

ban on begging

grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington, D.C. -- the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Phu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972.

“They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless?”

, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, leadi

way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor succumbs to racial profiling, but whole communities are effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor. Flick a cigarette and you’re “littering”; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect. And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting arrest.”

e government defunds services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement.

 Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Generate no public-sector jobs, then penalize people for falling into debt.

The experience of the poor, and especially poor people of color, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should try to escape this nightmare reality into a brief, drug-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too.

r staggering level of incarceration,

g. And what public housing remains has become ever more prison-like, with random police sweeps and, in a growing number of cities, proposed drug tests for residents.

The safety net, or what remains of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

official level of poverty increasing -- to over 14% in 2010 -- some states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty, using alternative sentencing methods, shortening probation, and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missing court appointments. But others, diabolically enough, are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes,” but charging prisoners for their room and board, guaranteeing they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

The Mongols were traders and herdsmen

The Felt Tent People because their homes were round tents made of felt.

They did not live in towns. The Mongols were nomads. They traveled in small groups composed of perhaps only two or three families.

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