Grain & Grasses
Let your sense of smell free to enjoy
Nature. That is, if you live anywhere near Nature?
So, we come back in from our second morning
walk and Smiley sets her squeaky toy down on the kitchen floor -- right before
the box of liver snacks on the counter. Both of our dogs are smarter than their
dad.Maybe, I don’t let enough of
my primitive senses free? Certainly, long, long ago, I learned enough about
science and reality to bypass that Stone Age gene that tells our cerebral cortex
to accept superstition and religion -- to explain away the stuff we
haven’t answers for. Yet.The
past couple of days, I’ve been feeling like the first erect biped to think
of milling grain. The spring grasses reached maturity a week or so ago. The
heat of the last week has parched and bowed the full grain heads of those
grasses. They wait for nature to play its part -- for wind and walking
creatures to thresh those grains. The hollow below our back meadow, in between
the meadow hill and the bosque, smells like a grain elevator -- without the dust
and mildew. Little chance of argot poisoning driving any populace into a
religious dancing death.Americans
often may have their brains filled with Dark Ages ideology; but, they’re
still more likely to show up at the ER than setting themselves alight in front
of an altar if they start seeing
visions.I imagine hunter-gatherers
stripped away and stored handfuls of seeds to munch whole, at first. Sooner or
later, some bright person got the idea of grinding them between a couple of
stones and making what became flour. All the other predictable processes
followed on -- from making a paste with water and drying it, baking it,
preserving however the protein and starch and ash could be kept for other
seasons. Then, yeasts did their naturally intrusive thing and we got to
Wednesday, Which is today. The day I usually bake a couple of ciabattas to get
us through to Sunday’s grocery shopping at Whole
Foods.Cultural divergence is a curious
thing. I sometimes wonder how the poverty of the weevils who spread across this
continent led to measuring ingredients by volume when the rest of the world
pretty much already measured by weight. You can only make a respectable
ciabatta [or a focaccia, for that matter] by calculating the weight of flour vs.
the weight of water -- and keep the dough at 70% water or
more.In some future reflection, I will
reveal the secret of my savory Italian loaves.
Posted: Wed - July 13, 2005 at 08:44 PM