The Goods Are Odd

Challenges make a thing use its greatest capacity to complete a task or, even, to fulfill its purpose. Lacking a challenge, the thing might change its function or go away entirely, leading me to suspect that challenge is crucial to purpose.

Humans’ inclination to displace life’s challenges off of the body and onto a tool has shaped us from the beginning- most especially when it came to the challenge of eating.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham explains that the transition to cooking our food fundamentally shaped our bodies into what we are working with today, e.g. smaller mouths, smaller guts, punier teeth than apes. We have come to rely heavily on food processing (cooking, fermentation etc) for digestion.

So for better or for worse the human form was shaped in large part by processing our food, making digestion easier and leaving extra energy for thousands of years of other inventions, which are continuing to shape us in ways we don’t yet know. Which brings us to…the appendix!

The irony of the appendix is that it turns out to be much more functional to us than we thought, but may well be on its way out after all.

Scientists are continuing to find evidence that reveals the appendix as a useful organ, and not, as Charles Darwin assumed, just a remnant from past preference of plants. Studies from the last few years has show the appendix to be an evolved organ that houses good bacteria waiting to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed due to the presence of harmful microbes.

This use has been hidden from us since increased use of sterilization, clean drinking water and non-threatening foodstuffs has meant that survival in an industrialized world may be possible without an appendix. In fact the presence of the appendix seems to do more harm than good in clean conditions as they are finding a relationship between the inflammation of the appendix, which leads to its removal, and the fact that it is under-used.

As explained by researcher William Parker, Ph.D. (more from him here)

“Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,”…This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react….

This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis…Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”

So, what should we do with our vermiform organ? Use it or lose it?  “The function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes…” says Parker. “[Such changes have] left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble.”

Cooking our food fundamentally changed the human body, and increased sanitation of food and drink seems to be on the way to do the same. But to just accept the obsolescence of this functional organ as a part of our ongoing evolution seems flawed. We can’t guarantee current conditions (not to mention that most of the world doesn’t experience such conditions) and we still are just discovering the power of the microbes in our gut as fighters of all sorts of disease; it seems hasty to just discount the thing entirely, though we often do since the appendectomy is the most commonly performed emergency operation in the world.

So, we should put it to use right?  Parker  posits that we should start challenging our appendix and the immune system generally with the tasks they are supposed to tackle. A completely great idea! However, I think he is looking to the problem for the solution…”If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that,” Parker says “we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis.”

I think this dilemma provides a lovely analogy to the situation currently faced by the whole human body. We have these perfectly useful systems, well-adapted to deal with challenges of daily life for the last 499,950 years, give or take. Modern society has taken it upon itself to relieve us of these challenges, only to find out that they are entirely necessary!

In the case of the gut, we might try trusting our microbes to deal with the challenges they are capable of facing. Instead, we should rely on modern medicine to bottle up and feed us those very challenges it helped us/told us to avoid?

I say, start with what we have and use it as its meant to be used. Drink raw milk, dig in the dirt, eat fermented food, even get sick! Resist the obsolescence of the human body and challenge it to its fullest extent.

In that spirit, after the challenge of a long trek on foot (and embarking on the challenge of marriage) and a long break from the blog, I look forward to recounting the adventures and the lessons, along with continued thoughts from home kitchen. No longer the itinerant one below (for now anyway).

I have spent only a limited time of my life living alone. I moved from the family house to communal housing then to life as part of a couple. Occasional travel or other changes have required me to be by myself for extended periods. The last three weeks was one such occasion and I realized what a challenge it is to eat well alone.

Getting groceries from the market and cooking a nice meal singlehandedly wasn’t really the issue, these are things I often take on. The challenge was really coming up with a reason to make a delicious meal when I was just going to eat it by myself. For me the dinner table is a great time to share in enjoyment of good food and to let other interesting topics entertain us while we eat.

The part of cooking for myself that I don’t love is that you make the effort (mess) of cooking and then have to clean up after yourself as well. This is a strong motivator to make something that you can eat for a couple of meals. I don’t mind the work of meals but there is a point where if you cooked and cleaned every night, the dinner out of a frozen box would get more and more appealing and that just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

For the first few days on my own, the evening meal became more of a chore of just filling me up with whatever I could piece together. Then, after days of so so dinners, I decided to just go all out and make a dinner I would be proud to share, and just enjoy it alone.

The roast has a lot going for it: It is easy to do well, comes from affordable cuts of meat (or a whole small bird), is pretty much hands-off, lasts for leftovers, and, best of all, makes gravy!

My first solo-roast was actually a beautiful little chicken from Soul Food Farm. I made a gravy from the drippings and proceeded to eat that with the best chicken bits with my hands, standing at the counter. It must have been the messy fingers that kept me from taking a picture to share. The meat from the breasts went into curry and chicken soup. The carcass made the best, richest broth I’ve ever had. It was a $10 four pound bird, but it made itself very useful.

Not all my meals from my time alone have been such undertakings. One of my favorite things has been how long leftover rice lasts. One of my jobs currently is selling rice at the farmer’s markets and I often get customers who don’t want to buy a 2lbs bag because they are on their own. I often make 2 cups (about half that bag) and eat it as instant meals throughout the week. A filling and quick standby is something I learned from a friend (and future sister in-law): A layer of cooked brown rice in a cast-iron skillet over medium-low heat. Crack an egg per person (just one in this case, and I used my tiny six inch skillet for a single serving) over the rice and cover with a lid. Cook until just before the egg is set to the firmness you like and grate some nice cheese on top. I use a raw Monterey Jack. The rice gets nice and crispy on the bottom and the whole mess is very satisfyingly simple.

I have a new favorite dish of baked beets marinaded in red wine vinegar and olive oil. It isn’t the most popular dish for others, so it made sense to make it more while alone. Beets and their greens are exceptionally nutritious, full of valuable vits and mins and very good to eat together. I chose to put the greens in the fritatta rather than mixing with the beets themselves, but the sweet and bitter of roots and tops do set eachother off well if you choose to combine.

(this fritatta was actually terrible, as I didn’t rinse the greens enough and ended up with crunchy eggs…yuck.)

My other strategy for eating alone was to keep flowers on the table. It helped in a funny way.

My solo eating adventures can now come to an end, as well as my lack of attention to Mind to Mouth. I have two weeks before I leave for the Great Walk North and even through that I plan to discuss eating and living well…just on the road and on foot. So apologies for the canvernous gap in posts and thanks for the fact that it mattered to many!

I’ve now made my third multi-grain sourdough bread, from here. For those adventurous souls who plan to embark on this three-day bread I have some thoughts. My amateur advice may not be worth much, but something I always find frustrating about recipes is that they don’t tell you about the mistakes. ( Though Breadtopia has a good deal of comment-discussion about things that go wrong for others, so that is worth a perusal.) The thing about this bread is that there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, when you have multiple days each step is a little nerve-racking. But the encouraging thing is that its a pretty resilient bread and all my mistakes have resulted in something different, rather than disastrous.

Notes on the first step: getting the starter working. Depending on its level of activity, or the last time you fed it, it can take a couple days to get going. Start with just a scant 1/4 of a cup, because you don’t need much for the bread. You will add an 1/8 cup of water and an 1/8 cup of (white) flour. You will then have a total of a 1/2 cup and your next feeding will continue this ratio of equal parts water to flour, doubling the amount of starter. So you can see how much you can make very quickly. If your starter is particularly dormant then you will need to feed it for longer, thus making more starter. You can dump some out and keep the level down…but! If you don’t want to do this you can plan a very delicious waffle breakfast after starting your bread. See this post for recipes. Using the starter means the phytic acid in the wheat is neutralized so its not blocking the nutrients in the other good stuff on the waffle. I used all white just to go full on pastry texture, but you could mix in whole wheat or other the night before.

Whole Milk Nancy's yogurt (which is pretty much like ice cream), Almond Butter, Grade B Maple Syrup, Raw Butter, and Late Spring Strawberries

Okay, back to the bread. So the first step is basically making a bowl of whole wheat starter and letting it sit, covered (plastic bag works well) for 12 hours. Breadtopia suggests this be the “evening of day one” but my schedule is weird and time to make bread varies so sometimes I use different 12hr periods, depending.

12 hrs from mixing together the starter and WW flour, you add the rest of the flours (spelt, rye, white, more WW) more water and salt. As much attention as the no-knead bread has gotten, I think that the kneading step is not just fun for the sake of bread making, but useful for getting a good sense of how the dough is doing. I once made the no-knead and couldn’t tell that is hadn’t risen (too long a proof and not very strong starter) until it was out of the oven, because you aren’t touching it and seeing how it feels. So this step of kneading for ten minutes is useful, and good exercise. I look at the clock to make sure I do a full ten (otherwise I’m too lazy).

The kneaded dough then goes in a bowl, covered with the same plastic bag, in the refrigerator to 24 hrs. This stage is where you can be more flexible about the timing. The first time I made the the end of the 24hrs ended up being at 8am, which was before work, but! it needs to sit and get warm and comfy for another 5hrs before going in the oven. I ended up coming home during lunch and baking it. This is a totally avoidable situation. If you find that the timing doesn’t line up for taking it out of the fridge and then baking 5hrs later, you can punch down the dough in the fridge before its fully rise (that is before the first 24hrs) and let it go another 24 or so. Ex: First step at 8pm Monday, second (mixing dough, kneading) at 8 am Tuesday, 24hrs later is 8am Wednesday but I don’t have time to deal with it then- so at 5pm on Tuesday I punch it down. Now, I am set to take it out at 5pm Wednesday and bake at 10pm (which works for me).

This is a lot for bread, I realize. And I think in the last post on this I admitted that it is probably too much and gives a good argument for specialization. But its interesting and delicious, very nourishing and getting easier. Plus, it turns out well even when not perfect.

Last loaf: I took it out of the fridge at 5pm and let it sit covered with plastic in the bowl until 10 (at 9:30 I pre-heated the oven, with the dutch oven inside). But, that isn’t whats supposed to happen. For some reason I completely forgot the step of taking it out of the bowl, forming a “boule” and putting it in on a floured towel, and then back in the bowl (covered, not with plastic, but more floured towel). I realized this as the action to put it in the smoking hot dutch oven felt different then before. But it was too late at that point and I just waited a half hour to see what happened.

Maybe not bakery-goods, but it was no fail.

I even think the crumb (the quality of holes in the interior, usually indicating moist, chewyness) turned out better than the last. The texture of the crust is different, but I woulnd’t even call it weird. That’s the thing with baking, often the variation is just that- not a mistake but a new way, a new texture, a new flavor. Punching down the dough and letting proof longer makes a more sour dough and really works the fermentation, that was a surprise and a delight (to avoid this acutally use more starter). Again, I don’t really know how useful it is for us all to be making our own bread, but I like to eat something and to know just how it got to be the way it is.

This year was big for me in that I had a piece of writing published in print for the first time. Because so much of what I write about here on this blog concerns letting go of a lot of the consumer culture around food, I haven’t been super comfortable with putting up ads, which might support the time I spend writing. Thus, it was very exciting to receive a check for a piece, especially one that really addresses the issues I go on about here. In fact it was probably the most satisfying check I have ever received.

I have begun working on other print projects since this piece was published, but it is now online and available to share. So share I will. The article is based on an interview with my granddad who grew up in the East Bay (where I currently live) in the Great Depression. We talked about eating, buying food, labor issues, family, and all those issues that come up when you talk about what we eat. Read on in the current issue of Edible East Bay

I’ve gotten my starter up and working again. This is the same starter I received in the Spring of last year. (It came from a very sprightly 80 year old, so that’s encouraging). I used it briefly but for most of the year it has sat neglected in the fridge. Now its clear that its fermenting powers have become crucial for more nourishing baking, so I brought it out with more commitment to keep it healthy. I wasn’t sure I could revive it, but it turned out to be very resilient. A few days of feeding every twelve hours and it was bubbling and working hard.

Baking with sourdough really is the best example of how much time it takes to make the best food. In fact its really a lot to ask; to keep something in your fridge that is essentially another mouth to feed, to keep track of one more thing, and to use it in a bread that takes over a whole day, often three to make. The cost of the flour alone makes me wonder if its worth it just to buy the beautiful $8 levain breads from the farmer’s market or the notable local Acme bakery. So maybe its just for novelty that I keep making this three-day bread.

The last time I went through the process, with the concern that after the second day it wouldn’t rise and it would all be ruined; the ten-minute kneading; the planning (once having to come home from work to bake my bread so it wouldn’t proof for too long), I thought that maybe specialization is a good thing when it come to baking. I pictured the adept bakers with their hundreds of proofing loaves, their active starters that are fed every day, and thought when is it that consumer culture hinders healthy food and when does it help it? I think everyone should make most of their own meals, working with other people, using their minds, hands, and fresh, real food- but does everyone need to make their own bread all the time?  Well clearly no, even in my Utopian real-food world, where people don’t work too long for so many things they don’t really need, -things that make them neither happy nor healthy- and where they put time and care into food, there would still be specialization of some kind. There is a benefit to becoming an expert at something and sharing your products and having a clear purpose. The problem with our current approach is that in giving over most of our food preparation to specialized producers we have lost skills that keep our minds and bodies active and the the quality of our food has suffered.

So, until my real-food utopia I am going to keep developing these disappearing skills, if only for the fun of it.

The recipe for this one come from my stand-by Breadtopia, with the cheery and informative videos. What I really wish he had though, and what I am finding impossible to find, are other types of baked goods and breads (like muffins, scones, banana bread etc) that use sourdough for proofing and fermenting, not just for flavor.  I am going to try this pizza dough recipe with a longer, overnight, rise and see how it goes.

The other option for quick breads is to buy sprouted flour (okay, the real other option is to sprout the grains yourself, dry them, and grind them into your own flour). Nourishing Traditions’ recipes for quick breads call for freshly ground flour (not sprouted); this is because pre-ground flour (sprouted included) is often more rancid than we realize. And apparently bread from freshly ground flour is beyond in flavor. Grinding your own flour isn’t as laborious as it sounds, since its really a process of pushing a button on an electric grain grinder. After grinding the flour NS has you soak it in buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt overnight (or for 12 hours). This addition of acidity does that neutralizing work to the nutrient blocking acids in grains (read more about that here. While the recipes say you can also use whey or lemon juice, its pretty clear that the outcome is not as tasty with this alternative.

So, I have to admit, I haven’t yet tried this technique. This is primarily because of the extra expense of cups of high quality dairy. I came up with an alternative I will try and then share; Bob’s Red Mill makes a buttermilk powder, just dehydrated, so I can make the amount I need store the rest. The whole package  makes six quarts for ten dollars.

I have some muffins and biscuits planned using this strategy, so stay tuned.

Also! Not that there is a lot of eating out going on these days, but we did go for Ethiopian food recently and I was very pleased to realize that the bread, Injera, which makes up the bulk of the meal, is made with fermented teff grain flour. So you can eat out and still get with real, live food- this chance is of course higher when you seek out restaurants serving traditional foods.

Sourdough Breakfast: