Give me not statins those white little pills give me good greens let me not eat too much red meat whose production decimates our blue marble planet white meat takes a lesser toll I will not eschew the yellow yolks of eggs and go full vegan limited to the orange, brown and greens of lentils the gold of grains the white of rice and others of the blond grasses but let me sway more in their direction – to healthy balance whatever colour that is…
Is it a crime to sup on a Sleeper Shark Genus: Somniosus microcephalus the solitary fish swimming in the dark waters beneath the Arctic ice so few and far between this shark is seldom seen but in the photographs captured the curves confirm this clearly is a shark but unlike its cousins – sleek Silvertips the Greenland Shark is no beauty it’s skin blotchy and rough…
On an exchange visit to an Icelandic ladies’ choir did I commit that crime? Our own ladies, scandalised at the first stop on our itinerary a swim in the Blue Lagoon – by naked women brazenly European walking around in the changing room were equally horrified in Reykjavik’s covered market to be offered seagull’s eggs and Rotten Shark – kæstur hákarl a national delicacy but foodie as I am I agreed to give it a go… “Best hold your nose” our host’s advice but not before I’d caught a whiff like ammonia I took a small white cube upon a toothpick and ate nose pinched it was not as bad as some wimpy celebrity chefs have claimed…
I was not told that this was Greenland Shark nor that it is now known to be the longest lived vertebrate thought perhaps to live as long as four to five hundred years one hundred and fifty before the poor creature is ready to breed imagine then it’s lonely search for a mate deep in the Arctic dark and the secret of this shark’s longevity – slow living – snail’s pace metabolism which is why, flesh full of bodily toxins the freshly caught Sleeper is poisonous but the peoples of the Arctic are not ones to waste a food opportunity and so they figured out to bury the shark for six to twelve weeks weighted to press out fluids whereby fermentation detoxifies to feed the nation it’s infamous dish at the midwinter festival þorrablót
Now that the Methuselah nature of the Greenland Shark is known it is not legal to hunt or kill this oldest of fish but fishermen’s bycatch provides sufficient specimens to feed the Icelandic appetite for Rotten Shark – so it was no crime to taste this long-lived being whatever my fellow singers said of the smell, but now that I know of what I ate, I carry the thought swimming in my imagination of this patient, slow-living denizen of the dark depths the Greenland Shark…
Driving home along City Road an ambulance dashes by with” blues and twos” screaming its way towards the hospital – do we all wonder whether its cargo is of death or life another human being on the way out or a baby on the brink of being born? Does anybody learn indifference to this question of “for whom the bell tolls?” The blue lights illuminate the faces and bare arms of the sex workers leaning against the old warehouse building – soon to be apartments and if they were looking for their veins right now, they wouldn’t find them but that will come later… One girl lurches across the pavement as a familiar car pulls up and as she departs, another slips into pole position, eyes peeled… A few hours earlier, or come tomorrow this street junction will belong to office workers or shopgirls some in the sanctity of hair concealing hijab with no knowledge of their having traversed the red light district of another temporal place. The patient in the ambulance will hopefully be settled in a bed recovering, or perhaps a bed beside a cot with mother and baby also recovering, and adjusting to the new place, respectively. At home I make two suppers to meet our different needs – one soft and forgiving on dentures that no longer fit well and tastebuds stripped of efficacy by smoking secondly the most creative that cooking for one can get and I remember cooking for different tastes in our early reconstructed family – one diabetic, one vegetarian two for meat and two veg, and the two of us then just wanting something interesting to eat… Now only Christmas dinner brings the whole family together and still there are different varied requirements to further complicate that logistical nightmare but catering to all is the measure of care…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in Live, OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice and hopefully read it at the live session. This poem references a time when I lived in the centre of Bradford, and unwittingly (since I viewed it in the daytime) lived in an apartment adjacent to the heart of the red light district, also a busy route to the Bradford Royal Infirmary and rarely, I still traverse this road on my way home, to my present address…
I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace – it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…
I have been banned from filling the kitchen cupboards with jam jars so I have to secrete them around the house in nondescript carrier bags, ready for the next, infrequent time I decide to make jam or chutney! I like to collect unusual-shaped jars…
Jam and other home preserves…
Although my mother did not consider it necessary for me to learn to cook (see “C”), when it came to preserving the harvest each year, the whole family had to get involved, either picking (Apples, Blackberries, Elderberries, Rosehips, Sloes) or preparing fruit and vegetables for bottling, freezing or making jam and chutney. The habit has stayed with me, for thrift and for the pleasure of cooking custom jams unavailable in the shops. For example, you can reduce the sugar content in jam (I am Type 2 diabetic) as long as you keep the jars in the fridge after opening. Once, on holiday in Menorca, thee was a massive collection of Prickly Pears at the back of the farmhouse where I was staying offering a bumper crop of ripe fruit – I simply had to make jam although it was a little bland and on reflection, needed something adding to it, more lemon juice, apple or perhaps ginger. There are pairings in jam which are for flavour, like Rhubarb and Ginger and others which are for functional reasons – blackberries lack pectin which combined with sugar is what gives you the “set” or jelly in the jam so they are paired with cooking apple that excels in pectin, hence Blackberry and Apple Jam! I have written about Rhubarb before, but I didn’t include jam in that post so here is my mother’s tip for making Rhubarb Jam. Use the early-season rhubarb when the stems (forced, ideally) are very slender and sweeter. Cut the stems in 1 – 1/2 cm lengths and weigh before placing in a large bowl. Weigh out an equal measure of white sugar and cover the rhubarb and leave overnight. Next day, place the mixture into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Continue boiling until a set is obtained. Place in sterilised jam jars and make sure the lids are on tight. By covering the rhubarb with the sugar overnight, the sugar sucks the juice out of the rhubarb compressing it so that it doesn’t cook down to a mush. The same thing works with other soft fruit like strawberries…
Making jam is so easy once you have tried it, cook fruit, add an equal weight of sugar – cook till you get a set and all the modern jam jars have silicone seal lids so it couldn’t be easier… Chutneys work much the same but the preserving is done by a combination of vinegar and sugar and is assisted by the spice content.
The last jar of 2024’s Apple Chutney…
Jam-jars
I confess – I collect jars… jam-jars for sure but others too sweets, gherkins, pills
My partner imagines I seriously culled the jam-jars and truly I tossed a few since diabetes and jam-making don’t mix
I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace. It just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…
Carol
Carol loved collecting glass artwork and before she died, offered a piece by way of a memento. I chose this perfume bottle with it’s prickly cactus stopper to remind me of how the little irritations that Carol was capable of feeling or giving out, could produce pearls…
“My sister Carol was a force of Nature!” This is how I began the eulogy to my late sister Carol when she died some 30 months ago. But you didn’t know her and as this is my memoir of sorts, and though I have hundreds of stories about Carol, I seek to write only about what Carol meant to me and the influence she had on my life so this is the merest selection… An early incident that showed a strong and assertive side of Carol in relation to me, was an iconic image (within our family) – a coloured slide (cheaper in those days than prints) in which Carol is squatting on my plastic football and refusing to give it back. Photographed from above, Carol looks both defiant and cute, as do all children photographed from this angle, with enlarged heads and small bodies. Later, when our sister Helen was born, Carol assumed (or was assigned) the role of “difficult middle child” and with her flaming red hair, she also aligned with the cliché of combative redhead. But mostly we had a loving and mutually supportive relationship – one in which she was not afraid to speak her mind about what she believed best for me. I recently learned the very appropriate meaning of the name Carol – ‘a joyous song to sing’ from a fellow poet’s piece on names.
Carol sitting defiantly on my football…
Carol trained in Community Arts and was an artist and poet as well as working tirelessly for the cause of refugees, Eritrean and later Syrian, using art to normalise the new lives of children, travelling to international conferences and in latter years, working each Summer with a Youth Club here in Bradford. Sometimes, during the ten years when we both lived in Ireland, I would assist her with face painting at some show or holiday event and the bags of equipment I kept for her when she was here in the Summer are languishing in the corner behind me…
My efforts on the left and Carol’s on the right – taken at Rosses Point with Knocknarea in the background.
Carol (and I) were inveterate collectors, and after her cremation, when it was agreed that I would carry half her ashes back to England to join my parents, her partner and I looked around for something suitable to transport them. This teapot was always my favourite from her teapot collection and now sits, relieved of it’s cargo, on the bookshelf to my left.
As teenagers, when in need of money, I sold various collections of mine to Carol – stamps for one – and she told me that I never stuck with collecting but nevertheless, was happy to purchase them… Carol was like a best friend who you could not bullshit and would always keep you up to the mark!
Another difference between Carol and I and which we shared the progress of when we had video calls, was our approach to shaping Jade trees -Carol (on the Right) preferred a grove of trunks whilst I am shaping mine as a single-trunked tree – I now have custody of both since she died…
My sister Carol – indomitable to the end…
I couldn’t close this brief sketch of Carol and my relationship to her without including her writing since she is in part responsible for my finding myself as a writer also. When Barbara and I lived in Ireland, Carol took me along to a writing group (in person group) and over the years since we would exchange poems and other pieces – here is one of her poems…
Dangerous Dreaming
Be dangerous and dream in this shit hole, and when you dream, dream big. Dream radical. Dream sans frontiers.
Some decry dreamers as if they were feckless, ineffective, unworldly. They underestimate the potential of dreams.
Dreams are powerful. Dreams are strong. Dreams are the first step to liberation, To a new world of possibilities.
Dreams are essential, like breathing. If you forget to dream, you might as well be dead. Dreams are a way of staying alive, even in a shit hole.
Dreams keep you in touch with yourself, the way you want you to be. So dream on, especially in a shit hole, until reality catches up with your dreams.
Dream on, dangerously.
Cars
I have a love/hate relationship with cars! I grew up in an era when the different marques and manufacturers had distinctive styles – unlike today’s offerings where a few owners have grouped companies together, sharing basic substructures and where the cost of developing safety features like crumple zones, has resulted in a dismal similarity across the board. Furthermore, in my lifetime, the consequences of the unfettered growth of private car ownership and consequently, on the growth of cities and the colonisation of the countryside by commuters, the devastation of the planet, has become more than apparent in the form of climate change. You can read an article I wrote with a blueprint for changing our relationship with the car here. Still, I have a love of certain cars – now mostly vintage, for their flair and design…
My Grandfather – Arthur, who died before I was born, with an Austin Seven embellished with a splendid Art Deco lady on it’s bonnet. The Austin Ten was the first family car that my father drove us around in…
I particularly love Citroens, starting with this “Maigret” prewar beauty (photographed on a recent reunion of schoolfriends at The Shuttlewoth Collection where all the aircraft and cars are in fully working condition) but going on to the “goddess” – the Citroen DS – surely the most futuristic car ever to grace the roads. and what about the Citroen Pallas whose dashboard resembles that of the Starship Enterprise…
Another Citroen I would love to own – the iconic 2CV – a car with the largest sunroof, can be wound up to 70mph on the motorway, seats which can take out to be used as deck chairs and all the panels of the car can be changed using just a screwdriver… Photographed in Paris last Summer!
A beautiful two-tone VW Beetle – the old shape which I still prefer – photographed on a visit to Bayeux to see the Tapestry…
Cooking
A Sabatier carbon-steel knife I have used every day for 58 years…
My Mother was traditional in her view of gender roles, she stayed at home and my Dad was the breadwinner – furthermore, she declared that I did not need to learn to cook but my sisters would one day have husbands and so she taught them cooking whilst I merely watched whenever I could and leaned what there was to learn. Out of my sisters and I, only I have cooked professionally! When I left to go to university (a wife not yet in the offing) my parents gave me two recipe books “Cooking in a Bedsitter” by the journalist /writer Katherine Whitehorn, and “The Paupers Cookbook” by Jocasta Innes also a journalist and writer. My ambitions in cooking aspired to more than expediency and economy and so I added “A Book of Mediterranean Food” by the somewhat racy food writer Elizabeth David – a book and writer credited with changing the course of food in postwar England (I didn’t know about the racy bit back then but I am sure it would only have encouraged me to experiment both in the kitchen and beyond…) Books on Chinese and Indian cuisine followed and so I developed a kind of personal fusion style. I wrote more fully on this here as part of the Six Degrees of Separation meme. I will share from that piece, the other gift my parents gave me as I left for university – and if the cookery books were a little banal – the carbon steel Sabbatier boning knife, was decidedly high class and high maintenance! Carbon steel rusts easily and so you must clean and dry it immediately after each use… I have used this knife every day for fifty-eight years, it has seen me through two food businesses and countless meals and feasts…
My essential cookery equipment:- Top row, Airfryer, Pressure Cooker (InstaPot), Frying Pan, middle row – Take-away containers for use in the microwave, Pyrex measuring Jug, old-fashioned Measuring Cone, Microwave Steamer, Wok. Bottom left: knives including an old fashioned cutlery knife for spreading things, can-opener, a wooden spoon that was once symmetrical but has worn down with stirring, spatula, slotted spoon, soup-ladle, silicone spatula, whisk, tongs (my step-daughter converted me to the usefulness of tongs) and a grater.
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in Poetics, invites us to write about what love means to us in light of the upcoming Valentine’s Day… In my writing group, Deborah had the same idea and presented us with Love Like Salt by Lisel Mueller so this poem is written in the shadow of that one…
A signature dish usually has a story Rooting its cook in the time and place Where it was acquired and from whom…
Palaver Sauce was my first glorious excursion into cooking in a different way, and I brought it out at dinner parties for many years and told its story. The American professor of West African studies who taught my fellow student and I to stew the things which convention would say ought not to go together, red meat and white, and salt fish…
Goat—funkier than lamb, nearer to mutton Chicken – chopped in chunks still on the bone Salt Dried Cod – ancient African currency that once bought slaves Spinach sauce rich with garlic and chilli Turmeric, my own addition.
Palaver is the Portuguese word for quarrel but there is no argument once cooking’s worked its magic.
My old boss Tony, took me for a meal in Manchester, in a church converted to a hotel and restaurant with a swimming pool in the Lady Chapel and Venison Marinated in Strawberry and Stilton on the menu. Tony gave me my first job as a cook—I will not honour it with the title chef. Ratatouille Chilli con Carne Six Quiches, various and six buckets of salad each morning developed my skills and gave me staples so that years later when I opened my own restaurant, Frewin’s, The Carroll Hotel long gone, I sentimentally made that Venison dish my own signature, menu centrepiece…
Small things can make a signature dish I nestle walnuts into Apple Crumble topping For who thinks of roasting walnuts Yet how delicious is this tiny touch Browned at the crown but protected from burning A rival to its cousin Pecan Pie.
But crumble never overtook Bread and Butter Pudding at Frewin’s – I made a rod for my own back with that one, so often was it ordered, but at least it could be made at a moment’s notice – the ingredients always to hand…
Buttered Brioche bread Cream Milk Eggs Veins of sugar and raisins interleaved
Ramekins into the microwave until the mix began to rise and then into the oven to swell and brown – the look on diners faces when the souffle impersonating dessert arrived hot foot…
Christmas Dinner for the whole family, though a favourite feast, is my least favourite meal to cook – all logistics and creativity giving way to tradition. Yet special meals are not always for the many, once, I spent a quiet Christmas with just my sister, Carol, in a town in Roscommon where a halal meat packing plant had populated the place with Pakistanis and the supermarket shelves with foodstuffs I could have found back home in “Bradistan*”. I decided to treat Carol to a “desi**” breakfast such as we had both enjoyed in Bradford. Such fun making wholemeal, spinach pooris, flicking the wrist to spin the disks discs like frisbees, into the deep fat fryer – watching them inflate like little green footballs then eating the curry and lime pickle with pooris and fingers, not forks and spoons.
Also at Carol’s command I recreated a Victorian favourite Sussex Pond… Suet Raisin pastry Crudely thrown together Roughly rolled out To line a plastic bowl A chopped-up lemon And equal weights of Butter and muscovado The filling in and Pastry top crimped down – Four minutes in the microwave Is all it took and When the pudding – Turned out on a plate Was cut into – out poured the Pond water, rich and brown Its sweetness offset by The chunks of lemon. This too graced my restaurant Tables for special guests With suitable appetites for Suet pudding – I promised To deliver in just twelve minutes Start to finish and I never lost my race…
Food is life, and love, and comfort and is it any wonder that it generates stories rooted in people, places traditions and relationships flavours and feasts remembered…
* So many Pakistanis came to work in the mills of Bradford, that it was sometimes referred to as Bradistan.
** from the Sanskrit word “Desh” meaning “country”. The word “Desi” refers to something “from the country” and so for Pakistanis in Bradford, it means things from the old country – desi food, desi calendars, and desi dress.
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, in Poetics: Satiating the Soul, Punam invites us to celebrate any or all of the things that go to make up the Hindu festival of Diwali – cleaning the house, preparing food, and celebrating the festival of Light with friends, family and everyone else…
I have been intrigued for some time, by the idea of the lyric essay and have bought books by Claudia Rankine and Kathleen Graber as examples, but the form is as slippery as a fish and impossible to pin down. Writers.com begin a very good attempt at definition by saying “Lyrical essays explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways, combining the subject matter of autobiography with poetry’s figurative devices and musicality of language.” This is my first serious attempt at the form…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
The Worldwide Trade in Wheat 2022 was $73.3Billion and it was the 49th most traded product…
Wheat Adobe Stock)
“Give us our daily bread…” says the Lord’s Prayer although the making of bread from wheat is by no means limited to the Christian West and I am sure there are similar lines in prayers of other religions (do please say if you know any…) but it indicates the huge importance of wheat and the bread, pasta, and cake that it is used to make, among other things. “Wheats are a part of Cereals. They include Wheat except durum wheat, and meslin and Durum wheat.” says the OEC website on Commodities. I confess I had not heard of Meslin (which turns out to be a planting of Wheat and Rye together) though I can disambiguate the other main types of Wheat which largely fall into two categories hard and soft wheat – this is not to do with physical hardness – in fact Durum wheat is physically harder, takes more milling, which damages some of the starches, has less gluten and is therefore has higher extensibility. This means they are more easily stretched into long pieces without breaking, making them ideal to use in pasta. Common Wheat on the other hand has a higher elasticity, which helps them bounce back when kneaded. This makes common wheat a better choice when making bread (the elasticity is what allows the bread to trap bubbles of carbon dioxide allowing the bread to rise). So Red Winter Wheat as grown in Canada for example, is a “hard” high-gluten bread-making flour whilst the Spring Wheats grown in say, France, are “soft” (less gluten) wheats and more suitable for cake making. Durum wheat (“soft” in gluten terms but physically hard) is used for pasta making. Below is a chart showing the gluten content of Common Wheat, Durum Wheat and two of the ancient grains from which our modern wheats are descended Emmer and Spelt… Oh and Meslin – is grown mainly for animal feeds these days but was big in breadmaking from Medieval times and its use in baking died out after the Second World War.
With Wheat as a commodity, we once encounter the geopolitical importance of markets and once again the unwarranted war by Putin on the Ukraine comes to the fore. Once described as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has not been well treated by Russia – under Stalin, whose collectivist farming policies were so efficient, that even in a land so blessed in soil and climate as Ukraine – they caused collective failure. Stalin punished Ukraine by taking all the grain including the next year’s seed grain which of course only exacerbated the problem the following year and led to a famine in the Ukraine so severe that people resorted to eating the dead to survive. This little-known atrocity was depicted in the film Mr Jones in which a determined Welsh journalist goes to Ukraine and sees for himself the devastation. This is one of the reasons why Putin, hubristically primed by his revisionist book to regard Russia as the “mother” of Ukraine (and not the other way round as is the real truth) was surprised to find that the people of Ukraine did not welcome him in to take Ukraine back into his dream of a re-unified Soviet state but instead continue to fight tooth and nail to stay free. Ukraine has become the bread bowl to a wider market supplying vital grain to many African countries who in turn, were pushed nearer to famine by Putin’s war. Fortunately, some grain is now getting out…
To understand who Exports and who Imports wheat and the value of those transactions – go to https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/wheat where they have some amazing interactive infographics but unless you are a commodity trader (and I suspect most of you are not!) then I am going to close the factual part of this post with a word about roller milling and stoneground wheat. The wheat kernel consists of a husk – the bran – inside which are two halves of flour joined together with a little proto-plant – the wheatgerm. In the old days of windmills turning great round grindstones, the grain was fed in between the stones and crushed into pieces but this included the wheatgerm which is a living plant and so if the stoneground flour was not used fairly quickly, the crushed wheatgerm would turn the flour rancid. The modern roller mills consist of heavy metal rollers that can be adjusted so precisely, that they first, delicately crack off the bran which is separated and perhaps further chopped up. Then the rollers gently break the two haves of the kernel apart so that the wheatgerm falls out and is taken away to be roasted – this kills the plant and makes a tasty product in its own right. Lastly, the rollers can grind the flour kernels down with such precision that different grades of flour are obtainable from the outside to the middle. Now if the mill wants to offer 100% Wholemeal Flour, then it can mix the bran, the toasted wheatgerm and all the flour back together and this flour will keep much longer than Stoneground – so what is the difference? Well stoneground flour contains a mish-mash of different-sized particles from pure flour to fragments of the kernel still in its bran and this means that when baked, the flour releases its carbohydrate slowly. Roller-milled flour is essentially white flour with the bran and wheatgerm added back in and that makes it a fast-release carbohydrate – in other words, you might as well be eating white flour in terms of carbohydrate release…
And so to today’s poem a WaltMarie. The Writers Digest University offers this definition:- This week, a Poetic Asides member shared a poetic form she created. While I don’t usually share nonce forms, I’ve tried this one myself, and I think it’s a lot of fun. So without further ado, I’m introducing Candace Kubinec’s form, the Waltmarie (which is itself a nod to PA members and Poetic Bloomings hosts, Marie Elena Good and Walter J. Wojtanik). Here are the guidelines for writing the Waltmarie:
10 lines
Even lines are two syllables in length, odd lines are longer (but no specific syllable count)
Even lines make their own mini-poem if read separately
No other rules for subject or rhymes.
Wheat
Give us our daily bread or just the flour and we will scavenge fire-wood to bake the staff of life flat bread or leavened if we can manage for life keeping body and soul together…
(Dedicated to the refugees in their own land Palestine but also to refugees or those afflicted by famine whether caused by war or climate change anywhere in the world… You can donate here Oxfam)
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Worldwide Trade in Soybeans in 2022 whether or not broken” exceeded $93 billion
If you have any doubt that Soya Beans (Soybeans) ar the most important of all the beans – just take a look at the table below – note how many bolded figures (Top value of the comparisons) fall to Soy Beans! Just on this nutritional guide alone (Courtesy of Wikipedia) you would know that this bean was important before even considering it’s history, it’s culinary story and the confirmation of it’s value as revealed in the International Trade Figures… However, there is a dark side to the Soya story and one which commands our attention – more of that later.
A raw yellow dent corn B raw unenriched long-grain white rice C raw hard red winter wheat D raw potato with flesh and skin E raw cassava F raw green soybeans G raw sweet potato H raw sorghum Y raw yam Z raw plantains /* unofficial
Evidence for the domestication of Soya Beans predates writing but has been found in China from between 7-6,500 years ago. Because, like many legumes, they fix nitrogen from the air and send it to the soil, the plant was quickly recognised as helpful in crop rotation and yet even as recently as World War 2, that benefit was being “rediscovered” in America when fertiliser supplies were compromised. If Soya Beans were discovered today they would be touted as a Superfood if not a “Miracle” food
One of the interesting aspects of Soya is just how many ways it is processed into other products beyond just eating the beans direct – they are the world’s largest source of animal feed (creating protein which humans then eat), the second largest source of vegetable oil and these two uses consume 85% of the soya crop leaving just 15% to be sold as whole beans. Out of that we then get soya milk, from which is made bean curd and tempeh (from the leftover of soy milk production), then Soy Sauce and various forms of Miso – these latter being fermented soya products without which both Chinese and Japanese cuisine would be unimaginable. I have to declare an interest here since among the many jobs I have done, I worked briefly for one of England’s leading Tofu (bean curd) producers creating and making new products out of tofu – previously he made only a plain and a peanut burger and I added two flavours of pastie, tofu quiches and a tofu “eggless” custard to his range. So this feels like a good place to offer two tips that I picked up in that job. Many Western people never take to tofu because they find it tasteless and unfortunately we don’t have access to some of the specialist variations available in the East such as deep-fryable pouching tofu whose crisped casing can be stuffed with tasty things – but there are a couple of ways to make tofu tasty… First you can buy (hard) tofu in a tub of it’s own whey and carefully peel back the lid, spread a layer of Miso (another soya product) on the top surface of the Tofu, cover and leave it floating in the whey in the fridge for a few days. The Miso is a live culture, fermented product so the quite strong taste will not simply permeate the Tofu, but will interact biologically to create a new flavour. Secondly, take an unopened packet of Tofu and freeze it – upon defrosting, the frozen crystals of whey which will have formed – compressing the Tofu – will melt and leave a network of holes in the now tougher, compressed Tofu so that it will hold together better when added to say, a stew and each chunk will act like a little sponge holding the gravy so that you can even use the mixture as a pie filling! If you have only encountered one or two kinds of Miso, the map below shows some of the many regional variations in Miso.
Where does it all come from – this vital, amazing Soya Bean crop – well for something that originated in China – these babies have roamed far from home as the diagram below shows – 34% from America and add in Brazil 29% and Argentina 18%, that’s 81% of the world production comes from the Americas and China’s demand for Soya has increased beyond their capacity to grow it – not least because with growing affluence – the Chinese demand for pork grew and soya beans were needed to feed pigs – anybody see a problem…? Actually there are several problems – during the Trump administration – that genius of Foreign Policy decided to play to his base by launching a Trade War on China – the US already had a 25% tariff on $250 billion of Beijing goods and Trump threatened a further 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports. Naturally, China responded by slashing its U.S. farm purchases by 53% to $9.2 billion from 2017. Soybeans (American name) purchases took a huge hit, falling nearly 75% to $3.1 billion. Trump had to pay out a lot of money to support the farmers and the stockpile of Soybeans mounted… This in turn put pressure on other areas like South America (mainly Southern Brasil and Argentina) to increase their growing of Soya and this led to increased deforestation – agriculture drove up to 88% of forest loss in Latin America and up to 81% in Southeast Asia between 2000-2015. So once again we see how geopolitical issues can have a huge impact on the commodities market not to mention the environment…
Just a couple of other fun facts about Soya beans – Soya is one of the fourteen notifiable allergens – that is it must be highlighted in bold in any ingredient list and as we have seen, soya can turn up in many guises – about 0.3% of the general population of adults and children are allergic to Soya. Another factor requiring labelling of Soya is that Soya was one of the first crops to “suffer” from Genetic Modification (GM) and the backlash against such “Frankenstein” food has been damaging in addition to the highly industrialised style of farming and the ecological effects of the crop worldwide. The expression “Full of Beans!” refers to horses who behaved with varying energy depending on which fuel they were fed – Grass – Ordinary – Oats – Friskier – Beans – Full of It and I wonder if it was Soya Beans that they used…? And lastly a film quote – Rick saying to Ilsa at the end of Casablanca, “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” A rare example of an anti-romance ending – the plight of the world is more important than a soppy ending…
That is my quite cursory glance at Soya (considering the importance of this crop) – other commodities I might have considered for “S” include Sugar and gold’s poor relation – Silver. And so to today’s poem which is a Solage:
Solage is a specific form of humorous verse with the following properties:
It has three lines (called the hook, the line and the sinker) of irregular length.
The rhyming structure is AAB.
The third line is a pun based on the previous two lines.
The form was invented by the Sydney-based performance poet Cameron M. Semmens.
Soybeans
To know where the wind is seen Be sure to eat more beans Windy bottom…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
I could find no Commodity beginning with “Q” so I am looking at another important “P” – Pepper as a commodity however the poetry form is a “Q” – the Quatorzain Poem…
Woldwide Trade in Pepper in 2022 $5.13B – 548th most traded product – 0.022% of total world trade
It is axiomatic that the Spice Trade from the Far East to Europe was important because without refrigeration, foodstuffs, especially meat, sometimes needed a little disguising and spices not only hid any dubious smells but in some cases, had antimicrobial properties that made meals safer. Of course, if curry spices were all that effective then there would be no such thing as Delhi Belly, but there is sufficient antimicrobial action that scientists are now looking seriously at spices from a medical standpoint. Of all the spices, Black Pepper is the oldest and most widely used – what restaurant table does not have a pepper pot? Turmeric, clove, nutmeg, cumin, and cinnamon are also contenders for medical research but Black Pepper has been such an important spice, traded for so long that it was used as currency in its own right – sometimes referred to as “black gold”. The legacy of this trade remains in some Western legal systems that recognize the term “peppercorn rent” as a token payment for something that is, essentially, a gift.
Black, White and Green Pepper are all true peppers from the plant Piper Nigrum (part of the Piperaceae family). This vine is native to India but grows in most tropical areas. Pink Peppercorns are from the Peruvian Pepper Tree, members of the cashew family Sichuan Peppercorns: also not peppercorns but rather “Chinese coriander”.
Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupe of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying.[9] The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browningenzymes during drying.[9] The drupes dry in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dry, the spice is called black peppercorn.
White pepper consists solely of the seed of the ripe fruit of the pepper plant, with the thin darker-coloured skin (flesh) of the fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week so the flesh of the peppercorn softens and decomposes; rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried.
Green pepper, like black pepper, is made from unripe drupes. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains the green colour, such as with sulfur dioxide, canning, or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar.
All these treatments of the pepper drupes result in slightly different flavours as well as colours so for example, you might use white pepper in mashed potato in order that it doesn’t show as black pieces. For many years, I had by my bedside as nighttime reading, a book which I would still recommend as the definitive encyclopedia “Herbs, spices and Flavourings” by Tom Stobart and from the large section on pepper I learnt this – the single most important thing to know about pepper in relation to cooking – piperine is the flavour element of pepper and is easily evaporated during cooking whereas the resin that gives the heat remains – and so rather than adding pepper to say, a casserole before cooking, pepper should always be freshly ground at the table – even ground pepper loses its piperine by evaporation over time.
Perhaps because of its historical role as the source of pepper, and although the majority of pepper today comes from Vietnam, India is a hub for both importing pepper from around the world and then processing and re-exporting it. India imports large quantities of pepper from Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. Usually, the majority of the pepper is just sent once again as whole black pepper to different areas. A lesser amount of the imported pepper is utilised in the production of different goods. Pepper trade makes up one-third of the net volume of spices traded globally.
The quote below shows how Pepper futures typify the role of all futures in the trading world…
Farmers use commodity exchanges as a buffer against price volatility, but a pepper trading platform and speculators complicate pepper trading even more. Commodity markets’ speculative character draws people and organisations looking to make money off of price changes. To place well-informed wagers on the future course of pepper prices, speculators examine economic statistics, market patterns, and other variables. Their involvement gives the market more liquidity but also creates a degree of uncertainty. On the other hand, traders and investors use pepper trading for a variety of purposes, including risk control and portfolio diversification. They may engage in the spice market without physically handling the product, thanks to the Indian stock market.
Whilst on the subject of a food-related future – Pork Bellies were once almost the icon of futures trading even being mentioned in the film “Trading Places” which we encountered under Orange Juice – but icons come and they can go too. Pork bellies have yielded in popularity at the table to bacon year by year until they have fallen below the threshold at which Futures Traders find it worth investing in and Pork Bellies have been dropped from Futures Trading…
And so to today’s poetry form which is a quatorzain (from Frenchquatorze, fourteen) is a form of sonnet. It consists of 14 lines and is, like a sonnet, divided into two tercets and two quatrains. According to my favourite source for poetry forms, Language is a Virus:-
The term is used in English literature, as opposed to sonnet, for a poem in fourteen rhymed iambic lines closing (as a sonnet strictly never does) with a couplet. The distinction was long neglected because the English poets of the 16th century had failed to apprehend the true form of the sonnet, and called Petrarch’s and other Italian poets’ sonnets quatorzains, and their own incorrect quatorzains sonnets. Almost all the so-called sonnets of the Elizabethan cycles, including those of William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel, are really quatorzains. They consist of three quatrains of alternate rhyme, not repeated in the successive quatlains, and the whole closes with a couplet.
Was Shakespeare wrong – this sounds like an academic storm in a tea pot, but whatever, this will be a quatorzain or as Shakespeare thought of it, a sonnet…
Pepper
Pepper you were known as “black gold” precious drupes of Piper Nigrum grown and processed in far India sought for heat and taste, your role was to fuel world exploration you drove many a man’s career searching for the better shortcut they found instead America then sought to go North-West but cruel ice and snow crushed dreams there dreams of spice isles and quick richness so gaps filled in the atlas bought only fame and stories told of their futile quests for “black gold”…
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