All about grain

It is all about grain at the moment. This post is an attempt to get down in writing the large-ish number of grain-related thoughts and issues which have been sliding round my brain of late.

Bread.
In 2004, Felicity Lawrence published an excellent book called Not on the Label: What really goes into the food on your plate. Lawrence and Joanna Blythman (author of, amongst other excellent books, Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets) are two seriously good food writers (or food issue writers for want of a better term) who introduced me to some really shocking facts surrounding our modern food chain. No one since Lawrence and Blythman has come close in impact on me until now with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Lawrence's book included a chapter on bread and introduced me to the the Chorleywood Bread Process. I took particular note of the increased yeast involved in the Chorleywood Bread Process as lots of yeast products disagrees with me generally, despite me loving nothing more than sitting down to read a good book with crusty white bread, red wine and blue cheese. Now, several years later, I'm thinking about it also in the light of the supposed gluten intolerance my eczema prone son has. I'll go back to the 'supposed' element later.

As regular readers will know, all three of you, I've been getting into breadmaking again recently. My sourdough bread tasted good yesterday and today (all one batch) and although I've made bread from scratch before (had a big phase in 1996 when we lived a long way from the shops in Dunedin with neither car nor public transport), I've never made it without shop bought yeast until now. So I have been thinking about whether gluten intolerance for some people is an intolerance to modern wheat and gluten processing methods. Fionn didn't respond adversely to the sourdough bread I gave him last night.

Corn
Michael Pollan's treatise on modern corn is mega frightening. Well it is if you acquire most of your calories from processed and pre-prepared foods. His discussion of the myriad ways corn can be 'reborn' with the aid of modern technology brings to mind a large octopus, reaching its tentacles down every supermarket aisle. I won't be at all surprised if there is an epidemic of corn allergies in the next decade. He mentions the way that products often say 'contains either soy, corn or canola oil' because whichever is cheapest is used on any given day. Corn products feature heavily in gluten free processed foods. Until now I've just partly hoped, partly presumed that these gluten free products are healthful and without deep ethical tarnish. Well I'm having to wake up on that one. Fionn is definitely intolerant of eggs (shame but true) but I'm considering keeping our household consumption low in gluten but including some slow-risen home made bread for everyone.

Biofuels and droughts
I find it utterly credible that we are paying higher prices for wheat in New Zealand currently because of the drought in Australia. This article is a good snapshot of issues surrounding grain prices worldwide. I'm suspicious of what is going on in the US after reading Pollan's book. The Us has a huge backlog of corn at least. Has ethanol really made that fast an inroad or is it a new context for hiking profits of the small but very powerful number of large grain processing companies?

Grains and food security in New Zealand
Today I collected the latest Organic NZ magazine from my local health food shop. This issue features several articles relating to grain and I'll be retiring to a bed, one with no children in or near it, very soon to read them.

One more
grain topic. I read a while ago though can't source exactly where, that commercial wholemeal flour is still highly processed as they separate the husk and inner part (please excuse the lack of appropriate terminology) and then add them back together again. In the UK I used to source varioous flour mixes for making bread from Infinity, a whole foods coop. That's not an option available to me now, but I have ordered from Biograins before and am considering ordering from Terrace Farm, an organic grain farm in Rakaia, mid Canterbury.

Actual achievements in the garden today. Emptied the beer traps and have caught heaps in the punga raised bed. Rescued one Purple Sprouting Brocolli seedling from the bold apprentice and transplanted it. Pulled caterpillar infested tomatoes from the vine and dunked them in the water-filled wheelbarrow to drown. I'm not in the garden as much as I want to be at the moment but things seem to be going okay. The nasturtiums (they grow wild here) are climbing over everything down the back of the garden in my invasive patch and also all round the letter box (which isn't actually on our land). I might buy some seeds of different colours in Spring and see if I can naturalise some more colours. Though maybe they'll all revert to orange and yellow. Fun and inexpensive to try.