Out of the way

On top of the fridge, waking up, I have some yeast in a jar with some flour, water, and sugar. When I have written this I'll go out and divide it, add some of it to flour and make a loaf of bread, and put the rest aside. I might make another loaf of bread in the evening, or tomorrow. Or perhaps I'll just go buy one.

After all, bread in Spain is not bad. Mostly it's made out of actual food. And it's cheap. So why do I bother?

Partly because I am pig-headed. It took me three tries to find actual baker's yeast - the little animal that makes bread fluffy and beer alcoholic. (Actually, it also makes beer fluffy in good beer, and in principle it makes bread alcoholic, until you cook it - but not enough that you would notice). So now I am going to use it. (I started yesterday, making pizza bases with herbs in them).

Partly because it is a good way to relax. It takes a few hours to make bread, but you only need to be involved for a few minutes, a couple of times during that period. The rest of the time the little yeasties do their work, and the flour does it's thing joining up to other flour (very sociable beast, flour) and then the thing that makes humanity so great - the ability to deliberately burn enough stuff to stuff up the planet in search of better-tasting food - turns the soggy mass into beautiful warm crunchy bread that melts the fat you put on it, soaks up the sugar-laden honey, or the grease left over from lunch, and generally makes the world feel a bit better.

I'll get some vegetables, probably some meat, maybe some eggs, and turn them into a meal by mixing and cooking. And Eva will say "I am a cow and I will get fat eating this". And then have some more. Making food, and walking to the shop to buy it every day, seems to be a good way for me not to get fat. If I eat out, or eat pre-made meals, I don't seem to burn through the energy I get from it. So it hangs around, converting itself to bad sleep, spare tyres, and a craving for sweet things that I can only describe as addiction - since I am not actually that fond of sweet things.

The supermarket is full of things that are loaded with fat, sugar, salt, and things designed to make them easy to digest. In a little corner there is actual food. Not too much. Mostly *not* plants. 25 years ago a film called Koyaanisqatsi - apparently a word meaning life out of balance - was a commercial failure. The music was great, but it had no words, just pictures of things that were wrong with the world. The supermarketis like that. Look for the food in it. Then look in the food for stuff that is *just* food. And then think about it - because most of the stuff that looks like just food has some funny characteristics - from corn-fed beef (loaded with anitbiotics because cows can't normally live on corn and get sick) to tomatoes that never ripen (beautiful and red, but they taste more like unripe watermelon, which kind of defeats the point of eating them, and therefore of buying them) to sour grapes that have no seeds.

In Morocco (a country so poor that the people are forced to live on actual food) a colleague once asked what ha been done to the grapes to give them the special flavour. It turned out that having eaten grapes for decades in the richest country on earth, he had no idea what grape flavour really is.

We worry about getting fat. Apparently the supermarket can help, by selling us things that make us feel full, but don't provide nutrition. So we stick to the idea that we should feel full (something that isn't normal if you think about it) and need more food to maintain our metabolism. And then we wonder why the most health-obsessed generation ever is the fattest, most medicated, least fit, and perhaps the first one in modern history to be looking at shortening life expectancies.

Growing your own food is great, and making your own bread is wonderful. But bakers are good people and if they make decent bread they are worth supporting, and bananas are nice things that people should be allowed to eat. And I like Wasabi, even if it comes from a long way away, and the odd hamburger laden with fat and salt, smothered in sauce, on a roll with high-fat butter and served with chips deep-fried in animal fat (they really taste better like that).

All these things can be achieved. So why is it so hard to get actual food, and so easy to live on things I can't pronounce, that are made in ways I learned about during chemistry class when i was forced to wear safety glasses, gloves, and work with in an area where they wouldn't contaminate the air I had to breathe?

Oh well. Off to mix the bread. Then maybe a short walk while it is rising, to see if there are some interesting vegetables I want...