Bread Recipes

About 14,400 years ago, someone was baking pita bread in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan. Researchers made this discovery by sampling the contents of 2 stone fireplaces left at a small campsite by the Natufians, who were hunter gatherers. The charred remains suggest the Natufians gathered wild cereals and tubers to make flour for the bread. Bread was probably not a staple food, but a rare treat. Researchers were surprised to find people making bread at least 4,000 years before the dawn of agriculture.

Meanwhile, at another Natufian site 150 miles away, another team analyzed residues on 3 stone mortors and found evidence of beer being brewed from wild wheat and barley 13,000 years ago.

Beer and Bread! Life was good!

Another source says that to make the first bread, cereal grains were roasted, water added to make a 'grain paste', which was then cooked. This flatbread still has a legacy in many parts of the world. Modern descendants include Mexico's tortillas, Indian chapatti, naan and roti, Armenian lavishes, Iranian sangaks and taboons, Scottish oatcakes and North American johnnycake.

Traces of flour have been found at Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, which means flour is over 30,000 years old. Cereals were a part of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, even though the majority of their food was animal protein and fats. Around 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic period, cereals and breads were eaten more regularly. Wheat and barley were domesticated about this time and spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Rice, maize, and sorghum may have been used to make bread in other parts of the world.

Eventually, leavened bread was created by taking a chunk of day-old dough and adding water and sugar to use as a 'sourdough starter', of sorts. For a lighter bread, the foam from beer was collected and added to the dough. For places that drank wine rather than beer, a mixture of grape must and flour paste worked in a similar manner.

 

https://abreadaffair.com/bakery-vancouver/history-bread-fun-facts-never-knew/#:~:text=Bread%20has%20a%20rich%20history,items%20are%20still%20made%20today

Archaeology, January-February 2019, pp 26-27, "The First Bakers"

Tepary Beans

When I was researching for my blog post on the Tohono O'odham people, one of the foods they relied on was the ‘white tepary bean’. With my New Year’s Resolutions in mind (#3. Eat more wisely), I thought I would research these beans to see how they compare to the more traditional beans I grew up eating. Not because I plan to add these to my diet (although I could... at least one of my sources will gladly sell me a pound or more, complete with cooking instructions), but because if I’m going to think of food between meals, I should probably make it healthy types of food and not left-over Christmas candy. Or any kind of candy.

The information on the O’odham people specified white tepary beans, but there are many varieties of tepary beans. One source even listed several wild varieties, which they will sell me a packet of 50 to grow in my own garden. Alas, Florida is not the same climate as the Sonora Desert, so I don’t think they would grow here very well. Especially with me being the unskilled gardener than I am.

Tepary beans - including the white varieties - are native to the Sonoran Desert. They were first domesticated in Northwest Mexico some 4,000 years ago. The ‘secrets’ of growing and using them were passed down from generation to generation, particularly among the O’odham people. Being a desert plant, they are tolerant of heat, drought and alkaline soil. In the last 30 years, tepary beans have spread to other arid regions worldwide.

Beans are already super foods, but tepary beans are even higher in protein (21 grams in 1/2 cup!) and fiber. Their fiber helps control cholesterol and diabetes. These small beans have a meaty, dense texture and are savory in taste. White versions are slightly sweet, while the browner versions have a more earthy taste. And even with all this fiber, tepary beans produce less gassiness than other beans like navy, pinto or kidney beans.

During the 1920’s, Tohono O’odham farmers grew 1.5 million pounds of tepary beans per year. However, during the 1930’s, increased mechanization and irrigation led to less tepary beans being grown, and by the 1950’s, teparay beans were extremely rare.

Native Seeds/SEARCH began to promote the use of tepary seeds in the 1970’s and 80’s, and today they conserve nearly 100 versions of domesticated and wild tepary beans, adapted to low and high desert environments.

Their website had pictures of different varieties, so I compared the ‘domesticated’ to the ‘wild’ types. The domesticated beans seemed very much like navy or pinto beans in shape, and each bean looked pretty much the same as all the others of that type. But the wild varieties were much more angular and looked more like pebbles, all the same color. I imagine the angular edges are from more seeds being crowded into one pod, and they squish each other trying to get as big as they can.

We can call Florida many things, but ‘desert’ is not one of them. Maybe I could try to grow them in pots in the house, but they like temperatures as high or higher than 100°F, and we have the air conditioning on long before the house gets that hot. I am NOT heat tolerant, and if the house ever got to temperatures teparies like, I would not just wilt, I would try to melt.

Guess I’ll just have to order a pound and see what they’re like.

https://www.ranchogordo.com/products/white-tepary

http://store.ramonafarms.com/White-Tepary-Beans-STOTOAH-BAVI/productinfo/BTEPWH1/

https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/tepary-beans

https://www.nativeseeds.org/pages/tohono-oodham-white-tepary-bean

Ironwood Seeds - Sonoran Desert Delicacy

When I researched the Tohono Oodham Nation, one of the foods they foraged in the Sonoran Desert was ironwood seeds, so I decided to find out what I could about this food source.

First, about the trees. There are many trees known as ‘ironwood’, so the version found in the Sonoran Desert is often called desert ironwood. The tree itself grows extremely slowly, and can possibly live for centuries. But even after one of them dies, it might remain a landmark for millenia. This is because the heartwood is so full of toxic chemicals that decay is practically eliminated.

The seedpods grow from the middle of a stem, not the end, and each pod can hold up to a dozen or so seeds. The pictures I saw depicted a brown pod that reminded me of a cross between a green bean and a smooth-skinned peanut pod. Or possibly a vanilla bean pod. The seeds inside seemed to have a passing resemblance to peanuts, which seems fitting, since both the peanut plant and the desert ironwood are legumes.

As with other legumes, the desert ironwood enriches the surrounding soil with nitrogen, so the area immediately surrounding this tree is richer for growing plants than the soil another couple of feet away from the tree. Did the Oodham tend to cultivate their crops by planting them in close proximity to an ironwood? I don’t know, I haven’t found any information on that. But in my mind, it would make sense for them to have done so.

Now, about those seeds.

Ironwoods generally flower from late April through May and set seed pods a few weeks later, which will dry in June-July. The flowers, fresh seedpods and dried seedpods are edible.

The pink flowers can be used in or as a salad. They can also be candied for use as a dessert, but I don’t know if the Oodham did that. Good to add to my basket of knowledge as I look for means to feed an alien culture.

The seedpods are apparently beige from the start, so how do you know when to harvest them if you want them fresh? You open up one pod and look for the seeds inside to be green. If the seeds are sweet and taste slightly like a peanut, you are good to harvest. Gently pull whole pods off the tree.

However, if that seed tastes chalky, you’ve waited too long to harvest them as fresh. Go away and come back when the pods are fuzzy, dry and dark brown. The seeds inside will now be hard and brown. Don’t bother picking the pods by hand at this point; just put a tarp or blanket on the ground and gently shake free the dry pods. But don’t harvest any dry pods that land on the bare ground.

Whether you have harvested your ironwood seeds fresh or dry, they should be cleaned and processed for storage as soon as possible after picking to reduce the chances of spoilage. Now, I got some information from a website (see below) on how to do this, but the instructions as given require things I’m pretty sure the Oodham did not have in yesteryear. Things like ice water, plastic bags and a freezer. Suffice it to say that they suggest you blanche the fresh seeds, package them in bags with as little air enclosed as possible, and throw the bags in the freezer. Even the dry seeds need to be frozen for at least 2 days to avoid bug infestation.

So I’m guessing the Oodham didn’t process them that way. I’m guessing they merely cooked them using their favorite method and ate. And the next day, somebody would go and forage again. Maybe they came back with more ironwood seeds, maybe they found something else.

All good to know when I’m trying to keep somebody alive on what seems an inhospitable planet.

https://www.desertharvesters.org/native-plant-food-guides-the-desert-can-feed-you/desert-ironwood/#desert-ironwood-harvesting-basics

Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe is Turkish for “Potbelly Hill”, and refers to an archeological site in the SE Anatolia Region of Turkey. The ‘hill’ is 49 ft tall and about 980 ft in diameter. It is located 2,490 ft above sea level.

The construction of this site is believed to date back to the 10th to 8th millenium BC. It was built before pottery was invented in this area, and contains massive T-shaped stone pillars, the world’s oldest known megaliths. Surveys have discovered more than 200 pillars in about 20 circles. Each has a height up to 20 ft and weighs 10 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.

The 2nd phase of this site was still pre-pottery, but newly erected pillars were smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors made of polished lime. The location was abandoned after that.

Dating of the site was accomplished by charcoal samples found in the lowest levels of the site. It is likely this charcoal indicates the end of the active phase of occupation, and that the actual structures were older.

The site sits on a flat, barren plateau connected on the north to a neighboring mountain range by a narrow promontory that shows evidence of human impact. In all other directions, the ridge descends steeply into slopes and steep cliffs.

The pillars were carved from the plateau edges, where several quarries have been identified, and 3 t-pillars found. The largest of these has been severed from the surrounding rock, and the other 2 are identified as t-pillars, but not yet separated.

At first I thought the article was talking about something like Stonehenge; monoliths standing on end, some with a cap stone balanced atop 2 of them, but further on, the article had details that belied that thought. A large number of t-pillars were embedded in thick walls made of unworked rock that formed a circle, approximately 8 t-pillars per circle. Four of these circles have been discovered so far, with indications of another 16 not yet uncovered. It is unknown if these walled circles had a roof.

But the t-pillars were not just used in walls; in the center of each circle, 2 taller t-pillars faced each other. Stone benches were also found inside the circles. Many of the limestone t-pillars were decorated with symbols or depictions of many animals that may have been present at the time, but which no longer live in the area today. It is likely the area was forested at the time, with a large variety of animals, but millennia of human habitation and cultivation has reduced the area to a dust bowl environment.

Some of the floors of the circles were made of burnt lime, while others were bedrock.

After 8800 BC, the people stopped making circles and constructed small rectangular rooms. Rectangles are a more efficient use of space than circles, and are often associated with the emergence of the Neolithic age. However, t-pillars are still present, indicating these probably served the same purpose as the earlier circles, perhaps as a sanctuary. Several adjoining doorless and windowless rooms have floors of polished lime.

No evidence of domesticated plants or animals have been found at the site. It is assumed the inhabitants were hunters and gatherers who lived in villages part of the year. Still, very little evidence of residential use has been found. It is believed that the locations may have been used as a spiritual center even earlier than the dates given here.

So, here is a site that was created before pottery, metallurgy, writing, the wheel, agriculture or even animal husbandry. It would have taken organization of an advanced order, as it is estimated that up to 500 people would have been needed to extract and move the heavy pillars. I don’t know if that number includes the people doing the hunting and gathering to feed the people doing the heavy construction.

But around 8000 BC, the site ceased to be a ceremonial center to the people. Instead of simply abandoning the site, they deliberately filled it in with whatever rubble they had at hand, including animal and human bones. It was used for agriculture from then until the present.

It has been suggested that Gobekli Tepe was a place for remembering the dead, of putting them to rest in some way. (No obvious graves have yet been found.) It seems fitting, then, that when the Neolithic people ‘moved on’, when they invented pottery, agriculture and animal husbandry, they made an effort to bury their past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Tohono Oʼodham

The Tohono O’odham are a Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, and they are recognized by the US federal government as the Tohono O’odham Nation.

After the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, a competitor people (The Pima) used an insult to refer to the Tohono O’odham, which the Spanish (and later English) mispronounced as ‘papago’, but this term has been rejected by the tribal government and most of the people of the tribe.

The Tohono O’odham Nation’s major reservation is located in southern Arizona, and stretches into Sonoma county of Mexico. The Tohono O’odham share roots with the Akimel O’odham (People of the River). Both are descended from the Sobaipuri, who resided along the major rivers of southern Arizona as long ago as the 15th century.

The O’odham-speaking people were a settled agricultural people who endured raids from the nomadic Apache when the latter needed food. It wasn’t until European settlers encroached on the O’odham people’s land that the O’odham and Apache found some common ground. It was more traditional that they were at odds, each taking captive woman and children during raids on the other.

The music and dance of the O’odham lack any grand paraphernalia or ceremonies. Both the music and the dance is subdued, with the music being ‘swallowed’ by the surrounding desert floor, and the dancing featuring skipping and shuffling quietly in bare feet on dry dirt to raise dust.

The traditional O’odham diet consisted of game, insects and plants. They foraged ironwood seed, honey mesquite, hog potato, cholla cactus, acorns and organ-pipe cactus fruit. They cultivated corn, squash, white tepary beans, papago peas and spanish watermelons. They hunted antelope, gathered hornworm larvae and trapped pack rats for meat.

The land did not provide ideal conditions for growing crops, but the O’odham developed the ‘mouth of the wash’ farming method. When they detected imminent rainfall, they would quickly prep the ground and seed it as the rain began to flood the area.

It is often assumed that the desert people embraced Catholicism, but the Tohono O’odham villages resisted change for hundreds of years. During the 1660s and the 1750s, major rebellions forced the Spanish to retreat, and the desert people preserved their traditions nearly intact for generations.

Apparently, the Tohono O’odham never signed a treaty with the Federal Government, so they managed to get a reservation by conducting trades for the land they thought was already theirs. They have retained many of their traditions into the 21st century, and still speak their language. However, US mass culture has started to penetrate and erode their traditions. Diabetes has become a major health problem for the tribe as they shifted away from their traditional food sources. There is a movement to assist the group to return to their more traditional food choices, and they are advocating for access to the rivers so that they can return to growing their own crops.

The Tohono O’odham Community Action was founded in 1996 with the intent to restore lost tribal traditions. It started as a community garden and basketweaving classes. It now has 2 farms, a restaurant and an art gallery. It is estimated that the restaurant - opened in 2009, and incorporating traditional foods into each item served - serves over 100,000 meals yearly. That’s a minimum of 274 meals a day! I don’t want to cook for that crowd!

The basket weaving classes were held once a week, initially, and a single basket might take an entire year to make! The fibers that were used had to be harvested and prepared, plus they needed to create a design that represented the tribe’s history.

Before contact with Europeans, the O’odham migrated north and south with the seasons, and this continued at least until the US-Mexico border cut through their lands. Even then, much of the O’odham continued to move about as they wanted, but efforts were made during the 20th century to ‘close’ this open hole in this border. By 2000, the Mexican census indicated there were no more O’odham to be found in Sonora.

Well, as the article got closer and closer to the present, I found myself losing interest, as is often the case when I’m looking at history. Besides, this was already a long episode. And thirdly, it kept mentioning all the ways this tribe has been and still are being treated as less than full citizens, which always pisses me off. I will have to remember that when I create cultures that are not based on US culture. Heck, even if they are based on US culture, from the looks of how things are now.

The most interesting things I found were the descriptions of the music and dancing, and the information on their traditional foods. This is the kind of stuff I really want to have available in my mind when I’m thinking up new cultures for future stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%CA%BCodham

What is This World Coming to? 6

Food. We all need it. We all have our favorites. But what will be available for us to eat in the coming much-warmer world?

Like the topic of ‘climate change’, this sub-topic is just as broad a question and just as difficult to sort out.

My initial belief was that the tropics would probably become pretty uninhabitable. After all, at least one city in the Middle East has already come too-d****d-close to that with a temperature of 115°F with 50% humidity. Places that are NOT deserts could be even worse. Deserts at least cool off at night, because they don’t have any cloud cover to hold the heat in. But when the humidity rises, cloudiness increases, so that heat could be held close to the ground. Also, when humidity rises, that ‘drop-dead’ temperature is lowered. At least as low as 96°F.

But the more I’ve researched, the less sure I am of that. I recently spent a few days looking at the countries in Central America, because I figured they were definitely in the ‘heavily tropical’ part of the world. The thing is, Central America is pretty mountainous, so a lot of the land is actually ‘temperate’. The low-lying jungle might not be a place people would want to live, but the highlands could still be habitable.

Crops, on the other hand, might not like the new weather patterns that could come. Even without the global temperature rising, people living in those countries right now have trouble providing food for their families year after year. The rainy season and hurricanes can produce mud slides and flooding. If that doesn’t happen, they could lose their crops because of drought, like the one they’ve been suffering through the last few years.

Anthropologists believe the Mayan civilization crashed because of a severe drought. Now that area is facing another drought, and who knows how bad it will become? None of the articles I read mentioned wild fires like we’ve had in the western states, but will there come a time when Central American starts to burn?

These were my thoughts as I studied this particular area, looking for food crops that might not survive where they have been thriving and will need to be transplanted elsewhere. I don’t have any answers on that yet. The export crops grown here might be okay, as long as they can get enough water. I’ll have to research individual crops - for instance, bananas - in order to take a guess on their prognosis.

Still more to come!

What is This World Coming to? 5

Okay, I did find something to say on this subject, from a totally unexpected source. I was watching an episode on Nova the other night. Our local channel has 2 episodes on Wednesdays, and we usually watch the first, but not the second, because that’s getting too late for my husband, who is an early bird. That night, I heard that the 2nd episode was on Neanderthals, and human evolution has always been an interest of mine, so I stayed up to watch it.

As a whole, the episode explored a lot of different information about the humans known as Neanderthals, but my interest picked up during their talk about the small colony of Neanderthals who lived in caves currently located at the base of the Rock of Gibraltar.

One question this episode was asking is, “Did Modern Humans have any part in eliminating the Neanderthals?” They didn’t have an answer to that question, in the end. Not a simple one, anyway.

Neanderthals lived in the Middle East, Western Asia and Europe for as much as 700,000 years. During all of that time, the world was in an ice age, but the Neanderthals were built for it, and apparently did not find that a hardship.

About 100,000 years ago (maybe as early as 125,000 years ago), modern humans started to populate these same areas. The cold probably made them wear more clothes than the Neanderthals. And maybe there were instances of violence between the 2 sub-species.

However, the scientists said, it was unlikely the modern humans had traveled all the way around the Mediterranean Sea and got to the Rock of Gibraltar before that particular group of Neanderthals died out. What the scientists discovered in those caves showed that the Neanderthals living there not only hunted and gathered, they ate a variety of sea life as well, from seals to clams. Today, the mouths of those caves are practically at the sea line, but during the brunt of the ice age, the water line would have been about 59 feet (18 meters) lower.

Neanderthals lived in small groups. Scientists estimate their entire population may have been about 100,000, scattered in small groups across a quarter of the world. (How big is the town you live in?) And as they studied this particular group, they realized that it died out during a long and severe drought that hit the area.

My thought? Neanderthals were suited for cold. Not so much for heat. They had a short, stocky build that would help them retain body heat. But when the world heats up, that doesn’t do you much good.

If the world were going through the gradual changes of leaving the ice age, the flora and fauna would no doubt evolve in order to survive. But the current rapid pace of warming that we are in doesn’t leave us time for that. Those who currently live in the tropics might manage by migrating north or south to the temperate zones. Those in the temperate zones might find some comfort in the polar regions, although there’s not a lot of land for them to settle on. Once Antarctica thaws, that land would be available. Would it be fertile? Who knows?

It won’t be a matter of the fit being able to survive. Those who can accept what’s happening and deal with it will have a chance to survive.

And I’m back to looking for potential food for that migrating population.

What is This World Coming to? 4

Okay, we’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring melting ice and (some of) the resulting changes to The Oceans As We Know Them. And last time, we touched on the Arctic jet stream, which brings us to the atmosphere. Let’s go ahead and explore (some of) the changes we can expect there.

I just heard on the news tonight that Hurricane Willa - born in the Eastern Pacific Ocean - will tear across the middle of Mexico (despite the mountains) and then hit the south and south-eastern areas of the US. It’s not expected to be a hurricane by the time it gets to the US, but I don’t remember hearing about any Pacific hurricane/cyclone/typhoon doing that before. And anytime hurricanes get mentioned anymore, there always seems to be a cat 5 hurricane that somebody is watching. Some of them have been so strong a cat 5, there has been talk of defining what would make a cat 6.

The average global temperature has risen 1.4° Fahrenheit (0.8° C) over the past 100 years. Now, that’s not 1.4° F for every single location on the globe. Temperatures at the poles have risen faster than other places. But that is a big change over a short period of time, when you are talking about the life of a planet.

Consider the northern plains of China, home to 400,000,000 people, and the place where much of China’s food is grown. It doesn’t get a lot of rainfall, when compared to southern China, so the fields are irrigated during the growing season. Research from MIT indicates that the temperature in this area of China will cross above 95°F several times between 2070 and 2100. At that temperature and with the added humidity caused by irrigation, even young and healthy humans would reach the point where their bodies could not cool off, and death would result within a few hours. And that’s the young and healthy. Old and frail wouldn’t last that long. Do you suppose they’ll farm at night? How would the plants they try to grow fare in that kind of heat?

Shanghai, on China’s central coast, would cross that 95° F threshold about 5 times, and approach it over 100 times during that same time period.

In the Middle East, many areas, especially coastal cities, are in the same mess. In 2015, Bandar Mahshahr in Iran almost reached that ‘death threshold’ when the temperature hit 114.5° F with 50% humidity. Only 50% humidity! But when the temperature gets high enough, the human body can’t function.

What else can we expect? Some areas, like northeast US, may experience an increase in rainfall, while in the northwest US, rainfall will decrease. Washington has been experiencing range fires the last few years, but I don’t remember hearing about them before that. Maybe I wasn’t listening. But I do know that California has been in a drought for several years, and they’ve had fires rampaging across the countryside.

Not a pretty thought, looking at the future and what climate change will do to us. I have a lot of thoughts to piece together for that book I’m thinking about.

I’ll be looking for information about what food will be able to be grown where in the next 50 years. If I find anything interesting on that front - or some other front I haven’t thought of - I’ll continue this series. Otherwise, I’ll wrap this up next time.

https://www.livescience.com/37057-global-warming-effects.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/31/chinas-most-populous-area-could-be-uninhabitable-by-end-of-century