WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST?

So what do you have for breakfast?
For a long time now oatmeal has been my favorite. Not the quick cook variety but those lovely rolled oats that you tip into boiling water and let soak for several minutes. Of course, it helps if you have some raisins in the water before and then add some walnut pieces and chopped bananas. Lately I have discovered that diced apple works pretty well and that adding a couple of dessert spoons of ground flax seed top off what must be the perfect breakfast dish. If you like a little extra sweetness you can add a little honey at the last, before some half-n-half (for Australians who read this, 'half-n-half ' is the closest you can get to real milk here in the good old USA where fat is akin to temptation and ingesting it tantamount to sin).

Despite all the goodness of oatmeal I have lately been seduced by barley (a notion introduced to be via the Real Age website). Lower glycemic index even than oatmeal, meaning you will not begin to feel famished until lunchtime, full of more nutritional goodies, as well as amazing health benefits. You cook it like brown rice; pouring a cup of hulled barley seed into four cups of boiling water and allowing to stand overnight. In the morning a several minutes on very low heat completes the uptake of moisture resulting in deliciously tender but still chewy swollen grain.
Mind you, I am not referring to pearl barley which is to hulled barley as white rice is to brown rice; meaning most of the nutritional goodies have been ground off.
I hope I have sufficiently tempted you so that you will want to step out to your local supermarket to get some and give barley for breakfast a try. Good luck but I doubt you will find anything like it, except maybe pearl barley. You can get it off the Internet if you are prepared to pay $2 or so per pound and $10-$12 for transport via UPS. This will still be cheaper and better for you than the sugar coated box of rubbish some of you may buy in box from the 'cereal' or breakfast section of your local supermarket (watch out, Robert, your nasty prejudice is beginning to peek out!).
I get my hulled barley for $1.19 per pound at a organic food co-op in Ithaca, some 45 miles from Painted Post. That's about $10 in gas, there and back, so I have to combine it with other things to do in Ithaca, like eating at the excellent Thai restaurants there or visiting the wonderful second hand book shops on The Commons.

'Where is all this going?' you might well ask. Why is he rabbiting on about boring breakfast concoctions? Now is the moment for a 'When I Was a Lad' contribution...

When I was a lad one could go to the local general store (no supermarkets then) and buy a pound or two (or five) of hulled barley grown within 100 miles and prepared at a mill even closer. What you could not buy was a box of sugar frosted "O's", or sich like, made of some sort of cereal grown far away and transported 1,500 miles or so for purchase off the shelf.

Actually, I am getting a little worried about that sliced banana I add to my oatmeal or barley. Not only does it come a long way but I read this morning in NY Times that banana plantations are so heavily dosed with pesticides so as unfortunately to decimate birds venturing into them.
Or what about the out-of-season melon I am tempted to purchase, grown in Mexico under conditions that apparently are killing off the skunk blackbird, a songbird once common in eastern USA (see NY Times article, Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird, March 31 '08).

Where is this leading? Where else but a discussion of 'Food Miles' and the cost component of oil in your food? In the meantime, enjoy the picture 'before and after' picture of barley for breakfast.

ACROSS TO CHATHAM

This week Uma journeyed up to New Brunswick to visit with her ailing Uncle; first going down to New Jersey to meet with her cousin so they could make the journey together. Rather than spend five days here in Painted Post alone in the house, I took the opportunity to visit with Richard Green over in Chatham. Those of you who worked at Mental Health Services West will remember Richard who was the IT Manager at one time. It is 18 months since I last visited (on my way back from my cycle tour in Quebec Province) over the Labor Day weekend in '06.
I drove over via the Catskill Region Park crossing through the almost mountainous terrain along a beautiful valley, following happy stream most to the way and passing through quaint villages in which the buildings must go back to 'yonks'. I followed the snow storm that had passed through this part of the work (had to clear three inches of snow off the front drive before I left on the Friday morning) and was in an out of snow flurries and low cloud for a good bit of the journey eventually emerging into fine weather once I had crossed over the Hudson River.
Richard and I share concerns about the impending energy crisis, the industrialization of food, and just what individuals and communities can do to blunt the effect of these impending crises. So we had a lot to talk about.
A high light of my stay was to attend a Saturday afternoon practise sessionof Richard's Blues group (he also leads a Jazz group) that was absolutely inspiring as well as hugely enjoyable. Being in the midst of a group of musicians who are working very hard to get their stuff right and thoroughly enjoying themselves in the process was quite an experience...not at all like attending a public session and I can tell you the music really gets into your soul as they work away and the sound is all around you.
Richard is very talented in many ways, apart from being a dedicated father and a quite passable cook. Speaking of cooks, his wive Gina was away at a yoga training program so I missed her excellent cooking. Here is a picture of Iona, Richard, and Finn at the front porch of the house they are renting just outside Chatham. As you can can see, they are quite the good looking group. The other highlight was to look around the small Quaker Intentional Village project this morning. It was a special treat to visit their communal house where they have a common kitchen and laundry; the treat being to see inside a real timberframe house.
The drive back today (Sunday) was uneventul and entirely pleasant on a wonderfully warm and sunny afternoon. Uma had returned on Saturday evening. Having driven to Texas and back last month and now to New Brunswick and back via New Jersey (some 8,500 miles in all), she declared she has had enough of travel along the highways!
So it looks as if Spring really has arrived, despite the brief return of wintry conditions last week. Hooray!!!
Out of the mundane stuff of this posting I will return to issues of food and energy for a bit next time I write.

March so soon? One month later...

Wow, I have been away from this Blog for over a month. So what have I been up to? Not skiing, I have to confess. The weather has been more or less miserable; very cold (nothing new there) with some sunny days and absolutely no useful snow (for skiing that is). At least the days are drawing out and there are signs that the local birds are thinking 'Spring'.

The main news is that Uma and I helped her elder daughter, Tara, move to Austin TX. She had been living in Cleveland and longing to get away to better climes. Then she got a job with a computer graphics group in Austin and the race was on to get her moved. Uma and I drove over to Cleveland on a Sunday three weeks back. We had thought that she would be pretty well packed up but, as it turned out, there was quite a bit of work still to be done before we had her car and Uma's Murano all packed up and ourselves ready to leave around noon on the next day. That evening had us just outside Nashville. We drove just to the northwest of a storm system, in and out of snow storms most of the way down through Ohio and Kentucky. From Nashville almost to Dallas on the Tuesday saw much better weather but we drove through some miles of blown down trees alongside the road with work gangs clearing away the debris. We were relieved that this was all as a tornado alert had been current just to the southeast of our route.

After winding down out of the Alleghenies, crossing the Mississippi at Memphis had us suddenly in the prairie terrain. What a difference this makes to the country. Two thirds of the US lies to the west of this river and there is hardly a mountain until one comes up against the Rockies. On the Wednesday, it was a relatively short drive to Austin. We crossed into Texas from Arkansas at a town called Texarkana and stopped for lunch at a real Texas bar and grill. I had the most delicious ribs and some wonderful beer. Texans are very friendly, I decided.

After this long drive, we were glad indeed to locate Tara's apartment and settle to the task of unloading. On the Thursday, we spent a lot of time at the local Ikea. On Friday, I was dismissed and took the bus into downtown Austin (no cost for seniors) and checked out the local art gallery, the History of Texas Museum, the Capitol Building (largest state legislature building of the 48 mainland states...they do everything big in Texas!) and finally, an excellent English Pub called The Dog and Duck (there is another of this name in London). Here I had 'bangers and mash' (sausages and mashed potatoes for the non-British) and two of the 50 or so beers on tap. I must say that the bangers and mash were almost as good as this dish cooked by my son Andrew, who must make the best bangers and mash in the world.

If ever you are in Austin, you must do The Dog and Duck. I ended up with three drinking companions and was glad to accept the offer of a ride home from one of them; I do admit to beinga little the worse for wear! Also, don't miss the Museum of Texas History and take the guided tour of the State Capitol.

Yes, they do it big in Texas and not the least are the amazing highway interchanges...these are four to five tiers of intersecting highways lacing over each other and rising up to two hundred feet high. Texas has a unique history having been under the French, ceded to Mexico, admitted to the Union, ceded with the Confederacy, was in limbo for five years following the Civil War and then was readmitted to the Union in 1970. No wonder the Texans think their state is special!

I would love to show you pictures of this trip but, having later upgraded the firmware on my phone I was dismayed to discover this destroys all the data on the phone...boohoo.

The trip home took two days. The one highlight was to visit the Clinton Presidential Library at Little Rock mid-afternoon on the Saturday. We were very happy to fall into bed around midnight Sunday. Foolishly, the next day I cooked up some mushrooms that I would have done much better to discard and made myself very sick for a day or so. More boohoos! It took the rest of the week to recover.

So that was Texas and back. America is surely a big country and filled with interesting places. Austin is quite the nice city but becoming burdened with traffic as its newest suburbia burgeons. Downtown is a little like Adelaide, my home city, with beautiful parks, nice old buildings, and the University at the edge of downtown. Like Adelaide, it has a passion for tennis (but no cricket). The locals are very friendly and many like to drink , it seems. My sort of town!

I do like the weather in Austin; it was already Spring and it seems the climate is a little like Darwin's during the Summer (hot and humid). Never mind they had heavy snow storms after we left. After that warm weather it was more than a little hard to return the ice and snow of Corning, NY.