Drink Deep from the Well of Knowledge

I was thinking today about how removed we are from the food we eat. Do we even know what half of it is? If the corn lobby, nabisco, and kelloggs went out of business tomorrow, would we have any idea what to do? Could you recreate them at home? Let me think of what I ate today:

Granola - what the heck is granola anyway? Some type of grain, I guess, but I’m not sure what kind or what’s been done to it.

Soy milk - how the hell does that happen? Someone plants a soybean seed, it grows, someone picks it… I’m lost after that step.

Chicken noodle soup - I think I can handle the chicken part, and I have made homemade pasta, so I have a good idea of how that happens (flour, egg, water, salt?)

How about a saltine? How would you make one of those? cheese?? It just seems sort of sad how out of touch I am with this basic human function - gathering and producing (or even understanding) food.

Which leads me to the subject of this post. What is vinegar? Well, like wine, it’s basically fermented whatever. It can made from wine, or grain, or other things. It’s basically a type of acid. I will never forget the day I asked my mother in law if she had any wine and she pulled out a bottle that they had opened a year previously from her cabinet. As I sceptically said “I’m not so sure that’s still going to be good….” she uncorked it and the very pungent smell of vinegar wafted through the air. That was.. as they say.. an aha! moment.

As with all matters, I will refer you to the good folks at wikipedia for more information on the subject, but I did want to highlight a few uses for vinegar (I’ve become less ambitious since I first named this post 5 minutes ago):

 – salad dressing - mixed with oil (ok, you knew that one, right?)
 – way to get cat pee smell out of stuff (I’m trying this tonight so I’ll let you know!)
 – the Chinese use it for all kinds of interesting things… including stopping the spread of SARS… who knew?
 – a great way not to catch flies? (or so the Southern saying goes)

Just FYI - as a way to get back in touch with my own personal food chain, I’m making attempt #2 at making mozzarella this weekend. I’ll keep you posted. So THAT’S what curds and whey are. : ) So gratifying to finally be able to understand nursery rhymes (at the age of 33)!