Notes from the week of May 27, 2024
This week I’m thinking about: baking on the barbecue, the OPEC oil embargo, and my aching back.
Cooler temperatures this week allowed me to do some baking - another batch of brioche col tuppo, and a sourdough banana bread using the d*scard saved from my failed starter... Saved half of the brioche, individually wrapped and frozen, to see if they can reasonably be defrosted and baked one at a time in the toaster oven... (I'll report back.) Embellished the banana bread with chocolate chips, sliced almonds, and pumpkin seeds. Sadly the proto-sourdough taste was undetectable.
In researching summer kitchens and baking on a charcoal grill, I found a connection to early kitchens of the colonial US, where a bake oven, separate from the hearth, was (at least initially) an expensive and inefficient auxiliary structure. Most cooking, including baking, was done in pots and pans resting on the coals in the hearth, or suspended over the fire. I don't love the idea of baking over charcoal, but I am willing to try it out, for the sake of having hot weather-, off-grid options.
(Also, really like this article from the Colonial Williamsburg blog, which points out that moving the kitchen from the basement to a separate, outdoor structure, while practical in some ways, was very much a performance of "rule by ostentation" - it enabled the meal to be prepared smell-un...smelled and sight-unseen, generally by enslaved workers, and then "just appear" in the dining room as a show of status.)
Thinking about abundance vs. scarcity (a recurring theme of the past 4 or 5+ years for me), and consumer culture in general, I keep coming back to questions about the few recent periods where USians actually had to endure generalized material shortages: the Great Depression (also WWII rationing), and the OPEC oil embargo in the 70s. My impression is that the Depression profoundly impacted people psychologically, and that shows up in everyday, household habits generations later-- whereas, nobody really talks about the oil embargo except as a quirky moment when there were gas lines? I wasn't there, I was born during Reagan's first term.
Any aftereffects are certainly not reflected in subsequent oil consumption or driving habits. I'm learning there were some specific economic and financial changes in the 70s and 80s that led to a sort of wholesale moving on. But I'm curious about the epigenetics and home economics of these two eras... and how a healthy appreciation for supply chains and materiality would be so helpful now, post-peak-oil...
I'm also unofficially participating in #1000wordsofsummer. On Day 1, I have written 1200 words about pulling my back, caregiving, and capitalism. Holler in a comment if you're interested in seeing these excruciatingly rough drafts?
Meanwhile, the yellow flag iris is blooming. It is so pretty and so very toxic and invasive...
