Sometimes I see it sitting on the shelf and other times it’s in the freezer section. I’m talking about The Original Ezekiel 4:9 Bread. The bag says it’s Organic Sprouted 100% Whole Grain and the motto is “sprouted for life”. There is a lot to read on this bread’s bag including the fact that it’s 100% flourless and it’s made by the Rainier Organic Bakery. The Fresh Taste of the Great Northwest, since 1945. That’s a lot of information but let me bring it down to a very simple fact that means something to Bob. I like the way it tastes.

I have been a big (and I mean that in every sense) fiber enthusiast for quite a few years. When companies started processing the fiber out of our grains in an effort to increase the shelf life of the product they began to rob us of important nutrients. The key word in that sentence is “product” because in almost every instance the process of altering the foods has happened because some company wanted to extend the shelf life of their product. That is when the foods quit being foods and became “products”. White flour will keep for a longer period of time than whole grain flour. White flour doesn’t die as soon because processing the fiber out of it has the same effect as killing it. The manufacturers killed it so it wouldn’t die. I love food but am quite skeptical of “products”.

My short lecture on fiber follows. White bread and pasta as well as other over processed and over refined foods have caused us to miss out on the fiber that our bodies desperately need. One result of this deficiency is the rise of colon cancer in the American population. Without going into too many details let me just say that we need fiber to keep us clean and regular. Everyone who is fifty years old or more needs to see their doctor about having a colonoscopy. If you haven’t had one, go see your doctor. Enough said.

By eating foods with substantial amounts of fiber we can all keep our colons clean and our bodies healthy.

In addition to that, whole grain bread just tastes better.

I am one of those people who read ingredients on the labels of food in the grocery store. I want to know how much sugar is in the food I buy. I want to know how much fiber, fat and cholesterol is in the bread and other “products” I consume. I guess I just like being the one who makes my choices, even if they are not always the best ones.

This bread has half a gram of fat, 90 calories and 6 grams of fiber in each slice. I think the USDA guidelines say that we should all be getting about 25 grams of fiber a day. Whenever I eat a fried egg or peanut butter sandwich made with this stuff, I am fulfilling almost half of that daily recommended requirement. Of course there are many other places to get substantial amounts of fiber. Fruits and vegetables have some. Beans and brown rice are also good sources. If you have questions about the actual amounts do what most other intelligent internet users do and Google it. Come on people. You are sitting in front of the most powerful learning tool that the world has ever known but it won’t do you any good if you don’t get out there and make it work for you.

Whole grain breads and other foods with substantial amounts of fiber can be found almost everywhere in the United States. I do the grocery shopping in my family so when my wife and I relocated to the beautiful Pacific Northwest I was looking for a whole grain bread that was made somewhere near our home. Eating locally is another one of my interests and I will have more to say about that in the future. The bright orange packaging of this bread caught my eye and while I was examining the information on the bag I could not help but be drawn to the name. Ezekiel 4:9. Wow, an Old Testament reference. I love the Old Testament. What great stories. What fantastic moral directions. What confusing, maddening and contradictory advice. I love those books.

I want to make it clear that I understand that it is more correct to refer to that collection of books that begins with Genesis as the Jewish Bible, not the Old Testament. Many people today do not think it proper to call it that because it could be construed as demeaning to the Jewish people as they regard it as their Bible in whole. They do not consider the so called New Testament as scripture from God. What Christians refer to as the Old Testament is to them the whole Testament. Most Christian people feel the same way about the Koran. For them the Bible is whole and complete with the Old and New Testaments while Islamic believers include the Old and New Testaments as well as the Koran. Many characters in the Old and New Testament including Abraham, Moses and even Jesus also appear in the Koran. Just as the Jewish people believe the revelations of God ended with the Old Testament, Christian believers feel that it ended with the New Testament. That is of course unless you are a Mormon and believe that the Book of Mormon is a continuation of divine revelation. It can certainly be confusing, can’t it?

I was raised in the Christian tradition so I still think of the Bible as being composed of the Old and the New Testament however I do not think that one collection of revelations outweighs another and I would not want to offend my friends of the Jewish faith. I mean no disrespect to them or to any practicing Muslim or Mormon believers. It’s a rough world out there. Hold on to what faith you can and God be with you. OK.

There have been many English translations of the Bible. There are also many opinions about which ones are more accurate, which ones are the easiest to understand and which ones are more beautiful or poetic. Once again, I find myself returning to what I was raised on. That does not mean that everyone should read the version I read or that my choice is the right one. I am just a little bit tired of everyone telling all of us what the right choices are. It is an election year (or should I say decade; it’s gone on so long). I read the much maligned King James Version because that’s the Bible my mom and dad got me for Christmas when I was eight years old and that’s the version that was read in the church I grew up in and I love the language. It is the English of Shakespeare’s time and I place great importance on poetry. Once again, I get to choose.

As soon as I got the first loaf of bread home I pulled out my King James and looked up the quote the bread was named for. Here it is

“Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.”

Wow! A recipe for bread from the Bible. How cool is that?

I checked the side of the bag for the ingredients and I saw that it had everything listed from this passage in Ezekiel in sprouted form. That explained why they said it was flourless. It was all there except for one item. Where were the fitches and for that matter why would a recipe call for birds in a loaf of bread? Was this like the four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie? Reading the Bible is always an adventure. I just love it.

Wait a minute. What was that you said honey? Oops. My wife just screamed at me from the other room where she was proof reading this post and said, “What the heck’s the matter with you? It says fitches…not finches.” Oops. Ok. Never mind about the blackbirds in the pie.

So just what is a fitch? Fortunately there was a footnote in my Bible that said that “fitches” meant rye. That made a lot more sense to me but I have to admit that rye was not listed in the ingredients. I decided it was my turn to take my own advice and just Google the darn thing. I found two different explanations. One said fitch was a spice called black cummin. Another source said that it had been misinterpreted as rye but really meant spelt.

I should explain here that I am not one of those people who claims to take the whole Bible as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I do not believe in what I think is referred to as a literal interpretation of the Bible. I will not go there right now but suffice it to say that I think you are causing yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble by trying to believe that and somehow live your life that way. I know many would argue with me about this but I just can’t go there and will not go there at this time. The good news for me is that because I do not believe in interpreting the Bible in that strict (and impossible) manner, I can forgive the Rainier Organic Bakery for leaving out the rye. However, if the interpretation of rye is incorrect and it should be spelt, then everything is cool. Sprouted spelt is listed as an ingredient so I guess they have been diligent in following the biblical directive. I’m still more impressed by the fact that the bread tastes great.

If you live in the area where this bread is distributed you need to check out this great tasting food source. Their web site is at www.rainierorganicbakery.com and they have a whole line of great foods for sale. I have tried the Raisin Cinnamon and love it as well. I also just visited the site and discovered they have a new bread named for the infamous Sasquatch that is widely accepted as living in the Pacific Northwest. That is the truth.

Finding local bread made from a Biblical recipe has inspired me to look for more spiritual food products that come from this beautiful area of the country. Washington State is quickly becoming world renown for the excellent wines that are produced here and my new goal is to find one that has been made in the manner that Jesus used at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. I wonder if any of the local vintners have ever read Chapter 2 of the Gospel of John.

Sometimes we eat and sometimes we have to wash the dishes. At least most of us have to. Some people never wash their plates, silverware or cookware. It usually catches up with them after awhile but of course there are those who have people who do that for them.

Everyone knows that I eat more than I report. It’s not some big secret. I try to concentrate on certain aspects of my food experiences. Things that I judge may be more interesting to you or more likely to me.

This may not be a confession, but I do want to come clean.

I went to the ballpark and ate some fantastic hot dogs and chicken wings and taco salad. I talked with some very interesting people, some of whom I had never met before, and that was great fun. It’s pretty much impossible to talk about what you have been eating without sharing a little bit about what you did and who you met. Remember? Life and food; two and the same.

I ate at a new favorite barbecue place for the third time and am going to share my experience at some future date or then again, maybe not. See, I get to choose.

I have enjoyed a couple of nights with fresh oysters popped on my grill for about five minutes. I really need to talk about my grilling sessions, not because I make anything all that fantastic, but it is a great deal of fun for me. I bought a cherry pie at the Farmers Market and enjoyed it very much, here’s a shout out to Deborah’s Homemade Pies.

I regret not talking more about seasoning iron cookware when I posted about my steak cooking. You must never use soap on them and you must season them before you use them and you have to pay attention to the seasoning and not hurt it. See? There is a lot to learn about using this stuff. Look it up on the Internet.

I want to talk about that great bread I used when I made that fried egg sandwich. That stuff is good and I eat a peanut butter sandwich made from that stuff almost every single day of my life. And I usually eat a banana.

I usually drink two cups of coffee every day.

I usually have at least one glass of plain flavored soy milk.

I claim to never eat ice cream and I don’t ever buy it at the store to bring home, but about twice a year I eat ice cream either when invited to dinner, eating out or visiting a Baskin Robbins with friends. I don’t deny myself very much, but I try to stay clear of ice cream and chocolate.

I do enjoy good beer and good wine. We had homemade pizza while my daughter was here and that made it taste all the better. I love to make pancakes for my wife but have not done it for a few weeks. Maybe tomorrow.

Enough. That is certainly not everything but it is food I remembered for one reason or another.

I need to air my feelings about washing dishes so I guess I’ll file at least part of this post as What’s Eating Bob? I am not a man of strong principles but more a man who looks around in wide-eyed wonder at this big old goofy world, to borrow from John Prine. I have no special knowledge. All I have is the desire to talk and write about the goofy things that catch my eye.

I don’t think a person has any business fixing food in a kitchen unless they are doing the dishes. Oh, I know that Bobby Flay and the rest of the crowd that goes in for “stunt cooking” don’t have to clean up their own messes, but that is not the way it should be. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Anyone who does not want to do dishes has no business cooking, which makes me think of an earlier time in my life.

When I graduated from high school I got a job as a carpenter’s helper. The pay was two bucks an hour and I caught a ride every morning with the boss, his father and another guy my age. I was eighteen years old and this was my first real job after graduating from high school. We rode 45 minutes every morning to Erie, Pa to build houses in a project. The father of my boss was 72 years old and his name was Bert. At the end of the summer the project was finished and Bert and I started putting new roofs on old barns. We spent the whole fall way out in rural Pennsylvania working on old barn roofs. I learned how to do the job and I hauled most of the new roofing up the ladder and I think perhaps more than anything else, kept an eye out for Bert. Bert knew more about what to do than I did by a mile, but I had a younger and stronger back. I was glad to play my role.

My favorite memories of Bert were when we stopped for lunch or took a break. I loved to listen to what he had to say and there was one particular saying he had that has become part of my vocabulary. Whenever it was time to go back to work, Bert would say, “There’s no rest for the wicked”, and then he would pause just the appropriate amount of time before finishing, “and the righteous don’t need it”.

When you think about it, that about covers all of us, doesn’t it?

And it is with that notion in mind that I extend my admonition to do the dishes. If you are cooking you should be expected to do your own dishes and if you are not cooking, then you should be willing to do the dishes. I think that about covers the subject.

I do have two rules I follow though. Not only do I insist on doing the dishes in my house, and on my time, but I also do not volunteer to do the dishes in others homes. That might sound cruel, and I have sometimes bent the rule, but I try to live by this.

One more thing that I must own up to is that all of these rules are arbitrary and can be changed whenever all parties agree or someone is shamed into it. Get it?

Life is not black and white. Sometimes you do the dishes in places where you had no intention of ever washing a plate or drying a coffee cup. In any event, we all need to do the dishes so I just wanted to clean up a few loose ends here.

I very much want to thank both George Huger and Abraham Whaley for all of the help they have given me in starting this blog. I would never be here without them. Thank you gentlemen. I will not forget your encouragement and technical assistance. I thank all of my family and I thank God for all of my family. I think that cleans a few things up for me. Thanks to all.

Food, Truth and Men

The title caught my eye and the dust jacket had a photo of some old geezer in what looked like bib overalls or a denim apron. Neither of which I am opposed to. It least it’s not an Utilikilt (read man skirt). Don’t ask me any more questions about it; I’ll explain some other time.

I must have picked up the book sometime around 1999 or 2000 when I was managing a used book store. Food books were very much in my radar. I bought it and read it and started watching for other copies and buying them when I could. I gave a few away.

Diggin’ in & Piggin’ Out; The Truth about Food and Men by Roger Welsch. There’s a title that grabs you if I ever heard one. Of course, diggin’ and piggin’ spoke to me but then there was this promise of the “truth”. The truth about anything is interesting to me. I seldom get a chance to learn the truth about anything so I hate to miss a chance to catch a glimpse of it in any form.

Food I like.

Man I am.

This book was specifically marketed to me and all those like me, but don’t let that stop you from reading it as it is extremely entertaining. Any man interested in food at all will enjoy it. Actually readers of all genders will find information and humor in this book. It is good solid, as well as liquid, food writing that is just plain fun to read. I hope we never quit reading books that are fun, whether they have anything else to offer or not. Let’s have fun reading. And let’s have fun cooking and/or eating. That’s what Mr. Welsch offers us and I firmly believe that we are giving back when we accept an offering of food and fellowship. You also give when you can receive graciously. Amen.

The author promises us no recipes. At least he says his is not a book of recipes but any lover of food cannot help but inject at the very least a vague reference to how to prepare a favorite dish. Whether or not this constitutes a recipe, per se, is up to you. I am glad he could not help himself, because we lovers of food are always looking for new finds. We crave new dishes to expand our culinary repertoire. We all know how important variety is and the spice of life is most certainly a potent seasoning.

Here is one from the book that I tried and loved. The name of this concoction is Cherry Bim. You begin with a large glass jar with a lid. Perhaps something that was used to store pig’s feet or pickles in a tavern. That would be an appropriate place to obtain one. Buy a bunch of fresh cherries and stem and pit them. You will also need a large quantity of sugar cubes and at least one bottle of bourbon whiskey. Get two. You can always use the leftover whisky. If worse comes to worse, drink the stuff. Sometimes we have to sacrifice ourselves when we choose to expand our food horizons. Begin by layering a thick foundation of the prepared cherries in the bottom of the jar. Next put in a thick layer of sugar cubes. Now repeat until the jar is full all the way to the top. The final stage is to fill up the remainder of the jar with bourbon whiskey. Now that’s not so hard, is it?

The reason for using the sugar cubes as opposed to plain sugar is that it separates the cherries and allows the sugar to mix more evenly throughout the whole jar while it matures. I say mature because you then have to let it sit for at least a couple of months and blend together. The longer it sits the better it gets. When you are ready to sample it you will find a delightful blend of whisky and fruit that is heavenly to taste and quite amazing on ice cream. It is probably good on just about any dessert but has no problem standing up by itself.

I made a batch and kept it for four or five years. When I began packing to move from the east coast to the west, I pulled the jar out from under the cupboard I where I had stored/forgotten it for so long and thought I would just pour it out. But when I smelled it and tasted it I realized that the stuff was not only still good but actually better than when I put it away. I passed it on to my adult son and he shared it with his friends. The whiskey had bleached out most of the color of the cherries and they were a pale whitish pink, but everything tasted great and none of it went to waste.

I suppose in the interest of political correctness I should mention that the author says many things that could very easily be construed as chauvinist or sexist. He voices many opinions that would not hold up under any careful scrutiny by a modern man or woman, but let’s keep one thing in mind here. He’s joking. He pokes some fun at us and should not be taken too seriously. That should not take away from the information and spirit of food fellowship that he offers.

The book is full of great guy food ideas as well as homespun philosophy and general tips on how to live and enjoy life. I believe it’s out of print but if you check out Amazon or any of the other used book sources on the internet I’m sure you will find one easily. I hope you are having fun eating and laughing with friends and family and if you are not, maybe this book will coax you into that wonderful experience we call life. Here’s to both life and food, inseparable.