Ruminants

Don’t you just love that word?  Doesn’t it make you think of strong jaws and the sound of large flat molars grinding?

When ruminants chew and swallow their food, it enters the rumen, which is the first chamber of the stomach. Beneficial bacteria in the rumen break down the fiber in the food, releasing proteins, fatty acids and B vitamins before the food passes to the reticulum. The reticulum prevents large pieces of food from moving deeper into the stomach, returning large pieces to the rumen in ball-like masses. The animal brings up the fermented ingesta, or cud, and chews it again. Finely chewed food passes from the reticulum to the omasum and finally to the abomasum before moving to the small intestine.

So you got your rumen, hence ruminant, your reticulum hence your reticle or rerticule (a small bag or mesh purse).  Omasum and abomasum—I got nothing.  Actually I do have something.  The omasum is also called a psalterium.   Now that is mighty biblical.  It means (in Greek) to break into pieces, which strikes me as a pretty good definition of digestion.  Now before you get disgusted and stop reading, I will just make something up for the abomasum.  It means it’s been done gone.  It means “out of here”.

I am a ruminant.  I chew words.  And now I’m out of here.

Bone Broth and assholes

I am fed up with hearing about bone broth.  I noticed a few days ago that some of the folks who make bouillon now make bone broth.

Just that phrase makes me want to shout BONE BROTH like GODZILLA or KING KONG, or TRUMPCARE, although “care” is a bit of a misnomer.

This is how I make soup.  This is how everyone who knows how to make soup, makes soup.  Bones and stuff in water, boil.  I make bone broth with chicken bones, feet and backs. I put in onion, garlic, ginger, celery (if I have it), carrots (I always have carrots), cilantro etc., etc.

I do not however roast the bones.  I suppose this would even make it richer.  More nourishing.I don’t even like the word “nourishing,” in this context.  It makes me mad.

Now why you may ask, does this make me mad?

I have an idea it has something to do with the same impulse that makes Trumpers mad at people who are politically correct.  It is reverse snobbism.

If I let my inner asshole out I can hear myself muttering:  “Oh that.  I’ve made that for years and never made a big deal about it.”  Kombucha—“Oh that.  It looks like a half-baked placenta.”  Pickled anything:  “Oh that.  People have been pickling stuff for years.”

So it’s my inner aging assholeness.  But it’s also skepticism.

It’s no sin to be a skeptic. Skepticism in the pursuit of truth is no sin. In fact, more than ever it makes sense.  Healthy skepticism is a sign of a thinking human being.

Skeptic comes from the Greek word meaning inquiry or doubt.  I love Greek words, don’t you.  Actually, I just love words:  pickling, tickling, placenta, who sent ya, and on and on.

Do you know where all this wordiness took me.  It took me to “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice (Cicero as reimagined by Barry Goldwater) , and to “Nattering nabobs of negativism”, ala Spiro Agnew.

So, talking about bone broth created a

need in me to put down the foodies, the “elites” which took me to the President(now dead) of the assholes, Agnew which opened me up to the possibility that we all have inner assholes that must be kept in check.

We all have our ideas and prejudices, right?  Well I do.  But we need to control them and continue to act “for the greater good.”

That’s all folks.

 

.

Bon Appetit

No, this is not Julia Childs.  This is what you do when you have in your vegetable bins: carrots, celery, ginger, onion, garlic and a tired looking jalapeno.  In the pantry, a jar of red lentils and in the fridge a half eaten chicken.

You make soup.  Hot, as hot as possible to counteract the chill March.  Make a chicken broth, throw all that other shit in there, add coriander seeds, cumin, cayenne, salt and pepper.

Heat, heat heat it up, test it with your toe and serve it to your husband with whom you have been exchanging an upper respiratory virus.  Use it in your neti pot, gargle with it and then go to bed and wake up feeling fine.

If not, repeat.

 

Sentinels

They are silent and watchful.

Alert but not aggressive.

They are ruminants, these elk, and so they live on the earth and off the earth, taking what they need and then moving on.

We ran into them one morning as we walked to the beach with the dogs.  They regarded us quietly as we passed by.  It was all so quiet until the dogs started barking and the man started yelling and all of a sudden we have crazytown.

It got me to thinking how intrusive we humans are.  We yell and flail our arms.  We push and shove and laugh loudly.

We are not sentinels usually.  We do not tread lightly.  We eat MEAT.

They would stomp a dog to death if it was threatening their newborns; but, the elk is happy to munch and chew and sniff the sea breeze.  He is a self contained unit, within his pack, his crew, his batchelor brothers, he has all he needs.

**************************.

So I was going on and on and waxing poetic about elk and then I decided to do a little digging.  Turns out these guys are animals when they’re “in rut.”  They may not talk and laugh loudly but they bellow in rut.  When they’re not in rut they like to go off on their own and hang out in the underbrush and have a few brewskis.  They live in bachelor herds and seem to be only interested in the cows when they’re “in rut.”

So I’m pulling back my endorsements.  Just because they look good doesn’t mean they are good. They wouldn’t have me anyway.  They want their cows in harems, in estrus and then not at all.

I’m not going elk.

 

 

 

German humor

Joshing around

I was thinking yesterday about what I like to think of as sly country humor.  I’m going to give you a little example:

It’s not particularly witty, it doesn’t involve wordplay.  It doesn’t really call attention to itself.  It’s joshing.

Joshing means “engaging in playful talk.”  I love that–it’s a form of play.   According to the Online Etymology Dictionary it is probably from the familiar version of the proper name Joshua. Perhaps it was taken as a typical name of an old farmer.

Here’s one of my favorite stories from my mom’s family.  I wish I remembered the whole story but it has to do with two old country boys that had stole a farmer’s pig and encountered a road block with the pig sitting in the front seat.  They put a hat on his head and an old flannel shirt and when asked by the officer “Why who’s that new feller sitting there between you?  Don’t remember him none” they responded “Well, that’s just Oink Jones come to visit.”

You would have to see my uncles tell that story, their big old broad faces and twinkly eyes to really understand joshing around.  They would spin that story out.  The officer would say “Why,  is that any relationship to the Orey Jones’s out by the Grange Hall and on and on until it took on the cast of a fable.  Old Oink Jones come to visit;  Oink Jones come to life.