~ Bread made with organic spelt flour -
farine d'épeautre biologique - being sold very cheaply in the supermarket, is obviously not widely appreciated. Spelt is a primitive kind of wheat and has a soft and substantial texture, and is, I'm convinced, happy food, thanks to its high magnesium content. We make cheese sandwiches with it - with raisins for Tom and tomato for me - and thinking about it makes me start looking in
Norman Davies 'Europe: A History', initially the capsule entitled
'Tammuz' about how 'Europe chose wheat'; then because of the beguiling way the book is laid out, with capsules then notes on capsules, then maps and appendices and so on and so on, I spend a long time after lunch browsing in it.
~ Up the coast to Erquy again, with the verges laced with the green and yellow tracery of fennel, and the scent of it drifting through the car windows, and the sky dramatised by every form of cloud, mackerel and mares' tails, anvil and cumulus and cumulo-nimbus, all in Rilke's 'delirium of uselessness... and their vacationing edges dare transparencies.'
~
Rainbow, a real one, though somewhat tweaked...
6 comments:
The clouds here have been dramatic this summer. But yours is my first rainbow of the season, Lucy! When I was very young, I used to believe that fish swam up and down rainbows. No idea why I thought that.
We have been in the Algarve this past week and the sky is notable for not having ANY clouds. It's like a Texas sky: blankly blue.
I have a bag of spelt flour in my pantry; I'm not sure why. I should try baking some bread with it!
Spelt is wonderful and hearty.
Rainbows never show up in photos as brilliantly in person.
Fabulous rainbow!
We've been using spelt flour in our family for a few years now, since several of us have found we have sensitivity to wheat. It's good tasting. It doesn't rise well in yeast baking (needing an additive that I can't think the name of right now).
Woody Allen in his film which parodies War and Peace faces a firing squad confused as to how he got there. "It has to do with wheat," he says to the camera. And the word - preceded each time by a pause, the "h" in "wh" distinctly pronounced - recurs in further mystified reflections as he awaits the last-minute rescue that never comes. As is so often the case with couples who have been together for a long time, the word simultaneously entered our respective vocabularies and now when we pass fields of demonstrable arability Mrs BB and I unconsciously mouth that inoffensive word. I appreciate your insights but alas that cereal can never now be accorded the seriousness it possibly deserves.
Your three beautiful things are developing a personality of their own and of your own. Just the right contrast of subject and sharpness of detail,and a focus which is all Box Elder. I hope that will continue.
For Rouschwalwe. There is a fish called rainbow trout. Where else could you find it than swimming through a rainbow?
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