The war over bread has escalated dramatically in our house ever since the 12-year-old developed the ability to research his arguments. Where once he used to say “Seeds — yuk, no way I’m eating that”, now it’s “There’s no actual proof white bread causes you harm, Dad”. And, more annoying, “I just don’t like wholemeal: and don’t you always say the most important thing to get from food is happiness?”
So, new strategies must be devised. Given that the price of wheat has doubled in the past year and could go higher, I will argue to my young rationalist that throwing out the best part of the grain is as foolish and wasteful as catching two fish in order to sell one. Which is, of course, another habit of industrialised food production — for more on that, see fishfight.net In the cause of still having a loaf to eat when bread is the same price as beef fillet, I have lately taken to roaming the garden, prodding our shabby lawn with my roasting thermometer. This is to see if the soil temperature has reached 9C. When it does I can replace the grass with spring wheat.
This idea, brilliant and so very now, though there may be issues with the dog, comes via the Real Bread Campaign. “Grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it!” are the campaign’s watchwords and they are distributing packs of organic wheat seed to people who want to have a go. According to the organiser, Chris Young, a square metre of turf is enough to grow the 15,000 grains needed for one loaf of bread. When we’ve done this — and the winnowing, threshing, milling and so on — my children might appreciate their bread rather more.
There’s more information on “Bake your Lawn”, free wheat seed for schools and other excellent ideas to improve the quality of our bread at sustainweb.org/realbread
My cup runneth over ...
For English poets, tea-brewing and teatime have always been the most inspiring of the food rituals. I asked you for your offerings on the subject. You sent poems comical, nostalgic and romantic, which is a pretty fair representation of the usual flavours of tea-poem over the 250 years that poets have been producing them. Jenny Swann, editor at Candlestick Press, selected six of you from among the many for prizes in the shape of copies of Candlestick’s new booklet, Ten Poems about Tea. See candlestickpress.co.uk to buy your own.
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The winners were Ann Hale, John Bisset, Julie Callan, Frances Aspinall and Jim Lindop, led by Caroline Buddery for (as Swann puts it) “her delightful poem The Tea Party — A Fable, with its echoes of A.A. Milne and John Betjeman, and its satisfying final line”. Here it is:
Oh, the selections of perfections
The home-bakes and the delicate cupcakes
When Pettifer comes to tea.
He is sweetly fussed and bussed
And all the details are discussed
Between the pastry-cook, the grocer and me.
It’s all rather hellish,
There’s even Gentleman’s Relish
When Pettifer comes to tea.
And he has the best armchair,
Which is actually rather unfair
For it really belongs to me.
Perhaps I’m rather girlish
And even a little churlish
When Pettifer comes to tea,
For indeed he’s slightly tricky,
And he can be rather picky
Particularly in his choice of best leaf tea.
I could somehow almost believe
And would even just concede
That when Pettifer comes to tea
I go weak at the knees
And sometimes nearly freeze
For fear he is displeased with me.
I sometimes wish he was not coming to tea.