Food and thunder
Summer came in last night with a mutter of thunder. It’s been gently storming for a few days and I kept forgetting (because I was too busy muttering imprecations against the weather) that I meant to write a comment on the change of seasons and what it means for produce or even a thought on food for health. They’re regular preoccupations of mine, after all. All I can think of is coffee and chocolate and ginger, because they’re the foods that help most with the headaches I get from summer storms.
Ginger relaxes muscles. It’s not as effective as one of its cousins (kencur, in Indonesian – I don’t know what it’s called in English) but it tastes nicer. Galingale is near kin to both ginger and kencur, so it might also be good against storm headaches. I shall look for it in the market this morning and maybe slowcook a stew using galingale and other regional spices. I made a seventeenth century stew the other night and it used galingale and grains of paradise very effectively, so it’s not beyond me, even in grouch-weather.
Coffee was seen as a curative and as a poison early on in its European history. I suspect it was a bit like sugar. It made people feel so good that they didn’t know if it was good or bad. Most people erred on the side of good, and that’s what I shall do today. I might also hunt out some early coffee literature over the summer and actually do a more serious comment. Coffee in the seventeenth century in Europe is very exciting and warrants more than passing words.
Chocolate can wait until a bit later in the day. I must to market go! This means I shall eat it rather than write about it. I’m unrepentant. In a hurry. Off to market. Have some coffee, chocolate or ginger while I look for goose eggs and cherries.
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