Brilliant of course (what else)--all but this sentence: "Maize, fast-growing and requiring minimal labour, is a sole-food when prepared with lye but results in a fatal nutrition-deficiency, pelagra, if eaten as untreated meal." It is not untreated maize that causes pellagra but a diet made up of nothing but maize. Let's call lye-treated maize hominy to avoid confusion.
It is a fairly complicated issue that has to do with human metabolism. If untreated maize is eaten on its own as part of a diet fairly rich in other vegetables and proteins, it is not in the least harmful. Witness the millions of US Americans who are even now gathering around their BBQ pits for the summer feast of grilled pork ribs, burgers, and the like, along with whole ears of maize corn (also cooked on the grill, often in their very own husks). No harm shall come to them--or at least no pellagra-like harm. If, on the other hand, they were to get carried away and eat nothing but maize corn from now until the middle of September--and I mean literally, nothing but maize--they would indeed be carried away, no doubt to an early grave. So it's maize on its own in entirety that's the problem. It does not have to be treated with lye to make it healthful, although lye will do that. Another way to boost the metabolic process is to consume maize with legumes, those Phaseolus you mentioned, which is another way indigenous people ate their corn--succotash is an excellent example of that.
This all has something to do with B vitamins and the very great Sir (I made that up) Harold McGee explains it well, which I cannot do. But the upshot is this: Be not afeard of humble, delicious, health-giving maize. Just consume it in consort with other foods. And enjoy the hominy too while you're at it.
Yr right and crystal-clear- 'course you are, Nancy! Philosphically-speaking (why ever not?) adaptability to maize as a grainfood in the Old World depended on existing established culinary habits. Bread-bakers in wheat-growing areas (Portugal's broa, n. Spain's tortos). In areas intolerant of wheat (oats, barley), were well-adapted to the porridge pot - polenta, mamaliga - i.e. food for the poor, and as cattle-fodder supplying a well-established dairy industry. In the UK, fresh maize-cobs not much appreciated until recently - barbecue season short, when fresh, mostly eaten as prepared kernels ready-frozen or tinned, result of imports from US in WW2? Otherwise, sold hot from the little portable box-shaped charcoal-grills in Istanbul (and maybe throughout N. Africa?). Association with famine-food remains strong - viz Ukraine's Holodomor, famine-relief during potato blight in the Western Isles (Ireland, too, I'm told) - possibly even pelagra. It's complicated. Thanks for posting. old friend - deserves much more thought (always!).
My Tuscan neighbor refused to eat polenta because, he said, it reminded him of La Miseria, the impoverished period between the wars when Mussolini was struggling to push for Italian wheat self-sufficiency. It didn't work. And still doesn't. Italy still imports an enormous amount of grain (one reason why it always amuses me that gluten-free types say they can digest bread and pasta in Italy, not in N. America--it's the same grain, guys!) And that roasted corn on the cob--also typical along the seafront in Beirut and, I imagine, farther south as well, all the way to Alex and beyond. Delicious at times. I take my corn on the cob rarely and usually with a very fine extra-virgin instead of butter. The first time I went to Europe, on a Dutch student boat, a fellow passenger said sneeringly: "Oh, you Americans, you eat cattle food!" I hadn't a clue what he was talking about.
The cattle-food comment can also apply to pumpkins grown in the Balkans (also Austria) for seed-oil (roasted or raw). The pumpkin flesh went as cattle-fodder. The growers - women hand-milling seeds in the field, scooping 'em out from squishy ripe pumpkins - didn't believe the flesh could possibly be prepared as pumpkin pie. p.s. I've corrected 'pelagra' info on my original post [in parenthesis] - needs to be short, so pls check if it's within the parameters of okay....
Such beautiful illustrations and writing on our Latin American food! In Chile we grow up eating avocados from the trees and avocado toast is a staple in everyone houses. That was until prices sky rocketed when we started to export to supply the needs of the avocado toast craze in Europe. It is mad!
PS. I dont know if you remember, but we met at the OFS this year, I gave a talk about Ecuadorian cacao value chain.
Ah - there you are, Camila! So happy to hear from you - loved yer cacao presentation, fascinating! Am currently trying to get an answer out of yr chocolate folk in Devon(?) so I can feature 'em in Christmas mail-ordeer roundup. Yr assistance in getting em to answer welcome!
I know I say it often, but your illustrations are so wonderful and so perfectly complement your words
Thanks, Mark! Picking the illustrations is the fun part - a reason why Substack works for me!
Brilliant of course (what else)--all but this sentence: "Maize, fast-growing and requiring minimal labour, is a sole-food when prepared with lye but results in a fatal nutrition-deficiency, pelagra, if eaten as untreated meal." It is not untreated maize that causes pellagra but a diet made up of nothing but maize. Let's call lye-treated maize hominy to avoid confusion.
It is a fairly complicated issue that has to do with human metabolism. If untreated maize is eaten on its own as part of a diet fairly rich in other vegetables and proteins, it is not in the least harmful. Witness the millions of US Americans who are even now gathering around their BBQ pits for the summer feast of grilled pork ribs, burgers, and the like, along with whole ears of maize corn (also cooked on the grill, often in their very own husks). No harm shall come to them--or at least no pellagra-like harm. If, on the other hand, they were to get carried away and eat nothing but maize corn from now until the middle of September--and I mean literally, nothing but maize--they would indeed be carried away, no doubt to an early grave. So it's maize on its own in entirety that's the problem. It does not have to be treated with lye to make it healthful, although lye will do that. Another way to boost the metabolic process is to consume maize with legumes, those Phaseolus you mentioned, which is another way indigenous people ate their corn--succotash is an excellent example of that.
This all has something to do with B vitamins and the very great Sir (I made that up) Harold McGee explains it well, which I cannot do. But the upshot is this: Be not afeard of humble, delicious, health-giving maize. Just consume it in consort with other foods. And enjoy the hominy too while you're at it.
Yr right and crystal-clear- 'course you are, Nancy! Philosphically-speaking (why ever not?) adaptability to maize as a grainfood in the Old World depended on existing established culinary habits. Bread-bakers in wheat-growing areas (Portugal's broa, n. Spain's tortos). In areas intolerant of wheat (oats, barley), were well-adapted to the porridge pot - polenta, mamaliga - i.e. food for the poor, and as cattle-fodder supplying a well-established dairy industry. In the UK, fresh maize-cobs not much appreciated until recently - barbecue season short, when fresh, mostly eaten as prepared kernels ready-frozen or tinned, result of imports from US in WW2? Otherwise, sold hot from the little portable box-shaped charcoal-grills in Istanbul (and maybe throughout N. Africa?). Association with famine-food remains strong - viz Ukraine's Holodomor, famine-relief during potato blight in the Western Isles (Ireland, too, I'm told) - possibly even pelagra. It's complicated. Thanks for posting. old friend - deserves much more thought (always!).
My Tuscan neighbor refused to eat polenta because, he said, it reminded him of La Miseria, the impoverished period between the wars when Mussolini was struggling to push for Italian wheat self-sufficiency. It didn't work. And still doesn't. Italy still imports an enormous amount of grain (one reason why it always amuses me that gluten-free types say they can digest bread and pasta in Italy, not in N. America--it's the same grain, guys!) And that roasted corn on the cob--also typical along the seafront in Beirut and, I imagine, farther south as well, all the way to Alex and beyond. Delicious at times. I take my corn on the cob rarely and usually with a very fine extra-virgin instead of butter. The first time I went to Europe, on a Dutch student boat, a fellow passenger said sneeringly: "Oh, you Americans, you eat cattle food!" I hadn't a clue what he was talking about.
The cattle-food comment can also apply to pumpkins grown in the Balkans (also Austria) for seed-oil (roasted or raw). The pumpkin flesh went as cattle-fodder. The growers - women hand-milling seeds in the field, scooping 'em out from squishy ripe pumpkins - didn't believe the flesh could possibly be prepared as pumpkin pie. p.s. I've corrected 'pelagra' info on my original post [in parenthesis] - needs to be short, so pls check if it's within the parameters of okay....
Such beautiful illustrations and writing on our Latin American food! In Chile we grow up eating avocados from the trees and avocado toast is a staple in everyone houses. That was until prices sky rocketed when we started to export to supply the needs of the avocado toast craze in Europe. It is mad!
PS. I dont know if you remember, but we met at the OFS this year, I gave a talk about Ecuadorian cacao value chain.
Ah - there you are, Camila! So happy to hear from you - loved yer cacao presentation, fascinating! Am currently trying to get an answer out of yr chocolate folk in Devon(?) so I can feature 'em in Christmas mail-ordeer roundup. Yr assistance in getting em to answer welcome!