all by page twelve

"this reverence of, or indeed worship of, bread is strange to us, being accustomed to a post-industrial diet which is unique in lacking a basic carbohydrate staple." sophie d. coe in "america's first cuisines"...what? wait...if this is true i cannot imagine why there ia all that bread in the local supermarket...i mean the one i frequent has an entire aisle of bread...white, honey wheat, rye, five grain, whole grain, potato, oat meal, cinnamon raisin, dinner rolls, hamburger buns, and some i am sure i missed...then there's all that pasta down the store...and rice...and spuds...i am inclined to call sophie on this one...she is clearly confused by diet gurus and paleolithic mavens...but hold on...it gets worse...at least for me..and i will not hesitate to elaborate my misgivings..."there have been modern efforts to eat teosinte. during the great spurt of interest in teosinte in the 1880, when an effort was being made to combine the perennial character of teosinte with the productivity of maize, thomas murrey published a little book called "salads and shoots", in which he recommended the use of young shoots of teosinte as a salad greens. alas, his book, which smells more of the library than the kitchen, could not overcome the fact that teosinte is adapted to growing in the short days of the tropics, does not do well in the long days of a temperate summer, and will not set seed here."...sophie, my back yard says you are deeply mistaken here...indiana is in the temperate zone...acres of dense yellow #2 grow here...and so does teocintli if you plant it...

by august of this past year i had a stand of teocintli with two varieties going strong...the standard zea mexicana grown from seed provided by an indulgent usda and northern tepehaun grown from seed produced in my yard last year...

the zea mexicana produced the standard male flower and ears with female tassels ...

by that same august the ears had matured...

and i harvested hundreds of mature seeds...

the northern tepehuan has something of a longer season, however it too produced flowers, ears, and tassels and by october had produced ears of mature seed...

a more prolific producer of ears, the northern tepehaun provided many hundreds of seeds in varying stages of maturity...there will be test germinations soon to see how viable this year's crop is...there have been multiple years of seed production out back..it is true that the plants do not begin to produce ears and set seed until the days shorten...the longer day length does not prevent their reproduction...sophie is mistaken...we will continue to read..after the first twelve pages we will be somewhat more critical in it