BREAD & GAMES: EMPHASIS ON BREAD

In the time of Covid it has been discovered that: Carbs are King!

Applause to all of you home bakers pulling the old Betty Crocker Cookbook off of the shelf, dusting it off, and impressing the internet with your leavened creations. So spoiled am I, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, for their lives on our shores a unique strain of wild yeast that gives our sourdough bread such a lovely, sour flavor. The heart of any great sourdough bread is the sponge you see. Thesponge, in case you did not know, is a soft, wet mixture of flour, yeast, and water that is left to sit open, high up on a shelf, in a warm spot of the kitchen. Here it is free to collect wild and rampant yeast spores which will feast upon the floury carbs, inoculate the mixture with its mouth-watering sourness and finally belch the very leavening gas that leaves those amazing nooks and crannies for olive oil or butter to fill, when finally kneaded and baked.

Extra applause goes to the baked ziti and to the pasta dishes festooned with fired Cremini mushrooms I have seen on my screen. Also too, the fat, fat lasagnas and the over-stuffed pot pies. Bring me my peanut butter and jelly sandwich knave and a fistful of cowboy cookies too. Pizza, pizza, pizza. Tea and toast!  Apple pie and chocolate cake.  “Bring me more carbs!” said the King of my castle.

Quick aside: Sunday was our one day off, on Easter Island, and two very, important things would happen that day:

1. The local bakery would make Empanadas. (Bread)
2. The local soccer teams would come out to play. (Games)

I read where the orange orangutan spoke on a conference call with representatives from all of the major sports organizations: MLB, NBA, NFL, NASCAR, etc.  Baboonishly he voiced optimism about opening up major sports venues in August. Apishly, the representatives were hopeful too.  All this makes me think of Juvenal, an ancient Roman poet credited with the phrase: Panem et Circenses (Bread and Circuses). The idea, in the political sense, is to keep the masses distracted with food and entertainment. Literally feeding their basic needs. If they have food and something to occupy their time, then they will not pay too close attention to what is happening politically. It is easy to see just how much money team owners have to lose if there is no sports season what-so-ever. No big stretch there. Politically it becomes even more interesting because, well, have you seen the bread aisle in the stores lately?  No Bread, nor Games. Oops!

I stumbled across a FB meme written by Ben Hauck (@fightdenial) who wrote:

Wouldn’t it be crazy if there was a large external shock yo our extractive capitalist system that proved without a shadow of a doubt that our entire economy runs on the labor of the working class, not the unseen and immeasurable genius of plucky billionaires?

Bread & Games, bread & games, bread & games. Wouldn’t it be nice though, if they all started up just before election season. 

#thingsthatmakeyougohmm

Until tomorrow,

Tommy Judt