Scandinavia (wasRe: a few carb questions (Deanna, Heidi, Wanita)

[Guest guest]

--- In , Quick <jaq@p...>

wrote:

:

** I do appreciate your inputs.

> Well, yes, but...the people who couldn't afford wheat ALSO couldn't

> afford cookbooks, even if they could read them. And if you don't

> have a varied diet, you don't need them. If you want to find out

what

> the peasants were eating, you need to look at folklore, songs,

fairy

> tales. And the food that seems to come up the most is porridge.

>

> We tend to look at diet through middle-class blinders. What do we

make of this?

> " For breakfast we have bulldog gravy

> For dinner we have beans and bread

> The miners don't have any supper

> And a tick of straw they call a bed. "

** Is that a children´s rhyme? I have observed that whenever a

children's rhyme mentions food - at least in this country - it is

always from the vegetable kingdom, so to say. Never is meat

mentioned. Well maybe milk or fish, but rarely. It is probably

thought to be inelegant to put meat in the mouths of singing

children.

> This is the Appalachian working class in the 1930s...not very NT,

is

> it? Not everybody had equal access to the agricultural means of

> production, esp. in the cities. And sometimes the means of

production

> didn't produce. It was basically the potato and modern

transportation

> that ended famine in Europe...grain crops periodically failed (or

> were taken by marauding armies, while the potatoes were safe

> underground).

** Just think then where there were no potatoes.

> >

> >We are Scot/Swede/Norwegian/German in our family. I suppose it is

the

> >same case for these regions. I have been trying to determine

dairy use

> >in Scandinavian countries; how recently it came on the scene.

>

> The Lapps have been living on reindeer milk for as long as anyone

> remembers. I don't know about cows though.

** This is interesting. Do you have the info if they ferment it or

drink it right from teats, as it were? Do you know if a reindeer is a

ruminant? I have read that milk from ruminants (cows, goats) can be

problematic, but not from mares, for instance, who are not ruminants,

you know. This is maybe irrelevant, but let's us not forget that the

Lapps are racially different from the Germanic peoples.

> Right, but look at the etymology of the word: smörgas=bread and

> butter + bord=table. It's like the Indonesian rijstafel...a zillion

> dishes, but ultimately it's all about rice. I've read that

> historically, smorgasbord as we know it is more an invention of

> hotels for late-19th c train travellers than a traditional Swedish

> meal, though certainly traditional dishes are included.

** Yes, of course, many myths around food are created worldwide. The

best cheeses come from Italy, not France, for instance. If you want

to know what the people eat, you'd be better to go inside their

houses to see, but not as a guest, because in this case there may be

some adornment. I was invited to a Swedish home for dinner, and we

had fish, potatoes and cherry tomatoes (maybe from the balcony?).

That was all. Oh, yes, there was also apple pie. Everything very

measured.

José