‽istis wonders at baking (weekending March 11th 2023)
This week ‽istis has been warmed by the smell of baking:
·
an age old activity
·
a kind of vital alchemy
·
so much more than simple ingestion to simply stay alive
·
for family, for friends, for kindness, cordiality[i] and hospitality
·
for nurturance and sustenance
·
for impressing and for expressing
·
home-made or heavily industrialised for mass-market
profitability[ii]
·
fancy and plain and everything in between
·
for a Hollywood handshake[iii], for an oh so droll scathing
yet somehow charming and sought after put-down from Tom[iv] or imaginatively for a musical that we ‘never
knew we kneaded’[v]
complete with a soggy-bottomful of innuendos[vi]
And ‽istis ponders some of the places where baking is almost certainly underway today, right now:
·
in ‘Agas’[vii] and in domestic ovens
perhaps with or without accompanying mixed domestic sagas: homely or sad or nurturing or abusive
alike
·
in air fryers as possibly they rise to must-have status
in the UK
·
in huge mechanised bakeries maybe with staff-to-machine ratios following the recipe of global trends
·
in local businesses, markets and home bakeries sometimes with missile, flood or
earthquake warning sirens sounding - struggling to feed the bereaved, the grieving and aggrieved, the homeless and the barely-hanging on, as well as those who support and build and find and save and restore and heal - with korovai, kolach,
paska and pampushka[viii], with taboon[ix] and mana’eesh[x], with matzo and
challah[xi], with kisra[xii], with malooga and kubaneh[xiii], with pide ekmek and pamazan
pidesi and on and on… and perhaps, possibly, maybe the ubiquity of both bread and tragedy, man-made or ‘natural’ alike, is proved
· in makeshift ovens where little is permanent save for needs to be met and where the wait continues for scraps to fall from a carved out and exclusively occupied top table…
And ‽istis ponders on: about
appetites; about obesity and malnutrition amongst adults and children, families
and friends, hosts and guests alike across the globe.
At the poles of social, economic and
physical over-development and under-development we find:
- 1.9 billion adults overweight or obese
- 462 million adults underweight
- 38.9 million children overweight or obese in 2020;
- 149 million children in 2020 under 5 estimated to be 'stunted' - too
short for age, 45 million children 'wasted' - too thin for
height[xiv].
And ‽istis cannot help but wonder
at such a half-baked world we seemed to have served up.
©
‽istis
NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and
past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t
necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’:
@Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...
[i] https://www.etymonline.com/word/hospitable
which shares a potentially place of healing etymological root
[ii] References
include: ‘Nestlé S.A. had sales of approximately 91.1 billion U.S. dollars in
2020, making them the leading snack and bakery product company in the World by
a comfortable margin.’ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1027263/top-snack-and-bakery-companies-us/
‘According to the Statista Consumer
Market Outlook, the bread market in the United Kingdom generated a revue of
approximately 6.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The revenue generated by this
market is estimated to increase to approximately 7.4 billion U.S. dollars by
2026.’ https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1191967/revenue-bread-market-uk
[iii] https://hollywoodhandshakes.com/ …now
there’s a website‽
[v] https://bakeoffthemusical.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAx6ugBhCcARIsAGNmMbj8JMcXLZ_fHlHuYkTtJ3urbZsA33rU9RK3VJaPW4b5niLV8Sg5bU8aAq57EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
[vi]
Is it just in English that the word innuendo somehow seems to be suggestive of an
innuendo‽
[vii] Many
other makes of oven are available
