Many Grained Bread

Many Grained Bread


OK, this is a "Jen doesn't bother to measure anything" recipe I made up today.

I did not measure the grains, but if I had to guess it was about a cup each of:

wheat berries
steel cut oats
millet
quinoa
amaranth

Put them all in a saucepan and cover about 2 inches over the grains with water. Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer for 45 min to an hour until the wheat berries are chewy rather than crunchy. Let cool a bit.

Take out about half and put in the fridge to eat later for lunch with salt, pepper and olive oil, or sweet for breakfast with brown sugar and maybe raisins.

Mix about two cups whole wheat flour, a TBS yeast, and a TBS sugar or honey into a large mixing bowl. Add 2 cups almost hot water and mix until smooth. Let it sit for 15-20 minutes until bubbles appear. Add the rest of the cooked grains and mix until smooth.You can wait for another 1/2 hour if you want; it helps but is not necessary. Add 3/4 cup ground flax seed, 1 TBS salt, 1/2 cup honey, and 1/4 cup oil. Mix it all together and start adding flour by the cup, alternating between white and whole wheat flour. Mix well between adding, and when the dough is too sticky to stir start kneading it by hand. You want the dough to be slightly sticky, but able to hold a nice form-it should feel like your earlobe, but wash your hands before you feel your ear or it will be messy!

Let the dough sit under a clean towel for an hour to rise. Punch the dough down, and form it into loaves-I ended up with three loaves in large stoneware pans-if you have those small glass loaf pans make it four loaves. Oil the pans well, and place a loaf into each pan, turning it once to coat the top of the loaf with oil. Let set for another 1/2 hour to an hour (until the dough is just to the top of the pans, then place in oven and turn oven on to 375 degrees F. Bake for at least 30 minutes. Tap the top of the loaf to check for done-ness-it should sound hollow. If you are worried, use a bamboo skewer stick to poke through the top center of a loaf-if the skewer comes out pretty clean, the loaf is baked-if it comes out gooey put the loaf back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.


It was a dense and heavy bread, perfect for toasting with lots of homemade strawberry jam on it. We had it for dinner tonight with BBQ shredded beef on rice, doctored up baked beans, and a green salad.



I have been watching Marc Rudov on FOX debate Lis Weihl-here is this week's video link:

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?072007/072007_cav_liswiehl&Your_World&Proof%20feminism%20is%20dead%3F%20&acc&Your%20World&-1&Business&236&&&new

Marc has landed a sweet position. He gets to work as a commentator bringing up men's issues on a weekly basis to millions of viewers. Also, viewers get to vote for who they feel won the debate by going to the fox website. He debates a feminist on issues of the day, most of them involving gender relations. Marc is able to talk on national television about issues such as the wage gap myth, negative generalizations of men in the media, and the necessity of feminism in today's culture. Not many MRAs have this opportunity reach so many people, and he is to be commended for taking the bull by the horns here. He is also a very calm, controlled person so is perfect for this position.

Here is what I am seeing though, and it has nothing to do with Marc's abilities. It was brought up on Mensnewsdaily.com however I have thought about this often in the past. It hit home this last debate because the topic was one with a wider scope, "Is feminism necessary?" Lis kept using phrases such as "73 cents on the dollar" and "women's rights" and "the glass ceiling", and these phrases represent larger ideas ingrained in the psyche of Americans. Where Marc has to explain the concept of the hatred, bias and fear of men (misandry,) Lis can simply say 'misogyny' and viewers understand her larger idea. While Marc has to explain the 93% male workplace death rate, the longer hours, and nasty jobs at which men demean themselves for money (the glass cellar), Lis can simply use the term "the glass ceiling" to convey all it entails.

Feminism controls language, and it was one of the movement's most brilliant acts. Ironically, many political movements including socialism and Nazi Germany used the same technique to create underwritten assumptions in the public. "1 in 4" is known to all Americans as the number of women raped in the US. Of course the fact that this number is greatly exaggerated and is based on faulty and misleading research means nothing-repeat a lie long and often enough and it becomes a fact. The '73 cents on the dollar' wage gap myth is another such 'fact', never mind that if one thinks for 5 seconds he would realize if this were true who would ever be stupid enough to hire men at such a higher cost for the same work?

I do not think we should demand to control language to such an extent as feminism-the men's movement is about equality, not power. I do think we need to create counter vocabulary, definitions, sound bites if you will. If feminism were truly about equality, we would be in complete agreement. The fact that feminism rejects 50/50 shared custody of children in divorce tells me they are not interested in equality but in privilege. Until we have equality of opportunity for men, we need to treat this like the war it is, and one weapon is language.