[Food For Thought] Roots and Routes, A Tale of Wheat, Bread, And Fish!
My Food Family Tree
This term in my humanities class, Food For Thought, we have been talking about our family's history with food, as well as the origins of the foods themselves. We conducted an interview with one of our family members to get a better understanding of our history with food, as well as a family tree of a relative's favorite foods, or our family’s “roots” in food. I interviewed my dad. We also had the chance to go on a field experience to Metropolis Coffee to see how the coffee goes from a bean to the great drink we all know and love, or the “routes” of the coffee. For our Action Project, we were tasked with picking a common ingredient our family uses for cooking and creating an autobiography of the food, figuring out where it came from, both using the roots, by how it evolved into what we have now, and routes, how it got from a plant to on my plate! I learned a lot about my family, what they like to eat and what they value in food, as well as about the food itself, how bread is made, and why it has to be made that way. Overall, it was a really fun project, with a lot of opportunities to learn about a lot of different things!
Script
This will be the journey of how I became myself from ancient times. Who am I? I am BREADCRUMBS. This is where it all began! The Fertile Crescent! Before anyone had an idea for bread or breadcrumbs, I existed as the humble wheat. I was domesticated from 8650 BCE to 7950 BCE, or about 10,000 years ago! I was one of the first grains to be domesticated and I have been in consistent use for all of this time! I was most likely first a type of wheat called Einkorn wheat. The Einkorn version of me is easier to digest and contains more protein and anti-oxidants than modern wheat. The only reason I evolved to modern wheat was because Humans decided they wanted quantity over quality, so they made me evolve into what I am today.
I grew in the fertile crescent for a long time, and the world grew around me. Humans made me grow so efficiently and I spread across the world. After a while, the humans discovered a new place. I didn’t grow very well there and I had a competitor there. Cron! Cron seemed more useful in every way. But, eventually, I adapted, and now I grow very well there. I grow across the midwest of this country, and I cover the most land in a mystic land called “North Dakota”
One thing that the humans do with me is they put me through a factory, and I come out as assorted other products! One of them is breadcrumbs! The way they do this is they grind me into flour and pour me into a machine. Then they pour water and yeast in with me and mix me into a dough. I am then kneaded until I am the desired consistency. The next thing they do is put me through a weird machine that makes the yeast rapidly multiply and make me rise. I am then molded and allowed to rest for a while, before being cooked alive and crumbled into bits. I am now breadcrumbs.
Once I have become breadcrumbs, I am then shipped around the world, and I coat a variety of things, like Chicken, Mac and Cheese, Shrimp, fish, and many more! I am a very easy way to make almost anything taste good by frying it.
One place I like going to is a specific family in the US. They are kind of spread out between Rice Lake, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois, but they all love fishing. I am often used by them to cover bluegill, perch, Northern Pike, Walleye, and many more! This has been my journey across time and space all to end up at a great family in the midwest! As one of them put it “That was a great meal because everyone participated and we made a huge dinner. If I had to choose a meal I was most proud of for making it would probably be that.” They have a great community spanning back many generations!
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