Food

To make tea, start by purchasing a ceramic pot with a semi-finished interior, then get comfortable with the notion that the interior should never be cleaned with soap or even a rag.  Desirably, the teapot's interior should build up a residue of earlier pots that have been brewed, and these should not be rubbed off or washed away.  At most, rinse the pot out with water.  A professor of mine who would always offer tea to his students, even though sometimes that meant making it, insisting the cups shouldn't be cleaned either; but that's a risk I'm not willing to take, at least not with cups that are shared with other students.  If a cup is to be kept strictly for tea-drinking, then it, too, should have a semi-finished interior.

If there is tea left in the pot before a new pot is brewed, pour it into a cup, put the lid on the pot and pour the old tea slowly over the pot, letting the tea sit on the exterior.  Boil water, and use the water to fill the teapot, leaving it to sit with the lid on.  Then, boil water again, leaving the first boiling to heat the teapot, while causing any tea residue on the outside to stain the pot.  Pour out the old boiled water, add the tea of choice, then consider adding spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves or licorice, depending on the sort of tea.  Add a thick woven cozy.  The heated pot should brew the tea more intensely, as the pot itself is not stealing heat from the second boiling of water that's been added.

The ritual takes time.  Many do not participate in the ritual because they don't know about it, cannot see why it makes a difference or simply can't be bothered.  It does make a difference.  It's not the only ritual to make tea; I am describing the English tradition, but there are many others.  The Japanese and Chinese are most commonly rendered onto film—I can't say for sure, because how would I know, but I'll bet the movies always get it wrong.

Rituals matter because at some point, someone has learned how to do something better.  Quite often, when we discard a ritual, because it seems troublesome or because it is a cheaper way to make something we're trying to sell, it almost always makes something worse.  We live in an age when almost everything that was once brilliant has been denuded of its brilliance, from the making of beer to clothing.  We don't notice, because we never experienced the thing when it was brilliant.  This is often a problem of very old people, because they have.

However loathsome time travel plots and renderings are, I feel the notion of travelling back in time is an important thought experiment in comprehending history.  Watching a film like 2016's The Founder enables us to see a bit through the eyes of people in another era; the film is about the popularity of destroying the traditions of food for the sake of merchandising ... both in the personality of Ray Kroc who acts the anti-hero in the story, but even in the personae of the two bambi-like innovators who are screwed over by Kroc's manipulations.  Everyone in the film is bent on the destruction of good food—a notion that hardly arises in the viewer's mind because we're far more engaged by the industrialization of food than we are in what it once was.  Some of us are old enough now to remember when the McDonald's french fry tasted better ... but we're dying off and in the end, it doesn't matter.  Other people are inventing new french fry traditions.

All this goes to set up a question that I often see asked:  If I could send you back in time to, say, the year 1513, how would you use your present knowledge of technology to either empower or enrich yourself?  Of course, I've just influenced you to my way of thinking by the paragraphs above the question: though you might have thought "guns" or "medicine" if I'd asked the question at the top of the post, suddenly you're thinking of food ... which probably would never have occurred if I hadn't Heisenberged you.  Nevertheless, think of the things you could invent in food services.

Indulge me first if you could, while I discuss for a moment the common "doctoring" answer to the question.  Yes, you probably do know much more about treatment than anyone from that time-period; you understand diseases, how bones fit in the body, what's really going on with the "humours" and so on.  Unquestionably, you could use your knowledge to improve the lives of a lot of people, by setting bones, practicing CPR, investigating possible drugs and so on.  However, if you got a reputation for healing people, no doubt your fame would grow; and people would start bringing patients in for you to treat.  If that happened, you're sure to find yourself treating some very powerful people, local lords and religious leaders, and later more powerful folks up the chain.  Now, assuming you don't get yourself executed as a heretic, consider for a moment what modern medicine would look like to a total ignorant outsider.  Medicine is a very uncertain practice; even if you ARE a doctor, you're going to have people die on you; and right now, when people die, we're educated enough as people that we understand that you've done all you could and it's not your fault.  But if you start saving some people, and not the important son of a Marquis or a Earl, you will find yourself facing some very unreasonable expectations from someone who will very definitely blame you for your failure.  You don't want that, believe me.

Now, what do we say when someone invents something really terrific?  We say, "That's the best thing since sliced bread."  Guess what they don't have in 1513.  They do have sausages for making hot dogs, and ground beef for making hamburger, and all the ingredients you'll need to make mayonnaise and ketchup.  They have salt and oil and potatoes.  They have fire for getting the oil very, very hot, and all the means you'll need to infuse the potatoes with salt before adding them to the oil.  You'll even be able to explain how to make a fryer basket.

My gawd, dear soul, do you realize how easy it would be to take all that we've learned about mixing salt, oil and sugar together (it'll have to be beet sugar, but still), to make a ritualistic something that will be incredibly addictive ... so addictive that you can be sure that you won't be executed for getting something wrong?  Or blow yourself up trying to make a 16th century rifle?

Sugar is your biggest stumbling block.  The West Indies have been discovered but it's a century or more before cane sugar makes its way to civilisation.  You need beets, and lots of them, and enough understanding of genetics to replant a selective new crop each season.  Until then, you can get along on the sugar you do have and honey as well, while using an oven to invent pizza, something that's been invented but certainly not the way you'll make it.  There persists a rumour among historians that Europeans thought the tomato was poisonous, but quite frankly I've always thought this is bunk.  8,000 years ago the almond absolutely WAS poisonous, but without knowing anything about genetics the locals selected the treenut until it produced almonds that weren't.  I've yet to see any fictional material from any historical period where the character decided to die by tomato.  If audiences thought it true, a writer would have used it as a plot trope.

Anyway, just throwing out a few thoughts, inspired by my making tea so I could work late into the night on rebuilding the textile pricing designs in my pricing table.  I finished foods a few days ago.  As such, these things prey on my mind.  Until next post.