Catalogued..

A while ago a customer of ours, John from
the Stoneman's Book Room in Castlemaine
generously gave Tony a pile of books.

One of them was this book here:



As he handed the book to Tony
John opened on to the page about cashew nuts and said
'Look at this, did you know they grew like this?'
and the two of them stared at the page in wonder..



How often do we pop something in our mouth
and not fully know what its origins are.
I'm not talking food additives, emulsifiers
and the secret code for m.s.g here.
I am talking about the actual grain, the nut, the fruit
the 'wholefood.'

People often pull out the viles of vanilla beans kept on the counter
and ask with real surprise, 'What's that?'
or don't know that 'flour' is not 'wheat', but a description of the
ground down product that is made from many different grains ie:
maize flour, rice flour, wheat flour, spelt flour, rye flour, buckwheat flour, quinoa flour, soya flour etc..
I think that at least once a week I explain this fact especially
to people hunting for 'gluten free' things,
who gasp when they read ingredients on things complaining,
'but I can't have flour!', mistaken that all flour is wheat flour.
Aside from explaining what gluten is, I show them wheat grain,
I show them what a Barley grain looks like compared oat grain,
what a wheat grain looks like unground.
What quinoa looks like red or white,
what buckwheat and rice look like, rolled, roasted, ground down , puffed or steal cut.

A customer said as we were looking at a bag of rice grain,
just regular old long grain white rice, (organic may I add)
and a bag of organic puffed rice,
'so this is just like 'Rice Bubbles' that you get in the supermarket,
and I answered, 'Yep, thats right, just with out the jingle'.....
(or the chemicals, may I just add here and probably added then)

How much faith we put into marketing and advertising
yet are totally removed from the real source, the fruit, the grain, the nut....

When I make the peanut butter it is to many a Ohh and ahhhh
at the discovery that no oil is added, only peanuts.

It is truly amazing what we can do with whole foods alone
let alone food science and synthetic processing.

Ahhh, The wonder of a single cashew
the little nut found at the end of the cashew fruit
that 'are always a bit expensive'
and we pop into our mouths with out a second thought.

How we take it for granted
with all its healing properties and multiple uses
( click here to see more: Cashew )

We can't all grow cashew plants
but we do have the ability to find out how things grow
what energy it takes to produce things
and get them to the store and eventually to our tummy's.

Thank you John for the book
its on the shelf behind the counter
and is pulled out often.

As ever, all of you are always welcome
to come in and have a flick through some of our books
browse at the products and ask questions..
We love to receive and share information about the stuff that sustains us,
and wonder at how things are produced and grown.
Everyday I have gratitude at the enormous availability and range of foods
we can access with out ever getting our hands dirty from the soil
from which they come.

John can be found at
Stoneman's Book Room
101 Mostyn Street
Castlemaine VIC 3450
Australia