Author Topic: rough bread  (Read 3112 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline franksolich

  • Scourge of the Primitives
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 58679
  • Reputation: +3057/-173
rough bread
« on: May 09, 2008, 05:51:45 PM »
Okay, so I spent much of the day thinking about that cookbook for primitives; recipes that have inexpensive ingredients and intestinal-cleaning properties.

As Sigmund Freud said, many psychological anomalies are colonic in nature.

I was thinking specifically about that brown bread produced in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants when I was roaming around there during the 1990s, just minutes after the Soviet Union fell apart.

Eastern Europe produces all sorts of bread, some of it undoubtedly good, but those were available only in the "dollar stores" (i.e., where one had use the American dollar, not the national currency), but I never patronized a "dollar store." 

Being a guest in their countries, I thought it a gratuitous insult to my hosts, if I used a currency not theirs, and so when getting American dollars, I immediately converted them into rubles or karbovanets.

For the record, franksolich has always been that way, since a little lad; courtesy before financial advantage.

Inflation of the ruble was bad enough, but inflation of the karbovanets (the then-Ukrainian currency) was even worse, the cost-of-living multiplying at Yugo-Chavezian proportions every day.  What might cost 800 karbovanets one day, cost 12,000 karbovanets two days later. 

By the time all was said and done, when I left that time and place, I had millions of karbovanets, which could have purchased for me when I first arrived a luxury tour, private vehicle with driver too, but at my departure wouldn't have bought a postage stamp.

Anyway.

Because people in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants with free medical care for all usually spend circa 60-67-75% of their income on food, the price of bread was a hot issue.  I was never sure about Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, but in Ukraine, the production and sale of brown bread was a government monopoly (as it had, of course, been under the benevolent Soviet regime).

And because the government didn't want to be overthrown by hordes of hungry famished starving Ukrainians, it was important to keep the price of brown bread low.  If memory serves me correctly, the price was usually kept at circa one-third of one American cent per 2.2-pound loaf.

The government-manufactured brown bread was on sale only during certain hours at certain places certain days of the week.  I've seen news reports of people jamming the subways in Japan, but that looks nothing like the crowds and congestion in Ukraine at the bread-distributories when brown bread was offered.

Well now, even a socialist government controlling all means of production can't produce bread for which it charges less than a cent, and so the government had to cut costs--as it had during the Soviet regime, too--by "substitution."  In this case, using instead of wheat, things such as sawdust and potato-peelings with some wheat of mixed qualities in the bread.

Actually, that was damned good bread, and I hunger for it even today, even slightly more than ten years later.

It was high in fiber too, which alleviates colonic problems.

I think I'm going to look around, to see what the socialist governments put into the bread they magnanimously feed the people, and include that recipe in my cookbook for primitives.
apres moi, le deluge

Offline Chris_

  • Little Lebowski Urban Achiever
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 46845
  • Reputation: +2028/-266
Re: rough bread
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2008, 06:09:27 PM »
I posted this bread recpie when I noticed them complaining about spending $4 for a loaf of bread.  I'm sure they could throw in some sawdust or cardboard if they need roughage.
If you want to worship an orange pile of garbage with a reckless disregard for everything, get on down to Arbys & try our loaded curly fries.

Offline megimoo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 734
  • Reputation: +42/-10
Re: rough bread
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2008, 09:46:13 AM »
Okay, so I spent much of the day thinking about that cookbook for primitives; recipes that have inexpensive ingredients and intestinal-cleaning properties.

As Sigmund Freud said, many psychological anomalies are colonic in nature.

I was thinking specifically about that brown bread produced in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants when I was roaming around there during the 1990s, just minutes after the Soviet Union fell apart.

Eastern Europe produces all sorts of bread, some of it undoubtedly good, but those were available only in the "dollar stores" (i.e., where one had use the American dollar, not the national currency), but I never patronized a "dollar store." 

Being a guest in their countries, I thought it a gratuitous insult to my hosts, if I used a currency not theirs, and so when getting American dollars, I immediately converted them into rubles or karbovanets.

For the record, franksolich has always been that way, since a little lad; courtesy before financial advantage.

Inflation of the ruble was bad enough, but inflation of the karbovanets (the then-Ukrainian currency) was even worse, the cost-of-living multiplying at Yugo-Chavezian proportions every day.  What might cost 800 karbovanets one day, cost 12,000 karbovanets two days later. 

By the time all was said and done, when I left that time and place, I had millions of karbovanets, which could have purchased for me when I first arrived a luxury tour, private vehicle with driver too, but at my departure wouldn't have bought a postage stamp.

Anyway.

Because people in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants with free medical care for all usually spend circa 60-67-75% of their income on food, the price of bread was a hot issue.  I was never sure about Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, but in Ukraine, the production and sale of brown bread was a government monopoly (as it had, of course, been under the benevolent Soviet regime).

And because the government didn't want to be overthrown by hordes of hungry famished starving Ukrainians, it was important to keep the price of brown bread low.  If memory serves me correctly, the price was usually kept at circa one-third of one American cent per 2.2-pound loaf.

The government-manufactured brown bread was on sale only during certain hours at certain places certain days of the week.  I've seen news reports of people jamming the subways in Japan, but that looks nothing like the crowds and congestion in Ukraine at the bread-distributories when brown bread was offered.

Well now, even a socialist government controlling all means of production can't produce bread for which it charges less than a cent, and so the government had to cut costs--as it had during the Soviet regime, too--by "substitution."  In this case, using instead of wheat, things such as sawdust and potato-peelings with some wheat of mixed qualities in the bread.

Actually, that was damned good bread, and I hunger for it even today, even slightly more than ten years later.

It was high in fiber too, which alleviates colonic problems.

I think I'm going to look around, to see what the socialist governments put into the bread they magnanimously feed the people, and include that recipe in my cookbook for primitives.
Frank do you think your skiff would make it to a new liberal island wonderland for your field reports.You do such a good job with the happenings on skins island that the land of nod just over the horizon from skins island would be interesting for you to cover.Neutral or neuter land it's called and they are in the process of blossoming into a full freak filled
paradise.