Of Shavians, Diets, And Oat Cuisine

A couple of days ago, I got in a discussion with a very interesting,
and down-to-earth
writer,
GrannyMar
Who writes of memories,
joyful moments,
and with a downright respect of solid and decent food.

That got me thinking.

Standard in our home, was always a simple, honest meal of tomatoes,
cottage cheese, beans, and applesauce.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Fresh from the garden,
or the cow,
or canned in the fall.

My other grandmother,
called Grams, because she was nearly twenty-five years younger than Grandmaw,
was raised in a family that ran a prairie boarding house
in a town almost exactly between St. Louis,
and the State Capitol of Springfield.
On the saints’ trail.

And cook that woman could.
Green apple apple sauce,
spicy chutneys,
and always major portions of meat and potatoes and thick gravy,
to make the salesmen,
and the major politicians of the day,
who knew her mother had been a cook at a fancy spa in Creve Coeur,
stop there to eat,

And then,
sleepy,
lose money at cribbage,
or one of the card games popular at that time:
hearts, pinochle,
all fun,
but all cutthroat.

Which brings me to the oat cuisine.

Oats,
and any other form of cooked grain,
from grits to cream of wheat, rice, barley, six-grain,
were,
and often still are,
in homes who eschew poptarts,
the staple of a mid-western twenty below zero breakfast.

Start the body’s motor, take care of the farm animals,
dig out of the snow,
and go to work.

I was therefore absolutely flabbergasted,
when I heard that a certain Hollywood film star,
with the initials DM
used a couple of days of oats to lose weight.
Oat cuisine.

Not to pick on Miss DM,
but there are a lot of places I have visited,
where oats are survival food.

Oats and lamb fat with pepper and onions is a white sausage in Edinburgh,

adding oats to offal gives you haggis.
(sorry, I know there is a lot more to it, especially the spicing, but there it is.)

Oat scones, oat biscuits, oat müssli, oat flakes, oat nuggets,
even cheerios.

Basic, filling, cheap, and,
if it’s grown right,
healthy.

And, supposedly, it lowers cholesterol,
no claims from me, so says the web.

And feeds the thinking cells of the brain.

So said, apparently, George Bernard Shaw,
he of Joan of Arc,
Major Barbara,
Pygmalian,
and many many other Shavian texts and plays,
named, of course,
for GBS,

misogynist,
and feminist,

social thinker,
and supporter of Hitler and Stalin,

lower middle class upbringing,
and strict, upper class insulting,
“dinner with blood offering rejecting” vegetarian,

who did his best work when “eating backwards”
ie desert, bread, fruit,scones,
with no time or interest in the main course of meat,
instead living off of the oats, carrots, and peas he raised himself in his own garden.

And who hated Shakespeare.
Obviously not an oat eater.

And fully believed, as did Mark Twain,
that Shakespeare was written by someone else-
In Twain’s case, Francis Bacon.

But then, since I have lately, while “researching,”
(on the web)
found the “facts” that Edward De Vere was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth I of England,
and probably should have been on the throne,

that he was the leader of a group of Rosicrucian writers,
who dedicated their lives to Pallas, she who shakes the spear,

and thus wrote, communally, under that name…

And that Ringo Starr is the reincarnation of Edward De Vere…

I wonder if Ringo eats oats?

copyright Dunnasead 2016