Along with the Song Festival came many events. As we dropped Grandmother and Grandfather off in a little parking lot near the Music Conservatory we heard a choir practicing medieval songs that sung in Latin of the joy of God’s presence in our world. As seductive as they were in their clarity, organization, and word choice, Ingrida and I still had to leave, for we had offered to buy perfect bread and different healing honeys for the family gathering in the evening, around the television again, with Grandfather’s ailing knees.
Grandmother always bought three loafs of bread whenever we stopped anywhere. Eating small twists from the loaf she would announce like a great wine connoisseur whether the bread was dry, moist, sweet, sour, raised well, rounded in flavor, and well baked. It didn’t matter what Grandmother’s verdict was, we would never throw any bread away, for bread is, in its simple way, sacred. Rather, the tables of the day would find us with Grandmother announcing that she would eat the dry sweet sour bread please, “the one with the thin crust, that’s not quite baked enough.” To us she would offer the best bread as she always did, eating the other herself as if she did some kind of penance for the state of the world’s poorer breads.
So as a thank-you, Ingrida and I had pledged to go to the Bread Festival and buy the very best breads we could find: moist, clear, flavor rounded, appropriately formed, thick or raised open, the flour and moisture structured by baking, cooked with an awareness of the middle of the loaf and the crowning of the crust. Further more, we had coughs to cure, pain in the knees, and weakness in the arms, that only country honey could cure.
Of course, we arrived too early, half the booths weren’t yet set up and the crowd was non-existent. But still we voted on the best bread display of The Great Brooches of the Sun formed of dough and walked away with a dense sweet sour rye bread formed around plump partially dried fruit and wild hazel nuts for Grandmother, her heaven of selfish bread choices. For the table and our guests Ingrida brought a fermented rye and flax loaf that was perfect in color, heavy in form, and thickly structured, appropriate for an evening of beer and spirits. To make the next two days ones of delight, we brought two string bags home with us which held single sliced samples of every great bread that had ever been produced in discerning Latvia.
Honey was a hard choice! We bought pure Linden Honey for coughs and colds aware that it has a tense aftertaste, and also rare, full flavored, dark Wild Forest Honey for strength. We were moved by the passion of the bee keepers and we left the little park thinking, in a world of modern things, how close real bread and honey are to song here, and to the souls of a people.
Grandmother always bought three loafs of bread whenever we stopped anywhere. Eating small twists from the loaf she would announce like a great wine connoisseur whether the bread was dry, moist, sweet, sour, raised well, rounded in flavor, and well baked. It didn’t matter what Grandmother’s verdict was, we would never throw any bread away, for bread is, in its simple way, sacred. Rather, the tables of the day would find us with Grandmother announcing that she would eat the dry sweet sour bread please, “the one with the thin crust, that’s not quite baked enough.” To us she would offer the best bread as she always did, eating the other herself as if she did some kind of penance for the state of the world’s poorer breads.
So as a thank-you, Ingrida and I had pledged to go to the Bread Festival and buy the very best breads we could find: moist, clear, flavor rounded, appropriately formed, thick or raised open, the flour and moisture structured by baking, cooked with an awareness of the middle of the loaf and the crowning of the crust. Further more, we had coughs to cure, pain in the knees, and weakness in the arms, that only country honey could cure.
Of course, we arrived too early, half the booths weren’t yet set up and the crowd was non-existent. But still we voted on the best bread display of The Great Brooches of the Sun formed of dough and walked away with a dense sweet sour rye bread formed around plump partially dried fruit and wild hazel nuts for Grandmother, her heaven of selfish bread choices. For the table and our guests Ingrida brought a fermented rye and flax loaf that was perfect in color, heavy in form, and thickly structured, appropriate for an evening of beer and spirits. To make the next two days ones of delight, we brought two string bags home with us which held single sliced samples of every great bread that had ever been produced in discerning Latvia.
Honey was a hard choice! We bought pure Linden Honey for coughs and colds aware that it has a tense aftertaste, and also rare, full flavored, dark Wild Forest Honey for strength. We were moved by the passion of the bee keepers and we left the little park thinking, in a world of modern things, how close real bread and honey are to song here, and to the souls of a people.
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