Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Wort Moon

July moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We have entered the lunar cycle known as the Wort Moon in Old England, and it is one of my favorite moons to write about because worts are among my favorite things.

But before I launch into my ruminations about worts both bitter and sweet, I have some exciting news: I've been offered a book contract! A wonderful, small-scale but well-established publisher in Vermont that focuses on sustainability finally accepted my book proposal (after two major re-workings), and I've got until May to get the book finished. The publisher is Chelsea Green (www.chelseagreen.com) and they have a great list of titles.

Those of you who have been sending me emails that I should turn these letters into a book with essays and recipes will get your wish -- that's exactly how the book will be organized... So I owe you all a huge debt of gratitude for all the encouragement and faith you have offered me over the past years of cauldrons! The book's working title is Thirteen Moons: Food and the Hunger for Connection. I will, I'm sure, be calling on all of you when the book comes out to help me get the word out, host a dinner and reading on my book tour, or just buy a few copies and give them to your friends! In any event, I'm very excited.

When one has a dream come true like this, when the universe gives you such a great gift, it is only right to celebrate and offer something back! So I've decided to make my first Full Moon Feast a celebration, and instead of charging for the dinner make it a donation-only event. And you're all invited! (Though of course space is limited.) To check out the menu and details, click on this link.

Also, I have been even more blessed by my first cooking classes, which have been packed to the gills with wonderful people who want to learn more about wise food ways. If the classes have been just half as much fun for the students as they have been for me, then I feel I have done my job. I will definitely keep offering them, and am willing to teach in other people's homes as well -- so if you're interested, please let me know. I do have one more spot for this Saturday's class, and two classes scheduled for August: "Summer in a Jar" on August 21 and "The Alewife" on August 22. You can check those out by clicking this link.

Now on to worts!!!

"Wort" is an Old English word for plants with medicinal and culinary uses, and over the past few centuries it has been almost completely replaced in English by the word "herb," which was borrowed from the French. But you still see the word "wort" in occasional use -- almost all of us have heard of 'St. John's Wort,' a beautiful herb that has become popular since it helps with depression (and so many of us moderns need help with that!) I also saw a beautiful poster of common medicinal herbs not too long ago, with beautiful botanical drawings.

On the bottom of the poster it gave credit to one woman for the artistry, and to another woman for the 'wort-cunning.' Wort-cunning is an old English term for knowledge of herbs -- the ability to identify a wide array of plants and use them for healing. My partner and I have an herb garden, but we usually use the more old fashioned and Old English term 'wort-yard' when referring to it. It helps connect us with our history and our ancestors, and with a style of life where the plants outside your window are a source of healing -- and the raw ingredients for the medicine chest!

One related but different use of the word "wort" has remained strong in English usage throughout the centuries: it is a term used in beer-making for the unfermented beer. Since most of us nowadays have drunk beer but never made it ourselves, here's a little primer on how beer is made. First, in order to create alcohol you need some sugar, something sweet for the beer yeasts to 'eat' as they create alcohol.

In cultures around the world this sweetness has been obtained from a myriad of sources -- from tree sap, to plant roots, to fruit juice, to honey. But in classical European beer making tradition, beer is made from 'malted grain.' This is grain -- generally barley -- that has been sprouted and then often roasted to convert the starch in the grain into sugar and flavor. If you want to make homemade beer, you can buy either the barley malt already prepared, or you can malt barley yourself. This is then used to sweeten the water you are going to use for the beer, and the sweetened water becomes the 'sweet wort.' A bitter herb is then added -- in the case of classical beer-making this herb is hops. This infuses the sweet wort with flavor and even the medicinal properties of the herb. What you have now is the 'bitter wort.' To this are added yeasts that come from a specific family of microorganisms that create alcohol from sugars -- saccharomyces. The wort is then fermented until it becomes beer. Then it is bottled for drinking. That's the very nutshell version.

There is actually a 500 year-old German law -- the 'Reinheitsgebot' -- that regulates the ingredients in beer and permits only four: water, barley, hops, and yeast. Nothing else can legally be called beer in Germany. I actually saw an article in the local paper (!) recently about a German beer maker who is in trouble with the law (so to speak) because he has taken over an East German brewery that has long been making a dark, strong beer to which some sugar is added to balance the flavors. This is strictly verboten by the Reinheitsgebot, as sugar isn't one of the four allowable ingredients. But East Germany didn't have to follow the same law, and now the brewery wants to keep making its popular signature beer. But the beer purists are fighting it.

There are actually quite a number of laws in various places that regulate what foods can be called what, and where, and by whom.

'Champagne' can only be called champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France -- everything else is just sparkling wine. Not too many years ago, Japanese food processing companies began creating and marketing products under the name 'kimchi' (the popular Korean pickles) that substituted citric acid and artificial flavorings for the traditional, Korean process of fermentation. The international food standards commission, the Codex Alimentarius, arbitrated the dispute and decreed that kimchi had to be authentically fermented in order to call itself kimchi. Here in the U.S., only dairy products can be called 'milk.' That's why even though the populace might call a drink 'soy milk,' on the bottle it won't ever say that. I find it somewhat reassuring that, in the age of widespread mechanical (and chemical) reproduction of traditional foods, someone is paying attention and doing something to preserve 'authenticity.'

But authenticity is relative. The Reinheitsgebot was the result of a hot fight between advocates for hopped ale and advocates for the (then more traditional) 'gruit ales' made from herbs (worts) such as marsh rosemary, bog myrtle, yarrow, wormwood, and sage. For many centuries, alcoholic ales had been brewed by women in small quantities from the good herbs in their wortyard. The ales had a wide range of properties -- medicinal, stimulating, ceremonial, culinary -- depending on which worts had been used in their brewing. The beer purity laws enacted in the 16th Century in both England and Germany served to pave the way for the consolidation of beer brewing into the hands of a few commercial producers that would eventually put the local, artisanal, small-scale production of the alewife out of business.

An 'alewife' is a woman who brews (and sells) ale. I love the word.

Both 'ale' and 'wife' are ancient words with obscure origins in West Saxon (for ale) and Old English (for wife). While the term 'beer' reminds me of the Reinheitsgebot, the usurpation of brewing by centralized regulation and teutonic, patriarchal (paternalistic?) control, the word 'ale' has a much more fluid, expansive, and earthy connotation to me. Ales are beverages in the European tradition that have been brewed from a wide range of herbs, grains, sweeteners, and yeasts to create drinks with a wide range of alcoholic contents, qualities, and uses, often by women. While the same could be said of 'beer,' nowadays 'beer' says 'Bud' to me -- and reminds me of macho commercial images. It is hard to imagine a group of guys sitting around watching television with their big bellies sticking out, saying "hey, could you pass me an ale?" You get my point. There's just something more subtle about the word.

But I don't find the word 'ale' half as intriguing as the word 'wife,' which has gotten very rough treatment in the modern context. We can't help but think of a 'wife' as being some sort of oppressed being, whether she is the spritzed and bleached partner of the beer-gutted football watcher, or the upper class equivalent who we liken to the infamous stepford wives. But the original meaning of the word 'wife' was simply 'woman.' It had absolutely nothing to do with marriage or a man. The term evolved into a later meaning, which meant (surprisingly, from today's perspective) a working woman -- and, by association, a working class woman. A woman who had to earn her own living. In this case the word wife was affixed to the profession or work that the woman did. So 'alewife' was a woman who brewed and sold beer. 'Herb wife' was a woman who grew and dispensed herbs, and was often known for her wortcunning. 'Oyster wives' and 'fish wives' were women who sold seafood. An 'apple wife' sold apples. A passage written in 1625 by Sir Francis Bacon described the cunning of "Strawberrie wiues, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones." A strawberry wife was a woman who sold strawberries. The 'old-wives' of the phrase 'old wives' tale' were simply old women. I wonder how many of those 'old wives tales' have a nugget of truth or wisdom in them after all.

There is one word in modern usage where this old (original?) meaning of 'wife' is still extant: midwife. A midwife is a woman who assists in childbirth. While the etymology of 'wife' in the phrase is clear, the etymology of the 'mid' part has eluded lexicographers to this day.

They think the meaning is one of two: a woman by whose means the delivery is effected; or, alternatively, a woman who is with the mother as she gives birth. (Students of German will note the connection between the German word 'mit' (with) and the Old English 'mid.') I like to ruminate on the fact that one of the earlier forms of the word was 'medewife,' which sounds to me a whole lot like medi-wife, or medical woman, or medicine woman. Unfortunately, the linguistics don't support this theory. But what is clear is that the term never meant (as some people today suppose) that the midwife is someone who is with the wife (ie. the mother). No. The 'wife' part of 'midwife' refers to the medical woman herself, this is clear. And no matter what the etymology of the word, midwifery has always involved knowledge, skill, experience, intuition, and even wort-cunning. I am glad to see a renaissance of interest in the field, and so many modern women still turning to midwives to guide them through this profound human experience.

For my part, I am working to keep the tradition of the alewife alive as well. I have been brewing up a storm in my kitchen, and have had my share of 'exploding' bottles to prove it! Ales made from blueberries, strawberries, apricots, and blackberries have all bubbled away on my countertop. My favorite ale of the summer has been a non-alcoholic lemon-verbena ale made with leaves picked fresh from my wortyard. I have also loved making and drinking a a sour kvass made from wholegrain bread and fresh mint leaves. A local farmer brought wonderful fresh elderberries to the market, and I made an ale with those that is deep scarlet red and so carbonated that it has to be opened outside, either very carefully or with great sacrifice of precious liquid. I am currently brewing an old-time yarrow beer, which will be alcoholic and maybe even psychotropic! I follow in the footsteps of my European foremothers as I've made it with malted barley, ale yeast and flowering yarrow from the wortyard right outside my kitchen window. If only I had fresh well-water!

Women brewing was so common that there are many old terms for it: alewife, ale-dame, brewster (as opposed to 'brewer,' which was used for men) brewster-wife, breweress, and brew-wife. (Though, interestingly, I can't find any reference to a 'beerwife.') And brewing, of course, has another whole layer of meaning: as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it: "to concoct, contrive, prepare, bring about, cause" often followed by 'mischief, trouble, evil, or woe.' What with the war in Iraq and an election coming, the time may be right for all of us to start a little trouble brewing -- maybe it will actually serve to end some of this woe.

Whether you're brewing ale or trouble, whatever it is, it's all part of stirring the cauldron.

On this wort moon, I wish you the mischief, wisdom, and healing that can come from green plants and their fragrant flowers, earthy roots, and balsamy berries. May we learn to remember all that is so easily forgotten.