Essays in Idleness

I would be more enthusiastic about making bread from sorghum flour if I “had more facilities” — to quote a delightful young man, once encountered in Bangladesh, or East Pakistan as they were then calling it, but not for long. The fellow, a Roman Catholic, was gleefully emigrating to Canada — “a country with very good facilities” — though, given the fact he was trying to escape Mahometanism, he was probably making a mistake.

But he wasn’t mistaken about sorghum. In Bangladesh, and all over the “undeveloping world,” including Africa but omitting the Antarctic, it is, or was, highly apparent. And with justice, for it grows well in highly saline seaside soils, prone to destructive flooding, and yet also where droughts are characteristic and endemic, such as in deserts. Indeed, sorghum can be an unkillable weed, and I think, like einkorn and amaranth, it has innumerable other practical advantages. This includes its slightly honey-sweet yet sourish, and earthy, nutty flavour, which is attractive to those not incurably bourgeois. But tell them it is gluten-free. The only problem is that you may attract health nazis.

Alas, droughts become less frequent due to increases in the anthropic carbon supply, and the seas are not actually spreading or getting deeper, so the coastlines of Bangladesh and most other countries are reasonably secure. (I find that I can stay ahead of most environmental issues, simply by saying the opposite of what the environmentalists are saying.) The hungry people of the world get more fulsomely and nutritiously fed.

In Canada, sorghum is more often concealed among food ingredients, than advertised. With cream, and a dollop of blueberry jam, it is even better than oatmeal porridge. Yet I find it impossible to locate sorghum in my neighbourhood “No Thrills” supermarket, where good-tasting things are quickly withdrawn. And I’m no longer mobile enough to go searching in the more expensive neighbourhoods.

So the sad truth is no sorghum sourdough for me.