GlutenEase

http://www.enzymedica.com/glutenease.php

 

Has anyone heard of this stuff before?  It makes me curious, but I remain fairly skeptical

Blog Day

I subscribe to several blogs using bloglines.  This morning I had an update for Gluten Free Girl, http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/ .  It said that it was posted Aug 31, so either my bloglines is working really slow, or she got busy and posted later than she had intended.  It seems like she has a lot going on right now, so I am guessing the later.  School started, right?

 

Anyway, this is relevant here because she mentioned me.  She is a rock-star in the gluten-free blogging world, so we might have more visitors today.  So, if you are here on Shauna's recommendation, welcome!

 

I explain what I am doing in the archives, but if you are new here, it is essentially this.  I want to bake foods that taste like the "real thing".  I want to do this as cheaply as possible.  I'm a science grad student, and don't have a lot of money to buy baking mixes and pre-made foods.  Jowar flour, from the Indian grocery, is the cheapest grain flour other than corn starch that I have found.  It is the right colour, and has a mild flavour.  It is even good for you, comparable to quinoa.  So, it's perfect for what I want.

 

The problem is, there aren't many recipes using it that don't also add lots of other things that I don't want to get into.  It doesn't need them.  So, I have to develop my own recipes.  Like Shauna said, you must create what you wish you could experience.  I'm currently interested in the effects of tapioca starch, but grad school hasn't given me much time in the test kitchen lately.

 

I'm the chemist, so I experiment with the baking, and my wife does most of the other cooking while I am at school.

 

Feel free to share any tips you have.

 

--Elwood City

 

Tapioca Starch

I have to balance making snacks for the Maestro to take to pre-school, and keeping the test kitchen running. Now that I have a workable formulation for potato starch, I'm interested in Tapioca Starch, the purest of flavours. According the the esteemed Ms. Hagman, Tapioca starch imparts "chew". What does that mean, exactly? I had a waffle made with a high proportion of tapioca starch, and it was very chewy. That was a long time ago, though. How does the moisture -retaining properties compare to potato (moist, like extra xanthan) and corn (hygroscopic and quick staling)?

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Also, if anyone has any ideas for cheap and easy things to put in muffins, give me a shout. I think the Maestro is getting tired of banana.

Banana Nut Muffins

Sorghum Blueberry Muffins

1 ½ c 3:1 Sorghum flour/Corn Starch
¼ c Soy flour
¼ c Sugar
2 ½ tsp Baking Powder
¾ tsp salt
1 tsp Xanthan gum
2 eggs
1 c milk or soy milk
1/3 c vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 c blueberries (rinsed and drained)


I used this recipe, took out the blueberries, added one ripe banana, and a half cup of walnut chunks. To convert it to potato instead of corn, I used 3: 2/3 (9:2) ratio of Jowar to potato starch, and only ½ tsp of Xanthan gum.


Banana-Nut Muffins (Potato Starch)

1 ½ c (9:2 Sorghum flour/Potato Starch)
¼ c Soy flour
¼ c Sugar
2 ½ tsp Baking Powder
¾ tsp salt
½ tsp Xanthan gum
2 eggs
1 c milk or soy milk
1/3 c vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 ripe banana
½ cup walnuts

As far as mixing, the only important thing is to make sure that it is mixed very well. I typically mix everything, prepare the muffin tins, and mix it again.

Potato Starch, Final Edition

I have found the answer to the question of converting corn starch to potato starch. It goes thus,

Use 2/3 equivalents of Potato Starch, compared to Corn Starch, and cut the Xanthan Gum in half.

This doesn't give you exactly the same product, but they are close. The Potato version is crustier, and doesn't appear to be as hygroscopic. The taste is different too, but you can decide which you like bette.

I think it has to do with the water absorbance, which is greater for Potato, and also the size, which is much bigger. (See previous posts) Because it is longer and holds more water, the starch polymer fills some of the role that Xanthan Gum plays. One equivalent of both Starch and Xanthan Gum gives very mushy, wet muffins or pancakes. The waffles stick and tear in half because they are too soft in the middle.

Soon, I'll post my perfect potato based Banana-Nut Muffins that the Maestro took to his first day of preschool.

Potato Problems

I haven't posted here for a while, in part because I am having trouble with potato starch, and I usually like to have something definite before I post. I have "Food Chemistry" by Belitz and Grosch right now. It's not really a Food Science book; it's a Food Chemistry book, so aptly named, I guess.
Anyway, here are some facts about starch that I am trying to put in some usable context. The book is due tomorrow…

Size (um) Swelling (95) Gel Temp (C). %amylose
Wheat 2-38 21 53-65 26-31
Corn 5-25 24 62-70 28
Sorghum 4-24 22 69-75 21-34
Potato 15-100 n/a 58-66 23
Tapioca 5-35 n/a 52-64 17

Wheat Potato
Start of Gel 56.5 60
End of Gel 62 68
Swell (80) (%) 7.15 62.30
Water binding (%) 89.1 102.00

I have a few thoughts about these numbers, but I have some more thinking to do before I try to draw any conclusions.

I am also considering moving over to blogger. The problem is moving, leaving, or ignoring the archives…

Welcome to Google

I did a google search for Elwood City Blues this morning. We finally are public! Searching for Elwood City Blog gets you here. So does "Baking with Jowar" and "Baking with Sorghum Flour". I must be cool to be searchable.

Sorghum Vs Quinoa

Do you want the short story, or the long story? Several people have asked me what the nutritional content of Sorghum is. I have always had to answer that I thought it was pretty good, because it is related to millet, but that I don’t know for sure. Until now, that is. The short answer is that protein-wise, it is as good as or better than Quinoa, which is currently being touted in the media as a sort of super-grain for its protein content. That’s the short answer.

Do you want the long answer? OK. Here come a few numbers… One warning before you start, I didn’t count significant figures in any of the math that I did.

There are several amino acids that the Human body is not capable of producing, for which we depend upon our diet to supply. These are known as the Essential Amino Acids. I went to http://www.nutritiondata.com/ for these numbers, comparing whole Sorghum (S), All-purpose enriched wheat flour, bleached (W), and whole quinoa (Q). My unproven assumption in this comparison is that sorghum and quinoa are ground whole into flour, so the nutritional data of the whole grain and the flour are identical.

For the essential amino acids, in mg/cup:
Trp 238 (S), 159 (W), No data (Q)
Thr 664 (S), 351 (W), 780 (Q)
Ile 831 (S), 446 (W), 803 (Q)
Leu 2863 (S), 888 (W), 1336 (Q)
Lys 440 (S), 285 (W), 1248 (Q)
Met 324 (S), 229 (W), 445 (Q)
Cys 244 (S), 274 (W), No Data (Q)
Phe 1048 (S), 650 (W), 913 (Q)
Tyr 616 (S), 390 (W), 624 (Q)
Val 1077 (S), 510 (W), 1001 (Q)
His 472 (S), 288 (W), 534 (Q)

Total Protein in g/cup:
21.7 (S), 12.9 (W), 22.3 (Q)

Total Carbohydrates in g/cup:
143 (S), 95.4 (W), 117 (Q)

Total Fiber in g/cup:
12.1 (S), 3.4 (W), 10.0 (Q)

The Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board has set targets for essential amino acid levels for an “ideal food”. These are, with the values for sorghum calculated, in mg/g total protein:
Trp 7 11.0 (S), 157%
Thr 27 30.6 (S), 113%
Ile 55 38.3 (S), 69.6%
Leu 25 132 (S), 528%
Lys 51 20.3 (S), 39.8%
Met+Cys 25 26.2 (S), 105%
Phe+Tyr 47 76.7 (S), 163%
Val 32 49.6 (S), 155%
His 18 21.8 (S), 121%

So Sorghum is deficient in Ile and Lys. We make up for it in total protein content, compared to Quinoa, in Leu,
Ala, Glu, and Pro, of which only Leu is essential.

Nutritiondata.com lists 999 foods that you can include in your diet that have a higher Lys/Leu ratio, to compensate for the Lysine you are missing eating Sorghum. This list is headed by turkey and mushrooms, and includes pretty much any meat or cheese, burdock root, and oranges. I thought that was great, because of course everyone loves burdock root, and oranges are a great way to supplement your protein intake. Actually, a mushroom-turkey melt on bread made with Jowar would be perfect.

I didn’t look up foods high is Isoleucine, and nutritiondata.com didn’t suggest any, because Ile is not the “limiting” amino acid.

Compared to all-purpose enriched wheat flour, bleached, sorghum is by far the champ protein-wise. It even has one-and-a-half times as much Lys, which is supposedly the big deficiency that sorghum has. It appears to be less of a problem with wheat, because the targets for “ideal foods” are set by ratio with the total protein, which is also lower for wheat.

The only area that sorghum appears to have a significant lack is in the area of minerals. Enriched wheat flour is, of course, enriched. As a result, it is chock full of minerals that don’t really belong there. Quinoa appears to be naturally high in all minerals, and is OK on most vitamins. Sorghum has good levels of only of iron, potassium, and phosphorus. It is also good in thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. It is missing manganese, zinc, copper and selenium. So, keep taking your multi-vitamin with minerals, but don’t worry so much about amino acid levels.

One final note for any non-chemists who may read this, who may also care to know and who don’t already, (I realize that the intersection of those three demographics may be vanishingly small) the abbreviations for amino acids mentioned above are:
Trp tryptophan
Thr threonine
Ile Isoleucine
Leu leucine
Lys lysine
Met methionine
Cys cystine
Phe phenylalanine
Tyr tyrosine
Val valine
His histidine
Ala alanine
Glu glutamate
Pro proline

3:1, not 2:0.66

I did the math finally. 2:0.66 is the same as 3:1. I guess I just like to make things more complicated.

Another entry in the potato starch data set. We made pancakes this morning, for the second time. I thought they were too flat last time, so I added another tsp of baking powder, for a total of 3. It solved the problem, but tasted a little bitter. Not too bad though. I’m a little over-analytical on flavor issues. It makes me wonder, though, if I need more starch in the mix.

I think it’s time to do the experiment of using 2:1 Jowar/potato starch, to see if they end up lighter. To compare apples to apples, I need to see how they turn out that way. I think that pancakes are a good model system. They are thin enough that texture and issues of “light” and “heavy” have a greater effect, proportionally, than in muffins. Controlling the variables is harder with waffles, because I can’t really watch them bake. Changes in flavour will be harder to observe in Brownies. So Pancakes seem like they have the lowest signal-to-noise ratio.

The only problem is that the Maestro doesn’t really like pancakes. I had a big stack of pancakes, and he chose to eat the last frozen waffle for breakfast.

Good Results Optional

I just realized that I left in the "Xanthan gum (optional)" line from waffle recipe I started with. I think that means "If you don't care if your waffles are any good, feel free to save a bunch of money by leaving this part out."

Waffle Stew

We made waffles last night, using potato starch. Fabulous. With corn starch, I have always had trouble keeping them crisp. I had to bake them longer than the waffle baker recommends, and even then, they tended to go limp while waiting to be eaten. No one likes a limp waffle, do they? Well, Hildr does, I guess.

What I observed with the muffins seems to hold true—crustier, less prone to going soggy, and tastes more like stew. Did I mention that Riley likes the taste of potato starch better than corn starch? It’s not blatant, regardless of how much you like hash, especially if you put maple syrup on them instead of ketchup. Here is the recipe.

2 eggs (separated)
1/4 cup corn oil
1 3/4 cup milk
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1 3/4 cup sorghum/starch mix*
4 t baking powder
1 t Xanthan gum (optional)

So far it passes with 2:1 Jowar/Corn Starch, and now with 2:0.66, or 2 to 2/3 Jowar/Potato Starch. One tip, though, don’t use1/4 cup soy milk and 1 ¾ cup oil.

Here I Go Again On My Own...

I realized something last night. I was in the mood for a treat, so I decided to make some brownies. I’ve made some gluten-free brownies before, but they were based on mashed black beans, not any sort of gluten-free flours. They are pretty tasty, but a little too gooey, and we like brownies gooey, so that’s saying a lot. That and it appears to be impossible to completely mash up the black beans, resulting in what appears to be chocolate chips mixed in -- somewhat bean-y chocolate chips, but chocolate chips. They bother Riley.

So I wanted to make some brownies using Jowar. I have a recipe from Dr. Fenster that I got off the internet several months ago, but have never tried. The batter was VERY thick, and the result was something that definitely tasted like brownies – not very good brownies. They were too cakey, salty, and dry. They might have seemed better if I’d been a celiac since the early 1970’s, and had forgotten what a real brownie tastes like, but my memory of good brownies was pretty fresh, and slightly offended.

I opened up my Purity Flour cookbook to look at an authentic brownie recipe and found that the flour, sugar and cocoa ratio was mostly the same. The recipe for the Fenster Special had twice the salt, a ½ tsp of baking powder that the Purity version didn’t (gosh, would that make it too cakey?) and one less egg.

It appears likely that my problems with the gluten-free recipe arose from deviations in the amounts of the non-gluten-free ingredients. What I mean is, the problem wasn’t the amount of xanthan gum; it wasn’t the amount or type of starch in the flour blend. It wasn’t a problem with any of the special adjustments you have to make when you are getting rid of the wheat flour. It was extra baking powder and not enough egg, which are problems that come from starting with a not very good recipe in the first place.

So why do I start with a gluten-free recipe at all? I often end up having to figure out what to change to make it into something I like anyway. Why don’t I just start with a wheat-based recipe that I am sure that I like, add what seems like the right amount of xanthan gum, and use a Jowar/starch mix in place of the flour. I don’t really trust that the amount of xanthan gum or the starch type/ratio in most of the internet gluten-free recipes are based on anything more that guesswork anyway, so starting with a wheat-based recipe doesn’t put me any further behind. Then I don’t have to go back and take out the baking powder that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

So from now on, when I need to make something I haven’t tried before, I am going to start with a regular, wheat-based recipe. At least then I know what I’m starting with.

Hildr Hits the Trail

One of the things that the Maestro and I used to do in the evenings--before he gave up naps and started having to start to bed immediately after dinner--was to go for walks to the gas station. There is a small gas station, with a big air compressor that he likes, about a half mile up the four-lane road we live on. It took Riley several weeks to get used to the idea of him walking on the sidewalk next to the road, but he was not about to go on the road where he might get “smushed”. The main point was what he could find on the sidewalk or in people’s yards anyway. It was kind of an Elwood City nature walk.

Last night Hildr and I went for our first walk to the gas station. She’s thirteen months old, so she only made it about a quarter-mile, but I thought that was a good start. Since we didn’t make it, it may not seem like it was really a walk to the gas station, but it was of a type with what the Maestro and I used to do.

He was in bed, and Hildr and I were playing fetch in the living room when she went over to the front door and started pulling on the knob. I helped her into one of her ten favourite pairs of shoes, and we went out to the front yard. After looking at the flowers by the front step, she headed off across the lawn and up the sidewalk. We walked together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not. She would stop to look at, and knock the fuzz off, the neighbour’s dandelions that were going to seed. She would try to sneak up people’s driveways, and make sure I noticed the motorcycles roaring past or the birds flying by.

We weren’t really going anywhere, and we weren’t really looking at anything. We were going exploring, and looking at everything. Before I realized it, we were half-way to the Maestro’s gas station, and Hildr needed to be picked up and carried home, just like the Maestro used to. When we got home, she was ready to snuggle into my arms, with one arm hooked around my neck, and quietly fall asleep.

Potato Starch II

I had time recently to do a couple of more potato starch experiments. The first was a batch of banana-chocolate chip muffins. Unfortunately, I added too much banana, and it was useless as a data point. They were pretty good banana bread pudding though, with a little soy milk on them.

This morning I made some pancakes using 2:2/3 mix Jowar:potato starch. The result was similar to the first muffin experiment. They were chewier, and the flavour was slightly different. Riley said that she liked the flavour better than tasting like cornstarch. One thing I noticed this time was that they didn’t brown as quickly. The may explain the crust on the muffins. If the cook longer before they “look done” they would be crustier, wouldn’t they? The crust may be a function of being more chewy, but it may be a baking/frying process issue. I’ll let you know if I resolve that.

The next question, now that I feel like I have repeatable results, is to see if the texture changes are due to potato vs. corn starch, or a results are due to 1 equivalent vs. 2/3 equivalents.

Kellogg's Sugar Guy

I had the opportunity to talk to a scientist from Kellogg on Saturday. He was explicit in his disclaimer that he was not here as a representative of Kellogg; his views were his own. He was here to give a talk at our annual “Careers in Chemistry” Symposium. His point was that in order to find a right job for you, you need to know yourself, and how you work with others and that sort of thing.

After his talk, I had the chance to talk to him. He is Kellogg’s “Sugar Guy” so I asked him about Starch. I was hoping that he could tell me what different effect each starch would have in a recipe, or how I could learn such things aside from having a test kitchen. He said, essentially, that the starches behave differently in different situations, and that he couldn’t tell me without knowing the temperature and water concentration. He suggested that really having a test kitchen is the best way to figure things out. That, and getting a good Food Science textbook.

Given his choice, he said he would use tapioca starch, because it has the clearest of flavours. I guess I will need to set up my test kitchen to investigate the effect of texture.

Two Types of Closure

We finally have some closure to the paint, paint, everywhere story. Earlier this week Riley came running into the bedroom early yelling "We forgot to take the Chair!" She had arranged with a friend who uses a different trash collector that we do to have the paint covered chair hauled to the dump. The truck was coming, and we hadn't taken the chair over. I stumbled up and into the wreckroom to help her load it into the car. To pick it up, I had to shift the jogging stroller than was leaning against the wall; it promptly rolled over my toe and ripped my big-toemail in half. I hurt like blazes all day, until I glued it back together with the crazy glue that I usually use on the Maestro's dollar-store-instruments. Now it's only tender. Closure.

The Muffin in My Head

We have a number of reasons to suggest that The Maestro should not eat corn. My family has a history of problems with corn, for one. I have been having such good success with 2:1 Jowar/Corn-Starch that I was pretty upset about it, at first. I am fine with corn, thankfully, but I have been looking into the question of starch amounts and sources, to try to get away from corn for The Maestro.

The first question I had was why Amy Perry used 3:1 Jowar/Corn-Starch in her muffin recipe, but 2:1 in everything else. When I was home, my Mom made some muffins and used a 2:1 mix. They tasted mostly the same, but were much lighter, closer to cupcakes than the muffins I was used to making. The experts say that if you use a gluten-free flour straight, the finished product is too heavy. Apparently, the starch lightens it up. Ms. Perry wanted heavier muffins.

Question four was why corn starch? I looked around for cornstarch replacements, and found that most web-sites said that you could substitute potato starch for corn straight across. A few sites, that looked like they took their food chemistry a little more seriously said to use 2/3 equivalents of potato starch for the corn starch.

I tried it out in some muffins, using a mix with 3 cups Jowar, and 2/3 cup Potato starch. I didn’t have any corn-based muffins to do a side-by-side comparison, but the texture seemed pretty much the same. It’s indistinguishable from the muffin in my head, anyway.

As for taste, it isn’t exactly the same. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s a tad more… savory. I think savory might be the right word. It’s not unpleasant, but it’ll take some getting used to, and I won’t be able to pass it off to associates as the authentic product. It’s kind of like when I was a kid and drank goat milk instead of cow milk. Goat milk has a slightly different aftertaste than cow milk. I drank it all the time, so it tasted just like milk to me. My oldest sister couldn’t stand it.

I just ate another potato-based muffin. It turns out than when cooled, the texture isn’t the same. It baked more of a crust than the corn-based muffins did. I think that is keeping them from going soggy when kept in tightly sealed containers.

I need to spend more time thinking about this, though.

Baking Questions

Early during my gluten-free baking journey, I identified a number of questions that I wanted answers to. I have made progress in answering some of these; others, I still have some work to do. Here are some remaining questions I am working on.

1. In a Amy Perry blueberry muffin recipe, from a Carol Fenster book I found, she used a 3:1 sorghum flour/corn starch ratio instead of the more common 2:1. I cannot argue with the results; they were fabulous, but it made me wonder why. I assume that she first tried the 2:1 and was not happy with the result. What is the property she was trying to avoid? To state it another way, in what way were the muffins improved by reducing the amount of starch?

2. Likewise, sometimes recipes use soy flour, and sometimes they don't. I understand this is on a case-by-case basis, but when you try a recipe without soy-flour, what do you observe that makes you think "this could be improved by adding some soy"?

3. Other than baking multiple cakes, is there a way to decide how much soy to add? 1/4 c soy to 1 3/4 c sorghum mix seems standard in the ratios I've seen, but why?
4. Other than being commonly available and cheap, are there any baking advantages of corn starch over potato or tapioca? The amount of carbohydrate is not equivalent among them, but most gluten-free bakers use a mixture of all three, I've assumed for the taste, whereas Amy Perry Recipes use only one.

5. In the past, I have used soy flour as a replacement for egg in dry baking-mix recipes. Now that I am using soy flour for soy flour in recipes that use also use egg for egg, what do you think about the prospects of using soy flour for both? This one is purely speculative, I expect.

Jowar Back-Story

So, why Jowar flour, you ask. OK, maybe you didn’t ask. But you should have. When we first started looking for gluten-free foods, we discovered that there were about a million different mixtures of brown, white and sweet rice flour; corn, potato and tapioca starch; bean flour; lentil, soy, sorghum and millet flour that had been developed. Everyone claims that THEIR mixture has exactly the right of proteins and starches to magically enable you to substitute straight across for wheat flour in any recipe you want. I can’t try every mixture when a quick google search gives me more hits than hours I’ve been alive, and I had no idea how to pick. Looking closer revealed that half the recipes belong to Bette Hagman, so I started there. Um… bland? To give dear Bette some credit, the famed Bette Hagman’s mix that I found all over the internet was developed a long time ago, when the right shape and texture was a great improvement over the bricks that passed as bread. She has a number of other mixes now that apparently are better. But if the pioneering mix that started the gluten-free revolution doesn’t meet my requirements for taste and texture, I’m left with the original problem. What to use?

A co-worker who likes to cook Indian food suggested that I look at the Indian Grocery in town, because they have a lot of “different flours”. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for when I went, but I came home with flours made from millet, garbanzo, lentil, and sorghum. I put them in my bucket with my rice flours and waited for inspiration to hit.

The Millet flour made it into a “loaf” of bread that was one inch high, and purple. Not what I was looking for.

I found a Carol Fenster recipe for Pineapple-Upside-Down Cake that called for “Garbanzo/Fava bean or Sorghum flour”. I had just bought two of those, so I took a gamble and used the cake batter made with Garbanzo flour to top a rhubarb cobbler. I later learned two things that would have helped me. First, bean flours are REALLY nasty if they aren’t cooked enough. There were a few spots in the middle that were almost toxic. I suspect that the “cooked enough” point for the flour may be a little beyond what is good for the dish you are making, kind of like the safe cooking temperature for pork is past the point that gives you good pork. Second, Dr. Fenster didn’t mean Garbanzo OR Fava OR Sorghum. The mixture of Garbanzo and Fava is a common flour combination that you can buy from Authentic Foods under the trade name “Garfava”. So she meant Gabanzo AND Fava OR Sorghum. Even if I had baked my cobbler enough, it wouldn’t have tasted as she intended, not even taking the rhubarb into account. Dr. Fenster might hate rhubarb anyway. Who knows?

A couple of weeks later, I had occasion to make a cake for the Maestro. I tried a straight-up Pineapple-Upside-Down cake this time, using Sorghum flour. To my delight, it was moist, and delicious, and the right color. It used tofu, which I think is where the faint hint of unusual came from, but on the whole, if I didn’t know it didn’t use wheat flour, I wouldn’t have suspected. After several weeks of trying, I had my first indistinguishable result! That’s really what I am going for with all this, foods that are indistinguishable from the traditional gluten-containing product.

Sorghum Flour appeared to have all the qualities I was looking for. It was relatively inexpensive at the Indian Store, unlike Amaranth. It has a mild taste and color, unlike things like Millet or Rice. I combed the internet for recipes and discovered several by one Amy Perry, who uses it in a 2:1 combination with Cornstarch most of the time, and occasionally with some Soy flour. So I can use a “mix” of only two ingredients most of the time, rather than the four or six that a lot of people use.

I said that Sorghum flour is inexpensive at the Indian Store, where it goes by the name of Jowar. I have looked for cheaper sources, and found that I have the hook-up for the cheapest Jowar anywhere. If I lived somewhere bigger, it would cost more. You might look into ordering from Twin Valley Mills, www.twinvalleymills.com/, depending on your city size, location and East Indian concentration, it may be cheaper for you.

Ideally, I would have had this blog set up around the time of the purple millet bread, but I didn't. Hopefully some-day I will get everything caught up so you know everything I have learned. Until then, enjoy your pancakes.

Is Your Mama a Llama

One of the bands that I grew up with was the Cowboy Junkies. After being together for about 10 years, they released a double album, called 200 More Miles. It was a compilation of live recordings, from 1984-1994. According to their website, 2006 is the bands 20th anniversary, which means that they or I can’t do math, or that they organized as a band twice. In any event, to celebrate their 20th birthday, their archivist has set up a website, http://www.4thellamas.com/. There are a number of purposes of this site, but one in particular that I am excited about is to make available to fans concert recordings.

I downloaded the first one yesterday, Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, Co, Feb 2, 2006. Can I say it is an amazing concert? I was particularly pleased with the 9+ minute version of Sweet Jane. This was the song that gave them national attention twice (two nations, two different times), and there is already a live version on 200 More Miles. I thought that after 20 years, it would be all played out. I am impressed that Margo and company can still find new directions to take this song after so long. The concert version of Cause Cheap is How I Feel is a lot more, um, vibrant than the studio version on Caution Horses.

So what is a Llama? I don’t know, which makes me think I’m not one. I suspect that if I had ever heard In the Time Before Llamas, I would have a better idea. My guess is that Llamas are the Cowboy Junkies version of Deadheads, people to followed the Grateful Dead around from concert to concert, or the Jamily, the Pearl Jam version.