Tidbit Tuesday: Yamology

It’s Tidbit Tuesday. Rejoice!

Tiny tubers on Tidbit Tuesday. BOOM.

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It’s nearing Thanksgiving so today we’re going to talk about yams. Not all about yams because, frankly, it would take several posts. The history of the yam is complicated and lengthy and, while I think it would be mega interesting, I want to keep it simple.

So I’m going to tell you a bit about yam mythology. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about yam rituals.

An Abelam yam mask. The Abelam people put these masks on their yams to transform them into the yam god.

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The yam is a staple in many cultures. There are tons of species all over the world and for the most part they aren’t that different from each other. People use the word “yam” to talk about other root crops, like sweet potatoes, taro, and oca, but they aren’t the same root. The confusion comes from the origin of the word “yam.”

Story time!

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Goat’s Milk and It’s Cheesy Story: Part III

Finally we come to the point of this whole series: goat cheese.

It's all goat cheese, all the time.

Cheese making is one of the first processes nomadic cultures discovered for preserving food. Processed milk (a fancy way of saying cheese) was eaten as early as 6500 B.C and evidence of milk byproducts have been discovered in Stone Age Turkish pottery. The first cheeses were made from sheep and goat’s milk. Later, other mammalian milks were used, such as donkey and zebu milks.

Tell me I'm not the only one who thought a zebu resembled a zebra.

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