Tuesday, January 18, 2011 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
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Going to Breakfast, Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 17, 2011
It's about Thyme
Thyme is my favorite herb; I use it in everything. Last summer I picked up a big container of organic thyme at a local farmers market. It's almost empty so when I was in Deming I put it on my list for a trip to Peppers, the local supermarket. Guess what? They had no thyme, unless you count those little McCormick "samples." Same thing at Bullock's in Truth or Consequences when I stopped there on my way through last Sunday. What's up with that - doesn't anyone cook with thyme in southern New Mexico? Or eat almonds; they've gone missing too?
Night camp
Site 10 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.