Wild Ricin': The Processing Process....

So I wanted to start this entry with a sort of confession or two to you all; seeing how I've played up my environmental halo in the last few entries by talking about giving my shit, my blood, my piss back to the earth and all that stuff...I wanted to let all of you know that I am no environmental saint, to be sure.

For one thing, while fooling around in our swimming hole, I dropped both my glasses and my cell phone into the water and was unable to retrieve them...I'm still feeling really guilty about all the toxins from the cell phone battery that are leeching out into that beautiful water even as we speak...I have to say, this makes me feel like an asshole. I didn't mean to drop these things into the water, of course, and my life is significantly harder because of the loss of them, especially the glasses, but still, I probably just negated everything I try to do for the environment just with that one stupid act. So there, I've confessed and I feel just a tiny bit better.

The other thing is I feel shitty about is trying to play out stupid patriarchal stereotypes; I mean, I always assume that all men just want to sleep with me, and I sorta act accordingly, especially when there is someone around that I like. In this case, I have a huge crush on this guy Zac, from the entries Beautiful Men in Buckskin, both one and two, and like the culture I grew up in, I assumed it was ok to act like he was just some dude to seduce...when in fact, I need to remember that men have emotions/needs/feelings too, and it isn't anymore ok to treat them like pieces of meat then it is for them to treat ladies that way. Sometimes I forget that and act like a big chauvinistic female pig.

Anyway, so there is my confession. I hope all of you aren't too disgusted with me and will read the rest of the entry. I'm gonna go a little out of chronological order on this entry, and talk about the processing part of getting wild rice, because my swollen ankles need a voice. Once you get wild rice, after all, you don't want to just let it rot, after all the work you did to get it. Most people who harvest wild rice these days take it to a processor, who uses machines to do all the dirty work for them; but my crew is a special group. They neither have the money, nor the desire to rely on electricity and machines to process the rice, so they do it the old fashioned, traditional way. This is a three or four step process, and is extremely labor intensive and time consuming.

Step #1: parching.

To me, parching is perhaps the most fun part of processing the rice. You need a big parching pan, which my crew welded out of scrap metal, some big wooden paddles to stir the rice with, and a fire. You put a small amount of rice in the parching pan, over the fire, and stir it with the paddles, parching it just enough to get the moisture out, but not enough to "pop" the rice, which by the way, makes a cute little "pop" when it gets overcooked. (Some of my rice today got overparched.)

Step #2: jigging or "dancing the rice."

This is the most exhausting step, and the reason I have really swollen and sore ankles at the moment. This is a step I call the "primitive treadmill," because you are leaning over a sawhorse with your legs in a pit, up to your ankles in rice (you have to wear protective footwear, you don't want rice beards in your feet, believe me,) and under the rice is a tanned animal hide, stretched taunt and pegged down. Now picture yourself becoming a human washing machine and you've got the motion that you are performing to get the hulls off of the rice. You are basically doing this stiff-legged dance on the rice, and in my case, you are doing this six hours a day, two days in a row. Whew! Talk about overdoing it! For this step, it is necessary to have a loud stereo, preferably playing Ace of Base or Emeniem or Rage Against the Machine or NIN, and a friend/helper to bring you drinks and slices of watermelon all day, while you jig and jig and jig! At the end of the day, you are lucky if you can still walk.

Step #3: winnowing.

I love this step too, since it is not jigging! You ever see those pictures of ladies in the so-called "third world" shaking grain in a basket to separate the grain from the hulls? That is winnowing, and with a light breeze, it can be really fun/rewarding.

Step #4: cutting the rice.

If you haven't parched your rice well, or you haven't jigged enough, or a combination of the two, then you are going to end up with some rice with hulls still on, even after all of that jigging/winnowing. That is when cutting the rice becomes necessary. Cutting the rice simply means sorting through all of it and separating the stuff with hulls still on and hulls off and throwing the stuff with hulls on under the feet of whoever is still jigging. You see, ideally all of these processes are happening at once, so the rice is constantly moving from station to station, thereby getting done faster. But as with any job where people aren't getting paid (except in awesome, nutritious, edible food! Come on people!,) it is hard to keep help around. We've had our stations a little "understaffed" these past few days, but we are actively working on recruiting people...(so if you are in Minneapolis and would like to help out for a little wild rice, contact me!)

Love ya,
Carrot