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1. the study of the peppers; black pepper, white pepper, Malabar pepper, Tellicherry pepper, Tellicherry Mangalore.
2. the study of the turmerics: Alleppey turmeric, Madras turmeric, rare turmeric bulbs, chicken soup w/turmeric.
3. the study of the " Peppercorns Sovor " with the attachments to the famous lady writers & the Akhaldan Sovors.
4. the study of the Taj Mahal Moonlight Spices with cardamom & saffron & almonds & moonlight.
5. Grains of Paradise. Why did Hippocrates think these so beneficial that he would send a thousand miles for them?
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the Kavanaugh Hill Spice School " Mistresses of Spices " ( also Spice House apprentices ) ... M.O.S.A.S.H.A.
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There she is, my Mom. She is the head lady; our mistress of spices; our master of spices.
And she is a remarkable lady. Fifty years in the spice trade, and at the age of seventy still mills
some of the most beautiful cinnamons & cassia cinnamons sold in America. Every day.
Yes she has a little help, but she still does this every day. Today she ground rich China Tung Hing Cassia Cinnamon.
The day before the favorite of British nobility, the parchment thin bark Ceylon Colombo Fines 00000 grade.
Also yesterday it was the perfumy Saigon 5% steam volatile oil cassia cinnamon ( from foot long thin quills ).
And Sunday morning she powdered the rare Chinese cassia buds cinnamon, which is the dried unripe fruit of the cassia
tree and extraordinary as only it is embedded with the precious genetic seed code for reproducing this splendid tree...
And regarding our " Mistress of Spices " group of young ladies, all spice workers here with her from time to time,
she was encouraged by both Julia Child and by the late Catherine Brandel ( of the CIA in Greystone California )
in this idea of teaching to this group of young ladies about spices, yes, spices, but also to teach about
this greater thing that spices seem mysteriously, purposely, inserted into, as if a jeweled center guide post.
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It was my Mother's birthday, Sept. 14, and we were all there dining at her very favorite place, even new little Teddi.
Pam & the grandkids Eva, Caity, & Lucas, my brother Billy with Jeri, & Tom and I. Towards the end of the dinner,
my Dad brought out a piece of paper with a poem on it, a poem in fact about cinnamon, the cinnamon peeler's wife
by Michael Ondaatje, and turned to look at my Mother, to look directly into her eyes, as he read the poem to her.
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p Oct. 15, 2007
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.Can we go back to the very first young ms. ladies? Melanie & Sarah, or was it Sarah & Melanie? Both started about
the same time. Then Midi, Corrina, & Jenni. Then Leah, Thuy &BFF Carly, & Jessica. Then Eva & Caity & Teddi.
Most 'Tosa East High. 3 valedictorians, 1 Eastman Music School grad., 1 has Father who is famous artist in Mexico.
Click here to see real vanilla bean chopping for vanilla sugar with Midi, Corrina, & Jenni.
click here to continue on with page two ........http://www.spice-work.com/ms.of.spices.page.two.html
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Pepper Study. Part I. Black Pepper.
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1. Heat ( pungency )
2. Fruitiness ( like berries )
3. Tartness ( like lemons )
4. Anise - y ??? how much?
5. Perfumey ( like incense )
6. Hardness
7. Beauty ... please ... what is your definition of beauty as regards a peppercorn flavor?
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Pepper Study: Part II. The Relationship between Black peper & White Pepper.
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Pepper Study: Part III. The review of other types of pepper . like Jamaica pepper, or Sichuan pepper.
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Pepper Study: Part IV. How to cook with pepper; for good taste; for health; & for elevation.
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Joanne the artist lady stops in ... Nancy Cavanaugh has sent her over ... we walk up to the house in
the rain ( using Gisele's umbrella ) to look at the rare camperdown elm in our front yard ... it was
planted about the same time as the house was built ... in about 1864. Joanne maybe will be kind
enough to do an artists rendering so we might post it to our web site?
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So who is to be the next young lady to be a " mistress of spices "? And how is it to be determined?
The writing below, from the
chapter on turmeric in the book " The Mistress of Spices " by Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni,
is a narrative which might show something about this question. There is a reference to the shore of the magic island
where the ancient India wisdom teaching is given over, ltittle by little, to the few selected beautiful young ladies .......
I think of the " old one " as Ruth, some years from now, long after I ama gone,
as she is the teacher of our young ladies here in the " Village of Wauwatosa ".
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..............................................................................................................................................................................is a narrative which might show something about this question. There is a reference to the shore of the magic island
where the ancient India wisdom teaching is given over, ltittle by little, to the few selected beautiful young ladies .......
I think of the " old one " as Ruth, some years from now, long after I ama gone,
as she is the teacher of our young ladies here in the " Village of Wauwatosa ".
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page 34
" The dreams I do not remember, but the voice that woke me
from them I will never forget. Cool and grainy with a hint of a
mocking laugh in it, yet deep, deep, a voice to plunge your heart
into.
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" What has the god of the sea belched up on our shore this
morning? "
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The Old One, surrounded by her novices, and the sun a
halo behind her head and shimmering many-colored imn her lashes.
So that I scrambling to my knees felt impelled to lower my own
sand-caked ones.
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It was then I saw that I was naked. The sea had stipped me
of all, clothes and magic and for the moment arrogance even. Had
thrown me at her feet bereft of all but this dark, ugly body.
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In shame I pulled at my salt-stiff haair to cover me. In shame
I crossed by arms over my chest and bent my head.
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But already she was removing her shalw, placing it around
my shoulders. Soft and gray as a dove's throat, and the spice-smell
rising from it like a mystery I longed to learn. And her hands.
Ssoft, but with the skin burned pink-white and puckered to the
elbows as though she had plunged them into a long-ago blaze.
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" Who are you, child? "
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Who was I? I could not say. Already my name had faded in
the rising island sun, like a star from a night that has passed away.
Only much later when she would teach us the herbs of memory
would I recollect it --- and my past life --- again.
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" What do yiou want of me? "
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Dumly I sstared at her, she who seemed at once oldest and
most beautiful of women with her silver wrinkles, though later I
would see that she was not beautiful in the way men use the
word. Her voice, which I would later learn in all its tones --- anger
and mockery and sadness --- was sweet as the wind in the cinna-
mon trees behind her. A yearning to belong to her buffeted me
like the waves I had fought all night.
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I think she read my heart, the Old One. Or perhaps it was
merely that all who came to her were drawn by the same desire.
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She gave a small sigh. The weight of adoration is hard to
bear, I know that now.
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" Let me see. " And she took my hands in hers that had
passed through fire, who knows where.
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Too light, too hot, too damp. My hands freckled as the back
of a golden plover,. Palms where at midnight thorn-purple blood-
wort would burst into bloom.
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The Old One had taken a step back, letting go.
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" No. "
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Each year a thousand girls are sent back from the island
because they do not have the right hands. It does not count if
they have the second sight, or if they can leave their bodies to
travel the sky. The Old One is adamant.
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Each year a thousand girls whose hands have failed them
throw themselves into the sea as they sail home., Because death is
easier to bear than the ordinary life, cooking and washing clothes
and bathng in the women's lake and bearing childdren who will
one day leave you, and all the while remembering her, on whom
you had set your heart.
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They become water wraiths, spirits of mist and salt, crying
in the voices of gulls.
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I too would have been one of them, but for the bones.
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They were why the Old One could not resist taking my
hands in hers again. Why she let me stay on the island though all
wisdom must have shouted no .
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Most important in a good hand are the bones. They must be
smooth as water-polished stone and pliant to the Old One's touch
when she holds your palm between hers, when she places the
spices in its center. They must know to sing to the spices.
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" I should have made you go, " the Old One would tell me
later, shaking her head ruefully. " They were volcano hands, sim-
mering with risk, waiting to explode. But I couldn't. "
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" Why not, First Mother? "
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" You were the only one in whose hands the spices sang
back. "
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BBBBBBB .
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Picture below from the Milwaukee Journal of Ruth in her younger years working the spices with her hands.
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note: make sure to have all twelve up to the house, or perhaps better yet, over to Billy's house,
to see the opening segment of " Meetings with Remarkable Men ", the video on TV.
The scene is a rough mountainous region of Afganistan where Gurdjief's Father says
" Every twenty years we aschkoffs gather here on the mountain to test our art ".
The mountain is teeming with the peoples of the region as one by one the famous
musician s of the area " play their art ". The winner is to be that one single musician
who makes the mountain sing back, as this was a famous, said to be, magic, mountain.
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The second most asked question of Thomas Jefferson when he was our
ambassador to France in the 1780's ( after all those questions about his startling red pants )
was about the secret salt mountain in the Ozarks in America, from which a highly
regarded salt was taken used in the curing & seasoning of all sorts of preserved meats & game & birds.
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As per Jenni's suggestion, yes, post here the lovely few pages on " the hand in very young children "
from the classic small book on teaching the very young by the Italian physician Dr. Maria Montessori.
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1. the study of the peppers; black pepper, white pepper, Malabar pepper, Tellicherry pepper, Tellicherry Mangalore.
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Tellicherry Mangalore peppercorns come from. If you look closely you will see the
Mother Pepper Bird teaching the baby Pepper Bird about the difference in peppercorns.
Also look at the young India girl. What is the book she is holding in her right arm?
What is it she is carrying in her left arn? What is the saffron hued banner she is wearing & why?
Can we ask Ruth to explain this all to us? Ruth the wisdom teacher, can we all ask her?
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Here they are, two " bona fide " MOSASHA ladies, Carly Annette & Caity,
with our new honorary Moasha young lady, Pauline of Argentina.
And, of course, there she is too ... Ruth.
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Another of the MOSASHA spice study themes is about " Cassia Cinnamon ". How does cassia cinnamon
differ from cinnamon? How does the original China cassia cinnamon differ from the Saigon and the
Indonesian cassia cinnamon. Two MOSHA young ladies were entrusted with this special study to take it
on as a life study ...... Colleen and Brittaney. Besides the MOSASHA group there is also a TVASHA group
which is an acronym for our young spice workers who have also been valedictorians at our village
high school Wauwatosa East High School ... Tosa Valedictorians Also Spice House Apprentices ... TVASHA.
It happens that Colleen is one of these and Brittaney was nearly one. So this is differentin in that it is a
double study spice subject ... both with the TVASHA group and the MOSASHA group. Colleen is away
having been called to spend her senior year of high school living in Africa, and while away her final
year of high school, Brittaney has agreed to be her " stand in " at the TVASHA group meetings and
the arrangement was that Colleen would study cassia cinnamon from the perspective of the American
medical community and also what governmental agencies like the USDA and the Human Nutrition Center
would study it, but Brittaney, since she is half Chinese, would study it from the perspective of
Chinese science, and in the process hopefully shed some light on how Chinese science differs from
American science. There seems to be a small amount of competion and contention between what
both these forms of science are saying about human nutrition, and even there seems to be
contention about the ancient Chinese ways of looking at these things and the modern Chinese
ways of looking at these things. Like how cassia cinnamon interacts within the human system as a
self regulating substance which activates some sort of master sequence " kick in " for well being.
So Colleen and Brittaney will, hopefully, have much to share with us here on these pages as times goes on.
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