| Author |
Message |
    
Kerensa
bear cub
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 52
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 05, 2003 - 11:05 pm: |     |
Browsing through Pine's thread I found St.John's bread. Do you know that?
It looks like a flat, dark brown/black legume. It is sold dried and you can eat it. The name comes from St.John who, eating only locusts in the dessert, found this fruit.
I do not have a question really, but a kind of answer
The seeds are half the size of aduki beans and all are 0,18 gram. It is said that Pharmacists used them long ago for tiny measurments to mix medicine.
Jeweller used it as well.
The latin word for St.John's bread is "Ceratonia" and probably comes from the word "carat". And 1 carat is 0,2 gram.
I don't know about you but I find this interesting! |
Pine
storyteller
Username: Pine
Post Number: 215
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 05, 2003 - 11:31 pm: | |
Yes, carob beans are rather tasty, but be careful not to bite into the seeds - you might break a tooth. One of the Mishnaic scholars, Hanina son of Dosa who chose to live in legendary poverty supposedly survived on carobs only. Shimon bar Yohai and his son supposedly hid from the Romans in a cave in Meron, and supposedly survived on carobs from a nearby tree. I wonder how nutritious carobs can be - surely there isn't much besides carbohydrates in them? |
Kerensa
bear cub
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 53
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 12:03 am: | |
It has 30% to 50% sugar. 35% starch, protein, fat, calcium, phosphor and tannic acid.
Today I eat it after a long time again and it does taste nice. It is hard to chew in the beginning. |
Darsina
gatherer
Username: Darsina
Post Number: 163
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 7:33 am: | |
Interesting topic.
quote:The latin word for St.John's bread is "Ceratonia" and probably comes from the word "carat".
Actually it is the other way round. Jewellers used the seeds as a measure for gemstones and jewels.
carat
quote:The carat is an ancient unit, originally the weight of a seed of the carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua, also known as St. John's Bread), from whose pods the familiar chocolate substitute is made. In classical times the seed was known as the siliqua or keratia, and one siliqua = three barley corns = four wheat grains. Twelve hundred years later, Johnson's Dictionary (1755) defined a carat as four grains.
Thinking is the work of the intellect, dreaming its pleasure. - Victor Hugo |
Kerensa
bear cub
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 54
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 3:44 pm: | |
I found a page in English.
It doesn't mention the Pharmacists but I read it somewhere.
Darsina, does Johnson's Dictionary say four grains of wheat are 1 carat? Because 1 carob seed is already 0,18 gram.
http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/vegetables/ca rob.htm
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Darsina
gatherer
Username: Darsina
Post Number: 166
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 3:53 pm: | |
Exactly kerensa. 1 carat equals 0.18 g.
one seed of the carob tree =
one siliqua =
three barley corns =
four wheat grains =
one carat =
0.18 g (or approximately 0.2 g)
Thinking is the work of the intellect, dreaming its pleasure. - Victor Hugo |
Kerensa
bear cub
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 55
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 4:46 pm: | |
Of course, seeds or grains of wheat, barley and also rice and beans are the same size in a packet or bag you buy. I just had a look at my beans and my rice.
Such a simple thing and I never thought about it even though I see it every day.
Perhaps all this seeds and grains where used ages ago to measure things. Depending on where the people lived. Interesting! |
Darsina
gatherer
Username: Darsina
Post Number: 169
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, November 06, 2003 - 8:26 pm: | |
Average people who had no calibrated weights and maybe even no scales for measuring had to come up with simple solutions: a handful, a teaspoon, a tablespoon, a cup, a knife point... all still used nowadays.
It makes perfect sense to choose an item that is always of approximately the same weight. Otherwise trading would be inevitably connected with overreaching and fraud.
That leads to a point that puzzles me a bit. How did *a stone* become a measure for weight? There's no such thing like an average stone after all. Neither regarding size nor mass due to the densities of different minerals.
Conversion of weights
Thinking is the work of the intellect, dreaming its pleasure. - Victor Hugo |
Thalion
storyteller
Username: Thalion
Post Number: 410
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Friday, November 07, 2003 - 3:55 pm: | |
My parents used to tell me, longingly, about Carob when I was a child. They grew it back in Croatia where they lived in their youth.
Finally they found some for sale in a store (selection of 'exotic food' wasn't huge in the sixties and early seventies) and made some of their dishes. Was I ever disappointed, LOL. I had been so looking forward to this, and didn't (don't) like the taste at all. They used the ground stuff like nuts, for cakes, and on pasta mixed with sugar.
Ah- the memories... 
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they pass by - Douglas Adams |
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