#natural wheat flour

[subconsciousmysteries]

I'm in a forum group and they're telling a woman who "cooks with mostly grains" that she's got a healthy diet. I'm fucking LIVID

[headspace-hotel]

Imagine if baking bread was a skill any person living independently in their own house needed to have at least a passing familiarity with, so there were endless books, blogs and websites about how to bake bread, but none of them seemed to contain the most basic facts about how bread actually works.

You would go online and find questions like "Help, I put my bread in the oven, and it GOT BIGGER!" and instead of saying anything about bread naturally rises when you put yeast in it, the results would be advertising some kind of $970 device that punches the bread while it's baking so it doesn't rise.

Even the most reliable, factually grounded sources available would have only the barest scraps of information on the particularities of ingredients, such as how different types of flour differ and produce different results, or how yeast affects the flavor profile of bread. Rice flour, barley flour, potato flour and amaranth flour would be just as common as wheat flour, but finding sources that didn't treat them as functionally identical would be near impossible. At the same time, websites and books would list specific brands of flour in bread recipes, often without specifying anything else.

An unreasonable amount of people would be hellbent on doing something like baking a full-sized loaf of bread in under 3 minutes, and would regularly bake bread to charred cinders at 700 degrees in an attempt to accomplish this, but instead of gently telling people that their goal is not realistic, books claiming to be general resources would be framed entirely around the goal of baking bread as fast as possible, with entire chapters devoted to making the charred bread taste like it isn't charred.

Anyway, this is what landscaping is like.

[raw1111official]

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[rmm-1f]

[asaviindia]

Pure & Sure Organic Wood Pressed Peanut Oil at Asavi.in

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[nrcs-unofficial-offficial]

very very important

[mey-rin-is-fabulous]

I really need to get better at eating regularly and staying hydrated. I think the new med will work but my bowel issues are always worse when I don't eat very often or hydrate enough.

And to think I would have probably been okay right now if I didn't accidentally eat that non GF spaghetti.

My doc says the spaghetti wouldn't cause it to get active again but I don't think I believe that. I am on a GF diet because wheat seems to be a trigger especially after an incident where I had gone GF and had some cheerios and the night after I experienced awful diarrhoea.

[shaaeximllp]

Organic Wheat Flour supplier in Andhra Pradesh | Natural Wheat Flour Exporter in India

[wosoamazing]

Pizza Night

Blurb | Diabetes and Love Series

The team was having a night out since the season had ended, however your Mum didn’t want to go out, she wanted to stay in and have a quiet night, it being one of the last ones she would get for some time, so that’s how you found yourself having a pizza and movie night with Leah, Lotte, Kim, Lia, Steph and your Mum.

_______

“Mummy icky” you chimed out as you walked towards her, having just retrieved an ice pack for Leah as you accidentally bumped into her knee, the older girls watched as Alessia moved to check her phone, before pricking your finger and handing you a small pack of gummy bears without batting an eye, she did everything whilst still talking, and you didn’t react at all, it was weird to them, it had only been two weeks, yet everything was already like second nature, and you continued your previous activities whilst eating your gummy bears.

_______

Your pizza was ready first, it had been specially made for you, it was a mini pizza, and you helped your Mum make your base with wholemeal flour instead of wheat flour. You were eating earlier because it would be your bedtime soon, your Mum had made sure to pre-bolused you so you could start eating right away. You sat on the floor leaning against the couch as you happily munched away. After you finished eating you climbed onto the couch and sat next to Leah, you liked her, ever since she took you to your first soccer practice and you had your sleep over with her you were basically inseparable, Leah’s pizza was done soon after and you eyed her pizza off as she ate.

“Leah, may I please have a bite?” you asked so politely and she found it hard to not just say yes, but she looked over to your Mum who gave her a nod and so Leah let you have a bite, it was good, but very plain, it was just tomato cheese and ham, you liked to put more than just cheese and ham on your pizzas, something like anchovies or olives, and some mushrooms and other things. You looked over to your Mum and saw she had a much yummier looking pizza, you slid off the couch next to Leah and walked over to your Mum, who was looking at your blood sugar on your receiver, already knowing what you wanted. You were at 5, so in range but on the lower side, so she was fairly confident in guessing you would need roughly 4 units of insulin for the piece she would give you.

“Would you like a piece?” your Mum asked you when you arrived in front of her.

“Yes please,” you said as you climbed up onto the couch, placing yourself in her lap, which was easy as her legs were crossed.

“Okay, but you need to make sure you tell me if you feel funny okay,” you nodded before you started to eat your Mum’s pizza, it was much better than Leah’s, your Mum could tell you were getting tired once you finished. “Why don’t you go get your blanket and come back,” you nodded and she helped you off her lap, you were already dressed in your pjs, you came back quickly dragging your blanky behind you, Alessia picked you up and placed you on her lap, you positioned yourself so you were facing her and you buried your head into her stomach, she placed your blanket around you before kissing your head and wrapping her arms around your back, holding you against her, and you quickly feel asleep.

[najia-cooks]

[ID: Two plates of cookies, one oval and topped with powdered sugar, and the others shaped in rings; one cookie is broken in half to show a date filling; two glasses of coffee on a silver tray are in the background. End ID]

معمول فلسطيني / Ma’moul falastini (Palestinian semolina cookies)

Ma’moul (also transliterated “ma’amoul,” “maamoul” and “mamoul”) are sweet pastries made with semolina flour and stuffed with a date, walnut, or pistachio filling. The cookies are made tender and crumbly with the addition of fat in the form of olive oil, butter, or clarified butter (سمن, “samn”); delicate aromatics are added by some combination of fennel, aniseed, mahlab (محلب: ground cherry pits), mastic gum (مستكه, “mistīka”), and cinnamon.

“مَعْمُول” means  “made,” “done,” “worked by hand,” or “excellently made” (it is the passive participle of the verb “عَمِلَ” “‘amila,” "to do, make, perform"). Presumably this is because each cookie is individually filled, sealed, and shaped by hand. Though patterned molds known as طوابع (“ṭawābi’,” “stamps”; singular طابع, “ṭābi’”) are sometimes used, the decorations on the surface of the cookies may also be applied by hand with the aid of a pair of small, specialized tongs (ملقط, “milqaṭ”).

Because of their laborious nature, ma’moul are usually made for feast days: they are served and shared for Eid, Easter, and Purim, a welcome reward after the Ramadan or Lenten fasts. For this reason, ma’moul are sometimes called “كَعْك العيد” (“ka’k al-’īd,” “holiday cakes”). Plates of the cookies, whether homemade or store-bought, are passed out and traded between neighbors in a practice that is part community-maintenance, part continuity of tradition, and part friendly competition. This indispensable symbol of celebration will be prepared by the women of a family even if a holiday falls around the time of a death, disaster, or war: Palestinian food writer Laila El-Haddad explains that "For years, we endured our situation by immersing ourselves in cooking, in our routines and the things we could control."

Other names for these cakes exist as well. Date ma’moul–the most common variety in Palestine–may be called كَعْك بعَجْوَة (“ka'k b'ajwa”), “cakes with date paste.” And one particular Palestinian variety of ma’moul, studded with sesame and nigella seeds and formed into a ring, are known as كَعْك أَسَاوِر‎ (“ka'k 'asāwir”), “bracelet cakes.” The thinner dough leads to a cookie that is crisp and brown on the outside, but gives way to a soft, chewy, sweet filling.

[ID: An extreme close-up on one ka'k al-aswar, broken open to show the date filling; ma'moul and a silver teapot are very out-of-focus in the background. End ID]

History

Various sources claim that ma’moul originated in Egypt, with their ancestor, كحك (kaḥk), appearing in illustrations on Pharaonic-era tombs and temples. The more specific of these claims usually refer to “temples in ancient Thebes and Memphis,” or more particularly to the vizier Rekhmire’s tomb in Thebes, as evidencing the creation of a pastry that is related to modern kahk. One writer attests that this tomb depicts “the servants mix[ing] pure honey with butter on the fire,” then “adding the flour by mixing until obtaining a dough easy to transform into forms” before the shaped cookies were “stuffed with raisins or dried dates and honey.” Another does not mention Rekhmire, but asserts that “18th-dynasty tombs” show “how honey is mixed with butter on fire, after which flour is added, turning the substance into an easily-molded dough. These pieces are then put on slate sheets and put in the oven; others are fried in oil and butter.”

Most of these details seem to be unfounded. Hilary Wilson, summarizing the state of current research on Rekhmire’s tomb, writes that the depicted pastries were delivered as an offering to the Treasury of the Temple of Amun; that they certainly contained ground tiger nuts; that they presumably contained wheat or durum flour, since ground tiger nuts alone would not produce the moldable dough illustrated; that the liquid added to this mixture to form the dough cannot be determined, since the inscription is damaged; that the cakes produced “are clearly triangular and, when cooked are flat enough to be stacked” (any appearance that they are pyramidal or conical being a quirk of ancient Egyptian drawing); that they were shallow-fried, not cooked in an oven; and that honey and dates are depicted at the far left of the scene, but their relationship to the pastries is unclear. There is no evidence of the honey being included in the dough, or the cookies being stuffed with dates; instead, Wilson speculates that “It appears that the cooks are preparing a syrup or puree of dates and honey. It is tempting to think that the cakes or pastries were served [...] with a generous portion of syrup poured over them.” Whether there is any direct lineage between these flat, fried pastries and the stuffed, molded, and baked kahk must also be a matter of speculation. [1]

Another origin claim points to ancient Mesopotamia. James David Audlin speculates that ma’moul are "possibly" the cousins of hamantaschen, both being descended from the molded "kamānu cakes that bore the image of [YHWH’s] goddess wife Inanna [also known as Ishtar or Astarte]" that were made in modern-day Syria. Other claims for Mesopotamia cite qullupu as the inspiration: these cakes are described in the contemporary record as wheat pastries filled with dates or raisins and baked. (Food historian Nawal Nasrallah writes that these cookies, which were offered to Ishtar for the new year festival in spring, may also be an origin point for modern Iraqi كليچة, "kleicha.")

The word "määmoul" had entered the English language as a type of Syrian farina cake by 1896.

In Palestine

From its earliest instantiations, Zionist settlement in Palestine was focused on building farming infrastructure from which Palestinians could be excluded: settlers, incentivized by foreign capital, aimed at creating a separate economy based around farms, agricultural schools, communal settlements, and research institutions that did not employ Arabs (though Arab labor and goods were never entirely cut out in practice).

Zionist agricultural institutes in Palestine had targeted the date as a desirable crop to be self-sufficient in, and a potentially profitable fruit for export, by the 1930s. Ben-Zion Israeli (בנציון ישראלי), Zionist settler and founder of the Kinneret training farm, spoke at a 1939 meeting of the Organization of Fruit Growers (ארגון מגדלי פירות) in the Nahalel (נהלל) agricultural settlement to discuss the future of date palms in the “land of Israel.” He discussed the different climate requirements of Egyptian, Iraqi, and Tunisian cultivars—and which among them seemed “destined” (נועדים) for the Jordan Valley and coastal plains—and laid out his plan to collect saplings from surrounding countries for planting despite their prohibitions against such exports.

In the typical mode of Zionist agriculture discourse, this speech dealt in concepts of cultivation as a means of coming into a predestined ownership over the land; eating food suited for the climate as a means of belonging in the land; and a return to Biblical history as a triumphant reclamation of the land from its supposed neglect and/or over-cultivation by Palestinian Arabs over the past 2,000 years. Israeli opened:

נסתכל לעברה של הארץ, אשר אנו רוצים להחיותה ולחדשה. היא השתבחה ב"שבעה מינים" ואלה עשוה אינטנסיבית וצפופת אוכלוסין. לא רק חיטה ושעורה, כי אם גם עצים הנותנים יבול גדול בעל ערך מזוני רב. בין העצים -- הזית [...] הגפן, התאנה והתמר. לשלושה מהם, לזית, לתאנה ולתמר חטאה התישבותנו שאין היא נאחזת בהם אחיזה ציםכר של ממש ואינה מפתחת אותם דים.

We will look to the past of the land [of Israel], which we want to revive and renew. It excelled in "seven species," and these flourished and became densely populated. Not only wheat and barley, but also trees that give a large and nutritious crop. Among the trees: the olive, [...] the vine, the fig and the date. For three of them, the olive, the fig and the date, it is the sin of our settlement that it does not hold on to them with a strong grip and does not develop them.

He continued to discuss the benefits of adopting the date—not then part of the diet of Jewish settlers—to “health and economy” (בריאות וכלכלה). Not only should the “land of Israel” become self-sufficient (no longer importing dates from Egypt and Iraq), but dates should be grown for export to Europe.

A beginning had already been made in the importation of about 8,000 date palm saplings over the past two decades, of which ¾ (according to Israeli) had been brought by Kibbutz Kinneret, and the remaining ¼ by the settlement department of the Zionist Commission for Palestine (ועד הצירים), by the Mandate government's agriculture department, and by people from Degania Bet kibbutz ('דגניה ב). The majority of these imports did not survive. More recently, 1000 smuggled saplings had been planted in Rachel’s Park (גן רחל), in a nearby government plot, and in various places in the Jordan Valley. Farms and agricultural institutions would need to collaborate in finding farmers to plant dates more widely in the Beit-Sha’an Valley (בקעת בית שאן), and work to make dates take their proper place in the settlements’ economies.

These initial cuttings and their descendents survive in large plantations across “Israel” and the occupied Palestinian territories. Taher Herzallah and Tarek Khaill write that “Palm groves were planted from the Red Sea in the south along the Dead Sea, and as far as the Sea of Galilee up north, which has given the Israeli date industry its nickname ‘the industry of the three seas’” Since Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank in 1967, it has also established date plantations in its illegal settlements in that portion of the Jordan Valley.” Today, these settlements produce between 40 and 60% of all Israeli dates.

In 2022, Israel exported 67,042 tons of dates worth $330.1 million USD; these numbers have been on a steady rise from 4,909 tons worth $1.2m. in 1993. Palestinian farmers and their children, disappropriated from their land and desperate for income, are brought in to date plantations to work for long hours in hazardous conditions for low pay. Workers are lifted into the date palms by cranes where they work, with no means of descending, until the crane comes to lower them down again at the end of the day. Injuries from falls, pesticides, heat stroke, and date-sorting machinery are common.

Meanwhile, settlers work to curtail and control Palestinian production of dates. The Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza is used as a pool of cheap labor and a captive market to purchase Israeli imports, absorb excesses in Israeli goods, stabilize Israeli wages, and make up for market deficits. Thus Palestinian date farmers may be targeted with repressive measures such as water contamination and diversion, destruction of wells, crop destruction, land theft, military orders forbidding the planting of trees, settler attacks, closing of checkpoints and forbidding of exports, and the denial of necessary equipment or the means to make it, in part to ensure that their goods do not compete with those of Israeli farmers in domestic or foreign markets. Leah Temper writes that these repressive measures are part of a pattern whereby Israel tries to “stop [Palestinian] growth in high value crops such as strawberries, avocados and dates, which are considered to be ‘Israeli Specialties’.”

At other times, Palestinian farmers may be ordered to grow certain crops (such as strawberries and dates), and forbidden to grow anything else, when Israeli officials fear falling short of market demand for a certain good. These crops will be exported by Israeli firms, ensuring that the majority of profits do not accrue to Palestinians, and that Palestinians will not have the ability to negotiate or fulfill export contracts themselves. Nevertheless, Palestinian farmers continue to defy these oppressive conditions and produce dates for local consumption and for export. Zuhair al-Manasreh founded date company Nakheel Palestine in 2011, which continues production despite being surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Boycotts of Israeli dates have arisen in response to the conditions imposed on Palestinian farmers and workers. Herzallah and Khaill cite USDA data on the effectiveness of boycott, pressure, and flyering campaigns initiated by groups including American Muslims for Palestine:

Israel’s exports of dates to the US have dropped significantly since 2015. Whereas 10.7 million kilogrammes (23.6 million pounds) of Israeli dates entered the US market in 2015-2016, only 3.1 million kilogrammes (seven million pounds) entered the US market in 2017-2018. The boycott is working and it is having a detrimental effect on the Israeli date industry.

Date products may not be BDS-compliant even if they are not labeled as a product of Israel. Stores may repackage dates under their own label, and exporters may avoid declaring their dates to be a product of Israel, or even falsely label them as a product of Palestine, to avoid boycotts. Purchase California dates, or dates from a known Palestinian exporter such as Zaytoun or Yaffa (not “Jaffa”) dates.

[ID: Close-up of the top of ma'moul, decorated with geometric patterns and covered in powdered sugar, in strong light and shadow. End ID]

Elsewhere

Other efforts to foreground the provenance and political-economic context of dates in a culinary setting have been made by Iraqi Jew Michael Rakowitz, whose store sold ma’moul and date syrup and informed patrons about individual people behind the hazardous transport of date imports from Iraq. Rakowitz says that his project “utilizes food as a point of entry and creates a different platform by which people can enter into conversation.”

[1] Plates from the tomb can be seen in N. de G. Davies, The tomb of Rekh-mi-Rē at Thebes, Vol. II, plates XLVII ff.

Purchase Palestinian dates

Donate to evacuate families from Gaza

Flyer campaign for eSims

Ingredients:

Makes 16 large ma'moul and 32 ka'k al-aswar; or 32 ma'moul; or 64 ka'k al-aswar.

For the dough:

360g (2 1/4 cup) fine semolina flour (سميد ناعم / طحين فرخة)

140g (1 cup + 2 Tbsp) white flour (طحين ابيض)

200g (14 Tbsp) margarine or vegetarian ghee (سمن), or olive oil

2 Tbsp (15g) powdered sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp (10g) dugga ka'k (دقة كعك)

1/2 tsp (2g) instant yeast

About 2/3 cup (190mL) water, divided (use milk if you prefer)

1 tsp toasted sesame seeds (سمسم)

1 tsp toasted nigella seeds (قزحه / حبة البركة)

Using olive oil and water for the fat and liquid in the dough is more of a rural approach to this recipe; ghee and milk (or milk powder) make for a richer cookie.

To make the bracelets easy to shape, I call for the inclusion of 1 part white flour for every 2 parts semolina (by volume). If you are only making molded cookies and like the texture of semolina flour, you can use all semolina flour; or vary the ratio as you like. Semolina flour will require more added liquid than white flour does.

For the filling:

500g pitted Madjoul dates (تمر المجهول), preferably Palestinian; or date paste

2 Tbsp oil or softened margarine

3/4 tsp dugga ka'k (دقة كعك)

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

5 green cardamom pods, toasted, skins removed and ground; or 1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Small chunk nutmeg, toasted and ground, or 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

10 whole cloves, toasted and ground, or 1/4 tsp ground cloves

The filling may be spiced any way you wish. Some recipes call for solely dugga ka'k (or fennel and aniseed, its main components); some for a mixture of cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and/or cloves; and some for both. This recipe gives an even balance between the pungency of fennel and aniseed and the sweet spiciness of cinnamon and cloves.

Palestinian date brands include Ziyad, Zaytoun, Hasan, and Jawadir. Palestinian dates can also be purchased from Equal Exchange. You can find them online or at a local halal market. Note that an origin listed as "West Bank" does not indicate that a date company is not Israeli, as it may be based in a settlement. Avoid King Solomon, Jordan River, Mehadrin, MTex, Edom, Carmel Agrexco, Arava, and anything marked “exported by Hadiklaim”. Also avoid supermarket brands, as the origin of the dates may not be clearly marked or may be falsified to avoid boycots.

Instructions:

For the dough:

1. Melt margarine in a microwave or saucepan. Measure flours into a large mixing bowl and pour in margarine; mix thoroughly to combine. Rub flours between your hands for a few minutes to coat the grains in margarine. The texture should resemble that of coarse sad. Refrigerate the mixture overnight, or for up to 3 days.

2. Add dry ingredients to dough. If making both molded ma'moul and ka'k al-aswar, split the dough in half and add sesame and nigella seeds to one bowl.

3. Add water to each dough until you get a smooth dough that does not crack apart when formed into a ball and pressed. Press until combined and smooth, but do not over-knead—we don't want a bready texture. Set aside to rest while you make the filling.

For the filling:

1. Pit dates and check the interiors for mold. Grind all ingredients to a paste in a food processor. You may need to add a teaspoon of water, depending on the consistency of your dates.

To shape the cookies:

Divide the filling in half. One half will be used for the ma'moul, and the other half for the bracelets.

For the ma'moul:

1. With wet hands, pinch off date filling into small chunks about the size of a walnut (13-16g each, depending on the size of your mold)—or roll filling into a long log and divide into 16-20 even pieces with a dough scraper. Roll each piece of filling into a ball between your palms.

2. Divide the dough (the half without seeds) into the same number of balls as you have balls of filling, either using a kitchen scale or rolling into a log and cutting.

3. Form the dough into a cup shape. Place a ball of filling in the center, and fold the edges over to seal. Press the dough into a floured ma'moul mold to shape, then firmly tap the tip of the mold on your work surface to release; or, use a pair of spiked tweezers or a fork to add decorative designs by hand.

4. Repeat until all the the dough and filling has been used, covering the dough you're not working with to keep it from drying out. Place each cookie on a prepared baking sheet.

For the ka'k al-aswar:

1. With wet hands, divide the date filling into about 32 pieces (of about 8g each); they should each roll into a small log about the size of your pinkie finger.

2. Divide the dough (the half with the seeds) into as many pieces as you have date logs.

3. Take a ball of dough and flatten it into a thin rectangle a tiny bit longer than your date log, and about 3 times as wide. Place the date log in the center, then pull the top and bottom edges over the log and press to seal. Seal the ends.

4. Roll the dough log out again to produce a thin, long rope a little bit thinner at the very ends than at the center. Press one side of the rope over the other to form a circle and press to seal.

5. Repeat until all the the dough and filling has been used, covering the dough you're not working with to keep it from drying out. Place each cookie on a prepared baking sheet.

To bake:

1. Bake ma'moul at 350 °F (175 °C) in the center of the oven for about 20 minutes, until very lightly golden brown. They will continue to firm up as they cool.

2. Increase oven heat to 400 °F (205 °C) and bake ka'k al-aswar in the top third of the oven for about 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Sprinkle cookies with powdered sugar, if desired. Store in an airtight container and serve with tea or coffee, or give to friends and neighbors.

[homunculus-argument]

For most of recorded history, Finland was one of the poorest corners of Europe, a backcountry inhabited by peasants who weren't merely illiterate, but whose spoken language did not even have a written form. People kept cattle and grew barley, oats, wheat and rye, and if the weather destroyed your crops you just starved. And if the weather destroyed everyone's crops, famine wiped out entire villages and foreign kings did not care.

During times of famine people made bread out of pettu, dried-up strips of pine trees' cambium and pholem - so the bit between the wood and the bark - ground up and either mixed into the scarce flour that was still left, or substituting flour altogether. It doesn't digest well, you can't eat it quite like bread - but it has more fibre than rye flour and actually fairly good content of some vitamins, and about a quarter of the caloric energy value.

Due to the last few, apparently pettu flour is actually sold in some herbalist shops along with other fancy luxury item natural products like seaweed and kombucha, and it's way fucking more expensive than regular flour. You can't harvest it yourself, either, since you can't scrape it out without injuring the tree and therefore it isn't covered by the free foraging law.

Modern well-fed, non-land owning millenials can't afford their ancestors' bleakest famine bread.

[headspace-hotel]

I've been researching how to unfuck our food system in the USA, and its so frustrating to learn about how we are locked into this deeply inefficient, destructive system that is running itself into the ground because everything is controlled by enormous corporations.

I agree that we need to switch to more plant-based diets

BUT i think this is something that will, to some extent, naturally happen if we fix the horrible homogenization of our food system

The USA is full of highly productive, edible plants that are already part of the natural ecosystem that we don't eat

example 1: Acorns. Once you cook the tannins out, acorns are edible. They were once a staple food for humans. You can make them into flour and all sorts of things, and oak trees are incredibly productive

example 2: Amaranth. It's more productive, easier to grow, and healthier than wheat and corn, very high in protein. It also was once a staple crop.

However, farmers need money or they will lose everything, so they plant crops based on what the big companies they sell to will buy.

Big companies only want to buy crops that have the highest chance of making a profit.

Unfamiliar foods don't make as much profit because people are not sure about trying them.

This means that farmers are mostly stuck planting the same, like, 3 things that big companies feel most comfy about.

I hate this so much. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it

it's absolutely infuriating how incredibly solvable our food system problems are, and how it's all going to hell because companies are like "okay but 5.5% more profits go brrrrrrrr"

[tanuki-kimono]

[Haircare during Edo period], handy illustration by Sayuri Sasai.

As time went, Edo hairstyles became more and more intricated. Hairdos were set using plenty of styling products, like 梳き油 sukiabura (creamy pomade) or 付け油 tsukeabura (solid pomade). Many recipes existed, varying in bases (like 椿油 tsubakiabura/camellia oil, 菜種油nataneabura/canola oil, 木蝋 mokurô/sumac wax etc.) and fragrances used.

Once set, hairstyles did not fell apart easily, but the oils used meant hair easily caught dust or dander - hence why people used tenugui or other kinds of hoods to protect their hair (see those past notes 1 / 2):

In the past, washing one's hair was usually done once or twice per month (in the meantime, to relieve itchy scalp, people often used hairpins to scratch without unraveling hairdo!).

Dirt and wax were washed off using hot water and shampoo made from dried 布海苔 funori (a type of red algae) and うどん粉 udonko (wheat flour). You can see here an attempt at recreating the mix.

Then, hair was allowed to dry naturally (taking care of not catching a cold in freezing weather!).

[4dkellysworld]

Be Not Discouraged

If you were working on a mathematical problem and came to the end of your process only to find you had made an error, you would know at once that you had not applied the principle correctly. You would not even so much as vaguely think the principle to be wrong. You would start over to solve the matter from the premise that the principle was absolutely correct, always has been and always will be, and that the problem could be worked out with ease when the principle was thoroughly understood. When you fail to make a demonstration of Truth, what do you oftentimes say? "Well I have tried and tried and been faithful, and for some reason or other, my problem does not work out." You are so busy with the problem itself that you have little or no time to go to the Principle, which you must abide by, and study it more closely and become more conversant with it. You spend all your time with the unsolved problem, hoping against hope that, after all, you can get through somehow. In mathematics, you simply set aside the wrong results which were obtained through misapplication of the principle and go to work at the beginning again. Or if you are not sure about some line of work, you go to the principle of the thing and refresh yourself, then start out with the positive knowledge that if you apply the principle correctly, the answer follows without question. If this is true in mathematics, it is infinitely more true in metaphysics. If it is true in solving the problems about material existence, it is infinitely true in solving the riddle of human life. Note this one thing: until you are thoroughly convinced that you are working to demonstrate an absolute Principle that is always perfect and infallible, you are likely to whine around over unsolved problems, spending most of the time in failure, instead of going to the fountainhead and increasing your understanding of the principle. Learn this: effect is not to be considered at all; seek only the causative side of existence. If a man offered you a loaf of bread or handful of wheat, your human sense would seize the loaf of bread, but your wisdom would take the seed. Why? Because the loaf of bread, while it would more quickly satisfy human craving, would soon be gone. But the seed is the substance of increase and would grow into unlimited possibilities, for there is no end to the result of one seed if properly planted. In a short time, the result of one seed could make a girdle of flowers or wheat around the entire world. You know all this - it is merely brought to your remembrance with admonition to "get understanding" and stop trying to gain material things. Once you have an understanding for the infinitude of substance, the material effect takes care of itself quite naturally. The harvest is plentiful; you can make it into flour and bread at will, or you can plant it again and increase the substance. Keep your thoughts away from the seeming material existence and let them dwell in the kingdom of Reality. Remember that you are not controlled by the human being side of your nature, but the God-being side which is the Soul, which is the Spirit that is one with the Father within and is a majority because of Its singleness. When a man begins to work on the inner side of his life, truly "the fields are white" with grain. A thousand ways open to him. Opportunity is not an evasive something but a sure thing, coming as often as man is ready to claim it. Form the habit of first acknowledging the principle you are working with as absolutely above change and as infallible. This is your premise, so whenever you fail to work out a problem, do not give a moment's consideration to the failure. The only thing that is wrong is your application of the principle, so go quickly to this principle; seek a better understanding of it and find out what you missed in your application and then work your problem out anew.

The Joy Bringer by Walter C. Lanyon