"Albrecht" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> On Apr 3, 9:38?am, "Wayne Lundberg" >
> wrote:
> > Interesting. I thought caliche is plaster, made from superheated calcium
or
> > gypsum. Now you've motivated me to get into Google for som serious
research!
> > Bottom line is the pyramids were wildly decordated by painting over
> > plastered walls and fronts. Some can still be seen and enjoyed.
>
> Perhaps a thousand years ago, both Spain and England were covered with
> forests. Perhaps you've heard of the Great Caledonian Wood that
> extended from Scotland to Wales. It's 95% gone now, and England's
> heavy industrial centers are there.
>
> Spain wasn't that wooded, except near the Pyrenees, because of the
> dryer climate due to the fact that the Iberian peninsula is
> essentially part of Africa.
>
> The builders of both countries needed lime for their cement, and they
> cut down the forests to heat limestone so it could be pulverized into
> lime. Later, the British continued to cut down their forests for wood
> to make charcoal to fire their furnaces as they manufactured steel and
> iron products.
>
> Spain didn't become industrialized. The wealth of the New World was
> squandered fighting the Protestant Reformation. Millions of people
> expelled from Iberia and France went to England, Holland and Germany
> to work in the factories there.
>
> > And surely the lime (lye?) used to make nixtamal is made from wood ash
left
> > from the cooking sites, potash (potassium carbonate) and lime (calcium
> > oxide)?
>
> Lime and lye are two different things. The flat Yucatan peninsula and
> south Florida are made of limestone formed from the skeletons of
> an incredible number of ancient animals that extracted calcium from
> sea water to form their skeletons.
>
> Later on, flat plains made of limestone get lifted up and great blocks
> of limestone are found in the mountains, far from the sea where they
> formed a billion years ago.
>
> I recently viewed a video that showed Mexican laborers prying
> limestone out of a mountain in Mexico so they could burn it to extract
> the lime.
>
> Nixtamalization seems to be a multiple step operation. The lye is used
> to soften the husks from the dried white corn by its caustic action. I
> suppose a mild acid would do the same thing, but we wouldn't care to
> take either an acid or a caustic into our systems.
>
> If I go to Food4Less and look in the Mexican products section, I can
> buy a little bag of slaked lime for about $0.69. The slaked lime is
> not going to turn into lye with the addition of water. It is to be
> added to the ground white corn.
>
> It's just so much easier to buy masa seca or masa in a bag.
>
>
I buy tortillas in a bag at my local grocery store, and tamales from a
Mexican theme grocery store on Broadway and Main.

But you bring up an interesting scenario of disappearning forests and the
like. And this brings to mind today's debate on global warming.

The Wisconsin Ice Age has not stopped because Al Gore or anybody else in a
science classroom has decreed a change. It has been going on now for over
50,000 years, trapping some Mongol explorers here in Central America, and
only some 15,000 years ago letting them out and others in as the lush
forests of northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona and even California were
brought to their knees to become wastelands and deserts. Again, humans had
nothing to do with this.

Nor did humans have anything to do with the evolution of the Sahara
wasteland. But that's another story.

Interesting thread, even though mildly related to Mexican cooking.

Wayne

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