Three things from DAH. Free every Friday!
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DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. Today's special: excess.

First up this week, Xanthan … 
I expect you've seen Xanthan gum on an ingredient list somewhere. First question to answer: What's if for? It's a thickening agent. Second question: Where's it come from? It's created when sugar is fermented with a cabbage bacterium: Xanthomonas campestris. Xanthan gum is important to gluten-free baking. And, news to me, you can use Xanthan gum in your home kitchen!  Not that I have plans to do so, although my Dad certainly would have tried it. It's all about making things thicker, which in cooking and life seems more challenging than making things thinner. I'm feeling this way after spending months in thinning semi-isolation (too few thickening social events) and binge watching the Great British Baking Show. I also call to mind a line in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: "When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?" I do.

Second up this week, Xerosis … 
Xerosis is a bigger deal for some than others. Dry, itchy skin. Xanthan gum can't solve the problem, although it may be an ingredient in some temporal soothing lotion. Hives are skin-itchy, too, but it's not as general a condition as xerosis. Hives can be the result of a histamine intolerance (too much histamine). Too much histamine can also lead to headaches and migraines. Rice pudding contains histamine, so, if you develop hives or headaches, don't blame the jam that won't stir out of suspension. I've had random episodes of xerosis, but all have cleared up. And I've spoken with many people who said the sulfur in wine gave them headaches. I explain that the sulfur level is pretty low, so they're more likely responding to the histamines in wine, in which case, take an antihistamine. Handy tip!

Third up this week, Xanthophobia …  
The color yellow is pretty ubiquitous: school busses, bananas, warning signs, bananas, lemons, and hazard-avoidance wear, curries and more. If you suffer from Xanthophobia daily life is a challenge. It's the fear of the color yellow, and it's a real (if rare) thing. A couple of the phobia symptoms are lightheadedness and tingling sensations. Not caused by histamines, so an antimhistamine is unlikely to help. But how debilitating! There are a variety of color phobias (grouped under the term Chromophobia). PTSD is a common cause of Chromophobia, which would explain why many suffers are dealing with Erythrophobia (red … as in blood, death, violence). I suppose that would make a nice xanthan gum thickened rice pudding with red stawberry jam stirred in but not out a less desirable dish.  

A book about not much: 
Pottering: A Cure for Modern Life, by Anna McGovern
A slight book about pottering (puttering in the USA). I feel a bit silly commending a book that's down on digital in my digitally published The There There Letter, but, here I am: A contradiction. Sometimes I need to find happiness by just letting go and simpling being. "When you potter, you take pleasure in small things: you don't need any special equipment" (from the book). Perhaps it is't all about the gear.

And a bit more:

There is a girl inside
by Lucille Clifton

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.
She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.


And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's Sometimes

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.