Treasures of Knowledge Found in a Seminary Classroom
Posted in The Life of the Historian and tagged with Knowledge, School on February 13, 2008One of the great things I love about blogging is being able to share with you, world, all the great insightful things I’m learning here at seminary. That’s why I’m proud to share with you a thought-provoking discussion I had with 3 other students during break time in our philosophy class.
What prompted this discussion was Easter candy (a holiday we do up big ‘roun’ here), particularly those malted milk ball eggs. Once they were mentioned, someone asked (it might have been me):
What exactly is malt?
Ooh, good question. In fact, this is such a good question that it sparked at least 5 minutes of debate on what it could be. Since we knew that you could have malt vinegar, malted milkshakes, and malted beer, we thought it might be something you do to a liquid, like fermentation.
The lady in front of us, who is from South Africa, had to chime in, just like you imagine would happen in a coffee house where intelligent discussions are going on. She said that in South Africa, malt is something you give a child to increase their appetite. She described it as a cross between honey, syrup, and cod liver oil. Yum.
Not satisfied that we’ve figured out how all these things could be “malt,” I came home, sat down, and put to use the years of research skills that have been honed by my Bachelor of Arts in history and my soon to be Masters of Divinity.
After painstaking research, I found that the information guru Dr. Wikipedia had something to say about our quandary. According to him, “Malt is a process applied to cereal grains, in which the grains are made to germinate and then quickly dried before the plant develops.” Malted milk, which is used in milkshakes and candy, is this type of malt mixed with flour and milk, and then evaporated.
So, yes it is a process, but it is a process done to grain, not liquid. It also makes it seem much less gross than I imagined it was based on what I’ve learned about gelatin and carrageenan (don’t click if you don’t want to know…I will say that I eat ice cream anyway).
There you go. Now you know something that I learned in seminary. And you didn’t have to pay a cent in tuition.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Awesome. I’m glad that your Master of Divinity degree taught you to use Wikipedia as your source of all knowledge. After all, using Wikipedia is kind of like divination.
By the way, after you graduate I’m going to start calling you “Dr. Rothe” because you have an “M.D.” :)
February 14th, 2008 at 8:08 am
LOL….that is too cute. Don’t you hate it when you get curious about a process of food-making then you get grossed out? Kinda takes away your enjoyment of eating it.
Like hot dogs….was never a really big fan to begin with, then I found out what they were really made of. :-)
February 18th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Cool. I’m getting a seminary education while blogging. My son(14) uses Wikipedia for almost everything.