The Story Of Alfredo Quinoa - Revised just slightly

From the short account in my previous post you may already have gained some appreciation about the plant from which Alfredo would eventually emerge. When his mother began to growing in the lightly watered Andean sunshine, she carried with her both an illustrious and complex gene stock.

As this particular parent plant began to grow and flourish in the ideal conditions of the arid plain, the flowers and seeds gradually began to form and bud. This is what we will recognize as the birth time of Alfredo and his many siblings.
He and his newly hatched family enjoyed a carefree, if somewhat inert and short, childhood. They swayed together softy in the gentle breezes, maturing at differing paces, depending on how much water and sunlight they were able to extract or expose themselves to. Chatting quietly amongst themselves during these happy days (all quinoa are born with an ability to speak Spanish Quinoan!), the young grain nodules spent many an hour contemplating their existence with pure and childlike simplicity. Why are we here? What will our future hold? Will I one day be big and strong like Mother?

It took only a couple of months before some of thsse questions were answered. One day a rickety old truck drove out across the dusty plain, a plume of dry dirt trailing high behind it. It stopped next to the rapidly maturing patch of quinoa plants and a group of men and woman jumped from the vehicle, immediately setting to work hand picking those flowers which had reached maturity. The plucked flowers were temporarily placed in baskets on the farm labourer’s backs, before eventually being taken out and dumped onto a large square of canvass laid out on some dirt adjoining the crop field. Alfredo and his nicely matured family were among those who were unceremoniously separated from their Mothers stem and placed into a basket on the back of a stooped and heavily calloused woman. He could hear the noise of the threshing before he saw it. Thwack! Thwack!!

When his basket was eventually dumped onto the ever growing green pile, Alfredo caught a brief glimpse of several other men and women who were taking handfuls of his plant cousins and whacking them with great vigour and zest over some stones in the middle of the canvass. The naked white seeds that sprung from the threshing were rolling all over the ground, almost covering it as they moved around in a state of wild pandemonium. It was only half an hour before a naked Alfredo was also tumbling across the ground like a bouncing gymnast. A short while after coming to a rest, Alfredo was swept up into one of several big piles; and then shovelled into a large burlap sack.

It was deathly quiet inside the ever plumping sack. All chatter had ended and each grain was stoic and silent as they waited to see what other surprises might be in store for them. That question too was soon answered when the top of the sack was closed and sewn shut. The entire sack and its contents was then lifted manually onto the back of the old truck. Alberto’s little Quinoan heart began to race when he heard the truck engine rumble into action. His little heart was still palpitating as he felt himself rocking and swaying in a frictionless dance with all of his newly found cousins, as the truck began motoring along a bumpy dirt track.

Day soon turned into night, the word on that having been passed down to Alfredo by some cousins near the top of the sack. The truck continued plodding on its merry way into the darkness. Throughout the night it travelled ever downwards from the mountains on a twisting road. When the new day dawned, Alfredo heard the unfamiliar sound of seagulls. The truck had apparently arrived at a port and a short time later the separate grains of quinoa were squashed even tighter together as a large crane lifted the heavy bag from the back of the truck and swung it down into the cargo hold of a rusty old tramp steamer. Many uneventful hours passed before the quinoa heard and felt the boat’s engine spring into life. Shortly after, the sack Alfredo was in began to rock and sway to the rhythm of a swirling ocean as the boat sailed away from Peru.

After several days of non-stop steaming the boat eventually docked in a place called San Francisco, on the west coast of North America. The quinoa knew this because they’d overheard some of the crew talking about it as they were sticking grappling hooks into their bag as the boat was being prepared for unloading.

Over the next few hours the group of Peruvian quinoa were shifted through several locations within the port perimeter. During their first stop the bag was fumigated, apparently to ensure no fungal spores had hitched a ride with them from Peru. The sack Alfredo was in, along with hundreds of others, were next inspected by several uniformed men before the truck they’d been placed on lurched out of the port’s gate and onto a north bound highway.

By mid-afternoon the newly quarantined and customs cleared quinoa arrived at a sorting factory on the outskirts of San Francisco. Alfredo was awed by the sparking facility, which he saw only briefly while his sack was being emptied onto a wide conveyer belt. The millions or newly arrived Peruvian quinoa grains were being promptly moved through a variety of stainless steel sorting trays. This process was apparently meant to determine grain quality, and to weed out those seeds which didn’t quite cut the mustard. Much to Alfredo’s surprise he found himself dumped into a stainless steel container marked “Export Quality”. Alfredo reflected that this good fortune may have in large part been due to the sunny northern exposure he’d enjoyed during most of his early growing period.

The next step in Alfredo’s exciting adventure was a warm bath in a slightly saline solution. When the water was later drained from the container, large fans blew heated air to dry them all. Alfredo was beginning to think he’d landed in the lap of luxury, quinoa heaven.

After the flurry of exciting activity enjoyed following their arrival in the USA, the next few days were deathly quiet by comparison. The Peruvians were pretty much left to their own devices, happy to still be in the warm confines of the modern factory. On their fourth day in America a fork lift suddenly appeared in their holding area. It lifted Alfredo’s container and moved it to an adjoining room where it was placed back down on a bench. The pristinely clean and dry grains were now weighed and packaged by another machine, which sorted and sealed them into 20 kilogram plastic bags. When each bag was full it was sealed with a heat machine and then neatly stacked onto a packing pellet by a small Asian man. When the pellet was fully loaded and in the shape of a nice neat cube, it was wrapped and covered with thick plastic sheeting. The same forklift then lifted the crate onto the back of another truck, again much newer than the one on which they’d left their little field on the Nazca Plains.

Alfredo was excited once more when the truck engine started and they began their next journey by snaking out of the factory grounds and heading via a busy highway towards the south.

Alfredo had no idea, but he and his companions were all now heading towards San Francisco International Airport. When the truck finally stopped at a big cargo shed on the fringe of the airport, a range of paperwork was signed off by the driver before another forklift turned up and offloaded the pellets of quinoa by a corner of a large hangar. A short while later an even bigger fork lift arrived. It carefully picked up the ten pellets of plastic packaged quinoa and deposited them separately onto a set of carriages. These were then hauled train like across the tarmac to where another big machine waited to lift them into the hold of a big bellied cargo plane.

After a long taxi down San Francisco Airport’s main runway the heavily laden plane banked in ever rising circles until the pilot finally set a course towards the North East. The plane continued flying roughly on that vector until it eventually touched down at Manchester Airport in Central England, ten hours later.

Once back on the ground, the plane taxied for a short time before coming to a halt. Alfredo noticed he and his band of brothers were pretty much going through the reverse of what had happened when they departed from San Francisco. When the various mini-moves and paperwork were completed they found themselves sitting inside another truck, a covered one, which travelled down rain and wind swept roads until it finally entered a gated compound on an industrial estate. The truck had its own mechanical lifting device; and it swiftly unloaded its cargo of plastic coated quinoa pellets into a big open sided shed. Being a weekend, there wasn’t a soul in sight for a full two days. The Peruvian quinoa were left to shiver in their plastic bags, grateful that their outer plastic coating at least protected them from the worst of the inclement weather.

Not long after the sun rose on Monday morning, a much sunnier day, people began arriving at the site. They burst into an immediate flurry of activity. The plastic covering over the pellets was first removed after a series of slices from a sharp Stanley knife enabled their release. Several men then carried each of the 20 kilogram bags of quinoa over to a wooden hopper deeper inside the shed. Slicing the big bags open with their own sharp knives, the men emptied the contents into a machine that directed the grains towards being packaged into smaller one kilogram plastic bags.

Each of the bags emerging from the machine had the following label printed on it:
Macro Health Foods
Peruvian Quinoa
Gluten Free Goodness for the Health Conscious

Alfredo, who’d long been separated from any of the grains he’d grown up with, was loaded into bag number 20 of the 24 bags which were eventually packed into a stiff cardboard box. When the box was full it was closed and sealed with short lengths of silver tape. The box was then man-handled and placed on top of an ever growing pile in a row of metal storage shelves at the back of the complex.

Alfredo once again thought this might be the end of the long road he’d been on, but he was again to be proved wrong. After sitting on the shelf for nearly a fortnight, a worker arrived holding a sheet of white address stickers labelled in bold typeface:

The Urban Farmer Health Food Store
O'Grady Street
NORTH FITZROY
MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA.

One of those labels, along with a sealed plastic bag containing other delivery and customs clearance paper work, was stuck on the side of the box Alfredo had been placed in. Three weeks earlier, Alfredo had no idea that a truck, ship or airplane had even existed. Now he was about to be despatched on his second long air journey, this time a 24 hour flight back to the southern hemisphere; but to an entirely different continent.

There was a lot of happy and friendly chatter going on in the well-stocked Fitzroy Health Food shop when Alfredo’s box was opened and its contents neatly laid out inside an open steel mesh basket near the cash register. Over the next week or so, Alfredo watched on as many of the bags he’d arrived with began disappearing. People had been coming into the shop, picking up the bags of quinoa and making enquiries to the owner about the grains beneficial qualities. When they were happy with the explanation, some of the people reached into their pocket and handed over some rectangular pieces of paper to the shopkeeper. In return they were handed over the bag of quinoa and then walked out of the shop with their healthy new purchase.

One day, about a week after he’d been placed near the bottom of the basket, a young hipster couple named Brad and Juanita came into the shop. They couldn’t help but notice Peruvian quinoa was available as they unloaded all of their other purchases at the counter. The couple already seemed to know a bit about this healthy new food product which had been sweeping the world like a storm in recent years. After some enthusiastic discussion between themselves they too handed over some of the rectangular paper in exchange for the bag containing Alfredo.

As he was being jostled about inside the bag with an array of other healthy and fresh food items, Alfredo’s thoughts once more began to wonder what his final fate might be. It didn’t take very long before he found out.

That evening Brad and Juanita were hosting a small dinner party for a few of their friends. Pride of place on the carbohydrate side of things was a bowl of fluffy quinoa. Juanita had stirred in some diced dried apricots and pomegranate seeds to the dish for a bit of extra flavour and colour. The magic of static electricity had held Alfredo against the side of the plastic bag as he watched half of his Peruvian pals slide from the bag and into a boiling pot of water. He and the remaining quinoa were then left on the kitchen bench to ponder what they’d just witnessed. Their proximity to the diners also allowed Alfredo a chance to eavesdrop as his owners and their friends shared some thoughts about the quinoa dish

“A bit bland,” said one. “I think I prefer brown rice.” said another guest. Juanita thought the quinoa was actually delicious, while Brad remained fairly non-committal about the taste and texture. He did, however, question the ethics of the first world depriving the people of the Andes from their cheap and reliable source of carbohydrates. He’d apparently read all about this in an environmental blog he subscribed to.

There didn’t seem to be any final or telling agreement on the novel new food. At the end of the evening when they were clearing up, the remaining quinoa was sealed into its bag with a peg to stop air from entering. Alfredo and the other surviving quinoa grains were then placed at the back of a pantry cupboard, alongside some packets of couscous, brown rice and whole meal pasta.

Whether it was because Brad and Juanita truly didn’t like the taste; or if they’d just moved on with other things in their lives, Alfredo remained untasted in the pantry cupboard for the next eighteen months. Maybe his owners had forgotten they’d ever brought him?

In any case, it seems the young hipster couple had eventually reached a point in their life where they felt they’d outgrown the trendy town house they’d been calling home for the last few years. Juanita was also showing distinct signs of being with child and so the couple decided they needed to buy a larger house further out in the suburbs. As part of their preparing for that move, Brad did a thorough clean out of all the cupboards, throwing out anything that was either redundant to their needs or had reached it’s used by date. The Macro Food Company in Manchester had printed on Alfredo’s bag a best before date that had been reached a full six months earlier. Brad pondered the bag and its contents for a few moments, possibly wondering if the dry quinoa might still be useable. In the end he decided that because they hadn’t used or thought about the quinoa for so long, it was probably silly to think they ever would. He put the half empty bag of quinoa into a garbage bag, along with all the other stuff that was to be thrown out.

The next leg of Alfredo’s journey was consequently a short trip to a food bin at the side of the house. This was followed three days later by a ride in a rubbish truck to a landfill site.

The truck load of smelly rubbish, mostly all rotting perishables and plastic, was soon being tipped over edge of an embankment. Gravity forced the dumped contents to slide down a long slope until it joined the big pile of rubbish below. This it seemed was to Alfredo’s final fate after his long journey, confined to eternity on a rubbish pile far from the Plains of Nazca in Peru. Fate, however, had a few more tricks up its sleeve for little Alfredo.

That night when all the trucks had stopped moving about and the people who worked at the landfill site had gone home, groups of scavengers emerged to forage through the day’s smelly new offerings. Amongst these scavengers was a sickly looking grey rat. Alfredo felt its whiskers scrape against the side of his plastic bag as the rat sniffed the contents. The rat’s large teeth then easily began nibbling through the plastic and the rodent was soon gorging itself on the contents, including our hero, Alfredo.
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The following day a new and different group of workers arrived at the landfill site. These white clad men and women were biologists attached to one of Melbourne’s leading research laboratories. They were at the waste site in search of the feral and fetid animals who fed on Melbourne’s detritus. One of their professors had long held a theory that animals who’d been exposed to our good and bad bacteria, which food waste had in abundance, may have built up useful resistance to some of humankinds as yet unsolved medical mysteries.

With a series of elaborate traps and nets permanently set up around the site, the scientists carefully checked to see if any had been successful in the luring of unsuspecting animals. On this particular morning’s check, the harvest was bountiful and included several different kinds of insect, mice, cats and other rodents, including the grey rat which had the previous night eaten Alfredo. The catches of the day were placed in boxes and taken to a laboratory where they were quickly and humanely despatched, before samples of their DNA were taken.

Once the full DNA sequences were sequestered and recorded, a few weeks later, the results were referred to the professor and his team for analysis.

One of the results, the one which came from our new rat acquaintance, showed some very interesting signs which were far from the norm. The professor so was intrigued by the finding he referred them to a colleague of his who was working on a similar kind of research in Jerusalem, Israel. Together they worked in close collaboration over the coming months, before they eventually managed to determine from the rat’s genome a ground breaking way in which melanomas, skin cancers, might be either reduced in size and frequency or totally eliminated. It turned out then that little Alfredo’s life was not in vain after all.

The party that was eventually held at a Jerusalem restaurant to celebrate the discovery, and also the selling of that discovery’s intellectual property rights to a large pharmaceutical company, coincidentally had a very special dish on the menu. A steaming pile of freshly cooked quinoa - the healthy power food which had just recently been approved as a kosher food in Israel!