Buttermilk

Many home cooks keep buttermilk on hand for pancakes, ranch dressing or corn bread. They might know that it makes more tender cakes (because it softens the gluten in flour), loftier biscuits (its acid boosts leaveners like baking soda and baking powder) and thicker dressings (lactic acid in buttermilk gently curdles proteins into a smooth mass). 

But what few cooks know is that commercial buttermilk isn’t really buttermilk. It is made from regular low-fat or skim milk, usually low-grade rejects from cheese and butter companies. The milk is inoculated with cultures to make it acidic, and thickened with additives like locust bean gum and carrageenan. The result is a flattened facsimile of the real thing, as a ring tone is to a song. 

This week. a look a buttermilk.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke (British science fiction author, inventor and futurist,1917 -  2008)

Buttermilk

The humble oreo cookie.  In 1912, Nabisco had the revolutionary new idea for a cookie: two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between. The first Oreo cookie looked very similar to the Oreo cookie of today, with only a slight difference in the design on the chocolate disks. 

Great disputes have arisen as to the best way to eat them: dunking them in milk or twisting off one side and eating the middle first.  However you eat them, Oreos have become part of twentieth century culture.

This week, a look at the many flavors of O-R-E-O.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do." - Joe Walsh (American musician, songwriter and record producer, 1947 - )

Oreo

Regional American BBQ Sauces

We've talked about barbecue before. Barbecue sauce is a flavoring condiment ranging from watery to very thick consistency. As the name implies, it was created as an accompaniment to barbecued foods. While it can be applied to any food, it usually tops meat after cooking or during barbecuing, grilling, or baking. Traditionally it has been a favored sauce for pork or beef ribs and chicken.

But why stop there? Isn't everything better with barbecue sauce? Well, maybe not maple bacon donuts, but you get the general idea.

This week, a look at regional American BBQ sauces.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Imagination is more important than knowledge..." - Albert Einstein (US (German-born) theoretical physicist, 1879 - 1955)

Regional American Barbecue Sauces

Canned Ripe California Olives Spread Botulism in 1919

In 1919, canned ripe olives spread an outbreak of deadly Botulism to three states. Nineteen people died, almost half the deaths ever caused by food products commercially canned in California, all killed in one outbreak.

This week, a look at one of the 10 deadliest outbreaks of foodborne illness in U.S. history.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination." - Bertrand Russell (British author, mathematician, and philosopher, 1872 - 1970)

Canned Ripe California Olives

Hues on First

We've talked about color additives that give the red tint to your fruit punch and the green hue to your mint-flavored toothpaste. New research suggests color, from the color of the plate to the color of the tablecloth, can affect how much people serve themselves.

This week, a look at the hues of food and how it affects serving sizes.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." - Carl Jung (Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, 1875-1961)


Hues on First

Spark of Ingenuity

A match a tool for starting a fire under controlled conditions. It is also a British football magazine, a clone of Superboy, a supermarket chain in Hungary and a carbonated soft drink sold in Japan. But I digress.

This week, a look at the history of matches.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (US novelist, 1926 - )


Spark

Gum

Chewing gum in various forms has existed since at least 5,000 years ago, as chewing gum with tooth imprints, made of birch bark tar, has been found in Finland. The ancient Aztecs used chicle as a base for making a gum-like substance. Forms of chewing gums were also used in Ancient Greece, made from the resin of the mastic tree. The American Indians chewed resin made from the sap of spruce trees.

Most chewing gum companies have since switched to synthetic gum bases because of their low price and availability. Thank goodness we don't need to chew on trees anymore.

This week, a look at the history of chewing gum.

TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!" - Yuri Gagarin (Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, and the first human to journey into outer space, 1934 - 1989)


Chew