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It's times like these I'm thankful for my obsessive-compulsive nature and the need to washing my hands ten times a day working in the food industry.
Stay safe, wash your hands, and practice social distancing. There is plenty of historical evidence showing it works, dating back just over 100 years to the last time a pandemic swept the globe.
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand." - Baruch Spinoza (Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin, 1632 - 1677)
Food has color. Some bright, some pale, but the colors are distinct. For decades everyone wanted a deep, mahogany red Delicious apple because it looked nice. It was mushy and mealy, but it looked nice. Those days are in the past for apples, which come in many different shades and taste much better than the previous standard.
I remember my mother describing how they kneaded in the color to margarine. It seemed strange, considering I grew up with neon colored candies, to think you had to add your own color to margarine. Everything has its own tale, as they say, and margarine is no exception.
This week, a look at how the government got into the color of margarine
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Happiness depends upon ourselves." - Aristotle (Greek philosopher and polymath, 384 BC - 322 BC)
The phrase “it’s all Greek to me” (meaning “I don’t understand it, it’s unintelligible”) is a common enough one in English to be the name of an awful lot of Greek restaurants. Quite a few other languages also use Greek as the stereotypical hard-to-understand language – mostly European languages like Portuguese, Spanish, or Norwegian, but also Persian/Farsi.
A Greek person, on the other hand, would express the same meaning with the phrase “It’s Chinese to me” – as would speakers of various other languages including French, Dutch, Russian, and various Eastern European languages; it’s an alternative option to Greek in Spanish and Portuguese, too. In fact Greek and Chinese seem to be the most popular choices of “unintelligible” languages. A few others choose Arabic or Hebrew; Dutch seems to be unique in having a phrase “That’s Latin for me”, while English, of course, also has “double Dutch”. Pleasingly, the constructed language Esperanto has a phrase “it’s all Volapük [a rival constructed language] to me”.
This week, well, you get the idea.
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult." - Ann Radcliffe (English author and pioneer of Gothic fiction, 1764 - 1823)
That's Greek to me or it's (all) Greek to me is an idiom in English, expressing that something is difficult to understand.
The idiom is typically used with respect to something of a foreign nature, however it may be considered an insult to some. Complexity or imprecision of verbal or written expression or diagram, often containing excessive use of jargon, dialect, mathematics, science, symbols, or diagrams. The metaphor makes reference to Greek (either ancient or modern), as an archetypal foreign form of communication both written and spoken. Technically, the phrase is classified as a dead metaphor, meaning that its components cannot be used separately, unlike for example the dormant metaphor "foot of the hill", which permits saying "that hill has a tree at its foot".
This week, if it's all Greek to you and me, what is it to the Greeks?
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions." - Alfred Lord Tennyson (British poet, 1809 - 1892)
Fruit. It's good for you, filled with dietary fiber, vitamins (especially vitamin C), and antioxidants. In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate seeds. Apricots, bananas, and grapes, as well as bean pods, corn grains, tomatoes, cucumbers, and (in their shells) acorns and almonds, are all technically fruits. Popularly, however, the term is restricted to the ripened ovaries that are sweet and either succulent or pulpy.
But they don't look and/or taste like they used to. In some cases, that's probably good.
This week, what some fruit looked like before humans intervened.
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "You do your best work if you do a job that makes you happy." - Bob Ross (American artist and TV presenter, 1942 - 1995)
This is What Fruit Looked Like Before Humans Intervened by fredwine on Scribd
Vegetables. They're good for you, filled with antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Some grow underground, including root vegetables like potatoes, yams, carrots, turnips and beetroot as well as bulbs like onion and garlic. Green vegetables include leaf vegetables like spinach and cabbage as well as certain legumes like peas and string beans. Many vegetables have seeds inside, and the best-known of these include pumpkin, squash, eggplant and the many kinds of pepper like the green pepper, chilli pepper and the bell pepper or capsicum. Salad vegetables such as lettuce and cucumber are eaten raw while other vegetables, including cauliflower, mushrooms and stem vegetables like asparagus and celery, can be eaten either raw or cooked.
But they don't look and/or taste like they used to. In some cases, that's probably good.
This week, what some vegetables looked like before humans intervened.
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Alexander Pope (English poet and satirist, 1688 - 1744)
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa. North Americans began consuming bananas on a small scale at very high prices shortly after the Civil War, though it was only in the 1880s that the food became more widespread. As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available.
And then, the Sixth Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, had a banana. And it was good.
This week, the rest of the story on the quest to save the banana from extinction and how Science! could be the answer.
TTFN, Fred.
Quote of the week: "Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on." - Karen Elizabeth Gordon (American author, 1947 - )
