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Trivia ~ Food
The science of apple growing is called pomology
More than 7,000 different types of apples are grown around the world One apple contains about 75 calories and five grams of fiber, which is 20 percent of the USDA's daily fiber recommendation.
The popular tropical Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), a major export of Brazil, has resisted all attempts at artificial cultivation thus far. Because it depends on the mixed environment of the Amazon rainforest for its survival, it cannot survive for long in a single-species plantation.
Brazil nut trees are some of the tallest and oldest trees in the Amazon rainforest. Their reproduction depends on a mammal, the squirrel-like agouti, which is able to crack open the hard shells of the nuts. Although the agoutis eat many of the nuts, some of the nuts they bury sprout into new trees.
Today, almost all commercial Brazil nut harvesting is done in the forest from wild trees. For this reason, the purchasing of Brazil nuts encourages preservation of the Amazon rainforest.
Egg Sizes
Who determines that an egg is a Jumbo egg? Does the farmer look at one and say, "boy, that's a jumbo egg you got there."
Actually, there is an official egg "measuring" system that is used in the grocery store. Eggs are measured by the weight of a dozen eggs. So, here's the system:
Jumbo: 30 oz.
Extra-Large: 27 oz
Large: 24 oz
Medium: 21 oz
Small: 18 ozNow you can buy in confidence.
Why can milk last only a short period of time before it spoils, while butter can sit in the fridge forever before it gets bad?
The microbes involved in spoilage require water to live and multiply. Milk contains about 93 percent water, while butter has much less. So, bacteria can live happily in milk but not as happily in butter.
Dry cheeses like Parmesan last even longer because they are made in a process that, in large part, removes the water from milk.
You know, you just never get the opportunity to shell a macadamia nut. Almost every other nut is available with its shell still on, but not that one. Why not?
It turns out that it takes about 300 pounds per-square-inch to break open the Macadamia shell. Thus, without the machinery that the producers have, people wouldn't be able to eat the nuts without first pulverizing them just to open them up. Think about this the next time you put your hand in a parrot's cage.
What's hotter than a jalapeno? A habanero pepper is about 50-100 times hotter. The measurement of pepper potency is the Scoville Unit. A bell pepper rings no bells at 100 Scoville Units, max. The jalapeno can hit 3,000 units, and set off an alarm. A typical habanero is a 275,000-unit scorcher. Minors may not eat it unless accompanied by an adult and restaurants may serve it only if a fire extinguisher is nearby.
There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.
When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
Ice Cream cannot be credited to one person who created this gift to humanity, for surely he or she would have already been awarded the Nobel Prize. Short of world peace and cures for terrible diseases, what better mark of progress and civilization could there be than the advent of ice cream in general and, Rocky Road ice cream in particular?
Ice cream debuted in China 4000 years ago among the nobility in the form of a milk and rice concoction packed in snow. Fruit ices and a form of sherbet followed. In the Middle Ages travelers brought these treats back to Italy, where it was still a dessert reserved for the upper crust. Improved cheaper refrigeration techniques in the 16th century brought ice cream to the masses, probably the most important dot on the timeline of history until the discovery of antibiotics 400 years later.
Just what is plum pudding and why aren't there any plums in it?
Here's a dish with a peekaboo ingredient: who knows where it's hiding. In fact if you were to dive into a plum pudding with sensitive electronic detection devices, you would find nary a plum in the place.
A treat for desert since the earliest Thanksgiving celebrations, plum pudding's ingredients include flour, sugar, spices and suet (fat). This mush is steamed, not baked, and is unleavened, making it pudding rather than cake.
As for plums, the stealth ingredient that lends its name to this post-turkey goo, credit linguistic practices currant, uh, current in colonial America. "Plums" and "plumbs" were what they called raisins, the final ingredient in plum pudding.
Ketchup was originally a Chinese medicine.
Ketchup was sold in the United States as a patent medicine in the early nineteenth century — Dr. Miles' Compound Extract of Tomato
The "57" on Heinz Ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.
How were potato chips invented?
The humble potato chip is more popular in America than in any other part of the world. America's favorite snack food, it is a direct descendant of another popular potato treat, the french fry. How did it happen?
According to the popular story, a dinner guest (rumored to have been wealthy railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt) was dining at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1853. He sent his Saratoga chips (Thin potato slices cooked like french fries back to the kitchen because they were too thick. The chef, a Native American named George Crum, was annoyed at the guest's complaint, so he responded by slicing the potatoes into extremely thin sections, which he fried in oil and salted.
From that day forward, potato chips evolved into the many forms and varieties we have today including chips of many flavors, fat-free potato chips cooked in high-tech synthetic chemicals, and even artificially shaped chips pressed from potato pulp and sold in cardboard tubes.
Beer: Truly a Blessed Beverage!
Monks in Germany began brewing bock beers back in the 1500s'. They used the full-bodied libations to fortify themselves while fasting during Lent. But along with calories… bock beers contain a lot of alcohol.
One abbot was concerned that the merriment caused by the potent brew might be sacrilegious, and sent a barrel to Rome, asking for guidance.
The cardinals - wine drinkers all—found the bitter brew unappealing. They not only decided the monks could continue to make their beer… they commended them for being willing to drink such awful stuff as a way to pay for their sins.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
Popcorn
The corn used for popping is a variety of Indian corn called Zea mays everta. This corn has a harder outer shell than other corns. As the corn is heated, the moisture in the grain is converted to steam, which causes a tremendous pressure to be exerted against the shell. The pop is caused when the pressure is allowed to build up until the kernel explodes with such force that it throws out its white pulpy insides.
And talk about a long shelf life... Archaeologists have been able to pop 1,000- year-old popcorn!
"Champagne,"
Do you like to play "let's pretend?" Surely winegrowers in New York State and California revel in it. Champagne is an area of France, not too far from Paris. It's where the authentic bubbly comes from. Labeling a beverage California or New York State Champagne is like selling Mississippi Nova Scotia Salmon. It doesn't make geographical sense.
So why doesn't Italy and, for that matter Germany, to name another prominent wine-producing nation, market their own Champagne-style sparkling wines (for that's what the New York and California products are) as if they were the same as the original? Because they have signed a treaty that says they can't use the "C" word.
The U. S. never signed it. The federal government does regulate the content of any wine called "Champagne," but doesn't care if it was produced in Bordeaux, Brooklyn or on Mars.You don't like it? Go pop your cork.
In Japan, you can buy pickled-orchid ice cream. You can also order eel-flavored ice cream and clam ice cream. Did you say snake is one of your favorite flavors? You can get that, too.
I’ll spare you what kind of topping goes on them to make a sundae.
The next time you feel like bragging about your local micro-brewery, consider this: 5000 years ago the Sumerians in the ancient Near East were already brewing eight different kinds of beer. Not only that, they devoted 40 percent of their grain harvest to their brewing operations.
Like the Roman Empire, the Sumerians are long gone. Rome decline and fell, but I suspect that the Sumerians just got tipsy and toppled over one day.
Barnum's Animal Crackers came into being in 1902, but these cookies have existed in similar forms for many years previous. In the late 1800s, "Animals" (animal-shaped fancy cookies) were im ported from England. Many bakeries in America made different versions called "Animals" or "Circus Crackers". Bakeries be gan to unite into larger companies with national distribution at the end of the 19th century, and one of these companies was the National Biscuit Company. Their animal biscuits were officially renamed "Barnum's Animals" in 1902.
During the Christmas season, the package was redesigned as a circus wagon with a string attached, so it could be hung on a Christmas tree as an ornament. They sold for five cents, and were an immediate hit.
In total, there have been 37 different varieties of animal crackers since 1902. The current 17 varieties are tigers, cougars, camels, rhinoceros, kangaroos, hippopotami, bison, lions, hyenas, zebras, elephants, sheep, bears, gorillas, monkeys, seals, and giraffes. There are 22 crackers in a box.
More than 40 million packages of Animal Crackers are sold each year, and they are exported to 17 countries. In a single pro duction shift, 30 miles of string is used on the packages, which runs into 8,000 miles of string per year. 15,000 cartons and 300,000 animals are produced per hour at the bakery.
Per capita, Canada has more doughnut shops than any other country.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
The second week of November is National Split Pea Soup Week, according to the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Industry. They used to serve that stuff in my high school cafeteria, but they spelled it Split Pea Soup Weak.
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
Ever wonder why do they put that ring of salt around the top of a Margarita?
I can't confirm the rumor that this wonderful drink contains all the vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients a human being needs to stay healthy. But darn it, it certainly satisfies on a warm and sunny -- or any other -- day.
As for the salt around the top of the Margarita, if you think it's pretty, I don't want to spoil your aesthetic experience. If you like the way it tastes, salud! But in truth it's there first of all to keep you from disowning your tongue after you've downed your last chili pepper or dipped the last chip into the salsa de muerta. Salt helps to dampen the fire of food that's hot, hot, hot. Even if you think you are a muchacho macho, Mexican food can push the envelope when it comes to spices. The salt insures that your sense of taste survives the experience.
Arachibutyrophobia is fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Tapping the top of an agitated beverage can with a key, spoon, or other metal object actually DOES reduce your chance of being sprayed?
You would have to drink 100 cups of coffee in four hours to get the lethal dose of caffeine--ten grams.
Most “Chilean Sea Bass” purveyed in upscale restaurants is really Patagonian Toothfish. The hotter than heck wasabi that comes with your sushi is almost certainly a cheaper blend of horseradish and mustard. And key lime pie is rarely made from the real and very expensive yellow key limes of Florida.
Next thing, they’ll claim that Rocky Mountain Oysters aren’t really . . .”
Would a cavemen diet be a healthy one for us?
Like the cavemen and women, we are also hunters and gatherers. Of course, we hunt and gather mp3 files and other goodies (like trivia) on the Web, while they stalked wild animals for dinner.
Some nutrition writers see the cave people as the model for what is natural, suggesting that we return meat to the featured place in our diet it had before we became so concerned with the amount and kinds of fat we consume. But before the youth of America goes off and binges on saber- toothed tiger burgers, somebody needs to force a reality check. The cavemen didn’t have electric knives, microwaves and supermarkets that delivered. They burned off the calories they consumed, while we are busy belly-building.
As for me, I do physical work at work, so I can red meat it. Pass me some of those prime ribs of mastodon or I’ll club you.
Why do we call that yellow vegetable corn?
Americans are unique in their insistence that corn is corn. In the rest of the English-speaking world, soccer is football and what Americans call corn is maize. Outside of the U. S., “corn” is a grain, such as wheat (in England) or oats (Scotland).
Don’t let this linguistic maize create cobwebs in your brain. Etymologically, “corn” comes from the Latin, granum, or grain. How we got corn from “granum” beats me, but that’s what the experts say. The vegetable is maize in Europe and elsewhere because Columbus discovered it, along with America, and the Indians he met in Cuba called it “mahiz.” It’s corn in America because the Indians brought it to the Pilgrims, who, not having discussed it with Columbus and guessing that it was a grain, called it “corn,” a word their descendants hung onto.
That’s it in a nutshell, or should I say, a kernel?
In 1765, the sandwich was invented by John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who gave the food its name. The Earl used to order roast beef between pieces of toast for a snack while he was at the gaming tables, it allowed him to keep one hand free to play while he ate.
Honey keeps almost forever on the shelf. It's probably the most long lasting of any food and has been found in a still edible state after sitting for centuries in Egyptian tombs dating back to the Pharaohs.
Remember that the next time you're tempted to tell YOUR honey that he or she is spoiled rotten.
Since a hamburger contains no ham--and hopefully, no horse--I suppose we could label any other version of chopped meat in any way we wish. This particular nom de hash, however, has a specific historical origin.
Hamburgers were named for the Germany city of Hamburg, where they supposedly originated. Salisbury Steak also has a German connection. But it was named not after anything German but rather to make it sound as un-German as possible.
Feelings against Germany ran so high during and after World War I that efforts were made to rid English of German names. Sauerkraut, for example, became "victory cabbage." And hamburger steak was renamed Salisbury Steak, after Dr. James Salisbury, who had extolled the health benefits from eating chopped meat. When feelings cooled off, victory cabbage went kaput. But Salisbury Steak is still on the menu.
"Hors d'oeuvres"
If we called them "fancy pre-dinner snacks," we wouldn't get to show our savoir faire. And caterers couldn't charge as much for them. (Wouldn't it be funny if the French paraded their cosmopolitanism by calling them "fancy pre-dinner snacks?")
But if you can slather it on a cracker, spear it with a toothpick or pick it off a silver platter carried by a server dressed like a penguin, they're definitely hors d'oeuvres. The phrase comes from architecture, where "outside the work," the literal translation, meant an outbuilding. The food hors d'oeuvres, by analogy, are outside the main meal. So the phrase, like many things french, sounds fancier than it is.
That's "outbuilding," by the way, not to be confused with "outhouse," although I've been to some parties where the latter would have been the appropriate culinary comparison.
Are you one of those people who still think there's something extra special about brown eggs? Brown or white, all eggs have the same nutritional value. The color is simply an attribute that varies between chicken breeds. Brown-feathered birds lay the brown eggs. The only legitimate reason why you should pay more for them is that they come from bigger birds that have to be fed more.
So the next time you hear someone making a claim for the superiority of brown eggs, tell them you won't fall for that shell game and the yolk's on them.
The scientific name for cacao beans (from whence comes chocolate) is Theobroma cacao, which literally translated means "food of the gods."
The Aztec ruler Montezuma II consumed upwards to fifty cups of chocolate daily in the belief that the substance possessed aphrodisiacal qualities.
In Bavaria, beer is not considered an alcoholic drink. It is legally defined as a staple food.
Americans consume more than 353 million pounds of turkey during National Turkey Lovers' Month in June. By comparison, more than 675 million pounds of turkey will be consumed at Thanksgiving.
Ben and Jerry's sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
Carbonated beverages in the United States are known by various names, such as soda and pop. But the name given to the 19th century prototype of all these drinks really takes the cake: "Impregnated Water."
Perhaps it was a warning to people with bubbly personalities not to get carried away.
Yeah? Who's the POPpa?
Many carbonated beverages were thought to have curative powers. The early version of the drink 7-Up, for example, was advertised as "For Home & Hospital Use." The implication is that it could relieve stomach distress. Or perhaps be used as a disinfectant?
Contrary to popular myth, carob isn't inherently better for you than chocolate.
Please note: this is not about chocolate's power to restore the soul, cleanse the spirit, bring enlightenment and turn you on. Nothing else on this planet can do that. No, this is more mundane - you know, calories, sugar content, nutrition, etc.
BUT, although carob, prepared from the ground and roasted pods of the carob tree, does not differ enough in sugar and other content to make a difference, it does taste sweeter than chocolate before both are processed. So you need to add less sugar to a recipe in which you substitute carob for chocolate. Hence it's presence in "health" food.
Final thought: What, then, are you going to do to add life to the years you think you've added to your life by eating carob?
McDonald's fast-food restaurants have been operating in the Middle East and Africa since 1992. The success was especially evident when 15,000 customers lined up on opening day in 1994 in Kuwait City. The line at the drive-thru window was seven miles long.
The first chocolate chip cookie was developed in the kitchen of a Whitman, Massachusetts, country inn in 1937. Simple experiments led to a recipe combining bits of chocolate candy with a shortbread type cookie dough.
Figs have the highest dietary fiber content of any common fruit, nut, or vegetable.
Fresh apples float because 25 percent of their volume is air.
Maine had the largest Blueberry crop in the nation in 2000; 60,000 acres in production producing 74.5 million pounds
The capsaicin found in hot peppers has been found to be an anticoagulant. Anticoagulants tend to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots.
Asparagus is a member of the Lily family. The name "asparagus" comes from the Greek language and means "sprout" or "shoot."
Rinse food products off knives immediately after use, especially mayonnaise, which is a highly corrosive substance. If staining should occur, use a non-abrasive polishing compound to remove it.
Parsley is a common herb of the Mediterranean area and was well known to the ancient Greeks. They considered it too sacred to eat. Romans did serve it as a garnish and to improve the taste of food. They believed it had special powers and would keep them sober
Any onion that does not form a large bulb is called either a scallion or shallot. These onions are also called green onion, and in larger, variety, leek.
The Indians of the eastern U.S. had a particular liking for meats served with fruit sauces. The ripening of cranberries and the Thanksgiving holiday coincide, which is one reason why cranberry relish is traditionally served with roast turkey.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
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