But Peanuts

I haven't had much time to post, what with being busy and working on the future instead of the immediate. Even though writing here regularly was always intended to help me get to the next place in my life professionally (I accomplished my goal but I still enjoy doing the research, writing, writing about food and posting regularly.) And even though wiki pages and portable internet are now so commonplace, that a 450 word treatise on black kale is unwanted, possibly unneeded at this juncture of time and technology - I still have so much to say about the subject of food.

To get back in the swing of things, I grabbed a book off the shelf – Volume 2 of Encyclopedia of Fast Food and Junk Food (K-Z), randomly opened a page and will now write words about...peanut butter. It's like a creamy smooth prompt, that's good on a sandwich.

Most of us instantly think of George Washington Carver's connection to the peanut. But what was it he actually did with the peanut is the fuzzy part: Did he improve the crop, breed a new strain, save it from the peanut weevil, invent peanut butter? I remembered him as the 'inventor' of peanut butter, but I remembered wrong.

Not just wrong in that way which presumes a modern American thought of doing something and gets labeled as an inventor - as if innovator or entrepreneur is an insult. Grinding peanuts – an activity that had probably been performed at least once or twice in the 1,000s of years the crop had been domesticated – no Mr. Carver's contribution to the popularity of the peanut seems to be encouraging southern farmers to rotate nitrogen fixing peanuts with their cotton crop, improving soil and yields.

It is our old friend and huckster, John Harvey Kellogg who became the champion of peanut butter. A religious vegetarian and health food evangelical, Mr. Kellogg promoted ground peanuts as a substitute for 'cow's butter'. Besides his popular with the influential sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, Mr. Kellogg also began manufacturing peanut butter as we know it.

Peanuts are 50% oil and turn rancid quickly, this problem was solved by English chemist Wm. Norman who figured out a way to saturate unsaturated fats. Shelf life was extended at about the same time Mr. Carver's crop rotation put enough peanuts in production to lower the product's cost and in California, Rosefield Packing began selling peanut butter with hydrogenated oil replacing natural oil – the result was a low-priced, solid a room temperature product. All the forces converged to make peanut butter an affordable staple of American kitchens.

By 2000, three companies controlled the majority of the peanut butter Market, Rosefield's Skippy, which was acquired by Unilever, ConAgra's Peter Pan and Proctor & Gamble's Jif. What started out as a health food and is often thought of as a quintessential children's food, peanut butter is now sweetened and transfatted to the point of one cup can contain 1500 calories and twice the daily allowance of fat recommended by the USDA. Added to the questions of relative healthiness of the products are concerns over food allergies for young eaters and salmonella outbreaks, the worst, 2009's poisoned over 22,500 and killed nine.

This post wasn't so hard, actually pretty enjoyable once I sat down and did it. Plus, I can totally Cliff Claven someone if they try to say George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. Rather than pick another  random subject to kick off next week's posting, I will write about the danger of immersion blenders. Plus by that time, I should have the 12 stitches removed from my finger and I'll be able to type about it pain free.

My Poor, Neglected Blog

My latest piece in the paper went up yesterday. It was written about prunes. Yes, prunes. You can read it here.

There was so much more that I wanted to say about prunes. 200 words seems like a jigsaw puzzle for words, requiring me to align, shape, fit, and piece together different parts to make the whole -except not all the pieces fit, making that a lame analogy.

Despite the small space, I chose not write about the back-end aspects of prunes. Not because a daily paper is even more PG-13 than this blog, it's because, I'm just not terribly concerned with what comes out of butts – It' s not like I would have become an internist, Galenite, or scatologist if I were, those weren't really viable career paths for me, but such talk is best reserved for preschoolers and Brett Ratner films.

Or not, because about 40% of all comments people made to me when they found out my latest FOODday blurb was about prunes contained a variation on the word 'poop'. So, I'll cover this real quick. Prunes are high in soluble fiber, about 22%. Fiber helps foods retain moisture. Apricots, cherries, and other dried fruits contain roughly equal amounts of fiber. So what gives prunes their colon scraping reputaion? The dried fruit is especially high in sorbitol – 15% by weight of both the dried fruit and it's juice. Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol. It occurs naturally in fruits, but is better known as a sweetening agent in foods for diabetics. Our bodies don't process sorbitol, allowing us to enjoy the sweet sensations without the calories. The current school of thought is that the high levels of sorbitol enhance the prune's laxative qualities.

Because of the space constraints, I was unable to tell the story of a former friend – geography and time, not bad feelings separate us – who loved prunes so much as a child, her mom needed to hide the prunes like other parents stash the chocolate. She claimed even as a wee child, she was able to eat a pound.

Nor was I able to mention that prunes undergo Maillard browning, giving them a caramel, unami like flavor, which in turn makes them so wonderful in meat dishes. And I wasn't able to mention the thing I learned in my research – older people prefer dried fruits, not because of the promise of regularity but because dried and canned fruits are what they grew up eating. And in an era of 'fresh' Argentinian pears, Chilean apples and Californian 'strawberries', I'm not sure they are wrong.

This is Why I Don't Go Out

I finally had the occasion to go out for a more traditional fancy pants meal. Since the end of my restaurant fast of aught eleven, I have gone out exclusively for wings, french fries, and BBQ brisket - the very things I things I can’t/won’t/don’t make at home. Well and an occasional slice of pizza. I was invited to a hip, well regarded restaurant - a beachhead of the future in a still evolving neighborhood for good company and the promise of good food. 

I walked away disappointed. 

It was a meal somewhere between breakfast and brunch - brbrunchfast?. The restaurant was obviously and painfully short-staffed. And since it was a weekend, at a popular place, where my fellow citizens who enjoy the activity of gerund brunching and all that that entails - waiting, paying nine bucks for a waffle, making the scene - I am going to assume there were one or two call outs. The restaurant, which shall remain nameless, because I think they were managing, not well, but the effort was there on a bad morning, so I don’t want to pick apart the experience.  

This is what I should have ordered. 

The funny part about going out, especially sitting in a well-lit, high-cellinged, thoughtfully designed spot - the food doesn’t have to be good. Getting waited on, having dirty dishes disappear, having a bit of background noise but still can talk to people at your table, there is a certain theatrical aspect to sitting in a restaurant that is part of the pleasure. All you have to do is make sure the food doesn’t suck. 

The food really didn’t suck, but it wasn’t good enough to make up for the thin service. And it was aggressively priced but here’s the part I don’t quite understand, I wasn’t paying. I was surrounded by people I enjoy and respect, everyone was in a good mood - We never get a chance to socialize and because the food took so long getting to the table, we had extra time. They were duly bloody mary’d, then prosecco’d, I had to go to work after our meal, so I passed but if there were ever a day for a breakfast beer, that would have been it.  

Despite this bubble of goodwill, surrounded by people I enjoy, celebrating our work...some aspect of the morning, the wait - for food, for drinks, to order, to get food took some of the enjoyment out of the experience. Then I started doing my food math, my very special brand of calculation I do with prepared food - the equation of how much better I could have done the meal for 15% of the cost. And once the mental calculator is going, the pleasure is lost. 

This is why I don’t go out, the let down, the disappointment. There are times when I listen to people rip apart movies and I want to say, why, it said Nicholas Cage/Michael Bay on the advertisements, you knew what you were getting for your $12. But movies, like food have the power to be transformative, help us see the world in new ways. I understand the let down when an experience isn’t as good as you want it to be or wish it could be. Next time we all somehow have time to get together - mimosas and French Toast at my place. 

Breakfast for Champions

Is breakfast a meal et at a specific time or is it a type of food? Ron Swanson

Denny’s serves breakfast all day, and if Ayn Rand taught me anything besides it’s okay to blow up buildings, it’s that the market is always right, so breakfast must be a type of food. Except the most populated nation state in the world, India doesn’t really designate foods as breakfast foods - although Poha, flattened rice flakes and milk is popular in the morning. (US cereal companies after a few false starts have figured out how to crack this emerging market by making cereals that remain crunchy in the warmed milk - two of the preferences in India). So breakfast is a meal, right? 

A History of Food by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, which was and maybe I don’t even need to say this, written in French, doesn’t have a separate entry for breakfast foods. While the encyclopedic Food and Drink in America has an epic 7 page entry plus another column and a half dedicated to Breakfast Drinks. 

Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food explains countries like Spain, Germany and Austria partake (traditionally) in two breakfasts. The British who have a strange thing going on with canned beans at breakfast also have their breakfast like elevenes. Pho is likely to start your day in Vietnam but even on my most hungover, I have never had Pho before noon.

The aforementioned Alan Davidson defines the term breakfast as the first meal of the day. Circling back to the States, our origins as a nation of farmers would have had us eating two large meals before noon - comprised of not particularly familiar breakfasty foods. Pilgrims would have sat down to cider, ale, cornmeal mush and maybe a little syrup. 

As the country prospered, breakfast grew to include meats, cured meats, meat pies, cakes, pies, coffee, teas and still hard ciders. Waves of immigrants particularly those from Scandinavian and Germanic countries added starchy pancakes and donuts to our cultural breakfast menu. Our evolution to an agricultural to industrial economy coincided with the rise of breakfast cereals - keep in mind in house cooking, ventilation, and refrigeration all would have been the exception for most urban dwellers. Cereal, although an outgrowth of vegetarian and sobriety movements of the turn of the previous century, offered convenience rather than conversion.  

The other day, I had eggs, bacon - two items I normally throw in bread and call it a sandwich - but I had it with a side of hash browns instead. Breakfast? I don’t know I had it at one in the afternoon. 

I am going to go with Davidson on this one, breakfast is the first meal of the day no matter what it is you eat. Waffles are fine for dinner (if you are Dutch).