Random Quotes of Fiction....
Overheard on BART:
"He's turning 22 the same day I turn 29 forever."
Overheard in Safeway:
"Isn't there a movie called The Story of Gravy?"
"I never heard of it. What's it about?"
"Six degrees of fat separation."
"You're such an idiot sometimes, but I love you."
Flank steak composition with avocado and tomatoes on a bed of spinach.
from epicurious:
Given the reaction to the case of White V Orange Cheddar, I was tempted to take the easy route today and ask: Which is better, pink grapefruit or white? But 1) I already know the answer (pink, by a grove) and 2) I have an opening for another back-story, one that's been bugging me. Why are grapefruit called grapefruit?
I checked a couple of books in arm's reach but am putting my trust, as always, in Waverley Root and his extraordinary "Food" (someone, somewhere, needs to find the un-truncated version of that manuscript and publish it online; it would go on for weeks). He says the old story is that some European botanist in the 1700s came across a fruit in Jamaica that tasted like grape, but of course that's nonsense, or otherwise wine stores would be more acidic. The other explanation, that this particular citrus grows in grapelike bunches, is also not true. As he says, "If individual fruits sometimes grow very close together, producing in this case a clusterlike effect, it is because the tree bears heavily, ripening up to 30 or 40 fruits on a single branch."
So there you have it. What's more fascinating is that the grapefruit is, as Root puts it, "an infant in a world where most commonly eaten fruits count their ages in millennia." It was only recognized as a species in 1830, and commercial cultivation only began in Florida 60 years after that.
The most everything-old-is-new-again detail in Root's essay, though: Grapefruit was a strange fruit to most Americans until the Great Depression, when it took off because citrus could be had for free with . . . food stamps. And I have to give him the last laugh: "This brought the fruit into families which had previously been so ignorant of it that welfare boards received the same complaint from a number of housewives: They had boiled grapefruit for hours and it still remained tough."
Another in our series of rediscovered gems from food historian Charles Perry:
Among the high-minded, strenuously active eccentrics of Victorian England, the naturalist and Inspector of Public Fisheries Frank Buckland stands out. His particular interest was enriching the English diet, and he was famous for his willingness to taste absolutely anything that might prove edible. Field mice, he said, were excellent--thunderously better than house mice. He did complain about the flavor of some panther steaks that had been buried in the ground for a while.
But as the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. His father, the geologist/clergyman William Buckland, dean of Westminster, had much the same habits. In his "Life of Frank Buckland," George Bompas recorded that at William Buckland's table, "Alligator was a rare delicacy . . . but puppies were occasionally and mice frequently eaten. So also at the Deanery, hedgehog, tortoise, potted ostrich and occasionally rats, frogs and snails were served up for the delectation of favoured guests." ("Party at the Deanery," wrote one guest in his diary; "tripe for dinner; don't like crocodile for breakfast.")
In 1856 the senior Buckland was asked to taste a strange, stony object and accidentally swallowed it. I turned out to be the heart of Louis XIV, stolen by grave robbers after the French Revolution. He said that it was rather tough, but that after all, it was the first heart of a French king he had tasted.
--Charles Perry
Money Trees
As perhaps a companion piece to last week’s skull nickels, here’s yet another thing I had no idea existed. Apparently in several wooded areas around the UK, passersby have been stopping for decades (if not centuries), meticulously hammering small denomination coins intro trees. Most of the trees seem to be in and around Cumbria and Portmeirion, and I didn’t find a single example of a tree like this located outside the UK. According to this recent article by the BBC, the practice might date back to the early 1700s in Scotland where ill people stuck florins into trees with the idea that the tree would take away their sickness. The practice seems akin to love padlocks or Americans collaborative effort of sticking their nasty ass gum all over everything. (photos courtesy shaun whiteman, drew, ken werwerka, rachel bibby, paul moriss, ministry, donald mcdougal, heartbeeps, via lustik and hrtbps)
Last winter, Timothy Dahl, founder and editor of the six-year-old home improvement blog Charles & Hudson (charlesandhudson.com), and his wife, Laura, a fashion designer, learned that she was pregnant. In addition to the usual prenatal preparations, they developed Built by Kids (builtbykids.com), a Web site devoted to do-it-yourself projects that parents and children can collaborate on, like herb gardens planted in a wheelbarrow, refurbished tatami tables and handmade wagons. The tasks were tested and refined during a series of daylong workshops with friends at the couple’s Los Angeles bungalow.
Their intention is to revive some of the backyard know-how that children had before the distractions of television, video games and other off-the-shelf entertainment, Mr. Dahl said. The do-it-yourself movement is enjoying a long, fashionable run as an alternative to consumer culture, he added, but when children are involved, the results are “too often dismissed as disposable ‘crafts.’ ”
The site went live on Sept. 5, and two days later Ms. Dahl gave birth to their son, Hunter. Asked what Hunter’s first project might be, Mr. Dahl said it would most likely be something to do with gardening.
“Kids as young as 2½ like to sit and feel the dirt,” he said. “It’s so visceral.”
Sleep restores us. And not getting enough of it can put us at greater risk of heart disease and cancer. Sleep even makes us smarter. Yet researchers are finding that more than 10 percent of the population is chronically sleep deprived.
If you're having trouble slipping into—and remaining in—Dreamland, don't dart straight to prescription sleep drugs, which can be habit-forming, harmful if you live with certain conditions, and even downright bizarre! (Some people develop sleep-eating and sleep-driving habits when using prescription sleeping pills.)
The good news is, science has found that many foods, drinks, herbs, and other natural sleep aids can help put you to sleep … naturally. In fact, just this summer, researchers made the connection between tart cherry juice and getting adequate shut-eye. Here are some natural food- and drink-based sleep aids.
Cherries
In the small study, participants drank eight ounces of the tart cherry (also known as sour cherry) juice in the morning, and another eight ounces in the evening, for two weeks and reported better sleeping habits. Since all cherries are naturally high in melatonin, a compound that makes us sleepy, you can try eating a cup as a snack before it's time for shut-eye if you'd rather not drink the juice.
Fish
Certain fish and sea creatures contain sleep-inducing tryptophan, including shrimp, cod, tuna, and halibut. But since not all seafood choices are healthy for us (some are high in contaminants) or for the planet (many are overfished, or methods for catching them kill other species), stick to catches like Pacific cod from Alaska or pole-caught Albacore tuna from the U.S. or British Columbia.
If keeping track of the latest safe seafood guidelines is too complicated, you can get your tryptophan fix from other things. You've probably heard that warm milk can help you sleep, since milk contains tryptophan. But the key is to combine carbs with a protein containing tryptophan to help your body better utilize the sleep inducer. Try pairing a cup of whole grain cereal with organic milk before bedtime.
Lemon balm
This lemon-scented member of the mint family has been a sleep-inducing superstar for ages. Other benefits include better digestion and decreased agitation. Try making lemon balm tea by steeping 1 to 2 teaspoons of the dried herb in 1 cup of hot water for 5 to 10 minutes. (If you take thyroid meds, talk to you doctor…drinking the tea could mean you'll have to adjust your dosage.)
Other herbs
If lemon balm's not your thing, another herb, sage, also works as a natural sleep aid. Just steep four tablespoons in a cup of hot water, steep for four hours, strain, and reheat to drink. Chamomile tea and valerian teas, other sleep inducers, are also more widely available pre-bagged in natural food stores, if you don't want to fuss with the aforementioned straining herbs.
If you live in the Northeast you'll want to buy your pumpkins early this year because they're going to run out fast, as farmers predicted last week. A rainy summer and flooding from Irene have ruined many pumpkin crops. Now that the official harvest has come in, it looks like instead of hunting for The Great Pumpkin, most people will just be hunting for "a" pumpkin.
"I'm getting a lot of calls from other pumpkin retailers asking if I might have some pumpkins I'll be able to wholesale to them, but my response is 'sorry. I barely have enough for myself,'" David Dumaresq of Farmer Dave's told CBS Boston.
If you do find a pumpkin, you'll have to pay the piper. Reader Nugatory said that at the HEB last week, 1-foot in diameter pumpkins were going for $9.99 per. "Guess I'm not going to be carving any this year," Nugatory said.
Some may choose to forgo pumpkins entirely. There's those gnobbly little gourds that you can try instead. For a crafty and frugal approach, reader lim says, "It isn't quite the same, but draw ghosts on milk jugs. The white jugs (as opposed to the more translucent ones) look great at night. Just cut a hole in the back to put the candle in."
For others, fewer pumpkins on the shelves just mean fewer pumpkins that end up in the streets. "I dont' like to put punkins outside anyway," said reader HogwartsProfessor, "Someone always smashes them."
But if you do want a pumpkin, get it soon, because there's not going to be many left at the stores after this initial wave.
Visitors look at a sculpture entitled "Drift" by Australian sculptor Ron Mueck at the San Ildefonso Museum in Mexico City September 20, 2011.
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