Archive for the ‘peanut butter’ Tag
How about a few strange trivia facts. After all this blog isn’t called Every-Useless-Thing for nothing. Here’s a small collection of useless things for your enjoyment.
- One pound of peanut butter can contain up to 150 bug fragments and 5 rodent hairs.
- Roughly 100 people die every year from choking on ball-point pens.
- Some scientists view love in terms of addiction. One study discovered that monogamous pairing is based in the same region of the brain as drug addiction.
- Studies show that 87 percent of people fear getting trapped in dull conversations at dinner parties.
- A retired teacher in California once admitted that he taught for 17 years without knowing how to read or write.
- There is a real neurological disorder called Alien Hand Syndrome (AHS). It causes the sufferer’s hands to move independently, without control of the action.
- The acid in your stomach is so powerful that it can dissolve a razor blade in less than a week.
- You can find 20 million microscopic animals living on a square inch of human skin.
- More than 90 percent of women have asymmetrical breasts.
- On any given day, approximately 400 million people across the globe will have sexual intercourse, which means that about 4,000 people are probably having sex right now.
THE HUMAN MIRACLE – NOT
For many years I’ve considered myself a true “foodie”. I’ve always made a point to try damn near anything called food. Of course, that has changed dramatically as I’ve aged. Truthfully, I don’t really miss my entrees of “dog soup” and “cat spring rolls” I once tried in Korea. So, when I started collecting odd facts and trivia, food always seems to be mentioned in some fashion. Here are a few little-known facts about food I’ve collected. How many have your heard before?
- What is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box? Bingo.
- What is the American name for the British delicacy known as trotters? Pig’s feet.
- Under US government regulations, what percentage of peanut butter has to be peanuts? 90%.
- Who originally coined the phrase that has been appropriated as the slogan for Maxwell House coffee; “Good to the last drop”? President Theodore Roosevelt
- What recipe did Texas ice cream maker Elmer Doolin buy for a $100 from the owner of a San Antonio cafĂ© in 1933 and later used to make a fortune? The recipe for tasty corn chips that was later marketed as Fritos. He made them at night in his mother’s kitchen and peddled them from his Model-T Ford.
- A California winemaker from Napa Valley once named a wine in honor of Marilyn Monroe. What was it called? Marilyn Merlot.
- What food product was discovered because of a long camel ride? Cottage cheese. An Arab trader found that milk he was carrying in a goatskin bag had turned into a tasty solid white curd.
- Peter Cooper, best known for inventing the locomotive “Tom Thumb”, patented a dessert in 1845. What was it? A gelatin treat that eventually became known as Jell-O when it was marketed in 1897.
- In 1867 Emperor Napoleon III had a chemist develop a food product “for the army, navy, and the needy classes of the population.” What was it? Margarine.
- What was the drink we know as the Bloody Mary originally called? The Red Snapper, which was it’s name when it crossed the Atlantic from Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.
THIS HAS BEEN A LOW CARB POSTING
With most of the gardening chores completed things have slowed down around here a bit. Who am I kidding? We’re just killing time until the day the “Fair” opens. That would be the Fair held every year in Fryeburg, Maine. It’s by far the largest event in the state and it’s a week long party for the many thousands of attendees from all over the country. We’ll be attending next week and it will be twelve hours of farm animals, large crowds, crazy good food, and hundreds and hundreds of photographs. So like I said we’re just killing time until the Fair.
Today I’ve been completing a number of small projects which required very little effort on my part. As I was walking through the house I remembered one thing that I absolutely had to do sooner rather than later. It was time for the Concord grape wine to be bottled. It’s been almost three months in the making and the fermentation has finally stopped.
The final product is a beautiful dry ruby red wine with an unbelievable bouquet. So it’s a half hour of washing bottles and making my usual mess. I tend to be a bit clumsy and if I don’t spill at least one bottle of wine in the process I just don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything.
There’s nothing like siphoning wine through a little plastic tube, spilling it on the floor, down your leg, and onto nearby books, papers, and house pets. Curiosity may have killed the cat but in this house a good squirt of wine onto a persistently nosy cat is as good as it gets.
After filling and corking nineteen bottles it was then time to put on the fancy gold PVC covers. This requires a large pot of boiling water into which the bottle tops are quickly dipped causing the cover to shrink and seal the corks. It’s imperative that the bottle not remain in the hot water for more than a few seconds or there will be trouble. That truth became immediately evident when my first cool glass bottle was held into the boiling water for more than four or five seconds and the top exploded. Now I’m down to eighteen bottles but with a much better understanding of things I shouldn’t do.
I finished the remainder of the job but held back another bottle for the better-half and I to have with dinner. I poured myself a large glassful and waited for her arrival from work. I found out in the middle of the second glass that there was definitely a sufficient amount of alcohol in the wine. I had a wonderful glow on which translated to my canceling dinner. There was no way I could safely cook without possibly burning down the house.
When the better-half arrived home she drank a couple of mouthfuls of the wine, declared it delicious, and then immediately opened a beer (she isn’t much of a wine lover). She made her own meal and I ended up having an off-the-cuff snack consisting of Wheat Thins, a dab of Smart Balance and peanut butter with a dash of triple berry jam.
This batch of wine has passed my final acid test. Any wine that can make me eat this slop for dinner contains more than enough alcohol. I tested it with my vinometer and it contain just a hair more than 9 percent. That makes for an excellent batch of 18 proof red wine, more than enough to make almost any food edible.
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