Friday - March 28, 2008

Thai Food Jones

Just a quick post. We got some take out Thai tonight from the fancy little place downtown here, and I’m a bit let down. It’s not that we didn’t know better, it’s that we’re spoiled. There are at least 6 top notch Thai places within an hour from where we live, several even garnering top Zagat ratings, but the local joint isn’t so good. But when you’re hungry, and you’ve got to have it now ... well, you know.

Masaman curry is my current favorite. While I cherish many of the other dishes, this one to me is just plain old comfort food. It’s a cross cultural delight; Masaman means Musselman, which is an old way of saying Muslim. So, to support our side, I always order it with pork. See, back in the day the traders brought spices and recipes to Siam from India and the Middle-East, and this one caught on there as an exciting foreign food. All it really is, is marinated meat simmered up in coconut milk with a hot and sweet red curry sauce with extra cinnamon and cardomom, with potatoes and onions added. Sometimes green beans or green peas find their way in, but the best recipes will always have some cashews cooked into them too. Or peanuts, but boiling cashews in coconut milk does something wonderful, whereas peanuts just get soft. Served over steamed rice, a good Masaman isn’t that hot*, just rich and flavorful. And so wonderfully addicting, if you can find a restaurant that makes it right. Our local place can’t. And they don’t even serve it with Ahjaad, which is cucumbers and onions in sweetened vinegar, and has to be the easiest and cheapest side dish on earth.

I’m going to try my hand at making it again. I’ve done this before, and failed. Badly. What I made was edible, but it was Masaman. Here’s one very basic recipe, and here’s a much more authentic one. I’ll get a can of the curry sauce from my favorite Thai place Sunday, and see what I can come up with.

graphic snagged from Thai Table

* To those unused to eating hot spiced food, ”not that hot” means enough heat to make the top of your head or your upper lip sweat a little. This might be an upsetting experience to those folks whose spices are limited to salt, black pepper, and the occassional shake of paprika from a 20 year old can. “Quite hot” will cause your tongue to sting and you will sweat. Buckets, in my case. Proper Thai Hot is usually only experienced in a bowl of the classic shrimp, mushroom, and lemongrass soup called Tom Yung Goon. It really ought to be called Tung Sai Ow. Talk about an aquired taste - made properly this stuff smells like last year’s socks. The soup comes to you boiling hot, with little globs of death-pepper oil floating on the surface. DO NOT EVER slurp this soup. If you do the pepper oil will jump off the surface and blast the back of your throat, giving you a sensation akin to loading up a 12 gauge with needles and firing it right into your mouth. After weekly eating for over a year at a Thai place run for Thai customers, not for ”farangs” (foreigners, ie, you and me) we felt we had built up enough resistance to try the soup full power. WRONG. Forget the sweat or the searing mouth burn. Forget that your lips are on fire halfway across your face. No, even ignore that you swear your eyes are bleeding fire. REAL THAI HOT means you fingers sting from coming in contact with a couple drops of the soup. That’s too much for me to handle, ever. On a more positive note, this is the bad-ass dish, and everything else is much milder in comparison. But please, take my word for it, and start off with “not spicy”. After a dozen or so meals you might be able to work up from “mild” to “medium”, and honestly, that’s enough. Any hotter and you’ll miss out on the wonderful give and take of all the different flavors that makes Thai food such a great adventure in eating.

In the USA, a really good Thai restaurant will not serve you proper Thai spice levels until they know you on sight. At which point it’s over, and you can never get anything mild there again, regardless of what you ask for. Lesser restaurants will serve anyone anything, but their idea of hot is usually just piling on the red chili powder. This is hot, but it misses out on the whole idea. Hot should also mean rich, a balance of increased heat with increased flavor.

Neither of the recipes I linked to makes a curry anywhere near as hot as I like, I can tell just reading them. But I’ll try them first, and if they’re good I’ll add more chiles next time around.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/28/2008 at 08:34 PM   
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   Wednesday - February 27, 2008

Python eats family dog.

Python eats family dog in front of children
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 12:00pm GMT 27/02/2008

An Australian family whose pet guinea pig, cat and dog were eaten by giant pythons menacing their tropical home fears their children could be next on the predators’ menu.

The Peric family watched in horror this week as their much-loved Chihuahua was swallowed by a 16.5 ft long scrub python on the verandah of their home in Kuranda, Queensland.

for the story and GRUESOME pix >>>> http://tinyurl.com/ywlajk

Posted by Drew458     on 02/27/2008 at 12:39 PM   
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   Thursday - December 13, 2007

I knew it!

Now understand, your humble host could stand to loose a few pounds.  I try and work out at least twice a week and watch what I eat, but I find it very hard to loose any weight at all.  My “bad” cholesterol is borderline high, but my “good” cholesterol is very low.

Then I read this:

What if bad fat isn’t so bad?
No one’s ever proved that saturated fat clogs arteries, causes heart disease

Suppose you were forced to live on a diet of red meat and whole milk. A diet that, all told, was at least 60 percent fat — about half of it saturated. If your first thoughts are of statins and stents, you may want to consider the curious case of the Masai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania.

In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist named George Mann, M.D., found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.

Scientists, confused by the finding, argued that the tribe must have certain genetic protections against developing high cholesterol. But when British researchers monitored a group of Masai men who moved to Nairobi and began consuming a more modern diet, they discovered that the men’s cholesterol subsequently skyrocketed.

I’m convinced it is the amount of additives in our diet combined with the near total lack of real grain.  What say you?

Posted by Drew458     on 12/13/2007 at 05:46 PM   
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   Friday - August 10, 2007

Steak, It’s What’s For Dinner

Being Friday and over 100 degrees each day this week, with no air conditioning on the main floor of our house, firing up the grill (outside) is very much preferable to cooking anything more than toast in the house.

We buy our beef from a local farmer (when we don’t slaughter one of our own), so combining that with the venison, rabbit, pork and chicken, there is always an abundance of something to grill in the freezer.

Mrs. DuToit has posted the defining work on how to choose, prepare and eat a fine piece steak.

Steak preferences are going to vary based on steak you had as a child.  What I will attempt to explain is how to make a good steak, starting with a great piece of meat.

This does not apply to cheaper cuts of steak.  And it is ONLY cheaper cuts that you put sauces on, such as hot sauce, A-1, etc.

It is the greatest of insults to the chef to add sauces to the food you are served, such as being served a fine steak and pouring Tabasco on it.  You might as well pee on the table.  It is THAT much of an insult.  If you weren’t taught that at home, now you know.

In addition, you never even ask for the salt to passed to you (or any other condiment on the table, unless it has been passed once, and you are on seconds).  The host/hostess will pass the salt or place salt cellars close to each person.  If, however, the salt is not in front of you (or not on the table), you do NOT ask for it.  Just to close that loop, you also don’t salt your food without tasting it first (exceptions are things like baked potatoes, corn on the cob, etc., that are condiment whores). 

On to steak…

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/10/2007 at 04:03 PM   
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   Monday - July 16, 2007

What is Red Bull?

I admit, I never drink the stuff, but I know a lot of folks who do.

Wired has gone and done the analysis for us so you know what you’re pouring down your gullet.

Enjoy.

What’s Inside: Red Bull

Glucose
Like most popular soft drinks, Red Bull is largely sugar water. But don’t count on its glucose to “give you wings,” as the ad says. Multiple studies have debunked the so-called sugar high.

Taurine
Also known as 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, taurine was originally isolated from bull bile in 1827. Now made synthetically, it is the magical elixir said to bring out the kitesurfing extremophile in any Web-surfing nerd. Taurine’s actual effects, while not as drastic as the hype, are pretty wide-ranging, even from the amount found in a single can: Not only is it an inhibitory neurotransmitter (in some cases acting as a mild sedative) and an age-defying antioxidant, it even has the potential to steady irregular heartbeats.

Glucuronolactone
Internet rumors claimed this was a Vietnam-era experimental drug that causes brain tumors. Luckily, that’s not true. But don’t crumple up your tinfoil hat yet — hardly anyone has looked into exactly what this stuff does. So little research has been done on glucuronolactone (and most of it 50 years ago) that almost all information about it is mere rumor. Users generally believe it fights fatigue and increases well-being, but that could turn out to be bull, too.

There’s more, but I can’t imagine anything more satisfying already, can you? 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/16/2007 at 07:05 AM   
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   Tuesday - December 05, 2006

Food Nazis Strike In New York

Forget the cigarette Nazis. Now we have to contend with the food Nazis. Your government is going to make sure you stay healthy whether you like it or not. Perhaps the good politicians in New York will have a heart and allow restaurants to have a “fat area” outside the back door (next to the smoking area) where customers can go stand in the rain with other similar addicts and enjoy a fried chicken leg or a basket of greasy french fies. These will be the next group of bad people alienated from society and forced to indulge their greasy habit in dark alleys and secret deep-fry hideaways on the edge of town.

What will the nanny-state come for next? How long will it be before somebody realizes that over 45,000 people die in automobile accidents every year and it’s time to ban autos. Besides, they will argue, walking is healthy. It’s coming. Pretty soon our behavior will be monitored for politically correct actions 24/7 and we all will have transmitters which will send data on our food consumption and daily exercise habits to a central computer for assignment of punishment if we deviate from government-mandated rules. Sieg heil!

Experts Say New York Trans Fat Ban a Healthy Move
_{NEW YORK (ABC NEWS) - December 5, 2006}

Following the New York City Board of Health’s unanimous decision to phase trans fats off the city’s restaurant menus, experts say the move could be an important step in saving many people from heart disease.

The measure, first proposed on Sept. 26, will take effect July 1. By this date, restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils that contain artificial trans fats. And by July 1, 2008, they will have to eliminate artificial trans fats from all their foods.

Experts believe trans fats cause harm because they raise “bad” LDL cholesterol and lower “good” HDL cholesterol. This combination has been found to contribute to heart disease — perhaps even more so than saturated fats.

“This is one of the most important actions taken by a city or state health department in many years,” says Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. “The trans-fat ban will save thousands of lives over the next decade.” Jacobson says that other cities and states should adopt the measure, “as long as the FDA and Congress sit on the sidelines.”

“This is a good idea,” says Keith-Thomas Ayoob, associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Trans fat is not a necessity, and there are suitable substitutes.”

“Some opponents of this ban have characterized this as ‘big brother in the kitchen,’” says Meir Stampfer, professor and chairman of the Harvard School of Health’s department of epidemiology.

“To those I would ask, ‘Do you oppose the regulations requiring employees to wash their hands? Do you oppose regulations limiting pesticide residue in food?’” Stampfer adds that consumers probably will not even notice the absence of trans fats.

“This ban does not ban any food item, and its implementation will likely be virtually invisible to consumers,” Stampfer says. “It bans an industrially produced artificial ingredient in the food supply that responsible manufacturers should have taken out themselves long ago.”

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/05/2006 at 03:52 PM   
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   Sunday - October 22, 2006

The Galloping Gourmet

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/22/2006 at 03:03 AM   
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   Tuesday - October 17, 2006

Quote Of The Day

“Cloning could solve a number of long-standing farm problems. Many prize males are not recognized as such until long after they have been tamed by castration. With cloning, that lack of semen would not matter.”

-- Washington Post, “FDA Is Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/17/2006 at 09:06 AM   
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   Monday - May 29, 2006

Memorial Day Munchies

SKIPPER’S BBQ GRILLED RIBS

Ingredients:

3 lbs. country style boneless pork ribs
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 bottle honey bbq sauce
Worcestershire sauce to taste (approx 3 tbsp)
5 tsp. chili powder
2 1/2 tsp. liquid smoke
24 cans beer
1/8 cup olive oil
Aluminum foil
Grill

Instructions:

Start off by placing ribs in a glass casserole dish, rub with oil and then with salt and pepper. Now flatten ribs as much as possible. Ribs racks may be cut in half if needed).

Mix BBQ sauce, chili powder, liquid smoke and Worcestershire sauce in a bowl, set aside. Pour 1-2 cans of beer over ribs. Start drinking the rest of the beer. Pour BBQ sauce mix over ribs.

Roll ribs around in sauce until ribs are covered and beer is mixed with sauce. Sprinkle garlic powder over ribs.

Marinate for at least 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Simmer in oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or just until tender; (don’t try to cook them too fast or they will become tough).

When ribs are finished in the oven, drain them, start grill on medium and allow to heat.

Cover with foil and brush (or pour) on just a small amount of oil to keep ribs from sticking/burning. Brush on first layer of bbq sauce after draining.

Once grill is heated, place ribs on grill. Cook covered for 5-10 minutes, then brush on bbq sauce. Grill another 5-10 minutes, keep adding bbq sauce until there is a thick layer of bbq sauce.

If ribs become somewhat dark, that’s ok; the bbq sauce tastes better cooked than raw. When bbq sauce is all gone, the ribs are almost done.

Grill 5 more minutes to finish cooking bbq sauce, then serve. Optional accessories include: several ears corn on the cob, freshly baked dinner rolls, potato salad, beer.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/29/2006 at 09:28 AM   
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   Wednesday - November 23, 2005

Gone In Twelve Minutes

By golly, there’s one thing we Americans can do better than anyone else in the world ... stuff our faces. MMmmpphh-uummmppphhhh ....

Turkey Gobbled Up In 12 Minutes
Woman crowned gobbling champion
NEW YORK (Reuters)

A day before millions of Americans sit down to eat traditional Thanksgiving dinners, a Virginia woman grabbed the world turkey-eating title on Wednesday by gobbling down a whole roast bird in 12 minutes.

Sonya Thomas, 37 (far left in picture), who weighs just 105 pounds (47.5 kg), beat seven men in the annual Thanksgiving Invitational: a race to eat a 10-pound (4.5-kg) turkey. The smallest in the field, Thomas put her victory down to “swallowing fast.”

“It was very dry and the skin was very dry,” said Thomas, holding her trophy, a roasting pan, over her head. “I just tried to eat fast.” Venerated in competitive eating circles as “The Black Widow”, the Alexandria, Virginia woman said she trained for the event, held at a delicatessen in New York, by chewing gum to get her jaw in top form.

She said she plans to eat turkey again on Thursday, but much more slowly so that she can taste every bite. Her victory was no surprise. She is ranked as the No. 2 competitive eater in the world, behind Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi, according to the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which sponsored the turkey-eating event.

Thomas, who collected $2,500 in prize money, has also dominated her opponents in egg, cheesecake, baked bean, crab-cake, meatball, and fruit-cake eating contests.

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/23/2005 at 10:18 PM   
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   Tuesday - November 22, 2005

Gobble-Gobble

I present the following as a public service. This Thursday is Thanksgiving day in America. A day in which we give thanks to whatever deity you worship for all the good things you currently enjoy in this life. If you don’t believe in a deity then just thank the forces of Chaos. Either way, pause and reflect on your life. Look around you at your family and all the wonderful friends you have.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my wonderful friends here at the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System. You’re a great bunch of people. Even the trolls who come here provide hours of amusement. There are men and women here from all walks of life and our readers (some of whom prefer to just lurk in silence - which is perfectly OK) cover the gamut of human experience.

We have readers in every country in the world (over 70,000 each month). I like to think that’s because in spite of the ignorant, stupid people we showcase and talk about there, there are still an awful lot of people out there who possess common sense, decency and valid morals. Here’s my best wishes to all of you in this season of Thanksgiving ....

Golden Brown Turkey

12 to 15-lb Turkey
½ cup butter or margarine, melted
½ cup butter or margarine
1 cup finely chopped onion
3 cups finely chopped celery
¾ cup finely chopped parsley
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten
12 cups fine fresh white-bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 325°F. Remove giblets from turkey; set aside for gravy. Wash and dry turkey very well inside and out.

Make old-fashioned Dressing:
1- Melt 1/2 cup butter in skillet over low heat.
2- Add onion and celery: sauté until golden, about 5 minutes.
3- Toss lightly with rest of dressing ingredients in large bowl just until well mixed.

Spoon dressing into neck cavity. Bring skin of neck over back: fasten with poultry pin.

Spoon dressing into body cavity. Do not pack. Bake any leftover dressing in covered casserole.

Insert about 5 poultry pins, at regular intervals, to draw body opening together.

With long piece of twine, lace cavity closed, boot lace fashion; tie with knot.

Bend wing tips under body or fasten wings to body with poultry pins. With twine, tie ends of legs together.

Brush turkey all over with some of melted butter.

Insert meat thermometer in inside of thigh at thickest part. Turn, breast side down, on rack in shallow roasting pan.

Roast, uncovered, 2 hours. Turn breast side up.

Saturate cheesecloth square with rest of melted butter; place over turkey breast.
(Or brush turkey with rest of butter; cover breast loosely with square of foil.)

Roast 2 to 2-1/2 hours longer.

As cheesecloth dries out, moisten with pan drippings. (Or brush turkey with drippings.)

Turkey is done when meat thermometer registers 185 to 190°F; leg joint should move freely when twisted, and fleshy part of drumstick should feel soft.

Place turkey on heated platter; remove cheesecloth or foil, twine, and poultry pins. Let stand 20 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make Giblet Gravy.

Makes 15 or 16 servings; about 12 cups dressing.

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/22/2005 at 06:36 PM   
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   Sunday - August 21, 2005

Happy Birthday

A grand birthday party was held yesterday for a 150-year-old. And many happy returns ....

MILWAUKEE (AP)—When it’s Miller Time, Miller Brewing knows how to party. The nation’s second-largest and oldest major brewer threw a 150th birthday bash Saturday with more than 100 descendants of the Miller family attending. Lured by the Goo Goo Dolls, Bon Jovi and Miller beer, the invitation-only event called “The Big Brew-Ha” was expected to draw about 35,000 people to Miller Park, less than a mile from the brewery.

“This celebration has been 150 years in the making, and it’s one that no other major American brewing company is able to celebrate,” said Miller Brewing President and CEO Norman Adami. “We are here to celebrate a major milestone, but more importantly, we are here to celebrate the employees, past and present, who made the last 150 years possible.” Adami read a letter from President Bush, who called the story of Miller a testament to innovation. Tailgating began early in the afternoon as people listened to bands outside the ballpark.

“It’s been long overdue,” said Todd Bandy, sipping a Miller beer with his wife, Trudy, on their 19th wedding anniversary. “Milwaukee needed something like this.” The Bandys praised Miller for keeping close to its heritage. “They didn’t close the factory, they didn’t move it to Mexico,” Todd Bandy said. “When you know Miller is involved, it’s done right.”

Miller, which established light beer, relished the underdog role, even back to its roots in 1855 when the brewery began on the outskirts of Milwaukee. In 1903, the company unveiled High Life—dubbed “The Champagne of Bottle Beer”—and its sales skyrocketed, even at a premium price. A family feud split the business in half before both were ultimately sold to tobacco giant Philip Morris Inc. by 1970. The company’s ad campaigns highlighted “Miller Time” as the time after work for the common man to enjoy a cold beer.

Then came Miller Lite. The brewer launched the low-calorie beer nationwide in 1975 and brought up the famous “tastes great-less filling” ad spots with celebrities like comedian Rodney Dangerfield spearheading the campaign. Lite moved Miller from the seventh leading brewer in the nation in 1970 to second behind Anheuser-Busch by 1977. Now, Miller holds about 18.5 percent of the market share, compared with half by Anheuser-Busch. Miller was taken over by South African Breweries plc three years ago and now operates under the name SABMiller plc, and recent ad campaigns have reversed a 15-year sales decline. “We’ve waited for 150 years,” said Miller sales representative Matt Baumann, “we’ve got to pack a lot of partying in today.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/21/2005 at 08:11 AM   
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   Tuesday - August 16, 2005

More Beer Fun!

Why do smart people drink beer from Anheuser-Busch? Because it’s the beer that made Bud wiser! Get it? Bud wiser? Budweiser? Oh forget it! Folks in St. Louis now have a new beer joke to play with. After an absence of over 40 years, the city’s premier brewery is back in business. Stop in at your favorite bar and ask for a glass of Griesedieck! You ladies out there better be real careful how you pronounce that, OK?

Actually, I’m told Griesedieck is a great tasting beer, following an old German tradition ....

(ST LOUIS TODAY)—History bubbles beneath the brew from the center tap at Dewey’s Pizza. Dewey’s partner Dave Justice caught a glimpse of the tradition recently when he watched a baseball documentary on HBO. On the right side of old Sportsman’s Park, Grand Avenue and Dodier Street in north St. Louis, was a big, red Griesedieck Brothers Beer sign. “I’m sitting there going, ‘That’s sweet,’” Justice said. “How great is that?”

After an absence of 40-plus years, Griesedieck Brothers Beer has returned as a microbrew. Cousins Alvin “Buddy” Griesedieck of Warson Woods, Ray Griesedieck of Des Peres and Steve Butler of Defiance, owners of the Griesedieck Brothers Brewing Corp., plan to establish their own brewery. In the meantime, their special recipe is produced under contract by the Morgan Street Brewery on Laclede’s Landing. Nineteen restaurants and nightspots, including Dewey’s, in Kirkwood, now carry the microbrew on tap.

Once one of the largest breweries in St. Louis, Griesedieck Brothers sponsored radio broadcasts of the St. Louis Cardinals and the old St. Louis Browns games in the years before Anheuser-Busch purchased the Cardinals. Harry Caray, host of the sports program, reminded listeners the initials GB meant “good beer.” Today’s German-style pilsener is better, the Griesedieck cousins say. Unlike its working-class grandfather, this microbrew follows a 13th-century German purity law that allows the use of only four ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast and water. The old GB was corn-based and sweeter, they said.

Ray Griesedieck developed the golden pilsener during a conference with brewmaster John Witte of Trailhead Brewery in St. Charles, the beer’s first contract brewer. It is styled after those brewed in Bitburg and Munich, Germany. “We’re going after drinkers who like a better beer,” Buddy Griesedieck noted. “We’re trying to bring back a tradition. There’s beer in our blood.” “Literally,” added Butler as he raised a glass of Griesedieck Brothers in a toast. “We don’t bleed red, we bleed yellow,” Ray Griesedieck concurred.

More than two centuries ago, Johann Henrich Griesedieck opened the family’s first brewery in Westphalia, Germany. Within eight years after descendants Anton and Heinrich immigrated to St. Louis in 1869, they acquired two local breweries and founded the A. Griesedieck Brewery Co. In 1911 Heinrich purchased the Consumers Brewery and named it Griesedieck Brothers for his sons: Anton, Henry, Raymond, Robert and Edward.

After Prohibition ended, three branches of the family went head-to-head in the St. Louis beer market. The Griesedieck Brothers ran their brewery; Anton’s son, “Papa” Joe Griesedieck, produced the Falstaff line; and another family member, Henry L. Griesedieck, brewed Stag beer in Belleville. “Griesedieck Brothers was always known as the beer with the funny name,” Butler recalled. By 1937, its brewery at Shenandoah and Lemp avenues was known as the most modern brewery in St. Louis, and its product was regarded as one of the hometown’s most popular brews. By 1950 the company sold nearly a million barrels a year.

Ray’s father, Henry A., was the final president of the company before it was bought out by Falstaff in 1957. Falstaff closed in St. Louis in 1977, and in the mid-1980s an investor named Steve DeBellis purchased the GB trademark, but did not have the support of the family, the cousins said. Ray Griesedieck now owns the trademark.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/16/2005 at 11:52 AM   
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   Sunday - August 07, 2005

Are We Hungry Yet?

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about food in America ....

• 1621 The first Thanksgiving is celebrated.
• 1773 After 342 chests of tea are dumped into Boston Harbor, coffee becomes the colonists’ drink of choice.
• 1803 The first home icebox is patented, and the iceman (below) is born.
• 1812 The first recipe for ketchup based on tomatoes instead of soy is published by James Mease, who calls it “love apple or tomato catchup.”
• 1845 Visitors to Poland Spring, Maine, begin paying for bottles of spring water.
• 1853 A patron at a New York resort complains that his french fries are too thick, so chef George Crum intentionally slices the next batch too thin and fries the potatoes too crisp, inadvertently inventing potato chips.
• 1858 John Mason invents the screw-top glass jar.
• 1860 Chemist Louis Pasteur heats milk to kill germs and bacteria, a process that will become known as pasteurization.
• 1868 George Pullman rolls out the first dining car on trains.
• 1874 Harper’s Magazine writes that using a knife as a fork is “regarded as a vulgarism.”
• 1886 John Pemberton begins selling medicinal syrup as a fountain drink, creating Coca-Cola.
• 1886 Josephine Cochran invents the first working dishwasher.
• 1888 The first vending machines in the U.S. are introduced on New York City subway platforms, selling tutti-frutti gum.
• 1897 A cough medicine manufacturer creates an 88 percent sugar gelatin dessert that his wife names Jell-O.
• 1901 Satori Kato invents instant coffee. (It be-comes popular only after the Nescafé brand of freeze-dried crystals is introduced in 1938, however.)
• 1902 Horn & Hardart opens the first Automat in Philadelphia. For a couple of coins, patrons can open a slot and grab a freshly made hot meal.
• 1902 The Kellogg brothers push boiled wheat through a roller and bake the thin flakes. Looking for a tastier version, they switch the base ingredient, and cornflakes are born.
• 1905 Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson leaves a stick in a cup of soda outside overnight, accidentally inventing the Popsicle.
• 1918 Having gone from 200 pounds to 150, Lulu Peters writes the first diet book to endorse caloriecounting—and sells 2 million copies.
• 1920-1933 Prohibition
• 1922 Stephen Poplawski puts a spinning blade on the bottom of a container, inventing the blender.
• 1937 The shopping cart makes its debut.
• 1946 Percy Spencer stands next to a magnetron, and the candy bar in his pocket melts. A year later he debuts a 750-pound microwave oven.
• 1953 Swanson marries a postwar demand for time-saving devices to the country’s newest obsession, and voilà: TV dinners.
• 1964 Ron Popeil pitches his Veg-O-Matic on TV, pioneering the infomercial.
• 1972 The Spa on Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., puts yogurt through a soft-serve ice cream machine, producing frozen yogurt.
• 1973 Carl Sontheimer introduces the slicing, dicing, all-in-one kitchen juggernaut Cuisinart.
• 1976 California’s New Albion Brewing Co. starts the microbrew trend.
• 1979 Chef Paul Prudhomme opens K-Paul Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans. His blackened redfish sparks a national fad—which depletes the state’s supply of the fish.
• 1988 Researcher James Anderson finds that oat bran lowers cholesterol. Soon after, oat bran is added to everything, from muffins to beer.
• 1993 The Food Network goes on the air, ensuring that the celebrity chef is here to stay.
• 2003 Congressional cafeterias change french fries to freedom fries after France refuses to support the war in Iraq.
• 2005 Fed up with gooey stickers and running inks, the produce industry introduces laser-tattooed fruit.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
• Comments (9) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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