Extra Matter

A tragedy foretold

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I’ve more or less given up on the story of Xylella in Italy. It is just too distressing. But I continue to follow the news as best as I can, which today brought a post containing this little nugget:

Three thousand eradicated trees, as foreseen by Silletti’s plan, would have represented a drop in the ocean, a small price to pay – however painful it might have been – to avoid a catastrophe.

Three thousand, or about four million? You do the math. Self-serving, anti-scientific, rabble-rousing cretins look on course to destroying the economy of the region.

Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 094

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  1. The Beet Goes On from The Botanist in the Kitchen
  2. A scientific method for perfect fondue is a press release about the Rheology of Swiss Cheese Fondue
  3. Why did the food media ignore Joanna Gaines’ ‘Magnolia Table,’ the bestselling cookbook of 2018?
  4. Researcher Finds 14% of Canadian Sausages Mislabelled. The same researcher says a Survey of mislabelling across finfish supply chain reveals mislabelling both outside and within Canada
  5. Does picture background matter? Peopleʼs evaluation of pigs in different farm settings
  6. Ancient Greek food porn

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Extra Matter

Ancient Greek food porn All that meat in Homer? Not what you think

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I know I come across as an old fuddy duddy, but I do wish that people who had something really interesting to say, like Flint Dibble, an archaeologist, would say it in an article, even an article somewhere awful like Medium. So I’ve attempted to present these 22 tweets here for other old fuddy duddies like me.

Continue“Ancient Greek food porn All that meat in Homer? Not what you think“

Podcasts

Better baking through chemistry The food fight that changed the US constitution

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:09 — 21.9MB)

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Linda Civitello is a food historian whose latest book is Baking Powder Wars: the cutthroat food fight that revolutionized cooking. My kind of book, it uses an ingredient we all today take completely for granted to look at everything from fake news and dodgy sales demonstrations to changes to the US constitution.

Our chat barely scratched the surface. We didn’t, for example, talk about the connection between baking powder and the Indianapolis Speedway. Nor did we talk about how the rise of baking powder made it so much easier to eat an excess of sugar, fats and carbs. But we did cover a lot of other ground, from before the outbreak of hostilities to the eventual end of the war.

The winner might not surprise you if you have a tin of baking powder in your cupboard. I imagine it did surprise some of the combatants.

Notes

  1. Get Baking Powder Wars at Amazon and I get a teeny kickback – just like those corrupt Missouri senators.
  2. The banner photograph is a detail from John Frederick Peto’s Still Life with Cake, Lemon , Strawberries and Glass, painted in 1890. The cake was definitely raised with baking powder, but which kind?
  3. The Clabber Girl advertisement is from 1955, by which time, the war was effectively over.
  4. The historic link between Clabber Girl and the Indianapolis 500.

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Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 093 Slightly different

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  1. George Orwell: British Cookery, finally published by the British Council after 73 years.
  2. More Than Peanuts: Revisiting the work and legacy of George Washington Carver for Black History Month, from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.
  3. CNN Travel goes beyond the listicle for The 15 best dishes of Ethiopian food.
  4. Choices Magazine, from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, examines Food Loss and Food Waste in the United States.
  5. A ‘greener’ way to take the bitterness out of olives that saves water and recovers valuable chemicals.