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While eating a delicious currant scone from one of my favorite cafes, I looked it currants on Wikipedia and discovered some interesting history of why currants are popular in Britain, but not the United States:

During World War II, most fruits rich in vitamin C, such as oranges, became almost impossible to obtain in the United Kingdom. Since blackcurrant berries are a rich source of vitamin C and blackcurrant plants are suitable for growing in the UK climate, blackcurrant cultivation was encouraged by the British government. Soon, the yield of the nation’s crop increased significantly. From 1942 on, almost the entire British blackcurrant crop was made into blackcurrant syrup (or cordial) and distributed to the nation’s children free, giving rise to the lasting popularity of blackcurrant flavorings in Britain.

Blackcurrants were once popular in the United States as well, but became extremely rare in the 20th century after currant farming was banned in the early 1900s when blackcurrants, as a vector of white pine blister rust, were considered a threat to the U.S. logging industry. The federal ban on growing currants was shifted to individual States’ jurisdiction in 1966, and was lifted in New York State in 2003 through the efforts of horticulturist Greg Quinn. As a result, currant growing is making a comeback in New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Oregon. However, several statewide bans still exist including Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Since the federal ban ceased currant production anywhere in the U.S., the fruit is not well-known and has yet to reach the popularity that it had in 19th century United States or that it currently has in Europe. Since blackcurrants are a strong source of antioxidants and vitamins, awareness and popularity are once again growing, with a number of consumer products entering the market.

Three fortunes I received following pho:

1. Encourage me, and I will not forget you.
   
2. Commitment is the hinge upon which the door to success hangs.
3. Everything serves to further.

I get a big grab-box of organic produce every week and last week I guess there was a bit of a mixup. I order it more for the variety and element of surprise (what should I cook with celery root?) than health or ideology, so the issue was more an opportunity to learn this fun fact:

It was brought to our attention last week that some of the Asian Pears we distributed were not organic. We should have caught it as the price lookup code or “PLU code” on the sticker label was a number “4” instead of the number “9”; all organic PLU codes begin with the number “9”. 

Of course, that your produce even comes with a PLU is a different matter…

featured in “PopCo” by Alice Butler (via Angelina):

Ingredients:
2 oz ground almonds
6 oz self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 oz light muscovado sugar
150 ml corn oil
200-250 ml soy milk
zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
juice of 2 lemons
1 tbsp orange flower water . . . not sure what this is
1 tsp vanilla/ natural vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees (given that this is a British book, I’m guessing convert to F — maybe 325ish?), or less if it’s a fan oven.

Grease a cake tin. A deep 6 inch tin is good but any will do.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and then add the sugar. Mix in the ground almonds and lemon zest. Add the oil and soymilk.
Use slightly less liquid to make the end result more of a cake and less of a pudding. You don’t have to be 100 per cent precise with
the liquids in this cake.

Knowing on dvd

Now add the lemon juice and mix in thoroughly. Add the flower water and the vanilla and mix again. The result
should look like a thick batter.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for about 40 min. The outside should be brown and inside very soft. Turn out, cool and decorate
Spoiler
with fresh mint leaves and strawberries.

After a bunch of googling around, I haven’t found an authoritative answer to my question: how are you supposed to set up and use your refrigerator’s food crisper—fruits and vegatables need different levels of humidity (which ones need what I wasn’t sure), and the little baffles are supposed to change that (which setting does what I wasn’t sure).

So it seems that they are more about humidity than they are about keeping your foods fresh.

That being said, this Cooks Illustrated PDF seemed to give a half-way decent explanation of the proper settings and use:

• Opening the baffles for air to pass through lowers the humidity, which is fine for basically anything that needs to be kept cold (like some fruit: apples and grapes)
• Closing the baffles to stop air from circulating allows the humidity to rise for leafy vegetables.

Meet Wally Sparks ipod

But according to Cooks Illustrated, it’s all much more complicated than that—some produce like it warmer than the crisper may provide, like green beans, subtropical fruits, melons and herbs. So good luck if you have roommates.

During an AmeriCorps icebreaker, I matched my desire to learn vegan baking with someone who knew how. Who say’s icebreakers are worthless (well, I sometimes do). I got the following two tips:

Egg Substitute: Use an amount of water equal to an egg (maybe ~1/4 cup) and mix in tablespoon of ground flax-seed

• Ghost movies

Best Oil: Coconut Oil is the best oil to use for moistness and tastiness. Of course, it’s really bad for you, but who cares.

If salmonella outbreaks weren’t actually killing people the following statement might be a humorous farce of a murder investigation:

Investigators are seeing more signs that the salmonella outbreak blamed on tomatoes might have been caused by tainted jalapeno peppers…. Echoing federal officials, who said this week that tomatoes remain the prime suspect, the health officials said that tomatoes cannot be ruled out as the cause of the outbreak. Investigators have been collecting samples of another possible suspect, cilantro, though the herb is less likely to be the source, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Other possible scenarios: salsa tryst, the tomato has an evil twin, the butler did it.

Dandy’s recipe:

8 medium tomatoes, stewed
1 jalapeno
4 green onion, chopped
1/4 bunch of cilantro, chopped
2 garlic cloves

In large sauce pan, stew tomatoes and jalepeno.
Remove stem from jalapeno.
Put into blender or food processor.
Add garlic.

Pour into pan.
Add 4 green onions and cilantro.
Simmer for 15 minutes.
Salt and pepper to taste.

My alteration:
On the Waterfront movie full
Take all of the above ingredients, and just throw them in a blender (I use a can of whole stewed tomatoes rather than the fresh tomatoes—probably better fresh). Done.

Read a fun article about Breakfast Cereals via a comment on breakfast cupcakes, err, muffins.

Mostly I like the article because of all the industry definitions:

RTEC: Ready to Eat Cereal

inclusions: the industry term for all that extra junk like raisins, marshmallows and honey-coated granola clusters.

and random facts, like this one:

a serving of Cheerios has 10 milligrams more sodium than a serving of Doritos.

For a 32oz Nalgene Bottle (the standard biggish one) of clean water, the Oral Rehydration Salt quantities are:

• Slightly less than 1/2 teaspoon of Salt (0.43tsp. to be exact)
• 7.5 teaspoons of Sugar

(Personal note: when you’ve made it correctly, it should taste like minusculey-sweet saliva)

Adapted from Rehydrate.org’s ORS Recipe based on 1 liter of water.

And the wikipedia entry on Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS)