Some Summer Trivia: Key Moments In The Life Of Junk Food

Penny Klatell, PhD, RN — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:13:11 +0000

Junk Food Has Been Around For A While . . .

Quite a while, as a matter of fact. It’s been around for centuries in all cultures and all over the world, but America has done one heck of a job coming up with a whole slew of varieties of junk food; then branding, mass producing, and eating it. According to the New York Times, the history of junk food as we know it is an American back story interlaced with genius, serendipity, and plain old cleverness.

Junk Food: A Phenomenon That Changed America

Andrew F. Smith, author of the Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food includes soft drinks, ready made burgers, salty snacks, candy, and ice cream – foods with little or no nutritional value and/or high fat and calories — in his definitions of junk and fast food. He sees junk food “as an incredible phenomenon that’s changed America, for better and worse.”

A Look Back At Some Favorites

From the New York Times

1896: Cracker Jack – America’s First Junk Food?

Yes indeed, according to Mr. Smith. The molasses, popcorn, and peanut combo was first sold by street vendor brothers at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. They perfected it by 1896 and called their treat Cracker Jack. They ultimately created a product that was, and is, salable and commercially viable and salable.

1905: Tootsie Rolls — The First Individually Wrapped Penny Candy

Originally manufactured in New York City, their production changed junk food because they were the first individually wrapped penny candy. The chewy chocolate taste was — and still is — a bonus.

1923: Popsicle Patent

By accident, on a cold night in San Francisco in 1905, an 11 year old left a powdered soda drink on the porch with a stirring stick still in it. The next morning: frozen sweet stuff on a stick. Years later, Frank W. Epperson applied for a patent for his discovery. He initially called the treats Epsicles but his children called them Pop’s ’sicles. Unilever now sells two billion of them each year in the US.

1928: Dubble Bubble, Stretchier Gum

Walter E. Diemer, an accountant for Philly’s Fleer Chewing Gum Company, fooled around trying to produce a gum base that could be blown into bubbles. When he finally had a batch that was stretchier and less sticky than most other gums, he sent 100 pieces to a candy shop and they sold out in one afternoon.

Fleer started selling the gum, calling it Dubble Bubble. Even though it became a global sensation, Mr. Diemer never received any royalties and retired from Fleer in 1970. He felt that he’d done something with his life by making kids happy around the world.

1930: Twinkies, Two For A Nickel

James A. Dewar, manager of a Chicago baking plant during the Depression, saw that shortcake pans used during strawberry season just sat around the rest of the year. He put them to use by baking little cakes injected with banana cream filling, and called them Twinkies (inspired by a billboard that advertised Twinkle Toe shoes). Price: two for a nickel. Bananas were rationed during World War II so he replaced the banana cream with vanilla cream. Hostess now bakes 500 million Twinkies a year.

Do you have any favorite junk food trivia?

The post Some Summer Trivia: Key Moments In The Life Of Junk Food appeared first on Eat Out Eat Well.

Eating In Tuscany: Panzanella

Penny Klatell, PhD, RN — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 04:21:02 +0000

A Tuscan Specialty: Bread And Tomato Salad

Rustic dishes often withstand the test of time — usually because they are easy, make use of local ingredients, and they’re good. Recipes for the same dish are usually not identical – they are adjusted for the hand that makes them and the tongues that eat them — but they consistently have at least one common central ingredient. They are dishes that are usually the result of necessity – the local crop, hard winters, what the land and surrounding environment yield, how they stand up to cooking and/or lack of refrigeration. In most cases they are peasant dishes: frugal, hearty, and delicious.

Panzanella is a bread and tomato salad (with some other ingredients) that is popular in Tuscany, other regions of Italy, and other parts of the world where the main ingredients: crusty bread, tomatoes, olive oil, onions, basil – are commonplace. Typically, the bread is two day to a week old unsalted Tuscan bread – originally, and still, a great way to make use of hard-as-a-rock leftover bread and extra tomatoes, with very tasty results.

In The Bar-Ucci Kitchen With Paola

When I was standing in the little café near our rented villa in Tuscany, I started up an interesting mixed Italian/English conversation with, Paola, the very amiable café owner of Bar-Ucci, the café/wine bar in the village square. She speaks Italian, I speak English, and much to my surprise, I found myself thinking in Greek (still don’t have an explanation for that). She being Italian, and me, Greek, it is safe to say that a whole lot of communication was through waving of the hands and facial expression. We understood each other with no problem.

She invited me into the tiny kitchen behind the café to watch the morning preparation of Panzanella.

Some Leftover Crusty Bread, Ripe Tomatoes, Luscious Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Bright Green Basil, Onions, And A Few More Ingredients . . .

Even though Panzanella is a very rustic dish, it is essential that all of the ingredients be of the best quality. The bread is stale, but if it is supermarket, spongy, and pale, it ends up as a soggy and yucky mess. Lacking access to unsalted Tuscan loaves you can use any good quality crusty loaf. I happen to love olives in any way shape or form, so I’m itching to try combining kalamata olive bread mixed with another crusty variety.

Use the ripest, juiciest tomatoes, the freshest basil, and the best quality extra virgin olive oil available. As with the farro salad I have already written about, Paola, with waving hands punctuating her point, emphasized that extra virgin olive oil was the most important ingredient. Easy to say when you live surrounded by olive trees with a gigantic olive press housed in a medieval stone building just across the square. To her, the fabulous bread, vine ripened tomatoes, and awesome bright green basil are not luxury foods – they’re simply the components of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing that I found really different, and that I don’t love (because I go for crunchy and chewy), is that she soaked her bread in water first, squeezed out any excess drop she could, discarded the center, then tore the crust into pieces. Other recipes just use torn stale bread, without soaking, or even oven toasted bread or torn bread pan fried in olive oil.

You Can Make It A Dinner Salad, Too

Panzanella is totally accepting of a whole array of extra ingredients. With the addition of some protein, it can be a fantastic summer dinner salad.

I have made panzanella before, and I love to add tuna and some crumbled blue cheese or feta along with tomatoes and basil from my garden. For anyone looking for a way to use up the end of season overflow of tomatoes, this is an ideal way to do it.

Some people also add hard boiled eggs, celery, anchovies, hard cheese, and capers, to name a few possibilities. As long as you stick to the basics of bread, tomatoes, onion, basil, salt, vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil, add whatever you like (you can even leave out the onions if you want – although I personally consider that heresy!). It’ll taste great and on top of it all, be a healthy, nutritious meal.