August 10, 2018 • 35 mins
The seemingly humble garden pea has soil superpowers, caused a medieval craze, and drove Orson Welles to distraction. Come along with Anney and Lauren as they give world peas a chance.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Foodstep. I'm Anyeries and I'm Lauren
voc Obam, and today we're talking about peas, if you please,
and I did please. Excellent because we're talking about it
either way, so I'm glad that you do please talk
about peas. That is a rhyme f y I that
my dad used to say every time we had peas,
(00:31):
and I could never figure out if it was an
actual poem or if he just said it because it rhymed.
But if you're curious where I get all of my
love of bad, bad puns and every play, everything's falling
into place. That is one one piece of the puzzle.
And it turns out doing doing peas, I had a
(00:53):
couple of weird memories associated with them. Um. One is
have you heard of the English nest? No, I have
no idea. You wrote that in the note in the notes,
and I was like, well, okay, I wonder if anyone
else Is this just some weird thing that made up
in my family? Well, okay, so the English nest? And
I'm pretty sure I read a story about it in
(01:14):
one of those literature textbooks okay, high school. So I
think it's a thing that's where you get your mashed
potatoes and you make a little indent in them, and
then you put the p's in there, and it looks
like a bird's nest with eggs in it, and then
you eat it and it's good. It's an odd but
good mixture. Okay, okay, so please write it if that's
(01:36):
not just me that did that usually came with ham
as well, at least in my family. Um, what did
the ham represent? Oh? My goodness, I guess I'd be
like a hawk destroying your nest goodness. Or maybe it's
just a big that just took a dark turn. Okay, well, yes,
(01:57):
there's there. There is also, of course, the the fairy
Tale of the Princess and the Peace, Yes, which I
was one of my favorite stories as a kid. I
had a pretty Um, I bought it at the book fair.
And side note, I missed the book fair so much.
That was such an exciting day. You think about this
all the time, and I mean, like we have I
mean I have access to plenty of books. I also
(02:19):
have like real money and like bookstores nearby that I
could go to, But like the book fair, it was
so exciting, got to get out of class and like, look,
around at books in a little shop sometimes. Um, but
I bought The Princess in the p at one of
my first book fairs, and it was so beautifully illustrated.
It's longer than the the one I found in the
(02:40):
public domain, because we recently did that food for episode
and I was like, ah, Princess and Pete. It was
like two paragraphs long. The one I have is not
much longer, but it's longer than that probably so it
would have more pages and they could fill it for
more well, you know, anyway, I'm sure it had lovely
illustrations as well. Did it have lovely illustrations? Do it?
And does I still have it? It's one of the
(03:02):
There are a couple of books I could not get
rid of, like children's books, and that that is one.
So maybe I'll bring it in. Yeah, you can take
a look. Absolutely, But we're getting we're getting away from
our first question, so let's return to it peace. What
are they? Peas are the fruit of a climbing vine
(03:23):
scientific name Pisum sativum. The vine flowers and pea pods
grow from those flowers. You know, these like long, skinny,
yellow or green containers that that plump up with seeds.
As the seeds develop. Now I said that those pods
are fruit, and botanically they are, but they're more commonly
(03:44):
called lagoons and lagoum is the word for the fruit
of a plant in the family Fibasi. Thanks to listener
Kelsey for writing in the last time I mispronounced it
a little bit. I was going off four dot COM's
Latin pronunciation. I don't know anyway, um, But back in
the day, the fabaci E family was called the leguminos,
(04:07):
not the luguminati, the lagum to say that, but but
hence hence the name lagoons um. These fruits typically consist
of a pod with two long seams, you know, on
each side, and the pod contains high protein, high fiber seeds.
(04:27):
Some varietals of peas and sutivum have edible pods, like
Saccaratum uh snow peas and macrocrpond or sugar snaps. But
today we're talking mostly about non edible potted peas. This
is a non edible potted peas podcast. It's exact branding
for this episode. So, so, the seeds develop in these pods,
(04:51):
you know, we green or yellow spheres and you can
either let the whole fruit ripen and then stop growing
and dry out on the vine, and then shell the
dry peas and save them either to plant later or
to cook in liquids so that they rehydrate. Um. These
dried peas are sometimes hold that is that the skin
is taken taken off, leaving just the inner bit, which
(05:12):
will often split into two halves at that point in
these are split peas, oh I see. Or you can
pick the fruit when the seeds are still immature. You
shell them and either eat them or cook the peas
fresh or freeze them or can them for later. And
at this point they might be called the garden pea,
(05:33):
green peas, English peas, so many names for peas all
you can please. Oh my goodness. They're a little sweet,
a little savory, slash earthy, sort of fresh and grassy,
and have a texture a little bit like potatoes, like
creamy to meally um, speaking of mashed potatoes, Yeah, I
(05:54):
guess this would go well together. The skin of the
peak can create a pleasant like burst or snap when
you bite into one. You can also soak dried peas
overnight and then coat them with some kind of flavoring
like a wassabi flavored rice flour, for example, and then
fry them in oil or hot air or roast them um,
which leaves them sort of dehydrated and crispy with sab peas.
(06:15):
So good, so good. The leaves are also used as
a vegetable or urban parts of Asia and Africa, and
they are an annual plant, which means that they die
off after a single growing season and further crops need
to be replanted from seed. They also, like many other lagoons,
have this amazing and fascinating symbiotic relationship with bacteria that
(06:38):
live in the soil around their roots. All right, here,
here's the gig. These bacteria need sugars produced by photosynthesis
to live, but the bacteria themselves cannot photosynthesize, so they
form colonies, these these little nodules on d pas roots. Meanwhile,
the peat plants need nitrogen to create chlorophyll and a
bunch of other important stuff like like a very proteins,
(07:00):
but they can't use free ranging nitrogen in the air.
They can't absorb it, even though it's one of the
most abundant elements in our atmosphere, So in turn, the
bacteria breathe in nitrogen from the air um and process
that nitrogen into ammonia, which plants can use. This process
is called nitrogen fixation, and peas and other lagoons, along
(07:23):
with their little bacteria buddies, fix so much nitrogen in
the soil that there's a surplus even after the peas
growing season is over. They leave the land better than
they found it. So for this reason, lagoons are a
popular crop to plant in rotation with other crops that
deplete the soil. Um and gardeners can use peas like
alongside other vegetables to reduce or ideally eliminate the need
(07:46):
to fertilize. Way to go. Peas good for the earth,
But are they good for you? Yeah? We're talking nutrition. Yes, yes,
Peas have a decent amount of protein, potassium, iron, calcium,
I mean, no acids, and complex carbs. They are a
low fat, low sodium food and they show up in
all kinds of things, some healthier than others. Pasta soups
(08:09):
than notorious pup I love a split pea soup, Oh
do you. I don't think I've ever had one, outside
of once when I was a kid, and I the
Exorcist is the only thing I can envision there. They
show up frequently in fried rice. There's PET flour and
P protein, just to name a few. These days, there's
also P milk and P yogurt on the market for
(08:31):
folks who want their dairy alternatives to be soy and
nut free. Personally, I think that P yogurt tastes not good.
Oh I have not had it. It's one of the
very few foods that I've ever been like, Nope, not
this one. Why what was it? What was the taste? Like? Oh,
it was just sort of well, the face you're making
is not good. It was sort of planty. It was
(08:55):
sort of like I was eating like a salad yogurt
or like a but like, oh, that's that's what Google
thinks of women right there. Not in a salad boss,
but not in a nice way. I was not a
woman laughing alone with salad yogurt? Well who is? Though
I don't know. My salads are frequently hilarious good that
(09:16):
makes me happy most of the time. I'm just kind
of like, this is okay, I was I was joking. Unfortunately.
Um back to peas. Frozen peas, I will say, are
just as nutritious as fresh peas, and they are the
most common frozen vegetable in the United States. Yeah, Like,
frozen peas are popular here to the point that it's
(09:40):
really hard to find fresh peas outside of like farmers
markets or your own garden. Yes, Bone Up Tea ran
a headline in p s A frozen peas are actually
better than fresh bold words, I know. The article is
touting frozen peas convenience and quality, an ability to be
(10:00):
cooked into dishes without being thought first. Um. And and
to be fair, peas that are frozen are like a
couple hours out of the field when they are frozen,
and they're um, they're sorted using this fun salt water
process um, like a like a really specific gravity of
salt water to make sure that that only the younger,
more tender less starchy ones make it into packaging. Um.
(10:23):
The tender ones float to the top, the starchy ones
sink in this specific saltwater solution. UM. And there's no
such guarantee on peas that you shell yourself. Folks. I'll
have to tell my mom that, because if you remember
in our frozen food episode every summer where you buy
so many peas at the farmer's market here in Atlanta,
(10:43):
the one off of seventy. Laura and everyone else's like, oh,
it's a really big farmer's market, and we blanch them
and we freeze them, and the blanching hurts. It hurts
because your hands are hot and then they're cold, and
then you do it again until we usually at twenty
like freezer size bags of peas, and we put them
(11:04):
in this locked chest freezer and I never see them,
you know, because I don't live at home anymore. So
I'm putting all this work into it. Why doesn't she
give you some to take home? I think I'd probably
say no. I'm like, I would never want to see
peas again, and then like a week later, I'm over it.
I'm thinking, wow, I really wish I had some of
(11:24):
those fresh peas. They do usually turn out very well,
very delicious, I believe you. Fresh. Crispy, crunchy is how
I like them. Yeah, m m m m um. On
a on an industrial level, the sheer volume involved in
creating frozen peas within hours of the crops being picked
means that farmers have to stagger their plantings and their
(11:46):
pickings so that the freezing facility they're working with will
have the capacity to take their harvest when the peas
are ripe enough. It's this whole like labyrinthian schedule. It's fascinating. Yeah,
I would love to just to observe for a little bit.
Maybe that would put my struggles in perspective, my one
day of struggle a year with peas. I maintain there
(12:09):
has to be some better way than plunging your hands
into hot peas and ice. My mom does. It's like
a pro spoons perhaps probably you heard of slotted spoons.
Slotted spoons, you say, I do, say. Oh, man, I'm
going to have to think about this. Let's look at
(12:31):
the numbers. Yes, let's look at the numbers. Somewhere around
twelve to seventeen point four million tons of peas are
produced a year. And I was I was trying to
dig into this number, and I couldn't. I'm not sure
if that's just dried peas. I think it might be
just dried peas. That's wild because I because I kept
(12:54):
seeing like, like about twelve million tons of dried peas
every year, and and there's there's hypothetically a lot of
fresh frozen peas. From what we've been discussing, it seems logical.
I think that there could be at least at anyway,
there's a lot of peas. There's a lot of peas,
and mortor intelligence for once failed me on the fresh
(13:16):
pea thing. They're busy trying to capture hobbits. Um. We
can't blame them for that. Oh, it's not my fault
that someone named a company that anyway, their native to
North Africa and Asia, and you can still find wild
peas in parts of Iran, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Canada was
the largest producer in two thousand, though, with China, Russia
and France following its lead. And this is another food
(13:41):
that's eaten all over in all kinds of different ways.
In parts of Asia, dried peas are a popular snack
and um addition to stir fries, that's a pretty popular choice.
Mushy peas in England, usually with your your fish and chips.
Perhaps sure. Note, however, that we are mostly not talking
about American Southern field peas like black eyed peas and
(14:01):
other black brown, cream red type peas, which are more
like beans and tend to taste more earthy. A lot
of things are called peas, Yeah they really are, which um,
which is a good segue to our history segment, but
a bad segue to an ad But first we're going
to take you on that at break and we're back.
(14:34):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So yes. Some of
the history gets a little murky because there are three
main types of peas that sometimes get confused for each
other when we're talking about history. Peas were one of
the first domesticated plants around eight thousand years ago, most
likely in the Middle East or South or Central Asia.
(14:56):
They are one of the eight founder crops or eight
of the earliest domesticated crops ever. From there, the peace
soon appeared in China and India. If that's not where
it originated in the first place, Oh, history, um. If
we're talking pre domestication, some evidence suggest the Neanderthals are
(15:16):
eating peas forty six thousand years ago might not be
the same p though I would say probably not the
same pe probably not um. Other evidence suggests that two
types of peas were each domesticated from a now extinct
ancestor about eleven thousand years ago in the Near East.
The first known evidence of purposeful p cultivation is out
(15:40):
of Syria nine thousand three hundred years ago. Those domesticating
the p did so selectively, attempting to get to a
softer shelled, what season ready crop. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans
all enjoyed peas in their cuisine. The Epicios, that really
old cookbook recipe book had nine recipes that utilized dried peas.
(16:03):
Pea soup was a common to go items sold by
street vendors in ancient Athens, which I find very curious. Indeed,
one story goes that after Romans encountered it, they named
it piece them and that is where the name comes from.
But about that name, okay, So originally peace as in
(16:29):
p e a s E was the name for a
single P until the late seventeenth century when it became
known as the plural. So people seeing this peas thought
that that was the plural of oh. It would say
it out loud and say peas, and then from there
(16:50):
you get the singular P. Yes, So it was kind
of a big misunderstanding. But people were saying pieces pieces, Yeah,
that's great, I know, let's go back to that. We
can try it perfect. But you can still see peas
um in the rhyme peas porridge hot, which I don't
know but apparently is a lasting rhyme peace porch hot peace,
(17:12):
pordge cold pease porge in a pot nine days old.
Look at you, Lauren Font. You really are always surprising
me with these rhymes about peas and other things. Peace
itself is possibly way way older, pre Indo European, maybe
even a gan. I went on a hunt to prove
(17:34):
that peace was related to pisa, as in lending Tower
of but no die. Oh, I'm sorry, but pizza is
in its family tree like a word family tree. I'm
really bummed about it. But you can't always get what
you want good good life advice and rolling stones taught
(17:56):
me that peas reached China in seventh century CE, possibly
called foreign legume piece at this time maybe eaten fresh,
but were commonly dried. Um. Dried peas were a big
time winter food. These peas were more closely resembled to chickpeas,
though Charlemagne had peas planted in his gardens in eight
(18:19):
hundred France, and at the same time peas were a
popular staple for peasants, which I also went on a
word hunt to see if if peasants and peace was
related and it's not all at least I didn't find
any evidence that it was. Ah Well, they stored well
and they kept for a long time, so they were
a good peasant food. And green peas for lent were
(18:42):
stored in the Barking Nunnery and twelfth century London. A
century later in France, fresh peas in the pod was
a popular street food item. Um. They would go on
to become a go to food for lent in France
and England. Full of protein, you know meat, and I
think for back when we had big family dinners when
(19:04):
I was younger. Um, on Easter, I believe we had peace.
It's a pretty popular spring. Fresh peas are a good
spring spring thing. They are a little bit of mint
and lemon maybe m In sixteenth century Italy, gardeners cultivated
a smaller tender pea called Pizeli Novelli. People loved these things.
(19:26):
It was the fashion, the fashion to eat unripe peas
well by by unripe just like yeah, like like immature
pain peace because previously most of them had been eaten dried, yeah,
and all the way up until seventeenth century people were
sort of bed over heels in love with these things. Um.
(19:47):
A female friend of the Sun King Louis, had this
to say about fresh peas, which could be wildly expensive.
By the way, Um, this subject of peace continues to
absorb all of this some lady ease even after having
supped at the royal table and well supped too, returning
to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion.
Well again, eat peas before going to bed. It is
(20:10):
both a fashion and a madness. I mean, I mean
they're good. They are good. I mean they're real good.
They are. They have such an interesting texture thing. It's
that pop and then the kind of creamy thing. Yeah,
it's one of my favorite dishes that I had in England.
(20:32):
Just again like peas, a little bit of lemon, little
bit of mint. They were just so green, they are
very bright. They were just so I felt like they
tasted like the land in the air. Oh now I'm
gonna actually get peas in every episode. This happens every
episode almost um, and I have a slight aside because
(20:56):
doing this episode. The main reason I wanted to do
it was mostly because which in at X. Will get
into that more later, but I did a lot of
these memories got jumbled around in my head. Did you
ever play well, wait a minute, did you take what language?
Did you take Spanish? Spanish? Okay, so you didn't play
this game. Anyone who took French, please right in if
you remember playing the game the Sun King game where
(21:18):
you were wandering around his court and trying to please
people like it was a computer game that we would
play in French class to learn French, and I just
totally forgot about it. I remember it being incredibly frustrating.
You could never figure out what they wanted, which might
have been the lesson. And that's a little bit existential
(21:39):
for what like middle school. But sure, alright, well, speaking
of fashion, that trend setter Catherine de Medici introduced peas
to France during the fifteen hundreds, and the French named
them tiny peas. Due to the popularity of peas in France,
some towns were named after recipes is so seated with
(22:00):
their town that incorporated peas. Street vendors in England advertised
their hot gray peas with us suck up bacon around
this time as well. Um new varieties developed in England
around this time. We're known as garden peas and English peace. Yeah,
so that that's some Europe for you. Europe really digging
(22:23):
into this station of Peas. We do have some some
New World stuff, but first we have one less quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you. The colonist brought Peas with
(22:48):
them to the New World. In quotes, they kept well
and we're good for voyages, so kind of an obvious
choice to take with you settlers in Canada's New France
bought with them pea soup. If you remember at the
beginning we said top grower was Canada and France was
in the top five. I'll find that really kind of
(23:10):
there's interesting and legacy. There's there is a pe legacy um,
and once again it's time to talk about someone else
with a legacy. Thomas Jefferson. He and his neighbors engaged
in a battle of the peace to see who could
grow them in their garden first, and Thomas Jefferson came
(23:30):
out in front. Happened back over to Europe. In the
seventeen nineties, Peas appeared in their first genetics study, one
led by Thomas Andrew Knight. Yeah, and of course genetics
weren't I mean it's technically what he was studying, but
he didn't know it at the time. But he was
working with different colored peas and observing how cross fertilizing
(23:52):
them could affect the color of future generations. France's eighteen
hundreds encyclopedia The Vegetable Garden included fifty pages on different
types of peace. Yeah, okay. And then along comes one
Gregor Mendel in the eighteen sixties. Mendel was an Austrian
monk who realized that some p traits were more dominant
(24:14):
than others. He carried out a series of experiments that
were the precursor to the laws of genetic inheritance. While
he died pretty much as an unknown, his research came
back into the scientific sitegeists in the nineteen hundreds and
his contributions to genetics was recognized. Yeah. Um, he's currently
called like like the father of genetics and some circles. Um.
(24:36):
And Mendel was using p plants because they're they're inexpensive,
they're easy to grow and keep track of, easier even
than mice and honey bees, which is what he started with. Um.
Part of why his work didn't catch on during the
time was that The prevailing theory was that offspring are
blend of their parents traits. You know, like if you've
got a tall mom and a short dad, you'll be
of medium height. Um. So therefore, what Mendel was saying,
(24:59):
you know that two tall parents can produce can produce
a short offspring because the short trait may have been inherited.
Just recessive, right, Um it was. It was unintuitive to
people at the time, especially because humans are more genetically
complicated than p plants. But no one knew about jeans yet,
so it seemed really easily dismissed. Um. But yet his
(25:23):
his concepts of receiving a random assortment of traits from
each parent half of the traits that they had each
inherited from their parents, um, would become the basis of
chromosomal heredity. In the early the humble pee, the humble pea,
the Campbell Company, Yes, that Campbell Company shows peas as
(25:43):
one of the first things to can in eighteen seventy
as mentioned in our Frozen Foods episode. They were also
some of the first vegetables to be frozen around the
nineteen twenties. And speaking of frozen peas, uh, there is
this absolutely bizarre and delightful moment and relatively recent history
in which famed actor, writer and director Orson Welles absolutely
(26:08):
pitched a fit while attempting to refer to record a
few commercials. UM. One being four frozen peas. Another one
was for cod fish fingers. And I can't believe I
forgot that when we were doing our cod episode all anyway, Um,
this this fit he pitched. Um. This was? This was
after he reportedly made the recording crew chase him all
(26:31):
over Europe like like at least five locations around Europe. Um,
a sort of revenge for them requesting audition. How dare they? Um?
This happened around so he was he was already quite
famous and and really infamous also over being pretty person
nickety um and and had taken to doing ads to
(26:52):
help pay for his pet projects. UM and I I
think we can roll a little bit of of this
here because oh it's it's old. We know a remote
farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July peas
grow there. Do you really mean that? I yes, I'd
start half a second leak. Don't you think you really
(27:12):
want to say? July over the snow isn't that the
fun of it? It's if you can make it almost
when that shot disappears little bit. But I think it's
so nice that that you see a snow covered field
and savery July, pease grow there. We know a remote
farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July, peas
grow there. We aren't even in the fields you see.
(27:36):
We're talking about him growing and she's picked him on
one in July. I don't understand you. Then, when must
what must be over for July? When we get out
of the snowy field. When I was out, we were
onto a can of peas, a big dish of piece.
When I said, in July, let's just do the article.
If you'll forgive me by saying so, that's just stupid.
In July, I'd love to know how you emphasize in
(27:58):
and in July. We we just actually played a little
bit of it in the studio here, Annie, do you
have any thoughts, feelings, reactions. I love how his his
tone stays very like even the whole the whole time.
It sounds reasonable, but what he's saying is super unreasonable,
super unreasonable. And I told Lauren I don't know what
(28:21):
part we played, but I'm determined to say you don't
know what I'm up against in a like straight voice
in regular conversation. Maybe by the end of the day,
I think you can. I have faith in you. I
think I can. Yeah, goals from Orson but yeah, if
if if that sounds familiar to anyone who has never
(28:46):
actually listened to to that Orson Wells clip um, but
who was perhaps watching Animaniacs or The Critic back the nineties.
That's because Maurice LaMarsh, who's wells impersonation is super on point,
and I would say the Brain character is based on Um.
He did it pretty much verbatim in Pinky and the Brain,
(29:07):
except he like put in family friendly phrasing for a
few things. Um. And he also parodied it in The Critic.
So yeah, you can. You can look up the full
audio under the names Yes Always or or Frozen Peas
if you just want a real good giggle, I recommend it.
(29:28):
Now that you pointed out yes the Brain so much
very much. Um. Oh, that's so scared me as a kid,
I wonder and I could never put my finger on why. Uh,
it just really unsettled me. It did, But in a
way that I liked. Then again, I'm like, I was
a little bit older than you at the time, so
(29:49):
I might have Yeah, I should. I should revisit it
and see if I can figure out what it was
put me so on edge show. Maybe it was the
orson well impression. Maybe I don't know. I don't know,
but uh, yeah, that's a that's the story of frozen
peace and peace in general. Yes, um, kind of a
(30:15):
a random I just suddenly really wanted to talk about peace.
So I hope that it was enjoyable, enjoyable for you
out there and it brings us to listener. No, that
was I love that sound. That was good. I should
(30:40):
have done a pinking the brain kind of send off,
but oh it's okay. Maybe next time I couldn't have
done it. Anyway. I still working on my William Shatner,
so very slow when it comes to mastering impressions. That's
that's okay, take your time. These things. These things are important.
Thank you. Our first letter is from Alicia, who wrote,
(31:00):
I just listened to your better episode and the episode
that had a follow up from someone talking about the
Minnesota State Fair. I have a friend whose sister and
cousin have both been in the Princess k of the
Milky Way Court and have had both their heads carved
out of butter. My favorite account is one of our
friends meeting her sister and asking, aren't you the butter Princess,
(31:20):
and her reply was, Yep, my face is still in
the freezer if you want to see it. That is
a great quote. Butter carving is alive and well in
that part of the country. That's beautiful. It is I
want to see. I want to see some butter carving
in action one day. Yeah, we'll have to go. Yeah
to our ever growing list of faces. Stephy wrote in
(31:45):
about our food stuffs in Movies episode saying Halloween is
my favorite holiday and it gave me great ideas for
this year's costume. However, at the end of your interview
with V I have a solution to your glass problem,
or at least partially glass candy. If you make glass
candy without food dye, you can easily make a small
sheet of candy, smash it with a mallet or hammer.
(32:07):
It's my favorite part, and instantly you can make it
look like someone has glass sticking out of them. Glass
candy is super easy to make it only takes water,
corn syrup, sugar, and I recommend a candy thermometer to
make it easier. Me too. Also, I'm on a roller
derby team. Heck yeah, shout out to River City Renegades
out of Mackinaw City, Michigan, and we occasionally traveled to
(32:28):
Salt St. Marie, Canada. We have some teammates who travel
from here, so we stop at fast food places sometimes
in relation to your McDonald's episode, and I can tell
you this. You can find poutine it's fries with gravy
and cheese curds almost anywhere in Canada, including McDonald's. However,
KFC there doesn't have biscuits. What I know, it doesn't
(32:52):
sound like much, but we were very surprised, as obviously
we clearly I'm okay, I'm pulling myself back together. Oh
and you can find Tim Horton's everywhere anyway. You just
wanted to share, Well, I've never been to a Tim Horton's.
Oh I have very good Yeah. It's it's kind of
funny because you go to Canada and you think I've
(33:14):
got to go is it timmy ho hoes something? Anyway? Um,
and every time I've been to an airport in Canada
which is like five or next times. Um, there is
always a massive line to Tim Hortons, no matter what
time it is, no matter if like the line is
to me long enough to make me reconsider my choice.
(33:36):
If there's other places that are open, Nope, always a
really long line. And there's like three lines. So there's
like I just want coffee line, there's regular ordering line,
and then there's like I know exactly what I want
and it's those doughnut holes and one coffee. I don't
need to think about anything, and it's all three or long. Um.
(34:00):
This has just been my experience perhaps cultural standpoint. I mean,
you know it is. Yeah, it's lovely, it's delicious. Um.
And thank you for the hint about glass candy. If
we ever get around making our food Stuff horror short film,
we will keep that in mind absolutely. And uh yeah,
(34:21):
thanks to both of them for writing in. If you
would like to write to us our emails food Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at food
Stuff h s W. Also on Instagram at food stuff.
We do hope to hear from you, um, Thank you
as always to our super producer Dylan Fagan, who is
just a gem. It's just a gem. Thanks to you
(34:42):
for listening and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Foodstep. I'm Anyeries and I'm Lauren
voc Obam, and today we're talking about peas, if you please,
and I did please. Excellent because we're talking about it
either way, so I'm glad that you do please talk
about peas. That is a rhyme f y I that
my dad used to say every time we had peas,
(00:31):
and I could never figure out if it was an
actual poem or if he just said it because it rhymed.
But if you're curious where I get all of my
love of bad, bad puns and every play, everything's falling
into place. That is one one piece of the puzzle.
And it turns out doing doing peas, I had a
(00:53):
couple of weird memories associated with them. Um. One is
have you heard of the English nest? No, I have
no idea. You wrote that in the note in the notes,
and I was like, well, okay, I wonder if anyone
else Is this just some weird thing that made up
in my family? Well, okay, so the English nest? And
I'm pretty sure I read a story about it in
(01:14):
one of those literature textbooks okay, high school. So I
think it's a thing that's where you get your mashed
potatoes and you make a little indent in them, and
then you put the p's in there, and it looks
like a bird's nest with eggs in it, and then
you eat it and it's good. It's an odd but
good mixture. Okay, okay, so please write it if that's
(01:36):
not just me that did that usually came with ham
as well, at least in my family. Um, what did
the ham represent? Oh? My goodness, I guess I'd be
like a hawk destroying your nest goodness. Or maybe it's
just a big that just took a dark turn. Okay, well, yes,
(01:57):
there's there. There is also, of course, the the fairy
Tale of the Princess and the Peace, Yes, which I
was one of my favorite stories as a kid. I
had a pretty Um, I bought it at the book fair.
And side note, I missed the book fair so much.
That was such an exciting day. You think about this
all the time, and I mean, like we have I
mean I have access to plenty of books. I also
(02:19):
have like real money and like bookstores nearby that I
could go to, But like the book fair, it was
so exciting, got to get out of class and like, look,
around at books in a little shop sometimes. Um, but
I bought The Princess in the p at one of
my first book fairs, and it was so beautifully illustrated.
It's longer than the the one I found in the
(02:40):
public domain, because we recently did that food for episode
and I was like, ah, Princess and Pete. It was
like two paragraphs long. The one I have is not
much longer, but it's longer than that probably so it
would have more pages and they could fill it for
more well, you know, anyway, I'm sure it had lovely
illustrations as well. Did it have lovely illustrations? Do it?
And does I still have it? It's one of the
(03:02):
There are a couple of books I could not get
rid of, like children's books, and that that is one.
So maybe I'll bring it in. Yeah, you can take
a look. Absolutely, But we're getting we're getting away from
our first question, so let's return to it peace. What
are they? Peas are the fruit of a climbing vine
(03:23):
scientific name Pisum sativum. The vine flowers and pea pods
grow from those flowers. You know, these like long, skinny,
yellow or green containers that that plump up with seeds.
As the seeds develop. Now I said that those pods
are fruit, and botanically they are, but they're more commonly
(03:44):
called lagoons and lagoum is the word for the fruit
of a plant in the family Fibasi. Thanks to listener
Kelsey for writing in the last time I mispronounced it
a little bit. I was going off four dot COM's
Latin pronunciation. I don't know anyway, um, But back in
the day, the fabaci E family was called the leguminos,
(04:07):
not the luguminati, the lagum to say that, but but
hence hence the name lagoons um. These fruits typically consist
of a pod with two long seams, you know, on
each side, and the pod contains high protein, high fiber seeds.
(04:27):
Some varietals of peas and sutivum have edible pods, like
Saccaratum uh snow peas and macrocrpond or sugar snaps. But
today we're talking mostly about non edible potted peas. This
is a non edible potted peas podcast. It's exact branding
for this episode. So, so, the seeds develop in these pods,
(04:51):
you know, we green or yellow spheres and you can
either let the whole fruit ripen and then stop growing
and dry out on the vine, and then shell the
dry peas and save them either to plant later or
to cook in liquids so that they rehydrate. Um. These
dried peas are sometimes hold that is that the skin
is taken taken off, leaving just the inner bit, which
(05:12):
will often split into two halves at that point in
these are split peas, oh I see. Or you can
pick the fruit when the seeds are still immature. You
shell them and either eat them or cook the peas
fresh or freeze them or can them for later. And
at this point they might be called the garden pea,
(05:33):
green peas, English peas, so many names for peas all
you can please. Oh my goodness. They're a little sweet,
a little savory, slash earthy, sort of fresh and grassy,
and have a texture a little bit like potatoes, like
creamy to meally um, speaking of mashed potatoes, Yeah, I
(05:54):
guess this would go well together. The skin of the
peak can create a pleasant like burst or snap when
you bite into one. You can also soak dried peas
overnight and then coat them with some kind of flavoring
like a wassabi flavored rice flour, for example, and then
fry them in oil or hot air or roast them um,
which leaves them sort of dehydrated and crispy with sab peas.
(06:15):
So good, so good. The leaves are also used as
a vegetable or urban parts of Asia and Africa, and
they are an annual plant, which means that they die
off after a single growing season and further crops need
to be replanted from seed. They also, like many other lagoons,
have this amazing and fascinating symbiotic relationship with bacteria that
(06:38):
live in the soil around their roots. All right, here,
here's the gig. These bacteria need sugars produced by photosynthesis
to live, but the bacteria themselves cannot photosynthesize, so they
form colonies, these these little nodules on d pas roots. Meanwhile,
the peat plants need nitrogen to create chlorophyll and a
bunch of other important stuff like like a very proteins,
(07:00):
but they can't use free ranging nitrogen in the air.
They can't absorb it, even though it's one of the
most abundant elements in our atmosphere, So in turn, the
bacteria breathe in nitrogen from the air um and process
that nitrogen into ammonia, which plants can use. This process
is called nitrogen fixation, and peas and other lagoons, along
(07:23):
with their little bacteria buddies, fix so much nitrogen in
the soil that there's a surplus even after the peas
growing season is over. They leave the land better than
they found it. So for this reason, lagoons are a
popular crop to plant in rotation with other crops that
deplete the soil. Um and gardeners can use peas like
alongside other vegetables to reduce or ideally eliminate the need
(07:46):
to fertilize. Way to go. Peas good for the earth,
But are they good for you? Yeah? We're talking nutrition. Yes, yes,
Peas have a decent amount of protein, potassium, iron, calcium,
I mean, no acids, and complex carbs. They are a
low fat, low sodium food and they show up in
all kinds of things, some healthier than others. Pasta soups
(08:09):
than notorious pup I love a split pea soup, Oh
do you. I don't think I've ever had one, outside
of once when I was a kid, and I the
Exorcist is the only thing I can envision there. They
show up frequently in fried rice. There's PET flour and
P protein, just to name a few. These days, there's
also P milk and P yogurt on the market for
(08:31):
folks who want their dairy alternatives to be soy and
nut free. Personally, I think that P yogurt tastes not good.
Oh I have not had it. It's one of the
very few foods that I've ever been like, Nope, not
this one. Why what was it? What was the taste? Like? Oh,
it was just sort of well, the face you're making
is not good. It was sort of planty. It was
(08:55):
sort of like I was eating like a salad yogurt
or like a but like, oh, that's that's what Google
thinks of women right there. Not in a salad boss,
but not in a nice way. I was not a
woman laughing alone with salad yogurt? Well who is? Though
I don't know. My salads are frequently hilarious good that
(09:16):
makes me happy most of the time. I'm just kind
of like, this is okay, I was I was joking. Unfortunately.
Um back to peas. Frozen peas, I will say, are
just as nutritious as fresh peas, and they are the
most common frozen vegetable in the United States. Yeah, Like,
frozen peas are popular here to the point that it's
(09:40):
really hard to find fresh peas outside of like farmers
markets or your own garden. Yes, Bone Up Tea ran
a headline in p s A frozen peas are actually
better than fresh bold words, I know. The article is
touting frozen peas convenience and quality, an ability to be
(10:00):
cooked into dishes without being thought first. Um. And and
to be fair, peas that are frozen are like a
couple hours out of the field when they are frozen,
and they're um, they're sorted using this fun salt water
process um, like a like a really specific gravity of
salt water to make sure that that only the younger,
more tender less starchy ones make it into packaging. Um.
(10:23):
The tender ones float to the top, the starchy ones
sink in this specific saltwater solution. UM. And there's no
such guarantee on peas that you shell yourself. Folks. I'll
have to tell my mom that, because if you remember
in our frozen food episode every summer where you buy
so many peas at the farmer's market here in Atlanta,
(10:43):
the one off of seventy. Laura and everyone else's like, oh,
it's a really big farmer's market, and we blanch them
and we freeze them, and the blanching hurts. It hurts
because your hands are hot and then they're cold, and
then you do it again until we usually at twenty
like freezer size bags of peas, and we put them
(11:04):
in this locked chest freezer and I never see them,
you know, because I don't live at home anymore. So
I'm putting all this work into it. Why doesn't she
give you some to take home? I think I'd probably
say no. I'm like, I would never want to see
peas again, and then like a week later, I'm over it.
I'm thinking, wow, I really wish I had some of
(11:24):
those fresh peas. They do usually turn out very well,
very delicious, I believe you. Fresh. Crispy, crunchy is how
I like them. Yeah, m m m m um. On
a on an industrial level, the sheer volume involved in
creating frozen peas within hours of the crops being picked
means that farmers have to stagger their plantings and their
(11:46):
pickings so that the freezing facility they're working with will
have the capacity to take their harvest when the peas
are ripe enough. It's this whole like labyrinthian schedule. It's fascinating. Yeah,
I would love to just to observe for a little bit.
Maybe that would put my struggles in perspective, my one
day of struggle a year with peas. I maintain there
(12:09):
has to be some better way than plunging your hands
into hot peas and ice. My mom does. It's like
a pro spoons perhaps probably you heard of slotted spoons.
Slotted spoons, you say, I do, say. Oh, man, I'm
going to have to think about this. Let's look at
(12:31):
the numbers. Yes, let's look at the numbers. Somewhere around
twelve to seventeen point four million tons of peas are
produced a year. And I was I was trying to
dig into this number, and I couldn't. I'm not sure
if that's just dried peas. I think it might be
just dried peas. That's wild because I because I kept
(12:54):
seeing like, like about twelve million tons of dried peas
every year, and and there's there's hypothetically a lot of
fresh frozen peas. From what we've been discussing, it seems logical.
I think that there could be at least at anyway,
there's a lot of peas. There's a lot of peas,
and mortor intelligence for once failed me on the fresh
(13:16):
pea thing. They're busy trying to capture hobbits. Um. We
can't blame them for that. Oh, it's not my fault
that someone named a company that anyway, their native to
North Africa and Asia, and you can still find wild
peas in parts of Iran, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Canada was
the largest producer in two thousand, though, with China, Russia
and France following its lead. And this is another food
(13:41):
that's eaten all over in all kinds of different ways.
In parts of Asia, dried peas are a popular snack
and um addition to stir fries, that's a pretty popular choice.
Mushy peas in England, usually with your your fish and chips.
Perhaps sure. Note, however, that we are mostly not talking
about American Southern field peas like black eyed peas and
(14:01):
other black brown, cream red type peas, which are more
like beans and tend to taste more earthy. A lot
of things are called peas, Yeah they really are, which um,
which is a good segue to our history segment, but
a bad segue to an ad But first we're going
to take you on that at break and we're back.
(14:34):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So yes. Some of
the history gets a little murky because there are three
main types of peas that sometimes get confused for each
other when we're talking about history. Peas were one of
the first domesticated plants around eight thousand years ago, most
likely in the Middle East or South or Central Asia.
(14:56):
They are one of the eight founder crops or eight
of the earliest domesticated crops ever. From there, the peace
soon appeared in China and India. If that's not where
it originated in the first place, Oh, history, um. If
we're talking pre domestication, some evidence suggest the Neanderthals are
(15:16):
eating peas forty six thousand years ago might not be
the same p though I would say probably not the
same pe probably not um. Other evidence suggests that two
types of peas were each domesticated from a now extinct
ancestor about eleven thousand years ago in the Near East.
The first known evidence of purposeful p cultivation is out
(15:40):
of Syria nine thousand three hundred years ago. Those domesticating
the p did so selectively, attempting to get to a
softer shelled, what season ready crop. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans
all enjoyed peas in their cuisine. The Epicios, that really
old cookbook recipe book had nine recipes that utilized dried peas.
(16:03):
Pea soup was a common to go items sold by
street vendors in ancient Athens, which I find very curious. Indeed,
one story goes that after Romans encountered it, they named
it piece them and that is where the name comes from.
But about that name, okay, So originally peace as in
(16:29):
p e a s E was the name for a
single P until the late seventeenth century when it became
known as the plural. So people seeing this peas thought
that that was the plural of oh. It would say
it out loud and say peas, and then from there
(16:50):
you get the singular P. Yes, So it was kind
of a big misunderstanding. But people were saying pieces pieces, Yeah,
that's great, I know, let's go back to that. We
can try it perfect. But you can still see peas
um in the rhyme peas porridge hot, which I don't
know but apparently is a lasting rhyme peace porch hot peace,
(17:12):
pordge cold pease porge in a pot nine days old.
Look at you, Lauren Font. You really are always surprising
me with these rhymes about peas and other things. Peace
itself is possibly way way older, pre Indo European, maybe
even a gan. I went on a hunt to prove
(17:34):
that peace was related to pisa, as in lending Tower
of but no die. Oh, I'm sorry, but pizza is
in its family tree like a word family tree. I'm
really bummed about it. But you can't always get what
you want good good life advice and rolling stones taught
(17:56):
me that peas reached China in seventh century CE, possibly
called foreign legume piece at this time maybe eaten fresh,
but were commonly dried. Um. Dried peas were a big
time winter food. These peas were more closely resembled to chickpeas,
though Charlemagne had peas planted in his gardens in eight
(18:19):
hundred France, and at the same time peas were a
popular staple for peasants, which I also went on a
word hunt to see if if peasants and peace was
related and it's not all at least I didn't find
any evidence that it was. Ah Well, they stored well
and they kept for a long time, so they were
a good peasant food. And green peas for lent were
(18:42):
stored in the Barking Nunnery and twelfth century London. A
century later in France, fresh peas in the pod was
a popular street food item. Um. They would go on
to become a go to food for lent in France
and England. Full of protein, you know meat, and I
think for back when we had big family dinners when
(19:04):
I was younger. Um, on Easter, I believe we had peace.
It's a pretty popular spring. Fresh peas are a good
spring spring thing. They are a little bit of mint
and lemon maybe m In sixteenth century Italy, gardeners cultivated
a smaller tender pea called Pizeli Novelli. People loved these things.
(19:26):
It was the fashion, the fashion to eat unripe peas
well by by unripe just like yeah, like like immature
pain peace because previously most of them had been eaten dried, yeah,
and all the way up until seventeenth century people were
sort of bed over heels in love with these things. Um.
(19:47):
A female friend of the Sun King Louis, had this
to say about fresh peas, which could be wildly expensive.
By the way, Um, this subject of peace continues to
absorb all of this some lady ease even after having
supped at the royal table and well supped too, returning
to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion.
Well again, eat peas before going to bed. It is
(20:10):
both a fashion and a madness. I mean, I mean
they're good. They are good. I mean they're real good.
They are. They have such an interesting texture thing. It's
that pop and then the kind of creamy thing. Yeah,
it's one of my favorite dishes that I had in England.
(20:32):
Just again like peas, a little bit of lemon, little
bit of mint. They were just so green, they are
very bright. They were just so I felt like they
tasted like the land in the air. Oh now I'm
gonna actually get peas in every episode. This happens every
episode almost um, and I have a slight aside because
(20:56):
doing this episode. The main reason I wanted to do
it was mostly because which in at X. Will get
into that more later, but I did a lot of
these memories got jumbled around in my head. Did you
ever play well, wait a minute, did you take what language?
Did you take Spanish? Spanish? Okay, so you didn't play
this game. Anyone who took French, please right in if
you remember playing the game the Sun King game where
(21:18):
you were wandering around his court and trying to please
people like it was a computer game that we would
play in French class to learn French, and I just
totally forgot about it. I remember it being incredibly frustrating.
You could never figure out what they wanted, which might
have been the lesson. And that's a little bit existential
(21:39):
for what like middle school. But sure, alright, well, speaking
of fashion, that trend setter Catherine de Medici introduced peas
to France during the fifteen hundreds, and the French named
them tiny peas. Due to the popularity of peas in France,
some towns were named after recipes is so seated with
(22:00):
their town that incorporated peas. Street vendors in England advertised
their hot gray peas with us suck up bacon around
this time as well. Um new varieties developed in England
around this time. We're known as garden peas and English peace. Yeah,
so that that's some Europe for you. Europe really digging
(22:23):
into this station of Peas. We do have some some
New World stuff, but first we have one less quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you. The colonist brought Peas with
(22:48):
them to the New World. In quotes, they kept well
and we're good for voyages, so kind of an obvious
choice to take with you settlers in Canada's New France
bought with them pea soup. If you remember at the
beginning we said top grower was Canada and France was
in the top five. I'll find that really kind of
(23:10):
there's interesting and legacy. There's there is a pe legacy um,
and once again it's time to talk about someone else
with a legacy. Thomas Jefferson. He and his neighbors engaged
in a battle of the peace to see who could
grow them in their garden first, and Thomas Jefferson came
(23:30):
out in front. Happened back over to Europe. In the
seventeen nineties, Peas appeared in their first genetics study, one
led by Thomas Andrew Knight. Yeah, and of course genetics
weren't I mean it's technically what he was studying, but
he didn't know it at the time. But he was
working with different colored peas and observing how cross fertilizing
(23:52):
them could affect the color of future generations. France's eighteen
hundreds encyclopedia The Vegetable Garden included fifty pages on different
types of peace. Yeah, okay. And then along comes one
Gregor Mendel in the eighteen sixties. Mendel was an Austrian
monk who realized that some p traits were more dominant
(24:14):
than others. He carried out a series of experiments that
were the precursor to the laws of genetic inheritance. While
he died pretty much as an unknown, his research came
back into the scientific sitegeists in the nineteen hundreds and
his contributions to genetics was recognized. Yeah. Um, he's currently
called like like the father of genetics and some circles. Um.
(24:36):
And Mendel was using p plants because they're they're inexpensive,
they're easy to grow and keep track of, easier even
than mice and honey bees, which is what he started with. Um.
Part of why his work didn't catch on during the
time was that The prevailing theory was that offspring are
blend of their parents traits. You know, like if you've
got a tall mom and a short dad, you'll be
of medium height. Um. So therefore, what Mendel was saying,
(24:59):
you know that two tall parents can produce can produce
a short offspring because the short trait may have been inherited.
Just recessive, right, Um it was. It was unintuitive to
people at the time, especially because humans are more genetically
complicated than p plants. But no one knew about jeans yet,
so it seemed really easily dismissed. Um. But yet his
(25:23):
his concepts of receiving a random assortment of traits from
each parent half of the traits that they had each
inherited from their parents, um, would become the basis of
chromosomal heredity. In the early the humble pee, the humble pea,
the Campbell Company, Yes, that Campbell Company shows peas as
(25:43):
one of the first things to can in eighteen seventy
as mentioned in our Frozen Foods episode. They were also
some of the first vegetables to be frozen around the
nineteen twenties. And speaking of frozen peas, uh, there is
this absolutely bizarre and delightful moment and relatively recent history
in which famed actor, writer and director Orson Welles absolutely
(26:08):
pitched a fit while attempting to refer to record a
few commercials. UM. One being four frozen peas. Another one
was for cod fish fingers. And I can't believe I
forgot that when we were doing our cod episode all anyway, Um,
this this fit he pitched. Um. This was? This was
after he reportedly made the recording crew chase him all
(26:31):
over Europe like like at least five locations around Europe. Um,
a sort of revenge for them requesting audition. How dare they? Um?
This happened around so he was he was already quite
famous and and really infamous also over being pretty person
nickety um and and had taken to doing ads to
(26:52):
help pay for his pet projects. UM and I I
think we can roll a little bit of of this
here because oh it's it's old. We know a remote
farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July peas
grow there. Do you really mean that? I yes, I'd
start half a second leak. Don't you think you really
(27:12):
want to say? July over the snow isn't that the
fun of it? It's if you can make it almost
when that shot disappears little bit. But I think it's
so nice that that you see a snow covered field
and savery July, pease grow there. We know a remote
farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July, peas
grow there. We aren't even in the fields you see.
(27:36):
We're talking about him growing and she's picked him on
one in July. I don't understand you. Then, when must
what must be over for July? When we get out
of the snowy field. When I was out, we were
onto a can of peas, a big dish of piece.
When I said, in July, let's just do the article.
If you'll forgive me by saying so, that's just stupid.
In July, I'd love to know how you emphasize in
(27:58):
and in July. We we just actually played a little
bit of it in the studio here, Annie, do you
have any thoughts, feelings, reactions. I love how his his
tone stays very like even the whole the whole time.
It sounds reasonable, but what he's saying is super unreasonable,
super unreasonable. And I told Lauren I don't know what
(28:21):
part we played, but I'm determined to say you don't
know what I'm up against in a like straight voice
in regular conversation. Maybe by the end of the day,
I think you can. I have faith in you. I
think I can. Yeah, goals from Orson but yeah, if
if if that sounds familiar to anyone who has never
(28:46):
actually listened to to that Orson Wells clip um, but
who was perhaps watching Animaniacs or The Critic back the nineties.
That's because Maurice LaMarsh, who's wells impersonation is super on point,
and I would say the Brain character is based on Um.
He did it pretty much verbatim in Pinky and the Brain,
(29:07):
except he like put in family friendly phrasing for a
few things. Um. And he also parodied it in The Critic.
So yeah, you can. You can look up the full
audio under the names Yes Always or or Frozen Peas
if you just want a real good giggle, I recommend it.
(29:28):
Now that you pointed out yes the Brain so much
very much. Um. Oh, that's so scared me as a kid,
I wonder and I could never put my finger on why. Uh,
it just really unsettled me. It did, But in a
way that I liked. Then again, I'm like, I was
a little bit older than you at the time, so
(29:49):
I might have Yeah, I should. I should revisit it
and see if I can figure out what it was
put me so on edge show. Maybe it was the
orson well impression. Maybe I don't know. I don't know,
but uh, yeah, that's a that's the story of frozen
peace and peace in general. Yes, um, kind of a
(30:15):
a random I just suddenly really wanted to talk about peace.
So I hope that it was enjoyable, enjoyable for you
out there and it brings us to listener. No, that
was I love that sound. That was good. I should
(30:40):
have done a pinking the brain kind of send off,
but oh it's okay. Maybe next time I couldn't have
done it. Anyway. I still working on my William Shatner,
so very slow when it comes to mastering impressions. That's
that's okay, take your time. These things. These things are important.
Thank you. Our first letter is from Alicia, who wrote,
(31:00):
I just listened to your better episode and the episode
that had a follow up from someone talking about the
Minnesota State Fair. I have a friend whose sister and
cousin have both been in the Princess k of the
Milky Way Court and have had both their heads carved
out of butter. My favorite account is one of our
friends meeting her sister and asking, aren't you the butter Princess,
(31:20):
and her reply was, Yep, my face is still in
the freezer if you want to see it. That is
a great quote. Butter carving is alive and well in
that part of the country. That's beautiful. It is I
want to see. I want to see some butter carving
in action one day. Yeah, we'll have to go. Yeah
to our ever growing list of faces. Stephy wrote in
(31:45):
about our food stuffs in Movies episode saying Halloween is
my favorite holiday and it gave me great ideas for
this year's costume. However, at the end of your interview
with V I have a solution to your glass problem,
or at least partially glass candy. If you make glass
candy without food dye, you can easily make a small
sheet of candy, smash it with a mallet or hammer.
(32:07):
It's my favorite part, and instantly you can make it
look like someone has glass sticking out of them. Glass
candy is super easy to make it only takes water,
corn syrup, sugar, and I recommend a candy thermometer to
make it easier. Me too. Also, I'm on a roller
derby team. Heck yeah, shout out to River City Renegades
out of Mackinaw City, Michigan, and we occasionally traveled to
(32:28):
Salt St. Marie, Canada. We have some teammates who travel
from here, so we stop at fast food places sometimes
in relation to your McDonald's episode, and I can tell
you this. You can find poutine it's fries with gravy
and cheese curds almost anywhere in Canada, including McDonald's. However,
KFC there doesn't have biscuits. What I know, it doesn't
(32:52):
sound like much, but we were very surprised, as obviously
we clearly I'm okay, I'm pulling myself back together. Oh
and you can find Tim Horton's everywhere anyway. You just
wanted to share, Well, I've never been to a Tim Horton's.
Oh I have very good Yeah. It's it's kind of
funny because you go to Canada and you think I've
(33:14):
got to go is it timmy ho hoes something? Anyway? Um,
and every time I've been to an airport in Canada
which is like five or next times. Um, there is
always a massive line to Tim Hortons, no matter what
time it is, no matter if like the line is
to me long enough to make me reconsider my choice.
(33:36):
If there's other places that are open, Nope, always a
really long line. And there's like three lines. So there's
like I just want coffee line, there's regular ordering line,
and then there's like I know exactly what I want
and it's those doughnut holes and one coffee. I don't
need to think about anything, and it's all three or long. Um.
(34:00):
This has just been my experience perhaps cultural standpoint. I mean,
you know it is. Yeah, it's lovely, it's delicious. Um.
And thank you for the hint about glass candy. If
we ever get around making our food Stuff horror short film,
we will keep that in mind absolutely. And uh yeah,
(34:21):
thanks to both of them for writing in. If you
would like to write to us our emails food Stuff
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at food
Stuff h s W. Also on Instagram at food stuff.
We do hope to hear from you, um, Thank you
as always to our super producer Dylan Fagan, who is
just a gem. It's just a gem. Thanks to you
(34:42):
for listening and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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