foodmuseumblog

Industrial Candy Canes---A Licking Good Time

Terrible blog slacker that I am of late--blame my new preoccupation with an exhibition we are working on--I stumbled across this video on how candy canes are made. Love it! And I started wondering how engineers end up working on candy cane manufacturing, instead of, say, olive oil bottling or tennis racket manufacture or whatnot.

Random Bits and Bobs about Food

Apparently the Sunmaid Raisin logo has been updated! ( three years ago?) turning the sunbonnet-clad happy vineyard worker, (actually a model, ) of 1915 into a silly looking computerized doofus with a dumb hat. Not much of an update at all.  Anyway, this made the news, and got me thinking of those tiny boxes of Sunmaid that my mother placed in my lunchbox.  Though I ate the little brown squashed things, after some time I informed my mom that I really didn't like raisins, particularly the baked ones.

She then laughed and divulged that her sister also hated cooked raisins, stating firmly one day that they looked like  mashed bugs. Ta da--family ties.

So then--This morning I was perusing the wedding announcements in the NYTimes on line and came across a description of the meeting, life together, and eventual marriage in Connecticut of two middle-aged gay men, Stephen Davis and Jeffrey Busch. 

The universality of the desire to be married struck me ( sorry, Tiger,) along with the global commonality of the final statement in the piece.

The Times reporter writes:

"The synagogue was just a few miles from where  Mr. Busch spent his childhood. “Growing up, I thought I’d have to move 10,000 miles away,” Mr. Busch said. “That’s what it meant to be gay then.”

Now the couple are not only living in his hometown, but Mr. Busch’s mother, 72, shares the house with them. When they walk in the door, she asks, “Have you eaten?”"

Jewish mothers, other mothers, fathers, and persons of food, understand this.  According to a delightful piece on Chinese food by Jonathan Lipman,

"Anyone who has ever studied the Chinese language knows that Chinese folks talk about food more than any other topic, to the point that in some parts of northern China, people greet one another with "Have you eaten?" (chifanle meiyou) rather than "Are you well?" (ni hao?).

(Tks to http://guanabee.com/2009/12/lorraine-collet-petersen-sun-maid-raisin-makeover/ for the raisin images.)

"Pie in the Sky"--For Foodies Who Love Mysteries

Ever grateful for the endless treasure that is Netflix--I reserve it for the obscure, the old, the unheralded but good, rather than for the new--I stumbled upon this lovely Brit tv series written for the remarkable actor Richard Griffiths, whom I had most recently seen in the film The History Boys.

It's about an experienced Detective Inspector who is longing to retire so that he can run his own restaurant. Naturally, the series exists because "they" won't let Inspector  Henry Crabbe retire, but he also does open his business, so we see him both sleuthing and sauteeing. And talking with the hens in his new, utterly overpriced hen house, behind the store, as it were. Maggie Steed plays Crabbe's accountant wife, Margaret, who considers food as mere fuel, but strives to keep the Pie in the Sky Cafe on an even financial keel.

Crabbe has a gentle, insightful way with people, even the bad guys, and endures calmly the absurd ways of his immediate superior on the force. Possibly because Crabbe's mind is always on the next shipment of smoked Scottish salmon...

The series ran from 1994-1997.