I saw this parody of a phone meeting when the Passive Guy featured it on his blog, The Passive Voice.
Made me chuckle so much I had to share it with you all. 😀
My husband – who works for a large international corporation, is home-based here at Casa Ney-Grimm, and attends many phone meeitngs – assures me that this video is true to life in every respect. 😉 He has witnessed all too many of the depicted incidents.
Meat and fish stocks have been a staple of traditional cuisines for a long time. Consider the Japanese breakfast of fish broth with rice. French onion soup. Korean sol long tang (beef broth and thinly shaved beef brisket). Russsian chlodnik (shrimp soup).
Yum! I want some right now! 😀
No question that a homemade soup based on homemade stock is delicious. Makes me wish for a do-over of my winter cooking this year. I didn’t make nearly as much soup as I’d intended.
But homemade soup stock is great for a bunch other reasons too. Most of which I didn’t know before I read the book Nourishing Traditions.
Broth Is Super Nutritious
Okay, I “knew” soup was nutritious. You hear it all the time. But I didn’t know why. And, honestly, most commercial soups aren’t, because they’re made with cheap hydrolyzed vegetable protein as a base instead of actual beef stock or chicken stock.
So why is meat and fish broth so good for us? Two reasons.
All the minerals present in bone, cartilage, and marrow are present in the broth, especially the biggies of calcium, magnesium, and potassium.
These minerals, plus those of any vegetables you’ve included in your stock-making, are present as electrolytes, a form that is particularly easy for the body to assimilate – that is, your body will take in more of them, more easily.
Broth Is Hydrophilic
“What?” I hear you say. I said it too!
Hydrophilic means it attracts liquids. Most raw foods are hydrophilic. When we eat them, the particles attract the digestive juices present in the gut, causing the food particles to be rapidly and thoroughly digested.
But most cooked foods are hydrophobic. That is, they repel liquids. And repel the digestive juices. Which means your body has to use (and make) more enzymes to accomplish digestion, and it takes longer.
The gelatin in stock possesses the unusual property that even after heating it is hydrophilic. It attracts liquid. So all those lovely vegetable chunks and meat pieces in your soup? They’re coated in broth and thus become far easier to digest.
When I was a young thing, the emphasis placed by my elders on digestibility seemed incomprehensible. You swallow your food; it’s digested; end of story. After I’d experienced indigestion – ouch! – their concern made more sense. And after I’d experienced years of a painful gut from eating soy products such as tofu, digestibility seemed paramount! (All better, BTW, now that I’ve been avoiding soy for nearly a decade.)
Broth Is Protein Sparing
I said “what?” to that one as well.
Here’s the thing: all living cells are composed of protein. Or, put another way, protein is essential to life.
Proteins are assembled from amino acids. And our bodies can build many of the amino acids we need. But not all. There are eight of them that must be supplied by our diet. All essential eight are present in their most assimilable form in meat.
But meat is expensive. Plus, we now know that cooked meat is hydrophobic, which reduces the bio-availability of those amino acids.
So how does this protein sparing thing work?
It has to do with the protein in broth gelatin. The protein in broth gelatin is not complete. That is, it does not contain all eight essential amino acids. In fact, it’s mostly composed of two: arginine and glycine.
But meat broth (and fish broth) gelatin has another special property. It allows the body to more fully utilize the complete proteins that are eaten with it.
In other words, the chunks of beef in a beef stew (with its broth) will give you much more protein than the same amount of beef sliced from a roast. For those of us on a budget, soup with homemade stock is our friend. 😀
So how do you make soup stock?
I’ll confess that I make more chicken stock than any other, because it’s the easiest. Here’s how I do it.
Chicken Stock Recipe
bones & necks from 2 free-range chickens
4 quarts cold, filtered water
2 tablespoons vinegar or whey
1 large onion
6 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
2 large carrots, peeled
3 celery sticks
Put the chicken bones into a large pot, fill it with the water, and add the vinegar (or the whey – the liquid that runs off yogurt). Let it sit for an hour. This allows the acidic water to draw the minerals, especially calcium, out of the bones and into the liquid.
Stick the cloves into the onion.
Bring the soaking bones to a boil. Skim the foam that rises to the top. Reduce the heat, put the onion and the bay leaf in, cover, and simmer for 4 hours. Add the vegetables and simmer for another 2 to 6 hours.
Remove the chicken bones and wilted vegetables with a slotted spoon. Let the stock cool. Strain it through a seive and pour it into jars to store. It will stay good for 5 days in the fridge, several months in the freezer.
Use as a base for soups and sauces. Plain broth with some salt added makes a great breakfast addition.
For more about nutrition, see:
Grass Green
Handle with Care
For more about food chemistry, see:
Electrolytes iin Solution
Essential Amino Acids
Mercurio, the protagonist of Devouring Light, tends the planet closest to our sun.
I envisioned Mercury as a heat-scorched ball of rock, but I hoped to report on some of its interesting quirks as I told my story. “Does it possess any?” I wondered. Somewhat dubiously, I must admit.
I needn’t have worried. The universe is a quirky place, and Mercury is no exception. It abounds with quirks.
One of the coolest things is its huge, liquid iron core. For a long time astronmers assumed Mercury was a solid ball of rock, like our moon. Nope. Mercury’s core is not only molten, but large compared to the size of the planet.
Why is it so large?
While the sun was forming out of a giant whirling cloud of dust and gas, the planets were forming, too. But the dust cloud traveled around the sun a little more slowly than the coalescing planets. The cloud, particularly dense near the proto-sun, dragged away many of the lighter elements in Mercury’s orbit, leaving it with lots of heavy iron.
Why is it still liquid?
Tides caused by the sun!
Just as Earth’s moon causes a bulge of water to travel around the globe, the sun causes a bulge of magma to travel around Mercury’s core. But the sun’s tides on Mercury are 17 times stronger than the moon’s on Earth. Not only do they pull the molten core, they also flex the crust, causing it to bulge.
Additionally, Mercury’s eccentric orbit is very eccentric. At perihelion, the planet’s closest approach, the sun is 29,000,000 miles away. At aphelion, the sun’s 43,000,000 miles away. The eccentric orbit makes the tides particularly vigorous. It’s almost like Mercury’s core is being stirred by a giant egg beater!
Its core has cooled a little bit over the billions of years that have passed since the planet’s birth, however. How do we know? Mercury’s surface is striped by numerous narrow ridges called rupes. They were created when the core cooled just enough to shrink a little. The crust – already solid – wrinkled.
Okay, three more cool things about Mercury.
Mercury has magnetic tornadoes!
It’s that molten core combined with the close proximity to the sun that again creates an unusual phenomenon.
The large, liquid iron at the core – spinning as it does – means that Mercury possesses a strong magnetic field. Strong enough to protect the surface from the solar wind, just as Earth’s magnetosphere protects us.
But! Mercury’s magnetic field is so strong that it actually captures pieces of the low-temperature plasma that is the solar wind. And those plasma tendrils possess their own magnetic field. The plasma’s magnetic field clashes with Mercury’s magnetic field to produce magnetic vortexes – “tornadoes” – up to 500 miles wide!
At the center of the tornado is a window open to the full force of the sun’s blast.
Apparently Earth has these magnetic tornadoes as well, but those on Mercury are bigger and happen ten times more often.
Okay, second cool fact.
Mercury has ice at its poles!
With surface temperatures between 530º F and 800º F, how is this possible? And, if it has polar caps, why don’t we see them?
Well, first of all, not all of Mercury is hot.
The planet doesn’t have the axial tilt that Earth does. It spins nearly straight up and down. (At a tilt of .027 degrees, it has the least tilt of every planet in the solar system. Uranus, with a tilt of 98 degrees, has the most.) The angle of the sun is steep at the poles. And there is no atmosphere to spread the heat around.
So the poles are cold at -135º F. It’s even colder at the bottom of the craters at the poles: -276º F. And that’s where the ice is. Not a lot of ice. About enough to cover a square that’s 8 miles per side with 2 or 3 miles of ice. But ice nonetheless! And it’s shiny. Reflecting light that’s visible from space, when you use a big enough telescope.
Now for that third cool fact.
Mercury has hot spots!
But they’re not volcanic. In fact, Mercury’s volcanic days are long gone, a billion years in the past. So how does it have hot spots?
Mercury’s slow rotation on its axis combines with its quick journey around the sun to produce them. Here’s how.
Mercury spins 3 times on its axis for every 2 times that it travels around the sun. It’s got one heck of a long day! And at perihelion – when it’s closest to the sun – high noon lasts 16 Earth days.
At perihelion, Mercury is traveling so fast around the sun (faster than at the most distant point in its orbit, aphelion) that its own spin can’t keep up. The sun burns down on one spot – high noon – for more than 2 Earth weeks! That makes a hot spot. And one Mercury year later, the opposite side of the planet receives that 16-day high noon. Another hot spot!
I still have trouble wrapping my brain around that one, but wow!
Merucury features yet more cool quirks. Its exosphere. The Assyrian and Babylonian astronomers who first observed it. Why modern astronomers before 1965 thought Mercury spun once on its axis for every one circuit around the sun.
I wish I could have crammed them all into Devouring Light! But story comes first when I’m writing fiction. The hot spots made it in. The magnetic tornadoes and the polar ice did not. Nor any of the other fun facts. But I’m sure glad the story prompted me to learn more about our inmost planet. I’d no idea it was such a fascinating place.
For more about Mercury, see these articles at Wikipedia:
Mercury
Mercury’s Exosphere
Exploration of Mercury
For more about the world of Devouring Light, see:
The Celestial Spheres of Sol
What Do Celestials Wear?
The Graces
Roman Dining
The Heliosphere
The Oort Cloud
Draco the Dragon
The Simiae
Calico. Little House on the Prairie. Pioneer women.
These were the things that came to mind when I considered the domestic accomplishment of home canning.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
(It still amazes me how easy it is to be wrong about things. Does that happen to you? Thinking you know, and then finding you don’t?)
So if canning is not a creation of the American West, where did it come from?
Napoleon.
Yes, Napoleon Bonaparte of the Napoleonic Wars. And, indeed, war was the inciting factor. The Napoleonic Wars saw the advent of mass conscription. With 800,000 soldiers in the field for 12 years, the French needed a way to feed their armies.
The government offered a hefty prize to the inventor who could devise a way to preserve large amounts of food. Nicolas Appert – a confectioner and chef – rose to the challenge and won the prize.
His method?
Place the food in wide-mouthed glass jar. Force a cork tightly into the jar mouth using a vice. Seal it with sealing wax. Wrap the jar in canvas to protect it. Then dunk it in boiling water and boil it long enough to thoroughly cook the contents.
This was long before Pasteur and an understanding of microbes. But it worked.
Appert’s method was adopted by the British armies, but transposed to wrought-iron canisters, which were cheaper to make and less fragile. Unfortunately, the can opener was not invented for another 30 years. The soldiers opened the cans with their bayonets!
Although canned foods spread into civilian households across Europe, they remained more a novelty item than a staple. The process was too industrial and expensive for home use.
That changed in the 1860’s when a tinsmith named John Landis Mason invented the Mason jar. It was a threaded glass jar with a matching threaded ring or band, a flat lid (held in place by the band), and a rubber ring that went under the lid for an air-tight seal.
People all over America and Europe started canning fruit, pickles, relishes, and sauces such as ketchup. These high-sugar or high-acid foods could be safely canned without the pressure canning that we know today.
(Vegetables and meats must be pressure canned to kill the deadly botulinum bacteria which thrives in low-acid, anaerobic conditions.)
When the 1880’s ushered in the widespread use of the cast iron stove, home canning reached new heights of popularity. The denizens of small towns were especially well-placed to take advantage of the new technology. They were close to the farms that produced the food, as well as possessing space for home gardens. And they had the cash to afford the jars.
Strawberry preserves, dill pickles, and apple butter abounded.
Home canning was a widespread practice by 1900 and rose to great prominence in America during both World Wars. By planting Victory Gardens and canning the harvest, citizens allowed the industrial machine to be aimed more efficiently at the war effort.
But, as you can see from this short history, canning is a relatively modern development.
So how did people preserve food before before the advent of canning?
And why did I delve into the history of food preservation in the first place?
Well, I’ve been interested in one method of food preservation ever since I read the book Nourishing Traditions. The author, Sally Fallon, introduced me to the concept of lacto-fermentation. And it fascinated me.
(You can read about my discovery in the blog post here.)
Even though I’ve eaten yogurt for decades, I’d had no idea that yogurt is technically lacto-fermented milk.
And I certainly didn’t know that you could lacto-ferment other foods besides milk.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me write about this before. 😀
But if you’re new here, you might be asking, “What is lacto-fermentation?”
Lacto-fermentation happens when certain benign micro-organisms convert the glucose, fructose, and sucrose in food into lactic acid.
The micro-organisms are named – fittingly enough – after the substance they produce: they are lactobacilli. And they are present on the surface of most living organisms.
All they need to produce lactic acid is an anaerobic environment (a finger-tight jar) and a moderate “climate” (temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit).
And the process itself is really pretty nifty.
As the lactobacilli produce lactic acid, the acidity of the food rises. As the acidity rises, most other bacteria, including those that cause spoilage or disease, are killed.
The lactic acid curdles milk, to make that nice custardy texture of yogurt.
The lactic acid combines with the molecules of cabbage (and other vegetables) to form esters, which gives sauerkraut its unique flavor.
The lacto-fermentation process increases the bioavailability of vitamins and other nutrients, making lacto-fermented foods more nutritious than the original raw vegetable.
Plus the live cultures present in lacto-fermented foods help keep the human gut well-populated with beneficial micro-flora.
Bottom line?
Lacto-fermented foods are safe. They store unspoiled for a long time.
Lacto-fermented foods are delicious. Lacto-fermented cabbage is so much tastier than cabbage pickled in vinegar!
And lacto-fermented foods are good for you.
Why did we ever forget about them? I don’t know. But I do know that my new knowledge came in handy while writing stories set in my North-lands!
I wrote Troll-magic before I learned about lacto-fermentation. Since the technology level in Troll-magic is roughly equivalent to our own Steam Age, I assumed home canning was the norm in most households. I didn’t delve into the details of Lorelin’s kitchen, but she did pack up dried meat and dried pears, when she left home. (Drying is a very, very old method of food preservation.)
The technology of her culture undoubtedly could have supported home canning. And she lives in a time of peace following an extended time of warfare and mass conscription. (The wars in which the Giralliyan Empire gobbled many of it’s smaller neighbors.)
But, now that I do know about lacto-fermentation, I like to think that the people of the North-lands never abandoned it. I feel sure that Lorelin’s mother had shelves of lacto-fermented cabbage and turnips and greens and onions in her pantry. Yum!
Luckily, I had discovered lacto-fermentation before I wrote Sarvet’s Wanderyar. Because I was very clear that the Hammarleeding culture did not have the technological sophistication to support home canning. They would have had to get by with drying food, freezing it (during the winter months), salting it, curing it with smoke, and eating cooked dishes quickly, before they could spoil.
I was very happy to know they had another option! And we see that option pretty promptly when Sarvet teases her friend Amara with a platter of gundru – lacto-fermented greens.
So why did I read up on the history of canning?
I was mulling over my writing good luck a few weeks ago, and I got curious. Given that lacto-fermentation is so handy and yummy, how did the canning process get started?
I did some investigating. And you know the rest: I had to share! I hope you found the journey interesting. 😀
For more about lacto-fermentation, see:
Amazing Lactobacilli
Lacto-fermented Corn
For more about Lorelin and her world, see:
Character Interview: Lorelin
North-land Magic
A Great Birthing
For more about the world of the Kaunis-clan, see:
What Is a Bednook?
The Kaunis Clan Home
Hammarleeding Fete-days
Why Did the Three Goats Cross the River?
Livli’s Family
Ivvar’s Family
Pickled Greens, a Hammarleeding Delicacy
And for more about the history of canning, see these external links:
A Brief History of Home Canning
Commercial Canning
Nicolas Appert
John Landis Mason
