Food
How to Skin and Prepare a Rattlesnake for the Table
It's best to leave snakes alone, but if you do get a fresh rattlesnake, you might as well eat it.
Well certainly not legal to harvest in New York as they're pretty rare, they apparently make a good meal.
Does Photo Show Lice Sores on Chicken at Walmart? | Snopes.com
How Fish and Chips Migrated to Great Britain
Fish and chips’s origin story, however, is a bit more complex than this nationalist sentiment might imply.
As told by Simon Majumdar in his podcast, Eat My Globe, it all began outside of the U.K., hundreds of years ago. From the 8th to the 12th century, Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in relative peace in Portugal, known as Al-Andalus under Moorish rule. Sephardic Jews, who likely comprised around 20 percent of the population, were relatively well-respected and held positions in the high court. For this reason, the area became somewhat of a haven for those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. However, in 1496, after the end of Moorish rule, King Manuel I married Isabel of Spain, who was not so aligned with the idea of religious freedom. Her ultimatum: Their betrothal would mean the expulsion of Jews from Portugal. Manuel I mandated that all Jews be baptized, or otherwise expelled.
While many fled, some Jews stayed, and either converted to Christianity or pretended to do so while continuing to practice Judaism in secret. But when Portugal fell under Spanish rule, the Inquisition targeted individuals with Jewish lineage, threatening anyone claiming to be a Converso. As religious violence worsened, many fled Portugal and resettled in England, bringing with them culinary treasures founded in Sephardic cuisine—including fish.
The Economics Behind Grandma’s Tuna Casseroles
The modern foodie cannot imagine a world in which he or she would enjoy sitting down to a meal of poached eggs on toast points drowned in floury white sauce, followed perhaps by a dainty frozen salad. And after looking at food pictures of the era, you can sort of understand why. Photographers hadn’t yet figured out how to make food look appetizing on camera. Nor were the Technicolor hues then in fashion very kind to their culinary subjects. I confess that I myself, who have eaten and enjoyed eggs a la goldenrod, often find it hard to imagine what the cookbook authors were thinking.
how capsaicin brings the heat | NOVA | PBS
When applied as a paste or lotion to horses’ forelegs, capsaicin can cause a burning sensation that would be exacerbated by knocking against the rails of a jump. If a showjumping horse lifts its legs higher, it avoids the potentially irritating touch of a fence—and its rider avoids incurring penalties. But capsaicin can also soothe aches and pains by temporarily deactivating the nerve endings where it’s applied. An exhausted horse with numbed nerves will perform better than an equally tired one that can feel the full pain of its aching muscles, according to the American Association of Equine Practitioners, which is why capsaicin is banned from equestrian competitions to this day.?
“Capsaicin binds to the TRPV-1 receptor—a pain receptor present all over our bodies,” says Ivette Guzm?n, a horticulturist and member of the Chile Pepper Institute of New Mexico State University. If a horse is sore, “applying capsaicin binds up those pain receptors,” she says. A horse may feel a little bit of heat from topical capsaicin, but “they won’t feel the pain,” Guzm?n explains. “It works on us, too.”
Just as horses experience a numbing feeling from a topical application of capsaicin, your tongue will tingle when you chew a hot pepper. This numbing sensation is often coupled with a burning one that’s enjoyed by spicy food-lovers around the world: Whether eating centuries-old cuisines like Indian curry or saucy chicken wings on the popular YouTube series “Hot Ones,” human beings have subjected themselves to the uncomfortable chemistry of capsaicin for millennia.