While at a party on Saturday, Ep0pee mentioned that he read in a Lutheran Cookbook that Sloppy Joes are called “Spanish Tavern Sandwiches.”  He also mentioned that he knew a few nutty folks who call them “BBQs.”  So that got me thinking… what’s with the name?  I mean, sure ‘sloppy’ is descriptive, but who is this Joe.

Turns out, the origin of Sloppy Joes traces back to a bar in Old Havana.  Sloppy Joe’s is now an historic bar in Key West, FL (Foreign Leadership Camp?).  According to the wiki, Sloppy Joe’s is mentioned in Citizen Kane when one of the men interviewed lists a few places that are “down south.” The last place mentioned before he remembers the right name is Sloppy Joe’s.

The Sloppy Joe sandwich is an American dish, “of ground beef, onions, [and] sweetened tomato sauce.”  Turns out Korndog is making them wrong (no onions!).  In various other parts of the country, they are also called:
Loosemeat sandwich
Looseburgers
Maid-Rites
Wimpies
Yip Yips
Slushburgers
Barbecues
Hot Tamales
Taverns
Steamers
Gulash

I call them… delicious

1,500 Calorie Donut Burger…

The burger’ is named after Luther Vandross

Source: Here

This is one that slipped past my 80′s radar. Nerd’s had a breakfast cereal. Like Nerds candy, it came in a divided box with orange cereal on one side and cherry cereal on the other. Both Nerds cereal, and the Nintendo Cereal System, which also had the divided box, were made by Ralston (Purina?).

Possibly the best part about Nerds cereal, however, is Nerd-gate. You see, with only 2 proofs of purchase and $.50, you could order a cool nerds separated bowl, with a gate in the middle!!! How could I have missed this fad?

Source: this awesome site, while trying to fine the entire Batman quote “You wanna get nuts? Come on! Let’s get nuts!” which is apparently not on the internet.

I have been sitting on this since last week, never quite sure if it was true or not. Now that Fox has picked it up, it must be true. Right?

I can honestly say, without shame or embarrassment, that I want to have children with this sandwich.

I do have one request for KFC, and that is for more bacon. Seriously, only two slices? I think, nay, I know you can do better.

Onions in her food makes Korndog cry all the time, but it turns out the reason cutting onions make the rest of us cry is actually pretty terrible (sounding).

When the onion is in the ground, it absorbs sulfur from the soil. When you cut the onion, it releases “lachrymatory-factor synthase enzymes” into the air. That sets off a chain reaction that results in an airborne combination of sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide! Clearly, getting sulfuric acid in your eye is something to cry about! It is low concentration, so you’re not really in harms way, but that does sound terrible, doesn’t it?!?

Fear not. There are a few things you can do to help, one of which doesn’t require any action on your part. Some farmers are growing their onions in low-sulfur soil, which means the onion doesn’t have sulfur to absorb or to shoot into your eyes.

Aside from that, however, suggestions include:
Chop an onion beneath running water.
Turn on a fan while cutting an onion to scatter the sulfur compounds.
Chill or cook an onion before chopping it.
Use an onion chopping container.
Wear goggles or glasses to protect your eyes.

My favorites, however, come from my good friend Alton Brown. He suggests using a sharper knife. The sharper the knife does less damage to the onions skin, which releases less compounds into the air. After that, he suggests chopping the onion near an open flame (like a gas stove burner). The convection of the flame draws the compounds away from the onion into the flame, which incinerates them! How cool is that?

Source: the above-mentioned Mr. Brown and this site.

The dye that makes maraschino cherries glow red comes from crushed female cochineal beetles.

I think I’ll stick with regular coke for awhile.

Source: Nerdular Nerdance

For the past week, I’ve had this bag on my desk which looks surprisingly similar to a bag of Starburst. Seeing it led to Starburst cravings which lead to this post.

Starbursts were introduced in 1960 and were called Opal Fruits. Original flavors were strawberry, lemon, orange and lime. At some point, lemon and lime were combined to make way for some sort of black currant flavor. Not sure when cherry (or as I like to call it, the best one) was introduced. They came to America in 1976 with the new name. The Opal Fruit name was phased out in 1998 for global marketing reasons.

Starburst are classified as soft taffy. I hadn’t really thought of that.

Now and Laters, the ugly red-headed step-cousin of Starburst, “are initially tough to chew when placed in the mouth, but eventually soften and resemble taffy.” Resembles taffy, huh?

Also, because of this hard then soft formula, the candies don’t hold up well to the moisture in the air, and will build up increasing layers of “hardness.” Because of this, they only have a shelf-life of about a month.

People actually eat Now and Laters?

Source: Wiki vs. Wiki

Hagerty Classic Insurance, a provider of classic-car insurance, began looking more closely at the problem of eating behind the wheel after a DMV check on an insurance applicant turned up a “restraining order” against anything edible within his reach while driving.

The top 10 food offenders in a car are:

1. Coffee: It always finds a way out of the cup.

2. Hot soup: Many people drink it like coffee and run the same risks.

3. Tacos: “A food that can disassemble itself without much help, leaving your car looking like a salad bar,” says Hagerty.

4. Chili: The potential for drips and slops down the front of clothing is significant.

5. Hamburgers: From the grease of the burger to the ketchup and mustard on top, plenty of goop can end up on your hands, clothes and steering wheel.

6. Barbecued food: Similar issue arises for barbecued foods as for hamburgers. The sauce may be great, but it will end up on whatever you touch.

7. Fried chicken: Another food that leaves you with greasy hands, which means constantly wiping them on something, even if it’s your shirt. It also makes the steering wheel greasy.

8. Jelly- or cream-filled doughnuts: Has anyone ever eaten a jelly doughnut without some of the center oozing out? And jelly can be difficult to remove from material.

9. Soft drinks: Not only are they subject to spills, but they also can fizz as you’re drinking them if you make sudden movements. Most of us have childhood memories of soda fizz in the nose; the sensation isn’t any more pleasant now.

10. Chocolate: Like greasy foods, chocolate can coat your fingers as it melts against the warmth of your skin, leaving its mark anywhere you touch. Try to clean it off the steering wheel and you could end up unintentionally swerving.

I’m surprised Ribs was only 6th.

Source MSN.com

Miracle fruit (formally known as Synsepalum dulcificum) is a red berry native to West Africa. It contains a protein called miraculin that has the odd effect of making foods taste good.

[...] When miracle fruit is consumed, the miraculin in the berry binds to the taste buds on the tongue. A person has receptors on their taste buds that identify sweet, sour, bitter and savory tastes. Normally, if you were to eat a lemon, your sour receptors would start firing. [...] Under the influence of miraculin, however, the sweet receptors start signaling and suppress the sour tastes. The miraculin rewires the sweet receptors to temporarily identify acids as sugars.

[snip]

Then, for about an hour, the miraculin modifies sour foods to taste sweet. Sweet foods will taste about the same, if not overly sweet, and other flavors remain unaffected. Because miraculin is a protein, heat will destroy the effect, so the berry can’t be cooked, and heated foods won’t taste any differently. Eventually, saliva washes away the miraculin, and your tongue returns to normal.

Read on for more, including a neat conspiracy theory involving foul play at the FDA that explains why we don’t have this miracle fruit here in the US.

h/t Z.

Vanilla comes from a bean. That much I knew.

But what I didn’t know is that the vanilla plant is actually an orchid.

Some other vanilla fun facts:

• The beans have no flavor when they are harvested from the plant. The flavor comes from the curing process, where they dry the beans in the sun for a few months.
• After the beans are dried the flavor is extracted using alcohol. The process is kind of like brewing coffee, but no heat is used.
• Pure vanilla extract is 35% alcohol.
• 60% of the world’s vanilla comes from Madagascar.

Source: Food Network (That show with Marc Summers from Double Dare)