That Ol’ Slippery Slope

So let’s say you’re a councilperson in Los Angeles and you’re planning to ban all quick service restaurants in South L.A. in an effort to fight fat. What about quick service restaurants that serve only healthy food? Tough one. They didn’t contribute any excess calories or fat to the problem. But then what precisely consititutes […]

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Where Do Gingerbread Men Come From?

It’s impossible to know. Humans have been making ceremonial breads in all manner of shapes (especially and including the human form) since time immemorial. And even though gingerbread is a fairly recent innovation, there’s really no way to tell who might have fashioned that particular bread into a person-shape first. Even so, more than a […]

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Gimme That Old Time Flavor

These days (and I mean during Christmas time) you can find a lot of talk about sugars and sugar syrups in the popular press, much of it insinuating that somehow raw cane sugar and/or cane syrup and/or molasses are the real sweeteners, more authentic and/or more chemically or morally pure than white sugar and especially […]

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Speaking of the Third World…

For all those who have friends or family members who, instead of receiving an actual gift this Christmas, would be interested in having a charitable donation made in their name, I highly recommend this organization: Kiva. Not a “charity” in the traditional sense, it’s a mechanism by which donors extend small loans to entrepreneurs in […]

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What is Sorghum?

Sally C’s comment below references another general-purpose sweetner that was once common in the Midwest and southern states: sorghum syrup. But what exactly is it and where does it come from? Well, like wheat, sorghum is a grass that produces small seeds. About the size of millet, sorghum seeds are bunched together in a head […]

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Further Question…

Sally C. goes on to ask… Next question (and you’ve probably already answered it before… but I’m old and I forget) is cane syrup Karo Light Syrup? My dad and his family always had a jug of sorghum or black strap molasses on the table to use as sweetener. And he always used Karo Syrup […]

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What is “Sulphured” Molasses?

So then, having given you the long answer about how molasses is made, I can now give you the short answer on what “sulphured” molasses is. If you remember last week’s posts on “sulphured” fruit, you’ll recall that sulfur dioxide gas is sometimes employed in the drying and/or candying process to shut down (actually bond […]

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Got a Question…

…from a longtime friend and reader (miss Sally C of Tip of the Iceberg) asking what “unsulphured molasses” is, since it appears in this week’s recipe. Good question, though to answer it I’ll need to dip in to some old posts about molasses and sugar making. I trust you won’t mind, and anyway this kind […]

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