S is for Spinach

 Another blast from the past today. 

Popeye's Spinach

The other day Ward was reading something and called out, "Hey, listen to this. You know how Popeye eats spinach and gets really strong because of the iron in it? Well that portrayal happened because of a simple mistake." He proceeded to tell me that when the nutritional value for spinach was first published in the 1870's, there was a problem with a decimal point. That ended up with the belief that spinach had 10 times more iron in it than it really had. The mistake wasn't figured out until much later.

I thought that was pretty interesting and I would share it with you here on my blog. And that's where the problems began. I did a little googling and found the same story in many places. In fact, it's such a great story that it has been repeated for decades. But no one seems to have ever seen the original paper where this mistake was made. Mike Sutton published extensive research he did on the story in Best Thinking Science. After a lot of investigation, he could find no evidence that the misplaced decimal ever happened.

What about Popeye? Did the misplaced decimal story mislead him into eating spinach for strength? Well, it turns out that when he first ate it, he touted its Vitamin A properties instead of iron content.




Nevertheless, his love of spinach made it the third favorite food among children at one point and consumption of spinach went up in the 1940's when Popeye was in his heyday.

So how much iron does spinach actually have in it and is it any better than other foods as a source of iron? One cup of raw spinach (30 grams) contains 5% of the RDA for iron (which by the way is the same amount of iron in Peppermint Pattie.)  Of course, if you are eating it cooked you are likely to eat more. However, spinach also contains oxalates which bind to the iron and make it hard for the body to absorb. So generally, animal sources of iron are easier for the body to use. However like all leafy greens, spinach good for you for a lot of reasons.

So what conclusion can we draw from all of this? Once again, you can't believe everything you read.

Note: I did reading on this about a week before I wrote it. When I tried to relocate sources for some of the things I had written down, I couldn't find them all again. Therefore, I tried to summarize the topic without too many specifics when I couldn't find the sources. Come to think of it, this might be how some internet rumors get started :)

R is for Rutabaga

I am moving slower than normal because of side effects from my second COVID vaccination, so I'm going to be using posts I've done in the past for the next couple of days. Today' post, about rutabagas, I featured not too long ago. To add new content, here's a rutabaga joke from Jokes 4 Us

Q: What kind of socks do you need to plant rutabaga?

A: Garden hose. (You can groan now.)

Rutabagas

I've always been curious about rutabagas. Well, actually, I've never been curious about rutabagas and have never given them much thought until recently when Miss Landers brought some over from her garden for us to try. This was her first time growing them and she was curious about how they compared with turnips, so she also brought turnips that she had grown.

A bit of research revealed that rutabagas are a natural cross between turnips and wild cabbage. They are a relatively new plant in that the first time they are mentioned in literature is in the early 1600's. They go by many names including yellow turnips and swedes because Sweden is a top producer. (Can you guess they like to grow in colder weather?) The name “rutabaga” is derived from an old Swedish word meaning “root bag.”

Notice the multiple roots and yellow tint of the rutabaga.

How about our turnip vs. rutabaga comparison? This is what we observed. Miss Landers said that as she was pulling them (both root vegetables) that the rutabagas seemed to have more roots and root hairs. Both were pungent when raw and smelled like a cross between cabbage and radishes. The rutabaga had a yellow tint to it that intensified when cooked while the turnip remained white.

We were able to convince Ward and Theodore to participate in a taste test after the vegetables were cooked--which was pretty remarkable considering neither one of them like turnips.They weren't too sure that they wanted to sample anything called yellow turnips. However, they did sample them right along with Miss Landers and me.

We all agreed that the rutabaga had a definite potato taste. Theodore said that the rutabaga tasted as if it were a cross between potatoes and brussel sprouts. A fairly apt description. Theodore and I liked the turnips better with their more peppery taste while Ward and Miss Landers liked the rutabagas better with their milder taste and creamier texture.

In conclusion, will I start adding rutabagas to my grocery list on a regular basis? No. But will I now have something new to talk about when there is a lull in the conversation? Yes. :)

Notice they white color of the cooked turnips and the yellow color of the rutabaga.

 More sources:

• Rutabaga overview--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga
• Rutabaga recipes--http://allrecipes.com/recipes/everyday-cooking/seasonal/winter/rutabaga/top.aspx
• Rutabaga nutrition--http://www.produceoasis.com/Items_folder/Vegetables/Rutabaga.html
• How to grow rutabagas  http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-26.html
• A serious and not so serious blog about rutabagas--http://rutablogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/breakthrough-photosnynthesis-stimulate.html

Q is for Quaraibea

 I struggled a bit to come up with something for Q. I like to have a personal connection to the topic and use my own pictures if possible. Q just wasn't working for me this way. After letting go of those criteria, I decided that I would educate myself on some of the new-to-me fruits that begin with Q. So here it goes.

Quaraibea cordoto

Quaraibea Cordoto or Chupa Chupa - This is a soft, yellow fruit that grows mostly in the Amazon Rain Forest. The taste has been described as a cross between a pumpkin and mango, and nutritionally it is high in carotene. Outside of South American, I couldn't find anywhere to buy quaraibea codoto fruit. However, I did see several sources to buy seeds to grow the tree. The tree is very fast growing and can reach 140 high. However, if will only grow that high if it is in its native tropical rainforest. William Whitman brought it to Florida in 1964 and it has  been successfully grown there, although it needs protection from the cold. 

Quenepa or Spanish lime - This lime-looking fruit is about the size of an olive, has a hard shell, and a jelly inside. Despite it's name, this is not a citrus fruit. It has a sweet, tart taste and is a good source of Vitamin C. Quenepa is native to the tropics of Central and South America. In the US, it is grown in Florida, California, and Hawaii. I have never seen quenepa in the grocery store, but I did find it for sale on Amazon when it is in season.

Quandong or Desert Peach - Quandong grows in the deserts of Australia. It has been described to taste like a tart peach and has more Vitamin C than an orange. Indigenous people have used them for medicine and fuel (from seeds) as well as food. Some quandong are grown commercially, but much of the fruit is harvested in the wild. I could not find it mentioned that they are grown outside of Australia.

Those were very brief descriptions that I think I got mostly right. I would love to hear if anyone has had experience with any of these fruit. All of them grow in warmer or drier climates than I have ever lived, which may be why I was unfamiliar with them.

P is for Peas

 

Picture it. It's 2 am, and peas are flying all over the kitchen. Let me set the stage for this scene.

When I was growing up, my father raised huge vegetable gardens--an acre or more. We lived in Town without a very big yard, so friends would let him use land on their farms for his plantings. Every evening after work, he would go tend the garden, and sometimes, my sister and I would join him to work on our jobs - weeding and/or picking. But our main job was when we got home - processing the produce.

When we were younger, we helped our mother and learned the ins and outs of proper canning and freezing. When we were older, we did all of the canning and freezing since our mother worked long hours at her nursing job. We knew that when freshly picked peas or corn came into the house, they had to be frozen (this was preferred over canning because of taste) as quickly as possible because the natural sugars in them started to change into starch as soon as they were picked, degrading the quality. 

So it would go something like this. After an evening in the garden, we would start washing and shelling peas around 9 pm. When we got enough peas shelled, one of us would start blanching them while the other kept shelling. After the blanching, we would cool them in a big dishpan using ice we had frozen in orange juice cans. Then, they went into containers and into the freezer. This would go on until we finished, usually until the middle of the night sometimes.

If you would like to try one,
 I found this on eBay.

We'd then go to bed and get up the next day to handle whatever else there was that hadn't needed to be processed immediately. And so it went. That was until one day when my mother bought a gadget that she thought would help - The Magic Fingers Sheller.  It was a yellow plastic box that hooked up to a hand mixer.  The mixer ran two electric rollers that you fed peas through. The rollers would squeeze out the peas in one direction and the shells in another. And it worked, except when it didn't. Sometimes, the peas would get stuck, and you would have to retrieve them and restart the process. Other times, the peas would fly out of the rollers and land who knows where. 

At first, my sister and I found the stuck and bouncing peas very aggravating, but as the night wore on, we found it funnier and funnier. As those peas ricocheted around the kitchen, sometimes we laughed until we cried. I guess you had to be there to really get it, but those late nights with my sister and the pea-sheller are among my favorite memories of growing up.

O is for Orange

 Not only is it Blogging A-Z month, it is also National Poetry Month. So what better to share today than a poem about orange which has no rhyming words.*

*Technically there is one word that rhymes with orange: sporange which is a botanical term for part of a fern.