cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/28480950

In 2015, Cookie Monster filmed a viral video titled “Simply Delicious Shower Thoughts with Cookie Monster” for the Mashable YouTube channel. In the video, he explores various New York City museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, while pondering deep “shower thoughts” about food.

  • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
    36·
    2 days ago

    Ketchup is a fruit butter, not a jam.

    Cooked, pureed fruit with sugar and spices, no pectin. Not a jam

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      So to make ketchup, aka a fruit butter, we must first milk the tomatoes, then separate the cream, then churn the tomato cream, then separate the tomato buttermilk.

      I had no idea so much went into ketchup.

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 days ago

        Tomato butter is a little different, after you separate the tomato buttercream and add seasoning and vinegar, add back the tomato buttercream until the consistency is where you like it

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        Not sure if joking so I’ll answer seriously…

        Like apple butter, or pear butter. Maybe it’s an Appalachian thing, I dunno. You chop up the fruit, let’s say apples, and slow cook them for a few hours. Then puree them, add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, whatever, and a bunch of sugar. Can the results. We always used small mason jars that had been in the family for God only knows how long.

        Grandma wouldn’t use a blender, she was old school. She’d add all the ingredients together in a big stock pot, drop a silver dollar in the bottom, and stir for hours, until she couldn’t hear the coin move around anymore. I say she stirred for hours, but she’d “enlist” the help of the kids, and later, daughters-in-law, and eventually grandchildren. She was born in 1912, so I reckon it was just her way

        • Enkrod@feddit.org
          2·
          1 day ago

          Oh shit, that sounds exactly like Lekvar or Powidl, that might point to a mostly eastern European, maybe German but more likely Slavic origin.

          • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 day ago

            So I got curious and went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Here’s the first paragraph from the apple butter article:

            The roots of apple butter lie in Limburg (Belgium and the Netherlands) and Rhineland (Germany), conceived during the Middle Ages, when the first monasteries (with large orchards) appeared. The production of the butter was a perfect way to conserve part of the fruit production of the monasteries[1] in that region, at a time when almost every village had its own apple-butter producers. The production of apple butter was also a popular way of using apples in colonial America, well into the 19th century.

            So yeah, apple butter has roots in Germany, at least for central Europe. However, other fruit butters have other origins, such as Lekvar and Powidi, as you mentioned. At the same time Latwerge and Apfelkraut were developing in Germany, monasteries in the British Isles were also developing apple butter as a preservation technique. It seems the tradition/technique developed in parallel as a communal way of preserving fruit.

            Since grandma’s recipe included a sweetener it likely has its roots in the British Isles, where honey would be added to the preserves as a sweetener. Her apple tree produced a fairly sour soft apple, which also would inform that decision. The pies were amazing

    • cravl@slrpnk.net
      7·
      2 days ago

      Not just your stomach, but your entire digestive system actually. It’s called the enteric nervous system, and it’s absolutely fascinating (the disfunction of which has recently been linked to a lot of different diseases and disorders). From Wikipedia:

      The enteric nervous system (ENS) is one of the three divisions of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the others being the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS). The ENS is formed from the myenteric plexus, and the submucosal plexus, and consists of a mesh-like system of neurons that governs the functions of the gastrointestinal tract, including motility and secretion, and is known as the “second brain”.

      The enteric nervous system is capable of operating independently of the brain and spinal cord

      The enteric nervous system in humans consists of some 500 million neurons, 0.5% of the number of neurons in the brain, five times as many as the one hundred million neurons in the human spinal cord, and about ⅔ as many as in the whole nervous system of a cat. The enteric nervous system is embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system, beginning in the esophagus and extending down to the anus.

      • Narauko@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        extending down to the anus

        Brings a whole new dimension to the phrase “shit for brains”.

        But on a somewhat more serious thought, could we possibly see evolutionary pressures for adding extra gyri folds in the digestive tract to beef up ENS neuron numbers and density? I wonder if anyone has looked into it from an evolutionary biology perspective yet.

        In the future, could we all have a secondary hind brain like they used to theorize sauropods had, or possibly turn into Krang with his android body if Gordon Ramsey is the next step of human evolution?

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      7·
      2 days ago

      Only in the sense that the gut is deeply tied to your emotional state. Example: “that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach”

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    Donuts are already vegetable donuts. It’s cereal. Mostly wheat. And rapeseed or whatever you call it, uh canada oil with low acid.

    Donuts are mostly vegan. Should be at least.

    Although this makes me think of what donuts would taste like fried in beef tallow? Hmm…

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
        21·
        2 days ago

        Vegetables are edible parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. This original meaning is still commonly used, and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, roots, and seeds.

        Seems to me that grains are plants and edible.