Candy of the Day - Circus Peanuts

I can remember my grandmother having a bowl of Circus Peanuts on her dining room table whenever we came to her house. You’d reach into that bowl and come up with a huge mass of semi-molten orange corn syrup. Circus Peanuts aren’t so much a brand as a type of candy. Typically they are peanut-shaped marshmallow candies that are colored orange and banana flavored.

Circus Peanuts first showed up in the 1800's, but there isn't much information on who created them or where they came into being. In fact, if you look at a bag of Circus Peanuts you'll notice that the name is not trademarked - that's because the history of this strange candy is so convoluted that nobody has even seriously tried to unravel the facts.

I guess I’m cheating by including Circus Peanuts in my trip down trick-or-treat lane. I never got them in my bag, and I can’t help thinking that’s a good thing! In my research I did glean one thing that the ubiquitous Circus Peanut can be credited with - the creation of a iconic breakfast cereal. The following is from the fantastic Candyblog:

"If there’s one thing to be celebrated about Circus Peanuts it’s that they led to the creation of Lucky Charms. A General Mills team was charged with creating a kids cereal in only six months. So they sat down with everything available to them, from Cheerios and Wheaties to a bunch of candy from the store shelves (apparently that’s what a kid’s cereal is made from). They put bits of stale Circus Peanuts (now called “marbits” in the industry for marshmallow bits) in a sugared Cheerios and everyone loved the idea. A cartoon mascot and bit of Americana was born. So if you find yourself stuck with some extra Circus Peanuts, perhaps chop them up and throw them in your breakfast bowl."

So, maybe Circus Peanuts are magically delicious?

 

Candy of the Day - Jujyfruits!

1950 Jujyfruits Ad from Life Magazine

Jujyfruits, make sure you get at least three servings from the glue food group every day! Mostly I remember Jujyfruits as a theatre candy, sitting in a lighted cabinet with other strange throw-back confections like Sno-caps. Jujy’s came in four flavors that all tasted like corn syrup. Originally the Heide Company made Jujyfruit, a business started by German immigrant Henry Heide in 1869 but since then the brand’s changed hands several times. Today you can find Jujy’s being made by the Farley’s and Sathers Company.

You've got to worry about an ad campaign that has the slogan "Ever try Jujyfruits?" It sounds like something you say about Lima beans, "C'mon Johnny, have you ever even tried Jujyfruits? They can't be that bad, can they?"

Vive la Margarine!

As you probably know, I like to pour over old cookbooks. It gives me a chance to find forgotten recipes that might be worth trying along with a few that definitely are worth avoiding. Well, during today’s trawling I came across this recipe for Victory Meat Dish from Mrs. Scott’s North American Seasonal Cookbook: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.  

The name was the first thing to catch my attention. It reminded me of the infamous Freedom Fries served at the House of Representatives Cafeteria during 2003. America’s good for redefining and food-isolationism during times of military upheaval and, since the cookbook was written by Anna B. Storck Scott in 1921 (not long after the end of World War I), the name isn’t surprising. The recipe contains another little nugget of arcane culinary practice though, the use of Oleomargarine which, by chance, is why I decided to write this blog post on Bastille Day weekend.

 

Oleomargarine was one of a new class of food products in the twenties: processed food products. Oleomargarine, even without the E-Z Color dye-pack, has a colorful history. Its origins can be traced back to Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon was faced with the problem of feeding his navy and the poor subjects who’d overthrown the French monarchy over that whole “let them eat cake” thing so he offered a prize to anyone could create a cheap and palatable butter substitute. The winner was French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. In 1869, Mège-Mouriès patented a process for churning beef tallow with milk to create a butter substitute he dubbed Oleomargarine.

The prospects for this new product of science weren’t exactly sunny yellow, though. The product failed to gain widespread acceptance and Mège-Mouriès sought the help of a Dutch company (Jurgens) to build an international market. It was at this time that dyes began being added to the product to give it a more butter-like appearance.

It’s probably obvious that dairy farmers and butter manufacturers didn’t take well to the introduction of a cheap butter substitute. Lobbying by the dairy industry resulted in a tax of two cents a pound being levied against margarine (no small sum in the 1800s). Artificially colored butter became contraband in thirty US states by 1900. Between 1886 and 1948 Canada enforced a total ban on margarine with only a short exception during World War I and in Quebec bans on dying margarine remained in place until 2008. Margarine producers didn’t take these restrictions lying down, instead they sold dye-paks along with their product so that consumers could make their own artificially-yellow butter substitute at home.

The growth of the Pure Foods Movement of the 1920s eventually helped margarine’s case, preventing dairy producers from including additives in natural butter that would make it more spreadable. Smooth-spreading margarines became the toast-topper of choice during the depression and the rationing of dairy products during World War II convinced many consumers to switch.

In 1950, the U.S. government finally repealed its margarine tax, and the market continued to grow as individual states reversed their bans. Even the medical industry seemed to be on the side of margarine for a while, declaring that the high levels of saturated fats in butter put diners at a higher risk of heart disease. As we all know, though, the healthcare pendulum always tends to swing back and forth and eventually margarine got the doctor’s thumbs down for the use of trans fats which not only increased risk of heart disease but raised levels of LDL cholesterol (that’s the bad stuff).

The truth? Actually there never was good evidence replacing butter with margarine cut the chances of having a heart attack or developing heart disease. So, if I were to include this recipe in my Bastille Day feast I’d have to leave out the margarine in spite of its French connections. Still, vive la France!

Summer is Barbecue Time

One day after summer starts and I’m about to say something sacrilegious. So you might want to usher the children out of the room, close the blinds, and make sure a government drone isn’t loitering overhead before you continue reading. Prepared? Are you sure? Okay, here goes, the great American institution that is barbecue isn’t American at all.

Alright, I apologize. I know that the revelation one of our beloved summer traditions didn’t originate here in the US isn’t quite as shocking as I made it out.  To be honest, nobody really knows where the term barbecue comes from, though there’s speculation that it derives from the Spanish term for a cooking method they witnessed native peoples of the Caribbean using. Due to the abundance of pork in the American south the technique became established by the 1800’s.

To start things off, it’s important to talk a little about the distinction between barbecue and grilling.

Grilling is a method of cookery where food is placed directly on the rack or grate of a grill which uses a heat source such as wood, charcoal, or gas. The best kinds of foods for grilling tend toward meats and poultry (although fish, seafood, and vegetables grilled with the right accessories).

Grill is a high-temperature/dry heat cooking method which means that the meats cooked on a grill should tender and many cooks utilize marinades to help retain moisture.

On the other hand, Barbecue utilizes indirect heat to perform cooking and many smokers designed for barbecue will have a separate firebox to help keep the heat applied to the meat between 200 and 220°F. Cooking times for real barbecue can be as long as 18 hours which helps retain moisture and allows for the use of relatively tough cuts of meat with large amounts of fat and connective tissue (such as pork shoulder).

There are four basic styles of barbecue in America: North Carolina, Kansas City, Texas, and Memphis. Each of these differ in the choice of meat and the way it's prepared for cooking. In North Carolina the preferred method is to slather pork with a vinegar-based barbecue sauce during the cooking process. In Kansas City a combination of dry spices and sugar, commonly referred to as a dry rub, is used to season the meat before cooking. Texan barbecue artists also use dry rubs, but they lean toward choosing cuts of beef for their smokers. And in Memphis sweet and spicy tomato-based sauce sauce mopped over pork is king.

My preference? Well, I'm born and bread in the Midwest so I have a fondness for Memphis and Kansas City barbecue. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing like a properly smoked and seasoned beef brisket and I won't hesitate dig in when I get a chance, but my meat of choice is pork and with a good dry rub and a smoking-hot sauce to finish things off.

Barbecue holds at its smokey heart a kind of roadhouse romance. It's the alchemical art of mixing love with what geography provides poverty allows to create food for the soul. The best pit masters create rub recipes which they guard jealously and pass down through generations. I’m still working on my personal combination, a blend that expresses who I am, my history, and where I come from. It's a journey of discovery that started with a recipe for a ‘foolproof’ rub that I stumbled across on the web and still is evolving to this day and I highly recommend you begin your own exploration. Dig back into your history for flavors and mine your memories and in the end you might cook up something that speaks to your soul.