Category: Simple Living

 

My name is Wilson, and I am a bibliophile.  I also love food, so when it comes to information about food, food science, cook books, agricultural techniques, etc. I tend to surround myself with a lot of good content.  Of course Chaya and I have our favorite online resources as well, but when it comes to books, I wanted to share some of my favorites resources with you that I rely upon when I write a blog and tell you how they got to be that way. 

 

Does the author love food too? 

Now I know what you are thinking, “well, duh, they took the time to write the book.”  But I mean does the passion comes through.  Can you see him/her drive past the supermarket to buy from the lady selling produce out of the back of her pickup truck?  These are the kinds of people I really like to read.  One book I recently had to finally let collapse on the floor as I went to bed waaaaaay too late after getting sucked in by the first paragraph in the introduction is Russ Parsons’ How to Pick a Peach.  Russ is a cook (bonus) who advocates eating local (double bonus) and is a student of farming (trifecta). 

 

 

Does the author know what they are talking about?

Just because there is ink on the page, does not mean that it contains worthwhile information.  To pull this off someone usually has to put in a lot of study.  As in went to school and paid money to gain higher education.  For this, who better (or funnier) than Robert L. Wolke?  His books What Einstein Told His Cook and What Einstein Told His Cook 2 are hilarious.  Robert is professor emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburg, he gets additional bonus points for being married to a cook as well as winning the James Beard Foundation (more on them later) Award for his Washington Post column, Food 101. 

 

 

Does the author get angry about something? 

Let us face it, if someone is just demure about their life’s work—do you really want to read it? Sally Fallon Morell’s book, Nourishing Traditions is a classic not because it is ambivalent towards food quality and nutrition, but rather because Sally is not politically correct about food.  Sally is going to tell it like it is which is why her book gets top shelf rating in our house.  Enzymes to Egg yolks, Riboflavin to Raw Milk you can count on Sally to cover it like you can count on Carla Emery to give you the skinny on building a chicken coop.   

 

 

Does the author say it with tact? 

Even if you are angry or passionate about something, you still need good delivery to be convincing.  Homemade bread is something near and dear to my heart and I picked up the book by Steve Ettlinger, Twinkie, Deconstructed because I thought it looked funny.  I thought that it would be a good break from the serious titles I normally read about food.  Little did I know that Steve is a word wizard and a dozen pages into it you are already questioning why you ever even thought eating a Twinkie was a good idea in the first place.  Making the case for what goes into one of the free world’s favorite snack cake needs to be handled delicately.  After all, the Woody Harrelson (a real life vegan) character in Zombieland was willing to kill the undead over Twinkies, and rest assured, Steve does a splendid job with telling the ingredient label’s story.

 

 

 

Is the book easy to reference? 

I stay pretty busy.  So when I need information on imitation vanilla, you can bet I do not want to have the same experience with looking in the phone book for “Concrete Saw.” 

Concrete, see Cement.

Saw, see Cutting Device.

Cutting Devicce, see Rotary Blade.

Rotary Blade, see Sharp Steel Disc. 

(You get the idea)

 

 

 

 

For brevity, clarity and sheer scientific heft I saved my favorite book for last, The Science of Good Food by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss (who write other great books too).  These boys will give you the low-down on just about anything you can consider edible. 

 

Here is the rest of the list of my for other go-to’s:

 

 

You may notice these three titles Process This! by Jean Anderson, The Penguin Companion to FOOD by Alan Davidson and The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart all share something on the cover?  Yep, it is the James Beard Foundation Award.  If you are like me and you haunt library book sales and peruse yard sales for boxes of books, you might find a book bearing this embossed symbol.  I say, “buy it,” you will likely not be disappointed. 

 

 

As a tangent, Penguin also publishes Michael Polan’s In Defense of Food and 10 Speed Press (a division of Random House which is now the publisher for The Encyclopedia of Country Living) also publishes Hungry Planet which is a fascinating read/study with photography so high quality you can own it as a coffee table book.  The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is so good, one day I will have to do a whole review just on that book by itself!

 

I also recommend Michael Ruhlman’s book, The Elements of Good Cooking (Simon and Schuster another great publisher).   Aliza Green’s book, Starting with Ingredients (Running Press) is always sure to be within reach of the kitchen—from goat cheese filling to green beans, duck livers to Dutch Boeterkok it is hard to get more thorough than this book.  And last by not least is the never-fail, 15^th edition, family heirloom Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  My Mommy-in-law got it for her wedding from her mother, and Chaya got it for our wedding from her mother, and Bugaloo will get one for her wedding (after she turns 35) someday as well.  From how to boil water to how to make the chocolate chip cookies that moms the world over are famous for, this is a standby in our kitchen. 

 

 

So many books, so little time.  So how do you write a food blog?  Well, first be passionate about food—this is key.  Second, surround yourself with good content that is easy to reference.  I certainly cannot remember everything, so if you cannot find it, then how will you know it when you need to?  Lastly, keep asking good questions.  I love digging deep into resources to find out what is the perfect balance of citric acid for preserving apples from the amylase browning the fruit. 

 

May be you do not wonder about that, but I bet there is something about your food that makes you scratch your head.  Have a question? Put it in the comment section, I will try my best to get an answer for you. 

 

“Never lose a holy curiosity.”  Albert Einstein

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

Photo Credits:

Keyboard with Fruit by Pantry Paratus

 

 

Works Cited:

Einstein, A. (n.d.). Einstein quotes. Retrieved from http://www.einstein-quotes.com/ThinkingKnowledge.html

 

 

 

 

Mark came up to Chaya and I and introduced himself at the Dallas Self Reliance Expo in Dallas, TX.  We knew that we were dealing with a professional just by talking to him.  Rest assured, Mark is the real deal.  We like Mark because he is a level headed guy who has real metrics for measuring your family’s preparedness.  You may be a D-I-Y type of person, but if you partner with Mark, you will be a whole lot further ahead.

 

Listen to this interview where we talk about all kinds of things, and I am sure that you will agree that he knows how to measure where you are and tell you how you can get to where you want to be with objective waypoints along the way. 

 

 

Right Click here to download Episode 002

 

 

 

 

 

We talk about:

• Preparedness = guns and ammo, right?
• Social Unrest
• Consultation process on site, what does it entail?
• High Probability/High Impact contingency planning—Write a list of realistic threats.
• “You have to want it more than I want it for you.”
• Do an inventory!
• “You do not know what you need until you know what you have.”
• Lone wolf self sufficient entity myth
• How to set up a buying plan—“evening up the stacks”
• Rotate Items in your food storage: FIFO (First In First Out)
• Dollar Cost Averaging
• Monthly/Quarterly Inventories (Hint: keep a hard copy)
• Real-world preparedness budgeting
• Accumulating supplies: couponing, yard sales, craigslist, free cycle and pawn shops
• First item you need in order to prepare: “The Proper Mindset.”
• Real scenario: it is 20 minutes after an event, what do you do?
• “People gravitate towards order in times of chaos.”
• Preparedness as insurance
• Why fear mongering does not work in the long run
• Things that I can control & things that I cannot control—working on the correct side of that equation
• “Balance!”
• “You do not go into debt to prep.  You just don’t do it.”
• “A preparedness life style is about increasing both the quality and quantity of your options.”
• Psychological value of food
• Food, water, medical supplies fall into a category broadly labeled, “Can’t have too much of.”
• Value of your own work towards self-sufficiency on your homestead, “your buy in.”
• “No one gets to put me and mine at risk because they were too lazy, too stupid or to arrogant to prep.”
• Judgment, finding others and OPSEC
• World becomes very small with one family on one homestead without anyone else
• The quintessential “ideal land” vs real world neighbors that you may not like
• The moral code in preparedness and the choices that every individual must make
• Break bread with people!
• Life is a gift
• The worst stored food item Mark has ever seen put away
• Wrap up, finding others

 

 

Links:

http://www.southernplainsconsulting.com/

Quality Medical kits: http://www.southernplainsconsulting.com/products  

http://www.usaprepares.com/

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

We get the opportunity to visit some wonderful cities and the people who make them such when we travel with the Self Reliance Expo.  We’ve been to Denver, Salt Lake City, Dallas (Mesquite, more accurately), and it was Colorado Springs this time around.

 

It is a lot of work to pull off the show as Pantry Paratus.  We began by traveling for days (plural) with three young children side-by-side in the back seat of a truck (reminiscent of my own “she’s touching me” childhood with siblings).

 

Then we must set up the equivalent of a brick-and-mortar store within hours,  spend two long days standing and talking (yes, I usually lose my voice after an expo—my kids think it’s great), and then there is the reflective tear-down at the end.  It’s bittersweet to pack the store away, our mind swimming with the memories of the customer’s we’ve met, the questions we’ve answered, and the classes we’ve taught.  And yet, we’re exhausted.  We inevitably decide we wore the wrong pair of shoes and that we didn’t remember to drink enough water.  We replay conversations to each other, of the great cooking, canning, and dehydrating tips passed along to us by our newfound friends—our customers. 

 

During this last show, Wilson taught a class on dehydration.  A number of people came up to me afterwards and said that it was helpful and that he was funny.  There you have it folks, Wilson has a stand-up dehydration routine. 

 

My class, alternatively, is about bread baking—although I find I spend a lot of time in the beginning discussing the health benefits of milling flour at home.  This time around, the class featured the confessions of a sea-level girl who (in self-inflating grandeur) once thought she would teach bread-baking to a friend at 7,000 feet altitude. 

 

We got to spend some time with some people who have become very special to us—Lisa Bedford from www.thesurvivalmom.com and her beautiful family went out to lunch with ours, just to get to know each other. 

 

We found an amazing restaurant with Kellene Bishop from preparednesspro and www.womenofcaliber.com, a restaurant that makes all-natural sodas in-house.  We were immediately taken with the grounded nature and authenticity we found in Lisa, Kellene, and Patrice Lewis (ruralrevolution.com).   Dr. Prepper always stops by to say hello to us, encouraging us along the way.  Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy never fail to check on us, stopping by the booth to speak to the importance of nutritious whole food.   Colorado Ron and Bubba Davinci bend over backwards to ensure our experience is the best one possible, as do their great wives.  Jeff (The Berkey Guy) from LPC survival, Sun Oven, and many others all work together to bring the best products at the best prices, educating consumers along the way.  Ironically, in the business world many of the other vendors would be seen as competitors.  In the small world of self-reliance, we rely upon each other for friendship, advice, and the occasional brainstorm and partnership.  You see, self-reliance starts with community. 

 

If you have thought of visiting the Self Reliance Expo before, please note the next one nearest you on your calendar and don’t miss it!  We had people come as far as Chicago, Texas, New Mexico, San Diego, and even Nebraska to come visit the vendors and bloggers at the Self Reliance Expo in Colorado Springs!  If you were there, please drop us a note below this blog and say “howdy”!

 

Signing off so that I can go drink a tall glass of water and don my fuzzy slippers,

 

Chaya

 

 

Chaya and I try in every blog post to make the case for producing, preparing and preserving your own food surplus.  To that end, at Pantry Paratus we have four core competencies: canning (pressure and water bath), dehydrating, water purification and baking bread.  Carol Costenbader in this awesome book The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest covers the first two as well as anybody I have ever read. 

 

 

 

“Nothing compares to the satisfaction of growing your own fruits and vegetables, but looking at pantry shelves stocked with preserved produce, ready for the cold season ahead, certainly comes close” (Costenbader, 1997).

 

 <To get 15% off of the book between now and 5/31/2012, use code: HARVEST>

The book is put out by one of our favorite publishers, Storey out of Pownal, Vermont.  They have been collecting volumes and volumes of practical wisdom in print form for decades.  All the recipes and charts, tips and time saving tricks, equivalence tables and pictures that anyone could follow, this book is like having Sharon Peterson right there in your kitchen 24/7. 

 

I was not even ten pages into the book before I had filled up a sheet of paper with notes.  Everything from how-to’s to the history of the particular preservation method in that chapter—this book is a must have.   Here is a summary of the chapters:

 

• Ingredients

• Canning

• Freezing

• Jams & Jellies

• Pickles, Relishes and Chutneys

• Vinegars and Seasoning

• Cold Storage (Root Cellaring)

• and more helps . . .

 

 

I was not even through page two and I had these two quotes written down:

 

One of my fondest memories of childhood is playing in my grandmother’s pantry—the smell of the onion bin; the way the air stayed cool, even in the hot summertime . . . . There were endless rows of pickles—watermelon rind, green tomato, bread and butter—stacks of colorful jam jars, and rows of mixed vegetables.  Granny must have felt rich.  In those times preserving was a necessary economy (Costenbader, 1997).

 

Today’s families often turn to food preservation as an inexpensive and time-saving way to have chemical-free food that captures the abundance and flavors of summer.  Because I have preserved much of the harvest of seasons past, I can serve almost any condiment, relish, chutney, or fancy pickle from my own pantry—and for far less than the cost at expensive specialty food stores (Costenbader, 1997).

 

 

I wanted to capture a few of the great bits of advice that are neatly set into the wide margins:

 

• Start out early in the day

• Process small batches

• Have everything laid out ahead of time            *achhemmm*

• Wash and chop herbs.  Put them in ice cube trays and cover with boiling water.  Freeze them and use them in sauces or teas—brilliant!

 

I think that Carol Costenbader could have made the title, Pantry Paratus’ Thoughts and Methods on Food Preservation.  It would appear that I am in good company on my assessment on this book.  Anyone from the novice who is not sure which end of the canning jar does what to the do-it-yourselfer who wants to attempt to build your own electric dehydrator (detailed instructions in the back of the book), this book is on my top five books to have on the pantry shelf. 

 

Click here to find the title in our store, coupon is above in the blog.

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

New to preserving and storing your garden goodies? Check out  Excalibur Dehydrators.

 

Photo Credits:

Cover art by Storey Publishing

Pickles by mgyP6qG

Herb in the jar by mXcG2eu

 

 

Works Cited:

Costenbader, C. (1997). The big book of preserving the harvest. (p. 4). Pownal: Storey.

Ibid p. 1

Ibid p. 2

It turns out that the USDA can squeeze in everything they want to say about eggs in just 50 pages or so.  You can click here to read the whole thing (it does have pictures by the way).  Eggs are inexpensive protein, healthy, tasty and ubiquitous—so what do we really need to know about that takes up 50 pages?

 

I have always thought that chickens the world over make the “cluck, cluck” noise when imitated by humans.  Turns out I was wrong.  Last Friday at work two friends (who are Persian) were talking about how the chicken sound is actually different in the Persian language.  Do not worry, I will not embarrass myself by trying to transliterate it here for you.

 

According to Jared Diamond in his Nobel Prize winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, chickens actually come from (are native to) China.  As it turns out these extremely adaptable birds are found in just about every part of the world today from Haiti to the Himalayas, from Kansas to Kilimanjaro, from Montana to the Muppet Theater.

 

 

 

 

Since the popularity of eggs has only gone up the means to produce them has gone from backyard food-scrap management to battery corn fed egg production.  There is a big difference between chickens raised like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And chickens raised like this:

 

 

And what does the term “Farm Fresh Eggs” mean anyways?  Well according to this British website, the terminology can legally break down as follows:

 

“Farm”:  meaning that the chicken was not producing eggs in something like say an urban office building.  A farm may conjure up images like chickens wandering through a country pasture keeping an eye out for a fox in the hedgerow with rolling green hills and a red barn punctuating the landscape—not by a long shot.  Think large metal structure with chickens in a cage living its entire existence in the space that you could fit a piece of printer paper.

“Fresh”: naturally you think that they would be trucked in just this week, may be even still warm?  Not likely.  Fresh can mean up to 21 days old sitting in a cold storage on a pallet.  You may be surprised to learn what the acceptable shelf life is for an egg.

“Egg”: this may be the only intuitive term in the description.

 

Recently I got a hold of some backyard chicken eggs and I wanted to do some kitchen performance evaluation.  Now I do not have all of the precise measuring equipment like the USDA (Haugh Meter), but I know what I like as far as eggs go.  So I did a comparison.  The eggs on the left are store bought (corn feed and darkness) and the eggs on the right are backyard variety (bugs and sunshine).

 

 

 

At first glance it is hard to come up with a firm answer to exactly what the difference is by just looking at them with the eye.  Hard boiled, poached or fried the eggs all look pretty close to the same with a slightly darker orange going to the backyard chicken variety.  However, the true difference is in the taste.  The backyard eggs taste much better as the chicken is able to vary her diet with available protein and foliage.  For the record, chickens are not vegetarian.

 

How about the difference in color of the shell—brown or white?  Physiologically it comes down to the pigmentation in the chicken’s genetics.  As far as humans are concerned, it seems to be a regional preference for what people like best.  According to the USDA,

 

For many years, consumers in some areas of the country have preferred white eggs, believing, perhaps, that the quality is better than that of brown eggs. In other areas, consumers have preferred brown eggs, believing they have greater food value. These opinions do not have any basis in fact, but it is recognized that brown eggs are more difficult to classify as to interior quality than are white eggs. It is also more difficult to detect small blood and/or meat spots in brown eggs. Research reports and random sample laying tests show that the incidence of meat spots is significantly higher in brown eggs than in white eggs (Egg-grading manual, 2000).

 

Lastly, we should talk about the letter grading of eggs.  When eggs were produced on a family farms the grading was much more manual.  Now-a-days you can get whiz-bang gadgetry like this:

 

 

 

The USDA grading criteria breaks down to external and internal features.  If you are not up to read the 50+ pages from the USDA, the State of Georgia managed to get the point across here in a few paragraphs.  External features are the basic shape, weight, condition and cleanliness of the shell which is straight forward and easy to understand.  The interior qualities of the egg are much more difficult to quantify but the following diagrams should help:

 

 

 

Eggs, I love them.  So which egg is best?  For me, the eggs that are produced in the back yard are always the best.  They taste the best, and you know the condition of the flock.  The chickens that roam around the yard (or paddock shift is even better!) keep the bugs in check and they demonstrate to us that we can arrange to better facilitate nature to produce our food or we can try to come up with inhumane accelerants for nature end up with a broken food system.

 

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

Photo Credits:

Chickens, Chicken Tractors and the Egg Mobile were taken by Pantry Paratus at Polyface Farms

Chickens in a cage by USDA

Haugh Unit by USDA

Charts by USDA

Battery Egg Farm by USDA

 

Works Cited:

(2000). Egg-grading manual. USDA. Retrieved from http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004502

 

Further Reading:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004502

http://www.georgiaeggs.org/pages/grading.html

http://poultry.allotment.org.uk/advice/eggs

http://www.wisegeek.com/why-are-chicken-eggs-different-colors.htm

http://jennifercopley.suite101.com/nutrition-freerange-vs-batterycage-eggs-a186899

http://www.incredibleegg.org/egg-facts

http://www.eggcartonstore.com/New-Model-Jiffy-III-Egg-Grading-Scale-p/tecs-sc-1.htm

http://www.joyofbaking.com/eggs.html

Lunch need not be elegant, and I cannot remember any time where I needed a cork screw for a lunch meal.  If you are making a habit of eating healthy then you will notice an accumulative effect over time and you can add more variety into your diet.  Keep in mind variety in the context I am using it does not include individually wrapped sugary snack cakes.  

 

If I have leftovers, then I am pretty keen to take them to work.  But sometimes the well runs dry and you need to look for other options.  So, what is for lunch?  I like the old standby—the sandwich.  Now, every sandwich starts out with bread and if you want a good sandwich you need to have good bread.  To me, the gold standard is Chaya’s bread hands down it rocks.  It is hard to be in a bad mood on baking day.  

 

 

But traveling can be tough, and for business I do go to and fro.  So while on the road I buy the Ezekiel bread which is baked by Foods for Life.  Its ingredients label is beautiful simplicity and can be read by most second graders.  Sprouted grains without preservatives means that you are going to look for it in the freezer section.  If you are not baking your own bread, this is the next best thing.  

 

Next stop is the toaster.  Just a light brown is good for me.  Feel free to skip this step.

 

 

Now, since I am minimizing my trash output wherever I can, I am just going to use a bowl.  Not very sleek, but it all fits in the reusable shopping bag that doubles as my lunch bag.  

 

 

What you put next will determine what kind of sandwich you end up with, no big revelation there.  I choose the fattier cuts of meat like liverwurst or salami.  I hope that we are all past the ultra-lowfat diets of the 80’s & 90’s now.  You body needs (the right kinds of) fat.  I was also inspired by Anne Marie Michaels’ Q&A post (see item #5) about the connection between organ meats and straight teeth.  If you do not read Cheeseslave, trust me she is the real deal.  

 

 

I also like to put a fried egg (fried hard) on there, just my preference.  

 

 

And start stacking . . .

 

 

 

 

Admitedly this sandwich did have a Dagwoodesque profile.  But while soaking up some nice spring weather outside on the bench people passing by did comment on how good it looked.  “Go big or stay home when it comes to sandwiches,” I say.

 

So what about mayo?   I try to be neither a food snob nor a blind consumer, so there are some places where I just draw a line.  I am an olive oil kind of guy, so I may sprinkle a a bit over the top at the end.  But if you choose the fattier meat cuts then you have something to counteract the dryness of the toast.  Besides, most mayo is typically made with highly processed industrial seed oils—not good for the body. 

 

Next up is yogurt.  I like to shop at the ethnic food stores when I can because you can generally recognize with the eye that the things you are looking at are food.  Think about that for a second, if it comes in an opaque box and you were not able to read, would you know that it was food immediately?  Also the items are generally less expensive and you can pronounce everything on these two labels.  

 

 

I just buy  the plain whole milk yogurt and then mix a spoonful of the local fruit preserves into the container—viola!  All the yummy yogurt and no high fructose corn syrup.

I save all of my glass jars to get used for something somewhere.  In this case I brought some vegetable juice with me today.  I also like to make up a bunch of individual jars of sun tea in the summer time then just take the jar with me to work.  Either way, stay out of the vending machine or the soda fountain and your body will thank you.  

Lastly I took a piece of fruit.  I just stick in the bowl and it nests nicely inside the bag.  

 

 

Other substitutions might be: nuts, cheese, crackers (the good kind), fruit leathers, etc.  The possibilities are nearly endless.  

So avoid the drive thru and take your lunch with you in order to be healthy and save money.  To be fair you could graze the extra value menu and probably fill the void in your tummy for about the same amount that I have invested in this meal (~$2.50), likewise you could bring some pre-packaged frozen lunch that is loaded with unhealthiness.  The fact that you brought it with you does not make it cheap and healthy by necessity.  But with a little planning you can work in variety and really balance that diet.  

So, what is your favorite take-along favorite?  Leave a comment below.  

Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria

Photo Credits:
All photos by Pantry Paratus

 

Life is just not very interesting without enzymes.  We can neither make bread, brew beer, make vinegar or wine without enzymes.  Further up on the list, exchanging carbon dioxide is not nearly as efficient without the enzyme carbonic anhydrase.   “Although these reactions can occur even without the enzyme, carbonic anhydrase can increase the rate of these conversions up to a million fold” (Goodsell , 2012).  In the body, enzymes have everything to do with critical functions as well as the important task of breaking down sugars.  “Almost any acid, as well as a variety of enzymes from plants and animals, can perform the trick of breaking startch molecules down into syrup of mixes sugars” (Wolke, 2002).  But what do they do for food before we eat it? 

 

[They] are responsible for many good and bad changes in food.  They’re what make an apple bruise, an artichoke blacken and a green bean turn from bright to dull, and make fat rancid.  But enzymes are also why aging meat can make it more tender, are active in the fermentation process, and are often responsible for food aromas.  (Ruhlman, 2007)

 

Okay, so enzymes do lots of useful things, but what are they?  Animal, vegetable, mineral?  Actually, they are (almost all) proteins (but could be RNA).  [Click here for an audio explanation]  Speaking in Chemistry terms, they are catalysts.  That is to say that they accelerate a chemical reaction thousands of times or even as much as a million times (in the above cited example) over and over again without being used up. 

 

 

When I think of enzymes, I think of disassembly.  The enzyme is usually pretty specialized.  An enzyme will have an active site that interacts with a particular substrate.  In other words humans cannot eat grass because we lack the enzymes (with specific active sites) to digest it (work on the substrate of the grass).  If you are trying to avoid this disassembly process, then you can employ certain countermeasures against enzymes, namely: heat, cold, acids or sulfur to name a few. 

 

• Heat: If green beans are cooked quickly they will still have a bright green color, but if (over)cooked too slowly or for too long they will darken, the enzymes have been allowed to become vigorous and inevitably you will lose B Vitamins in the final product. 

 

• Cold: If honey is kept cool (or warm) it will not crystallize.  This is the process of the amylase and invertase enzymes acting to simplify the sugars and the result is that they fall out of solution.  More fun with food, amylase is also the same enzyme that starts to break down long chain carbohydrates down into simple sugars as food enters your body. 

 

• Acid: Phenolase (aka Polyphenol oxidase) is the enzyme that is responsible for turning cut or bruised apples and bananas brown.  Of course you are probably familiar with orange or lemon juice being used to save the family’s contribution to the pot luck from going brown.  This is the citric acid arresting the oxidation of the fruit and halting the work of the enzyme.  “Enzymatic browning is responsible for the sought-after development of rich color and flavor in the drying of tea leaves” (Handel, Joachim & Schloss, 2008).  Phenolase is also part of what determines whether tea is green tea or black tea by its presence or absence in the tea leaves.   

 

• Sulfur: certain commercially dehydrated fruits usually have sulfur applied to them to keep dried apples from browning, but raisins do not need them because they have different enzymes.  Possibly newsworthy is that McDonalds does not use sulfur, but “calcium ascorbate (a blend of calcium and vitamin C to maintain color).”  You can get that information as well as all of the information of McD’s fare here. 

 

 

Phenolase in apple juice can help your roast turn out to be very tender when you cook it in a slow roaster or crock pot.  The enzyme helps to tenderize the meat.  In answering the question why fish spoils quickly (and smells badly when doing so), Robert Wolke offers this explanation invoking enzymes:

 

Most fish have an unfriendly habit of swallowing other fish whole.  And they are therefore equipped with enzymes that digest fish.  If any of these enzymes should escape from the guts by rough handling after a fish is caught, they’ll quicly go to work on its own flesh.  That is why fish should be gutted as soon a possible after being caught (Wolke, 2002). 

 

To further demonstrate the beautiful design of the human body, some enzymes “require help, which comes in the form of cofactors (compounds bound to the enzyme, such as metal ions) and coenzymes (separate molecules that act in various ways, such as transporting chemicals form one enzyme to another).  Although some coenzymes are made by the body, some have to be taken in through the diet.  Many are vitamins, including riboflavin, thiamine and folate” (Handel, Joachim & Schloss, 2008).  It is a very similar symbiosis of sunlight and your pulse—no seriously.  Sunlight on the skin produces cholecalciferol (Vitamin D₃) which acts as a carrier of calcium to your bones and electrical paths in the nervous system. 

 

So what other fun with enzymes is there to be had?  If breathing and digestion are not enough, certain enzymes give some plants their color and defense mechanisms.

 

 

 

• Allinase in onions when mixed with another chemical creates the irritating gas that makes your eyes water. 

 

• Alpha-galactosidase is the active ingredient in certain over the counter items like Beano®.  You can learn more about that and other items covered in their University of Gas where you can earn your degree in Gas-preventionology . . . no, I am not making this up either. 

 

• Bromelain from pineapples, Ficin from fig trees and Papain from unripened papayas are extracted on an industrial scale and repacked and sold as meat tenderizers (Wolke, 2002). 

 

Except for the last example, you may have noticed that the naming convention for enzymes is structured that the words end in “–ase.”  This is highly descriptive and helpful for figuring out what the enzyme does.  For example, Phenolase is the enzyme that breaks down Phenol.  If there was an enzyme to explain the irresistible nature of Girl Scout Cookies, it may bear the name Thin Mint Resistase. 

 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

 

Photo Credits:

Apple Juice and Beer by Pantry Paratus

Apple Vinegar by mtXtFyg

Tools by mWlQkpe

Flowers by mCH4elM

Apple Juice in Crock Pot by Pantry Paratus

 

Works Cited:

Wolke, R. L., & Parrish, M. (2005). What einstein told his cook 2, the sequel : Further adventures in kitchen science. (p. 12). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Ruhlman, M. (2007). The elements of cooking. (p. 119). New York: Schribner.

Goodsell, D. (2012). Pdb-101. In RCSB Protein Data Bank. Retrieved from http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/101/motm.do?momID=49

Wolke, R. (2002). What einstein told his cook. (p. 26). New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Handel, P., Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 214). Toronto: Robert Rose.

Wolke, R. (2002). What einstein told his cook. (p. 161). New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Handel, P., Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 214). Toronto: Robert Rose.

Wolke, R. (2002). What einstein told his cook. (p. 44). New York: W. W. Norton & Co.