Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

When pecan trees produce nuts so high out of reach, people throw heavy sticks upward to make them fall to the ground.

But Boone Hall is actually where pecans came to be grown much quicker and more easily, thanks to an enslaved gardener known only as Antoine from Louisiana, enslaved at the Oak Alley Plantation, who successfully propagated pecans by grafting a superior wild pecan to “seedling” stock. This was the first time the nation had such a commercially viable grafted pecan tree—giving us nuts that previously were only considered a foraged food.

Even though this deliciously buttery and glossy pecan grew in popularity, it took the Centennial about fifteen long years before any of these new trees produced pecans, and that, coupled with the United States’ rising demand for sugar and the pressure from growers to plant the much-quicker-growing sugarcane, many of Antoine’s pecan trees were soon chopped down to make more room for sugarcane instead.

The pecan has become the “Queen of Nuts” in the United States, and other than Mexico, the southern states are the only substantial producers of pecans in the world.

and from the sample size of vendors and locals I spoke to, the correct way of pronouncing the word was “PEE-can” not the dreaded “Puh-CAHN,” though they said only Yankees and Louisianans pronounce it that way.

I kept thinking I had plenty of time to learn it, and I took note of virtually every other dish she made, but somehow not her chicken curry.

For now—look up, look up: potatoes were the first ever food grown in outer space.

In 1995, ten leaves from a potato plant were tucked into soil. Five cuttings were kept in a lab in Wisconsin, and five of them were packed into Space Shuttle Columbia and blasted into space. Just a few weeks later, marble-size potatoes formed from the plants in the lab, and hundreds of miles above Earth’s surface, the space plants grew the same size potatoes, even in zero gravity.

Early Scots refused to eat potatoes because they were not mentioned in the Bible.

Lots of things weren't mentioned in the bible. Rayon, peanut butter, lexapro, veneral dieases.

Misunderstood too: Captain Cook, Walter Raleigh, even Catherine the Great tried to convince people of the glorious crop but failed.

Wow.

A small, flat one is called mishipasinghan, which means cat’s nose; a knobby, difficult-to-peel kind is lumchipamundana, or potato makes young bride weep.

Primatologists observed a female macaque monkey on Koshima Island in Japan soaking and washing a sweet potato in a stream before eating it. Soon, other young monkeys started imitating her, and then all the monkeys started preferring seawater to wash their potatoes, so they moved their colony closer to the shore to have easier access to the sea.

Clean potato eat the potato. Duh.

bears love potatoes and have been known to scratch and dig and dig and dig to get to this vegetable most hearty and hale.

The Bing cherry cultivar was developed in 1875 in Oregon, named after a Manchurian Chinese orchard foreman at the Lewelling Orchards in Oregon, Ah Bing, who, according to various oral histories, stood over six feet tall.

Farmers know to expect a Bing cherry tree to make as many as seventy-five pounds of fruit a year.

Cherries also factor in a fifteenth-century ballad made popular by over twenty modern-day recordings—singers as varied as Joan Baez; Emmylou Harris; Peter, Paul and Mary; and even Sting all took turns recording a version.

Joseph must have felt extra petty that day, because he told Mary in so many words, why don’t you ask whoever got you pregnant to get you some cherries. My favorite part of the ballad is that baby Jesus from inside the womb directed the cherry trees to lower their branches so that Mary could in fact reach them, and when Joseph saw this he freaked out

Then Jesus spoke a few words, A few words spoke he: “Let my mother have some cherries, Bow low down, cherry tree.”

Wood from the cherry tree is known to be particularly coveted to make into bagpipes, even though in Scotland it is considered bad luck to do so, as cherry trees are known as “witches’ trees,” and you are never to bring any young cherry branches inside your house, else face bad luck.

As with cinnamon, grape seeds have been found with mummies in Egyptian tombs that are at least three thousand years old.

The Concord grape came to be from seeds dropped in a corner of Ephraim Wales Bull’s garden by some local boys or a passing bird.

Bull shared the news of this aromatic fruit with neighbors like Thoreau, and his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne named the vine for the town in Massachusetts.

He knew everyone.

When the man who invented the Concord grape died, he was penniless. His epitaph read: He sowed. Others reaped.

But they reassured me it was safe and clean, and not to worry, and it’s true—according to Wine Spectator magazine, almost no human pathogens can survive in the high-alcohol wine environment, including Staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria that can be found on feet.

Thank god.

Turns out, in 1869, Dr. Thomas Welch, a minister and dentist, developed this early form of jam after trying to figure out how to keep grape juice from fermenting and turning into wine for his church’s communion. His son Charles joined him in these experiments and introduced “Grapelade,” which became a World War I ration staple and was immensely popular with the soldiers who were clamoring for it again when they returned home.

Woooow.

It takes forty to fifty gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup, with constant stirring and skimming off the foam, so I was all too happy to let the good folks at Maple Glen Sugar House do that magnificent work.

Thankfully there’s a reason for my fumble: ninety-one unique flavors are actually at work, according to the Canadian Department of Agriculture. They drew up a “flavor wheel” to categorize the complex differences of maple syrup, organized among thirteen families: vanilla, milky, empyreumatic (burned), floral, fruity, spicy, foreign (as in fermentation), foreign (as in something added), herbaceous, plant (forest, humus, or cereals), plant (ligneous, as in firewood or sawdust), maple, and finally confectionery.

Crawfish is what they are called here in Mississippi, but my husband grew up saying crawdads in Kansas.

The biggest type of crawfish in the world is the Tasmanian, weighing about an average of eleven pounds—that’s about as heavy as two two-liter bottles of soda. The smallest crawfish is called a yabby, just a wee thing found in southeast Australia’s coastal lakes; around half an inch long, it weighs the same as about seven paper clips.

King Erik XIV of Sweden began the Scandinavian practice of kräftskivor—crawfish parties—when he farmed crayfish in the moat of Kalmar Castle.

You can expect to find paper hats, streamers, and bibs in stores during kräftskivor season in August and September each year, under the light of many moons—one of the memorable visuals of these celebrations is the bevy of paper lanterns strung up in backyards and restaurants featuring illustrations of a smiling full moon.

In the South, crawfish boils typically take place March to May, because freshwater crawfish grow best in warmer temperatures and with lots of rain.

Having a crawfish boil is a fairly new culinary party—eating these crustaceans was associated with poverty until the late 1950s, when a crawfish festival in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana (“the Crawfish Capital of the World”), helped rehabilitate that mostly white perception of economic status.

Crawfish can be kept as pets, too—my teacher used to tell me they’ll eat just about anything, including their molting debris for its high concentration of calcium.

Ew.

People can’t seem to agree on whether or not crawfish can feel pain when boiled alive, but the thing I can’t get over is that most crawfish taste bitter from the stress hormone cortisol being released during boiling.

Geez.

The South crawls into us like a skittery crawfish.

Sumerian clay tablets from 2500 BC, for instance, describe a well-established cult whose followers brought regular offerings of butter to their temple in order to satisfy the dairy desires of the goddess Inanna.