Prandial Wanderings

A Thought on Spicy Food

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:02:49 -0700

I recently started reading Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca & FLora Lichtman. I’m pretty disappointed by it. It’s a particularly shallow specimen of pop-psych nonfiction. And I don’t mean to badmouth pop science. While I admit that having a Psychology degree has made me a bit of a snoot, there are some good pop-science books out there, and I have been known to enjoy a few them (e.g. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Check out his blog, Frontal Cortex). This book just didn’t get into the nitty gritty science of what bugs us, which is a fair complaint, because they put it in the title.

I did, however, find one of the chapters fairly interesting. It was about why people enjoy eating chili peppers, and spicy foods in general. Spicy foods can be painful, they set your mouth on fire. Why do people like that?

Eating chili peppers dates back at least to when Christopher Columbus landed in the New World. He noted that all of the native peoples ate them. The authors explore several practical arguments why people would have started eating chilis. Chili peppers have antimicrobial properties, and help fight Helicobacter pylori, which causes gastric ulcers. However, this seems unlikely because H. pylori wasn’t discovered until 2005. It may be used to disguise food that has started to go bad, which would have been more useful in pre-refrigeration times, but not everyone buys that either. Chilis are also a good source of vitamin A and C, but there are easier ways to get those nutrients without burning your mouth off.

A guy named Rozin, who has been studying why people like to eat chili peppers since the 1970s (crazy, right?), thinks the most compelling explanation is hedonic reversal. In the book, the authors explain hedonic reversal by giving the example of “runner’s high,” where your body produces opioid-like substances in response to extreme physical stress and pain. Hedonic reversal is also related to benign masochism. We like to experience things that are innately negative. We like to watch sad movies even though they make us cry. We like to ride roller coasters even though they make us scream/feel like we’re falling to our death (at least that’s the case for me).

Why hedonic reversal occurs/why we enjoy benign masochism is less clear. Rozin believes it’s because we know that we’re experiencing those “negative” feelings without anything bad actually happening. Movies are fictitious stories. We’re not actually in danger when we ride a roller coaster. We are thrill-seekers.

I don’t know if I buy all this. And I don’t know if we’ll ever really understand why people like chili peppers. Heck, Rozin’s devoted his career to studying this for the past 40 years, and he doesn’t even really know. I just thought it was interesting to think about, especially since I LOVE spicy food.

Speaking of which, I think I’ll have Indian food for dinner.

- Amanda

[For further reading: this New York Times article]

Remember that scene in Oldboy where Oh Dae-su eats the live...

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:01:32 -0700

Remember that scene in Oldboy where Oh Dae-su eats the live octopus whole?

From the Wikipedia page on the movie:

“The octopus being eaten alive was not computer-generated; four were used during the making of this scene. Actor Choi Min-sik, a Buddhist, said a prayer for each one. It should also be noted that the eating of live octopuses (called sannakji (산낙지) in Korean) as a delicacy exists in East Asia, although it is usually cut, not eaten whole. When asked if he felt sorry for the actor Choi Min-sik, director Park Chan-wook stated he felt more sorry for the octopus.”

I think the Wikipedia article on sannakji is a good follow-up to my post on mochi:

“Because the suction cups on the arm pieces are still active when the dish is served, special care should be taken when eating sannakji. The active suction cups can cause swallowed pieces of arm to stick to the mouth or throat. This can also present a choking hazard for some people, particularly if they are intoxicated. One must thoroughly chew so that no piece is big enough to stick to one’s throat. Some people like the feel of the pieces wriggling as swallowed, and so will not completely chew up the particles. Those who are new to eating sannakji should completely chew it up into tiny particles before swallowing.”

Killer Tradition

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:05:56 -0700

Meet our cat, Mochi (photo below). We recently adopted her from the SPCA. Unbeknownst to our little kitty, she’s named after a traditional Japanese snack that has quite a notorious reputation.

Mochi is a gooey rice cake. It’s sort of like gelatin, but even thicker and stickier. In Japan, it’s eaten year-round, but is a traditional New Year’s food. It comes in a variety of flavors, including green tea and red bean.

Mochi has become known for its tendency to kill elderly people in Japan. Older people, already disproportionately susceptible to aspiration, choke on the sticky confection. Every year, the number of victims is usually the highest on New Year’s. Here are a couple of articles about the death toll from New Year’s 2011 (one, two). This is a brief article from the Japan Today website about the toll from 2012:

“Emergency services in Tokyo said Monday that 13 elderly people were taken to hospital in the Tokyo area after choking on traditional “mochi” rice cake on New Year’s Day.

The cakes, a traditional New Year’s food, cause choking incidents among elderly people every year. Police said that of the 13 people taken to hospital, two died, according to NTV.

Authorities appealed to people across Japan to cut up their mochi into small chunks and to eat it with great care.”

(original here)

It’s a tragic irony that a delicious, seemingly-innocent, celebratory treat should cause so much death and destruction.

Speaking of seemingly-innocent…

Mochi, named for a killer confection. (Her eyes betray her sinister nature.)

- Amanda and Charlie

Strange Fruit of the Week: Cara Cara!

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:04:52 -0700

[photo credit]

Strange Fruit of the Week time!

This week, we bring you the Cara Cara orange/my one true love. I had never even heard of these amazing fruits until I moved to San Francisco, and now they are basically my main source of energy. They just started popping up all over farmers’ markets and groceries around the city last November, and I’ve been eating them non-stop ever since.

They’re still not entirely sure what its parentage is (the fact fruit genealogy is a field is nerdily hilarious), so sometimes they class the fruit as a mutation. Mutant fruits = tasty fruits! The best guess is its related to Washington navels and to a less-awesome-sounding-but-admittedly-still-intriguingly-named Brazilian Bahia navel - I definitely need to track down the latter.

I admit they’re not strange in the conventional sense, but their name is fun to say, and they are at least 14 different kinds of delicious. They’re almost out of season, so snag some while you still can!

- Charlie

163-year-old mother still thriving, producing offspring

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:30:54 -0700

I love bread. It’s my carb of choice.

About two months ago, I was at a friend’s house. I was standing in her kitchen, and she had just baked the most beautiful loaf of homemade sourdough, and the aroma was intoxicating. After a copious amount of oo-ing and ahh-ing over her wonderfully crusty creation, she happily shared with me a little blob of her starter.

I cherished it, like a proud new mother. I carefully fed it for a couple weeks, following the instructions precisely. When it was big enough, I baked two loaves for a housewarming party. I’d say it was a success overall. It wasn’t the best sourdough ever, but it was a good first attempt. I had always wanted to learn how to bake my own bread. This time I kept it simple and just did flour, water, yeast, and salt. But I had high ambitions, involving rosemary, olive oil, and egg-white brushings. My starter and I were going to achieve greatness.

Unfortunately, I’m a bad parent, and I let my little starter die. All attempts to revive it failed. Not sure what I expected after neglecting it for three weeks.

I’m pretty embarrassed over my negligence. I wouldn’t have felt so guilty if it weren’t for Boudin. While looking for sourdough recipes online, Boudin Bakery of course came up. They had a a little blurb at the top about the history of the bakery, and it noted that they’ve had the same starter since 1849. EIGHTEEN FORTY-FUCKING-NINE. I can’t even keep my starter alive for 160 days, let alone 160 years! That mamma predates the Civil War! Granted, a lucrative business wasn’t dependent on my bread, but still, it really heightened my sense of shame over my failure.

So now my new goal is to make my own starter. I always imagined it would be a super complicated process, since everyone makes a big deal about getting chunks of starter from other people. But it’s just water, flour, and yeast (see here). And in San Francisco, I’m sure I could take advantage of the wild yeast in the air, and just leave it on my counter for a few days. I guess the hard part for me will be keeping it alive.

I’ll get started on that. Updates to follow.

- Amanda

[To make your own sourdough, try the Boudin Bakery recipe. I didn’t use that one, because it’s a no-knead recipe and it takes several days to get the dough ready, and I had a bit of a time crunch. I used a recipe more like this one.]

Prandial adj. ‘pran-dē-əl\ : of or relating to a...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:51:00 -0700

Prandial adj. ‘pran-dē-əl\ : of or relating to a meal

This is not your average food blog. There won’t be any recipes for cute raspberry cupcakes. This won’t be a log of our daily eating habits. You won’t be inundated by blurry amateur food porn.

There will be recipes, but they’ll be how-to’s on fermentation, so you can enjoy homemade pickles and moonshine. You might hear about things we eat, but only because we want to share kooky Wikipedia articles that mention them. There will be photographs of fruits and veggies, but only of the classy, high-production variety (see above).

We are Amanda and Charlie, and this is Prandial Wanderings.

We wanted to start this blog because, let’s face it, we love to eat, and it’s hard not to, living in the foodie capital of America. But we also wanted to approach things from a fresh angle. We’ll explore food in literature and film, we’ll supply trivia and fun facts. We’re really playing to our strengths here. While we love to cook and prepare food, we’re admittedly mediocre chefs. But we still want to contribute to and be a part of the culture of food that surrounds us. This is our own take on being foodies.

So, really, this is a blog about anything even vaguely related to food. It will be delightfully tangential.

I hope you will join us on our Prandial Wanderings :)

- Amanda