The history of Brussels Sprouts.

And why they'll never be as good as cake. (I warned you the topics would get weird.)

First we start with a sorta-quick botany lesson. (Which thrills me, 'cause botany is my thing.)

There is a huge family of plants (taxonomy is another day) called Brassicaceae or Cruciferae, which contains a good many veggies we eat. They're known as the cruciferous vegetables, due to the taxonomy classification. Among others, there's broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, mustard, kale, turnips, rutabagas, horseradish, and wasabi. Big family of plants. Very good for you; lots of beta-carotene and fiber and minerals and all that rot. They are popular the world over because they grow in crappy soil and in weird conditions (cabbage is a WINTER crop in many places - grow other food in the 'real' growing season, then grow cabbage on the off season). For many, many years, in many places, the Cruciferae are what kept the human race going, nutritionally. It is not a coincidence that just about every culture in the world has a recipe for pickled cabbage: sauerkraut, kim chee, suan cai, etc. (I knew a guy in Hawaii; his mother was German and his dad Japanese, and his mother was famous for an east-meets-west pickled cabbage she made.)

Okay, so cabbages are a big deal nutritionally. Botanically they're pretty cool, too, because they're all the same plant, or damn near. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, among other things, are all cultivars of one plant: Brassica oleracea. See, people all over the world took cabbage and selectively bred it into whatever they wanted. That's why there are eleventeen million different kinds of leafy greens and cabbage and radishes and, and.

Cabbage itself is a wild mustard (technically) and is thought to be native to the Mediterranean area. Broccoli and several others are thought to be native to Italy. The list goes on.

Brussels sprouts are not native to Brussels; though they did probably come from somewhere in northern Europe. I suspect they would do better than traditional cabbages, because they're closer to the ground (the ground holds heat; it's warmer down there). They'd probably survive short frosts if covered with some straw. They were bred between the 1600s or 1700s, making them some of the most recent of the dozens of cabbage cultivars out there. Alton Brown did an episode of Good Eats starring brussels sprouts, and you can find the recipes here, if you've an urge to cook some.

So why aren't brussels sprouts as good as cake? Well, that's kind of an easy answer, but it's depressing. Remember the previously-blogged-about human fat tooth? (If not, link here.) In a nutshell, we evolved to crave fats because for most of human history, they were hard to get and we needed them. In addition, we're evolved to crave sweets because sweet = mother's milk (at first) and then sugary foods contained calories that we need. Again, for most of human history, sugar was pretty hard to get, so we could get away with eating all we wanted.

Short answer? Cake tastes better because we evolved to think cake tastes better. Not a damn thing we can do about it.

Go eat your leafy greens.

Cranberries!

For those who are new here, I'm really into food history. I wind up doing quite a few posts about food, and since I'm stalled on blog topics, I thought I'd cover some Thanksgiving foods. I've already done Brussels sprouts, corn, and the spice rack.

I almost didn't do this, because I thought "oh, cranberries are pretty boring". But then I remembered that not everyone has spent the last couple decades reading food books and taking classes, so... I hope you find it interesting.

There are four different species of cranberry, including Vaccinium oxycoccus, the Northern Cranberry from Eurasia, and V. macrocarpon, the cranberry everyone eats. It's native to the New England area of North America and grows up into eastern Canada and down as far south as the Carolinas, in high-altitude areas that are kind of chilly.

There are two ways to harvest cranberries. The Bog/Wet Pick method is the one we're familiar with, if you're one who pays attention to such things. (Cranberries grow in dry, chilly areas; they don't actually grow in water. The water is part of the harvest method.)

Fields are created with sandy beds and dikes around them. When the fruit is ripe, the area is flooded with water. Cranberries have little air pockets in them (sort of like tomatoes, but open, rather than full of seeds and goo), so they float. The bushes are swished around with giant rakes, and then the berries are sucked up in a giant wet vac. Due to the moisture, they don't keep for crap, so they're immediately juiced, jellied, or frozen.

Dry Pick is just about what it sounds like; people pick the damn things by hand, which would have to suck because they grow low to the ground. These berries keep much better, and account for the less than 5% of the worldwide cranberry harvest that's actually sold fresh. I imagine it's sold mostly in New England, because no one else would know what to do with them.

Nutritionally, chemically, cranberries are pretty awesome. Lots of vitamin C and fiber, trace minerals, and 'phyto chemicals'. Phyto chemicals are assorted plant chemicals that aid the body in some way. A hundred years ago it'd be called a tonic instead.

Cranberries contain goodies that aid circulation; it thins the blood a tad, and sort of de-grease your digestive tract. It's got tannins that fight tooth decay. And, its most well-known property, it does fight or inhibit urinary tract infections.

There's just one drawback. (Isn't there always?) Raw cranberry is so sour and bitter, it'll turn your head inside out. So lots of sugar needs to be added, or the juice needs to be blended with other, sweeter things.

The fiber in cranberries is the soluble type, and one of them is pectin. Pectin is the thing that makes fruits turn into jelly. The cranberry jelly at Thanksgiving? It does that all by itself.

Historically, there's not much. Native Americans put it in their pemmican, for flavor and nutrients, I imagine. Plus the pectin/goo factor. First recipe for cranberry sauce, 1663, from the pilgrims.

I'll do what I can to find some more interesting Thanksgiving foods for the next week.

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Oh, and found while poking around for cranberry information: Traditional Dyes of the Scottish Highlands. Enjoy.

Oh, well, cartoons.

I'm knitting a scarf while arguing with a three year old. The only thing of note is, this morning the Goober announced "I knitting a sweater." and then sat down with a pile of bead necklaces and two drum sticks and mooshed it all around. She's also pretended to spin before, holding yarn in the tips of her fingers. I think I have a fiber geek on my hands. (Yay!) With nothing else to report, I'm more than happy to sit here for three or ten hours and discuss classical music and cartoons.

Fantasia was the first of the, well, what I think of as 'interpretive toons'. Where they took classical music and illustrated it. And it was fricking brilliant, certainly, and I watch it even now. But it was all arty and stuff. Warner Brothers and Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, made classical music approachable and funny and witty. Which is better? Hard to say. I like both, but they're certainly two different schools of thought.

I'll put links to articles and YouTube video of the toons I'm talking about, wherever I can. I'd like to put the vids themselves in here but I don't think Blogger or my video card would put up with it. (I really need a new computer.)

(Proof reading this, later, I suspect this is half helpful information and half stream of consciousness on classical music and cartoons. Bear with me, we're screwing with my nerve damage meds again. This could be the history of Brussels Sprouts.)

FANTASIA, DISNEY:
So, Fantasia. It was made in 1940 and considered very long-hair and hoity-toity in some circles. But it was so cool nearly everyone watched it.

The biggie, the most famous sequence in the movie, is of course, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. (Kudos to whoever posted that in wide screen.)

Most people don't know, but it's based on a real piece of music called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", but a guy named Paul Dukas, in 1897. Near as I can tell, without getting all anal and sitting down with the cartoon and some sheet music, the piece is used in it's entirety without screwing with it. Disney regularly hunted up what was then obscure classical music and made it famous; I doubt anyone but a few serious classical music fans had heard Sorcerer's Apprentice before Fantasia was made. After, well, I played it in concert in the 1980s and it was wildly successful and that was because of the cartoon (and the two maniac basoon players we had).

One reason I'm not a bigger fan of Fantasia is that they often got REALLY famous pieces, and some of us ALREADY had mental images for the songs and so even though theirs were all right, it was really jarring to the brain. The stuff from Nutcracker Suite is the worst, for me personally. I'm always like "Okay, this is cute, but WTF is up with those mushrooms? Were they DOING them?" Another bit that really messes with my head is Rhapsody in Blue from Fantasia 2000. (And while I'm on the subject, United Airlines needs tortured for what they did to Rhapsody in Blue in the nineties, using it as their goddamn theme and playing the main bit over and over and NEVER ADDING THE REST OF THE SONG. Yes, I flew United a lot in the nineties. Yes, it drove me insane.)


The other famous bit, of course, is the dancing hippos in "Dance of the Hours" by Amilcare Ponchielli - another case, I suspect, of Disney making some music more famous than it started out to be; I wonder who'd have to listen to Dance of the Hours in appreciation class, BEFORE Disney used it.

Personally, other than Socerer's Apprentice, which is a story, I find the whole movie interesting but soulless. My favorite of the pieces actually comes from Fantasia 2000, the decent sequel. It's flamingos flying in formation to "Carnival Overture" by Camille Saint-Saens. If you watch ONE cartoon from this whole post, watch this one. THIS is illustration of music. I just watched this again, finding the link, and laughed like a loon.

So, Disney and Fantasia. Brililant, of course, but a little obvious, if you ask me.


WARNER BROTHERS:
These guys were brilliant, in that they slipped in a whole crapload of classical without people really noticing. Then later you'd be sitting in music appreciation class going "Hey... I know that..."

Last night's entry, that started this, was "What's Opera, Doc?" available on Youtube, here. (The Goob just watched this with me; she was enthralled, and got the bigger plot bits -"Mumma, dat de bunny in a dwess.")

It is an unholy, hilarious mashup of Wagner's operas; the music has bits from all over. Tannhauser, the Ring cycle (a series of operas lasting, what is it? twelve, twenty hours? something insane), Siegfried, and the Flying Dutchman. There's so much packed in there that even with listening guides and people analyzing it, it's hard to figure out what all goes where. At any rate, they've permanently warped generations of people toward Wagner's music; we're supposed to be all intimidated and full of awe when Dutchman starts off, and instead, we're in the back, giggling because we're thinking of Elmer Fudd in a horned helmet. Chuck Jones (the director; brilliant man, passed on in 2002) once said that this was the entire Ring Cycle in seven minutes. I think I get my love of German opera entirely from this cartoon; the over-the-top high drama of them becomes fun instead of annoying, when viewed through the lens of Warner Brothers. I found out last night, while poking around on line looking at information, that "What's Opera, Doc?" is in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress and is considered 'culturally significant'. Maybe they aren't total snobs over there at the LofC.

From German opera (dismal plots where everyone dies, massive orchestras, and overblown lyrics, orchestration, and arrangements), they went to Italian opera (the Broadway of its day) with "The Rabbit of Seville", available to watch, here.

This is a full playing of the overture to the Barber of Seville, an opera by Gioachino Rossini, with one quick break for a blast of the Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn. They took out a couple repeats (I assume for timing issues) and fooled around a little with the instrumentation, but otherwise it's pretty much as Rossini wrote it. (I always wonder what Rossini would have said; from what I know of the man, he was a horrible snob and would have been annoyed.)

Then they took a little break, and Bugs tormented the opera singers themselves, in "Long Haired Hare".

The bit at the beginning that the singer is trying to rehearse is a bit from the Barber of Seville, also. There are several popular tunes of the day thrown in, played by Bugs, my personal favorite being "When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba". (Personal bias.) Then, at the concert, the singer's first piece is from an opera called "Lucia di Lammermoor" which I assume is an opera in-joke because that opera has a world famous 'mad scene' in it where the heroine goes insane. The Leopold that Bugs impersonates is Leopold Stokowski, famous conductor of, among other things, the New York Philharmonic, and the Fantasia soundtrack.

It suddenly occurs to me, how much information there is on this topic. If books haven't been written, they should be. A quick Google search turned up this summary, though it's far from complete. Wikipedia has amazing detail on these cartoons, but you have to look up each one, separately. I haven't found a master list. If I do, I'll pass it along.

One last WB cartoon. I love these things.

Rhapsody Rabbit. This is one where Bugs plays Franz Lizt's "Hungarian Rhapsody #2". There are some breaks with other music, but for the most part, it's Lizt. The same year, "The Cat Concerto" came out with Tom and Jerry doing nearly the same thing, with the same exact song. Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera sued each other for plagiarism, and the Tom and Jerry version won an Oscar. It's kind of fun to compare the two.

I'm not starting on Tom and Jerry and THEIR use of classical, or we'll be here all day. But they used it, too.

Anyway, you get the idea; there's amazing amounts of classical, including in-jokes, packed into cartoons we grew up watching.


Anyone want a suggested listening list, or do I need to shut the hell up, already?