![Sprucing Up Your Cocktail
Spruce was a familiar flavoring in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially if you lived up north. It was found in tea, in beer, and perhaps most commonly in chewing gum—spruce gum was produced commercially all the way until the 1970s. “I have tended evening meetings up in Maine,” noted the writer Henry Wheeler Shaw in 1877, “and everybody was chewing gum except the minister.”
The taste of spruce resin is quite potent, described by one late-19th-century writer as “sweet, peculiar and balsamic.” In my experience, spruce engages not just the senses of smell and taste, but also a more primitive part of one’s brain, conjuring a dank and loamy forest. I’m mystified that a flavor this large and powerful has been forgotten by consumers.
Read more. [Image: Jeffrey Westbrook]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcgisf4L9T1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Spruce was a familiar flavoring in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially if you lived up north. It was found in tea, in beer, and perhaps most commonly in chewing gum—spruce gum was produced commercially all the way until the 1970s. “I have tended evening meetings up in Maine,” noted the writer Henry Wheeler Shaw in 1877, “and everybody was chewing gum except the minister.”
The taste of spruce resin is quite potent, described by one late-19th-century writer as “sweet, peculiar and balsamic.” In my experience, spruce engages not just the senses of smell and taste, but also a more primitive part of one’s brain, conjuring a dank and loamy forest. I’m mystified that a flavor this large and powerful has been forgotten by consumers.
Read more. [Image: Jeffrey Westbrook]
![Why Does Canada Have a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve?
On Friday, news broke that thieves had stolen $30 million dollars worth of Quebec’s strategic maple syrup reserves. Much as the United States keeps a stock of extra oil buried in underground salt caverns to use in case of a geopolitical emergency, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers has been managing warehouses full of surplus sweetener since 2000. The crooks seem to have made off with more than a quarter of the province’s backup supply. (I personally suspect these guys.)
Why exactly does Canada need to stockpile syrup? To find out, I called up Michael Farrell, an extension associate at Cornell University’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and an expert in all things maple.
“We think of it as a little cottage industry here in the states,” he told me. “But up there [syrup is] a big industry that’s responsible for a lot of people’s livelihoods.”
Read more. [Image: Michael Farrell, Brian Chabot]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9u4c0qO7v1qcokc4o1_1280.png)
![Sunny-Side Up: In Defense of Eggs
What is the most heart-healthy diet? The answer to this much-debated question just became more controversial after a study in the forthcoming issue of Atherosclerosis reported that egg yolks are nearly as bad for your arteries as cigarette smoke. After years relegated to the do-not-eat list for fear of cholesterol-raising effects, the humble egg was finally making its way back into mainstream acceptance as a heart-healthy food full of healthy fats and protein. But it appears this latest study may indeed send us back to the days of egg-white omelets and Egg Beaters. […]
The study has potentially serious consequences for people trying to improve their health and reduce their risk of stroke and heart disease — and that’s because most people should be eating more eggs, and particularly the yolks, not fewer.
Read more. [Image: ella novak/Flickr]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9f9k57vsa1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
![Americans Throw Away 40 Percent of Their Food Every Day
A new study says that the American food chain is so wasteful that roughly 40 percent of all our food goes uneaten, because we basically just throw it in the garbage.
[Image: Chris Waits/Flickr]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m961khc1o61qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
