crazysalad

A Better Diet For Everyone: Less Meat, Less Junk, More Plants. Eat Real Food.

Midway Magic

Living in San Diego, one is constantly reminded of the presence of the military.  We have the Navy in Coronado and the Marines at Camp Pendleton and Miramar.  F-18s roar over your car as you drive up the I-15 freeway.  But somehow I never noticed the giant aircraft carrier sitting near the foot of Broadway and Harbor Drive--the USS Midway--home of the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum.

Although it has only been in San Diego a little over a year, it has become one of the most successful museums in town.  Not being much of a military buff, I probably never would have visited had I not accompanied my daughter’s class there on a field trip last month.  As well as housing a naval aviation museum, the Midway offers math and science labs for school age kids, covering subjects such as physics, weather, and electricity.

From the main entrance on the Navy Pier, we climbed several flights of stairs and came aboard the aircraft carrier on the Hangar Deck—a cavernous indoor space capable of holding 20 airplanes.  Below this deck are the “Midway University” classrooms where my daughter’s class took part in a thermal energy lab. 

After an introductory lecture about how the ship gets its power (steam generated by 2 million gallons of fuel), we set off on a treasure hunt.  With a map of the ship and a digital camera in hand, our assignment was to discover how energy was produced and used in various parts of the aircraft carrier.  It was a great way to get to know the ship.  We wandered up and down ladders, following pipes through the engine room and up to the massive flight deck, searching for answers and items, such as the steam-driven catapults that propel the aircraft off the ship at 165 mph in 2 seconds. 

The Museum is also open to the public.  The price of admission ($15 adults, $10 children) includes a free headset that guides you on an audio tour of the ship.  The segments are brief, but allow you to hear voices of actual pilots and crewmen from the Midway, the longest-serving carrier in US Navy history (47 years, from the end of World War II through Desert Storm in 1991). The best resources, however, are the docents located throughout the museum.  These navy veterans--many of whom actually served on this carrier--are fantastic, more than happy to answer questions and share their personal experiences with you.

Although the flight deck is probably the most impressive and popular area of the ship, my favorite, of course, was the galley (kitchen).  The amount of food that was prepared here is staggering:  8 galleys and 2 bakeshops on the Midway operated 23 hours a day, serving up 13,500 meals (10 tons of food) daily to the 4500 crew members.  Each day sailors consumed: 1000 loaves of bread, 5000 lbs. of vegetables, 4500 lbs. of meat, 3000 lbs of potatoes.  I walked around the Meat & Potates Galley and the Doggie Diner in awe, trying to imagine where they stored all that food and what it must have been like cooking in such cramped conditions.

From the audio headset tour, I copied down this recipe for Beef Stew, given by Charlie Keefer (sp?) who served on the Midway 1970-71:

Old Noodles & Pasta Presto

Maybe this will settle once and for all the debate about who invented noodles.  Earlier this year when archaeologists in China turned over a 4000 year-old bowl, this is what they found underneath:

Photograph © Chinese Academy of Sciences

Noodles.  4000-year-old noodles.  Beautifully preserved, thin, delicate, 20-inch-long yellow noodles. 

This discovery predates by at least 2000 years any other evidence or mention of noodles in human history, according to Houyuan Lu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who was part of the team that made the discovery.  They are also the oldest prepared food ever found intact.   

Notably, the noodles are made, not of wheat, but from millet, a grain that has been cultivated in China for 7000 years, and is still a mainstay of the diet in many arid regions today.   

This discovery offers conclusive evidence that the Chinese were making noodles long before Marco Polo arrived.  Although the legend that Marco Polo "discovered" pasta and brought it back to Europe has been largely discredited, Italians are responsible for popularizing the consumption of noodles in Europe and much of the world. 

Links to the story in The Guardian and National Geographic.

In the interest of further culinary inquiry, I am heading off to Italy to do some noodle research of my own.  That’s right, I will be taking crazysalad on the road as I spend 10 days in Italy and France.  First stop: Reggio’Emilia, home of the world best cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano.  Then on to Paris where I’ll try to make it to every chocolate shop on David Lebovitz’s list.  I will have Internet access, so when I’m not eating, I’ll be taking photos and posting them here.

Ciao a presto--

Millet, It’s Not Just For Birdseed Anymore

I led a deprived, un-American childhood: my mother refused to buy any breakfast cereals with added sugar.  That’s right, no Cocoa Puffs, no Sugar Snaps.  No crackle or pop.  The only cereals allowed in our house were unsweetened rice puffs and unsweetened shredded wheat.  When milk was added, the puffed still tasted like sawdust and the wheat quickly turned to leaden mush in the bottom of the bowl.  Oddly enough, we were occasionally allowed Grape-Nuts, which contain neither grapes nor nuts, but sugar in the form of malted barley, and Chex, which contain both malted barley and sugar.  This probably owed more to my dad’s influence—he liked them and bought them for himself—than my mother’s “don’t argue with me” policy. 

Now I find that I’m inflicting the same abuse on my own offspring.  I make my husband stash his Raisin Bran on the top shelf of the pantry where the kids are less likely to notice it.  Still, they know where to score some Froot Loops, if they really want to (Halmoni’s house).   

So despite years of television watching, whereby cute characters and catchy jingles tempted me with forbidden foods, as an adult I find I have no desire to eat those boxed, sugary cereals.  If I want to eat something that sweet for breakfast, I would rather cut a big slice of last night’s birthday cake or make fresh scones.  Most of the time, I am content to eat a bowl of slow-cooked, steel-cut oats, sweetened only with currants and topped with toasted almonds. 

But a look down the cereal aisle of any grocery store clearly shows that I am in the minority of American consumers. For that I blame the Kelloggs.