Things I don’t understand

It’s been a while, kiddos.  Might as well relaunch this thing with something completely crazy.

With a title like that, this could be a ridiculously long post. Sure, I recently read a book on the history of butter, I can write an ugly but functional computer program in a couple of languages, and I can explain why your wool sweater shrunk when you accidentally sent it through the washer and dryer (surprise: it wasn’t the hot water. Well, not just the hot water, anyway). But the list of things I don’t know…is infinite. So buckle up, because I don’t know how big this is going to get. (Bonus points if you caught the movie quote there.)

What is that exactly?

So, I eat candy once in a while. Ok, every now and then. FINE, I eat a lot of candy. And candy flavors are usually based on real foods. Those strawberry hard candies with the liquid centers. Lemon drops. Hot tamales (which thankfully taste like cinnamon, not actual tamales). Orange slices. Cherry nibs. Mints (don’t get me started on mints, I have some sort of addiction).

And each of those things taste like some sort of relative of what they represent. Fourth cousins twice removed, maybe, but one could at least identify them as in the same family.

Now, I love a good cold grape soda. Welch’s, if i can be selective. So cold it’s just a bit slushy, like the pop machine on the fritz in the Rotunda at SDSU would deliver back in the stone ages when I was in college. (That pop machine may be the only reason I ever went to my big lecture classes.) Everyone knows what grape soda, or gum, or Mike and Ikes taste like. It’s a very specific “grape” flavor. Except…it’s nothing like any actual grape I’ve ever eaten. And I buy grapes every week. It’s baffling to me.

Apparently it’s a theme

As long as we’re talking about grapes…this isn’t about them, exactly.  Including grapes, many fruits are eaten in both fresh, ripe forms as well as dried.  (I’m a sucker for dried pineapple, because it often features extra added sugar and might as well be pure chewy glucose.)

The subject of dried fruit is really a two-fer in the land of things I don’t understand.  I know you’re thrilled to read that.

Thing the first:  Why do some dried fruits get new names (I’m looking at you, raisins and prunes*), while other fruits just get the word “dried” or “chips” added to them?  Why don’t we call dried apples “almegs” or banana chips “brundorgs”?  Something in me suspects it has to to do with the moisture content left in the fruit, where it can be considered a whole separate fruit rather than just a shriveled up leather version of it’s former glorious whole.  The odds are better that this theory is just something I made up, though.**

The moisture content idea does segue nicely into thing the second, however.  If a prune is a dried plum, it is commonly understood that it has had a fair portion of the fruit’s moisture removed.  So what the devil is prune juice?  Why isn’t it just plum juice, since they have more juice to provide in the first place?***  I’ve consumed vast quantities of grape juice in my life, but never once even encountered raisin juice.  And I doubt one could even juice a brundorg.

Maybe it’s not fruit that I don’t understand, but the English language in general.  That actually makes more sense.

It’s gross

Yet another food thing.  I know this is bound to rankle some folks…

Nutella. Nope, I don’t get it. You want to ruin my chocolate with hazelnut? What’s wrong with you? Give me peanut butter (creamy, I’m not a sociopath). Give me chocolate spread. And keep your hazelnuts to yourself.

Not a food at all

I’m a life-long allergy wrangler.  Foods, animals, the world in general.  I’m allergic to it all.  I don’t know about the rest of my allergy-laden friends, but mine frequently manifest themselves with a healthy dose of itchiness.  That’s right, I’m a scratcher.  That is easy enough to understand (albeit likely more than you hoped to learn upon clicking the link to get here today).

What I don’t understand is why some scratching works, and some doesn’t.  If I get a mosquito bite on my upper arm, it itches, I scratch it, temporary relief.  Repeat ad nauseam until I’m bleeding or three days have passed, whichever comes first.  However, if I have an itch anywhere on my hand…ANYWHERE…scratching it with the other hand just doesn’t work.  No relief whatsoever.  The only thing that works is to gnaw on that paw like a feral cat.  Admit it, you’ve done it.  You’re driving along, an itch strikes on the muscle below your thumb, and suddenly you’ve got your palm jammed in your mouth so you can chew your way to nirvana.  No?  Just me?

Enough already

Like I said at the start, the list of things I don’t understand is infinite, so I’m just going to wrap this up for today.  I’m sure another round will pop up in the not too distant future.  For now, it appears that I’m the crazy lady who doesn’t understand what she puts in her mouth.  (Yes, I typed that, read it, thought about it, and still posted it.  No, I don’t know what is wrong with me exactly.)

Footnotes, aka Nerds Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone

*It seems that prunes had an image problem on account of their associated juice, and have been rebranded as “dried plums” since 2000.  This was blessed by the FDA and handed down to the California Dried Plum Board (CDPB).  I couldn’t make this stuff up.

**My research (cough~NERD~cough) indicates that it’s more likely a product of the source of the fruits than the moisture content.  Prune and raisin are the french words for plum and grape, respectively.  Many long years ago, if a fruit were to be exported from France to England, it needed to be dried to survive the journey intact.  It makes sense that the name from the source of the dried fruit would stick with it, and the native name would stay with the local, fresh fruit.

***There actually ARE both prune and plum juice, of course.  Prunes are made from a different variety of plums than the fresh red or black plums we generally eat.  So not only does the drying process for prunes produce a more concentrated and differently flavored sugar that affects the final juice, but the fruit itself has a different flavor.  Also, prune juice is made by boiling or steaming the dried fruits before extracting the juice, whereas plum juice is made like most other fruit juices, by crushing the ripe fruit to expel the liquid.  Because of the difference in the fruits and the chemical processes that happen during drying, even boiling down this freshly expelled juice wouldn’t magically create prune juice.