Marshmallows and S'mores

Modern marshmallows are made in a variety of colors and shapes

Most of us know the marshmallow as a candy confection. But I wondered how this sugar, water and gelatin whipped to a spongy consistency and molded into small cylindrical pieces with a corn starch coating got its name.

I had some vague recollection of marshmallow being a plant and some quick searching told me that I was correct.

The word marshmallow comes from the mallow plant (Althaea officinalis) that is a genus of an herb native to parts of Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

"Marsh" is used because the mallow plant grows in marshes and other damp areas.

We don't know exactly when marshmallow plants led to the confection. As early as 2000 B.C, Egyptians were said to be the first to make marshmallows for eating. They were considered a delicacy for gods and royalty.

The root of the plant was used as a medicinal to soothe coughs and sore throats, and to heal wounds.

The edible version was made by boiling pieces of root pulp with sugar until it thickened, then strained, cooled and shaped.

choclate-covered marshmallows

In the early 19th century, French confectioners pioneered the innovation of whipping up the marshmallow sap and sweetening it, to make a candy similar to modern marshmallow. In the late 19th century, French manufacturers thought of using egg whites or gelatin, combined with modified corn starch, to create the chewy base.

Traditional marshmallows used marshmallow root, but most commercially manufactured marshmallows instead use gelatin. Vegans and some vegetarians avoid gelatin, so there are versions which use a substitute non-animal gelling agent such as agar.

Marshmallow creme and fluff products generally contain little or no gelatin (which is used to allow the confection to retain its shape) and generally use egg whites instead.

toasted marshmallow

A popular camping or backyard tradition in the United Kingdom,] North America, New Zealand and Australia is the roasting or toasting of marshmallows over an open flame.vHeld on the end of a stick or skewer over the fire, a caramelized outer skin with a liquid, molten layer underneath can be created.

S'mores are a traditional campfire treat in the United States, made by placing a toasted marshmallow on a slab of chocolate which is placed between two graham crackers. These can then be squeezed together to cause the chocolate to start to melt.

S'more is a contraction of the phrase "some more" and one early recipe for a s'mores confection is found in recipes published by the Campfire Marshmallows company in the 1920s. there it was called a "Graham Cracker Sandwich" that was already popular with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. In 1927, a recipe for "Some More" was published in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts.

The contracted term "s'mores" appears in conjunction with the recipe in a 1938 publication aimed at summer camps.

S'more about all this at wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow

Bling

Bling  (also bling-bling) is a term for expensive, ostentatious jewelry that came from the world of rap music. It evolved to mean not only that type of over-the-top jewelry but also clothing and other accessories such as cell phones or tooth caps.

The term has even been used to describe things like cars with the noun being used as an adjective, as in "That car is really blinged out." It has also devolved to sometime mean the free things given out at events, even if they are not of great value.

Linguistically, "bling" is an onomatopoeia, like buzz, meow, boing or cuckoo. Some might call it an ideophone which are words that evoke an idea in sound, movement, color, shape, or action.

Bling was meant to evoke the sound of light reflecting off something shiny, especially valuables like gold or diamonds.

Although the term came into wide usage in the late 1980s, we can go back twenty years earlier to some TV advertising, such as toothpaste maker Ultra Brite, that used a bling sound effect. In ads that said "Ultrabrite gives your mouth...[insert bling sound]...sex appeal" the sound might be accompanied by a sparkle effect on the actor's teeth.

The word "bling" was used by some comedians, such as Martin Lawrence. He parodied the "Ultrabrite smile" by and vocalized the sound effect as "bling-bling" and "bling-blauw."

The Silvertones song "Bling Bling Christmas" is sometimes noted as the earliest known usage of the term, but it was also used in rap by Dana Dane in "Nightmares" in 1987 referring to the sound effect used on cartoon shows along with gold coins, money, jewelry or gems. The term probably went more public with Cash Money Millionaires' song "Bling Bling" in 1999.

Fortnight

If you have heard the term "fortnight" used it probably meant a unit of time equaling 2 weeks as in 14 consecutive days.

The word suggest a fort as in fortress, but that is not the origin.

The word derives from Old English: fēowertyne niht, a term meaning "fourteen nights".

Some wages and salaries are paid on a fortnightly basis. In North America, it is more common to use the term "biweekly."

Neither of these terms should be confused with "semimonthly" which divides a year into exactly 24 periods instead of the 26 periods of fortnightly or biweekly.

In astronomy, a fortnight is half a synodic month, equivalent to the mean time between a full moon and a new moon (and vice versa). This is equal to 14.77 days. The synodic period is the amount of time that it takes for an object to reappear at the same point in relation to two or more other objects.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an American brand of prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses founded in 2010.
Warby Parker primarily sells eyewear online and through its New York City headquarters. It also maintains a limited number of showrooms in boutiques elsewhere in the United States. Warby Parker's "Home-Try-On program" allows customers to choose five frames from the website, which they receive to try on at home for five days, free of charge. Customers can also upload a photo and try on frames virtually

When someone joins Warby Parker as an employee, one of their gifts is a copy of Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums . That is because the name Warby Parker comes from two early Jack Kerouac characters: Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker.

The company's official corporate name is JAND Inc. and "Warby Parker" is the company's trade name.

measuring temperature

One way to gain some immortality is by having something named for you. Unfortunately, not every geographic, invention, species or other item that is an eponym is known for the person behind the name. A good example are some words we use to measure temperatures.

In the United States and a few other countries we measure the temperature inside and outside in Fahrenheit. But it would be unusual for an American to know that it was Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
(1686–1736), a Dutch physicist is be the source of that measurement. It was the first standardized temperature scale to be widely used. Mr. Fahrenheit also the invented alcohol and mercury thermometers that most of us have used (pre-digital). In his temperature scale, 0 degrees marks the temperature of a 1:1 mix of ice and salt.

Most of the world measures temperature using the scale created by Anders Celsius (1701–1744). He was a Swedish astronomer and professor at Uppsala University. His Celsius (also called centigrade) temperature scale marks 0 degrees as the temperature at which water freezes, and 100 as when it boils.

Americans traveling outside their homeland are always baffled at readings in Celsius. To convert temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius, you can subtract 32 and multiply by .5556 (or 5/9).
Example: (50°F - 32) x .5556 = 10°C. But that is tough math for most of us without a calculator. Nowadays, people are more likely to ask their phone to do it for them. "Siri, what is the current temperature in celsius?"  AS I am typing this, my thermometer says 78 degrees, and Siri tells me it is 26 Celsius.

William Thomson (1st Baron Kelvin and popularly known as Lord Kelvin) was a Scots-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer. He was born in Belfast in 1824. His work at the University of Glasgow in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics helped unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. His work on the transatlantic telegraph project gained him a knighthood, so he was also Sir William Thomson.

But it is for his work on absolute temperatures that units of kelvin were named for him. The lower limit to temperature (absolute zero) was known prior to his work, but Thomson determined its correct value as approximately −273.15 degree Celsius or −459.67 degree Fahrenheit and gave us our third temperature scale. In this scale, 0 is equivalent to absolute zero, the theoretical coldest temperature possible. It isn’t measured by degrees, but by individual kelvins.

Red Cubanelle chili peppers

American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville gave us another kind of "temperature" measurement. This one won't show up on a thermometer but on your tongue, and it matters when you are eating foods with hot peppers. Scoville Heat Units (SHU) are used to measure the "heat" of Capsicum.

He devised the test and scale in 1912 while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company to measure pungency, "spiciness" or "heat", of various chili peppers.

The common sweet bell pepper is measured at 0 Scovilles, so it is very mild. The world's most popular chili pepper is the jalapeno chili pepper which is measured at 2,500 - 8,000 Scovilles. A chipotle is a smoked jalapeno chili pepper. The serrano pepper can range from 5,000 - 23,000 Scovilles. This smaller version of the jalapeno can be dark green to reddish in color.

Chili peppers vary in heat based on their cultivation and harvesting. The New Mexico Scorpion is a super-hot chile rated at 1,191,595 Scoville Heat Units by an independent laboratory. And the Naga Viper (capsicum chinense) has been rated at 1,382,118 SHU, according to tests conducted by the Warwick HRI Mineral Analysis Laboratory, UK.

But, according to chilipeppermadness.com, the Carolina Reaper has a Guinness-submitted 1,569,383 SHU and more recently measured peak levels of over 2,200,000 SHU to top the super-hot chili charts.