Tips on currency exchange
This page has
some useful information on exhange options and on getting a good exchange
rate. It’s for Us travellers to Canada, but the information should apply
generally.
posted at: 16:49 |
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Fat Tuesday
Reading that previous page led me to wonder what holiday ‘Carnival’ was,
since I’d heard of the others. It turns out, based on the information from
this
page, that I’d also heard of Carnival, but under the name Fat Tuesday
or Pancake Tuesday. I’d never heard of the reason for the name Fat Tuesday,
though, which I think is quite interesting: “Carnival was celebrated on
the the last day of the year before Lent and was a feast like no other in
the calendar. It was called Fat Tuesday because all meat and animal
products such as cheese, milk, bacon, and fat, had to be eaten before
sundown, since none could be consumed during the forty-day Lenten fast
(the name derives from carnelevare, the Latin word meaning giving up
meat)”.
posted at: 16:01 |
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Fake Fish
Knowing that I’m fascinated by medieval cooking, Keltie sent me
this
great link about baking pie that looks like fish. The page also has
some fascinating information on medieval eating that I hadn’t come across
before, about the fact that the medieval Christian diet was quite heavily
restricted at many times of the year, and at these times was either
vegetarian or vegan, with the exception of fish. This is really quite interesting when combined with
the fact that there was no cold storage in medieval times. You might think
this would be less of an issue when it came to vegetarian eating, but if
you’ve ever left a head of lettuce out on the table, you’d know that
vegetables can spoil quite a bit faster than meat. I was particularly
fascinated by the fact that the more wealthy people kept fish ponds, since
fish was essentially considered a vegetable.
posted at: 16:01 |
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A whole lot of info on mycotoxin regulations
For some reason the last time I did research on mycotoxins, I didn’t turn
up much information. And most of the sites seemed a little…
over-anxious… in tone. This time I’m finding all sorts of interesting
sites. For example, here
are the Worldwide regulations for mycotoxins in food and feed in 2003. For
those of you who are interested, it includes handy charts detailing the
type of mycotoxin testing each country, including Canada, does in its
food. Canada looks like it does a fair amount of testing on the type of
food it tends to produce commercially. I might be a bit concerned about
eating peanuts in Cameroon, though.
posted at: 16:38 |
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The story on A. oryzae
Okay-
this
page has the full story on A. oryzae, which is the type of mold used
in making sake and other products. Apparently, A. oryzae is considered to
be a ‘domsticated’ version of this type of mold, which does not produce
mycotoxins, unlike its wild cousins. So, as long as you definitely have A.
oryzae, and not any of the other Aspergillus molds, it’s apparently okay.
Although it sounds important to also keep this in mind: “Even with the
food industry strains, a caveat of safety is that the fungal incubation
not exceed the normal three day period. A. oryzae has been shown to
produce toxic compounds under incubations longer than the typical koji
fermentation(Semeniuk et al, 1971; Yokotsuka & Sasaki, 1986)”.
posted at: 15:58 |
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More on mycotoxins
A while back I did some research on mycotoxins, which are toxins produced
by molds and fungi. Today I was once agian inspired to learn more about
these toxins, and when they are and are not produced, because I learned
from Colin that sake and soy sauce are made from moldy rice. I don’t
actually have a problem with that- I like blue cheese- as long as this
mold isn’t one that happens to produce mycotoxins as a by product. To that
end I found this
interesting page, that talks about mycotoxins and the history of their
discovery. It appears that their existence was not discovered (or at
least, conclusively proven) until as recently as 1960. Regarding sake, the
page says “A. oryzae has long been used in the Orient to prepare various
kinds of food products, such as sake, tofu and soy sauce, which in turn is
used in the United States. Were aflatoxins present in these products as
well? This was a question that needed to be answered. Research began to
take place at a rapid pace and continues to do so.” So, I’m not sure what
to conclude from that. It sounds like there might be a problem with black
pepper, though.
posted at: 15:53 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.