Actions that might even come true. From k.c. r w I'm having Kleiman And you're listening to good food. Good hotels good restaurants around on the. Exterior. That's too cute adversity Professor Henry Petroski I talked to him about dispensable back in 2000. Text Knology in culture this week we're sharing some of my favorite conversations from the past decade starting with this one so how far back to use. Goes back about 2000000 years we're pretty much all early toothpicks made out of wood out of twigs it seems pretty good that they are back as we can imagine paragraph 2 off a tree splinter out of it and use it I would imagine that in certain cultures and in certain times when I think about ancient China or Japan I think perhaps maybe toothpicks may have been made out of ivory or other objects and were sort of more precious is that the case yes that is the case for those that could afford those things it was common to carry around a personal to expect and for people who didn't have the means to they just would all their own a lot of people did that's right or they might use certain materials such as say iron which would effectively be a. Given that people will hold their own how did the idea of a manufactured product succeed I would imagine it had to be sold to people that something that they would have to buy would. More value than something they can just make themselves Well that's right back in the 19th century a lot of things began to be made by machinery it was really just a natural extension of the hospital revolution and there was a fellow from the New England area named Charles Forster who was working in Brazil and he noticed that the natives down there were carving toothpicks by hand he also noticed that the natives had a very white very clean tick a list t. He thought Well I think that I can make a fortune literally if I go back to New England and I begin to make toothpicks by machine and sell them in such a way that I could undersell even these natives in Brazil but it was not as easy to do it as he 1st thought he had to acquire the patent rights to machines that could make toothpicks and then had to develop the machinery and figure out exactly what wood was best for toothpicks that took him close to about 10 years when he finally was able to produce toothpicks in such vast quantities if found that well now we have to sell them to people and not only literally sell them but also in the sense of marketing them before we get into the marketing I'm just fascinated by the idea of making a toothpick my mind tends to go to a cartoon place where you have a tree and all the sudden the tree is on a lathe and what's left of the tree is this one little toothpick Well the beginning is actually correct it does start as a tree in fact white birch bark was taken off the tree and then it was literally put on a lathe and it was sort of peel the veneer was peeled from around it and sometimes as long as 100 feet and then that was bad into a machine that literally chopped off toothpicks the way we might cut cookies kind of cookie dough so let's talk about how he marketed this old tool in a new way can see here is pretty ingenious Well you remember in the 19th century just about everybody is. Or had a personal to expect that they carried around with ivory brass bronze whatever gold and silver so Forster had to figure out a way to break the habits of people and get them accustomed to buying to specs that they would then dispose of what he did as he hired students from Harvard to didn't arrest Ronson Boston after they enjoyed their meal they would call for the manager and ask where his wooden toothpicks were when the manager said Well I don't know what you're talking about socially stomped out of the restaurant and say will never come to this and stablished once again because you don't provide toothpicks for your guests after the meal of course the next day Charles Forster shows up at Lane precisely these things that the students had demanded naturally the restaurant manager can't refuse to buy some and distribute to his customers now what about this custom walking around with your walking stick in your top pad and having a toothpick in your mouth that you just sort of kept there and moved from side to side and chewed on was that an affectation that was marketed as well or did that just happen naturally that seems to have happened naturally as happened in the 870 s. And 18 eighties dandies who often had it came with them came to be known as the crutch of. Conversation. Next. Stay with us. Sponsors include humble maker coffee company California committed to enriching the lives of children with autism through surfing music and the great outdoors. Organic humble maker cold brew is now available at all Gelsen market locations Welcome back to good food and Casey r.w. Have been climbin Mormon recipes are not so different from typical Middle Western recipe. Mormons making jokes about their own food that sound just like the jokes Methodists make about their food. In the Mormon community we 1st aired this interview 6 years ago. In this process of you learning about Mormon women in the kitchen what did you find out our food and cooking an important part of the society or the are they always in the background they're in an important part of the society their congregation is called a ward and there are a lot of Ward cookbooks I study particularly the 20th century and they used to have lessons once a month called homemaking lessons where people would gather to learn how to cook or how to sell something or how to do something in the home but the letters from the leaders of relief society that went from Salt Lake City headquarters out to the individual wards they emphasized that food served at those meetings should be nutritious it should be economical it should be easy to prepare so that it was providing a model for the women who attended the meetings about how to prepare that kind of food at their home so they didn't want women just serving desserts at these meetings they wanted food to be nutritious easy to prepare and economical yet it's interesting I was looking at a recipe for funeral potatoes could you take us through the ingredients Yeah typically funeral potatoes have some kind of. Canned soup cream of chicken soup or cream of mushroom soup there are a few stalwarts who will great their own potatoes but usually it's an industrialised form of potatoes frozen hash browns they have sour cream in them they have cheese and them and then they normally have crushed corn flakes on top the popularity of here old protégé toes particularly to be served at funerals is based on the fact that these travel well they can be prepared ahead of time and these tend to be things that Mormon women would have in their pantries they have extensive pantries so you could call somebody and say so and so just died in 2 days we need you to bring funeral potatoes to serve the gas that the funeral and the woman would already have the things that she needed to be able to throw that dish together let's talk about these extensive pantries for a minute I understand that the Church advocates at least 3 months worth of food stored Why is this a few reasons in the 1930 s. The church was concerned about how many Utahns were on national welfare during the Depression they were worried that the Government sources of funding would run out and that people would be left really in trouble so they started their own welfare program the welfare was based on feeding the poor but it also had a strong component of teaching self-sufficiency they really taught people to store their own food so that in a time of need they would have resources they taught them how to save money not spend more than they should they teach that you shouldn't go into debt and I think for a house or education people would often use industrialized food products as a part of their food pantry initially you were to store 2 years worth of food and then they took it down in the last couple of decades keeping the garden was another important part of this and so people would grow their own food and then they would bottle the food or freeze. It or dry it so that was part of their food storage is there an ethical component of food choices there is a few years after Joseph Smith founded that Mormon church he received a revelation called the Word of Wisdom and that outlines something that would sound familiar to you know somebody like Michael Potter Barbara Kingsolver it says eat very little meat eat food in season feed the animals properly according to what they should be fed it's a little bit puzzling why some of those things are out there when this revelation was received in 830 days before food was really industrialized before eating out of season was a possibility but now it has strong powerful implications people tend to look at the aspects of the word of wisdom that forbid coffee and alcohol and focus on those instead of the aspects that have more in common with today's local force like the eating in season in the eating of little meat now part of your study has been to compare cultural significance of food in Mormonism with that of the Nation of Islam which seems like they wouldn't have very much in common right that's part of why I chose to compare the 2 groups both groups are considered new religious movements and both have some aspects that are quintessentially American but they're Chia graphically and racially quite distinct groups so I find it very interesting that both emphasize growing your own food having some land food storage for times of want both emphasize helped a great deal that's popular now and it's been popular all through the 20th century but there's a lot of rhetoric about health and eating properly and in order to honor the body that God has given you and in the case of the Mormons this is for the hereafter it's for now and the here after Mormon theology is very rooted in a no show. That people are supposed to be happy and that God wants them to be happy and God gives them rules so that they can be happy now and happy during the here after the Nation of Islam doesn't believe in life after death or didn't at least in the time of large Mohammad so they wanted to maximize their lives now wanted to be happy now wanted to be economically well off now to help with particularly important to them because it was related to longevity and they believed that if they ate correctly which included just eating one meal per day that they would be able to live long long lives like hundreds of years even what about the role the fasting of depriving oneself of food in both religions so for the Nation of Islam that was a lot about health and most of the language about it is health and Elijah Muhammad taught that if you allowed yourself 22 hours to digest your food then the food would no longer harm the body but if you were constantly feeding the body then there were harmful particles that wouldn't have the chance to be fully digested and expelled from the body so he taught that there were even some diseases some problems with high blood sugar that could be controlled if you would only eat one meal per day with the Mormons there are 2 main reasons they fast one is about spiritual power depriving the body of food puts you more in touch with spiritual matters it also shows your humility and the depth of your desire so you're more likely to get answers for prayers if you're fasting but the other interesting thing about Mormon fasting which is pretty unique to them is that even when Joseph Smith from the very beginning when he was teaching people to fast he said that the reason they should fast is so they could give the food that they did not eat to people who had no food so it was an effort directly related to alleviating poverty and so Mormons they skipped 2 meals during the 1st Sunday of each month and sometimes if they. Want they might fast and some additional period but what they're supposed to do is fast during the 1st Sunday of the month and then in a generous way calculate to help much money they may have spent on the meals that they skipped and then they put that into a general fund for the poor while we talked a little bit about the dish funeral potatoes aside from that what are some of the most common Mormon dishes in the early days of the church and now when their early days of the Church of Mormon say what you would see anybody in the areas they were in eating you know when they were in Missouri they would eat the way Missourians ate That's a little less interesting it in the middle 20th century they also looked a lot like it specially people in the middle of the country with a lot of industrialized food products and a lot of casseroles you know a leaf of lettuce with a little Jell-O. On top of it as a salad side what does set Mormon food apart a little bit is the emphasis on rotating food storage because if you have all of this wheat and all of these canned stored up wheat was a big deal then you need to be able to use them or else they spoil and you don't want waste whereas a regular cookbook from Ohio would have a recipe for zucchini bread that I called for all purpose flour them warm and version of zucchini bread was more likely to have some whole wheat flour and they were trying to throw whole wheat flour in wherever they could or nonfat milk that was a part of food storage because it has a longer shelf life and so whereas other bread recipes would call for fresh milk Mormon red recipes would be more likely to call for the dehydrated milk or for candy evaporated milk Holbert is a historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day say. We're going to hop out of the way back to come back to the press. Avery shopping for this week at the Santa Monica farmer's market I'm happy to be visiting with Noel Carter who is the test kitchen director for the Los Angeles Times she writes about seasonal produce she publishes the culinary s.o.s. For those hard to find beloved recipes and know well you're here today you're going to tell us a little bit more about the test kitchen and also tell us about the taste Well it's this weekend and it's our 8th annual Taste and it's bigger and better than ever I'm hosting one of the events the Sunday block party with Sherry are you know her from Spa go and now she's a tough tavern and it's just going to be a fun event and what exactly are you 2 crazy ladies going to be Don Oh gosh we've got a bunch of things going on we're going to be chatting about brunch Sherry's doing a demo and then I'm going to be watching over the ultimate biscuit if you want to know how to make good biscuits Ellie has a great biscuits and we've got David and Jason full of coming in and they're going to show like tips and tricks for making awesome biscuits. A jar to cut little circles. But you know there are there are a few like really good hints like keep your ingredients cold I use a pastry cutter my mom she was a big baker growing up and I learned a lot of what I know from her and you know you cut in those ingredients so when the butter melts it creates the steam so you've got all these flaky layers but I know David and Jason are going to have some great tips to share Will they be baking biscuits for us to taste they will be we will have samples with all the demos this year which will be awesome that sounds amazing and no one else like is something that's new that we should be kind of looking for you know it's funny walking around the markets and I see you every week it's so good to see oh we've got figs are like really really big right now and it's have such a small season and they're such a delicate fruit actually they're like several 100 kinds of figs out there and you know we've got several beautiful ones out here beyond just the mission figs or the turkey figs there are a bunch of great I love making a jam with goes really well with biscuits and you know it's just it's that time of year and it's it's a perfect. Right and probably one of the best ways to preserve the seasonal magic of this market is like you said Noel to make the jam with for example figs you know it's funny I was so much of the great produce it's like you put everything in a pot with some sugar or maybe some pectin and you cook it down you might flavor it with a thing or 21 of my favorite things to do with figs is do a little bit more of a savory take on it and I do a fresh veg salsa which is super simple to make a little all of loyal you saute an onion until it's nice and soft add maybe a half pound of figs chopped up and you just cook them down for a few minutes until they start to break down and they're getting like all nice and go away and then I like to add some white wine and a little chicken stock and I cook that down until you get that perfect Jamey consistency toss in some more figs even out the consistency a little with with a little extra chicken stock if you like and it's perfect on a freshly baked biscuit with a little bit of butter some really nice butter perfect snack and tell us a little more now about the test kitchen what goes on in there oh gosh every single recipe that runs in the food section is tested and frequently retested until we get it right because we want to make sure that the recipes work before they run in the section which I think are one of just a handful of newspapers and publications that still actually have a test kitchen so who gets to come into the Test Kitchen You are the head test kitchen tester and I mean I'm the one that tests most of the recipes but we have people from the sections neighboring sections that come in sometimes we've got travel and books that are nearby us and they offer their pallets to sample the dishes as we're testing them we just had a big brownie story and we had we tested about a dozen different kinds of brownies and so we had people from all over the paper coming in it was work related trying all these brownies somebody has got to do it I got to do it it's a tough job. All right well this is exciting so the taste is Saturday and Sunday September 1st through 3rd Friday night through Sunday and 5 events I'm going to be hosting the 1 tomorrow morning on Sunday come on down at the Paramount backlot and you're going to have a great time. Sunday morning sounds like a date so see there that was Noel Carter she is the test kitchen director for the l.a. Times she also writes a lot of the columns you'll see the culinary s.-o. As a seasonal market report on what produce is in season and urging us all they head on over to Paramount backlot and taste l.a. I'm talking now with Farmer Stephen Murray from Murray family farm up in the Bakersfield Arvin area and the Murrays bring in the earliest cherries in California they have a beautifully eclectic wonderful farm and several varieties of figs as well tell us how many varieties of figs you grow well it's kind of actually a little bit hard to say because I've collected a lot of varieties at Scion exchanges across California so I think I have about 15 or so 15 varieties and of those how many can you bring to market on a regular basis so the varieties that I bring regularly I have elected a Bordeaux which I have one customer that they buy most of them the other one is the white coat which was originally cultivated in southern Italy we have black mission which is you know the ancient variety from from California from the mission time period in brown Turkey we also grow some that I was kind experimental figs which are basically the ones I lost the tags. And we have one that is a purple striped Fig which every once while I have a few of those but today they they sell out by about. 50 so I'm the figs there's so many different varieties and figs bear twice a year tell us tell us about their crazy season figs are very different from other plants and how they reproduce so a lot of figs are wasps so there's some figs that if they don't ha