My Science School

A s'more is a traditional camping snack that has been popular with kids—and their parents!— for years and years. Although many different varieties of s'mores have developed over time, the s'more is basically a sandwich of roasted marshmallows and chocolate between graham crackers.

S'mores are usually made by the campfire. Marshmallows are roasted over the fire until they're gooey. Then graham crackers with pieces of a chocolate candy bar are used to sandwich the gooey roasted marshmallow. Many kids mash the combination together so that the heat from the marshmallow will melt the chocolate.

This sweet, warm, gooey, delicious treat always leaves kids wanting more. In fact, that's probably how they got their name. S'more is thought to be a contraction of the phrase, “some more," as in “I want some more of those s'mores!"

No one knows for sure who invented the s'more. However, the first published recipe for “some mores" was in a 1927 publication called Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. Loretta Scott Crew, who made them for Girl Scouts by the campfire, is given credit for the recipe.

So even though we don't know for sure whether the Girl Scouts were the first to make “some mores," no one else has claimed to have invented them. We also don't know when the name got shortened to “s'more" as recipes for “some mores" appeared in Girl Scout publications until at least 1971.

Credit :  Wonderopolis 

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The history of the waffle cone dates back over a century beginning with Abe Doumar. Doumar, a traveling salesman who spent his days selling paperweights to visitors at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, had an epiphany one day while strolling the fairgrounds. One evening, Abe saw the owner of an ice cream stand packing up his things to close because they’d run out of the paper bowls used to serve ice cream. At another stand nearby, a man was making waffles on a single-iron waffle maker. Abe bought a waffle, rolled it into a cone and topped it with ice cream, resulting them in the world’s first waffle ice cream cone! In the following days, the ice cream vendor and waffle salesman continued operating under one stand, selling ice cream cones.

After the fair ended, Abe – an immigrant from Damascus, Syria – began a business with the help of family. He built a four-iron waffle machine from scratch (that is still used today.) What made this particular machine different is that the four-iron machine allowed Abe to roll a waffle while three others cooked. In 1905, Abe opened the first of what would become a chain of Doumar’s ice cream stands stretching from Coney Island to Jacksonville, Florida. Two years later, in 1907, Abe and his brother George opened a stand in Norfolk at the Ocean View Amusement Park. The park, now gone, was once the most popular oceanfront destination and the stand was launched during the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition and became the most successful of all of the Doumar family’s stands. Because of this, Abe relocated to Norfolk permanently.

Credit : Culture Trip

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These days, Thanksgiving is all about the food—from the classic turkey to delicious pumpkin pie, Americans look forward to overindulging on favorite foods that we associate with the harvest bounty of 17th-century Massachusetts. But did they have these beloved Thanksgiving foods at the first Thanksgiving in 1621? A deeper look reveals that our "traditional" Thanksgiving feast may not be as traditional as we think.

The Pilgrims’ autumn harvest of 1621 was plentiful. Of course, they owed a lot of that success to their Wampanoag neighbors, who had helped them grow crops and taught them how to survive in the brutal climate of coastal Massachusetts. The harvest festival took three days, during which the Pilgrims and Indians feasted and celebrated. Approximately half of the original settlers died during the first year, and only four women remained alive by the fall of 1621, so the meal was likely prepared largely by men. 

There would not have been cranberry sauce, though they might have had raw cranberries. There were no mashed potatoes, since the potato didn't make its way to North America until the 18th century. There was no pumpkin pie—they didn’t have a baking oven in Plimoth Plantation—but there might have been pumpkin served other ways, since both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate pumpkin and other indigenous squashes.

On the table would have been local root vegetables like carrots and onions, dried fruits and nuts, venison (provided by the Wampanoag), fish such as bass, and shellfish like mussels and lobster. They might have had corn, though it would have been more of a cornmeal mush, known as "samp." There is also an account that mentions a "great store of Wild turkies," so it is likely that turkey was on the menu at the first Thanksgiving, in addition to other wild fowl such as duck and goose.

Credit : Gilder Lehrman 

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For more than 80 years, Girl Scouts have sold cookies to raise funds to support their scouting activities. Today, the sale of Girl Scout Cookies raises more than $700 million each year, making the Girl Scout Cookie Program the largest girl-led business in the country!

Girl Scout Cookies got their start in the kitchens of Girl Scouts and their mothers. Girl Scouts began to sell cookies as a way to finance their scouting activities as early as 1917, just five years after Juliette “Daisy" Gordon Low started the first Girl Scout group in Savannah, Georgia.

In July 1922, Girl Scout national headquarters published an edition of The American Girl magazine for all Girl Scouts. The issue contained a recipe for a sugar cookie that could be baked and sold to raise funds for local councils. Thus, the simple sugar cookie was arguably the first true Girl Scout Cookie.

In 1934, Greater Philadelphia became the first Girl Scout council to sell commercially baked cookies. In 1935, the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York used the words "Girl Scout Cookies" on their boxes of commercially baked cookies for the first time.

Girl Scout leaders believe selling cookies helps Girl Scouts realize their full potential and become strong, confident and resourceful citizens. In fact, Girl Scout leaders have identified five essential skills that Girl Scouts develop by selling Girl Scout Cookies: goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics.

Girl Scouts set sales goals to support their chosen activities for the year, which might include funding community service projects, attending summer camp, traveling on field trips and providing events for girls in their community. Many successful businesswomen today say they got their start selling Girl Scout Cookies.

Credit : Wonderopolis 

Picture Credit : Google

The World's Largest Cupcake record now belongs to Georgetown Cupcake at Georgetown Cupcake's national headquarters in Sterling, Virginia, though the picture here is from the previous world record holder.. On November 2, 2011, the bakery created a cupcake weighing 2,594 lbs, according to Guinness World Records.

Everything is certainly bigger in Texas. The World's Largest Gingerbread House was created in 2013 in Bryan, Texas. It covered 2,520 square feet, and was 21 ft in height. This 35.8 million-calorie treat has been named the biggest gingerbread house ever by the Guinness World Records.

The Food Network's Duff Goldman lives up to his Ace of Cakes title by baking the largest cupcake in history — now entered in the Guinness Book of World Records. The 61.4-pound creation is more than a foot tall and entirely edible. Reportedly 150 times the size of a regular cupcake, this record-breaker called for 16 pounds of butter, 10 pounds of sugar, and three ounces of food coloring. The mammoth confection supported the Great American Bake Sale, which raised $10,000 and awareness for Share Our Strength, a charity working to fight hunger across America.

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Cacao has carried deep cultural meaning since it was first domesticated. For the Olmec, an early Mexican Gulf Coast culture (1500 to 400 BC), this plant had geological, nutritional, spiritual, and economic significance. As the first society known to have domesticated the cacao tree, the Olmec found the crop to be spiritually and culturally significant in addition to being a healthful and delicious foodstuff. Theobromine (a chemical compound present in cacao) found in excavated Olmec pottery and at ancient burial sites revealed that cacao beverages were a staple in a variety of spiritual ceremonies (Powis 2011).

The question becomes, why cacao? According to the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation text, the gods created humans from a combination of sweet things, maize, and cacao (Driess and Greenhill 2008, 18-22). In addition, many ancient artifacts depicted cacao offerings between gods such as the Mayan moon goddess IxChel and the rain god Chac who are seen trading cacao in an ancient Mayan depiction. This iconography rooted the tree’s capacity as a conduit of communication with the gods. Known as the “World Tree” or the “First Tree,” this crop became the tree of life and a cosmic metaphor linking the natural world to the spirit world. Thus, the offering of cacao functioned to symbolically connect diviners with the gods through ritual. The bounty of the cacao tree in Mesoamerica also created a metaphorical link to abundance, which was a request to the gods in agrarian and funerary rites. As Driess and Greenhill state, “Obsession with time and calendrical events fueled rituals during which cacao offerings helped to ensure the continuation of cosmic and agricultural cycles” (2008, 52). Cacao drinks were left in tombs and beans were used to adorn the bodies of the dead as it was believed that cacao had the power to energize the soul and aid in the transition to the supernatural world. The deep spiritual meaning of cacao catalyzed its importance in Olmec society.

Generally sought out for religious purposes by the Olmec, cacao didn’t become a food of conspicuous consumption until the Aztec and Mayan eras when cacao was served at feasts, weddings, birth ceremonies and other social occasions (Henderson 2015, 84).  As the crop gained exposure, demand was created and soon cacao was present at nearly every commensal dining event, becoming a staple in the Mesoamerican diet.  Popularly consumed as a beverage, the Olmec fermented the cacao with pulp intact.  In the early days, cacao beverages were produced solely from the pulp of the fruit.  The discovery of the more familiar chocolate drink might have been a happy accident as a by-product of the pulp brewing process (Edgar 2010).

After fermentation, cacao beans were mixed with water, vanilla, cinnamon, and sometimes a red chili.  The beverage is generally made by women who dutifully raised the foam on the drink before consumption.  The foam was thought to contain the essence of the wind god P’ee and still today, the amount of foam raised is a measure of a woman’s worth.  After the drink was prepared and the foam was raised, the cacao beverage was ready for use in ceremony or prescribed as a remedy for ailments.  Cacao was used to cure skin conditions, fever, seizures and in the most severe matters used to coax illness out of the body by appealing to the spirits with an offering of beans or a blended concoction containing the fruit (Dreiss and Greenhill 2008, 136).

Over time, chocolate has become a beverage enjoyed by cultures all over the world, but cacao was an incredibly significant crop to the Olmec during the Formative Period in Mesoamerica. The abundance, healing, and nutritional properties of the crop made it seem a true gift from the Gods, and created a foundation for its integration into the cultural identity and landscape of Mesoamerica.

Credit : Boston University 

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So much for a cup of tea...

In both Britain and USA, when you're invited for a high tea, don't ever forget these teaspoon rules. For a start, it's of course okay to stir up that sugar lump into your tea, but remember to stir without touching the sides of the cup. That's right no loud clinking! Don't leave your spoon in the cup after you're done stirring. Wait, there's more! Remember to place the spoon on the saucer in the same direction as the handle of the cup. But if you're smart, you'd just drink a fruit juice instead!

The art of using chopsticks

The Japanese are just as particular about how you use chopsticks as the British worry about the teaspoons. Never stick your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl. It's convenient, we know, but it's considered bad manners because it resembles the ceremonial offering to the dead. You don't want to create an awkward situation like that, do you?

And hey, don't wave your chopsticks at someone while you're talking or pull the dish close to you with it or place them on the table pointing towards someone. Just check out some 'how to use chopsticks' before you head out! But when it comes to drinking soup, slurp away like a champ, because that's considered as a big compliment.

Raising a toast

When you're in Norway and get invited to attend either a business lunch or a business dinner, go for the latter - because the lunches are all about discussions and dinners focus on socializing. When you want to raise a toast to someone, make sure you look the person in the eye and say "Skal!", nod and then lower the glass!

Tackling a taco

In Mexico, it's not considered good table manners to eat a taco with a fork and spoon. But then, who would really eat a taco, like that? And here's another thing if you catch the eye of someone eating, it doesn't matter even if it's a stranger, just say "Provecho!" which means "Enjoy!"

One plate for everyone

The Ethiopians are big believers of avoiding waste. So when you're invited to a dinner or lunch at someone's place, be prepared to eat food from a single big plate. And don't look around for spoons and forks - eating with your hand is cool here. If all the mouthwatering stuff is on the other end of the plate, too bad! It's not, considered good manners to reach out and grab food like that! And don't be surprised when someone puts food in your mouth - it's their way of showing respect to their guest. Best of all, expect some good coffee after the meal!

And in China…

When was the last time Mom appreciated you for belching in front of the guests at home? But chances are that when you're invited for dinner in a Chinese family and you belch loudly after a meal, it'll be considered a big compliment to the hosts. But when you're eating fish, remember never to flip it to eat the other side. It's considered a bad omen, similar to capsizing a boat!

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You read it right. It was way back in 1834 that a doctor named John Cooke Bennet added tomatoes to ketchup and claimed that his concoction had medicinal properties that his diseases such as diarrhea, indigestion and rheumatism. Following this, tomato sauce and related products were sold as a form of medication.

We've all eaten ketchup, and know that's clearly all nonsense, but until 1850, people were flocking to ketchup to cure their ills.

The reason this scam eventually ended was because imitators started making their own bootleg ketchup medicine, making even crazier claims, saying it'd cure scurvy and mended bones, and people eventually started calling bullshit.

Tomatoes do carry antioxidants and vitamin C, but don't expect to chug a bottle of ketchup and feel like a million bucks after. 

 

Picture Credit : Google