The BeardnWeird Blog

  The "fifth taste" — after salty, sweet, bitter, and sour—has been known for more than a century. Monosodium glutamate (or AJI-NO-MOTO), the cheap and easy way to get that umami hit, was once criticized as the cause of an allergic reaction known as Chinese restaurant syndrome. Although that's been debunked by scientists, is it still safe to include MSG in our diet?   Monosodium glutamate (MSG) Monosodium glutamate( C ₅ H ₈ NO ₄ Na ), is the sodium salt of glutamic acid. It is designated as non-essential because the human body, as well as a large number of other plants and animals is able to produce it on its own. In the body, glutamic acid is often found as glutamate. Glutamate is one of the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitters in brain, playing a crucial role in memory and learning. The average adult consumes 13 grams of it a day from the protein in food. Non-meat food sources like tomatoes and Parmesan cheese have high levels of glutamic acid. MSG is used i...

“Our parents had decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and Father shipped us home to his mother. A porter had been charged with our welfare — he got off the train the next day in Arizona — and our tickets were pinned to my brother’s inside coat pocket. I don’t remember much of the trip, but after we reached the segregated southern part of the journey, things must have looked up. Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for “the poor little motherless darlings" and plied us with cold fried chicken and potato salad." -           Maya Angelou(I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) Yard Bird Every chicken on Earth is the descendant of the red jungle fowl found in South Asia. The chicken is not just a bird that provides us with meat and eggs. It has played more roles across human history than any other animal. In ancient Babylon (now Iraq), seals were used by people to identify themselves. Some of t...

  The ancient network of trading routes known today as the Silk Road, stretched through the ages and across half the world, from China in the east to Persia and on to the Mediterranean in the west. Each place on the Silk Road itself, has its own distinctive character and culture. It was along the caravan trails that these cultures passed from one civilization to another, to be absorbed and transformed into local specialties. Today we explore one such culinary bond that links distant and hostile cultures. Sanbosag A praise for a savoury snack called sanbusaj can be found in a 9th-century poem by the Persian poet Ishaq al-Mawsili. Recipes for the same are found in 10th–13th-century Arab cookery books, under the names sanbusak, sanbusaq, and sanbusaj . These are considered to be the early medieval form of the Persian snack sanbosag , which originated in the 11 th century and were inspired by the pyramids. Abu'l-Faḍl Bayhaqi, an Iranian historian, mentioned sanbosag in his book -...