Posts Tagged ‘Minnesota’
“The highly motivated people in society are the ones causing all the trouble. It’s not the lazy unmotivated folks sitting in front of a TV eating potato chips who bother anyone.”*…
Americans consume about 1.85 billion pounds of potato chips annually– around 6.6 pounds per person. A history of our favorite snack…
When Covid-19 forced people to stay home, many of us found solace in a snack: potato chips. The crispy treats enjoyed around a $350 million increase in sales from 2019 to 2020. When the chips are down, it seems, Americans gobble them up.
Any search for the origins of this signature finger food must lead to George Crum (born George Speck), a 19th-century chef of Native and African American descent who made his name at Moon’s Lake House in the resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York. As the story goes, one day in 1853, the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt was eating at Moon’s when he ordered his fried potatoes be returned to the kitchen because they were too thick. Furious with such a fussy eater, Crum sliced some potatoes as slenderly as he could, fried them to a crisp and sent them out to Vanderbilt as a prank. Rather than take the gesture as an insult, Vanderbilt was overjoyed.
Other patrons began asking for Crum’s “Saratoga Chips,” which soon became a hit far beyond Upstate New York. In 1860, Crum opened his own restaurant near Saratoga known as Crum’s House or Crum’s Place, where a basket of potato chips sat invitingly on every table. Crum oversaw the restaurant until retiring over 30 years later; in 1889, a New York Herald writer called him “the best cook in America.” Crum died in 1914, but today’s astounding variety of potato chips, from cinnamon-and-sugar Pringles to flamin’ hot dill pickle Lay’s, are a tribute to the man American Heritage magazine called “the Edison of grease”…
A fussy magnate, a miffed chef and the curious roots of the comfort food we hate to love: “How the Potato Chip Took Over America,” from @SmithsonianMag.
* George Carlin
###
As we try to eat just one, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1965 that a storage tank ruptured and three million gallons of soybean oil flooded streets in Mankato, Minnesota, then flowed in the Mississippi River.
Stan Eichten was working in the office of Honeymead Soybean Products [the largest oil-processing facility in the world at the time]… when one of the biggest environmental disasters in state history hit.
“There was a roar, like an explosion,” said Eichten of the rupture of a soy oil storage tank that sent millions of gallons into Mankato streets and the Minnesota River. “It was almost like a tsunami. There was oil 2 or 3 feet deep all over.”
source
The Land of 10,000 Logos…
Designer Nicole Meyer has set herself a heroic– that’s to say, Herculean– task:
Lake logos have a tendency to be, well, fairly ugly. This project was created to rethink what they could be.
One Minnesota Lake. One Logo. Every day.
Should only take a little over 27 years to hit ’em all.
Check in on her progress-to-date at Branding 10,000 Lakes.
As we chose our vacation spots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1908 that avid outdoorsman and staunch conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon a National Monument. Land and mining claim holders blocked efforts to reclassify the Canyon as a U.S. National Park for 11 more years. But Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th U.S. National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in early 1919.
TR on Jacob’s Ladder, Bright Angel Trail (source)
Nuts!…
Our friends at Autopia report:
It’s been quite an adventurous few months for Mr. Peanut. First, he got a makeover that left him with a gray flannel vest and a shell tanner than Snooki. Shortly after that, he made the acquaintance of Benson, a legume who is now his sidekick. With all those changes in his life, it’s only fitting that he upgrade his ride.
To that end, Planters has fixed him up with — wait for it — the Nutmobile, a custom creation set to tour the country teaching Americans to follow the way of the virtuous peanut…
Underneath that dry, wrinkled shell, the humble peanut is quite helpful to farmers. Like nearly all legumes, the roots of the peanut plant contain bacteria that contribute to nitrogen fixation — the process by which atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia, fertilizing the soil.
To promote the “peanut lifestyle” of giving back to the earth, the Nutmobile will appear at events to draw support for The Corps Network, a service and conservation agency that offers over 30,000 young people the chance to mobilize communities in projects that restore and maintain public and green spaces…
The whole thing is one part George Barris, two parts George Washington Carver, and will join the Oscar-Meyer Wienermobile and the Red Bull Mini in the annals of vehicular marketing. If the new Planters commercials are any indication, we can only imagine that Benson will be riding shotgun.
So, is Mr. Peanut nuts about his new ride? We may never know, as the voice that sounds strangely like Robert Downey Jr. fell silent on this one: A spokeswoman for Planters told us that Mr. Peanut has no comment on the Nutmobile.
As we roast ’em and salt ’em, we might wish a hearty Happy Birthday to Verne Gagne; he was born on this date in 1926. Verne was a champion athlete from an early age: he won NCAA titles while wrestling for the University of Minnesota. Then.in 1947, he was drafted by the Chicago Bears (though he never played for the team). But it was as a professional wrestler and promoter that Gagne made his name. He is recorded as a 10-time AWA World Heavyweight Champion, holds the record for the most combined days as a world champion, lags only Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz for the longest single world title reign. He is one of six men inducted into each of the WWE Hall of Fame, the WCW Hall of Fame, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame. Through that same period– 1949 to 1981– Gagne became the owner/promoter of the American Wrestling Association (AWA), based in Minneapolis, the predominant professional wrestling operation throughout the Midwest and Manitoba.
Gagne was much beloved in Minnesota… which did after all elect one of his spiritual successors, Jesse Ventura, governor.
Verne Gagne in 1953 wearing his U.S. Heavyweight Championship belt (source: Minnesota Historical Society, via MinnPost)
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