Nutrition Facts?

Yes, I'm still planning on preparing those Korean acorn noodles I received in the mail (and no, contrary to the vicious rumors flying around, I'm not still trying to figure out how to first boil the water).

Partly I'm trying to summon the courage to eat from a package with a slight tear and that expired Feb 23, 2009.  But don't worry, I never let expiration dates come between me and packaged food before, I'm not about to start now.  Plus, acorns are eternal.

In the meantime I took a look at the nutrition facts on the package.  Per serving - and they list a serving a whopping 7 ounces:
2g Total Fat (0g Sat or Trans)
Carbohydrate 103g
Protein 15g

All of this compares very closely to Creamette pasta as listed on their web site.  Then I came to:

Sodium 560mg... huh?

Then I realized the nutrition information includes the flavor packet that comes with it for making acorn noodle soup.  The main ingredients in the flavor packet are: Salt, MSG, Garlic and Salt.

Which makes it right up my alley, nutrition-wise; I'm the guy who refers to a 16oz pretzel bag as the "handy single serving size."  But it will be a tough sell for the rest of my much more nutritionally-aware family.  (On that note, I am, without question, the only person in the history of planet Earth to ever shout at the dinner table: "No one gets any more tofu until you finish all of your french fries!")

Based on the acorn starch and acorn noodle packages I have, the Koreans either have acorns with much lower nutritional content than those we have in North America (And I, for one, consider fat to be an essential nutrient.  So does my - and every other mammal's - body.), or they are particularly adept at taking one of the most complete and nutritious food sources in the world and bringing it down to the level of a mere cereal grain.  I need to look into this more.

In the meantime I love the final instruction on the acorn noodle soup package:  "Combine noodles with the soup and garnish with boiled beef..."  Now that's my kind of garnish - beats the heck out of parsley!

Manna From Heaven

Of course the phrase manna from heaven has an oak-rooted origin, but actually that's another story for another day.

For purposes of this post the phrase manna from heaven is the answer to the question, "What do you call it when one of your heroes sends you Korean acorn noodles in the mail?"  It's better than Christmas.  It's... well... that manna thing.

And it works out great, because boiling noodles is the one and only thing I can do in a kitchen!  There's no easier way to be an accidental balanophage (too rushed for time to link - look it up ;-) than having noodles show up ready to be boiled.

The question now is: What sauce goes best with acorn noodles?  I'm open to suggestions!

The Beauty of Kells

Friday night has become pizza and movie night around our house, primarily so that our children realize what that ugly box with the glass screen is for (since they don't see its hypnotizing glow any other time).

This past weekend was The Secret of Kells, a gorgeously animated movie telling the story of the creation of the Book of Kells during a time of darkness and constant danger in Ireland.  Not to go all two thumbs up Siskel and Ebert on you here, but if you have upper grade school or middle school aged kids, they should see this...

... but first they (and you - and I, since I had only a hazy understanding of it) should know the back story of the book.

It was, of course, done largely with oak gall ink.  I have linked to this wiki page several times before.  I thought as a complete change of pace that I might actually read it this time.  I have written before about how one minor problem with oak gall ink - the high quality ink of choice for important documents from da Vinci to Bach - is that over time it eats the very surface upon which it is written. 

According to wiki: "The acidity of iron gall ink is well known but it must also be observed that the case for the acidity of iron gall ink is somewhat overstated. There are several thousands of manuscripts, some of them well over 1,000 years old, with iron gall ink on them that have no damage or degradation whatsoever from the iron gall ink."  Apparently degradation is much less of a problem with vellum than with paper, which helps explain the generally good condition of The Book of Kells - especially considering everything it has been through.

Imagine the times!  9th century Ireland.  Vikings, borne across the sea with terrifying speed in oak ships (whose equal would not be seen again until the 19th century) that seem to literally swim across the waves, are raiding the coastal areas including the rich abbey at Iona, dispersing monks to monasteries in Ireland and Scotland.  Dedicated monks painstakingly concocting oak gall ink, stretching vellum, and sitting in the scriptorium by flickering candle or oil lamp light to create works of art awe inspiring beauty, designed to bring light - to illuminate - a world that seemed bathed in darkness in fear... all the while feeling - knowing - that the next Norse attack could come at any time. 

The Book of Kells is what happens when belief and hope flow through gifted and dedicated hands to simple natural media of incredible permanence.  Although personally I believe fairies were also involved somehow.

How Range Maps Get Drawn

** Updated proof read version, this time in actual English for your reading pleasure **


I'm feeling vindicated and gypped at the same time.

Every range map I have seen for chinkapin oak (Q. muhlenbergii Engelm.) shows it just barely reaching into the southeastern corner of Minnesota.  From time to time I have joked that we have six native oaks in Minnesota (white, swamp white, bur, red, black and northern pin), seven if you count "those two chinkapins growing in Houston County."

I didn't realize how correct I was!

I was reading Welby R. Smith's amazing and gorgeous Tree and Shrubs of Minnesota (guess which section I went to first - my two favorite words both start with Q, Quercus and quixotic).  Under 'Natural History' for chinkapin oak:

Native chinkapin oak has been found only once in Minnesota.  The discovery was made by the early botanist W. A. Wheeler on July 15, 1899, in Section 19, Crooked Creek Township, Houston County.  Wheeler described two small trees in some detail:  one was 9ft (2.8m) tall, the other 10ft (3.1m) tall.  He documented the discovery with authenticated herbarium samples.

The site is on a dry southwest-facing hillside at an elevation of 850ft... At the time of the discovery the habitat was apparently open and prairie like... The site has since grown into a substantial forest, a common fate for savannas deprived of wildfire.  It is now dominated by several species of oak (only chinkapin is missing)...

No one knows for sure what happened to the chinkapin oaks, but they have not been seen since the original discovery.  Some say they were cut for fence posts or trampled by cattle, but more likely they were overgrown or crowded out when the habitat succeeded from savanna to forest.

In the general description under fruit (acorn) it says: "Maturing August-September of the first year (dates imperfectly known for Minnesota)."

Imperfectly known?  I should say so, considering the entire documented presence of chinkapin oak in Minnesota consists of two small trees which were probably too young to bear acorns and haven't been seen since July of 1899.

I feel vindicated in that my little joke was more accurate than I ever could have thought; not only are there officially two chinkapin oaks in Minnesota, those two chinkapins no longer exist.  But they seem to have earned Minnesota a permanent spot on the range map for chinkapin oak.

I feel gypped because despite my joke about 2 trees I always assumed there was a least a viable small population of chinkapin oaks in SE Minnesota to justify the shading of the range maps, and that someday on a hike or bike ride in Houston County (which is a beautiful area by the way - Mississippi River bluff country) I would see some.  The cool thing now is that if I do it will be big botanical news - first sighting in more than a century - and I'll probably get a mention in the next edition of Smith's book!

Winter Photosynthesis?

Reader/commenter (and therefore hero!) Eric had a thought provoking comment after my sickeningly anthropomorphic post on what red and bur oaks think and feel during winter.  Eric writes/wonders:

"According to Phil Rutter (ed: Founder, American Chestnut Foundation and owner Badgersett Research Corporation), chestnuts and hazelnuts do a measurable amount of photosynthesis during the winter months using chlorophyll in the bark. I wonder, since oaks are related to chestnuts and hazelnuts (ed: All members of family Fagaceae along with beeches) - do they also photosynthesize during the winter months? And all those fractal branches would help expose more surface to sunlight and reflected light..."

I feel silly for not thinking about/pondering the same thing.  I read the passage in American Chestnut: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, by Susan Freinkel where Rutter says of chestnuts: "if you scrape half a millimeter under the bark it's green as grass. It's making sugar all winter long."

It's a great discussion topic!  One would think that a genus that includes many evergreen species (and some, as we have learned to our confusion, that are "half evergreen" and "partly evergreen") would have some mechanisms in place to get something out of every last drop of sunlight no matter what time of year.

1. What do you readers know about winter (winter of course meaning different things in different locations) photosynthesis beneath the bark of oak trees?  If you have trouble using the comments section feel free to email me at siemschristian (at) gmail (dot) com.

2. I'll do a little investigating myself, checking oaks of various species at different temperatures (today's temp quickly approaching absolute zero) and report my findings

3. Who knows, I might even crack a book to see what I can learn on the subject!

Thanks, Eric for a great subject to explore, and thanks as always for reading.

Arguing Evolution Under The Oaks

The other day I walked past my daughter who was (as usual - and very much unlike me at that - or this - age) immersed in a book.  I looked at the title and asked her, "What's a 'Scopes Monkey' and why did they put one on trial... for stealing bananas?"  Though not yet a teenager she has already perfected the withering look that  so eloquently says - without saying a word - "Papa you're such a door knob and having half your genes is a burden I struggle to overcome every day."

The trial of John Scopes for violating a recently passed Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in its schools was a media sensation.  In the sweltering heat of that summer of 1925 in tiny Dayton, TN the issue of faith versus science was debated before a national audience.  Scopes himself was virtually an afterthought, a bit player on a stage that featured celebrated characters like William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darraw and H. L. Mencken.

In reading through her books and printouts on the Scopes Trial I have been struck by four things.

First, how completely manufactured the whole thing was, how staged.  After the Tennessee legislature passed the anti-evolution bill, the recently-formed ACLU placed ads asking someone to violate the law so that the ACLU could challenge it, offering to provide for that person's defense.  Then a bunch of dudes sitting at the drug store in Dayton, TN over coffee cooked up a brilliant scheme:  Biggest philosophical issue of the day + High profile legal battle = Tourism!  If there's going to be an evolution trial, why not here in little ol' Dayton?  Think of the money to be made. 

So young John Scopes was recruited to break the law and get arrested to stand trial.  Bryan volunteers to travel to Dayton to argue, as only he can, for the prosecution, and on hearing this news Darrow immediately volunteers his services to the ACLU for the defense.  Mencken - and about a jillion other reporters - descend on Dayton to cover the battle.

The thought of how CNN would cover the spectacle nowadays is physically nauseating.

Second, after a few days of holding the trial in the county courthouse and carting out a continual procession of fainting spectators, the judge decided to hold the remainder of the trial outdoors in the shade of nearby oak trees (you knew there was an oak angle coming, didn't you?).  There is a delicious irony to holding a trial which was obstensibly to determine simply if a young teacher had broken a well defined law (in his closing remarks Darrow asked that Scopes be found guilty just so the case could be appealed to a higher court) but was actually about the much larger issue of religion versus science, in the shade of oak trees.  Oak trees which are continuously evolving all around us to adapt to continously changing environmental and climatic conditions, forming new species, fusing old species into new ones, mutating.

Third, the irony of holding the Scopes Trial in the shade of oaks is even larger when you think about the facts that 1) what was actually being discussed was interpretation of the Book of Genesis as "Gospel truth" (sorry) versus oral history, when 2) as the brilliant J. Russell Smith has shown us Genesis stands as an almost perfect oral history of man's transition away from a life of peace and plenty eating the fruits of trees provided for him, to a life of sweat and toil coaxing annual grain crops from the Earth.  Genesis stands as an oral history of an absolute truth.

Finally I have been struck by how a man's views and legacy can be simplified and trashed in an instant.  William Jennings Bryan has been characterized, in large part due to the film Inherit the Wind, as a closed-minded buffoon who was made to look silly on the stand by Darrow's brilliant cross examination.  The truth is, as always, considerably more complicated. And much more interesting. 

Part of Bryan's objection to the teaching of evolution in schools was his deep concern about the implications of Social Darwinism, which in his view allowed one group of people to see itself as the pinnacle of evolution while believing other groups of people to be inferior. In fact, the very text book that Scopes taught from promoted the idea that caucasions were more evolved than other races of humans.  Bryan understood, and to his eternal credit argued, that this concept could be used to justify wars and unimaginable mistreatment of fellow humans.  As world events would very soon demonstrate with barbarous clarity and on an imaginable scope, he was correct to be concerned.

Bryan died five days after the trial ended.

Tough Call

I can’t decide which I like more.

The northern red oaks and northern pin oaks, who say, “Screw you winter, you can take my chlorophyll but I’m going to keep my dry leathery leaves to rustle in your winds in stubborn defiance of your doleful silence.”

Or the bur oaks who say, “Fine winter, you can take my leaves - they were shredded, battered and pocked with galls after a summer of feeding countless insects and fungi and it was their time to go – but I’m going to use your whiteness as the perfect, stark white backdrop for my ancient labyrinthine branches, my massive skeleton which lies hidden all summer beneath a skin of leaves.”

Let’s call it a tie.

And that’s about all the poetic I care to wax about winter. Bring on spring. Please. It started way too early, has already lasted too long, and I have acorns I'm dying to plant.