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Why Does Popcorn Pop

All right. Let’s talk about ‘Why Does Popcorn Pop?’.

There we go. What is that? Oh, that’s a sweater back there.

Surf and Turf, why you should eat oysters in months with an R. That makes abs-, okay.

Okay. Okay. All right, this is just completely random facts. I’ll just read a little bit, like here, this is, ‘in fact, at various times throughout history, oysters were all the rage. The Romans were the first to engage in oyster mania, collecting them from all corners of their far-flung empire. With the fall of the Roman empire, oysters fell out of flavor until the Renaissance, after which, oyster frenzy peaked between the late 17 and 19 centuries. In American England venters passer-by’s with plentiful and cheap oysters. People ate dozens of them in one city, and since oysters stayed fresh for months in cold storage, they were shipped all around the country. Even Abe Lincoln in Illinois couldn’t resist them. But alas, all good things come to an end.

By the turn of the century, oyster supplies were nearly depleted. Over-harvesting and a natural disease have steadily lowered their numbers. Today, wild oysters are increasingly rare and farm oysters rule’. I did not know that. ‘You may have heard of the oysters powers of an aphrodisiac. Oysters are packed with zinc, which the male body needs to maintain normal testosterone levels. The great lover Casanova ate 50 oysters every evening’.

Wow. Wow, that right there, some very interesting. Okay, here we go. ‘What popular expensive food was once the food of the poor?’. I knew this, I actually did know this. ‘You guessed it – lobster. The American lobster’, and then it gives its Latin name, ‘which is found from Southern Labrador to Cape Hatteras, is considered to be one of the most tasty of the lobsters and a culinary delight. During the 1700’s and early 1800’s, however, the American lobster was so plentiful in the waters of New England, that one could walk down the beach and pick them up. There were so many, in fact, that they were used as fertilizer and food for the poor’. They also used them in, they used to serve lobster in the jails.

‘Why is Maine lobster so highly priced? Simple. The colder the water, the better tasting the lobster, and the waters off the Maine are frigid. These waters are ideal for lobster growth. Given enough time, the American lobster can grow as big as three feet long and weigh some 44 pounds’. God! ‘Female lobsters taste better than the males and have more tender meat. How can you tell the sex of a lobster? Flip it over and look at the place where the head meets the body, and you will see two spiny appendages. If they are soft to the touch, you have a female. If they are hard, you got a male.

Other areas of the world have their own version of lobster. A similar European lobster, the Norway lobster, is quite popular. The spiny lobster, which lacks the delicious claws of the American lobster, is found in the waters off of Florida, California, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. They do not compare in taste, however, to the robust Maine lobster’.

Okay. Okay. That’s enough surf and turf. I guess for what I’m going to write for you, I’ll just pick a whole bunch of them and summarize them, right? Because I’m reading you the whole woo wop, right?

‘Thirst Quenchers. What is the most popular beverage in the world? Sorry, Coke and Pepsi, it’s not Cola – it’s tea’. So if you ever want to start a beverage business, think tea. ‘Today, tea is the most popular drink in the world, except for water. In the United States, over 187 million pounds of tea are consumed each year. That’s about 13 gallons per person’. Goodness!

‘The following should explain everything you ever wanted to know about the favorite tea. It is said that tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shen Nung around 2737 BC. The word Tea comes from the Chinese Te, pronounced Tay. Legend has it, the emperor accidentally discovered it when the wind blew some tea leaves into a pot of boiling water. Since that time, tea has been attributed with many healing powers. It eases upset stomach and indigestion, relieves fatigue and stimulates mental ability. The Japanese have a cult called Theism, which has actually raised the art of making and drinking tea to a near religious experience’.

All right. See, here we go, I think this is what I can talk about. We can go in depth about this kind of stuff over here. Tea, because this goes on for a while. We’ll go into Thirst Quenchers. What about orange juice? All right, I love me some orange juice.

‘Orange juice is America’s favorite juice. The enormous variety of orange juices available today is astounding. Taste varies between varieties, and from mouth to mouth throughout the growing season. Even oranges picked from the same tree can vary in taste. Those growing lower on the tree, and those facing North tend to be less sweet, and contain less vitamin C’s. Orange packagers eliminate these variations by blending several varieties, picked at different times and different places, to produce a more consistent tasting product’. I did not know that. ‘The main reason packaged juice just doesn’t taste like fresh squeezed is heat. Concentrates are evaporated with heat. Most chilled juices are made from concentrate. The best tasting orange juices are premium chilled juices, not from concentrate, which are squeezed in Florida, packaged in an expandable plastic bottle, pasteurized, and then flash quickly frozen’.

Yep, Thirst Quenchers, that seems like that’s where we’re going to go from. ‘Different types of teas, there are over 3000 varieties of teas. There are three broad tea classifications, green, black and oolong’.

So yeah, we’re going into Thirst Quenchers. Right? Boom. That’s interesting. Did not know all about that. Didn’t know that about oysters. I knew a little bit about the lobsters, and then the Thirst Quenchers, I did not know tea was that important. But I mean, it makes sense, because look at it like this, the Boston tea party, that was before soda and caused a whole revolutionary war, right?

All right. Talk to you in the next one.