When you're poor, you get a LOT of dried potato flakes from food banks. They're actually pretty damn awesome. Mix it with some milk, some butter (or marg), add some veg...you almost have a full meal. If you have meat, toss it in. It's nice when you want a quick, warm and filling meal.
My favorite cheap meal was a box of macaroni and cheese, a can of peas and a can a tunafish. Make mac and cheese and then mix other ingredients together (And anything else you might have laying around). Tuna casserole.
Our babysitter used to bring a box of those with her as a snack. We never had them before so we tried them and now we eat them all the time. They aren’t my mom’s, but they are still mashed potatoes in less than two minutes!
I haven't been poor enough to need food bank food yet, and hopefully never will need to, but one of my favorite dishes consists of beans brown rice and medium pace salsa with added spinach when possible tastes pretty good with good enough nutritional profile to last a healthy adult a couple of weeks and possibly even months without significant risks of developing deficiencys and it is pretty cheap as food goes depending on the ratio of ingredients.
I almost forgot one of my favorite cheap meals from when I was in college. Chicken thigh (Or really any chicken that you can get for cheap), bag of yellow rice and a can of black beans. Fry/ bake/ roast/ boil/ or otherwise cook chicken until it's 3/4 of the way done. Then add yellow rice and water. When done, serve hot black beans on the side. The chicken juices really make the rice taste good.
"the British government offered little support" isn't exactly true. They actively tried to maintain the famine, destroyed aid that arrived from overseas and exported all other food being produced within Ireland to England, while putting people in workhouses to do slave labour in exchange for thin soup. The famine was more to do with English power & control than the failure of one crop. This is a PSA for all viewers x
Yes!!! I was disappointed that England’s colonial control of Ireland wasn’t really acknowledged until he said “subjects” one time (so brief). Thank you for sharing. There is also very little explanation of colonial dynamics in South America where the Spanish first encountered potatoes but that doesn’t pertain to your post.
For the record, Ireland was a net exporter of food during the famine because the English oppressors forced them to send their food over to England instead of using it to help their starving countrymen.
Cumin would be interesting. Originally a spice from the Middle East, it worked its way to through the Mediterranean and eventually to the New World through Spain and Portugal, becoming a huge part of Latin American cuisine.
Just call it a 80's sweater. I had one like it with a black background, and neon colored patterns. Potatoes are a main food group for many people of low income.💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜
You left out one use of the potato: A source of potato starch that is used as part of a substitute for flour made from grains during Passover. Also, a cousin of the Phytophthora that affected potatoes in Ireland and elsewhere is running rampant in California and Oregon, killing oaks and other trees. So far, no cure has been developed in part because it's affecting wild populations instead of domesticated ones.
OK, this is actually a great idea, but I love that someone in our audience was like, "Hmm, what would be interesting...wait, I've got it...CABBAGE RELATIVES!"
5:45 - The potato famine tragedy taught us a valuable lesson, leading to our current… corn, wheat, rice, banana monoculture. 🤦 Potatoes are the best food because they can be (directly) prepared in more ways than any other foodstuffs. 👍
Grapefruits seem like they'd have a pretty rich history to do a video on. They're a hybrid of pomellos and Jamaican sweet oranges. There seems to be a great deal of contention as to whether they came about naturally or whether they were bred intentionally from pomello seeds introduced to Jamaica by sailors.
Oo, interesting. I always thought grapefruits came first (probably just b/c that's the one I was familiar with first.) Mostly unrelated fun fact I just found looking at an old Mental Floss article: "A few other languages have also adopted the American word “grapefruit,” even though they don’t have the same word for “grape,” such as Dutch (grapefruit), Swedish (grapefrukt), and Turkish (greyfurt)."
This is so fun! I can’t wait to see the rest of the series. It’d be really cool to see the history of cinnamon. Whatever videos you make, I can’t wait to see!
Pomme De Terre, French for Potato. Translation? Apple of the earth. Many European languages have apple in their name for Potatos. Also, the potatoes plant is still largely poisonous to us; leaves, stems, flowers and the 'eyes' that grow on potatoes. Only the Tuber, the potato itself is edible.
@@guidemeChrist yea not liberal. And just cuz you know something doesn't mean the empty headed sheeple do. If the media doesn't tell them, how can we expect them to know about it?
I'd love to see an episode on how WW2 and women entering the work force effected homemade vs prepared food. People often joke about the low quality of food starting in the '50s, not realizing it's historical significance.
Few ideas for food history episodes: 1. Salmon/Shrimp/seafood...is the popularity of seafood today due to fish being a staple in cuisines for centuries? 2. Sweet potatoes and other types of potatoes...where did each type of potatoe originate from and what was their impact to cuisines throughout the world? 3. Sugar/sugar cane...and sweets in general to their importance of societal status and influence in today's diet debate. 4. Pineapples, mangos, kiwis, and essentially any tropical fruit that have become popular in non-tropical climates.
Thanks! For what it's worth, we weren't familiar with DYKF?, but sincerely do appreciate the advice- we'll make sure to peruse their topics to try to avoid too much overlap (and looking quickly, it seems like our initial idea/approach is distinct enough to make that doable).
The way Antoine ranted and raved about potatoes is how I feel about verdolagas (aka purslane). The stuff is considered a weed and grows in just about any environment (even in the cracks on sidewalks), cooks up into some really great dishes, and is jam packed with Omega-3 fatty acids (a boon for folks such as myself who can't stand fish).
I hope this series goes into the history behind drinks as well as foods. I would love to know more about why the Brandy Old Fashioned is such a thing here in Wisconsin.
For sure! We did a fascinating shoot with a bartender and student of cocktails for our Facebook page, and learned some really interesting info about low-ABV cocktails that I'd love to dive into further in the future. RE: the brandy old fashioned (which I'd never heard about!), it looks like one story attributes their popularity in the region to the 1893 World's Fair, when Korbel introduced an American brandy. Apparently (and this all comes w/ a massive *needs to be fact-checked* note) European brandies were hit by a blight around the same time, and the brandy-loving recently-immigrated Germans in the region took to this new domestic spirit. As for why the cocktail caught on in Milwaukee and not Chicago, where the Exposition was held, looks like we'd need to go beyond Google...
I love good mashed taters but also have a guilty pleasure mostly based on nostalgia in the eating and enjoyment of public school institutional "quality' powdered mash. They could be used to make a decent mashed potato sandwich to dip in the yellow stuff they called gravy.
Can we just go back to the part where llamas figured out that licking clay made potatoes non-toxic? I'm constantly amazed by animals' abilities to adapt to environments despite NOT BEING HUMANS! Just so cool. I KNEW llamas were the best!
Thank you! We appreciate both the kind feedback, and that you put it in the form of a play-on-words that makes it feel like a Gene Shalit film review from the mid 90s.
The history of Schnitzel - is it really inspired by an italian dish? Was "real" Schnitzel = veal schnitzel ever more popular than pork ones? Could also include the history of the correct breading: Semmeln - while they existed at least since 1487 they were still a hit for international spectors at the expo in 1867.
The British government didn't just do little to aid the Irish during the potato famine; they actively perpetuated it. Irish people didn't only grow potatoes, but their other food supplies were being taken off them as taxes for the British government. Most of the 'help' the government provided (which wasn't much at all) was not offered unless the Catholic Irish people converted to Protestantism. Their other options were starvation or moving to workhouses (essentially forced labour camps. Much of the old Irish railway was built by famine victims). It wasn't just potato blight that caused the famine. Many people believe that the potato blight was a convenient scapegoat for what was really a British genocide of the west and south of Ireland. 1 million people died, another million emigrated - it was a tragic time for the county. Apologies. I'm very passionate about potatoes.
No apologies necessary for potato passion in these parts! And I do think we could've worded that section better. While our research suggests that the blight was a real phenomenon with tangible impact, we probably did shortchange the political aspect of the famine. Always appreciate when our viewers provide more context in the comments-if nothing else, it's a reminder to be even more thorough with future scripts!
@@MentalFloss Oh, don't worry about it! I was trying to provide a little context to a common dialogue. I like this channel a lot, wasn't meaning to critique it or bring down the mood with my historical ramblings. It was an interesting video! Thanks for getting back to me!
@@VyolitFly Your comment was definitely taken in the spirit it was intended. (Polite) feedback is always welcome-it's interesting to learn new info and it makes us want to make better videos.
It was! The cooked potatoes were (and, indeed, still sometimes are) dunked in the clay/water mixture. Apparently "The flavor is like a creamy milk, very thick and salty." The slurry is known as chaco in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages of the region).
In approx. the first quarter of this video, the audio is just barely out of sync, probably only by like one or half of a frame, and it was driving me nuts. I'm really sensitive to audio sync issues so I'm sure plenty of people didn't even notice and some might not even notice if they try to look for it. It did get better though and seemed to be perfectly in sync toward the final third. The rest of the video seems well done though, I even really enjoyed the quiet little sound effect reference at about 6:13. I also love potatoes of all kinds and I made Mashed Potatoes yesterday, possibly a subconscious que from the title of this video being in my sub box.
Funny you should mention that-we started working on both those sections, and it quickly became apparent that the gravy section could grow into an entire episode (though maybe the answer is just to do longer episodes moving forward). As for the holiday meal tradition, we found a source saying that Sarah Joseph Hale (the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb) was partially responsible for mashed potatoes' place on our holiday dinner tables through her campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Apparently she outlined a hypothetical perfect thanksgiving meal, and included mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, our fact-checker (who, frustratingly, is very good at his job and gets in the way of all our fun non-facts) didn't buy it. It seems there are likely predecessors to Hale's inclusion of mashed potatoes, and that it's tough to pinpoint the time when potatoes became a standard thanksgiving dish (though potatoes were likely eaten, in some form-very possibly mashed-years before Hale's campaign).
@@MentalFloss I hope to see more. There some amazing origin stories behind many of the dishes we eat. There is this one channel I watch that delves into many of old American dishes from the times during the original colonies called Townsend's on TH-cam. They have mentioned the 2 cooking books you spoke of in this one episode.
@@Zeldaschampion Oo, that channel looks awesome. Maybe there's an opportunity to collaborate with him in the future. Thanks for the tip, and for watching!
@@MentalFloss The vegetables of today are not vegetables of the pass. We call odd color vegetables of the pass heirloom vegetables today. Carrots where never really were orange. They where a rainbow of colors. At least that's the story I got from 2 different people from 2 different parts of the county. When I was in high school I had a history teacher that brought in some carrots none of the carrots were orange. He told us a story about a King. The King was called King Orange, because everything in his kingdom was orange. He loved the color orange. One day he ask his people if someone could make his favorite food carrots orange and a farmer did. It caught on so well, that to day people prefer the orange carrots over the heirloom colors. Moving forward 40 years I was seeing a lawyer and he was late for our meeting but he had a hand full of different colored carrots. He was a big time Gardner and won many prizes for his gardens you could say he was very knowledgeable when it came to carrots. We talk about why they were not orange. And his story was word for word what the history teacher had said so long ago. I had aways believe it was a fairy tail. So could you find out if these 2 man where just pulling my leg.
We'd love to do something on bread, but it's such a sprawling topic that we might need to find a particular entry point. But we definitely appreciate the suggestion!
In S. Korea, At Yonsei university proffessors' cafeteria, I was served mashed potatoes with mustard and raisins, it was lukewarm, so don't know if it was supposed to be a mashed potatoes or potato salad.
I really don't like this premiere feature... I'm aware that this is a major first world problem, but I don't need TH-cam giving me more notifications therefore I'll be giving this one a miss
😂😂😂 Sorry for resuscitating an old thread. I am a new(ish) fan catching up on past shows but...SHOW IDEA. SWEET cornbread (Northern?) vs. NON-SWEET cornbread (Southern?) I innocently started talking about a corn bread recipe on my Facebook homepage this week and all hell broke out! As the Midwestern daughter of a pastor, whose congregation came largely from the South, I sit on the fulcrum of this issue. My mother and most non-Southern Midwestern cooks make sweet corn bread. But my mother was also a horrible cook and so our parishioners often brought by Southern, non-sweet corn bread for my father. (So I like BOTH.) Our parishioners I think were convinced that eating only my mother's food Daddy would melt away to nothing. Prior to this flame war that lasted for days, with mostly Southerners insisting that sugar does not go in corn bread, I had no idea that it was anything other than a preference mainly associated with where you grew up. I had no idea it could be as charged an issues as...well...everything ELSE in this country has become! It sure would be nice to learn the history of how these dueling cornbreads came to be!
Thanks! Hope you'll check out the next ep in the series (If YT didn't already do its magic and suggest it to you: th-cam.com/video/yn69AYv5qMo/w-d-xo.html )
Sittin' here, eating fries while learning about mashed potatoes. This is a good day, I feel.
When you're poor, you get a LOT of dried potato flakes from food banks. They're actually pretty damn awesome. Mix it with some milk, some butter (or marg), add some veg...you almost have a full meal. If you have meat, toss it in. It's nice when you want a quick, warm and filling meal.
Yeah, we got those. My husband was totally surprised that I could make them taste good, as they never had them it at his house.
My favorite cheap meal was a box of macaroni and cheese, a can of peas and a can a tunafish. Make mac and cheese and then mix other ingredients together (And anything else you might have laying around).
Tuna casserole.
Our babysitter used to bring a box of those with her as a snack. We never had them before so we tried them and now we eat them all the time. They aren’t my mom’s, but they are still mashed potatoes in less than two minutes!
I haven't been poor enough to need food bank food yet, and hopefully never will need to, but one of my favorite dishes consists of beans brown rice and medium pace salsa with added spinach when possible tastes pretty good with good enough nutritional profile to last a healthy adult a couple of weeks and possibly even months without significant risks of developing deficiencys and it is pretty cheap as food goes depending on the ratio of ingredients.
I almost forgot one of my favorite cheap meals from when I was in college. Chicken thigh (Or really any chicken that you can get for cheap), bag of yellow rice and a can of black beans.
Fry/ bake/ roast/ boil/ or otherwise cook chicken until it's 3/4 of the way done. Then add yellow rice and water. When done, serve hot black beans on the side.
The chicken juices really make the rice taste good.
"the British government offered little support" isn't exactly true. They actively tried to maintain the famine, destroyed aid that arrived from overseas and exported all other food being produced within Ireland to England, while putting people in workhouses to do slave labour in exchange for thin soup. The famine was more to do with English power & control than the failure of one crop. This is a PSA for all viewers x
@Phil Ad 'you guys'? I'm assuming you mean the brits and I'm not British lol
@Phil Ad yeah I know the Brits/British are one in the same, I'm not British lol so the you guys was redundant
Yes!!! I was disappointed that England’s colonial control of Ireland wasn’t really acknowledged until he said “subjects” one time (so brief). Thank you for sharing.
There is also very little explanation of colonial dynamics in South America where the Spanish first encountered potatoes but that doesn’t pertain to your post.
For the record, Ireland was a net exporter of food during the famine because the English oppressors forced them to send their food over to England instead of using it to help their starving countrymen.
Matthew Holloway fuck the English yet again.
I cannot concentrate because of his marvelous sweater
Cumin would be interesting. Originally a spice from the Middle East, it worked its way to through the Mediterranean and eventually to the New World through Spain and Portugal, becoming a huge part of Latin American cuisine.
Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.
Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish
The history of chocolate has got to be in here, it was used as money at one point (cocoa beans, anyway).
6:12 i heard what you did there! Tim Allen's grunt from Home Improvement :D
Keep 'em coming! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew... PO-TA-TO
This is one of the Cosbiest sweaters I've seen in a long time.
Steve Heeey heeey heeey!
Just call it a 80's sweater. I had one like it with a black background, and neon colored patterns. Potatoes are a main food group for many people of low income.💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜💜💜💜💜🐩🐩🐩💜
It's practically radiating that Memphis Group style 🤘
Googi Sweaters are always a classic fashion.
For a debut, you're setting the bar awfully high in terms of your sweater game. Here's hoping you can it up 😊
You left out one use of the potato: A source of potato starch that is used as part of a substitute for flour made from grains during Passover.
Also, a cousin of the Phytophthora that affected potatoes in Ireland and elsewhere is running rampant in California and Oregon, killing oaks and other trees. So far, no cure has been developed in part because it's affecting wild populations instead of domesticated ones.
Chag Pesach samech!
I am having a flashback to my Dad circa 1985 with that sweater and those glasses....
Why do people always say “Try the Veal!”
I’ve never even been to a restaurant that serves veal.
LOL. I think it has something to do with 1950s-era (?) comedians trying to hawk more expensive dinner items? Maybe veal was more in vogue at the time?
Love this series! Food history is so interesting!
So in this new series a handsome man talks to us about the history of food? I'm in!
Thank you for not sneaking in an advertisement in the middle of the show.
Now I know why my sister prefers instant mashed potatoes to homemade. It's the way they're mashed!
I’m so ready for this series!
I just feel like no one needs a 24 hour notice for a video about potatoes 😅😂😂😂💀
No, you don't understand. I'm super grateful for this feature since it gives me time to buy potatoes so I can follow along with the video 👌😁
As someone with a diet that is approximately 90% potato I do need 24 hour notice so I don't eat before incase theres a recipe 😂
Do an episode on all the foods that are hybrids of cabbage.
You mean broccoli, right?
Wild mustard plant
OK, this is actually a great idea, but I love that someone in our audience was like, "Hmm, what would be interesting...wait, I've got it...CABBAGE RELATIVES!"
Brussel sprouts looks like TEENIE baby cabbages
@@MentalFloss you have to feature the Cabbage Man from Avatar the last Airbender
Carbonated beverage's, maybe coke in particular
If they do one on Coke I hope the say where it was really invented and not Atlanta.
The Dr Pepper story is really good too
I'd love to see the history of apples or black eyed peas or some cultural food history (like soul food)
Crystal Williamson see Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire
@@mchllbrhgh7269 Yes! Great book. And Crystal, stay tuned-your comment got a conversation started in the office...
Check out our latest episode! th-cam.com/video/VbjdYOy5_4I/w-d-xo.html
@@MentalFloss YAY going to check out now!!
Hello Crstal how are you doing hope all is well with you Edan care 😇👍
5:45 - The potato famine tragedy taught us a valuable lesson, leading to our current… corn, wheat, rice, banana monoculture. 🤦
Potatoes are the best food because they can be (directly) prepared in more ways than any other foodstuffs. 👍
Lovely sweater! Made my day.
Love the history of foods!
Corn has some history. Good episode.
coffee has an interesting story as well.
Thanks! And I think we might have landed on something corn-adjacent...
Hi, looking for material for an episode?
Here is a short list:
Cucumber
Bitter melon
Peppers (capsicum)
Strawberries
But hold on that sweater is FLAMES!!!! I need it!!
How about the history of lobster - from 'peasant' food to an expensive delicacy?
Nice! I remember reading (perhaps apocryphal) accounts of prisoners in New York demanding to limit the number of days they could be served lobster?
Grapefruits seem like they'd have a pretty rich history to do a video on. They're a hybrid of pomellos and Jamaican sweet oranges. There seems to be a great deal of contention as to whether they came about naturally or whether they were bred intentionally from pomello seeds introduced to Jamaica by sailors.
Oo, interesting. I always thought grapefruits came first (probably just b/c that's the one I was familiar with first.) Mostly unrelated fun fact I just found looking at an old Mental Floss article: "A few other languages have also adopted the American word “grapefruit,” even though they don’t have the same word for “grape,” such as Dutch (grapefruit), Swedish (grapefrukt), and Turkish (greyfurt)."
This is so fun! I can’t wait to see the rest of the series. It’d be really cool to see the history of cinnamon. Whatever videos you make, I can’t wait to see!
Excited for more of this series, do one on apples, or chestnuts
Black pepper should be fun
First video I've ever seen from your channel!! I love it, you have a new subscriber
Yay! Thanks for watching and for the sub. Can't wait to share more episodes!
I saw that Tim's ad. Canadian imposter spotted
Lol. This is in Penn Station. The Canadians are inside the house!!
Heres a thought for an episode: How did lobster go from poverty food to fine dining
Sea cockroaches
Pomme De Terre, French for Potato. Translation? Apple of the earth. Many European languages have apple in their name for Potatos.
Also, the potatoes plant is still largely poisonous to us; leaves, stems, flowers and the 'eyes' that grow on potatoes. Only the Tuber, the potato itself is edible.
You baby liberals blowing your minds over basic facts everybody else knows is so cute
@@guidemeChrist yea not liberal. And just cuz you know something doesn't mean the empty headed sheeple do. If the media doesn't tell them, how can we expect them to know about it?
History of pancakes needs to be on the list!
Hello Christina how are you doing hope all is well with you Edan care 😇👍
Ok, I’m loving this new series
I'd love to see an episode on how WW2 and women entering the work force effected homemade vs prepared food. People often joke about the low quality of food starting in the '50s, not realizing it's historical significance.
Hello Jenny how are you doing hope all is well with you Edan care 😇👍
Oh look, Peruvian Heirloom Potatoes I can grow!
"These potatoes were toxic"
Oh.... never mind...
Lays even makes chips out of the purple lined ones, look kinda trippy
Needle grew sweet peas. They are bright multi colored coloured flowers.
Bacon, because bacon, and the difference between it and pork belly and/or ham. 🤷🏾♂️
History of Kale might be fun. There's got to be some wild stories about that prevalent garbage salad.
Bananas would be a cool history
Few ideas for food history episodes:
1. Salmon/Shrimp/seafood...is the popularity of seafood today due to fish being a staple in cuisines for centuries?
2. Sweet potatoes and other types of potatoes...where did each type of potatoe originate from and what was their impact to cuisines throughout the world?
3. Sugar/sugar cane...and sweets in general to their importance of societal status and influence in today's diet debate.
4. Pineapples, mangos, kiwis, and essentially any tropical fruit that have become popular in non-tropical climates.
Now that's an.. interesting sweater~!
Interesting concept for a show, but try not to interfere with Did You Know Food?...
Thanks! For what it's worth, we weren't familiar with DYKF?, but sincerely do appreciate the advice- we'll make sure to peruse their topics to try to avoid too much overlap (and looking quickly, it seems like our initial idea/approach is distinct enough to make that doable).
That sounds wonderful :) Good luck with your endeavor to teach us about the history of certain food items~!
The way Antoine ranted and raved about potatoes is how I feel about verdolagas (aka purslane). The stuff is considered a weed and grows in just about any environment (even in the cracks on sidewalks), cooks up into some really great dishes, and is jam packed with Omega-3 fatty acids (a boon for folks such as myself who can't stand fish).
Hello 🐩,
This was the first video I watched on your channel. It was interesting, so much that I subscribed!😁
Awesome! I can't tell you how motivating it is to hear positive feedback like this, especially for a new series.
I hope this series goes into the history behind drinks as well as foods. I would love to know more about why the Brandy Old Fashioned is such a thing here in Wisconsin.
For sure! We did a fascinating shoot with a bartender and student of cocktails for our Facebook page, and learned some really interesting info about low-ABV cocktails that I'd love to dive into further in the future. RE: the brandy old fashioned (which I'd never heard about!), it looks like one story attributes their popularity in the region to the 1893 World's Fair, when Korbel introduced an American brandy. Apparently (and this all comes w/ a massive *needs to be fact-checked* note) European brandies were hit by a blight around the same time, and the brandy-loving recently-immigrated Germans in the region took to this new domestic spirit. As for why the cocktail caught on in Milwaukee and not Chicago, where the Exposition was held, looks like we'd need to go beyond Google...
"Fully edible and no longer poisonous" cries in nightshade allergy.
Bread. How on earth does anyone figure that out
Loved it! Want more!
I love good mashed taters but also have a guilty pleasure mostly based on nostalgia in the eating and enjoyment of public school institutional "quality' powdered mash. They could be used to make a decent mashed potato sandwich to dip in the yellow stuff they called gravy.
Lol @ "the yellow stuff they called gravy." And yet somehow, at the time, it was good!
Anything involving rotten fish would be interesting. I would imagine a lot of people lost bets throughout history.
How about episodes for kombucha, nato, kimchi, kvass, tapache and other fermented foods
I want more! Both potatoes and videos!
I would love to hear more about macaroons and pizza!
Hello Chrissa how are you doing hope all is well with you Edan care 😇👍
Pineapples would be a cool one to do 😁
Can we just go back to the part where llamas figured out that licking clay made potatoes non-toxic? I'm constantly amazed by animals' abilities to adapt to environments despite NOT BEING HUMANS! Just so cool. I KNEW llamas were the best!
Underestimate a llama and pay the price, those are some tough mfs
II'll be coming back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths,and (well you get the point) for Mental Floss: Food History 😄
Thank you! We appreciate both the kind feedback, and that you put it in the form of a play-on-words that makes it feel like a Gene Shalit film review from the mid 90s.
@@MentalFloss in this reviewers humblest of opinions play-on-words are punny...Ah-ha! The essence of Gene Shalit strikes again.
Toxic mashed potatoes premiers in 20 hours. Got it.
The history of Schnitzel - is it really inspired by an italian dish? Was "real" Schnitzel = veal schnitzel ever more popular than pork ones? Could also include the history of the correct breading: Semmeln - while they existed at least since 1487 they were still a hit for international spectors at the expo in 1867.
So I'm making mashed potatoes for dinner now.
Highly enjoyed this video. Please make one about tomatoes or ketchup or apple crumble
Thanks for watching! I could definitely see a ketchup episode.
The British government didn't just do little to aid the Irish during the potato famine; they actively perpetuated it. Irish people didn't only grow potatoes, but their other food supplies were being taken off them as taxes for the British government. Most of the 'help' the government provided (which wasn't much at all) was not offered unless the Catholic Irish people converted to Protestantism. Their other options were starvation or moving to workhouses (essentially forced labour camps. Much of the old Irish railway was built by famine victims). It wasn't just potato blight that caused the famine. Many people believe that the potato blight was a convenient scapegoat for what was really a British genocide of the west and south of Ireland. 1 million people died, another million emigrated - it was a tragic time for the county.
Apologies. I'm very passionate about potatoes.
No apologies necessary for potato passion in these parts! And I do think we could've worded that section better. While our research suggests that the blight was a real phenomenon with tangible impact, we probably did shortchange the political aspect of the famine. Always appreciate when our viewers provide more context in the comments-if nothing else, it's a reminder to be even more thorough with future scripts!
@@MentalFloss Oh, don't worry about it! I was trying to provide a little context to a common dialogue. I like this channel a lot, wasn't meaning to critique it or bring down the mood with my historical ramblings. It was an interesting video! Thanks for getting back to me!
@@VyolitFly Your comment was definitely taken in the spirit it was intended. (Polite) feedback is always welcome-it's interesting to learn new info and it makes us want to make better videos.
I would love an episode about dates(not the ones you get on tinder) and/or figs.
You should do the Maultasche or the Spätzle!
Make a video about noodles!
Yo Bill cosby sweaters are effing hilarious
Bring back Misconceptions please!
Stay tuned...
I don't understand. Was the clay slurry actually consumed along with the early potatoes?
It was! The cooked potatoes were (and, indeed, still sometimes are) dunked in the clay/water mixture. Apparently "The flavor is like a creamy milk, very thick and salty." The slurry is known as chaco in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages of the region).
How about the history of collard greens.
Where did you get the sweater? I am in love with it 😍 great video by the way.
Would love to know the history of oysters...
I can't wait for more episodes! Please cover the history of bananas!
In approx. the first quarter of this video, the audio is just barely out of sync, probably only by like one or half of a frame, and it was driving me nuts. I'm really sensitive to audio sync issues so I'm sure plenty of people didn't even notice and some might not even notice if they try to look for it. It did get better though and seemed to be perfectly in sync toward the final third. The rest of the video seems well done though, I even really enjoyed the quiet little sound effect reference at about 6:13. I also love potatoes of all kinds and I made Mashed Potatoes yesterday, possibly a subconscious que from the title of this video being in my sub box.
What? No mention of gravy on mashed potatoes? Or how it became a 'staple' of holiday meals?
Funny you should mention that-we started working on both those sections, and it quickly became apparent that the gravy section could grow into an entire episode (though maybe the answer is just to do longer episodes moving forward). As for the holiday meal tradition, we found a source saying that Sarah Joseph Hale (the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb) was partially responsible for mashed potatoes' place on our holiday dinner tables through her campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Apparently she outlined a hypothetical perfect thanksgiving meal, and included mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, our fact-checker (who, frustratingly, is very good at his job and gets in the way of all our fun non-facts) didn't buy it. It seems there are likely predecessors to Hale's inclusion of mashed potatoes, and that it's tough to pinpoint the time when potatoes became a standard thanksgiving dish (though potatoes were likely eaten, in some form-very possibly mashed-years before Hale's campaign).
I like this show. I hope they have more.
Thanks! We definitely will, in part due to positive feedback like this-we really appreciate it.
@@MentalFloss I hope to see more. There some amazing origin stories behind many of the dishes we eat. There is this one channel I watch that delves into many of old American dishes from the times during the original colonies called Townsend's on TH-cam. They have mentioned the 2 cooking books you spoke of in this one episode.
@@Zeldaschampion Oo, that channel looks awesome. Maybe there's an opportunity to collaborate with him in the future. Thanks for the tip, and for watching!
@@MentalFloss You're welcome.
Suggestion! its not a specific food as much as a method of cooking, but a video on the history of deep frying?
id watch that :3
If it requires us eating pounds of fried food, I am willing to make that sacrifice.
Have you ever done a show on carrots. Now I know a little about the history.
We haven't. What's one fun fact about the history of carrots?
@@MentalFloss The vegetables of today are not vegetables of the pass. We call odd color vegetables of the pass heirloom vegetables today. Carrots where never really were orange. They where a rainbow of colors. At least that's the story I got from 2 different people from 2 different parts of the county.
When I was in high school I had a history teacher that brought in some carrots none of the carrots were orange. He told us a story about a King. The King was called King Orange, because everything in his kingdom was orange. He loved the color orange. One day he ask his people if someone could make his favorite food carrots orange and a farmer did. It caught on so well, that to day people prefer the orange carrots over the heirloom colors.
Moving forward 40 years I was seeing a lawyer and he was late for our meeting but he had a hand full of different colored carrots. He was a big time Gardner and won many prizes for his gardens you could say he was very knowledgeable when it came to carrots. We talk about why they were not orange. And his story was word for word what the history teacher had said so long ago. I had aways believe it was a fairy tail. So could you find out if these 2 man where just pulling my leg.
Hello 👋
Do an episode on bread
We'd love to do something on bread, but it's such a sprawling topic that we might need to find a particular entry point. But we definitely appreciate the suggestion!
Have we always eaten scrambled eggs? I often wonder how creative people got with eggs back in the days cuz you can do so much with them
As always, respect to the first person who saw an egg come out of a chicken and thought: "breakfast!"
@@MentalFloss Indeed! Anyways, you should make one of these episodes about eggs :D
@@MsSwitchblade13 It's definitely on the list, either by itself or maybe "omelette" or "deviled eggs."
In S. Korea, At Yonsei university proffessors' cafeteria, I was served mashed potatoes with mustard and raisins, it was lukewarm, so don't know if it was supposed to be a mashed potatoes or potato salad.
You should do an episode on chicken noodle soup
just had to flex on us with that coogi sweater geeze
That Cosby sweater is a knockout. See what I did there
British are so friendly, that's why I love them!
Great start for this project! Spices would provide a fruitful series of episodes. 😏
Thanks! And for sure, there's something to do on spices/a spice. We just need to figure out the exact angle.
Sushi or poké would make a great episode!
I really don't like this premiere feature... I'm aware that this is a major first world problem, but I don't need TH-cam giving me more notifications therefore I'll be giving this one a miss
😂😂😂
Sorry for resuscitating an old thread.
I am a new(ish) fan catching up on past shows but...SHOW IDEA.
SWEET cornbread (Northern?)
vs.
NON-SWEET cornbread (Southern?)
I innocently started talking about a corn bread recipe on my Facebook homepage this week and all hell broke out!
As the Midwestern daughter of a pastor, whose congregation came largely from the South, I sit on the fulcrum of this issue. My mother and most non-Southern Midwestern cooks make sweet corn bread. But my mother was also a horrible cook and so our parishioners often brought by Southern, non-sweet corn bread for my father. (So I like BOTH.) Our parishioners I think were convinced that eating only my mother's food Daddy would melt away to nothing.
Prior to this flame war that lasted for days, with mostly Southerners insisting that sugar does not go in corn bread, I had no idea that it was anything other than a preference mainly associated with where you grew up.
I had no idea it could be as charged an issues as...well...everything ELSE in this country has become!
It sure would be nice to learn the history of how these dueling cornbreads came to be!
Do corn!!
Where did you get the sweater? I need
nice
Great format. DFTBA
Kombucha!
Hello, how are you, hope you are all well Edan care 😇👍
cool history, i love potatoes.
Thanks! Hope you'll check out the next ep in the series (If YT didn't already do its magic and suggest it to you: th-cam.com/video/yn69AYv5qMo/w-d-xo.html )
Hello, how are you, hope you are all well Edan care 😇👍
Good and nice! :)