Footnotes to a Conversation, July 15, 2024

“Enthusiasm is the electricity of life.” – Gordon Parks

Stepladders & Pizza Rolls

I’m enjoying reading Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World by William Alexander. He outlines the history of tomatoes from their origins as a highly suspect, possibly poisonous oddity to their ubiquitous place in the modern diet (think ketchup and pizza).

Speaking of pizza, I was intrigued to learn that before the cardboard pizza box, “take-out pizzas were rolled up, wrapped in white craft paper, and tied with string, not unlike a salmon from your fishmonger.”

And tomato plants used to be up to 15-feet tall so gardeners had to use stepladders to reach the tops of their plants. In 1949, Burpee’s introduced Big Boy tomatoes in response to urgent consumer requests, like, “My husband can’t grow tomatoes anymore. Do you have something that he could grow? He cannot go up a ladder because he fell.” Big Boy was still indeterminate but much less rambling and all the vines could be tied to a single stake rather than a beanpole, tepee-like construction.

The ‘Red’ Guide That Isn’t Red

In 1943 as the Americans were preparing for the D-Day landings, they were concerned about the lack of accurate maps of France. The Michelin Guide came to the rescue and the American military printed 5-10,000 copies for distribution to American officers. The restaurants might be closed, but the city plans and information about the weight borne by bridges, distances between service stations, and the condition of the roads was incredibly valuable. The only difference from the original 1939 Michelin Guide was the sand-coloured cover. [Guide Michelin]

Arsefoot

I was surprised to learn that the word ‘penguin’ is Welsh. “It’s thought to come from pen gwyn, ‘white head,’ and was originally applied to the great auk itself. It seems that sailors confused the flight-less black and white birds for auks, or perhaps simply used the same word for both … the name replaced an older term in the ornithological lexicon for the much-loved bird: ‘arsefoot’.

Corgi is also a Welsh word meaning ‘small dog’. [Word Perfect, Susie Dent]

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.