Category: Food – Nutrition

Did you know bananas are in threes? For centuries in England, the "plowman's lunch" was associated with farm laborers who ate a midday meal of bread, cheese, pickled onions, and a drink consisting of beer. Today, this is a popular lunch served in British pubs.

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The postmodern plate: why cuisines come in threes

Title: The postmodern plate: why cuisines come in threes
Author: Symons, Michael
 
Source: Australian Cultural History, 1996
 
Annotation: Eating, Symons holds, cannot be isolated from the cultural, social and physical context.

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Pretzel – Trinity symbol

History

pretzel

pretzel

Pretzels have been around for almost 1,400 years. History has their origin about A.D. 610 when a baker in a monastery in southern France or northern Italy twisted leftover strips of bread dough into the shape of a person’s arms crossed in prayer, traditional posture for prayer in those days.

Monks began offering the warm, doughy treats to children who had memorized their Bible verses and prayers. They were used to help children understand the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The three empty holes in the pretzel represented the Christian Trinity. The monks called these treats pretiolas, Latin for little rewards.

Queen Esther - King Ahasuerus

Queen Esther, King Ahasuerus

The little knotted treat wandered around a while and  became known in old high German as Brachiatellium, and then just plain Bretzel or Pretzel. Left: one of the oldest depictions of pretzels in the Hortus Deliciarum of 1190 showing Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus sharing a meal. The king is pointing at the ale cans and dart board not shown in the detail.

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banana

 

bananas

bananas

The banana is a fruit which naturally disects into three parts (try it!). To do this, peel the banana and push down on the top of the banana with your finger, and it will start to divide into three parts.

Cultivated bananas are seedless because they have three of each type of chromosome instead of the normal two of each type. Such plants are called "triploid” (a triploid has three times the haploid number of chromosomes in the cell nucleus).  They are always sterile. Genetic triploid freaks arise from time to time in nature, but modern breeders can also use chemicals or electric shocks to create triploid mutant cells.

 

 

Here is a site with many banana recepies.