HA! There's Still Time for ... Tuesday Trivia!!!

Thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? WHAT?? You didn't even notice I hadn't posted Tuesday Trivia???? sighhh. What AM I going to do with you??

Today is about .....


FOOD, DRINK AND THE HUMAN BODY


OK ...... Food ...

Healthy Eating - Potatoes are high in vitamin C and potassium. In fact, just 1 medium potato has 45 percent of the vitamin C and 21 percent of the potassium our bodies need every day for good health. Just one serving of potatoes have 12 percent of the fiber we need every day.

RICE - According to Shinto belief, the Emperor of Japan is the living embodiment of the god of the ripened rice plant, Ninigo-no-mikoto.

RHUBARB - Its primary function was to induce vomiting, although rhubarb is also a mild astringent. This medicinal role caused the price of the dried root to rise. In 1542, rhubarb sold for ten times the price of cinnamon in France and in 1657 rhubarb sold for over twice the price of opium in England.

SHRIMP - Some 40% of the shrimp eaten in the U.S. is farmed raised shrimp from Asia and South America. World shrimp production is over 5 billion pounds a year, about 20 % of which is farmed.

Almonds are the oldest, most widely cultivated and extensively used nuts in the world.

Ginger has been clinically demonstrated to work twice as well as Dramamine for fighting motion sickness, with no side effects. (Caroline, remember me telling you this?)

Prior to takeoff, the 'engine' was fueled with bananas, apples, hard rolls and one pint of water. The engine was the pilot himself, twenty-six-year-old Bryan Allen, whose long, powerful legs pedaled a seventy-pound airplane, the Gossamer Albatross, the twenty-three miles across the English channel in two hours and forty-nine minutes in June 1979.

The yeast extract left over from the manufacture of beer is considered a delicacy in Australia. (I'm afraid to ask how they consume it. Sounds gross to me!)

If all the oceans were to evaporate, the salt left behind would cover the entire planet with a layer of salt that was 50 meters (half a soccer field) thick. (That's a lot!!)

An acre of typical farm soil (to a depth of six inches) has a ton of fungi, several tons of bacteria, 200 pounds of protozoa (one-celled animals), 100 pounds of algae and 100 pounds of yeasts.

What makes hot peppers hot? - The answer is a chemical compound called Capsaicin, which is found in the inside wall of the pepper and in its white lining. Capsaicin is odorless and tasteless, except for the hot, tangy sensation it yields. The true flavor of a pepper comes from its outer walls. Rocoto (spicier than habanero): This capsicum pubescens is a fireball of unbelievable proportions. Generally not available outside of Latin America, since its fragile fruit is grown only in high altitude, cool climates, it comes in green, yellow, and red globes, about 2 x 2 inches, and has a hairy stem.

Red and yellow bell peppers are much sweeter than green. Although they started out as green peppers, they were left on the plant to ripen for a much longer period of time.


DRINK ....

Sparkling Wines A.K.A. ......... Spain uses Cava, Italy calls it spumante, and South Africa uses Cap Classique. A sparkling wine made from Muscat grapes in Italy uses the DOCG Asti. In Germany, Sekt is a common sparkling wine.

Not Champagne - While the term "champagne" is often used by makers of sparkling wine in other parts of the world, it should properly be used to refer only to the wines made in the region of Champagne, France.

Champagne's Sugar Content - The sweetest level is doux (meaning sweet), proceeding in order of increasing dryness to demi-sec (half-dry), sec (dry), extra sec (extra dry), brut (almost completely dry), and extra brut / brut nature / brut zero (no additional sugar, sometimes ferociously dry.).

More than 80 percent of the rum consumed in the U.S. comes from Puerto Rico. (I contribute to the cause.)

Vodka accounts for more than one out of every four bottles of distilled spirits consumed in the U.S.

Tequila is not made from cactus, but from agave; the best tequilas are 100% blue agave. (So why isn't it blue?)

The average age of a French oak tree harvested to make wine barrels is 170 years old. This is because the older oak tends to be denser. This is good for adding flavor to wine.



And about the human body...............

Your muscles do not grow during exercise. Exercise is only the stimulus. The body strengthens the muscles while you are resting.

If 80 percent of your liver were to be removed, the remaining part would continue to function, and within a few months the liver would have reconstituted itself to its original size.

Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.

The average human body contains enough: iron to make a 3 inch nail, sulfur to kill all fleas on an average dog, carbon to make 900 pencils, potassium to fire a toy cannon, fat to make 7 bars of soap, phosphorous to make 2,200 match heads, and water to fill a ten-gallon tank. (That's not a pretty picture, is it?)

The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180 inch in diameter. The smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell. (Now we know why women battle weight more than men ... we have more to begin with!!!)

If you have a 'Sister Joseph's Nodule,' you have been diagnosed with belly-button cancer.