The Spooky Food Issue! 🎃 | Stress Dreams | Recipe: Reese's PB Cup Bars
Issue No. 59
Happy All Hallow’s Eve. Go vote or we’ll haunt you! 👻
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WARNING!!! What follows are gruesome examples of real food traditions that may make some readers queasy. Read at your own risk!
Feel like humans have collectively gone batty? Well just a few hundred years ago, cannibalism was all the rage in Europe! For real. That may comfort you, or it may serve as a spooky portent of things to come.
A while back a friend (who totally gets me) sent me this horrifying and majestic article about Europe’s long history of eating corpses. For medicinal purposes only, of course. Munching on a bit of powdered skull or sipping some fresh blood were considered potent and extremely popular health tonics collectively known as “corpse medicine.” According to Richard Sugg, author of “Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians”, “The question was not, ‘Should you eat human flesh?’ but, ‘What sort of flesh should you eat?” I highly recommend reading the whole article, which is chocked full of fabulously horrible tidbits. Did you know the frenzy for eating mummies fueled Europeans’ plunder of Egyptian tombs? White people, amiright?
It’s truly tough to top cannibalism, but in the spirit of Halloween, here are a few other horrible food traditions from around the globe!
The Sourtoe Cocktail.Visitors to the Yukon Territory prove their metal at the Sourdough Saloon in Dawson City, Calif. by drinking a cocktail with a very special ingredient: the amputated toe of a local resident. To be inducted into the Sourtoe Cocktail Club, the toe must touch the lips of the drinker. (Hat tip Helen)
Hakarl. Also known as rotten shark, the national dish of Iceland. Shark meat is fermented, allowing the naturally occurring toxins and ammonia present in the animal to leech out. After being dry-cured for several more months, it is ready for consumption. According to one Icelander, “it tastes and smells of piss.” 😋
The “Real Vampire” Community. It does what it says on the tin, folks. Washington Post journalist Yanan Wang explains: “To be clear, these aren’t people who possess the supernatural powers that we associate with the likes of Count Dracula, but rather individuals who claim to have a medical condition that requires them to drink blood (human or animal) in order to sustain themselves.” According to a 2015 survey by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (you can’t make this stuff up), there are about 5,000 Real Vampires in the United States alone.
Bugs. The protein of the future.I know plenty of cultures eat insects, and a more culturally sensitive person would be down with that. But in my heart of hearts, I think eating bugs is gross. Unfortunately for me, certain scientists say that the only way we’ll be able to support our ballooning human population is by making insects our chief protein source. They are nutritionally dense and their carbon footprint is minuscule compared to all other animal protein sources and many field crops.
Toe Cheese. This is a personal one. There is a lot of questionable cheese out there. Maggot cheese. Breast milk cheese. EZ Cheez. Head cheese! (which isn’t actually cheese. Don’t look up that one if you don’t know about it). But back in my performance art days, I curated a lecture with art critic and writer Chris Fite-Wassilak. At the end of his talk, he shared a delicacy of his own creation with the audience, an aged cheese cultured with bacteria harvested from in between his toes! It was a bit funky, but quite tasty!
If you just can’t get enough of disgusting food habits, here is a collection of photos from The Museum of Disgusting Food in Malmö, Sweden. But WARNING! Do not click on that link unless you have a strong stomach!
love,
Jackie
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Our Collective Nightmare
Readers share the stress dreams that have been haunting their nights
I escaped to the mountains of North Carolina for the last few weeks. While my days have been peaceful bliss, I have had a wild series of stress dreams, almost nightly. When I mentioned these nocturnal terrors to my friends, they made it clear I wasn’t alone. 2020! Here are a few spooky nightmares, for our collective haunting pleasure.
Olivia Carves a Pumpkin like Anthony Bates
Jackie Fiddles while the Roof Burns
Charlotte Fights Back
Do you have any 2020 stress dreams? Tell us about them at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com
Fresh Links
🍬🦇Explore the subliminal messaging on your Halloween candy’s label | The Counter
Seemingly inconsequential packaging elements can shape what we taste. Marketing professor Carlos Velasco studies how angular fonts can heighten the sense of sour in a candy and the cloud-lettering of Airheads feels saccharine to the brain. Beloved Reese’s peanut butter candies deploy fonts with a soft, perhaps creamy texture. Sour WarHeads' lettering appears angular.
The study of how taste interacts with other senses first received a detailed look in the early 2000s by marketing professor Charles Spence. He discovered a loud crunch of a Pringle makes a chip seem more satisfying, and a white mug can make a cup of coffee seem twice as strong. Neuromarketing can really sway our purchases. The right label can turn a $10 bottle of wine into something that can sell for $100.
Sometimes the wrong shape can have unintended consequences. For example, “People also taste rounded shapes as sweeter, which is why, when Cadbury started rounding the corner of its chocolate bars in 2013, some customers complained that the new chocolate bars now tasted “sickly” sweet—even though the actual ingredients hadn’t changed.” Once you notice how a sound, color, or typeface (see the word “diet” on every soda) is associated with a flavor, you might start to notice it everywhere. Make binging Halloween candy an intellectual pursuit by identifying how each wrapper might be subtly convincing you to eat just one more. (As long as it’s not candy corn 🤢)*
*Jackie here to acknowledge that based on last week’s thread, we know you guys love candy corn. Matt is just being a bully.
🕯️This year, I need my ancestors more than ever. I’m baking pan de muerto to call them forth. | Washington Post
You can find pan de muerto, a “pillowy-soft dream” of a bread made with orange blossom water and star anise, on altars erected for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Dia de los Muertos, celebrated in Mexico and other Latin American countries on the first and second of November, is a hybrid of the Catholic All Souls’ and All Saints’ Days combined with ancient Mesoamerican rituals. To honor loved ones who’ve passed on, celebrants erect beautifully adorned altars featuring the deceased loved ones’ favorite items, as well as visit their grave sites with offerings of food, wine, and candles. This year, more than ever, the holiday feels vital for Americans of Latinx heritage. The sudden loss of so many lives from the coronavirus pandemic has many desperately seeking the collective mourning that Dia de los Muertos can provide.
Author Adriana Velez will deepen her celebration by baking her own pan de muerto, a visceral and cathartic act of remembrance.
As I knead, I am aware of my breath, my body, and I am a god using the alchemy of seeds, water and motion to create life. When the dough rises, I admire my creation, filled as it is with spirits. I conquer death, if only for today.
And I connect with my ancestors, who help me see past this momentary crisis. I feel the generations before and the generations to come. I cross dimensions of time and space. My ancestors have seen war, genocide, bondage, heartbreak, and yet here I am, their descendant, working dough in their honor, for now, for those we lost this year, for those who will rise up in the future.
🌎🗳️The Whole World is on the Ballot | New Republic
In this extra spooky edition of Sunshine + Microbes, this might be the most frightening piece of all. But we recommend reading it. Mary Annaïse Heglar writes that there “is no hyperbole there. The world is literally on fire. Global warming has not paused for the Covid-19 pandemic or the long-overdue reckoning on race or any of the other crises at play. Quite the opposite. The climate crisis has gained strength and run right smack into every other crisis at hand.”
Climate action (and any other progress) is only possible under an administration that is not hostile to democracy. Unfortunately, the current White House occupants have hallowed our institutions and rolled back countless environmental regulations. Joe Biden has a decent climate plan. Not perfect, but it's a fine start. Donald Trump Also has a climate plan. Doing nothing is a very deliberate plan.
Once the climate that fostered human civilization is gone, it’s up in the air whether you can ever get it back. The same is true with democracy. And as goes one, so goes another. We’re not just voting for a president. We’re voting for a chance at something that should be the bare minimum: a livable future. The bar has never been lower, and the stakes have never been higher.
Peanut Butter Cup Bars
Last week, we asked readers to pick their favorite Halloween candy. and the winner — based off of ranked choice voting — would inspire today’s Halloween recipe! The results are in, and the official winner of the Sunshine + Microbes Power Candy Ranking is Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Sort of.
In actual fact, the results are inconclusive, and that’s because people were not voting based on a set choice of candy candidates, but from the endless options of candy available to us in these United States. Not limiting the options was an oversight on our part. Based on people’s choices, it wasn’t possible for any candy to receive over 50 percent of the vote, which is the threshold for winning a ranked choice election. That’s because too many of us threw our votes away on “third-party candidates” like Nerds Rope and Flying Saucers and Candy Cigarettes (obvious spoiler candidates!!). Ultimately, Mounds and Peanut M&Ms finished the second round with 16 percent each, but Peanut Butter Cups came out on top with 38 percent. Over 21 percent of candy choices had just one vote each.
Ranked choice voting really is great… Sunshine + Microbes just doesn’t know how to run an election., But I was personally satisfied with the winner. They were my no. 2 pick, after Sour Patch Kids.
I’ve created a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup-inspired recipe that I feel represents my aesthetic well. It was inspired by my favorite menu item in the kitchen at Clearwater Camp for Girls, the classic peanut butter bar. I use hippie ingredients like oats and honey, but also sweet, sweet trash like actual Reese’s cups 🤤 I recommend it for self-medicating OR celebrating after the election!
Makes a 9x9 pan
Ingredients
6 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon salt + more for sprinkling
3/4 cup peanut butter + 2 tablespoons
1/2 cup chocolate chips
as many mini peanut butter cups as your heart desires (but probably 6)step-by-step
In a blender, blend oats to a powder, or as fine as the blender will allow.
Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.
Once melted, stir in oats, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and honey. Once combined, stir in 3/4 cup of peanut butter.
Cover bottom and sides of pan with foil or parchment. Spoon peanut butter mixture into pan and smooth to form an even layer that fills pan.
Unwrap peanut butter cups and press them down throughout the mixture.
Melt remaining 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and chocolate to form a smooth mixture. The easiest way to do this is in the microwave, heating for 30 seconds, stirring, and then repeating. Or heat in a double boiler.
Pour chocolate mixture over peanut butter mixture and smooth with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle salt over top.
Place in fridge to harden for at least two hours.
To serve, remove from fridge and cut into squares.
Matt and I don’t agree on everything, but we do agree that this is the scariest music video of all time (and scariest cake).
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is a cook and kitchen educator based in Stuart, Fla. She is co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a communications specialist at the ACLU of Texas. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.