The fall apple crop is in and so jelly has been on my mind.  We shall cover jams and other preserves as well, but jellymaking takes more technique, so more detail will be given to jelly.  If you can make jelly well, the others are easy.  Jellymaking is not really hard, but there are a couple of rules that have to be followed.

Jelly and other preserves thicken upon cooking because of the interaction between pectin (found in many fruits), sugar, acid, and water.  Pectin is one of the soluble fibers that get so much attention as part of a balanced diet, even though it contributes few nutrients.  Its main purpose in the diet is to help regulate the metabolism in the gut, and soluble fiber has been shown to be beneficial for blood pressure and blood lipid regulation.

This essay is sort of a prequel to two that I am scheduled to write for What’s for Dinner, posted at Dailykos.com (and here) Saturday evenings around 7:30 Eastern.  Next Saturday I am writing rather long one about jellies (and related items) with lots of technical information and pictures of the process from start to finish.  On 05 December I return to write about my favorite holiday goodies.

This got me to thinking that some of those goodies need background preparation before cooking them.  Tonight we will discuss several key ingredients in some of my favorites, and some of the biology and natural history about them.  Some things, like preparing nuts and persimmons, HAVE to be done in advance for various reasons, and some can be done in advance to ease the workload during the busy holiday season.

Preserving food by drying it is prehistoric.  Humans have dried food for millenia, and it works as well now as it did way back when.  In this sense, I am not talking about grains and seeds that naturally dry on the plant, with no interaction from humans, but rather foods that need a bit of help to dry without going bad.

Let us take, for example, apples.  Dried apples are wonderful, but leave that apple of the tree and it falls to the ground, and just rots.  Apples are too moist in their prime state to dry whole, especially if nature is all that is working for one.

Enter mankind to make a better process.  We have learnt to peel and slice the apples, and then put them into a place where the water is lost rather quickly, before bacteria and molds can grow.  Please read further.

Food preservation is as old as humankind, and actually predates us.  Animals are known to preserve food in a crude fashion, from dogs burying bones to squirrels stashing away nuts and acorns for later consumption.  Strictly speaking, that is not really food preservation but rather food stockpiling, but the two are extensively connected.

Our hunter/gatherer ancestors began to preserve food with the discovery and taming of fire.  The mere act of cooking meat has a preservative effect, especially when the meat is cooked to near dryness.  Drying food in the sun was also certainly practiced in warmer climates, and freezing food for later use was and still is done by nomads in the Arctic regions.

With the advent of agriculture the need for preservation of food on a large scale became essential to provide sustenance during times of crop failure, especially for grain crops.  Grains are fairly easy to preserve since they are dry, so keeping them dry and vermin out of them are the keys.  It is thought that the cat became domesticated around this time.

This series will examine various food preservation methods from the ancient to the modern, including an extensive installment on chemical preservatives.  Some of these have gotten bad press undeservedly, and some are not as safe as commonly thought.

Last time we talked about the history of the periodic table and some of the reasons behind why it “works”.  We also took a look at the first three periods (rows), the very short first period, with only two elements, and the two short periods with eight elements each in them.  We also grouped these elements into families (columns) that show similar chemical properties.

Now we shall look at Periods 4 and 5, the two long periods.  These periods (and later ones) contain the transition metals.  In the first three periods, chemical properties change radically from one element to the next as atomic number increases.  For example, fluorine, the most chemically reactive element sits next to neon, which forms no known ground state chemical compounds.

The single most important piece of scientific literature is, in my opinion, the periodic table.  Those who understand what it means, and what it actually implies, have mastered more science than most professors ever will.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but come with me and I think that I can prove it to you.

One thing that scientists like to do is to make order out of what seems to be a myriad of disjointed facts.  The table does just this.  The table did not just appear overnight; it is the product of contributions by hundreds of scientists over decades and finally took a form sort of like what we use today in 1869.  That was the year in which Dmitrii Mendeleev published his table, but he was not alone by far.

Water is a material unlike any other.  I will go on record to say that, whilst a few other substances may have a one or two unusual properties, no other known substance has as many, or as to as great an extent in toto, than does water.  If anyone can think of any other substance that has as many aberrant properties, please let me know.

Because of the unique set of properties, water is usually declared to be essential for life.  I do not know if I would go quite that far, because that sounds more like dogma than science to me.  However, I would agree that any nonaqueous form of life would be extraordinarily bizarre to us, and might not even be recognized as a lifeform.

Water is such a basic part of daily life that the ancients thought that it was a fundamental element.  Whilst they were incorrect, it is so different than anything else that it deserves a place of its own in our understanding of things.

In the blink of an eye or a beat of a heart

One poor choice can tear things apart

A smart guy gets a comeuppance and action,

and the family lives in the dregs of reaction.

I am the one who caused the despair

And hope that the deity to me will be fair.

I do not ask for anything for me,

but want good things to happen for my family.

Those of you who feel that you have things fine,

Remember, one mistake and your fate is like mine.

So, always do things that you know are right,

and never fall into the urges of night.

If you do these loving things

Your loved ones will take to wings.