Friday Facts From Sasha

Hi my pals, I hope you are all well and looking forward to a nice weekend. I am just a little bummed today cause it is raining all day and I want to play outside.

I couldn't find anything to do so I started researching some kitchen facts for Mommy. I would like to share them with you and I hope you find them useful.


Why do I cry every time I cut an onion?
A: Cutting an onion releases an enzyme called alliinase, which reacts with a substrate to produce a compound like sulfuric acid. This sulfuric acid gets in the nerve cell membranes of your eyes and causes you to form tears. The reason this occurs only after cutting is that the enzyme and the substrate are separated in different compartments of the cell. They come together only after cutting.
You can reduce this by chilling the onion, which slows down the enzymatic reaction.
- Irwin Goldman, horticulture professor in the UW-Madison College of Agricultural & Life Sciences 

Blah, blah, blah, I think its cause onions are bullies and they are mad cause they are getting cut up and cooked. 

Why do some recipes call for baking soda and others call for baking powder?
A: Baking soda's active ingredient is sodium bicarbonate. When it comes in contact with a mildly acidic liquid such as buttermilk, it gives off carbon dioxide gas. (You have probably seen those little bubbles if you have made buttermilk pancake batter.) Those little bubbles are needed to make pancakes fluffy.
The same bubbles would give muffins or cupcakes a light texture, but many of those types of recipes don't have any acidic ingredients to make the soda produce those wonderful gas bubbles. That's why many recipes use baking powder instead of soda. In addition to sodium bicarbonate, baking powder has an acidic ingredient that activates when the baking powder gets wet - like when it's mixed with liquid ingredients in a cupcake or muffin recipe.
- Susan Nitzke, professor Emerita and Extension Nutrition Specialist at UW-Madison 

Here is what I think, are you ready?? WHO CARES, just bake me some cookies, you can put whatever tastes good in them and I will eat them.


Why do cheese curds squeak?
A: Cheeses like cheddar and American are firm and elastic when they are very young, which allows them to stretch (a bit like an elastic band) and deform when they are being eaten (as we bite the curds). This creates some noise: i.e., the "squeak."
Milk proteins form the network in cheese, and after a few days of ripening, the texture of these proteins starts to change, the result of ongoing fermentation processes and internal changes in the nature of the bonding within milk proteins. With aging, the cheeses become less elastic. So during biting, they deform less and create less noise.
Best to eat them right after the cheese is made; the fresher the better.
- John Lucey, director of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research and professor of food science at University of Wisconsin-Madison

This one I like, cause I LOVE cheese curds(well any cheese). I want to know why they also squeak when they come out of me. Can someone explain that one??





Thats it for today, I hope you learned something on this rainy Friday. Have a great weekend!




Loveys Sasha