Peachy Reads

The Aussies have their vegemite, the Europeans their nutella, but the sandwich spread that unequivocally and perhaps uniquely defines the American palate is peanut butter.  This book tells you all you need to know about peanut butter from its humble origins (no, George Washington Carver was not its inventor) to the consolidation of the triumvirate of national brands: Jiffy, Skippy , and Peter Pan .   Did you know that peanut butter tastes more flavorful when made from Spanish, Valencia, or Virginia peanuts and not the less tasty (but easier to process) florunners ?  A major “improvement” in peanut butter production was eliminating the oil separation which still characterizes natural brands.  Unfortunately for the consumer, the solution to a creamy, more stable spread was adding partially hydrogenated oil, this being the poster child for trans-fats, the nutritional bad boy in recent years.  (The U.S. government calls standard grocery store peanut butter...

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt , has that folksy quality that harkens back to the gentility of a bygone age.   Maybe it’s growing up in rural Georgia, as she did, that defines her character to such a degree, and comes through so well on the written page. In any case, her musings and her thoughtful prose are always a joy to read. In this book she takes on a topic that resonated with me—saving seeds to plant for next year’s crop.  Why is this so important?  Well, with hybridization and genetically modified crops, farmers (and more and more, home gardeners) no longer are able to keep and replant seeds the following season. I n fact, in the case of farmers, in most instances it’s illegal for them to do so.    Remember that prize tomato that grandpa grew when you were young?  Chances are that variety is not in any seed catalogs any more.    This diminishes plant diversity and makes agriculture beholden...

I heard the author of Going Clear being interviewed on NPR and was captivated.   What I knew about Scientology wasn’t much—its Hollywood adherents including Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, John Travolta; its science fiction writer founder L. Ron Hubbard; and the fact that Scientology seems to be a near constant magnet for controversy.   This book filled in some of the gaps for me, including the foundation of their beliefs: …Teegeeack [Earth] was a dumping ground for thetans, it became known as the Prison Planet, “the planet of ill repute.”  The Galactic Confederacy abandoned the area, although various invaders have appeared throughout the millennia.  But these free-floating thetans remain behind.  They are the souls of people who have been dead for seventy-five million years.  They attached themselves to living people because they no longer have free will.  There can be millions of them clustered inside a single person’s body.  Auditing for Scie...