Chowdah

I am old enough to know how clam chowder has changed just in the time that I’ve been alive. In the last decade alone, it seems like there has been a race to see who can make the thickest chowdah!

Set your Way-Back Machine to the year of the Revolution… 1776! What was in their bowls back then looked more like Manhattan Clam Chowder. Brace yourself: the recipe consisted of clams, salt pork, onions, potatoes, and tomatoes in a clear broth.

Jumping forward to the 1830s and the recipe has morphed to…

CHOWDER RECIPE (1830)

The Frugal Housewife (1830)

Lydia Maria Child

TO MAKE A CHOWDER

Four pounds of fish are enough to make a chowder, for four or five people,—half dozen slices of salt pork in the bottom of the pot,—hang it high, so that the pork may not burn,—take it out when done very brown,—put in a layer of fish, cut in lengthwise slices,—then a layer formed of crackers, small or sliced onions, and potatoes sliced as thin as a four-pence, mixed with pieces of pork you have fried; then a layer of fish again, and so on. Six crackers are enough. Strew a little salt and pepper over each layer; over the whole pour a bowl full of flour and water, enough to come up even with the surface of what you have in the pot. A sliced lemon adds to the flavor. A cup of Tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in a cup of beer. A few clams are a pleasant addition. It should be covered so as not to let a particle of steam escape, if possible. Do not open it, except when nearly done, to taste if it be well seasoned.

OMG! There’s the tomatoes again!

In the 1920s, a lightning bolt split the chowder world apart. Those who worshipped New England called it Boston Clam Chowder, while those who still swore their allegiance to the tomato called it Rhode Island Red Chowder

Things got so heated that by 1939, a Maine politician actually tried to make putting tomatoes in chowder illegal! According to the New England Historical Society, the proposed law would have sentenced anti-creamy offenders to the impossible task of digging a barrel of clams at high tide.

It wasn't until the middle of the century that we saw chowder change from something resembling a clam stew into a true chowder.

Now, in the new century, we see chowdah get heavily thickened. It seems like a spoon needs to stand straight up in the bowl for it to even be called clam chowder anymore!

I prefer mine with milk or cream and no thickeners. One of the reasons I don’t like it thick is because the added starch spikes my blood sugar! When I'm on the Cape, I love going to Mac’s On The Pier—their chowdah is the perfect, traditional thin style.

It Is All TAS2R38 Gene’s Fault!

Are you a finicky eater… did your mother always tell you to finish your broccoli, only for you to turn up your nose at it? What about Brussels sprouts? Did you turn up your nose at them too? Can you brush your teeth before drinking orange juice? Do you also turn up your nose at artificial sweeteners? Well, there is a scientific reason for that!

It is all the TAS2R38 gene’s fault!

What about the OR6A2 gene? Doesn't have some part in all of this? Yes. Some people who have certain versions of the OR6A2 receptor are much more sensitive to aldehydes, which are compounds found in cilantro… and also in soaps and detergents!

Via Pub Med, the NIH website:

Supertasting, earaches and head injury: genetics and pathology alter our taste worlds

Neurosci Biobehav Rev

L M Bartoshuk , V B Duffy, D Reed, A Williams

Abstract

Family studies using thresholds showed that PROP (6-n-propylthiouracil) tasting is produced by a dominant allele, T. Nontasters have two recessive alleles and tasters have one or two dominant alleles. The bitterness of suprathreshold PROP and anatomical criteria subdivide tasters into medium and supertasters. Supertasters may be TT tasters, but this has yet to be demonstrated. Supertasters preceive the greatest bitterness and sweetness from many stimuli as well as the greatest oral burn from alcohol and capsaicin. Women are more likely than men to be supertasters. Otitis media and head trauma can alter taste and thus PROP classifications, complicating studies on PROP genetics. Some subjects with a history of otitis media show taste reductions, but others show enhanced tastes and appear to have more taste buds per fungiform papilla. Subjects with head trauma show reduced tastes on some oral loci, but there is evidence that severe reductions on the front of the tongue ameliorate reductions at the circumvallate papillae on the back of the tongue by a release of inhibition mechanism.

Do you know what “supertasters” were used for? During the Middle Ages, we were the king’s food tasters. What a job! You get to eat all the king’s best food… if you can stay alive!

This just goes to show that we are all different. As a lobster lover, I cannot get enough of the bug! But others turn their noses up at it, while I hate avocado. We all have different tastes!

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I have to ask: why is it so hard to think that our sexuality and gender identity do not vary from person to person? Why is so hard for people to understand that we are all genetically we are all different?

I Think This Is So True!

Growing up I was constantly in the woods, on three sides of where I grew were woods and pastures and cow patties.

How a radical experiment to bring a forest into a preschool transformed children’s health

In Finland, kindergartens are exposing children to more mud, wild plants and moss - and finding changes to their health that show how crucial biodiversity is to wellbeing

The Guardian

29 Oct 2025

Aurora Nikula, 5, is having a normal day at her nursery. She is making a cake out of sand and mud, adding in make-believe carrots, potatoes and meat. “It’s overcooked,” she says as she splashes water in, then adds another dollop of sand. “More sugar, it tastes better,” she says. A handful of mud goes in, and the dish evolves into a chocolate cake.

Aki Sinkkonen, a principal scientist with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, is watching. He’s also very interested in Aurora’s cake, but for different reasons. “Perfect,” he says, admiring the way she is mixing soil, sand and leaves and then putting it on her face. “She’s really getting her hands in it.”

[...]

We already know that access to the outdoors is important for children and their development. But this study goes one step further. It is part of a growing body of research linking two layers of biodiversity. There is the outer layer – the more familiar vision of biodiversity, made up of soil, water, plants, animals and microbial life, that lives in the forest, playground (or any other environment). And then there is the inner layer: the biodiversity that lives within and upon the human body, including the gut, skin and airways.

Increasingly, scientists are learning that our health is intimately linked to our surroundings, and to the ecological health of the world around us. The first 1,000 days of human life – when the brain and body are most rapidly developing – are considered particularly crucial.

You all have seen ads for cleaning produces... kills 99% of the germs! The ads have created a fear of germs or mysophobia. We probably all know someone who carries around bleach wipes! Kill those germs!

While at the same time there is a rise in allergies! What did the researchers find?

A year later, it found children playing in the green kindergartens had less disease-causing bacteria – such as Streptococcus – on their skin, and stronger immune defences. Their gut microbiota showed reduced levels of Clostridium bacteria – associated with inflammatory bowel disease, colitis and infections such as sepsis and botulism. Within 28 days it found an increase in cells in the blood – called T regulatory cells – that protect the body from autoimmune diseases. Other research showed that in just two weeks children’s immune system regulation could be improved by playing in a sandpit enriched with garden soil.

Now look at this...

Peanut Allergy Rates Plummet 10 Years After AAP Early Introduction Guidelines

New data show peanut allergy rates have dropped sharply since early introduction guidelines, reducing 27% and 43% after the 2015 and 2017 guidelines, respectively.

Author(s)Stanislaw J. Gabryszewski, MD, PhD, Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, Vivian P Hernandez-Trujillo, MD

HCPLive®

October 30, 2025

New data show a sharp decline in peanut and food allergy prevalence, but experts say the real work is just beginning.

A decade after the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorsed early peanut introduction, new real-world data suggest those recommendations are paying off.

A study led by David Hill, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia analyzed data from more than 85,000 children across nearly 50 pediatric practices and found a 27% drop in peanut allergies following the 2015 early introduction guidelines (P <.0001), along with a 43% decrease after the 2017 addendum (P <.0001). Rates of any IgE-mediated food allergy also fell by more than a third, offering promise for food allergy prevention.

The findings, published in Pediatrics, provide the first large-scale evidence that national policy changes inspired by the landmark LEAP trial have translated into measurable real-world benefits. The LEAP study, published in 2015, demonstrated that infants who were introduced to peanuts early and kept them in their diet were significantly less likely to develop a peanut allergy later in life.

How many time have you heard parents say that they are not allowing their children to eat peanuts because they don't want there to get a peanut allergy... the exact opposite of what they should be doing!

Throw the kids outside! Let them play out in the dirt, let them drink from the garden hose, and let them use their imagination! 

We Have A Hostage Situation Here

The Republicans are using food as a weapon to end the shutdown! They are willing to starve millions of people just to get their way politically!

Mike Johnson Accidentally Lets Slip Why He Won’t Fund Food Stamps

Mike Johnson accidentally gave away his whole game.

The New Republic

Edith Olmsted

October 30, 2025

House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted Thursday that feeding the hungry would mess up his political game.

CNN host Dana Bash asked Johnson why he wouldn’t consider moving money around to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which will stop receiving federal funds at the start of November. The House speaker accidentally revealed Republicans are using the program as leverage to end the government shutdown.

“Because if you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games with people’s paychecks, their livelihoods,” Johnson said. “And if you do just part of this, it will reduce pressure for them to do all of it, to do their basic job, and that is reopen the government.”

It seems clear that Democrats aren’t the ones playing games with people’s livelihoods, but instead it is Republicans who are holding SNAP benefits hostage from 42 million Americans in order to make the opposition bend. And SNAP is a hostage Republicans are more than willing to kill—they’ve already voted to gut nearly $300 billion from the program through 2034.

We are all pawns to the Republicans to be played on a chessboard. Whether it the sick and disabled, whether it is for the hungry,  whether it is for the homeless, whether it is us the LGBTQ+ community, we are all pieces to be played on in their game of politics! The Republicans are no longer "the party of the people" they are a party of a cult leader. The Republicans are using starvation as a weapon to force the Democrats to end their demands for health insurance to be reinstated!

Instead, the Trump administration has set up a false dilemma, asserting that the government can’t continue to fund SNAP benefits without draining funds from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, which is currently being paid for by tariff money. Meanwhile, Trump had no problem moving funds to pay for military service members’ paychecks.

What the Democrats are saying...

With November 1st right around the corner and millions of Americans’ health care and food assistance on the chopping block, Trump STILL refuses to join Democrats on a common-sense proposal that reopens the government and lowers health care costs. Instead, he has worked to send a $40 billion bailout to Argentina, demanded $230 million in taxpayer funds as payment for his criminal investigations, demolished the East Wing, and hosted his billionaire friends at the White House for his $350 million ballroom remodel. It’s clear who Trump works for, and it’s not the American people.

All the Democrats are asking for is the reinstatement of funding for the Affordable Care Act!

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Here is something to think about: The Republicans say they are "Pro-Life" but they stopped SNAP and people are starving! They cut WIC and babies are starving! They cut housing assistance and people are freezing! They cut funding to Head Start, so that the children will always be in poverty!

Editorial: What's For Dinner?

[Editorial]

I was an article this morning in the Hartford Courant and I realized that they got it wrong.

Where Will We Eat When the Middle-Class Restaurant Is Gone?

The boom in American sit-down chains has come and gone. What replaced them isn’t so great for human connection. 

And I take exception to the article the article says that the family restaurants are closing… Pizza Hut, TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Outback, Olive Garden, and Applebee’s all are struggling from going belly-up. But are they really family restaurants or are they chain restaurants?

It may seem counterintuitive to speak about these large chains as essential aspects of the social fabric. For decades, they were cast as invasive predators in American dining, displacing or devouring the small restaurants that came before.

But I think that the family restaurants still are plentiful… just not the ones that all had cookie cutter food. I’ve been to just about all of them and there really aren’t any differences between them except for the cuisines. That was what made them unique… you knew that their menus were all the same wherever you went…  Olive Garden; Mediterranean, Red Lobster; seafood, Outback; meats, etc. etc.

But also the same… Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara from each and every Olive Garden were also the same. The same proportion, the same cream sauce, same number of shrimp… all the same!

A bunch of senior friends go out to lunch once a month, we pick a different restaurant each time but we avoid Noon – 12:30… Why? Because they are too busy!!!! 

“They are the ruination of American food,” said Jane Stern, who has dedicated roughly the last half-century to chronicling the nation’s foodways. Alongside her now-former husband, Michael Stern, she crisscrossed the country writing the canonical “Roadfood” guides.

I agree! But they are a traveler’s delight because of the cookie-cutter menus.

I see more and more restaurants opening up… but they are not chain restaurants!

What I do see the demise of are the fast food places, and the restaurants with the high;y processed foods. When I bit in a nice juicy hamburger, I want to see texture in the patties… not something that looks like it was extruded from a machine like something out of Soylent Green novel.

“The things that Olive Garden and Applebee’s and TGI Fridays do for people is provide a reliable meal that will please most people,” she said. “All of those needs and desires are really pedestrian things, not distinction-gaining things.”

Great for the traveling public, but… Going out to dinner before a date?

Just look at Pizza Hut pizza, they are a cookie-cutter pizza… uniform thick, uniform diameter, the same amount of sauce right down to a fraction of an once. The same amount of cheese, the same amount of processed sausage! The pizza joint down the street, the small is about, with about so much cheese… they are all unquiet.

Yeah, the chains are going down the tubes but the mom & pop restaurants are taking over the void, the best sub… at the corner store deli! And the guy knows that I like a lot of cheese on that sub so he adds a little extra cheese because he knows it will bring me back Italian sub

America is giving up on cookie cutter processed meals and in favor unique individually made to order meals.

[/Editorial]

It Is All About The Children… NOT!

You know that the Republicans have banned abortion because life is so sacred but it is okay to stave them.

15 G.O.P. Governors Shut Out Food Aid for 8 Million Children

Congress approved a Biden administration initiative to feed poor children during the summer. But 15 states led by Republican governors opted out.

The New York Times

By David W. Chen

January 12, 2024

More than eight million children in 15 states, all led by Republican governors, will be shut out of a new federal food assistance program intended to help needy families during the summer months.

Set to begin this summer, the new program will provide low-income families with $120 for each eligible child, which can be used to purchase food at grocery stores, farmers’ markets or other approved retailers when such assistance is not available in schools.

Can you believe that? 8 million children they are throwing under the bus. They just don’t care if the die, look at all the money we saved by not feeding them.

The 35 states included all the ones led by Democratic governors, and a dozen led by Republican governors from all parts of the country.

But 15 Republican-led states said no. Some of those governors voiced concerns about the program’ mechanics and administrative costs; some indicated that they had ideological objections and a lack of faith in the federal government.

I don’t know about you but I see this as a Christian value, didn’t Jesus feed the multitudes but this will cost money that we gave to the billionaires.

The rollout of the food assistance program comes at a fraught time in the efforts to combat hunger in the United States. Food insecurity rose to 12.8 percent of U.S. households, or 17 million households, in 2022, up from 10.2 percent, or 13.5 million households, in 2021, according to the Agriculture Department.

Moreover, the future of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a federally funded program known as WIC, remains uncertain, as conservatives in Congress challenge longstanding budget priorities.

The Republican philosophy is: “I got mine, s**w everyone else!”

They just don't care that,

Women will die during pregnancy.

Trans children will die if they don't proper healthcare.

That children will die from starvation.

Save The Child! Um… Ah…

Not quite, Nebraska is one the state of the states that jumped on the ban abortion bandwagon when it passed its own abortion law.

NPR reported that,

The Nebraska Legislature on Friday approved a 12-week abortion ban and restrictions on gender-affirming care for people younger than 19 in a move so contentious that lawmakers on both sides have said they may be unable to work together in the future.

Conservative lawmakers called in a visibly ill colleague so they would have enough votes to end a filibuster and pass a bill with both measures. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who pushed for the bill, has promised to sign it into law.

The mood in the Nebraska Capitol has been volatile since lawmakers on Tuesday advanced by a single vote the hybrid measure that ties together restrictions that Republicans have pursued across the U.S. One lawmaker, Omaha state Sen. Megan Hunt, disclosed in March that her teenage son is transgender and said Friday that she now plans to leave the state.

But once the child is born they are thrown under the bus. They are on their own.

Nebraska governor stands firm on rejection of federal money to feed food-insecure children
AP News
BY MARGERY A. BECK
December 29, 2023

Nebraska’s Republican governor on Friday reiterated his rejection of $18 million in federal funding to help feed children who might otherwise go hungry while school is out.

Nebraska will not participate in the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children — or Summer EBT — program, Gov. Jim Pillen said in a written statement. That statement came as advocates for children and low-income families held a news conference outside the Governor’s Mansion in Lincoln to call on Pillen to change his mind before the Jan. 1 deadline to sign up for the program.

The program — part of federal assistance made available during the COVID-19 pandemic — would provide pre-loaded EBT cards to families whose children are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches at school. Those families would receive $40 per eligible child per month over the summer. The cards can be used to buy groceries, similar to how SNAP benefits are used.

[…]

Neighboring Iowa is also opting out of the program, with Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announcing that decision last week and saying, “An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”

Do you know one of the reasons why child are obese? It from not eating nutritional foods, it is from eating processed foods. Eating fresh fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats promote healthy bodies.

Pillen insisted Friday that the state would continue to help food-insecure children through the Summer Food Service Program, which provides meals and snacks at various sites when school is not in session. Providing on-site services also allows providers to spot and report issues like malnutrition, neglect and abuse in children, he said.

But critics say not all families have access to the on-site programs — particularly in Nebraska’s vast rural stretches, where sites can be many miles away from a struggling family.

“No kid ever said, ‘I want to be born into a family that struggles,’” said Jenni Benson, president of the Nebraska State Education Association — the state’s largest teachers union. “Why would we even question that people and children deserve food?”

This shows you that the abortion bans are not about saving the children but it is more about power and control and satisfyingly their evangelical base.

The Perfect Trifecta

What could be better than having lobster three times in one day?

• Lobster Cake Benedict… homemade lobster cakes, roasted red pepper hollandaise at the Van Rensselaers
• Lazy Man's Lobster Roll… 5 oz native lobster meat sautéed in butter and served on a toasted roll at Mac’s on the Pier
• Lobster Newburg… fresh lobster meat in a sherry cream sauce at the Lobster Pot