Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for November 07, 2024

That wasn’t cheese!

Baking soda can also be used as toothpaste.

Too bad the Chinese didn’t also have macaroni in 1576 BC.

A guy was watching TV as his wife was out cutting the grass during the hot summer afternoon. He finally worked up the energy to go out and ask his wife what was for dinner.

The wife was quite irritated about him sitting in the air conditioned house all day while she did all the work, so she scolded him. “I can’t believe you’re asking me about dinner right now! Imagine I’m out of town, go inside and figure dinner out for yourself.”

So he went back in the house and fixed himself a big steak, with potatoes, garlic bread and a tall glass of iced tea.

The wife finally walked in about the time he was finishing up and asked him, “You fixed something to eat? So where’s mine??”

“Huh? I thought you were out of town.” he replied.

Baking soda can also be used to brush your teeth.

Eew!

Who the heck put their feet in garlic to find this out. And then did they use Baking Soda to deodorize them?!!

Oh yeah? Then how come I can’t taste my sox? ~ Willy Shoemaker, dead but inquisitive

Hmm, so I wonder why cheese today molds?

When scientists discovered the world’s oldest preserved cheese smeared on the necks of ancient mummies in China, it raised a lot of questions.

Now DNA analysis is answering some of them. It solidified that two of the three curdled samples of kefir cheese are likely made from cow milk, while a third came from goat milk. And a closer look at bacteria in the cheese offers new insights into the origin story of Asian dairy fermentation, revealing how kefir culturing techniques spread across the continent, paleontologist Qiaomei Fu and colleagues report September 25 in Cell.

The samples were first found over 20 years ago in Xinjiang, China, on nearly 3,600-year-old Xiaohe mummies. Scientists couldn’t fully identify the samples back then. In 2014, another group reported evidence that the that the mystery curds were made from kefir. The yogurtlike drink is made by fermenting milk with kefir grains, which consist of live bacteria and yeast cultures. When drained, kefir becomes a lumpy mass of cheese.

Me theenks that onions theeng is not true.

That’s a waste of garlic!

Who was rubbing garlic on their feet (and why) when they figured out you could taste it that way?

So good to read without the snake.

To get a stain out of the carpet, wet some baking soda just enough to form a paste and cover the stain. Then slice some cheese, put it on garlic toast and enjoy the wonderful taste of a garlic cheese sandwich. Later, in the middle of the night, when you remember the carpet stain, get up and sop up the baking soda with a wet cloth. Cover the spot with a dry cloth and place a copy of War and Peace on it until it dries.

They probably found opium in those tombs that’s just as old

Baking soda also makes a good dentifrice.

Yeah, but the cheese was no gouda.

It is unknown when cheese was first made. The earliest direct evidence for cheesemaking is now being found in excavated clay sieves (holed pottery) over seven thousand years old, for example in Kujawy, Poland, and the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, the latter with dried remains which chemical analysis suggests was cheese. Shards of holed pottery were also found in Urnfield pile-dwellings on Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland and are hypothesized to be cheese-strainers; they date back to roughly eight thousand years ago.

For preservation purposes, cheese-making may have begun by the pressing and salting of curdled milk. Animal skins and inflated internal organs already provided storage vessels for a range of foodstuffs. Curdling milk in an animal’s stomach made solid and better-textured curds, which could easily have led to the conscious addition of rennet.

Hard salted cheese is likely to have accompanied dairying from the outset. It is the only form in which milk can be kept in a hot climate. Dairying existed around 4,000 BC in the grasslands of the Sahara. Cheese produced in Europe, where climates are cooler than in the Middle East, required less salt for preservation. With less salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for useful microbes and molds, giving aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors.

Garlic and the dirty secret of China’s prisons

Rainwaterrunoff.Com/garlic-and-the-dirty-secret-of-chinas-prisons/

From the moment the grateful otter was able to walk, it never left Juan’s side. It even learned to dig for clams.

One day, a man went to Juan’s house looking to hire him for a week.

His wife answered the door.

“Sure…” his wife said. “It will cost you $500.”

“That much?” he asked

“But you’re getting my husband and his otter. They bring up more clams than anyone else in town.” she said.

“I just want Juan. I’ll hire him alone for $350.” the man countered.

“Sorry…” she shrugged. “You can’t have Juan without the otter.”