Culinary Side Effects

Some dishes have side effects that impact different people differently. My last  blog was about a wonderful ham and bean soup. My wife Susan reminded me that while she loves bean soup, it doesn’t love her. There is that wonderful rhyme from our youth:

Beans, Beans good for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart!

For Susan this is the truth, fortunately for me, not so much.

There is the wonderful campfire scene from the movie Blazing Saddles. The cowboys are sitting around the campfire eating their plate of beans for dinner and soon break out in a chorus…

Blazing Saddles Campfire Scene. 

I was once driving from Frankfurt Germany to Paris with two business associates. One was from east Texas and the other, the South of France. It was a long drive and as we started to get sleepy. I decided to ask questions to keep the conversation flowing and keep me awake. I asked what were the standard meals that your mother made for you growing up? The Frenchman started out explaining that every day started with a croissant and confiture and he went on from there. The Texan countered with: “We were poor and we had beans for breakfast, beans for lunch and if we were lucky, beans for dinner”. All I could think of was the scene from Blazing Saddles. In the closed environment of that car, I was just glad the Texan’s dietary fare had evolved.

Beans are not the only cause of a certain unwanted culinary side effect. Back in the 1990’s the food industry went to great lengths to develop fat replacers. A few of these replacers had the same effect of those good old beans. Olestra was the branded sucrose polyester that the FDA required a warning on the label that said: “Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and or loose bowels”. It didn’t have the same marketing impact as the warning on Viagra.

At Kraft we had a friend that worked for a company in Germany that had developed a polyol based fat replacer. My friend had an array of baked goods made with his miracle fat replacer that we sampled during a morning session. That afternoon we had a meeting in the R&D lab. I noticed that one by one the Kraft people kept walking away from the meeting table. Again, it was like that scene from Blazing Saddles. I finally confronted my German friend telling him what the rest of the group was too polite to say. To which he responded: “You Americans are too sensitive, you need to be strong…” Strong or not, there certain culinary side effects that some of us need to avoid.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.