While a lot of garlic is grown here in the US, some is imported from China and other countries. If you want to buy American, believe the rumors that Chinese garlic is toxic, or simply believe that domestic garlic tastes better, how do you tell the difference? It’s been said that all Chinese garlic has no roots because they have been cut off to meet import requirements (see first photo), while domestic garlic always has roots (which may have been trimmed short, see second photo). Well, no.

For one thing, all imported garlic has trimmed roots, so it may be from Canada or Mexico and not necessarily from big bad China. But more important, plenty of domestic garlic also has trimmed roots, so it’s not a reliable way to tell. Bottom line? Roots = domestic, no roots = who knows?

An allergen is a chemical in food that causes the allergic reaction. Food allergies an be deadly, as with a peanut allergy, which can kill you dead, or mild, as with my father-in-law who would get dry eyes after eating a banana.

It’s a mistake to think that allergens can be destroyed by cooking, even at high heat such as deep frying or grilling. For example, French fries may see fine for someone with a peanut allergy, but not if they are fried in peanut oil. It’s true that cooking works sometime. For example, people with dairy allergies may be able to eat cooked items, such as a cake, that contain milk. So don’t count on cooking to save the day!

This is a common belief but it is untrue–that not-yet-ripe tomatoes can be hurried to juicy perfection by a few days in the sun. Sunlight does not help and can in fact be harmful if the tomato gets too warm or suffers from sun scald. Sure, those pretty tomatoes look nice sitting on a windowsill, but there is a way to hurry ripening that actually works. Put the ‘maters in a sealed paper bag for a few days, ideally with a ripe banana.

Say what? You see, fruit (tomato is, technically, a fruit) naturally gives off ethylene gas as part of the ripening process. It’s completely natural and perfectly harmless and by keeping the tomatoes in a bag you concentrate the ethylene and hasten the ripening. And further, bananas are the champs at giving off ethylene so including one speeds things up even more.

This is a common error because, in English, the prefix “re” means “again.” The Spanish name for this dish is frijoles refritos, and refritos means “well fried” (frijoles = “beans”)–so what we really have is well-fried beans. And of course the basis of this dish is frying and mashing cooked beans with flavorings, so there you go. Here’s a recipe for homemade.

No, and I do not know why it is even called chocolate because it tastes nothing like it. Well, actually I do know–it is marketing, because everyone likes chocolate, right?

White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, the fat/oil that is pressed out of cacao beans during processing. Sugar and vanilla flavor are added. Cocoa butter has no chocolate flavor–that’s left behind in the cocoa solids that are made into cocoa powder and then into (real) chocolate candy, etc. Cocoa butter is extensively used in skin care products, for what it’s worth. But it is not chocolate, despite the deceptive name.

Bagels and lox, lox and bagels–and lox means smoked salmon, right? Wrong! I thought this was true for many years, and indeed it is common usage. Buy nay, this is not what lox means.

Lox starts with salmon fillets. They are covered with a good amount of salt (always), sugar (usually), and spices/herbs (optionally). This mixture is called the cure. They sit for a while, at least overnight and usually longer. Then the cure is rinsed off and, voila, you have lox (sometimes called gravlax). The curing process will have drawn a lot of water out of the fish, making it a lot firmer, and imbued it with salt and other flavors. Yes it’s raw, but the cure has killed any nasties. It’s yummy enough now.

But then, you can smoke it. This is cold smoking where the fish is exposed to smoke but not heat. After quite a few hours in the smoke, the lox has absorbed the smoke flavor and is, at least in my opinion, even more delicious. It’s a light smoke, usually done with fruit wood, nothing like what would be done for BBQ or ribs (hickory or mesquite). The salmon is now known as Nova. The name Nova is capitalized because it comes from the name of Nova Scotia, the Canadian province where a lot of the salmon is–or at least was–caught.

Now of course a lot of people refer to Nova as lox so the meanings may be changing, as word meanings tend to do. But now if someone offers you Nova you’ll know what they mean.

And then there is hot smoked salmon, smoked and cooked at the same time. Delicious stuff, but very different from lox and Nova.

This is one of those malarkey marketing scams that so many people fall for all the time. Coconut oil as the new super food, with claims that it lowers blood pressure, promotes weight loss, reduces blood glucose, protects against heart disease, erases wrinkles, increases energy, reduces inflammation, and counters Alzheimer’s disease. Nope to all these claims–y’know, that little pesky matter of evidence, of which there is none. That doesn’t stop some people, to the supplement makers’ delight.

Coconut oil does have a unique taste that some people love, and using it in your diet occasionally is not a problem. But don’t expect any health benefits. And, by the way, external use is fine.

No way. They have the same origin–sugar cane–but are quite different. In a nutshell, the liquid squeezed from the sugar cane is boiled until most of the sugar crystallizes. The sugar is separated and further processed to become the granulated sugar we are all familiar with. The liquid remaining is molasses. It is sweet, slightly bitter, and with a complex flavor that is important in many baked goods.

If you take molasses and boil it down even more, you get black strap. You might think it would just be a more concentrated molasses, but no–the additional cooking breaks down a lot of the sugar into simpler molecules and the result is less sweet and much more bitter than real molasses. It’s quite salty, too.

Bottom line, molasses and black strap molasses are two quite different critters and cannot be interchanged.

Sure, it’s easy to throw cooked potatoes, milk, butter, etc. into your stand mixer and whip them up. In fact, some people ever refer to whipped potatoes! But this is actually the worst way to do it. You see, potatoes contain tiny starch granules, and if they stay intact they do no harm. But if they are burst by the mechanical action of a mixer, they make the potatoes gummy. Mashed spuds should be fluffy, and gummy is yucky! So, what to do? Fortunately you have several options.

The hand masher is the old stand-by, preferably the kind that has a plate with holes rather than a serpentine wire. The result with this will not be perfectly smooth but that’s OK with a lot of people, myself included.

A ricer works really well. This is essentially a huge garlic press with a piston that forces the potato thru a perforated plate. A food mill does much the same thing, using a rotating blade in place of a piston. They both have uses other than making mashed potatoes.

Most of us have heard of Cincinnati Chili, if not actually tried it. Most folks are surprised when they first taste it because they are expecting the traditional southwestern style chili with beans, meat, etc. The Cincinnati version is really more of a meat sauce; it’s served over spaghetti and traditionally topped with grated cheese and chopped raw onion, with beans and oyster crackers sometimes added to the mix. And while it contains chili powder, it also contains other flavors like cinnamon and chocolate that are not associated with traditional chili. So, enjoy your Cincinnati “chili” as long as you know what you are in for!