Quotes from Amy Stewart

A jalapeño pepper—generally considered to be the hottest pepper any sane person would attempt to chew and swallow—gets a rating of around 5,000 SHU.

During Prohibition, enterprising California grape growers kept themselves in business by selling "fruit bricks"—blocks of dried, compressed grapes that were packaged with wine-making yeast. A label warned purchasers not to dissolve the fruit brick in warm water and add the yeast packet, as this would result in fermentation and the creation of alcohol, which was illegal.

Everyone with a camera and a set of draperies runs a portrait studio. Miss

It looked like the kind of place where people were shot over the rent money.

Where the years ahead had once seemed vague and unknowable, amorphous in shape and indeterminable in size, after my mother died I began to see a set of decades stacked neatly in front of me like bricks...When I allowed myself to think of the brevity of the time ahead of me, and the futility of spending any more of it on cooking and mending and gardening, it frightened me so much that I almost couldn't breathe.

Are we so hierarchical that we can't respect a creature that lives beneath our feet?

Wapsie Valley, known for producing red kernels. (The legend behind Wapsie Valley is that at corn shuckings, any man who found a red kernel could kiss the girl of his choice, and Wapsie Valley could turn an innocent gathering into a free-for-all.)

Why is it that a worm can regrow most of its body, but we can't replace so much as a finger? I am left with the troubling conclusion that the worm's survival may, in the grand scheme of things, be more important than my own.

the primary sources of moral decay in this country are the theaters, the dance halls, and the saloons.

Even today, chocolate is made by fermenting the beans for several days to allow richer and more complex flavors to emerge. They are then dried, roasted, and cracked open so that the nibs—the meaty part of the bean—can be extracted. The nibs are ground into a powder or paste that, along with a little sugar, becomes dark chocolate. If milk is added, it becomes milk chocolate. And if the fat, called cacao butter, is extracted by itself and mixed with sugar, that is white chocolate.

I wish I could say that over the years I've gained some insight into the intelligence of my worms, but the most I've seen them do is act out of instinct or hunger, moving up to higher ground in the bin if water pools in the bottom, or gravitating towards food they like and away from food they don't. If they have an intellect, I don't suppose I've provided much to stimulate it.

Freshly cut oak is given time to dry, which not only makes it easier to work with but also concentrates those important flavors. The staves are also lightly cooked to make them more pliable as they are shaped, and fire causes some of those flavors to caramelize, so that caramel, butterscotch, almond, toast, and warm, woodsy, smoke essences emerge.

the layer of charcoal filters and flavors the whiskey

new laws regulating the now-legal liquor industry, they helped ensure that bourbon (and other whiskey) would, as of July 1, 1936, have to be stored in charred new oak containers in order to claim the name.

Botanists who study "twining handedness" have discovered that hops are unusual in their proclivity to twine in a clockwise direction; 90 percent of all climbing plants prefer to go counterclockwise.)

solera system for aging. The barrels are stacked four high, with finished sherry coming only from the bottom barrel. It is refilled by sherry from a barrel above it, which is then

freshly picked hops heat up the way a compost pile does and have been known to catch fire.

Dogfish Head makes a cacao beer called Theobroma that is intended to be a modern recreation of an ancient Olmec recipe.

The soldiers had, apparently, been given beehives filled with the honey of bees that had feasted on rhododendron and azalea, plants that produce neurotoxins so potent that they remain active in the honey. Those who eat the honey succumb to honey intoxication, also called grayanotoxin poisoning.

An invasive European moth was to blame for a series of mysterious rashes among schoolchildren in northern Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1981, roughly a third of the children at two schools in Luzerne County suffered from rashes on their arms, necks, and legs.

loopholes in some United States liquor laws allow it to be served in restaurants with only a beer and wine license. This has led to shochu's use as a mixer in Asian-inspired cocktails—think lemongrass martinis—

most of what we know as rum comes from molasses, not cane juice.

Later, when beekeepers realized that they could get lighter, sweeter honey by placing beehives near particular crops like clover, alfalfa, and citrus, the wild honey collected in forests went first to mead, while more refined, cultivated honey was preferred as a sweetener.

Early spice traders tried to plant allspice seeds around the world but found them impossible to germinate. Eventually it was discovered that the seeds must pass through the body of a fruit-eating bat, a baldpate pigeon, or some other local bird, in order to be sufficiently heated and softened for germination. Today, through the