Wyngz – The cool way to say “not wings” (Fun facts about food Friday)
I really hate when people spell things with a ‘z’ instead of ‘s’ anyway, but apparently this is a real thing now – A government issued mandate that requires food manufacturers to label certain types of food this way.
So basically, “wyngz” are any chicken products that are sort of shaped like chicken wings, but aren’t actually wings at all. In fact, this is the ONLY misspelling that’s allowed and it has to be exactly this way with both the ‘y’ and the ‘z’ in order to be legal.
Not only that, but there is an entire list of very specific details that must be followed:
- The chicken used in said “chicken product” has to be white meat
- “Wyngz” has to be in the same color font and not hidden inconspicuously
- Here’s where we start getting specific – The smallest letter in the name can be no smaller than one-third the size of the largest letter used in ‘wyngz’. Get out your rulers, folks!
- It also has to state that it’s not wing meat (or isn’t ‘just’ wing meat), such as “contains breast meat and wing meat,” and has to be linked by an asterisk next to “wyngz,” pointing people to a more specific description of what they may or may not want to eat now.
Digiorno is doing it right on their boxes there.
And actually, they’re going one step farther by trying to make this sound like a great thing. If you go to their website, they explain that the reason for the “fancy spelling” is “Because they’re not wings. They’re even better!”
/facepalm
Really, I think this one sums up the new “spelling” quite nicely:
(Gah! My spell check was really angry at me for this post of “wyngz,” ha!)
Margarine used to be pink! (Facts about Food Friday)
Here’s a fun “did you know?” and no, I’m not talking about the pink Parkay in the picture above!
Back in the 1870s and 1880s, in an attempt to restrict the sale of margarine even more than their taxes and labeling laws, they forced manufactures to add pink coloring to margarine. The idea was that the pink would make it unpalatable and less desirable, and therefore, discourage people from buying margarine instead of butter.
The color bans started in big dairy states like New York and New Jersey (no surprise, right?) and even created an entire underground market for bootleg colored margarine (yes, that was a real thing) and food coloring capsules so that consumers could need in the yellow color into their margarine to make it look more like butter again.
Between the color rules and the taxes, it cut margarine sales down immensely (to about 40% of their previous sales). Eventually the Supreme Court jumped in and overturned the laws, but as many as 80% of Americans didn’t have access to yellow margarine (oh noes!).
Fast forward a little more than a century and Parkay actually intentionally released the colored Fun Squeeze versions of margarine above in hopes of making it MORE desirable and fun, so that people would be more likely to buy it. Everything cycles back around eventually, huh?
~Edit~ Oh, and I don’t think Fun Squeeze is still sold in stores, but you can get it on Ebay! http://www.ebay.com/itm/PARKAY-FUN-SQUEEZE-SHOCKING-PINK-MARGARINE-BOTTLE-/190155035809
Facts about Food Friday – Chicken stock ice cubes
Mmm, appetizing, right?
That large roaster I love so much is also great for cooking big turkeys or multiple chickens at once. And that much poultry, uh, goodness, means a whole lot of stock can be made at once, too.
You never usually don’t know which recipes you’re going to use in 3 months and how much stock/broth they’ll call for, so a really easy way to store it is to freeze in ice cube trays.
Cool it in the fridge like you normally would, pour into trays, freeze until solid, and then toss them all into gallon sized bags so your trays aren’t monopolized with soup base.They don’t stick together, so later, you can simply pull out a couple for a quick sauce or a couple handfuls for a soup.
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