Margarine used to be pink! (Facts about Food Friday)

Blue and pink Parkay Fun Squeeze margarine. In the 1880s, margarine was pink to discourage people from buying it instead of butter.

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

Chicken stock ice cubes

FaFF

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.

Facts about Food Friday – Make your own shaker jars

Facts about Food Friday

So it’s been a little while since the last FaF, but no matter. I’ll make it up to you with this genius fact:

Canning jars have the same size top as parmesan cheese shakers.

Why should you care? Because that means you can turn any old glass jar (not the wide-mouthed kind) into your own shaker bottle.

Mason jar with green parmesean cheese jar shaker top lid

Not that you should be buying those cheap green jars of parmesan “cheese” anyway, but if you have any sitting in the back of your fridge, might as well put them to use. Think outside the standard box of shaker jars and consider storing your bread crumbs in them for an easy way to add a quick topping to a casserole.

Or store your cat’s favorite nutritional yeast and garlic power in one. Not that I’ve ever done this, of course. Just hypothetically speaking, if your cat is addicted to powdered yeast, this would make it really easy to shake on her food every morning…