Bob and Marcia discussed the history and functionality of chopsticks, the massive size and unique characteristics of blue whales, and the popularity and evolution of baseball in Japan. They also delved into pop culture, exploring Taylor Swift’s record-breaking achievements, the popularity of Korean content on Netflix, and the origins of cultural terms like ‘blue blood’ royalty and ‘pound cake.’ Throughout the conversation, Bob and Marcia displayed their playful and humorous personalities, with Bob asking questions and seeking clarification, and Marcia providing insightful explanations and definitions.
Outline
Animal facts, history of chopsticks, and human body height.
- Confucius popularized chopsticks as a more refined, non-violent eating utensil.
- Kangaroos cannot walk backwards due to their hopping movement and body structure.
- Bob and Marcia discuss blue whales, including their massive size, diet, and aging process.
Pop culture, history, and toys.
- Bob and Marcia discuss bubble gum alley in San Luis Obispo, California, with over 2 million pieces stuck to the wall.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss Taylor Swift’s achievements, including having four albums in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 charts at the same time.
- Marcia Smith explains that the difference in the shiny and dull sides of Reynolds Wrap aluminum is due to the manufacturing process, and there is no significant difference between the two sides for any purpose.
- Bob Smith reveals Furby was banned from NSA due to recording capabilities, while Marcia Smith questions why a Furby was present in the building.
Audio transcript.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the origins of the phrase “last ditch stand” and its connection to trench warfare in the 16th century.
- They also explore the popularity of Korean content on Netflix, with 60% of subscribers watching Korean language shows or movies in 2020.
- Bob Smith asks Marcia Smith about the most painful and least painful parts of the body, with surprising answers (forehead and outer shoulders, respectively).
- Marcia Smith reveals that the brain does not feel pain, despite being pricked with a needle.
- Bob Smith incorrectly identifies the country where baseball has been played for over 400 years, Marcia corrects him.
Radio battery life, national anthems, and kosher cola.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the factors that drain battery life on electronic devices, including screen brightness, background apps, and notifications.
- Bob shares interesting facts about national anthems, including that some countries, like Spain, have a melody without lyrics.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the meaning of a yellow cap on a Coca Cola bottle during Passover, learning that it signifies the drink is kosher for the Jewish holiday.
- Marcia shares that Holland is a region within the Netherlands, but the country officially dropped the term in 2020 and redesigned the Holland logo to reflect this change.
Food, history, and quotes.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the origins of the term “blue blood” and its association with royalty.
- Bob explains the etymology of the word “souffle,” which means to rise or inflate.
- Marcia Smith provides quotes and insights on various topics, including love, friendship, and the importance of taking time to relax and enjoy nature.
- Bob Smith engages with Marcia’s quotes and adds his own thoughts and opinions, with a focus on the importance of having faith and believing in things.
Bob Smith 0:00
What animals cannot move backwards
Marcia Smith 0:03
AHA and who popularized chopsticks for eating
Bob Smith 0:07
answers to those and other questions burning questions burning coming up in this episode of The off ramps with Bob and Marsha
Marcia Smith 0:15
Smith
Bob Smith 0:16
but that matchup
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I have chopsticks, the history of chopsticks. Yes.
Marcia Smith 0:46
You know what’s older, the chopsticks or the fork?
Bob Smith 0:50
No, I think chopsticks are older than fork sense.
Marcia Smith 0:52
Doesn’t it like
Bob Smith 0:53
that forks come from the Middle Ages? They’re
Marcia Smith 0:55
like 2000 years older than the form?
Bob Smith 0:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we have the name of the person who made chopsticks popular.
Marcia Smith 1:02
We do Confucius? How did you know that? I
Bob Smith 1:05
assume it’s a manners thing. Like you should eat with sticks, not with your hands.
Marcia Smith 1:09
So that was a thing, but it wasn’t manners. Confucius believed that knives evoked bloodshed. And the honorable and upright man allows no knives on the table. They used to stab their food and eat it off of a knife. Right, right. That’s how people used to eat. So he saw chopsticks as a more peaceful way to pick up food compared to spearing it with a knife.
Bob Smith 1:34
Well, then it is it’s more refined.
Marcia Smith 1:36
It’s certain Genteel. Yeah, it’s not easy to pick up a pea with a knife or a chopstick in my opinion.
Bob Smith 1:42
Yes. Have you ever tried to do that? Oh, God
Marcia Smith 1:44
sticks.
Bob Smith 1:45
That thing rolls right down. I’m
Marcia Smith 1:46
miserable. With those, you know, I
Bob Smith 1:49
went to some dinners early in my adult life and use chopsticks. And then that was it. They don’t don’t have any need to do that in
Marcia Smith 1:57
my early 20s. Because it was cool. And then I said, the hell with this. I need more food.
Bob Smith 2:03
So it was meant as a more refined and less violent way to eat. Yes, he was yes, he was right. Yeah, he
Marcia Smith 2:09
was a non violent person. He’s like Gandhi, I was espousing peace. And so he brought on the chopsticks.
Bob Smith 2:18
All right, my question now what animals cannot move backwards?
Marcia Smith 2:22
I knew this at one time. Do you
Bob Smith 2:24
want me to give you any choices? Yes. Choices for animals that cannot move backwards. Turtles, chimpanzees, dogs, cats or kangaroos?
Marcia Smith 2:35
It would be turtles, no, no kangaroos,
Bob Smith 2:39
kangaroos, yes, kangaroos, they’re hopping mammals. Australia hoppers, big hoppers carry their offspring and pouches. But what may not be so well known is that kangaroos cannot walk backwards so they
Marcia Smith 2:50
have to turn around and walk the other way. You know what
Bob Smith 2:54
their hopping movement is called? It’s got a specific name. saltation, soft. That’s what happens when I put salt in my food. saltation during saltation. Kangaroos push off with both large feet at the same time, and they use their tails for balance. Oh, that I can’t do it and reverse Hmm. So they’re combinations of their muscular legs, big feet and tails help them move forward effectively, but these appendages prevent them from going in reverse. That comes from animals.mom.com.
Marcia Smith 3:23
Okay, Bob, in a 24 hour day, when are you the tallest?
Bob Smith 3:28
What? Okay, I’d say when you’re laying in bed, and the gravity is not pulling you down, you’re flat. So when you’re laying in bed, you’re probably the tallest, you are wrong.
Marcia Smith 3:39
We don’t really measure people for their height when they’re laying in bed. Do we true, okay. Okay, it’s when you get out of bed. You’re the tallest gravity weighs down the human body throughout the day. And by the time you go to bed at night, your body has shrunk about one centimeter throughout the day, you shrink at one centimeter, which is less than a half an inch. If you’re metric deficient like me, is that due to gravity pulling you down? Okay, where I’m going with this, okay, it’s gravity pulling down the human body throughout the day. Laying down at night gives our spines and joints time to decompress and gain back the height they lost during the day.
Bob Smith 4:17
All right, I have a question about a whale. This is about the blue whale. We know that’s a huge animal. It’s a big one. How much does a blue whales tongue weigh? Oh can weigh as much as what kind of animal a blue Wait, you’re right. And elephant. Can you believe that? No, I was going to give you a dog a bear an elephant or a tiger. Yep, blue whales, the largest animals ever known to have lived on earth 100 feet long, and they weigh up to 200 tons. They’re as long as three school buses. That’s how long they are. And their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts can weigh as much as an automobile. Good Lord, but they reach these dimensions on a diet composed exclusively of tiny Eat Shrimp like animals called krill.
Marcia Smith 5:02
And that’s the most prolific organism in the world is crap. Yeah. So I guess they need a lot of cheese.
Bob Smith 5:08
I have a question though. Yeah. How can you tell how old a whale is?
Marcia Smith 5:13
Well, that’s a good question. You cut them open, and you count the layers of blubber.
Bob Smith 5:17
Well, you count the layers. You count your wax tea.
Marcia Smith 5:21
Oh, no, yes. Oh, Lord, count
Bob Smith 5:23
the annual layers. Like you count the rings on a tree, your
Marcia Smith 5:27
wax your wax. How do you get your wax underwater? That’s
Bob Smith 5:30
how you know how old they are. So how old do blue whales grow?
Marcia Smith 5:35
How old? Do they grow? They
Bob Smith 5:37
grow old. We all grow old to a certain extent except me. Okay.
Marcia Smith 5:40
I’ll say 80 years. 80 years
Bob Smith 5:43
is the average lifespan. It is 80 to 88 years. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 5:47
I guess it right. But the oldest
Bob Smith 5:48
found based on counting the layers of the earwax was 110 years old. I’ll be down so those big old whales live a long, long time.
Marcia Smith 5:57
Let’s have a little read. I guess the right age here. I didn’t get the earwax question.
Bob Smith 6:03
Okay, congratulations, Mark. Thank
Marcia Smith 6:05
you, darling. Have you ever heard of bubble gum alley?
Bob Smith 6:08
No. What’s that?
Marcia Smith 6:09
I never did either. I don’t know if I can say I never say this right. San Luis Obispo, California. It’s a it’s an alley, like 70 feet long or something. Anyway, my question is, how many pieces of gum do you think are stuck on the wall? So
Bob Smith 6:24
I know, from whale earwax to bubble gum, yes. Exactly what he’s eating lunch while they’re listening to this kind of Yeah, okay. I would say there must be hundreds of hundreds of pieces pieces of bubblegum stuck to the bubble gum alley. Is that on the ground?
Marcia Smith 6:40
No. They’re on the wall. And you may look at a picture after we finished the show. Okay, 2 million pieces. Holy caffeinated. That’s just a thing. A little tourist attraction we didn’t know existed. It’s like the big ball of twine and the mustard Museum. Oh, those are much
Bob Smith 6:55
more interesting, I think and then use bubble gum Bubble gum alley. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 7:00
I would agree. Anyway, topic change
Bob Smith 7:01
Music Okay. You and I kind of always look at Taylor Swift to like a surrogate daughter is something we’ve liked her career. We followed it. And she just broke a musical barrier. What did she recently topple amount of records sold. She just made history as the first woman and the third artist ever to have four of the top 10 albums and the billboard 200 charts at the same time. You know, she’s recording her first six albums to gain money Yeah, artistic and financial control of her songs. She released the third of those speak now Taylor’s version it debuted in the top spot it’s her 12 number one album, which pushes her past Barbra Streisand for the most chart topping albums by a female artist. She actually added six new songs previously
Marcia Smith 7:49
previously unreleased based in Dubai it again yeah, that
Bob Smith 7:53
album speak now joins three other albums in the top 10. So they are the fifth 10th and seventh respectively, on the charts right now.
Marcia Smith 8:01
So you really have thought of her as a daughter of surrogate surrogate, you want to have her over for Sunday dinner.
Bob Smith 8:06
So I think it’d be fun. Let’s do that.
Marcia Smith 8:09
Let’s bring out the guitars. We got a piano we
Bob Smith 8:10
got musical chairs and pianos here.
Marcia Smith 8:12
All right, here’s a pondering question Bob. Why is one side of Reynolds Wrap aluminum shiny on one side and dough on the other
Bob Smith 8:21
man, I’ve always wondered about that. And I’ve wondered which side should I use? Well,
Marcia Smith 8:25
that’s my last part of that question. Okay, which side should you use to wrap food in? I think
Bob Smith 8:30
you use the dull side. And You wrap the food with the dull side so the shiny side is showing because because that’s easier to keep clean. I don’t know what’s the answer?
Marcia Smith 8:41
The answer is it doesn’t matter. Oh, I thought there was some significance according to the folks at Reynolds. The only reason that it’s difference in the sides is that during the last stage of manufacturing, two layers of aluminum are pressed together through a rolling mill at the same time and one side comes in contact with a highly polished steel rollers and become shiny and the other side doesn’t come in contact with that and it’s kind of matte finish so there’s the answer there’s no difference to either side for any purpose
Bob Smith 9:13
why not run it through twice I’ll pay a little more shiny real shiny on both sides
Marcia Smith 9:18
man you are demanding consumer damn right all right now you can sleep well tonight. Okay, much to do that.
Bob Smith 9:25
What toy was famously banned from the National Security Agency and why this is a 1999 toy. From the what? banned from the US national security agency offices. It’s an animatronic toy. They still make them. Oh, it’s called Furby. Oh Furby. Yeah. They banned them from its headquarters because they it was a robot like animated toy which could record and repeat audio. That’s right. They said no, no, can’t have those engineer capturing state secrets. That’s so funny. So they put a bullet in and out anybody who sees anything like there’s got to report it. No. While
Marcia Smith 10:00
that Furby must leave the building, security
Bob Smith 10:02
researchers discovered the microphone on a Furby Connect could be remotely activated and use to record voices through a Bluetooth connection. But later they dropped the band they decided now I guess it can only record short snippets of things. It wasn’t gonna get any big national security secrets, but that that was the reason that the FBI was banned. What was a Furby doing there? Anyway? I guess people supposed to be protecting our country. Why would they have a Furby on their desk? At lunchtime? Good god. Okay, another question about another toy. This one in the news because of a movie Barbie. Oh, big time in the news. This is a recent article in The New York Times Magazine pointed this out I didn’t know this. What has Barbie never been since her debut in 1959. Barbie has been a fashion editor a nurse a flight attendant and executive career girl that’s how Mattel described it. Barbie has also been an astronaut and a President of the United States. Did you know that? I missed that one Barbie has been all those things. But what has Barbie never been a boy a mother? Oh, a mother, you know supposed to be a role model. But Barbie has never been a role model as a mother. Interesting. Well, they’re
Marcia Smith 11:14
going to change that. So I don’t think that they change that little naked body with the skinny little up and down.
Bob Smith 11:21
I don’t look like a pregnant woman.
Marcia Smith 11:23
Oh my god. That’s very interesting. Okay. Where did the term last ditch stand come from?
Bob Smith 11:32
Last ditch Stan? Yeah, it’s
Marcia Smith 11:34
my I’m taking a last ditch stand on this program.
Bob Smith 11:38
Is this from trench warfare from like World War One or something like that?
Marcia Smith 11:42
You got half of it? Right? It’s trench warfare. Okay, so you’re like the it’s interesting answer. It goes back to the 16th century holy cow. When an army attacked the walled cities, you know, for a fortress, they would advance by digging ditches a series of ditches to get them closer and closer so they could scale the wall. But if there was a successful counter attack, the invaders would start going backwards to the last ditch. Oh, and to the left, they kept going back until they got to the last very last stitch. And if they fail to hold off their attackers, then the battle was lost. You don’t have a ditch. Okay, so that’s what’s the year again? 16th century Bob. Wow. Yeah. Okay.
Bob Smith 12:28
All right. He got another entertainment question for you. Yes. Good. All right. What is the most watched Netflix show? From the early 2020s? Early 2000s? What
Marcia Smith 12:37
was it? I don’t know if this was was it Breaking Bad?
Bob Smith 12:40
No, it wasn’t.
Marcia Smith 12:41
I don’t even know if it was on Netflix. What is it? Squid game?
Bob Smith 12:46
That was the most watched show ever on Netflix. It’s a Korean produced show. And the point of this question is How popular is content for American viewers of Netflix that’s not produced in the United States. And here’s the answer that spurred an interest in Korean produced shows. So in 2020 to 60%, that six 0% of Netflix subscribers watched a Korean language show or movie from that point on. Really, that’s a triumph for Korean pop culture. I’ll
Marcia Smith 13:16
say. Here’s another fascinating thing to ponder, Bob, why do superficial paper cuts hurt so much?
Bob Smith 13:24
Oh, yeah. Death by 1000 cuts. That’s the term isn’t it? Yeah, it’s
Marcia Smith 13:28
seemingly more than much grosser cuts that it just hurts like the dickens.
Bob Smith 13:32
It’s such a tiny slit. I don’t understand why it is either. What what’s the answer to that
Marcia Smith 13:37
the skin surface of the hands where most paper cuts occur contain more nerve endings and almost any part of your body. Oh, extended Jenna paper cut won’t help much, but keeping it moist will help. Oh, okay. Keep that in mind. Fingertips and the forehead are the most sensitive parts of your body to pain. I didn’t know that. Those are the two parts of your body with the most nerve endings. Oh, I
Bob Smith 14:03
never would have thought of the forehead. No, I wanted to be there’s many times I’ve slapped my forehead in frustration which brings us
Marcia Smith 14:10
to the least painful part of your body and where you should probably get your tattoos in the future. Bob is the outer part of your shoulders. Which has thick skin and very few nerve endings. Hardly any at all. How about that? Know that inside your body? The organ that does not feel any pain is the brain. Yes,
Bob Smith 14:32
I know that. Oh, you did?
Marcia Smith 14:34
Yes they did. If pricked with a needle it will feel nothing. How
Bob Smith 14:37
did you know that? Well, because I studied that when I went through brain surgery. I did. I looked into it. Okay, I thought boy if I get you know accidentally touched by a scalpel or something that would be oh man that was hurt like hell but no, no, it doesn’t. You’re right. Well, that just probably saved a lot of surgeons careers. All right, let’s go to sports. I got a question for you talking under baseball in Maybe America’s game. But what country has played baseball for 145 years other than us know, we’ll have the answer that coming up next, when we return after this message, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob Smith. We’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith and I posed a question to Marsha about baseball. But just a reminder, before we get to that we do this broadcast for the Cedarbrook Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and it’s internet radio station every week. And we encourage you to go to your local library. They’re just wonderful sources of information, as are we not what I was gonna say. All right. All right. All right, Marsha. So Baseball, baseball may be America’s game. But which of these countries has played baseball to 445 years or more since 1878? The United Kingdom? No, cricket, Japan? Nope. The Netherlands, New Mexico. Which one? It’s one of those. Marcia, I know you said no. To all of them. Yes, I did. I’ll say Mexico. No, Marcia, Netherlands. No. Marcia, Japan. It is Japan. Yeah, he
Marcia Smith 16:12
played baseball, regular baseball. Yeah. You didn’t
Bob Smith 16:14
know that. No, baseball is big. In Japan. It has been for a long time. A lot of players when they would leave the American leagues. They’d play in Japan for a few years and come back sometimes it just happened in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, immensely popular. There were it was first introduced way back in the 1870s by Horace Mann, an American school teacher in Tokyo. And during the same decade in engineer Hiroshi HighRock ha came home from studying in the United States, and he launched several of the first organized Japanese baseball teams in 1878. And over the next decades, the sport swept through Japan. So you didn’t even know you probably didn’t hear about this. Then back in 1934. There was a Major League All Star Tour Japan led by Babe Ruth. Now Yeah, they went there with the roster, which included Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Earl Eberl, Lefty Gomez left to doubt and Moe Berg. Now, what did Moberg do their while he was in Japan in 1934. I don’t know he spied for the United States. He got up on rooftops and took pictures because they were worried about Japan maybe trying to do something in the future. And lo and behold, they did seven years later. But that’s the other country Japan started playing baseball in 1878. And today, Japanese professional baseball consists of two leagues with six teams, each millions of Japanese fans follow the sport closely.
Marcia Smith 17:34
Alright, here’s a question for you, Bob. We still have radios around the house with batteries in them, I think. Yes, we do. We have a few. Yeah. So two batteries run out faster. If you have the volume loud on your radio,
Bob Smith 17:48
maybe it does, because the gain is pulling more current from the battery to make the volume louder. So yeah, I’d say yes, if the volume is lower, the battery will last longer. That’s
Marcia Smith 17:59
right. The more power you use, the more juice you use. So if it’s allowed radio all the time, you’re going through the batteries much quicker. Now most people use their cell phones these days. And what drains your battery on your phone faster than anything?
Bob Smith 18:13
When you take a movie of something that that is probably taking more energy?
Marcia Smith 18:18
Yeah. But I mean, just regular on your phone. The brightness on your phone can drain your battery. Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Yeah, I thought it was just bad eyesight, ya know, along with background apps picture in picture mode. 24/7 connection old battery, location tracking apps and a surplus of notifications will all train your battery quick.
Bob Smith 18:38
Coming up. Lee. Yes. You have a notification quick, Lee. Okay, that happens in church. And I think really, what’s that important? You need to know about what your insurance. I need to be notified about something? Maybe it’s God. Okay. Mark, don’t
Marcia Smith 18:52
you have? Don’t you sing a song about that? No. But I have a question about
Bob Smith 18:57
what do the national anthems of Spain, Bosnia, Kosovo and San Marino have in common? Four very different countries, Spain, Bosnia, Kosovo, and San Marino. What do their national anthems have in common?
Marcia Smith 19:10
They all sound like the American anthem. No, I don’t know.
Bob Smith 19:14
They have no lyrics. Oh, you think that a national anthem would have to have lyrics? Yeah, right. Yeah, that’s the case for Bosnia Herzegovina, San Marino, Kosovo and Spain. Let’s take the biggest of these countries Spain. Its national anthem is called la marcha. Real the royal March dates back to 1761. There have been a number of attempts to write lyrics for it. But it’s never received official status so they just play the song. It’s more universal when you’re just playing a melody. Yeah, but I can’t imagine the national anthem our song being famous unless you have the words because that gives it really meaning. You know, the Fort McHenry battle during the with rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Marcia Smith 19:57
saying it to me bah and rockets are Do what does a yellow cap on a bottle of Coca Cola signify?
Bob Smith 20:05
The yellow cap? You’ve won the lottery. No, it’s one of those contests. No, I don’t know. See I don’t pay a lot of Coca Cola. The yellow cap. Well, what is the answer? It signifies
Marcia Smith 20:17
it’s kosher. Oh, no kidding. I had no idea. Sure cola. Yeah. Is that a new brand? No. Well, most plastic bottles of coke boasts a red cap and matches their usual color scheme. In the spring, you may notice bottles with yellow caps appearing on shelves and that means that the drink is kosher for the Jewish holiday of Passover. Wow. Okay, prior to 1935 Coke wasn’t kosher at all. But that year the company swapped out beef tallow glycerin for a vegetable counterpart that makes the drink kosher and vegan. Wow, I didn’t know that in 1980. However, Koch began using high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar, making the beverage non kosher for passover so they had to fix it again. Anyway, so they put a yellow cap on it and that’s what you know you can drink during Passover. Okay. I had no idea. Kosher cola. Yeah, I love it. Okay, are Holland in the Netherlands the same thing, but this thing always drives me nuts. Yes. Netherlands is Napa, they
Bob Smith 21:21
are the same. You Holland in the Netherlands are the same. The Netherlands is the official name of the country. Yeah, Holland is a region
Marcia Smith 21:29
Holland is a region of the Netherlands, two popular provinces within Netherlands but over the years, it just became common to call the Netherlands Holland. However, in 2020, the Netherlands officially dropped in support of the word Holland. They never mentioned that when I was there in 2020. You weren’t
Bob Smith 21:47
there? No, I was there like 40 years ago, and everybody talked about the Netherlands and I was wondering, Where is Holland, you know,
Marcia Smith 21:53
and so they dropped it and they redesigned the Holland logo, changed it to an n l logo with the letters and l standing for Netherlands.
Bob Smith 22:02
Okay. I have another question. What do cows and camels have in common? Well, they chew their cut. That’s right. They do. They’re both called ruminants. ruminants are animals that regurgitate the food backup from their stomachs and chew it again? Cows and camels do that. Okay, they enjoy their meals twice. A ruminant.
Marcia Smith 22:23
Okay, so I got that one right, get a ruminant. Notice how you just keep talking when I answer it, right.
Bob Smith 22:29
More questions, more trivia? Yes, you got that right.
Marcia Smith 22:32
Yes, I did. Okay. Why is royalty referred to as blue
Bob Smith 22:35
blooded, blue blooded royalty? Does that have to do with varicose veins or something? You write about the veins? Their veins looked dark. So they said they were blue blooded? Yeah, Explain.
Marcia Smith 22:48
Well, okay, there’s two theories. The first one, that term was first applied to the royalty of Spain during the Renaissance when the job of royalty was to loll around the palace and not lift a finger to do anything. And because of their total lack of physical exertion, their oxygen levels were lacking in their veins showed through their skin more than the others and it appeared that their blood was pale blue when it was just their veins really. Okay, that’s one theory. But here’s the more believable the oldest enriches families of the Northern Italian Casteel claim never to have intermarried with Moors or Jews or any races that weren’t as fair skinned as they were. Uh huh. And just to show that they hadn’t inter married to take their fair skin, they show their blue veins, which were more prominent than they were on darker skin people. Okay. And those blue veins were to be flaunted as proof of their purity, the blue bloods but you were right about the vein part.
Bob Smith 23:46
Okay, and whoever thought that was a symbol of beauty. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 23:51
I agree. Okay,
Bob Smith 23:53
Marcia, ever heard of pound cake?
Marcia Smith 23:54
Oh, I love pumpkin.
Bob Smith 23:56
Why do they call it that?
Marcia Smith 23:57
Because it’s heavy. It’s dense. It’s thick. It’s weighty? No, because you have to pound the mixture to put it together.
Bob Smith 24:07
Actually, it’s pretty simple. This goes back to 1795. It’s called the pound cake because it requires one pound of each ingredient. Really? Yeah. According to the original recipe published in Hartford, Connecticut, one pound sugar, one pound butter, one pound flour, one pound or 10 eggs, Rosewater, one Gill spices to your taste. Watch it well. It will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.
Marcia Smith 24:33
How big is it to have be like over four pounds of stuff.
Bob Smith 24:37
I can’t believe that it would bake in 15 minutes.
Marcia Smith 24:39
It couldn’t pass. Well. What kind of oven did they use? This
Bob Smith 24:44
is from Smithsonian Magazine or put it in a furnace. All right. Here’s another one. What’s the original meaning of the word souffle to rise? That’s exactly right. It means to inflate or to rise.
Marcia Smith 24:57
I am right a lot today. You
Bob Smith 24:59
are right Many times now, when was that first introduced? Can you give me the century? Oh, for heaven’s sake. Oh, let’s see how good you are. Let’s see how right you are. Let’s see how knowledgeable you are a century, not the 17th century, not the 16th not the 15th 18th Yes, the 18th You’re right, Marcia. It took you a while 1742 was first introduced. The recipe was published in The 1814 Cookbook Allah Potsie car royalty by the famous French chef Maria Antoine Korean myth. So there’s my information
Marcia Smith 25:31
all right, can I do my quotes now? Yes. Oh, do you want to play Frenchmen?
Bob Smith 25:35
Display friendship and more? Give me your fridge quote.
Marcia Smith 25:39
What did they call you in Paris? What did was my name for you?
Bob Smith 25:43
Oh we had that was funny things we used to say. Your love is gone yeah, my love is gone. What
Marcia Smith 25:48
were our names in Paris you were called sad co
Bob Smith 25:51
said yes. And I was I don’t know what I was on we call your staff My name was not on honoree on Lee didn’t know what my name
Marcia Smith 26:01
was Henri. Okay. My
Bob Smith 26:03
love is gone. Yeah, that was it is gone on. Like a butterfly. You just go on
Marcia Smith 26:09
we could give me on we Yes. line of thinking. Okay, here’s a quote from John lubok. Rest is not idleness and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waste of time.
Bob Smith 26:31
Well, that’s true. That’s what I used to tell my nice description you just gave it
Marcia Smith 26:35
Isn’t it lovely? Yeah. I tried to say something like that to our kids. When summer came. I don’t ever want to hear bored, go out and stare at this. clouds go by, you know, there’s always something to do. And here’s a quick one from Audrey Hepburn and this goes out to our daughter Chelsea, to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
Bob Smith 26:54
That’s a great. Yeah, it is. It shows you have faith in things. Yeah. All right. Well, we have faith in you. We have do, we hope that you will return again, that’s my faith. To hear Marsha again and again, be correct on the off ramp. If you’d like to be correct. If you’d like to send some questions to me that I can pose to Marsha to see if she’s still correct. You can send them to us via our website, go to the off ramp dot show and scroll all the way down to contact us. Okay, that’s it for this week. We’ll be back in another. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp. Wow. I just had to get that Oh.
The AF rep is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
