(Deceiver) “Yes, Virginia, spaghetti grows on trees.”

Imagine a television program depicting beautiful rural scene where trees are in full blossom near an Alpine lake. Soft mandolin music is playing in the background. A British narrator with great gravitas makes an announcement;

“It is not only in Britain that spring, this year, has taken everyone by surprise. Here, in the Ticino, on the borders of Switzerland and Italy, the slopes overlooking Lake Lugano have already burst into flower at least a fortnight earlier than usual.”

So far, so good. It sounds like the beginning prose of our own poetic writer here, Hardscrabble Farmer. The narrator continues.

“Most important of all, it’s resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop.”

The scene switches to trees heavily laden with spaghetti handing down from the branches.

Young women dressed in traditional Swiss garb are picking ripe pasta from the trees, and very gingerly laying it in their baskets. The narrator explains that the Swiss treat the spaghetti harvest as a “family affair” as compared to Italy where it is like an industrial assembly line supplied by Italy’s “vast spaghetti plantations in the Po valley.” He speaks softly but carries the big stick of measured authority, reminding folks of what they should have known all along.

Then, the narrators tone drops a pitch and says somewhat ominously; —

“The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer. There is always the chance of a late frost which, while not entirely ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavor and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in the world markets.”

But, wait, there’s good news, after all; — “But now these dangers are over and the spaghetti harvest goes forward!” The viewers should be relieved, he informs them, that the “spaghetti weevil” is no longer a threat.

The narrator then gives a brief description of how the spaghetti crop is harvested and laid out to dry. He addresses the unasked question; “How is it that all spaghetti is so amazingly uniform in length?” The narrator responds in a conspiratorial voice — as if letting you in on a great secret — that it’s the result of, “many years of patient endeavor by plant breeders who succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti.”

The commercial, which was filmed in black and white and made to appear in the style of a Movietone newsreel, ends with images of a happy family celebrating the fruits of their labor. The “ceremonial dish” of spaghetti was picker earlier in the day, dried in the sun, and “brought fresh from the garden to the table at the very peak of condition”. The folks even make a toast from their special drinking receptacles called “boccalinos”.

Here it is.

OBSERVATIONS

1)      The idea for the broadcast came from Charles de Jaeger, an Austrian by birth, who fled to Britain in the 1930’s when the Nazi’s invaded Austria. When he was a schoolboy in Vienna one of his teachers taunted the class by saying, “Boys, you are so stupid, you’d believe me if I told you spaghetti grew on trees!”.

2)      That this was aired on APRIL FOOLS DAY (1957) seemingly went over the heads’ of quite a few folks.  This hoax is listed as #1 in 100 best April Fools’ Day hoaxes of all time on http://hoaxes.org/aprilfool/

3)      There were only two TV channels in the UK in 1957 – the BBC and the independent ITV — so, this broadcast was seen by millions.

4)      The broadcast ended and within minutes callers besieged the BBC switchboard … some with complaints, many with questions. It was so bad that the BBC was obligated to issue a statement before the end of the day;

 “The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland. The hoax Panorama program, narrated by distinguished broadcaster, Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest. It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry. But some viewers failed to see the funny side of the broadcast and criticized the BBC for airing the item on what is supposed to be a serious factual program. Others, however, were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush.”

 5)      DESPITE the retraction, callers CONTINUED to flood the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Exasperated switchboard operators eventually had to resort to that special brand of English humor by advising callers … “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best”. And then some did just that!

 The point of this little article is to offer some proof that a significant percentage of a population, and in any time-period,  and regardless of country of origin are GULLIBLE AND WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING … no matter how moronic the proposition.

For example, there are people, even here, who believe that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax. The FACT that this would have required at least hundreds of fallible human beings to pull it off is brushed off as irrelevant to them. “Fallible” in the sense that it is a FACT that a secret no longer remains a secret when more than one person knows the secret.   People spill-the-beans the first chance they get as it is human nature, and that, too, is a fact. And, yet, we are to believe that hundreds (or, at a minimum, dozens) of human beings have kept this secret now for years … and will continue to do so forever. I’m guessing that such people are, at this very moment, planting spaghetti sprigs in their Ragu sauce.

 SOURCES:

http://intimesgoneby.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/april-fools-day-1957-the-spaghetti-tree-hoax/

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_swiss_spaghetti_harvest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax

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 BONUS SECTION —- HOMEMADE TOMATO SAUCE (fast and easy)

Saturday we went to the farmers market. There was a basket of tomatoes for sale which were bruised, somewhat ugly, and very ripe … about 12 pounds, for a mere $3. I bought them.

Sunday we celebrated my dad’s 90^th-something birthday. Spaghetti happens to be in his Top 3 favorite foods.

I’ve made spaghetti (tomato) sauce from scratch just once before in my life, about 15+ years ago. It was a TEDIOUS and LOOOONG process. Picture the typical Italian mama cooking ALL DAY in the kitchen; starting with blanching the tomatoes (to remove the skin), taking out the seeds, cooking and stirring, adding this, adding that, cooking and stirring, and oh, yeah, more stirring.

I just found out much of the flavor from a tomato comes from the skin, the seeds and the gelatinous material around the seeds. So, removing those items seems crazy at this point. Removing seeds is done to remove the “bitterness” that sometimes results in cooking tomatoes. However, there is a much better remedy for taking care of that.

Anyway, I SWORE to myself I would never do that again, and haven’t, until Saturday. I found a recipe online a few months ago which claimed to simply the process tremendously while producing superior results. He was correct. Everyone in my family absolutely loved it …… a LOT, and we are a critical bunch when it comes to food. It took about two hours, and most of that time was in the roasting and subsequent heating.

Why bother making your own tomato sauce? Because if the label shows “Imported by”, or “Prepared for” but no country of manufacture then it is highly probable that the tomato sauce was manufactured in China.

The original recipe link is at the end. I modified it and it’s listed below.

RECIPE

1)-  Buy enough tomatoes, which when cut in half, will completely cover a baking sheet. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. (It should go without saying that the quality of your sauce can’t exceed the quality of your tomatoes. So, if you buy that bland cardboard tasting crap from a supermarket, then don’t expect good sauce regardless of how much you doctor it up. If the tomato tastes yucky when eaten raw, it will taste just as yucky when cooked. Garbage in, garbage out.)

2)- Light grease a baking sheet with a good oil. I used grape seed oil.

3)- Cut tomatoes in half, remove stem, remove the stiff core, place face down on cookie sheet.

4)- Make a slit in each tomato. Stuff some minced garlic in it according to your taste. I used ½ teaspoon.

5)- Get a big yellow onion, peel it, cut it to make rings.       Place a ring on each tomato.

6)- Drizzle good oil over the tomatoes.

7)- Spread seasonings over tomatoes according to your liking. I used Himalayan rock salt (gotta have salt!), and copious amounts of oregano, basil, and thyme. At this point I also added a cup of freshly grated Parmesan. (Don’t add to much spice, because roasting intensifies the taste. It’s much easier to add more spice in the final step.)

So, that shouldn’t have taken you more than 15 minutes.

8)-  Roast for about 45 minutes. There’s your big secret, roasting. Roasted tomatoes creates an incredible richness in taste not found in even fresh tomatoes. That’s why roasted peanuts taster richer and better than plain peanuts. So, roast for about 50 minutes or until the tomatoes are soft and the skin begins to break or brown.

9) Remove from oven. Put the tomatoes ONLY in a food processor … not the liquid. However, reserve the liquid because you might need in later.   Pulse until you get the consistency you like.

10) Taste the sauce. The end.

————————————-

Or, is it? You have a decision to make. Unless you’re really brilliant and lucky, you will probably have to adjust the spices. A little more of this, add some that … whatever …. hey, you’re not building a rocket engine, you’re just making sauce. There is no “right” or “wrong” way. It’s all up to your taste buds, and your creativity.

In my case the sauce was too thin. As I mentioned, the tomatoes were very ripe and juicy. To thicken it up I “fried” some tomato paste. Just heat it for a minute or two on a skillet, no oil, as this will bring out the full flavor of the paste. Then I added just some of the reserved liquid from the roasting. Add the tomato paste concoction to the tomato sauce. I cooked it down for another 40 minutes, until it was the thick consistency I like.

I like my sauce smooth and creamy … but also with chunks of tomato. A paradox for sure, and impossible to buy from a store. At this point the sauce is creamy smooth from being in the food processor. So, I took a couple of fresh tomatoes and finely diced them and threw them in the pot. Perfect.

ADD MORE STUFF you like! In my case, the sauce did have a slight bitter taste. Two things cure that; butter or wine. I added ¾ stick of butter, let that melt, and 15 minutes later the bitter taste was gone, not to mention the sauce had a creamy texture. You like mushrooms in your sauce? Now is the time to add it. Some people like a sweeter tasting sauce. So, go ahead and add some honey …no one will shoot you. What you end up with is a sauce that is amazingly delicious and EXACTLY to your liking …. and you won’t poison your family with Chinese garbage.

SOURCES

Here is the original recipe with pictures;

http://geroldblog.com/2013/07/13/roasted-tomato-sauce/

Here are comments on a blog where folks share their secrets to great tomato sauce. Some very interesting info is presented there. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/847753

Author: Stucky

I'm right, you're wrong. Deal with it. View all posts by Stucky