Smithsonian.com

An abstract image of an egg. Photo adapted from Flickr user davidex

A quiet whisper contains less than a nanowatt of power. A human shout is a little more than a microwatt, and when you get 68,000 screaming fans inside Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium—one of the NFL’s louder indoor stadiums—the Super Bowl represents a big game and an incredible source of sound. And all those shouts add up to real power.

In Sound and Sources of Sound, Anne P. Dowling writes: “The total energy radiated by the combined shouts of the Wembley cup final crowd during an exciting game being about that required to fry one egg!” Really? Well, American football fans probably outdo British soccer fans; anecdotal reports suggest that indoor stadiums can reach up to 117 decibels. Still, the question remains: Does the Super Bowl create enough power to fry up a dozen eggs?

I called Mark Sheplak at the University of Florida. He’s a mechanical engineer who has modeled how much power could be harvested from the acoustic liner of an airplane engine. (He’s found that the take-off of many commercial flights can generate the same amount of noise as roughly equal all the human shouts in the world, and this intense concentration of waste noise can be enough to power on-board acoustic monitoring systems.) “I don’t know if there would be enough sound in a stadium to get anything,” he says. “It would have to be really, really loud.”

Before we go much further, it’s also worth pointing out that an egg is a heterogeneous substance. “The various kinds of proteins do not all coagulate at the same temperature,” Herve This writes in Kitchen Mysteries. “One forms at 61°C another at 70°C, and so on….” The combination of cook time and temperature ultimately yields different textures and viscosities (which César Vega writes about extensively in the new book The Kitchen as Laboratory). For the sake of simplicity, let’s forget about any energy lost in cooking—heating a pan or allowing flames to escape around a pan—and take a wild guess at the power required to heat the yolk of a chicken egg to 85°C at sea level. (Engineers and food scientists, please feel free to weigh in). Let’s call it 30 watts to fry an egg: Five minutes of intense screaming.

The bigger problem here is that all these screaming fans are spread out over 1.8 million square feet and, to cook an egg, you would need to concentrate and harvest those sounds and convert them to heat. “You’re usually not terribly efficient,” Sheplak told me, “usually less than one percent efficiency of harvesting that energy. You need to be in a situation where it’s really loud. You can’t have a perpetual motion machine.”

So what might sound like a deafening cacophony during Sunday’s game might actually amount to only a single fried egg, if that. Perhaps thinking about how sports fans might actually cook an egg with their vocal cords demonstrates something else entirely: the pervasive use of the “fried egg” as a scientific analogy.

"Frito Favorites," circa 1954/Courtesy of Texas A&M University Press and Frito-Lay North America, Inc.

The curvy chips crinkle and crunch. Top the salty, golden corn chips with chili and you’ve got yourself a Frito pie, sometimes portioned out right inside the silvery, single-serving bag. The Frito pie is also known as a “walking taco,” “pepperbellies,” “Petro’s,” “jailhouse tacos,” or officially—under Frito-Lay North America, Inc.’s trademarked “packaged meal combination consisting primarily of chili or snack food dips containing meat or cheese corn-based snack foods, namely, corn chips”—the Fritos Chili Pie®. Call it what you will. It’s a soupy, creamy street food that’s recently entered the realm of haute cuisine.

Fritos got their start in Texas with the “Tom Edison of snack food.” The legend goes something like this, as Betty Fussell writes in The Story of Corn: “In San Antonio in 1932, a man named [Charles] Elmer Doolin bought a five-cent package of corn chips at a small café, liked what he ate and tracked down the Mexican who made them.” In another version of the story, Clementine Paddleford writes:

The flavor tickled his fancy, it lingered in memory. He found the maker was a San Antonian of Mexican extraction who claimed to be the originator of the thin ribbons of corn. The Mexican, he learned, was tired of frying the chips; he wanted to go home to Mexico and would be glad to sell out.

The café was more likely an icehouse, and the man who made the corn chip was named Gustavo Olquin, according to C.E. Doolin’s daughter Kaleta, who wrote a 2011 book Fritos Pie: Stories, Recipes, and More. She says her father worked briefly as a fry cook for Olquin and paid Olquin and his unnamed business partner $100 for a customized, hand-operated potato ricer, their 19 business accounts and the recipe for fritos—the patentable Anglo re-branding of Mexican fritas, or “little fried things.” Doolin borrowed $20 from the business partner; the rest came from his mother, Daisy Dean Doolin, who hocked her wedding ring for $80.

C. E. Doolin tinkered around with the recipe, mechanized the chipping process, and, in 1933, patented a “Dough Dispensing and Cutting Device” and trademarked the Fritos name. He worked on breeding custom varieties of hybrid corn. Doolin invented a “Bag Rack” and adopted the now-familiar practice of deliberately misspelling products to draw attention—“Krisp Tender Golden Bits of Corn Goodness.”

Rack header/Courtesy of Texas A&M University Press and Frito-Lay North America, Inc.

Whether fritas become fritos as an accidental Anglofication or as a deliberate “sensational spelling”—in the vein of Dunkin’ Donuts, Froot Loops, Rice Krispies—remains something of an open question. Prior to Doolin’s trademark, though, fritos does not appear to have referred to fried corn chips in Mexican Spanish. Either way, snack foods with distinctive, masculine “Os” persevered: Doolin would go on to create Cheetos and Fritatos; the company he founded would introduce Doritos and Tostitos.

What’s remarkable in retrospect is that he appears to have intended Fritos as a side dish or even an ingredient. In fact, the first recipe Daisy Dean Doolin came up with in 1932 was a “Fritos Fruit Cake”; its ingredients include candied fruits, pecans and crushed Fritos. Another early recipe for a company contest submitted by the woman who would later became C.E. Doolin’s wife, Mary Kathryn Coleman, described a “Fritoque Pie,” a chicken casserole with crushed Fritos. Her prize: $1. (This recipe has been lost and the lack of documentation probably contributes to competing claims about Frito pie’s origins at a New Mexico Woolworth’s in the 1960s.)

Pies aside, the fried corn chips became a pantry staple and an easy-to-use replacement for cornmeal, salt, and oil. Their versatility was practically unlimited. Advertisements from the 1940s said, “They’re good for breakfast, lunch, snack-time and dinner.”

Even more surprising for a man who revolutionized American corn chips and presaged the meteoric rise of the “Anglo corn chip,” which firmly cemented itself when Frito-Lay’s unveiled Doritos in 1966: Doolin did not eat meat or salt. He was a devoted follower of Herbert Shelton, a Texas healer, who ran for president on the American Vegetarian Party ticket.

I thought this transformation of Fritos loosely mirrored that of the Graham cracker, a whole-wheat health food that evolved into a sugary snack. I called his daughter, Kaleta Doolin, and asked about the apparent disconnect. “Fritos have always been a salty snack,” she said, “unless you’re at the factory and take them off the assembly line before they go through the salter, which is what we did.”

Rack header/Courtesy of Texas A&M University Press and Frito-Lay North

As much scorn and derision as today’s leading nutritional gurus heap onto processed foods, it’s worth noting that Fritos arrived here by way of a Mesoamerican staple and their invention and flavor owes a debt to one of the greatest food processing technologies ever invented: nixtamalization. The 3,000-year-old tradition adding calcium hydroxide—wood ash or lime—so greatly enriches the available amino acids in masa corn that Sophie Coe writes in America’s First Cuisines that the process underlies “the rise of Mesoamerican civilization.” Lacking this technology, early Europeans and Americans (who considered corn fit for slaves and swine) learned that eating a diet exclusively based on unprocessed corn led to pellagra, a debilitating niacin deficiency causing dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death.

As we approach one of the biggest snack days of the year and as “Anglo corn chips” continue to make up an increasing percentage of the snack foods market, perhaps it’s also worth celebration the incredible corn processing technology that brought us masa, tortillas fritas, Late Night All Nighter Cheeseburger-flavored Doritos and, of course, the Frito pie.

Leaf plates. Images courtesy of VerTerra

The first single-use food service item was the paper plate, invented in 1904. Paper cups followed soon after. Over the next century, disposable cups, utensils and plates were developed in increasingly durable—and environmentally unfriendly—materials. The low point, as far as the planet’s health is concerned, was probably the original Styrofoam cup. It was durable, lightweight and kept people from burning their hands while holding a hot cup of coffee, but it was also made using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which break down ozone in the atmosphere. CFCs were phased out in the late 1980s, but that didn’t eliminate the problem of polystyrene, like other plastics, hanging around landfills for centuries after being used just once.

According to Time magazine, Americans throw away an estimated trillion disposable plates and utensils per year. The best option, of course, would be if everyone stopped using disposable products altogether. That’s probably never going to happen—it’s just too convenient to be able to grab a cup of coffee on your way to work. But some ingenious new products have come out in recent years that might be able to reduce the damage, including disposable cups and utensils made from a material derived from corn. They look just like plastic, but can be composted by a commercial composter so they don’t end up in landfills. Even more interesting—not to mention seasonally appropriate—is a line of plates made from fallen leaves, which can be naturally home-composted after use.

In the natural order of things, leaves fall from trees and eventually disintegrate, their nutrients enriching the soil to help the next generation of leaves and other plants grow. If those leaves happen to be in someone’s yard or a public place, they are usually picked up. Gardeners and other environmentally conscious people will add the leaves to a compost pile to become a natural fertilizer. But more often than not, the fallen leaves are incinerated or taken to the dump, where they will still disintegrate over time, but the plastic bags that were used to collect them will stick around for a good, long while.

VerTerra, a company founded in 2007, just adds another step to the leaves’ natural life cycle: dinner. The idea for plates made from fallen leaves came to VerTerra founder and CEO, Michael Dwork, when he was traveling in rural India. He saw a woman soaking palm leaves and then pressing them in a kind of waffle iron. She then served food on the pressed leaves. When he returned to the United States and business school, he experimented with adapting this simple and resourceful concept to make a line of attractive, durable and environmentally friendly single-use plates and bowls. (Not as cheap as paper or plastic, though; they can cost up to about a dollar per piece.) After they’re used, they can be thrown in the compost pile, where they will naturally compost within two months. The company website even includes a tutorial on composting at home, whether you live in the country or in a tiny apartment.

According to the company, the plates are made from leaves in India because no American leaves would produce the right effect. Only fallen leaves are used; steam, heat and pressure are applied to form the plates. Since nothing but leaves and water are added, they’re nontoxic and can be safely added to the compost pile.

That means the plate you eat your food on can help grow your next meal. Pretty cool.

As long as you're careful not to spill, the computer can get you a great culinary education. Image courtesy of Flickr user Travelin' Librarian

Whether for career development or their own edification, the culinarily curious can gorge on all kinds of food knowledge online. Here are a few of the offerings:

Sharpen your cooking skills. Everything from nifty tips on peeling garlic to full-fledged cooking shows are available online. Saveur (source of the amazing garlic video), Epicurious, Chow and Cook’s Illustrated (for subscribers only) are good sites to check for short technique and recipe demonstrations. The Culinary Institute of America’s ciaprochef.com is full of recipes and videos. And a number of YouTube cooking shows have gained a loyal following, including Show Me the Curry, where Hetal and Anuja help you navigate South Asian and occasionally other cuisines; Great Depression Cooking, starring 96-year-old Clara; and the amusingly enigmatic Cooking with Dog (tagline: It’s not what you think…), where you can learn to make all kinds of Japanese dishes while the host’s coiffed poodle looks serenely on.

Get a culinary degree. Until someone figures out how to transport food via the Internet, you can’t actually attend cooking school online. But you can earn an online degree in a culinary-related subject that doesn’t involve cooking. Le Cordon Bleu USA offers a bachelor of arts in culinary management and an associate of occupational studies in hospitality and restaurant management. If you can’t move to Vermont (which you should consider, because it really is lovely), the New England Culinary Institute offers an online bachelor of arts in hospitality and restaurant management. And Virginia College Online’s culinary arts associate’s degree  is designed for those who have already completed cooking school elsewhere.

Feed your inner geek. One of the greatest developments in recent years for people like me who love to learn but live far from a big university is iTunes U. Institutions like Oxford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the National Portrait Gallery upload audio and video of lectures—and most of them are free to download from iTunes. A few of the foodie offerings are Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science’s public lecture series on science and cooking, with demonstrations from top chefs like Wylie Dufresne, on meat glue (transglutaminase), and José Andrés, on gelation; the University of Warwick on how to build a chocolate-powered race car; and culinary historian Jessica Harris speaking at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Learn how to write about food. If you already know plenty about food and want to share your knowledge with the world, online food-writing classes can help tune up your presentation. Indian cookbook author Monica Bhide offers occasional e-courses covering everything from recipe writing to food memoir. The latest class started in September, but check her site for upcoming dates. Gotham Writers’ Workshop’s next 11-week course, which includes a Q&A session with a New York Times food editor, begins October 4.

Farming and new media are not mutually exclusive. Image courtesy of Flickr user IRRI Images

Conscientious eaters want to know all about where their food came from, how it was grown and who grew it. Part of the appeal of farmers’ markets is getting face time with those who spend their days with their hands in the dirt. Suddenly, consumers want to have a “relationship” with their small-scale farmers, ranchers and cheese makers — people who once toiled in obscurity. (This is still usually the case in the larger agricultural industry, where the vast majority of our food comes from.)

One unintended consequence is that, now, personality counts. A grower with a winning smile or the gift of the gab may get the sale even when the wares at the next table are just as fresh and succulent-looking. There’s a pair of young, attractive male farmers in my area whose tent always seems to be crowded with female customers.

Now, technology that wasn’t around a decade ago—blogs, smartphones, Facebook and Twitter—is taking the farmer-consumer relationship to another level. It’s how CSA members can find out what’s likely to be in their share soon, get recipes for what to do with bok choy or celeriac, and read cute little stories about how the farm animals are doing. The farmer gets to communicate with current and potential customers, and office-bound readers get to live vicariously through their computer or phone screens.

Ree Drummond, who has parlayed her rural life as the wife of a cattle rancher into a wildly successful site called The Pioneer Woman, gives a glimpse of the possibilities for savvy online self-marketing. She doesn’t quite qualify as a rancher herself—although she often rides along and helps out with the chores, she seems to usually have a camera in hand—but her gorgeous photographs and folksy anecdotes about life on the range are about as good an advertisement as any for making a living off the land.

Most farmer blogs are far simpler (and, some might argue, more authentic). The Dairyman’s Blog, written by a young Alabama dairy farmer, offers “MooTube” videos of life on the farm. Self-described farm wife Jill Heemstra focuses on the funny side of farming at Fence Post Diaries, with blog titles like “You Might Be a Farmer’s Wife If…” (example: “…you use the phrase ‘semen tank’ in casual conversation”).

Blogs and tweets are also providing a new platform for farmers of all stripes to express their views on agriculture and politics. Missouri hog farmer Chris Chinn advocates on her blog for fewer government regulations and conventional farm practices that she feels have gotten a bad rap, while small-scale farmer Gavin Venn tweets as @morethanorganic with his thoughts on animal welfare and genetically modified foods.

Social media has become a stand-in for the kind of conversations farmers have always had in person, about the weather, what’s growing, advice and opinions. The Twitter hashtag #agchat encompasses discussions of parenting on the farm, venting about too much or too little rain, links to agriculture news and just about everything else of interest to the ag-minded.

But tweeting from the tractor has its perils. As Stewart Skinner, a Canadian pig farmer with the Twitter handle @ModernFarmer tweeted recently about his gadget, “The blackberry can’t stand up to the rigors of the barn. RIM needs to come up with a smartphone for farmers.”