Hot Pockets and Their Ties to Creepy Tommyknockers

In Cornwall, when you’re eating your lunch pasty deep in the copper mines, it’s tradition to throw off the excess pastry used to pinch closed the filling as an offering to the Tommyknockers, the invisible sprites who inhabit the mines.    That’s unless you want to risk a cave-in or an ‘accidental’ fall into a mine shaft or want to find the next good ore lode.   It’s the same tradition in Devon, across the Tamar River from Cornwall, eating YOUR lunch pasty deep in the tin mines.     But if you’re eating a Cornish pasty the excess pastry comes from the crimped side of the D-Shaped pasty, while if it’s a Devon pasty, the excess comes from its top crimp.   You’d think the shapes would be the other way around – you know “D” for Devon –  but it’s just one of the weird rivalries from the two areas in Western England.     It’s a bit like the difference between Dixie Chili from Kentucky, and Skyline Chili across the Ohio River in Cincinnati.

Both area’s pasties are filled with whatever your wife or mother had in her larder at the time – parsnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, maybe a bit of salt pork or smoked bacon if you’re lucky.  There’s a joke that anything could be used to fill a Cornish pastry and as a result the Devil never came there for fear he’d be made into such a filling.   And if it’s near Christmas and the females of your house were particularly industrious, you might wash your pasty down with a shot of house-made Sloe Gin, made from the berries of the many hedgerows separating farm grazing plots.

When the Cornish and Devon immigrants came to work the mines in the United States, like the copper mines of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; or the lead mines in Mineral Point, Wisconsin; or Butte, Montana’s copper mines; or even the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania, they brought their portable lunch food with them.    Pennsylvania also had an influx of Italian immigrants who worked the coal mines and brought with them their Pepperoni roll, a version of the pasty – a pepperoni baked into a soft white Italian bread.     Steven King popularized the Cornish folklore of the Tommyknockers with his novel of the same name in 1987.   The series Ghost Hunters on the Travel Channel recently did an investigation of the Phoenix Gold Mine in Colorado Springs purportedly plagued by Tommyknockers.

America saw the potential of these portable foods and invented the Hot Pocket, which is sort of a mashup of the Cornish/Devon pasty and the Italian pepperoni roll.  Iranian-Jewish immigrant Brothers Paul and David Merage of Chef America, Inc. developed a pastry pocket that would stay crispy, like a pasty, when microwaved.    It was introduced in 1980 as the Tastywich, and then renamed the Hot Pocket in 1983.   Since then it has become a $2 billion dollar category, with 50 different flavors of Hot Pockets in breakfast, lunch and even dinner varieties.    They’ve even brought Germanic flavors into the mix with their pretzel dough hot pockets – I think a Goetta filled hot pocket is in order. 

David and Paul Merage, Iranian Jewish immigrant brothers who invented the Hot Pocket.

Whether you’re like me, who prefers the traditional pepperoni hot pocket, or you’re the more adventurous sriracha steak lover, the next time you microwave a frozen Hot Pocket at UDF, make sure you save some crust for the Tommyknockers, lest you fall into a mine shaft or have a pile of rocks fall on your head.

In Food Green is Good Unless its Fast Green #3

Ok all ye leprechauns who drank green beer or ate a green spaghetti’d threeway yesterday.   I hope your supplier used a natural dye, and not Fast Green # 3, which is used in a lot of commercial drinks, candy,  cotton candy, ice cream, sherbert, sorbet, jellies, fruit filled desserts, confections, dry bakery mixes, jellos, sauces and even fish.   If you had canned peas with your corned beef, you definitely had Green # 3.

The bad thing is that Green # 3 is a known tumorigenic, which means it creates cancerous tumors, particularly in the bladder.   And, despite this knowledge, it’s one of the seven approved FDA food coloring agents.  I know, I know I’m sounding like a Karen.  I know there are a lot of urban myths about food coloring – like that the yellow dye, tartrazine, in Mt. Dew significantly lowered male sperm count.    That has not been confirmed by studies and should not be used as a prophylactic    But these are known and tested toxicologies with Green #3.   It’s also an irritant to the digestive and respiratory systems.    But with the luck of the Irish, green food is not very popular or appetizing, so it tends to be the least used of the seven approved FDA dyes.   And there are more natural options for dying something green.

But that’s unless you’re a kid and you love the popular sour flavors and eat a lot of green candy.  That’s because one of the most common uses is in candy and energy drinks.   And the green color is super popular in sour and tropical flavored candy.    So if your kid likes green apple Jolly Ranchers or sour green anything or energy drinks – you may want to limit or reduce their use.

Why is it we need dayglo-dyed green or dayglo colored anything for it to be considered ok?   None of the food dyes exist as a normal in nature anyway.     What is it about our American psychology that makes us think a piece of produce has to be the perfect shape and color.    I love it when I see people pinching and smelling the produce at the grocery to see if something is good enough to bring home.   Unless it’s organic, there have been so many chemicals sprayed, pumped, and so much hybridizing done to the flesh  that there is no color change at the shelf, you’re not eating a natural fruit or vegetable.   They’re designed not to ripen.  

Thankfully, there are smart companies like Imperfect Foods who are selling off spec produce (and growing like mad) – i.e. weird shaped, off color, or anything that doesn’t meet the specs of the retail grocer buyer or product manager.   Those can be specs that have nothing to do with the taste or quality or even healthiness of the food, but some prettiness factor a well-dressed, office-residing geek drummed up.

The pawpaw is a green fruit that is a perfect example of how nature is supposed to work.    The Pawpaw was never commercialized, hybridized or treated.    As a result, you’ll never see it in a Kroger because it has a short shelf life and is just not profitable.    There is a very specific season they are available in the fall, and only a short maybe two week window where they can be eaten, before they start to turn bad.   This is how we were meant to eat – by the seasons, and with natural ingredients.

I was recently so excited to see Spargel, the white asparagus at my Whole Foods.   But when I brought them home, I realized they were not the tender, luscious spargel I was used to.  They were tough, thick and flavorless.    That will teach me to expect farmers market quality from commercial retail grocers.

I look forward to the opening of our local farmer’s markets and getting some real greens not dyed by FD&C #3.