‘Muffin Man’ returns to prominence as bakery icon

Care to sing along? “Oh, do you know the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man who lives on Drury Lane? Yes, I know the Muffin Man…who lives on Drury Lane.” 

We all know “The Muffin Man.” It’s a British nursery rhyme and sing-along ditty, which dates back to 1820.

 

Kudos to McKee Foods Corporation of Collegedale, Tenn., owners of the popular line of tasty Little Debbie Snacks, for making the connection. 

Observing the 200-year anniversary of “The Muffin Man” from children’s literature is commendable as well marketable. 

“The Muffin Man” originated in London, England, and it validates the existence of muffin vendors who once upon a time fanned out and walked about in the working-class neighborhoods. Wearing long white aprons, the muffin men would carry trays of muffins on their heads and ring bells to call customers to their hot treats. 

Freelance writer Lindsey Wojcik said Little Debbie has reinvented “The Muffin Man” character to be the mascot for its “Mini Muffins and Mini Brownies” products. 

McKee Foods’ marketing specialist Erica Harrison told Wojcik: “We commissioned a free, downloadable e-book that tells the story about how “The Muffin Man” got his name and makes for a sweet, sharable reading moment with your child.”

The story’s author is Melody Delgado, a novelist who specializes in Christian fiction. Her light-hearted and humorous touch is perfect for the new rhyming book. The young English prince expresses his breakfast food boredom when faced with yet another bowl of disgusting and dreary oatmeal.

Illustrator Jim Talbot, who has worked for more than 35 years as an artist in the toys and games industry, portrays the young prince as a carrot-top royal with a pompadour hairstyle. (Any resemblance of the boy to U.S. President Donald Trump is surely purely coincidental.) 

Hence, the king and the queen decide to host a muffin bake-off at the castle and have the lad select England’s premier muffin maker. Let the games begin.

The muffin made by the baker from Kings Road was too fancy. The one made by the baker from Oxford Street was too crumbly, while the muffin made by the baker from Piccadilly Street was too crusty. The baker from Hyde Park used too many flavors, including black olives and broccoli. Yuck. 

The baker from Drury Lane presented the prince with a platter of muffins that were just the right size…and chock-full of chocolate chips (or so it appears). “You win the prize,” the prince proclaimed, and the “miracle muffin maker” is crowned with “The Muffin Man” toque blanche (chef’s hat).

Talbot’s characterization of “The Muffin Man” depicts a jolly fellow with a round face, a bulbous nose and sparkly blue eyes. His smile is partially hidden by a curly, bushy reddish-brown handlebar mustache. The adorable image also appears on new packaging. 

Building “muffin awareness” is part of Little Debbie’s job description for “The Muffin Man.”

He is delivering. A new product now available in stores is labeled “Birthday Cake Mini Muffins.” It promises to be a ‘mini muffin-ized’ version of Little Debbie’s vanilla-flavored cakes with candy confetti and rainbow sprinkles,” said Erica Harrison, Little Debbie product manager. “It’s a treat the entire family can enjoy.”

“Muffintologists” are a new breed of North American consumers. Perhaps the movement started in Canada with healthy bran muffins. The stated goal is to have muffins displace doughnuts as the morning’s most popular baked good item.

The upswell of local coffee shops and artisan bakeries are contributing to “muffin mania.”

North Carolina ought to have a ‘state muffin’

What North Carolina needs is a “state muffin.” Several states have selected their own “official muffin,” so there is a precedent. 

There are two obvious options: a strawberry muffin or a blueberry muffin. Consider this: In 2001, the strawberry became North Carolina’s official “red berry” and blueberry was voted in as the state “blue berry.” 

The “enacting legislation” was a classic case of “pure politics” within the North Carolina General Assembly, according to Jeremy Markovich of Our State magazine. 

The original bill, which was introduced in February 2001 and sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Russell, R-Goldsboro, proposed that the strawberry become the official state fruit, period. The “authors of the bill” were fourth graders in Mrs. Manning Musgrave’s class at Tommy’s Road Elementary School in Goldsboro. (“Go Tigers!”) 

Rep. Russell’s “strawberry bill” passed the House of Representatives, but it stalled in the Senate.

Meanwhile, elementary school students from Dare County stepped up to recommend that the scuppernong grape be the state fruit, not the strawberry. They “bent the ear” of Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Manteo, president pro tempore of the Senate. 

Scuppernongs are big, juicy grapes that are green-gold in color and members of the muscadine family. They took their name from the Scuppernong River, which flows through Columbia in Tyrrell County to enter Bull Bay and the Albemarle Sound. Sen. Basnight represented Tyrrell County as well. 

The “fruit bill” was re-cobbled in the bowels of the Senate, with input from heavy hitters such as T. LaFontine “Fountain” Odom Sr., D-Charlotte, and Sen. John Hosea Kerr III, D-Goldsboro. 

“As if by magic,” Markovich wrote, the Senate comes out with a new version of the bill…and the scuppernong is the state fruit. Not the strawberry. And that’s not all.” 

The blueberry was added to the language in the bill as the official North Carolina “blue berry.” The strawberry was degraded in status to be the state’s official “red berry.” 

Democrats ruled the roost in 2001, so a conference committee approved a “scuppernong/strawberry/blueberry combo” bill. 

The Goldsboro students objected and voted by an overwhelming margin to write to Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat, asking him to veto their own bill. He disregarded their plea and signed the bill into law on Dec. 16, 2001. 

When Markovich asked Carolyn Russell, who is now living in Morehead City, about the outcome some years later, she told him: “That’s the way sausage is made, dear.” 

“If you think about it that way,” Markovich said, “that class project was a huge success. The students got involved. They helped introduce a bill to make the strawberry into an official state symbol, and that is exactly what happened. And along the way, they learned some things.” 

Today, some North Carolina wineries are making wine with scuppernong grapes. “In the kitchen,” says Caroline Rogers of Southern Living magazine, “scuppernongs can be used to make jams, jellies and preserves.” 

Muffin recipes with scuppernongs are rare. On the other hand, strawberries and blueberries are popular choices used by muffin makers. 

Elizabeth Waterson of Orange County, Calif., who maintains the blog “Confessions of a Baking Queen,” suggests that strawberry blueberry muffins “are the perfect breakfast treat. Adding strawberries to a classic blueberry muffin mix makes your morning treat a little sweeter!” 

Waterson holds dual citizenship in the United States and in the United Kingdom, where the muffin was first created on Drury Lane of London, England. Heed her advice.

 No other state has crowned the strawberry blueberry muffin as its state muffin. North Carolina should seize the day.

Beaufort’s claim: ‘Blackbeard slept here’…and then some

Beaufort, N.C., is tagged with the reputation of being a “pirate town,” which adds to the charm and intrigue of this historic seaside village. 

The most notorious pillager and plunderer of all time – Blackbeard the Pirate – was a regular visitor. 

Journalists from the British Isles note with pride that Bristol, a port community in southwestern England, is the hometown of Edward Teach Jr., born about 1680, the son of Capt. Edward Teach Sr. and his first wife, Elizabeth. 

Edward Jr. became Blackbeard, who “still captures our imaginations to this day,” wrote journalist Maddy Searle of Edinburgh, Scotland. He was bad to the bone and “one of the most infamous pirates in history.” 

Blackbeard sailed the seas around the West Indies and Britain’s American colonies, making a fearsome reputation for himself,” she said. 

Searle cited research by the late Robert Earl Lee of Kinston, N.C., who authored several Blackbeard books. Lee wrote that “Teach was born into an intelligent, respectable, well-to-do family…and was undoubtedly swayed by Bristol’s maritime heritage and traditions…and privateering.” 

The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) believes: Teach “served in Queen Anne’s War between England and Spain, which lasted from 1702-13…sailing out of Kingston, Jamaica, to prey on French ships for Britain.” 

“After the war, Blackbeard reportedly sailed in consort with the pirate crew of Capt. Benjamin Hornigold,” based in the Bahamas, according to DNCR. Blackbeard captured the French slave ship, La Concorde, in 1717 off Saint Vincent Island in the Caribbean and transformed the vessel into his flagship, which he renamed as Queen Anne’s Revenge.” 

Lee wrote: “Teach grew a coarse, coal-black beard that covered the whole of his face. He allowed his monstrous mane to grow to an extravagant length, and he was accustomed to braiding it into little pigtails, tied with ribbons of various colors.”

 “As a finishing touch before a battle, he tucked under the brim of his hat fuses (made of hemp) that would burn at the rate of a foot an hour, the eerie coils of smoke from which added to the frightfulness of his appearance. Across his shoulders he wore a sling with two or three pistols hanging in holsters, like a bandolier. In the broad belt strapped around his waist was an assortment of pistols and daggers and an oversized cutlass,” Lee wrote. 

“Teach’s deliberately awesome appearance in battle” was totally intimidating, causing crews of many merchant ships to surrender “without any pretense of a fight,” Lee noted. 

Blackbeard was a major player during the final chapters of the “Golden Age of Piracy,” which is generally defined as the period between the 1650s and the 1730s. 

His story is best told by the staff at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, which has on display an impressive array of artifacts salvaged from the wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The ship ran aground and sank in 1718 while approaching Beaufort Inlet. The wreck was discovered in 1996.

Blackbeard was a frequent guest at a small inn located on Hammock Lane overlooking Taylors Creek in Beaufort, one of the oldest structures in town. 

The building is now a private residence, but locals believe it is among Beaufort’s most haunted houses. 

Jane Welborn Hudson, a journalist from Greenville, N.C., wrote that Blackbeard “reportedly had two dozen ‘wives’ in various ports.” 

Hudson wrote that Blackbeard brought his 18-year-old bride from France to the “Hammock House” in Beaufort. 

“Blackbeard’s bride,” Hudson said, “is one of the people who, according to folklore, came to Hammock House and never left.”

Happy Thanksgiving: Enjoy your sweet potatoes!

Freelance food writer Lesley Porcelli of Syracuse, N.Y., said that during colonial times, Southerners learned how to prepare sweet potatoes by watching “native people bury them in the embers of fires and then peel away the skin to eat the smoky flesh.”

Throughout the colonial era, sweet potatoes were a staple in the South.” 

“I learned from several old recipes the trick of boiling them in their skins, after which the flesh slides easily from the peels. Still, boiling the potatoes whole means the narrower ends and the centers cook unevenly,” Porcelli said. 

“Roasting the sweet potatoes in their skins eliminates that problem and has the added benefit of intensifying their sweetness.” 

“Many Southern recipes recommend rubbing the skins first with butter or bacon fat, which certainly adds richness and flavor. But simply scrubbing the skins clean and pricking them all over produces excellent results.” 

“Ninety minutes (in the oven) at 425 degrees yields tender, sweet flesh that slips right out of the skin (though you might find that very large potatoes need a little bit more time),” Porcelli said. 

If you are determined to make a sweet potato casserole, Porcelli strongly suggests ditching the marshmallows and adding eggs and topping with brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, oats, pecans, maple syrup and chunks of salty bacon.

Sweet potatoes fresh off the grill

Sweet potato pie is a Carteret County delicacy

Sweet potato pie “is the fuel that has fired North Carolina’s tremendous fishing industry all these years, suggests Liz Biro, a contributor to the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s online newsletter. 

It’s how Carteret County’s commercial fishermen began their day, “oftentimes before sunrise,” Biro said, eating their “humble sweet potato pie” for breakfast. 

“A slice was not nearly enough sustenance for the tough labors of setting nets, raking clams or hauling fish by the hundreds of pounds to market. These men drank what amounted to soup bowls full of hot coffee with not two or even three slices of sweet potato pie,” she said. 

“They folded entire pies in half and ate them like breakfast sandwiches.” 

Biro commented: “Sweet potatoes thrived in gardens in coastal North Carolina and on its barrier islands where fishermen lived. Sweet potatoes flourished in the coast’s hot, moist climate and sandy soils. Growers appreciated the plant’s lack of natural enemies.” 

Clearly a Southern favorite food, sweet potato pies are “simple affairs of mashed sweet potatoes, milk, eggs and spices, providing plenty of protein from the milk and eggs and big doses of vitamin A and beta-carotene from the sweet potatoes.” 

Some bakers prefer to use canned evaporated milk or “sweet milk” (canned sweetened condensed milk), Biro said, “as that is the milk their ancestors relied upon in the days when fresh milk and cream were not readily available.” 

“No matter the recipe, cooks agree that perfect sweet potato pie is a balance of creaminess, sweetness and spices against a sturdy, savory crust,” she said. “The filling is so smooth no whipped cream garnish is required.”

Sweet potato cheesecake

Sweet potato muffins

Sweet potato pound cake

Sweet potatoes weren’t invited to 1st Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims featured plenty of pumpkins, but nary a sweet potato. 

Sweet potatoes typically don’t grow in the Massachusetts environment. The weather’s too cold and brutal. 

Sweet potatoes prefer a warm and humid southern climate, like North Carolina. 

Sweet potatoes have a “sweet southern personality,” too.

When it comes to holiday dining, sweet potatoes and creamy, white mashed potatoes deserve equal billing on the menu. Found in tandem on many American dining room tables, you just have to have scoops of both.

Marshmallows are a ‘Northern experience’

To at least one English food writer – Rosie Spinks of London – America’s “weirdest dish” is a sweet potato casserole with its well-browned, gooey mini-marshmallows packed so tightly together they can’t breathe. 

To Rosie…and this writer…marshmallows are disgusting, whether raw, baked, roasted or camp-fired. 

Rosie Spinks asked: “Is there any dish more reviled…than the sweet potato marshmallow casserole?” 

Hooray for the “Ghostbusters,” who in the 1984 movie took down “Mr. Stay Puft,” the giant, fictional humanoid – made of a ka-zillion marshmallows. 

Stay Puft’s sailor attire is too familiar. With his white sailor cap, traditional blue sailor’s collar and a red neckerchief, he resembled Cracker Jack’s iconic “Sailor Jack” mascot. He was a 5-year-old boy, dressed in a blue sailor suit. 

As background, America’s first marshmallow company of note was Angelus Marshmallows in Chicago, a unit of Rueckheim Brothers & Eckstein, the company that had invented the Cracker Jack treat in 1896. 

The Rueckheim brothers – Frederick and Louis –were German immigrants who had opened a confectionary in 1872 in Chicago. 

They introduced Angelus Marshmallows in 1907; it became the company’s second-most popular product after Cracker Jack. 

The real marsh mallow is a perennial plant that grows best in the damp marshes of the eastern Mediterranean region. Ancient Egyptians discovered that the whole plant could be used medicinally – to cure or relieve sore throats, coughs, toothaches, arthritis and joint pain, insect bites, indigestion, diarrhea, dysentery, stomach pain and assorted skin irritations. 

French candy makers were the first to add sugar, water and gelatin, whipping the marsh mallow mixture into a foamy confection that became known as marshmallow treats. 

Today’s “marshmallows are a processed food that provides little to no health benefits,” wrote Malia Frey, a health coach and weight management specialist. 

“Eating a marshmallow is a quick and easy way to satisfy your sweet tooth that won’t do too much damage to your waistline.” But can you eat just one? 

The Rueckheims promoted their Angelus Marshmallows as being “fluffy, light and pure,” to be used as an alternative for homemade meringue and whipped cream by American homemakers. 

In 1917, the brothers hired Janet McKenzie Hill, founder of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, to develop recipes to encourage home cooks to embrace marshmallows as an everyday ingredient. 

Her favorite was “mashed sweet potatoes baked with a marshmallow topping.” 

Right away, reported Madeline Bilis of Boston magazine, Southerners objected to sweet potatoes with “candy on top, recognizing the sweet-on-sweet combo was too, too much.

Northerners, by contrast, embraced marshmallows as “the latest innovation.” Yuck-o.

Sweet potatoes...cranberries...pecans Yum!

Sweet Potato reigns in North Carolina

North Carolinians are loyal to their “official state vegetable,” often incorporating servings of sweet potatoes into family meals and holiday feasts.

The North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation in 1995 making the sweet potato the Tar Heel State’s “top vegetable.”

The bill was “recommended” by students at the former Elvie Street School in Wilson who were in the 1993-94 fourth grade class taught by the late Celia Batchelor.

The kids were mostly 10-year-olds at the time, and nicknamed themselves the “Tater Tots,” in order to help get attention from the news media as well as the legislators.

North Carolina produces more sweet potatoes than any other state, growing nearly half the country’s supply. And Wilson County sits right in the center of sweet potato farmland.

 The Wilson kids had their facts in a row – pointing out that Native Americans harvested sweet potatoes and introduced them to explorer Christopher Columbus. “Dinosaurs may even have munched on sweet taters,” reported Josh Shaffer for Our State magazine.

The sweet potato bill took more than a year to get through the House of Representatives, and once it arrived in the Senate, “every vegetable with a constituency reared its head demanding fair consideration,” according to Shaffer.

“Many of us think that the official state vegetable ought to be the rutabaga,” said one Fayetteville legislator.

Lawmakers threw out tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, collards and other vegetables in protest.

The sweet potato survived the verbal food fight on the Senate floor…and prevailed.

 

Growing conditions are right in Coastal Carolina

Sweet potatoes thrive in North Carolina’s coastal plain because of its sandy soil and temperate climate.

Surprisingly, the sweet potato is not at all related to the white (Irish) potato. The sweet potato belongs to the root family, while the other potato is a tuber.

Sweet potatoes and yams are not the same. They are two distinctly different vegetables. While sweet potatoes are indigenous to North America, the yam comes from West Africa and Asia. 

There are hundreds of different varieties of sweet potato. They are usually orange and have an oblong body with tapered ends.

 Sweet potatoes are high in vitamins A and C and low in fat. They have a low glycemic index, which makes them a good source of nutrients for diabetics. They are also very high in potassium, magnesium and phosphorus.

Jennifer Harbster of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is a sweet potato historian. She said that English botanist John Gerard wrote about the sweet potato in 1597, noting that it was best eaten when “roasted and infused with wine, boiled with prunes or roasted with oil, vinegar and salt.”

Gerard also suggested that the sweet potato “comforts, strengthens and nourishes the body” and has aphrodisiac qualities. English King Henry VIII consumed massive amounts of sweet potatoes, especially spiced sweet potato pie,” Harbster said. 

A leading character in William Shakespeare’s comedy “Merry of Wives of Windsor (1602) bellows: “Let the sky rain potatoes.” 

Harbster said: “By 1880, Americans were enjoying some sort of variation of candied sweet potatoes. American cookbooks, such as the widely published 1893 Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer featured a recipe for glazed sweet potatoes.”

 Around the same time, George Washington Carver, an agricultural scientist and inventor, compiled more than a hundred recipes for the sweet potato, she added.

Right whales are on the brink of extinction

Marine scientists are worried that North Atlantic right whales, now an endangered species, could become extinct – due to human activities that interfere with the whales’ natural habitat. 

Much has been written about the effects that seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast has on marine life. The testing is associated with the exploration process of determining if there are sufficient offshore reservoirs of oil and gas to justify drilling into the ocean floor. 

This isn’t a new or easy issue. It’s been an ongoing tug of war. On one end of the rope are scientists who are aligned with environmental groups; at the other end are energy industry lobbyists who represent investors who envision dollar signs bobbing on the ocean surface.

 

Let’s just suppose, however, that a coalition of 28 marine scientists is correct in its assessment that underwater seismic blasting is gravely harmful to the health of right whales…perhaps even lethal.

These researchers sounded the alarm in 2016 that loud noises cause stress to right whales. They said: “The additional stress of widespread seismic surveys may well represent a tipping point for the survival of this endangered whale, contributing significantly to a decline toward extinction.” 

(North Carolina is well-represented among the group of 28 scientists. Five professors affiliated with universities in the state are included. Three are associated with the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, and two are from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.) 

Researchers at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (also known as NOAA Fisheries) estimate the entire North Atlantic right whale population is about 400. 

The situation is dire, however, because adult right whales are dying at a greater rate than females are birthing calves, according to a NOAA Fisheries spokesperson. 

“Right whales communicate using low-frequency moans, groans and pulses. Scientists suspect that these calls are used to maintain contact between individuals, communicate threats, signal aggression” or make social conversation, said a NOAA Fisheries spokesperson.

“Underwater noise pollution interrupts the normal behavior of right whales and interferes with their communication,” the spokesperson stated. 

Todd Miller, executive director at North Carolina Coastal Federation, has said: “Seismic testing and offshore drilling are incompatible with our coast in North Carolina. There’s never a window that would be a good time for seismic testing to happen.” 

NOAA Fisheries says: “In the spring, summer and into early fall, right whales can be found in waters off New England and Canada, where they feed and mate.” 

“Each fall, the whales travel from these northern feeding grounds to the shallow, coastal waters of the southeastern United States…the only known calving area for the species.” 

NOAA Fisheries researchers recently released these findings: 

The normal lifespan of right whales used to be 70 years. Now, females are only living about 45 years while males live to about age 65.

Female right whales become sexually mature at about age 10. They give birth to a single calf after a year-long pregnancy. Three to four years was considered a normal or healthy interval between calving events. But now, on average, females are having calves every 6 to 10 years.

In the last three calving seasons (2017-19), there were only 22 births, about one-third of the average annual birth rate.

Clearly, something has gone wrong with our right whales. Do the people and the government have a responsibility to protect endangered species?

 The National Wildlife Federation, America’s largest conservation organization, which has been around since 1936, says: “Yes.”