8/31/2006 - All about the mustard

Since I have been having some difficulty tracking down some of my rest stops here in Wisconsin, I decided to take a look at some of the sites I have been missing. For example, had I managed to make my way to Mount Horeb, I would have been treated to an exposition on mustard.

At the Mustard Museum here I could have been introduced to over 2,300 varieties of the stuff. Happily they have a pretty good website (no tastes are downloadable yet) so I was able to learn a little something about the history of the condiment.

For example: Mustard seeds were found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Nobody knows for sure how long this has been a condiment used to spruce up meals. The earliest reference to mustard in the Dijon area of France was in the 14th century, but it is believed that the monks there were developing the stuff considerably earlier.

We Americans didn't catch the mustard wave until the early 20th century but in 2006, we harvested more than 40,000 acres of mustard seed.

I briefly flirted with mustard after one of my brothers-in-law showed me how good it was with salami. For a while I was eating it at work, with my pretzels. But then I got some on a shirt.

That was the end of that.

16,000 condimential steps today. Cheers,