Pointless Questions...with Aaron Mucciolo

Apparently I’m getting thematic — this week’s column is all about food. Yay food. Just a note for those of you wondering: this column will return for the 2002-3 school year, so keep those questions a comin’.

What’s the deal w/ red pistachios? –anonymous, slightly drunk person at OCapella Fest
According to the California Pistachio Commission (I kid you not) pistachios were originally imported from the Middle East. Importers dyed the nuts for two reasons: to hide the stains from the “antiquated harvesting methods” and to make pistachios “stand out among other nuts in vending machines.”
Pistachios weren’t grown in the U.S. until the 1970s, at which point they were sold in their clean, natural tan or greenish shells. Some domestic pistachios are still dyed red due to consumer demand for the more colorful shells.

How is “fried” ice cream made? Travis Heaney has some weird explanation involving dry ice, but I don’t believe anything he says. –Yvonne Piper, OC ‘01
There appear to be two kinds of fried ice cream. There’s fake-fried where you roll a ball of ice cream in corn flakes or something similar to create the ‘shell.’ But what we’re after here is real fried ice cream, the kind requiring an element of danger to create. (A side note — hot stoves are not toys. Please cook responsibly. Thank you.)
Fried ice cream is basically a ball of thoroughly frozen ice cream covered in some kind of batter and then deep fried. Yup, you actually stick that sucker in a fryer or big pot of oil and wait ‘till it’s golden delicious. If you’d like a complete recipe, there are quite a few out on the web — just type ‘fried ice cream’ into any search engine — but aside from flavoring and decoration there’s not much else to the recipe.
As for the dry ice issue, a couple of recipes I found said to put the ice cream balls into an ice chest with dry ice in order to freeze them. But most just said to put the ice cream in the freezer once you had shaped it. The author of this column makes no judgement as to whether or not you should believe Mr. Heaney in the future.

Is that an update in your pocket?
No, I’m just happy to see me. Hoo-dang, I’m rolling today. Anyway, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Lynne Bianchi dug up two other theories about those ‘sun sneezes’ — or ACHOO syndrome in technical parlance — from last week. ACHOO, by the way, stands for ‘autosomal dominant compelling heliopthalmic outburst.’ We know, we know. It should be ADCHOO. No one ever said scientists could spell.
One theory is basically an elaboration of the one I published last week: an impulse travelling along the optic nerve might trigger a sympathetic discharge in the nerve that connects to the lining of the nose. A second theory is that squinting from bright light causes a squeezing of the lacrimal (tear) duct, which causes tears to run down into the nasal cavity thus triggering a sneeze.
For those of you who suffer from these photic sneezes, you can avoid any or all of these possible reactions by simply wearing sunglasses.

Thanks Prof. Bianchi. And thank you all for reading. Now send in a question. You know you want to. Email aaron.mucciolo@oberlin.edu or write to Pointless Questions, c/o The Oberlin Review, Wilder Box 90, Oberlin OH, 44074. Your name will be used only with your permission.