Nuts about hazelnuts and note-taking about Texas
Hazelnuts' role in Nutella, plus authors Lawrence Wright and John Irving
In today’s newsletter, I talk about:
Hazelnuts’ role in Nutella
Note-taking while reading digital books
Travel to hazelnut country
In my previous article Salivating Curiosities, I talked about Piedmont’s history of Vermouth, the fortified wine many people mistake as a type of spirit.
Today, I’m introducing another culinary favorite of the Piedmont region: Hazelnuts.
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Where is Piedmont?
Located at the foot of the Swiss alps in north-western Italy, Piedmont is the second largest region after Sicily. It borders Switzerland to the north and France to the west.
Hazelnut country
Piedmont is a paradise for foodies; truffles, beef, rice, rich wines and nuts. Especially hazelnuts. However…
Not all hazelnuts are created equal.
Did you know the bulk of the world’s hazelnuts are grown in Oregon (USA) and Turkey? Most of their harvest is manufactured into Nutella.
Gianduja - chocolate stretched with hazelnut butter
Chocolate stretched with hazelnut butter known as gianduia originated in Turin and is considered a confection specialty of the region. The traditional Piedmont recipe for gianduia was developed due to a lack of cocoa beans after post-war rationing reduced availability. The original recipe contained just over 70% hazelnut paste and just under 20% chocolate and eventually launched the confectionery giant Nutella.
History about Nutella
A man by the name of Pietro Ferrero owned a bakery in Alba, a town well known for hazelnuts production. He started selling a creamy hazelnut butter called gianduja in 1951. His son Michele Ferrero revamped this nut butter with the intention of marketing it through Europe and named it Nutella in 1963. The first jar of Nutella left the factory in Alba on Aprl 20, 1964 and the product became an instant success. (source)
Fun facts about Nutella
The main ingredients of Nutella today are sugar and palm oil (greater than 50%). A mere 13% contains hazelnut, the rest is cocoa solids and skim milk. In the US and UK, soy products are also added into the recipe.
In November 2017, Nutella increased the sugar and skimmed milk powder content. When consumers noticed the product had a lighter tone, the Hamburg Consumer Protection Center estimated the cocoa content was also reduced. This caused outrage by some consumers. Media outlets reported customers were ‘going nuts’. Fans of the Nutella brand, originated by the Ferrero family, confirmed the recipe had indeed changed, sparking a huge backlash among fans of the brand.
Hazelnuts from Piedmont
The sweetest, best-tasting hazelnuts are grown in the hinterlands of the Piedmont region in Italy. Known as Tonda Gentile delle Langhe or Nocciola del Piedmonte IGP, Piedmontese hazelnuts are small, intensely sweet and nutty and their growing protocols follow a rigorous set of rules to protect their quality and reputation. (source)
Piedmont hazelnut farmers can have no more than 500 hazelnut trees per square hectare. Trees are planted at five-metre intervals, and the hazelnuts must be allowed to ripen and fall to the ground without interference. Once the nuts have been harvested they’re usually dried in the sun before being stored in thin layers. (Source is paraphrased)
Not only is the soil condition in Piedmont perfect for growing grapes, it suits the hazelnut trees perfectly.
The best conditions to grow hazelnuts in Piedmont is located in a region southeast of Turin, between Cuneo, Asti and Alessandria. It has been listed by UNESCO (United Nations Educational and Scientific Community Organization) as a World Heritage Site and is fiercely protected (and rightly so).
Fun fact: When Oregon attempted to transplant the indigenous hazelnut trees from Piedmont into their soil, their harvest failed. The weather and soil conditions weren’t conducive for the Piedmont hazelnut trees, so the Americans experimented and found a hardier Spanish variant which proved much more successful. (source)
Although my trip will focus mostly on the Aosta valley, I am sure I will be exposed to many hazelnut products across the region.
Stay tuned for pictures coming up in future Substack articles.
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Note-taking while reading
It has come to my attention that reading is an immersive experience, at least for me. Not only do I want to take notes while I read, I want to remember the context in terms of page numbers and chapters.
Do you jot down notes when you read books?
I haven’t always read books this way. It was only in recent years when I began reading books - both fiction and non-fiction - while simultaneously jotting down notes either into an app in my phone or via screenshots.
Especially screenshots.
You see, I have come to enjoy reading digital books on my phone more so than traditional books for two reasons: eye strain and the ability to search up something quickly.
Eye strain and digital books
As I get older my eyes are getting weaker.
I like how technology for reading digital books has improved and now allows for font size increases, dim backlights and other conveniences. Plus, with a touch of a fingertip I can look up the definition of any word at a moment's notice.
So convenient.
Searching up definitions
Definitions of words are almost never a concern for me as I am an avid reader and well-versed in semantics and etymology. Partly, this is also because I am a writer.
I never write a single sentence without having a thesaurus app open on my laptop - I am obsessed with looking up synonyms and antonyms when writing.
Meanwhile, when I read a digital book in my Libby library app, which is where I do 90% of my reading, I find the quick link to an online dictionary to be immensely helpful.
Mostly, I know the word's definition I come across, but sometimes curiosity has me digging around to try and get into the author's head; why was this particular word chosen over another one? An online thesaurus is invaluable here.
Like I said, reading digital books allows me to feed my ever-increasing vocabulary.
Habit of note-taking
The habit of taking notes while reading began when I read a slew of Joe Dispenza’s books, which are non-fiction. Later, when I embarked on a journey of John Irving's fiction books, I screenshot so many poignant or cleverly-composed phrases I had to sit down at my laptop and enter them all into a Word document.
Books like:
A Prayer for Owen Meany
A Widow for One Year
The Fourth Hand
The 158-Pound Marriage
Fun fact: John Irving’s book The World According to GARP is my all-time favorite book and is credited with launching my interest into becoming a writer. My Swiss aunt gave me the German translation to read on the plane back to Canada many moons ago. I was hooked and immediately sought to read its original English version. I have re-read it multiple time and continue to be enlightened by the writing talents of Mr. Irving who can ignite such vivid imagery in my head.
Meanwhile, something strange happened when I loaded the latest book of interest (not by John Irving) into my Libby app: I suddenly have a deep desire to own this book in physical format.
God Save Texas by Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright has made such an impression on me with his choice of words and phrases, as well as his conversational writing style, I wish I could keep this book handy as a type of reference. As a digital library book, I can't keep it, and the digital notes inside the app will all be lost upon return.
For the first time in a very long time, I desire to own a book in physical format just so I can add post-it notes.
The words in the image above made me stop my reading and reach for my notes app.
Are you familiar with some of these words?
Rapscallion, Antimythic
rascal, scoundrel
antimythic - this word does not appear in my online searches spelled this way. I can gather meaning from the context, but the word itself is not seen this way in any of my dictionaries.
“The Texas I actually lived in finally did break into the movies, first with Hud, based on McMurtry’s first novel Horeseman, Pass By.The book was about the end of the western frontier and the men who made it. The movie, with Paul Newman in the rapscallion title role, made the antimythic story into a legend of its own.”
Chimerical
absurd, fabulous, utopian, wild
“There’s a little museum at the end of the airstrip housing a 1934 Ford Phaeton, which he (president Lyndon) outfitted with a gun rack and wet bar; the Corvette he gave his daughter Luci for her eighteenth birthday; an antique firetruck; and a little blue Amphicar, a chimerical cross between an automobile and a boat, which Johnson bought as a practical joke.”
Ungainly
awkward, lumbering
“Lyndon Johnson was Kennedy’s opposite in so many ways. Where Kennedy was polished, Johnson was vulgar - fantastically and unselfconsciously so - picking his nose, scratching his ass, eating off other people’s plate. He once held a staff meeting in his bedroom while he was getting an enema. Kennedy went to Harvard, he had a Publitzer Prize, and his friends were movie stars. Johnson went to a teachers college in San Marcos. Kennedy was beautiful and Johnson was ungainly, with immense features - his nose, his ears, his cock which he named Jumbo.”
Entrepreneurial muscle
Being an entrepreneurial spirit myself I zoomed in on this term.
“Outsiders view Texas as the national id, a place where rambunctious and disavowed impulses run wild. Texans, they believe, mindlessly celebrate individualism, and view government as a kind of kryptonite that saps the entrepreneurial muscle.“
About myth and religion
Given today’s social climate I found this statement to be especially poignant.
“Richard Linklater’s tour de force Boyhood follows a child who actually grows up in Teas during the twelve years it took Linklater to make the film, tracing the evolution of the boy’s consciousness as he approaches maturity. The myth has diminished, assuming a more modest place in the Texas psyche. Itmay never disappear entirely, nor would I wish it to. The myth has gone through hard times before and come back to life - although each time, I think, with a little less reality. The danger in holding on to a myth is that it becomes like a religion we've stopped believing in.”
There are other words and phrases, of course, but I haven’t finished reading the book yet. I may write a redux article about this topic on my blog in the coming days or weeks. Stay tuned and subscribe to my website.
It was a fascinating word-study, this book (and I’m still reading it as I type these words). Lawrence Wright is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.
I’ve always liked Texas despite the negative media respresentation - I have several writer-type Texan friends - and have visited San Antonio and Houston for business. Sadly, I saw more of the inside of convention centers than the local sights... Still, I learned a lot about this state, its colourful history, its fascinating rhythm and the people who call themselves Texans while reading this book.
I urge you to consider broadening your horizons on Texas and its history by taking a detour away from mass media and reading Mr. Wright’s eloquently written book God Save Texas.
Let me know what you think!
Final remarks
Jotting down my thoughts about various author’s choices of words and phrases inspires me to think deeper, ruminate and overthink before I’m inspired to write my own words. I can pretty much guarantee the term entrepreneurial muscle will almost certainly find its way into one of my future essays.
I aim to write like Mr. Irving and Mr. Wright, to name but two authors who just happen to be on my peripherals lately although there are many others.
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I know that some people justify eating large amounts of “nut” butters that are loaded with toxic oil and addictive sugar, because they think the nuts are good for them. I read the ingredient list on Nutella and decided it was only slightly related to any sort of nuts. If I want to eat candy, I don’t lie to myself, I just buy some candy! So I never developed a Nutella habit.