sugar and molasses
I never knew exactly what molasses is. Vivian and I agreed it was "in" for the month, so I went web-searching to find out. It was actually more difficult to find a good explanation than I expected, and Wikipedia's semi-verified page was the most comprehensive.
To make sugar, the juice is extracted (by crushing, mashing, etc.) from sugarcane, beets, sorghum, or whatever the vegetable source is. The juice is boiled down, then cooled. Stirring while cooling crystallizes sugar out of the liquid. At this point, the crystals are basically light brown raw sugar, although more treatment is usually done before it goes to market. White sugar is bleached and further refined from this.
Molasses is the liquid left over when the sugar crystals are removed. More accuately, this is light molasses. It can be boiled a second time, removing more water, and re-cooled to crystallize more (darker) sugar. The remaining liquid is dark molasses. A third boiling yields ever darker sugar, and blackstrap molasses.
So, molasses is basically a by-product of sugar production. Blackstrap has less than half of the sugar content of the original cane juice, but it's still mostly sugar and water. It does contain a decent amount of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron. It doesn't taste nearly as sweet as other syrups, but it's still pretty sweet.
So,should we allow molasses this month? It's not refined, in the sense that it hasn't been processed to concentrate or enhance its sugar content -- in fact, it's had half its sugar content removed from its original form. But it's still pretty empty calories, and it produces blood sugar spikes. I'm thinking no, not this month. Crap, that means grocery store bread is pretty much completely out.
Final note: in a lovely ironic industrial twist, it turns out that some brown sugar is actually white sugar that's been re-coated with light molasses. Gotta love that.
To make sugar, the juice is extracted (by crushing, mashing, etc.) from sugarcane, beets, sorghum, or whatever the vegetable source is. The juice is boiled down, then cooled. Stirring while cooling crystallizes sugar out of the liquid. At this point, the crystals are basically light brown raw sugar, although more treatment is usually done before it goes to market. White sugar is bleached and further refined from this.
Molasses is the liquid left over when the sugar crystals are removed. More accuately, this is light molasses. It can be boiled a second time, removing more water, and re-cooled to crystallize more (darker) sugar. The remaining liquid is dark molasses. A third boiling yields ever darker sugar, and blackstrap molasses.
So, molasses is basically a by-product of sugar production. Blackstrap has less than half of the sugar content of the original cane juice, but it's still mostly sugar and water. It does contain a decent amount of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron. It doesn't taste nearly as sweet as other syrups, but it's still pretty sweet.
So,should we allow molasses this month? It's not refined, in the sense that it hasn't been processed to concentrate or enhance its sugar content -- in fact, it's had half its sugar content removed from its original form. But it's still pretty empty calories, and it produces blood sugar spikes. I'm thinking no, not this month. Crap, that means grocery store bread is pretty much completely out.
Final note: in a lovely ironic industrial twist, it turns out that some brown sugar is actually white sugar that's been re-coated with light molasses. Gotta love that.