BITES : How Cow?

Gail Borden Jr., who invented condensed milk in the 1850s, also invented the Lazy Susan. On the other hand, he didn’t always hit pay dirt. Another of his inventions was a “meat biscuit.”

Slick Fish

“It’s the slickest thing since the wheel,” says Mike Fields. He’s referring to his brainchild, the lutefisk TV dinner.

Lutefisk is a Norwegian preparation of fish treated with lye, traditionally served during the Christmas season and rather laborious (and odoriferous) to cook. Fields estimates that his Mike’s Fish and Seafood in Greenwood, Minn., might sell 10,000 to 20,000 of the frozen lutefisk dinners this year.

“You know,” says Fields, “lutefisk is a seasonal business, September to February. I was sitting around and thinking about how the grocery stores don’t handle it after the fresh season is over. But your good lutefisk eater will eat it all year.”

The frozen dinner consists of lutefisk, corn and mashed potatoes with butter. At the moment it’s being sold only in Minnesota and adjacent states (“We don’t like to mail it to California because of the frozen thing,” Fields says. “You know, you’re a little bit warmer out there.”) For this year, at least, Fields recommends asking your market to order it. In Los Angeles, Mike’s Fish and Seafood is distributed by Lasco Fish.

Cleanup Kick

Researchers at the Penn State Center for Bioremediation and Detoxifaction have shown that certain common industrial wastes can be cleaned up with minced horseradish. Oh, you have to mix hydrogen peroxide with it, but Jean Marc Bollag and Jerzy Dec say the combination causes chlorinated phenols and anilines to form insoluble polymers that can be filtered off. Their first proposal was for cleaning up industrial runoff, but they even propose that it can clean up soil, either by mixing the two ingredients or raising horseradish on the soil and rototilling it just before applying the peroxide.

One drawback: After the horseradish/peroxide treatment, water takes on yellowish to dark brown color.