My life is to say the least "gummy" right now.  I would like to say that I am about to snap, but I snapped over a year ago.  I'm still trying to stand up, or rather sit up- out of bed- out of the dark- open the blinds- remove the fear- my chest cramps- i can't- lay back down- try again tomorrow.

FOOD GUMS: a group of complex carbohydrates that are water soluble (soluble fiber).  They have a high affinity for water (hydrocolloids) and give high-viscosity aqueous solutions, but are not able to form gels.  The reason for this is that all gums possess structures that incorporate a very high degree of branching or highly interrupted chains.  This prevents the formation of junction zones (such as in pectins) that are a feature of polysaccharide gels.

Food properties: food thickener, gel-forming agent, stabilizing agent, increase viscosity

Examples:
Xanthan gum.  Secreted via aerobic fermentation from Xanthomonas campestris.  Has a backbone of b(1->4)-linked glucopyranose with trisaccharide branch points every five residues.  *Gluten-free flours are often supplemented with this gum which help bind the dough together and retain gas bubbles produced by yeasts or chemical leavenings.

Locust-bean gum/Carob-bean gum.  Extracted from the seed of the carob tree.  A galactomannan consisting of a (1,4)-linked b-D-mannopyranose backbone with branch points from their 6-positions linked to a-D-galactose.

Guar gum/ Guaran.  From seeds of the guar beans.  The backbone is a linear chain of β 1,4-linked mannose residues to which galactose residues are 1,6-linked at every second mannose, forming short side-branches.

Gum arabic/ Acacia gum.  Made from the hardened sap of various species of Acacia trees.

Food Spotlight: Maple syrup

Maple syrup is one of the oldest agricultural commodities produced in the United States and Canada, mostly in Vermont, Maine, New York, and Quebec.  Native Americans taught sugaring to the settlers.

Maple sap looks, feels, and tastes a lot like water, and in fact straight from the tree it's only 2 to 3 percent sugar.  Most popular maple tree used is Acer saccharum. To get it, you drill a hole with a 7/16-inch bit into a maple tree that's at least 10 inches in diameter.  You drive an iron spigot called a spile into the hole, then either hang a bucket on it or attach a tube system.  You do this in the early spring when the temperatures drop well below freezing at night but rise above freezing in the daytime.  <sap is collected from first major thaw until leaf buds burst at which point the tree fluids carry substances that give syrup a harsh flavor.>
*40 parts sap: 1 part syrup

Syrup is graded according to flavor, color, and intensity.  The grades do not have anything to do with quality or purity, as they all have the same sugar content (62% sucrose, 34% water, 3%glucose/fructose, trace amts of acids and amino acids).  Grade A assigned to lighter, more delicately flavored, sometimes less concentrated syrups that are pouring directly on foods.  Grades B and C are stronger in caramel flavor and are more often used for cooking.

GRADE A: LIGHT AMBER
Light, mild, delicate maple flavor.  Usually boiled from sap gathered at the beginning of the season.  Good for use in cakes and pastries, but way too weak for pancakes.
GRADE A: MEDIUM AMBER
This is the most popular grade in the United States.  It's a bit darker than light amber and delivers a more distinct maple flavor.  It's produced during the middle of the season.
GRADE A: DARK AMBER
Just like medium amber only more so.  Usually produced a little later in the season.  Good on pancakes and waffles.
GRADE B/C
Very dark and very strong.  Made from the very last sap of the season and used mostly for baking or glazing.

Science Explained
-Why the darker amber color across grades?
%sugar declines as season progresses from ~3 % at beginning down to ~1% at end, so late season sap must be boiled longer and thus is darker and strongly flavored.  Longer and hotter boiling promotes sugar caramelization and browning reactions between the sugars and amino acids.

-What are browning reactions?
Browning Reactions in Food  or See Blog: Browning Reactions

-Some recipes call for maple sugar.  How is that made?
Maple sugar is made by concentrating the syrup's sucrose to the point that it will crystallize when the syrup cools.  This point is marked by a boiling temperature of 237-250 F/114-125 C.  ex: cold air holds less water vapor than warm air
Maple cream, a malleable mixture of very fine crystals in a small amount of dispersed syrup, is made by cooling the syrup very rapidly to about 70 F/21 C by immersing the pan in baths of ice water, and then beating it continuously until it becomes very stiff.  Rapidly cooling concentrated sugar solutions results in smaller crystal formation while cooling slowly results in bigger crystal formation.  Beating the mixture continuously aids in dispersing the fine crystals.

food science= interesting and satisfying, vegan=i can eat it!

Who am I?  A simple but unsatisfying answer is that I am a human, the extant species of the genus Homo.  That is the thing about science, so intellectually satisfying yet so emotionally empty...or is it?  Take a glass of fine wine for example.  Just saying "cabernet sauvignon" elicits feelings of grandeur, culture, above the petty stressors of everyday living.  Yet, "cabernet sauvignon" is nothing but science in a finely stemmed glass.  For me, food is science at its most interesting.  Both intellectual and emotional.  

Why vegan food?  It took me awhile to realize this but because that is what is most interesting to me! so deal with it!  I have always found my personal vegan lifestyle at odds in many ways with the various food science books and tv-shows (I love you Alton Brown even though I can't eat most of what you cook).  Not that I don't find the science of curdling milk interesting, I just never felt I could fully appreciate the process unless I could cook, smell, touch, and most importantly eat the final cheese product.  It's like someone telling you about this fantastic party that Ashton Kutcher will be at but where the cover charge is $500.  It is possible but it will hurt.  One hurts your pocket-book, the other your stomach.  

So back to the question "who am i?".  While I can't answer that question at the moment, I hope that somewhere in these pages there will be some hint of an answer.  With so much wrong in my life right now (that's another blog), only two things make any sense to me- vegan food and food science.  I am not saying I am an expert in either of these topics (though I hope to be someday); I do hope to learn a lot about them as well as maybe a little more about who I am.   

Ashton+CabernetSauvignon= ?