Saltine Cracker Challenge!

Believe it or not, this is the best I could come up with on Google Images.

A few people mentioned the dryness of saltine crackers in the comments for my last post, and so I couldn't help but write about the Saltine Cracker Challenge!  (I'm also assuming that this is what SlogBlog11 meant by "cracker races," but I could be mistaken.)

Anyway, the Saltine Cracker Challenge! is known by a variety of names, and sometimes the rules vary, but the basic challenge is to chew and swallow six saltine crackers in a minute or less, leaving no crumbs, and without drinking anything to wash them down.  Like many things that sound simple, it's not.  Here's a video of the Saltine Cracker Challenge!:

Wow. What an alarming picture.

There's a Wikipedia page for the Saltine Cracker Challenge!, and in the entry is a section called "Game Variations."  This is the entire section as of this writing:

"Several people claim their version of the challenge is the 'correct' one. This section will itemize the myriad variations of the challenge:

• California Saltine Challenge - This version of the challenge requires contestants to eat 7 saltines within 60 seconds and then whistle clearly. The saltines dry up the mouth making whistling near impossible. No crumbs are allowed to spray out of the mouth when the whistle is attempted."

  >myriad variations

  >myriad

  >one variation

Saltine Crackers

I thought saltine crackers would be a no-brainer for a salt blog, but can you believe that there are unsalted varieties?  Saltine crackers, sans-salt. I'm appalled.

That's just a cracker.

Anyway, if you like crackers and you like salt, then this is the perfect combination.  The ingredients: flour, shortening, yeast, baking soda -- and, of course, salt.  Saltine crackers are also called soda crackers because after the dough rises, alkaline soda is added to cut the acidity of the yeast.  I guess I can handle the idea of salt-free saltine crackers, but only if they're called "soda crackers" instead.  Not everything can have salt in it; I can admit that.

The holes in the crackers are so that steam can escape while they bake, making the dough rise uniformly.  The perforations on the edges are there because the crackers are baked in sheets and then broken apart into neat little squares.

Saltine crackers have been around since at least the nineteenth century, and they were first marketed as "Premium Soda Crackers," and later as "Premium Saltines."  The Premium brand was later absorbed by Nabisco.  Nabisco once held a patent on the word "saltine," but popular use of the word has since rendered the patent no longer extant.  Be careful using the word in Australia, though, because "saltine" is patented there by Arnott's Biscuit Holdings.  In New Zealand they have this:

Is that Spanish I detect? Hm...

 

So according to Wikipedia, saltine crackers are used as a home remedy to settle upset stomachs, which I guess makes sense, but Wikipedia mentions another home remedy called "Chelt," which makes little to no sense.  "Chelt" is a combination of saltine crackers and spearmint or menthol flavoring, which, taken before breakfast (I'm guessing this is very important), is meant to promote hair growth.  While I have zero faith in "Chelt" actually working, I'm also taking it's very existence into consideration (let's say with a grain of salt) because surprise, surprise...

 

 

 

 

Bull Sharks

"Well, I'm back," he said.

-----

Bull sharks today.

Bull sharks aren't, as I immediately assumed them to be, bull/shark hybrids, freely roaming both land and sea unchecked by natural predators.  In reality they have no bull parts, nor do they make the water-to-land transition very gracefully.  But they can live in both saltwater and freshwater.  Which means that, yes, there could be something dangerous swimming below your feet in that cloudy lake water.

Bull sharks are not the only saltwater species that can enter and thrive in freshwater, but they are easily the most intimidating.  In fact, forty-two other species among the subclass Eslamobranchii, to which bull sharks belong, can live in freshwater.  The way they manage this is through a process called osmoregulation, where the concentration of water in an organism's body is maintained despite changes in the external environment.  All fish undergo osmoregulation; bull sharks are just particularly good at it.  By controlling the concentration gradients of solutes in their bodies, bull sharks can ensure that the proper levels of water and solutes diffuse through them (by the way, this means that in freshwater bull sharks pee a lot).

I like a creature that knows how much salt it wants.

Here is an image of the geographic range of the bull shark:

The bull shark has been recorded approximately 2,600 miles into the Amazon River.  Now, to my American readers, I ask you, do you see the bit of blue on the map stretching up the Mississippi River?  The Mississippi is only 2,320 miles long.  Do the math.

A couple other things about bull sharks:

1) In Nicaragua bull sharks are known as "Nicaraguan Sharks," probably because Lake Nicaragua is one of their usual haunts.  I, personally, think it's a load of bull (pun absolutely intended) that Nicaraguans would be so presumptuous.

2) The bull shark's diet consists mainly of bony fish and other sharks.  (What is this world coming to?)  They also eat a variety of other marine life (including dolphins, how sad), birds*, and terrestrial mammals (by which I'm assuming Wikipedia means people).





*I've always wondered about those birds chilling on the water amid violent bloodbaths on Animal Planet.  I always assumed the sharks left them alone.  But now I want to shout at the screen, "Fly, birds!  Use your wings--they want to eat you too!"