oldrebel's blog

the joy of chili beans

 abuse

During the week I produced a batch of crock pot chili beans that were truly memorable. :) I love plain pinto's with some onion, or as I've started topping it with pico de gallo, and corn bread...but it's hard for me to turn down a good bowl of chili beans.  Anyway with the joy of consuming the beans comes the inevitable by product of that musical fruit...gas.

Our illustrious stateman, one of our nation's Founding Fathers,  Ben Franklin wrote an essay dealing with the subject that seems to only come out (pardon the pun) in comedy skits or crowded elevators.  So without further delay I give you gentle Ben's thoughts on flatulence. And btw, did ya happen to recognize the illustration...nothing like a steaming bowl of chili beans around a campfire with good friends. Who needs cablevision or the internet when you've got beans. ;) Y'all have a safe night and hopefully we can all share a bowl of beans for breakfast.

"…It is universally well known, that in digesting our common food, there is created or produced in the bowels of human creatures, a great quantity of wind.

That the permitting this Air to escape and mix with the atmosphere, is usually offensive to the Company, from the fetid smell that accompanies it.

That all well-bred People therefore, to avoid giving such offence, forcibly restrain the efforts of nature to discharge that wind.

That so retained contrary to Nature, it not only gives frequently great present pain, but occasions future diseases such as habitual cholics, ruptures, tympanies, &c., often destructive of the constitution and sometimes of life itself.

Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company, than they are in spitting, or in blowing their noses.

My prize question therefore should be, To discover some drug wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that shall render the natural discharges, of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes.

That this is not a chimerical Project, and altogether impossible, may appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of the means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale flesh, especially with much addition of onions, shall be able to afford a stink that no company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on vegetables only, shall have that breath so pure as to be insensible to the most delicate noses; and if he manage so as to avoid the report, he may any where give vent to his griefs unnoticed…"

Blazing Saddles Campfire Scene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence

http://www.amazon.com/Fart-Proudly-Writings-Benjamin-Franklin/dp/1583940790