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Glad You Asked: We Energies' legendary cookbook; the status of the Martin Walker case; origins of the phrase 'charley horse'; What is yeast made of?
By Chris Bennett
Where can one get a copy of the We Energies cookie book? An elderly woman called wanting an answer to this question. It's pretty simple. Call We Energies' customer service at (800) 242-9137 and just ask.
"If a customer wants one they can call our customer service number and we'll mail it to them," Beth Martin said. Martin is a We Energies' media relations representative.
You may also download the cookie book from We Energies' Web site: http://www.we-energies.com/recipes/.
According to Martin, 90,000 people did so in November. December's download numbers are not yet available.
Whatever happened to Martin Walker? He will appear in court at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 5 for a status conference in front of Judge Emily Mueller.
Walker, 34, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the June 29, 2005, stabbing death of his girlfriend, Rhonnette Lange.
Walker's IQ is reportedly in the range of 60, which is low enough for him to be considered mentally retarded. The average adult IQ is between 90 and 100. Court officials deemed Walker capable of standing trial in May.
Walker faces life in prison with no chance of parole if convicted.
How did the phrase "charley horse" become associated with leg cramps?
We don't exactly know. Some sources say origin unknown, others cite the history of baseball or health of horses, and date the term to the 1880s.
The American Heritage Dictionary on my desk lists "origin unknown" at the end of its definition for a charley horse. The definition, by the way, reads, "a muscle cramp."
The Random House Webster's Dictionary I found in our sports department also lists no origin and its definition is similar to that found in the American Heritage Dictionary.
The 2,662-page unabridged edition of Webster's Third New International Dictionary speculates on a meaning, saying Charley is a common name for "old lame horses kept for family use."
And, http://www.freedictionary.com, at the end of its charley horse definition, says the term is originally baseball slang, of unknown origin.
A posting at http://www.wordwizard.com, a Web site devoted to the history of words and phrases, offers the following: "In the 1890s an old horse named Charley was used in the old Chicago White Sox ballpark to pull a roller across the infield. He was old and his muscles would get so stiff he could hardly walk. Players and spectators who caught a cramp thought of the old horse and started calling the condition a charley horse."
Other baseball explanations exist, referring to Charlie "Duke" Esper, a southpaw who walked like a lame horse. The other talks of a Sioux City, Iowa, groundskeeper named Charley who owned a lame horse.
And in an unlikely marriage of the two, the term might refer to the name of either a horse or an afflicted ball player who limped like one of the elderly draft horses formerly employed to drag the infield.
This is more than I ever thought I'd write on the subject of leg cramps.
What is yeast made of? Yeast is a tiny form of fungi scientists refer to as "microorganisms." They are egg-shaped cells that can only be seen with a microscope. It takes 20,000,000,000 (20 billion) yeast cells to weigh one gram or ½8 of an ounce.
The scientific name for one species of yeast is "Saccharomyces Cerevisiae" or "sugar eating fungus." This name is derived from the Latin word "cerevisiae," which means "brewer." This strain of yeast is very strong and capable of fermentation, the process that causes bread dough to rise.
I stole this answer from the good folks at Red Star Yeast via their Web page.
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