Japan is a country in love with noodles, which are an important ingredient of everyday life there; whether it's a quick lunch, or a special dish at a religious festival.  Soba noodles are made mostly from buckwheat flour, which gives them a richer and nuttier flavor than other noodles.  Soba noodles are brown, which makes them easy to recognize, because most other noodles in Japan are yellow or white.  Soba noodles are dense, thin, and long.  When dried, they are similar in shape to spaghetti.  They are not only low in calories but also low in carbohydrates and contain all eight essential amino acids.  The only ingredients are buckwheat flour, plain flour, and water.  The three ingredients are kneaded into thin dough.  Then they are sliced into long thin spaghetti-like strands.  Once the dough is formed the noodles are added to hot water, which is boiled until the noodles are cooked.  Then a broth or sauce is added to the noodles to make a complete dish.  Udon noodles are extremely popular in Japan, though they haven't yet become popular in other countries.  They are very different from soba noodles in appearance.  Soba noodles are brown, flat, and thin, udon noodles are glossy white, round, and thick.  Made from wheat flour, they are much milder in flavor than their buckwheat counterparts and are thick and chewy in texture.  They are served in many hot soup dishes as well as in some cold dry dishes.  Ramen is the best-known Japanese noodle outside Japan, though it is one of the newest culinary inventions in the country.  The biggest difference between ramen and soba noodles is the flavor.  While soba noodles are made mostly with buckwheat, ramen is usually made with wheat flour.  Yakisoba noodles are not made with buckwheat flour but instead with wheat flour, like udon and ramen.  Yakisoba noodles are round, but much smaller and thinner than udon.  They are most commonly used in stir-fried noodle dishes, and are not usually eaten with broth.  Somen noodles have a similar texture and flavor to udon noodles and are also made with wheat flour.  However, somen noodles are thinner and normally eaten cold with sauce, instead of in hot broths.  Unlike soba or udon noodles, somen noodles are not made by cutting, but by stretching the dough.  This gives somen noodles a smoother and more elastic texture.  posted by Carol  https://www.asiahighlights.com/japan/soba-vs-udon 

Amino acids are organic compounds that combine to form proteins.  Essential amino acids cannot be made by the body.  As a result, they must come from food.  The 9 essential amino acids are: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.  https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002222.htm 

Carbohydrates, or carbs, are sugar molecules.  Along with proteins and fats, carbohydrates are one of three main nutrients found in foods and drinks.  Your body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose.  Glucose, or blood sugar, is the main source of energy for your body's cells, tissues, and organs.  Glucose can be used immediately or stored in the liver and muscles for later use.  https://medlineplus.gov/carbohydrates.html 

BY THE NUMBERS  There are about 2,000 species of fireflies, each with its own flash pattern that it uses to communicate.  *  With 284 acres of ancestral land added, the Ioway Tribal National Park will encompass about 820 acres on a forested bluff overlooking the Missouri River, a historic trading village and 3,000-year old burial mounds.  Nature Conservancy Magazine  Summer 2021

In 1701, Copenhagen was a burgeoning city fortress of 60,000, a seaside capital enclosed by canals and high walls with just four gates.  The streets were narrow and crowded, lined on each side by cramped, timber-framed buildings, though strewn among the city were architectural jewels.  Copenhagen held the Renaissance-style Frederiksborg Palace, symmetrical baroque gardens, and Gothic churches.  The University of Copenhagen, the second oldest institute of higher education in Scandinavia, had the Round Tower astronomical observatory where the speed of light was first quantified.  A day in 1728 changed the face of the city forever.  A fire raged until October 23rd.  In the end, nearly half the medieval section was destroyed, totaling about a third of the city.  A full fifth of the residents of Copenhagen had been left homeless.  This was awful, but the cultural destruction was truly staggering:  virtually all of the books of Copenhagen had been destroyed.  The University of Copenhagen had lost everything; at Borchs Kollegium, 3,150 volumes burned; the city archives were lost.  “Almost all the books in Copenhagen were incinerated.  But many of the Icelandic handwritten manuscripts were saved because Arni Magnusson . . . managed to get the manuscripts out in time,” attests Professor Morten Fink-Jensen, a researcher and University of Copenhagen historian.  Egill Bjarnason  Read extensive article at https://lithub.com/the-obsessive-scholar-who-rescued-icelands-ancient-literary-legacy/ 

wake up and smell the coffee (third-person singular simple present wakes up and smells the coffee, present participle waking up and smelling the coffee, simple past woke up and smelled the coffee or woke up and smelt the coffee, past participle woken up and smelled the coffee or woken up and smelt the coffee)  verb  (idiomatic, US, informal) Often in the infinitive or imperative: to face reality and stop deluding oneself. quotations ▼ Synonyms:  open one's eyes, take the hint, (rare) wake up and smell the ashes, wake up and smell the decaf, wake up and smell the roses  Probably a humorous elaboration of wake up (“to become more aware of a real-life situation; to concentrate on the matter in hand”), alluding to the fact that coffee is often consumed at breakfast time after waking up in the morning.  The term was popularized by the American writer Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer (1918–2002), who used the pen name Ann Landers, in the syndicated newspaper advice column Ask Ann Landers.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wake_up_and_smell_the_coffee#English 

June 18 is designated as Sustainable Gastronomy Day by the United Nations to highlight the role that gastronomy can play in promoting sustainable development.  Wikipedia 

US President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.  Issued under powers granted to the president “as a fit and necessary war measure”, the proclamation declared, “That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and forever free . . . "  Union troops arrived in Galveston, and Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, commanding officer, District of Texas, from his headquarters in the Osterman building (Strand and 22nd St.), read ‘General Order No. 3’ on June 19, 1865.  The order stated “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free.  This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”  With this notice, reconstruction era Texas began.  Freed African Americans observed “Emancipation Day,” as it was first known, as early as 1866 in Galveston.  Read more and see graphics at https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-and-general-order-no-3 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2379  June 18, 2021