Upside Down!
| February 22, 2017
Photo: Shutterstock
A re you dizzy? I mean are you ready? Rosh Chodesh Adar’s in the air and you know what that means… it’s time to look at things from a different more fun perspective! How about in say an upside-down way? Or better yet we could stay right-side up and just check out everything that’s upside down!
At Bat
Check it out: Bats — yup there they are hanging upside down from their legs roosting in secluded spots like caves under bridges or inside hollow trees. Ever wondered why on earth they’re upside down? I can’t imagine that’s the most comfortable way to sleep!
Turns out their legs are small so they can’t run into a takeoff and their wings don’t produce enough lift to take off from a dead stop so the best way for bats to start flying quickly is just to drop into a free fall! If they’re upside down they’re always ready to escape a predator…
But that’s enough about bat — I mean that!
Racecar (now read that word backward!)
If you’re in Clinton Illinois you might see an upside-down vehicle driving around town. It’s the brainwave of mechanic Rick Sullivan who spent six months and $6 000 building his creation from the parts of two separate cars. It looks like an upside-down red-and-white pickup truck complete with four spinning tires in the air.
Though it drives like any regular vehicle and is completely road safe it does make people — pedestrians and fellow drivers alike! — stop and stare. Rick says about a thousand pictures are taken of his car every time he takes it for a spin. The best part? His license plate: FLIPOVR!
Piece of Cake
I’m hungry! Are you? (Always right?!) In the spirit of today’s upside down-ness I have the perfect snack! A slice of pineapple upside-down cake. Why’s it upside down? Well for that we have to explore the kitchens of yesteryear before all the super funky kitchen inventions we love to use today were invented. Centuries ago cakes were cooked (not baked) in cast-iron skillets. It was easy for the cook to put fruit and sugar in the bottom of the pan and the cake batter on top and then put it over the fire to cook. Then she’d flip it over onto a plate to show the pretty fruit and let it run into the cake as well.
In 1911 an engineer at the Dole factory invented the machine that cuts pineapples into those nice little rings. Soon after that someone thought of putting the pretty pineapple slices into an upside-down cake and filling the pineapple holes with maraschino cherries. Ta da — the pineapple upside-down cake had been officially invented! The wildly popular recipe has been shared worldwide — in women’s magazines and cookbooks and on flour bags and pineapple cans.
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