Monday, August 17, 2026

Just ordered Alexander P. Anderson Minnesota farmer-botantist "short stories/poetry" book from 1941 (inventor of Puffed Rice!!)

 https://www.featherstonefarm.com/our-story

they sell at our local co-op - gotta try some of their organic corn just now harvested!  

I just ordered his 1941 Minnesota Botany book for $10 from Dallas Halfprice books.
Anderson, Alexander P. The Seventh Reader: Short Stories with Some Verse. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1941.

The cereal also gained attention as “food shot from guns of peace.”

Online articles from the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Botanical Garden explain:

In 1902, Alexander Anderson received a patent for “a dry method of swelling starch materials of all kinds to render them porous, thereby enhancing their nutritive value and rendering them more readily and completely digested.” The following year he signed an agreement with Quaker Oats to begin large-scale production of puffed rice and wheat cereals. (Source: “Alexander Anderson and the Cereal Shot from Guns” at https://invention.si.edu/alexander-anderson-and-cereal-shot-guns.)

Prior to being marketed as a cereal, Anderson’s puffed rice was promoted as a confection at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Cannon-like cylinders discharged downpours of puffed rice in a giant cage, wowing the crowds, who purchased packages of the novel treat. (Source: “Breakfast in a Blast: The Invention of Puffed Cereal at NYBG” at https://www.nybg.org.)

Then, the cannons stopped firing. In April 2019, Mae’s Food Blog, posted “The Quaker Oats Company Has Stopped Puffing!” (Read more at https://maefood.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-quaker-oats-company-has-stopped.html.)

Poof!

Quaker Puffed Rice--and Puffed Wheat--disappeared.

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