Joseph Knecht

Beans, Beans ... Johann Schmelzer Sonata for the Day of the Bean Feast If you listen carefully to the bassoon bursts in Schmelzer's sonata you'll hear that school boy humor was alive and well back in the Baroque Era. 😀 Like last week's puzzle, today's theme is all about food .   I wonder if Patti considered that the proteins provided in the  LEGUMES of our 4 theme clues today, complement the proteins in the BREAD GRAINS in last Thursday's puzzle, to provide the nearly complete protein   needed to sustain a vegetarian diet 😀.  For more on this topic see  Frances Moore Lappé ' s Diet for a Small Planet first published in 1971. We'll start with the reveal ... 36A. With 40-Across, a punny title for this puzzle: HUMAN ; and  40-Across See 36-Across: BEANS . Thus the themers  are all HUMANS , whose  last names happen to be a type of BEAN ... 17A. ...

The Stuff of Genius* ... and the staff of life .  People literally "broke" bread for their meals for thousands of years.  But all that changed in 1928 when Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread slicer .  And constructor Emma Oxford has come up with the best invention since then -- sliced crosswords !  Well maybe not 😀.  But she does present us with the following fill for four pairs of theme clues, each with some of the letters circled (shown in RED below), sliced by a black square , and when sandwiched back together give us  four kinds of bread ... 17A. Radio City, for one: MUSI C HALL and  19A. In the lead: AH EAD -- CHALLAH BREAD .  Here's a recipe . Challah Bread 32A. Arizona people: HO PI . and 34A. Drink mix made popular by NASA : TA NG -- PITA BREAD ....