Boing Boing / Google Gemini Alfred M. Thomsen had spent years at his San Francisco lab trying to grow edible yeast. The yeast grew, but every batch came out terrible. Then one day, a brew that should have been especially nasty boiled over onto his hand. He licked it to cool the burn. It tasted fine. Nelson Valjean told the story in the September 1946 issue of True: The Men's Magazine . Thomsen chased the fluke and, within a few tries, had yeast food that tasted like peanut butter. The yeast was grown on glucose that Thomsen squeezed out of cellulose waste shoveled into his hydrolizer. Sawdust was the classic raw material, but cornstalks, peanut shells, and even sugar cane leavings all worked. A pound of the finished product had the nutritional value of two and a half pounds of lean beefsteak, at five cents a pound. Thomsen calculated that the U.S. could feed a billion people on waste from its mines, lumber operations, and farms. Former president Herbert Hoover was a fan.…