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National Biscuit Day

Five Food Finds about Biscuits

• In the United Kingdom, the word “biscuit” is used to refer to what we in the United States would call a “cookie”.

• White flour, commonly used to bake biscuits, is almost instantly metabolized into sugar.  Biscuits will quickly spike your blood-sugar level.

• Mustard is a common condiment to use on biscuits in the south, especially to accompany ham.

• Most biscuit recipes call for a healthy dose of butter in the baking process.  Despite this, many people butter their biscuits after they are served as well.

• The main difference between biscuits and rolls is the leavening agent.  Biscuits use baking soda.  Rolls use yeast.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1630 Charles II, king of England was born. The ‘Merry Monarch,’ tea was introduced to England during his reign. On December 23, 1675, he issued a proclamation suppressing Coffee Houses. The public response was so negative that he revoked it on January 8, 1676.

1716 Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton was born. A French naturalist and pioneer in several fields including plant physiology. He also conducted agricultural experiments and introduced Merino sheep to France. First director of the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

1886 Coca-Cola, invented by pharmacist John Styth Pemberton in 1885, was advertised for the first time in the Atlanta Daily on this day. 1919 Charles Strite of Stillwater, Minnesota applied for a pop-up toaster patent.

1971 ‘Brown Sugar’ by the Rolling Stones hits number 1 on the charts.

2004 Tens of millions of pounds of almonds were recalled by one of the world’s largest almond producers, located in California due to a salmonella outbreak. At least 25 people were sickened in states from Alaska to Michigan.

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National Brisket Day

Five Food Finds about Brisket

• Brisket is a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest of beef or veal.

• The beef brisket is one of the eight beef primal cuts.

• The brisket muscles include the superficial and deep pectorals.

• As cattle do not have collar bones, these muscles support about 60% of the body weight of standing/moving cattle.

• This requires a significant amount of connective tissue, so the resulting meat must be cooked correctly to tenderize the connective tissue.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1892 The Sierra Club is formed in San Francisco for nature conservation.

1897 Jell-O was introduced.

1910 T-Bone Walker, blues guitarist, was born in Linden, Texas.

1944 Gladys Knight was born. (Gladys Knight & the Pips) A ‘Pip’ is the small seed of a fruit, like those in an apple.

1999 After 22 years of controversial restoration, Leonardo de Vinci’s masterpiece ‘The Last Supper’ is returned to public display.

2003 The first cloned horse was born in a natural delivery. Cloned horses are currently banned from racing.

National Grape Popsicle Day

Five Food Finds about Grape Popsicles

• Popsicles were originally marketed as “a frozen drink on a stick”.

• Popsicles originally came in seven flavors thought to be root beer, cherry, lemon, orange, banana, grape, and watermelon, but there is no official record of Epperson’s original flavors.

• The most popular Popsicle flavor is Cherry.

• More than two billion Popsicles are sold each year.

• The dual Popsicle featuring two sticks and one Popsicle that could be split in half was introduced during the Great Depression as a way to split the treat across two children for the same cost.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1901 Conrad Arnold Elvehjem Born. American biochemist who identified nicotinic acid as a vitamin (one of the B vitamins), and that a deficiency on nicotinic acid resulted in the disease pellagra.

1907 Rachel Louise Carson was born; author of ‘Silent Spring.’ An American biologist, the book was concerned with the dangers of environmental pollution, especially DDT

1930 Richard G. Drew of St. Paul, Minnesota patented transparent cellophane adhesive tape. He worked out a deal with 3M to market this ‘Scotch’ tape. What did we ever do without it?

1933 The first automatic soda fountain dispenser is introduced by Coca-Cola.

1975 British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was born. Known as the ‘Naked Chef,’ on his BBC TV cooking shows (the name refers to simplicity, not nudity). He has had several TV shows, ‘The Naked Chef,’ ‘Return of the Naked Chef,’ ‘Happy Days with the Naked Chef,’ ‘Jamie’s Kitchen,’ ‘Return to Jamie’s Kitchen,’ and ‘Oliver’s Twist.’ He has also written several cookbooks.

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National Blueberry Cheesecake Day

Five Food Finds about Cheesecake

• Cheesecake is a dessert formed of a topping made with soft, fresh cheese upon a base made from biscuit, pastry or sponge. The topping is frequently sweetened with sugar and flavored or topped with a puree or compote of fruit.

• Savory cheesecakes also exist, served sometimes as hors d’oeuvre or with accompanying salads. Despite their name, cheesecakes are technically tarts; the word ‘cake’ was formerly applied to a much broader category of foods than it is today.

• Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura includes recipes for two cakes for religious uses: libum and placenta. Of the two placenta is most like modern cheesecakes having a crust that is separately prepared and baked.

• Cheesecakes can be broadly categorised into two basic types – baked and unbaked – and each comes in a variety of styles determined by region.

• Japanese-style cheesecake relies upon the emulsification of cornstarch and eggs to make a smooth flan-like texture and almost plasticine appearance.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1923 James Arness was born. Best known as Marshal Matt Dillon on the TV series ‘Gunsmoke,’ he also played the creature in the 1951 movie ‘The Thing from Another World.’ The creature was a vegetable based alien life form, a “super intellectual carrot.”

1955 Morimoto Masaharu was born in Hiroshima, Japan. Masaharu is a well known Japanese Chef, and was the last Japanese Iron Chef on the TV show, Iron Chef (late 1990s).  He now has his own restaurant, Morimoto in Philadelphia.

1971 Don Maclean recorded ‘American Pie’.

1979 ‘Reunited’ by Peaches & Herb is #1 on the charts

1999 R.I.P.  Waldo Lonsbury Semon. Semon was an American Inventor who is credited with the invention of Vinyl. Vinyl is the 2nd most used plastic in the world.  Semon held over 100 patents.

National Wine Day

Five Food Finds about Wine

• The longest recorded champagne cork flight was 177 feet and 9 inches, four feet from level ground at Woodbury Vineyards in New York State.

• Thomas Jefferson helped stock the wine cellars of the first five U.S. presidents and was very partial to fine Bordeaux and Madeira.

• Chilling tones down the sweetness of wine. If a red wine becomes too warm, it may lose some of its fruity flavor.

• The Irish believe that fairies are extremely fond of good wine.

• Foot treading of grapes is still used in producing a small quantity of the best port wines.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1789 R.I.P. Anders Dahl. A renowned Swedish botanist, the Dahlia flower was named for him.

1877 Minnesota’s $1.00 per bushel bounty on grasshopper eggs expires. The state had experienced a 4 year grasshopper (locust) plague.

1882 The first frozen mutton from New Zealand arrived in Britain

1973 Wrexham Asda supermarket opened in the U.K.

1986 Six million Americans participate in ‘Hand Across America’ by holding hands and singing across 4,150 miles of road in support of the hungry and homeless.

2007 Coca Cola created a 3,000 gallon, 15 foot high ice cream float with Vanilla Coke and ice cream, and set a new world record for the largest ice cream float.  The float was certified as drinkable by health inspectors, but it was disposed of by a garbage company.  Coke also held the previous record from 1998 with a 2,085 gallon float.

National Escargot Day

Five Food Finds about Escargot

• Escargot – French – An edible snail, especially one prepared as an appetizer or entree.

• The French consume 40,000 metric tons of snails each year.

• Heliculture is the science of growing snails for food.

• Snails have been eaten as food since at least ancient Roman times. Apicius, the author of the oldest surviving cookbook (1st century B.C – 2 century A.D.) has a recipe for snails in his cookbook.

• Restaurants serve about 1 billion snails annually.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1686 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born. He developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale, and invented the mercury thermometer.

1883 R.I.P. Gabriel Gustav Valentin. This German-Swiss physiologist was the first to discover the digestive activity of pancreatic juice. (Oh Boy!).

1883 The Brooklyn Bridge opened. It took 14 years to build at a cost of $18 million, and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.

1893 The Anti-Saloon League was founded by Howard H. Russell at Oberlin, Ohio.

1929 The first Marx Brothers film, ‘Cocoanuts’ premiered.

1941 Robert Allen Zimmerman was born.

1945 The first Food-O-Mat was installed in a Grand Union Company store in New Jersey

1976 In Paris, two California wines won top honors at a blind wine tasting by the best of France’s wine experts. The French were shocked, and the wine world was changed forever.

2007 R.I.P. Kelly Jo Dowd. She was one of the original ‘Hooters’ Girls’ at the first Hooters’ restaurant which opened in 1983 in Clearwater Florida.

National Taffy Day

Five Food Finds about Taffy

• Salt water taffy was “invented” in Atlantic City in 1883.

• Modern technology allows confectioners to produce 1,000 pieces of taffy a minute.

• In one hour enough pieces of taffy are made to cover one third of the length of Atlantic City (about 1.3 miles).

• The three most popular taffy flavors sold by Sweet Candy Company are peppermint, cinnamon and chocolate.

• America celebrates National Taffy Day May 23rd.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1707 Carolus Linnaeus was born. He was a Swedish botanist who developed the 2 name or binomial system for defining and naming plants.

1774 Residents of Chestertown, Maryland  react to news of the Boston Tea Party by staging a similar protest, dumping a shipment of tea into the Chester River.

1868 R.I.P. Kit Carson, American frontiersman. His last words were supposedly “Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.”

1922 Thomas Edison patented a method for making metal foils.

1960 R.I.P. Georges Claude. A French engineer, he invented the neon light, commonly used for signs.

1968 ‘Yummy, Yummy, Yummy’ by the Ohio Express is #1 on the charts.

National Vanilla Pudding Day

Five Food Finds about Pudding

• The Fortress hotel in Galle, Sri Lanka, is charging $14,500 a serving of the world’s most expensive pudding, which is called “The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence”.

• Hasty pudding, originally a British dish, this pudding could be made on very short notice.  Ingredients vary, but it was basically a sweetened porridge made from flour, tapioca or oatmeal and milk. The term originated in the late 16th century.

• In Colonial America cornmeal was cheaper and more readily available, so here, Hasty Pudding was a cornmeal mush (cornmeal added to boiling water and cooked) with molasses, honey, brown sugar or maple syrup and milk.

• There are both savory and dessert versions of this dish.

• Meat pudding would be a savory example of a pudding dish.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born. Creator of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes would go for days without food while working on a case.

1892 Dr. Washington Sheffeld invented the collapsible metal toothpaste tube.

1894 African American inventor S. Newson patented an “oil heater or cooker.”

1931 Canned rattlesnake goes on sale. Packed by George K. End of Arcadia, Florida. Not quite as big a hit as Spam.

1934 R.I.P.David Wesson. An American chemist who developed a method to make cotton seed oil edible. Cotton seed oil has almost no taste, so it allows the flavors of other foods to come through. It is used in the manufacture of margarine, salad dressings, in commercially fried foods, and of course, Wesson Oil.

1946 The Culinary Institute of America is founded.

National Strawberries and Cream Day

Five Food Finds about Strawberries

• Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.

• The ancient Romans believed that strawberries alleviated symptoms of melancholy, fainting, all inflammations, fevers, throat infections, kidney stones, bad breath, attacks of gout, and diseases of the blood, liver and spleen.

• Strawberries are the first fruit to ripen in the spring.

• Over 53 percent of seven to nine-year-olds picked strawberries as their favorite fruit.

• In a test, subjects who ate nitrate rich foods like strawberries, before exercising burned 100 more calories than those who did not.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1923 Delmonico’s Restaurant closed its doors, a victim of Prohibition. (Some sources list October 4, 1918).

1987 R.I.P.  Archie Fairley Carr. An American biologist and authority on turtles. His extensive studies and conservation efforts helped to increase turtle populations around the world.

2009 After months of numerous mechanical failures, a new recycling system was activated on the international space station. The new system recycles astronauts urine and sweat into drinking water.

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National Quiche Lorraine Day

Five Food Finds about Quiche

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1506 R.I.P. Christopher Columbus, explorer.

1799 Honore de Balzac Born. French author. Balzac would lock himself away during creative bursts, drinking coffee and eating only fruit and eggs. When he finally took a break, he was known to consume huge quantities of food. One report recalls that at the Véry restaurant he ate “a hundred Ostend oysters, twelve cutlets of salt-meadow mutton, a duck with turnips, two partridges and a Normandy sole,” not to mention the desserts, fruit and liqueurs he also consumed.

1810 On this day Dolly Madison, wife of president James Madison, supposedly served the first ice cream at the White House, for a reception.

1862 President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law. It opened millions of acres Western land to settlers.

1874 Jeans with copper rivets are patented by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis.

1875 The International Bureau of Weights and Measures was created.

1884 L. Blue patented a hand corn sheller.

1892 George Sampson received a patent for a clothes dryer.

1913 William Hewlett was born. Founder with David Packard of Hewlett Packard Company. Before they became famous for computers and printers etc., some of their early inventions were an automatic urinal flusher and a weight loss shock machine!

1961 The record Jewfish weighed 680 pounds and was caught in Fernandina Beach, Florida.

1993 The last episode of ‘Cheers’ aired on TV.

2005 Governor Jeb Bush signed a bill making the orange the official State Fruit of Florida. The orange blossom and orange juice have been previously declared the official state flower and official state beverage.

2009 Hot Dog Wars: Sara Lee (Ball Park Franks) sued Kraft Foods (Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks) over claims that Oscar Mayer franks are better than Ball Park Franks.

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