February 21

is

National Pancake Day

Five things you should know about

Pancakes

  1. Throughout Europe most people celebrate Shrove Tuesday with pancakes–
  2. Pancakes are associated with the day before lent because it was a way to use up “rich foods” such as eggs, milk, & sugar, before the 40 days fast begins–
  3. A waffle is basically a pancake with a syrup trap.  -Mitch Hedberg
  4. Pancakes became popular because of the ease of quickly producing them in large quantities.  They’re ideal for a big celebration or a large family’s breakfast.–
  5. While cooking pancakes, the French often make a wish, while flipping the pancake to turn it over, while holding a coin in the other hand.

On This Day in Food History…

1554 Hieronymus Bock died. A German botanist whose work contributed to the transition from medieval beliefs to modern science.
1741 Jethro Tull died. He was an English agriculturalist and inventor whose ideas were instrumental in the development of modern English agriculture. One of his inventions was a horse drawn seed planting drill that sowed 3 even rows of seeds at once. (1701). The music group ‘Jethro Tull’ was named for him.
1858 Edwin T. Holmes sells the first electric burglar alarm in the U.S., in Boston, Massachusetts. His workshop was later used by Alexander Graham Bell.
1895 Carl Peter Henrik Dam was born. Dam was a Danish biochemist who discovered vitamin K in 1939.
1927 Erma Bombeck was born. Writer, humorist, you will find some of her quotes about family and food on the Food Reference website.
1931 Alka Seltzer was introduced.
1985 Nathan Pritikin died. A nutritionist who believed that exercise and a low fat, high unrefined carbohydrate diet helped reverse his own heart disease. He founded the Pritikin Longevity Center in 1976.
1989 The USDA approved ‘Simplesse,’ a low calorie fat substitute.
1994 Whirlpool began manufacturing a refrigerator that was significantly more efficient, and did not use freon. Freon has been implicated in the destruction of ozone in the atmosphere.