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Here are today’s five food facts about Escargot:

 

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

 

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

 

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  • Heliculture is the science of growing snails for food.

 

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  • 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.

 

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  • Restaurants serve about 1 billion snails annually.
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Today’s Food History

 

  • 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.