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Happy National Empanada Day!

Here are today’s five food facts to know about Empanadas:

• The Spanish word for bread is “pan”.  “Empanar” is a verb form that means “to bread”.  Emapanada is the past-participle, “breaded”.

• It’s basically a single-serving turnover.  It can be filled with sweet foods like fruits, sugars, and syrups, or savory foods like meats, cheeses, and oils.

• They originated in northwest Spain, in a region known as Galicia.
• Today they are most popular in Spanish-speaking countries across Europe and South America.

• Originally they were made with bread dough, but now they are made with pastries as well.

Today’s Food History

o    1513 Ponce de Leon landed in Florida while searching for the Fountain of Youth. He thought it was just another island of the Bahamas.

o    1862 John D. Lynde of Philadelphia patented the first aerosol dispenser.

o    1873 Alfred Paraf received a patent for the first commercially viable margarine manufacturing process.

o    1879 The Echo Farms Dairy of New York began selling milk in glass bottles, the first in the U.S.

o    1946 ‘Catfish’ Hunter, baseball pitcher, was born.

o    1992 R.I.P. Benjamin Eisenstadt. He invented the artificial sweetener, ‘Sweet ‘n Low’ (granulated saccharin and dextrose).

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