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Tagged: food holidays
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The bagel originated in Poland and it was designed for Lent.
Its name derives from the Yiddish word ‘bengal’, meaning ‘ring’ or ‘bracelet’.
Immigrant Polish-Jews brought the bagel to the United States.
Automated production and distribution of frozen bagels started in the 1960s with bagel baker Harry Lender, Murray Lender, and Florence Sender.
The hole in the center of the bagel is for multiple bagels to be threaded onto a dowel, which allows bakers to transport the bagel more easily.
Today’s Food History
1686 Prince Louis II de Condé, known as the Great Condé, died. He was a French general who loved to hunt and had a passion for rice. Several dishes have been named for him, including Consommé Condé and Creme Condé.
1874 James Lewis Kraft was born. Founder of Kraft Co. a wholesale cheese distributor and producer. In 1916 he patented pasteurized process cheese, a low cost cheese that would not spoil. Not a great hit with the public, but the U.S. army purchased over 6 million tins of it during WW I. During the depression, it became popular because of its low cost.
1940 David Gates of the music group ‘Bread’ was born.
Tagged: bagel history, national have a bagel day
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Tagged: food holidays
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Vinegar has been used for 10,000 years. It just might be the world’s oldest ingredient.
The main uses for white distilled vinegar are cooking/food preparation and cleaning/disinfecting.
The International Vinegar Museum is in Roslyn, South Dakota.
Consumers in the South buy and use more white distilled vinegar than in any other region of the country.
Adding vinegar to baking soda produces a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide. This combination is often used to make a do-it-yourself erupting volcano.
Today’s Food History
1600 The British East India Company was incorporated by royal charter. It was created to compete in the East Indian spice trade.
1841 Alabama becomes the first state to issue dental licenses.
1853 A New Years Eve dinner party for 21 scientists was held inside a life size model of an Iguanodon dinosaur on the grounds of the Crystal palace in London. Sculpture Benjamin W. Hawkins had teamed up with paleontologist Richard Owen to create more than 2 dozen lifesize models of dinosaurs for a special exhibit.
1879 Thomas Alva Edison made the first public demonstration of his electric light bulb in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1917 Sugar rationing began in Britain as a result of WW I
1929 Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as their New Years Eve song for the first time.
1938 The Harger ‘Drunkometer’, the first alcohol breath testing device, was introduced in Indiana.
1977 ‘Bubbling Brown Sugar’ closed at the ANTA Playhouse in NYC after 766 performances.
Tagged: national vinegar day
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Instead of eating straight out of the box, pre-portion your snacks into small individual baggies.
Skip dessert and instead have a roll in the hay with your honey. Healthy sex may also help control the amount of food you eat.
Be sure to stock some red pepper flakes to your pantry. When eaten early in the day, red pepper can reduce the amount of food you consumer later.
Many of us hit the gym and eat right during the week but cut loose on the weekends by indulging in fried foods and trading in workouts for sleep. Be healthy seven days a week by planning your weekend ahead of time.
Who said healthy foods have to be boring? Puree peaches, pears and berries and spread them on whole wheat pita for a healthy and delish treat that’s perfect for spring and summer!
1800 Charles Goodyear was born. He invented the process named ‘vulcanization’ which made the commercial use of rubber possible. Vulcanized rubber didn’t become brittle in winter and turn gummy in summer as natural rubber did.
1837 A threshing machine powered by a horse on a treadmill was patented in Winthrop, Maine, by Hiram A. and John A. Pitts.
1921 Robert C. Baker was born. While a Poultry and Food Science professor at Cornell University from 1949-1989 he developed chicken nuggets (keeping the breading on was the key), turkey ham, poultry hot dogs and many other products. He founded Cornell’s Institute of Food Science and Marketing in 1970, and in 2004 was inducted into the American Poultry Hall of Fame.
1947 Ted Danson, American actor, was born. Best known for his role as bartender Sam Malone on the TV series ‘Cheers’.
1997 Fear of the ‘bird flu’ led Hong Kong to order its entire population of chickens, over 1 million birds, to be killed.
2005 Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans reopened exactly 4 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Tagged: national get on the scale day
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The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec word, “Xocolatl”, which ironically means “bitter water”.
The biggest bar of chocolate ever made was created in Turin, Italy. The bar was created in 2000 and weighed 5,000 pounds.
While the US produces the most chocolate and consume the most pounds every year, the Swiss consume the most per capita, followed closely by the English.
Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40% of the world’s almonds and 20% of the world’s peanuts.
Every Russian and American space voyage has included chocolate bars.
Today’s Food History
1763 John Molson was born. Founder of Molson Brewery, Montreal, Canada.
1869 William Finley Semple patented the first chewing gum, although he never commercially manufactured any gum.
1886 Josephine Garis Cochran patented the first commercially successful dish washing machine. It became a huge hit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Her company eventually evolved into KitchenAid.
1897 Edmond Rostand’s romantic, dramatic play ‘Cyarano de Bergerac’ premiers in Paris. A unique combination of love, swordplay, comedy, pathos and proboscis.
Tagged: National Boxed Chocolates Day
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The Egyptians liked these cakes so much that they put them in tombs. They thought that fruitcakes would survive the long journey to the afterlife
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Even Crusaders knew that fruitcakes could withstand a long journey. Not only did these cakes withstand long journeys, but they were also full of nutritious items like dried fruit and nuts.
Fruitcakes were the wedding cake of choice in England. Single female wedding guests would take a piece home and place it under their pillow in hopes of dreaming of the man they would marry.
Fruitcake is perfectly edible as long as there is no mold on it.
If your fruitcake dries out, soak it in alcohol or some other liquid and it will become as edible again.
1741 Jean Etienne Bore was born. The inventor of the sugar granulating process (1794 or 1795), founder of the sugar industry in Louisiana.
1822 Louis Pasteur was born. A French scientist, he showed that microorganisms were responsible for disease, food spoilage and fermentation. He developed the process for killing these organisms by heat, called Pasteurization. He also developed vaccines for anthrax, cholera and rabies.
1831 Charles Darwin sets off aboard the HMS Beagle, on his historic 5 year voyage of scientific discovery.
1834 English author and poet Charles Lamb died.
1947 The children’s TV show ‘Howdy Doody’ debuts on NBC.
1960 Ray Charles recorded ‘One Mint Julep.’
1968 Victor Shelford died. An American zoologist and ecologist, he was one of the first to treat ecology as a separate science. He was active and influential in several ecological organizations, including the Nature Conservancy formed in 1951.
Tagged: national fruitcake day
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The candy cane was originally a straight stick.
It was not until the mid 1900’s that candy canes with red stripes appeared in Sweden.
The curvy shape of the candy cane is credited to a choirmaster who worked at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. It is believed that he bent the peppermint sticks to look like the canes that shepherd’s used.
Other sources credit the bending of the candy maker in Indiana. It is rumored that he also decided to added three red stripes to the candy cane which were meant to represent the Holy Trinity.
Some people believe that the reason the peppermint sticks were bent into their curvy shape was so that they could look like a “J,” for Jesus.
Today’s Food History
1620 The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on the ‘Mayflower.’
1792 Charles Babbage was born. He invented the adding machine, and among his other inventions is the cowcatcher, the V shaped front end on locomotives.
1850 Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey declares Minnesota’s first Thanksgiving Day.
1865 James H. Mason received the first U.S. patent for a coffee percolator.
1903 Elisha Cook Jr. was born. A well known character actor in films and TV. I remember him most as Wilmer, in the ‘Maltese Falcon’.
1931 Melvil Dewey died. He created the Dewey Decimal Classification system for cataloging library books.
1982 The ‘Time’ magazine Man of the Year was the personal computer.
2004 A massive earthquake near Sumatra caused a tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean from Indonesia to Africa. It was one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. Over 220,000 died, and millions were left homeless.
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#NationalPumpkinPieDay
1213 King John of England ordered 3,000 capons, 1,000 salted eels, 400 hogs, 100 pounds of almonds and 24 casks of wine for his Christmas feasts.
1252 Henry III hosts 1,000 knights and nobels at York. 600 oxen are consumed.
1415 England’s Henry V orders food distributed to the citizens of Rouen who are trapped by his siege. Henry himself dines on roast porpoise.
1512 The Duke of Northumberland was served 5 swans for Christmas dinner.
1580 The Christmas feasts of Sir William Petrie includes 17 oxen, 14 steers, 29 calves, 5 hogs, 13 bucks, 54 lambs, 129 sheep and one ton of cheese.
1642 Sir Isaac Newton was born. Newton was an English mathematician famous for being hit on the head by a falling apple (probably a ‘Flower of Kent’ variety). He also wrote ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’ in 1687.
1714 England’s King George I has his first Christmas pudding, made with 5 pounds of suet and 1 pound of plums.
1741 Anders Celsius developed the Centigrade temperature scale. Originally he had the freezing point of water at 100 and the boiling point at 0. This was reversed after his death to match the other temperature scales.
1805 American explorer Zebulon Pike celebrated Christmas by allowing “two pounds extra of meat, two pounds extra of flour, one gill of whiskey, and some tobacco, to each man, in order to distinguish Christmas Day.”
1852 A 446 pound baron of beef was served to Queen Victoria and the royal family.
1887 Conrad Nicholson Hilton was born. Founder of one of the largest hotel chains. It all began when he and his father turned their large New Mexico house into an inn for traveling salesmen.
1944 Henry Vestine of the music group ‘Canned Heat’ was born.
1946 Jimmy Buffet, musician, was born. ‘Cheesburger in Paradise,’ ‘Margaritaville’ etc.
1954 Liberty Hyde Bailey died. He was an American botanist who studied cultivated plants and developed horticulture into an applied science.
1958 ‘The Chipmunk Song’ becomes the only Christmas song in U.S. in history to be Number #1 on Christmas Day.
1960 Dr. Irving Cooper received a wine bottle opener for Christmas. It injected carbon dioxide gas into the bottle to force the cork out. He noticed the gas was extremely cold coming out from the needle like device. This gave him the idea to develop a brain surgery technique using liquid nitrogen to freeze tiny areas of brain cells or tumors.
1971 Neil Hogan of the musical group The Cranberries was born.
Tagged: national pumpkin pie day, pumpkin pie
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1809 Kit Carson, American frontiersman, was born. When he died May 23, 1868, his last words were supposedly “Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.”
1826 ‘Eggnog Riot’ at West Point military academy. When informed that their Christmas eggnog would be alcohol free, cadets in North Barrack No. 5 decided to make their own eggnog with alcohol, for a Christmas eve late night/early morning celebration. Of course it got noisy and they were caught. Shouting and general disorder developed, some swords were drawn, firewood crashed through windows, and at least one shot was fired. The artillery unit stationed at West Point had to be called in to quell the disturbance. In the aftermath 6 cadets resigned, 19 were court marshaled, and many, including a young Jefferson Davis, were confined to quarters for more than a month.
1914 John Muir died. Muir was a naturalist who was largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in California in 1890.
1968 ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye is #1 on the charts.
2006 In the Chicago suburb of Villa Park, thieves stole a semi tractor trailer filled with broccoli. It was valued at $50,000.
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1675 On December 23, 1675, Charles II of England, issued a proclamation suppressing Coffee Houses. The public response was so negative that he revoked it on January 8, 1676.
A Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee Houses.
“Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of Coffee Houses of late years set up and kept within this Kingdom…and the great resort of idle and disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well for that many tradesmen and others, do herein misspend much of their time, which might and probably would be employed in and about their Lawful Calling and Affairs; but also for that in shcu houses…divers, false, malitious, and scandalous reports are devised and spread abroad to the Defamation of His Majesty’s Government, and to the disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; his Majesty hath though it fit and necessary, that the said Coffee Houses be (for the Future) put down and suppressed…”
1901 Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert died. An English chemist, he is the co-inventor (with John Bennet Lawes) of superphosphate fertilizer.
1940 Jorma Kaukonen of the music group ‘Hot Tuna’ was born.
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1884 John Simpson Chisum died. An American cattle rancher, in 1867 he blazed the Chisum Trail from Paris, Texas to New Mexico. He developed the largest cattle herd in the United States.
1885 La Marcus Thompson of Coney Island, New York was issued a second patent for a gravity switchback railway. This was an improvement on his previous patent issued January 20 the same year. The “Father of the Gravity Ride” had opened a 600 foot roller coaster the previous year. Stomachs would never be the same again.
1938 A coelacanth was caught off the coast of South Africa. The coelacanth is a primitive fish thought to have been extinct for more than 80 million years. Since then another coelacanth population has been discovered in Indonesia.
1943 Beatrix Potter died. English author of children’s books, her first and most famous story is ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit,’ originally written as an illustrated letter to a sick child.
1985 The largest grouper caught with rod and reel weighed over 436 pounds. It was caught in Destin, Florida.
Tagged: national date nut bread day
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Today’s Food History
1883 Laurence M. Klauber was born. Klauber was an American herpetologist and inventor who was a rattlesnake expert. If you want to know anything or everything about rattlesnakes, see his book ‘Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories and Influence on Mankind.’
1913 The ‘New York World’ published the first crossword puzzle. Don’t forget to check the various Food theme Crosswords on the Food Reference Website!
1937 Walt Disney’s first full length animated film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ opened in Los Angeles, California. It ran for 83 minutes and cost $1.5 million to make.
1998 Adelaide Hawley Cumming died. She was television’s original Betty Crocker on the Betty Crocker Show premiering in 1949.
Tagged: National fried shrimp day, shrimp facts
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1829 Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck died. A French naturalist, he believed in the inheritance of acquired traits. He was the first to draw an evolutionary diagram. Some of his ideas influenced Darwin.
1965 ‘Taste Of Honey’ by Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass is #1 on the charts.
1988 Pillsbury Co. is acquired by the British company Grand Metropolitan PLC, a food and spirits conglomerate.
1991 The ‘International Project to Save the Brazilian Rainforests’ was launched.
Tagged: honey facts, National I love honey day
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1843 Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ was published. It contains numerous and elaborate descriptions of Christmas food and dinners.
“Oh! All that steam! The pudding had just been taken out of the cauldron. Oh! That smell! The same as the one which prevailed on washing day! It is that of the cloth which wraps the pudding. Now, one would imagine oneself in a restaurant and in a confectioner’s at the same time, with a laundry nest door. Thirty seconds later, Mrs. Cratchit entered, her face crimson, but smiling proudly, with the pudding resembling a cannon ball, all speckled, very firm, sprinkled with brandy in flames, and decorated with a sprig of holly stuck in the centre. Oh! The marvelous pudding!”
1892 The first performance of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ in St. Petersburg.
1940 ‘Corn Silk’ was recorded by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
1948 Jim Bonfanti of the music group ‘The Raspberries’ was born
Tagged: National Maple Syrup Day
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1843 Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ was published. It contains numerous and elaborate descriptions of Christmas food and dinners.
“Oh! All that steam! The pudding had just been taken out of the cauldron. Oh! That smell! The same as the one which prevailed on washing day! It is that of the cloth which wraps the pudding. Now, one would imagine oneself in a restaurant and in a confectioner’s at the same time, with a laundry nest door. Thirty seconds later, Mrs. Cratchit entered, her face crimson, but smiling proudly, with the pudding resembling a cannon ball, all speckled, very firm, sprinkled with brandy in flames, and decorated with a sprig of holly stuck in the centre. Oh! The marvelous pudding!”
1892 The first performance of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ in St. Petersburg.
1940 ‘Corn Silk’ was recorded by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
1948 Jim Bonfanti of the music group ‘The Raspberries’ was born
Tagged: national covered anything day
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Tagged: National Gingerbread Latte Day
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on this day in…
1686 Isaak Walton died. He is mainly known for ‘The Compleat Angler, or, the Contemplative Man’s Recreation,’ which is one of the most frequently published books in English literature. It is a literary discourse on the pleasures of fishing.
1902 Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet died. A French botanist, he saved the vineyards of France from total destruction by the grape phylloxera, a small greenish-yellow insect which sucks the fluid from grapevines. He did so by grafting the French vines on American rootstock, which was resistant to phylloxera. He also developed the first widely used plant fungicide.
1903 Italo Marchiony received a patent for an ice cream cup mold. Initially, he would fold warm waffles into a cup shape. He then developed the 2-piece mold that would make 10 cups at a time.
1946 Carmine Appice of the music group ‘Vanilla Fudge’ was born.
1964 Canada adopted the maple leaf as the official symbol for its national flag
Tagged: National Lemon Cupcake Day
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Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the South. It consists of a doughy biscuit covered in sausage or sawmill gravy, made for the drippings of cooked pork sausage and flavored with black pepper.
The meal emerged after the American Revolutionary War, when food stock was in short supply.
It became a popular dish for Southern plantation workers because the ingredients were cheap and in abundance.
The word “biscuit” comes from a Latin word “bis” which means to cook.
It’s also known as a “gravy biscuit.”
on this day in…
Tagged: National Biscuits and Gravy Day
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Make at least one large size bowl of popcorn.
Thread the needle without cutting the thread from the spool.
Start stringing one popcorn at a time by inserting the tip of the needle into the center of each piece.
Carefully hang the garland onto your Christmas tree.
Tagged: national popcorn string day
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Cocoa was first used to make “hot chocolate” by Aztecs. The drink was called “xocolatl”, which means bitter water.
The Swiss consume the most chocolate per capita, which is 22 pounds each compared to 11 pounds each in the United States.
Cocoa grows from cacao trees and the name cocoa bean was from a spelling mistake made by English importers in the 18th century.
Fine chocolate is pricy because every stage of cocoa production is down by hand: planting, irrigating, harvesting, fermenting and drying.
Amsterdam is the world’s most important cocoa port: 500k-600k tonnes of cocoa per day.
Tagged: National cocoa Day
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The bagel originated in Poland and it was designed for Lent.
Its name derives from the Yiddish word ‘bengal’, meaning ‘ring’ or ‘bracelet’.
Immigrant Polish-Jews brought the bagel to the United States.
Automated production and distribution of frozen bagels started in the 1960s with bagel baker Harry Lender, Murray Lender, and Florence Sender.
The hole in the center of the bagel is for multiple bagels to be threaded onto a dowel, which allows bakers to transport the bagel more easily.
Today’s Food History
1686 Prince Louis II de Condé, known as the Great Condé, died. He was a French general who loved to hunt and had a passion for rice. Several dishes have been named for him, including Consommé Condé and Creme Condé.
1874 James Lewis Kraft was born. Founder of Kraft Co. a wholesale cheese distributor and producer. In 1916 he patented pasteurized process cheese, a low cost cheese that would not spoil. Not a great hit with the public, but the U.S. army purchased over 6 million tins of it during WW I. During the depression, it became popular because of its low cost.
1940 David Gates of the music group ‘Bread’ was born.
Tagged: bagel history, national have a bagel day
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Lager is a type of beer that is fermented at low temperatures and generally takes longer to ferment out than ales.
Most lagers have a light color and crisp taste.
The first US lager was brewed in 1840 by John Wagner in Philadelphia.
Lager beer is the most popular beer style throughout the world except in UK, where ale is dominate.
Besides pale lager, there are also dark lagers, such as Dunkel and Schwarzbier.
Today’s Food History
1851 Melvil Dewey was born. He created the Dewey Decimal Classification system for cataloging library books.
1877 Dr. Jared Kirtland died. A physician, naturalist, botanist and teacher, he is credited with developing 26 varieties of cherries and six varieties of pears.
1947 Walter Orange of the music group ‘The Commodores’ was born.
1958 A National Airlines Boeing 707 with 111 passengers flew from New York to Miami. It was the first domestic passenger jet flight.
Tagged: national Lager day
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It is said that the brownie was created at the Palmer House Hotel during the 1893 Columbian Exposition when the owner Bertha Palmer asked the chef to make a ‘ladies dessert’.
The word ‘brownie’ became so popular that soon after the Expedition even Kodak named one of it’s first hand held cameras after them, the little ‘brownie.’
Brownies were one of the very first prepackaged food ‘mixes’ ever sold. First appearing in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue in 1897.
Fannie Farmer, the First Lady of American Cookery, published the first written recipe for brownies in 1896.
A popular turn of the century alternative was considered of equal importance, the ‘blondie‘, which used many of the same ingredients except chocolate. Many believed chocolate to be a ‘vice’ on the same level as alcohol and even coffee.
Today’s Food History
Tagged: national Brownie day
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Cotton candy was originally called fairy floss.
The process by which cotton candy is made has been around for over 100 years.
It was forgotten several decades ago, but cotton candy became an instant hit when suddenly it was mass produced and became readily accessible to everyone – not just for those attending the fair or circus.
Cotton candy doesn’t contain all that much sugar – merely as much sugar as one would get drinking a can of an average soft drink.
Spun sugar has been around since the 17th century!
Today’s Food History on this day:
Tagged: national Cotton Candy day
Here are today’s Top Five Christmas Food:
Tagged: Cook for Christmas day
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Comfort food is traditionally defined as a food that is sentimental to the consumer.
The term comfort food has been traced back to at least 1966, when Palm Beach Post used it in a story.
Psychological studies have turned up evidence that the comfort foods we crave are actually artifacts from our pasts.
A 2005 Cornell University survey of 277 men and women found that females tend to seek comfort in sweet and sugary foods like ice cream, while males prefer savory comfort foods like steak and soup.
A recent study published in Health Psychology suggests that comfort foods don’t actually make us feel any better.
Today’s Food History on this day in…
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The name cookie derives from the Dutch wordkoekje or koekie, which means little cake.
The origin of cookies appear to be in 7th century AD Persia.
Cookies spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain.
In the Middle East, chocolate chip cookies are topped with chocolate sauce and eaten with knife and fork.
The Cookie Monster’s cookies are actually rice cakes.
Tagged: national Cookie day
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