Food and Food History A la Carte
Tomorrow – the 24th of January- is perhaps my favourite food holiday of the year.
Peanut Butter Day!
Yep, a whole day devoted to just peanut butter! I’m seeing parades with beige banners, complete with majorettes tossing their batons whilst smiling through clenched jaws because their teeth are stuck together with the ol’ pb, and Peter Pan scarfing contests. The works. Continue reading “Nuts to That! A Celebration of Peanut Butter”
Aug 29th is Lemon Juice Day so it seems the perfect time to reflect on the usefulness of this sunniest of citrus. Is there anything in the kitchen as useful as lemon juice? It’s a must for cooking – adding tons of flavor to so many dishes but it’s also great for cleaning and staying healthy.
First, a few of my favorite cooks tricks featuring lemon juice: Continue reading “Jumping for Juicy Joy – Happy Lemon Juice Day!”
Nothing I like better than pondering (and frankly spinning tales) than the origins of ‘named’ foods. All we actually know is that Escoffier created two dishes named for Melba. Everything else is … well, not outside the realm of the possible. And that brings me to today’s topic.
Happy Melba Toast day.
Happy Piña Colada Day! Possibly it is a bit early where you are to indulge – it’s only 8:15am here. If so, then indulge in THIS classic tune ’till the bar bell goes off.
The residents of TransAtlantic Towers often discuss this song and its story. We’re puzzled as to how and why this song ends the way it does. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I like a happy ending as much as anyone else. I hope those two kids worked it out and lived happily ever after.
But does it make sense as given? Surely, once they arrived at O’Malley’s, one or both would ask in affronted tones, “What the hell were you doing placing/answering personal ads?” Then there would be a row, someone would huff off. Or they’d make up over piña coladas. But I feel there may be unresolved issues in that relationship.
And that’s not the only potential dust up linked to the fruity tropical drinks. Just try to establish who invented it. See, it’s like this – there were these two Puerto Rican bartenders. Come to think of it sounds like the beginning of a joke (“two Puerto Rican bartenders walk into a bar…”) but it is really the beginning of a great cocktail mystery. Continue reading “A Story for Piña Colada Day”
Every year, on January 19th, the United States of America celebrates Popcorn Day. And short of Thanksgiving (last Thursday in November), Apple Pie Day (May 13th), Root Beer Float Day (August 6th) or Peanut Butter And Jelly Day (April 2nd), I can think of no other food holiday that is as quintessentially American.
No movie or baseball game is complete without it. According to the good folks at Encyclopedia Popcornica, Americans consume 16 billion quarts of popped popcorn every year, equaling 52 quarts per person. A quart a week for each of us, then.
Popcorn is so ingrained (ahem) in American culture, that we not only eat it at ball games and the movies, we eat loads of it at home, and – like the Balkans, who must have got the idea from us – we use it to decorate Christmas trees.
We even briefly used it as packing material. American films are often derided by foreign critics as “popcorn entertainment.” Popcorn even played a major role in the development of that other great American invention, the microwave oven. Continue reading “It’s Popcorn Day! Celebrating Our Favourite Banged Grain”
