John-Bryan Hopkins's Blog, page 9

December 28th is National Boxed Chocolates Day!

Five Food Finds about Chocolate

The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec word, “Xocolatl”, which ironically means “bitter water”.

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The biggest bar of chocolate ever made was created in Turin, Italy. The bar was created in 2000 and weighed 5,000 pounds.

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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.

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Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40% of the world’s almonds and 20% of the world’s peanuts.

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Every Russian and American space voyage has included chocolate bars.

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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.

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December 27th is National Fruitcake Day!

Five Food Finds about Fruitcake

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.

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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.

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Fruitcake is perfectly edible as long as there is no mold on it.

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If your fruitcake dries out, soak it in alcohol or some other liquid and it will become as edible again.

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Today’s Food History

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.

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December 26th is National Candy Cane Day!

Five Food Facts about Candy Canes

The candy cane was originally a straight stick.

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It was not until the mid 1900’s that candy canes with red stripes appeared in Sweden.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Today’s Pinterest Board :  Foodimentary

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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December 25th is National Pumpkin Pie Day! ? #MerryChristmas

#NationalPumpkinPieDay

 Five Food Finds about Pumpkin Pie
The American colonists used pumpkin in pie crusts, but not in the filling.

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The type of pumpkin pie we know today was not made until the 1700s.

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Every year, 50 million pumpkin pies are made using Libby’s canned product.

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Nestle bought Libby’s in 1971.

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The world’s largest pumpkin pie weighed over 350 pounds and was made with 80 pounds of pumpkin, 36 pounds of sugar, and 144 eggs.

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Today’s Food History

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.

December 24th is National Eggnog Day! / #NationalEggnogDay #ChristmasEve

 

Here are today’s Five Food Finds about Eggnog
For a serving of eggnog (one cup), you will be consuming approximately 342 calories. Of those calories, 167 are from fat.
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The word eggnog comes from a Middle English term meaning a small, wooden, carved mug used to serve alcohol.

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Gelatin can be found in some eggnog, though it is typically cream, milk, sugar, eggs, cinnamon and nutmeg.

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Eggnog became popular in America around the 18th century when it made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, though there is debate exactly when and where it originated.
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It is difficult to find eggnog year round. It typically becomes available around Thanksgiving. Sales for eggnog drop tremendously after the New Year’s holiday.
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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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December 23rd is National Pfeffernusse Day!

Here are today’s Five Food Finds about Pfeffernusse
Pfeffernusse is a variant of German Lebkuchen, or gingerbread.
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Pferffernusse cookies differ from regular German gingerbread is that they are rolled into balls and then glazed with powdered sugar after baking.
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Pferffernusse literally means “pepper”.
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A traditional Pfeffernusse cookie will be too hard to eat without dipping in liquid for the first few days.
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The cookies do soften with age and more modern recipe adaptations have been made to make them soft from the start.
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Today’s Food History

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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December 22nd is National Date Nut Bread Day!

 

Here are today’s five food things about dates:
A date pit almost 2000 years old was recently sprouted by Israeli researchers.
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 Very few people are allergic to dates.

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The bulk of US dates are grown in Coachella Valley of California.

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 The date palm is the national symbol for Israel and Saudi Arabia.

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The word “date” comes from a Greek word which means finger.

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Today’s Food History

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.

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December 21st is National Fried Shrimp Day! / #FriedShrimpDay

 

Here are today’s Five Food Finds about Shrimp:
Every shrimp is born male, then some mature into females.
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It takes 2 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed shrimp.
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Shrimp is the favorite seafood of Americans.

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The “Pistol Shrimp” can fire water like a bullet from its claw, producing an incredibly loud pop.
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The “Ghost Shrimp” is transparent, and therefore practically invisible in the water

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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.

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December 18th is National “I Love Honey” Day! #HoneyDay

Here are today’s five food things to know about honey:
Greeks and Roman referred to honey as a food fit for the gods.
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A honey wine was developed, and largely consumed by many. Its given name was mead.
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Honey was so in demand in the eleventh century that it was a stipulation for German peasants to offer their feudal lords payment in honey and beeswax.
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Have allergies? Take a teaspoon a day of a honey made from the region where you reside and it will aid in developing resistance to pollen thereby reducing your allergies.
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Have chapped lips? Apply honey!
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Today’s Food History

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.

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December 17th is National Maple Syrup Day! / #NationalMapleSyrupDay #MapleSyrup

 

Here are today’s five food things to know about maple syrup:
There’s an International Maple Syrup Institute that was founded in 1975. 

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Canada supplies about 80% of the word’s maple syrup. 
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Koreans usually prefer sap over syrup. 

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One gallon of maple syrup is made of 40 gallons of sap. 
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Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth syrups aren’t considered authentic maple syrup because of all the high fructose corn syrup they contain.
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Today’s Food History

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

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