Desserts

203/365: National Penuche Fudge Day

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If you accidentally skip today’s food holiday, you might end up muttering a few choice curse words like “oh, fudge!” July 22 is National Penuche Fudge Day.

I’ve had this one on my radar for some time, and planned ahead, buying a bar of penuche fudge the first time I found one for sale earlier in the year. Because penuche is one of those things that may leave you scratching your head in bewilderment, wondering if it’s a strange vegetable or a fish or a mysterious Chinese herb. Turns out it’s none of the above, but rather, a type of fudge made with brown sugar instead of the typical white sugar found in other flavors. Other main ingredients include milk, butter, and vanilla. Some people add pecans or other nuts, and in New England – where the recipe originates, and is particularly popular – they’re fond of adding maple syrup. The caramelization of the brown sugar gives penuche fudge a distinctive caramel-like flavor, and the color is usually tan.

If you want the history of fudge, click here. Been there, done that, so let’s move on.

I’ve actually had penuche fudge before. Several years ago I stopped by a chocolate festival in Portland where they were selling all sorts of chocolate confections, including fudge. For some inexplicable reason I bought the one bar of fudge that contained no chocolate, just because I was curious about it. It was penuche, and I thought it was incredibly creamy and decadent, so I was particularly looking forward to today’s food holiday.

National Penuche Fudge Day

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198/365: National Peach Ice Cream Day

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today’s holiday will leave you feeling peachy keen! July 17 is National Peach Ice Cream Day.

We’ve already celebrated a ton of ice cream-inspired holidays, it seems – and there are more to come. If you haven’t been following our blog religiously (gasp!) and are curious about the history of ice cream, click on the preceding link. Instead, I’ll talk about…umm…

What in the heck am I going to talk about?!

Peach ice cream has long been my mom’s favorite flavor, so there’s that. I’m partial to good ol’ vanilla, which is the most popular flavor in America, while Tara is chock full of love for chocolate. Basically, anything by Tillamook – an Oregon-based creamery that makes a variety of delicious dairy items including cheese, yogurt, milk, and sour cream – is top-notch. Tillamook’s cheese factory – conveniently located in the town of Tillamook, on the Oregon coast – is a fun place to visit, and a popular tourist draw. We get out that way once a year or so, and their onsite ice cream parlor is one of the main reasons why.

Now that I’ve given both Tillamook and my mom shout-outs, I guess we can get down to the business at hand. Peach ice cream, that is. Turns out peach ice cream is difficult to find. But once we went on the road again and pulled into the Fred Meyer parking lot, we found a container of Ben & Jerry’s Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler ice cream. Which was really, really good, I might add.

National Peach Ice Cream Day

 

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196/365: National Tapioca Pudding Day

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If it seems like we just celebrated today’s food holiday, you’re right: we did. Well, kind of. June 28 was National Tapioca Day. July 15, by contrast, is National Tapioca Pudding Day. Fine, they’re different holidays, but there’s a strange bit of deja vu because we honored the June 28 holiday with tapioca pudding. I know I said I write posts ahead of time, but that was a case where I didn’t write them far enough ahead of time to realize that Tapioca Pudding Day was right around the corner. What can I say, other than oops?

Tapioca pudding, similar to sago pudding (a Filipino dish made with sap from the sago palm tree), is a sweetened pudding made with tapioca and milk or cream. British schoolchildren call tapioca pudding “frog spawn” due to its appearance. I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to run out and devour a great big bowl!

Tapioca pudding was created in 1894 when Susan Stavers, a Boston housewife who ran a boarding house, took in a sick sailor who had returned from a journey with cassava roots. In an effort to make him feel better, she created a pudding using the roots, running the tapioca through a coffee grinder to give it a smoother consistency. The boarders raved over it, and Susan began grinding tapioca and selling it out of paper bags on a regular basis. Newspaper publisher John Whitman caught wind of Susan’s recipe and bought the rights to it, creating the MINUTE® Tapioca Company. General Foods bought them out in 1926, and tapioca pudding has been a popular dessert staple ever since.

This time, rather than settle for a cheap cup of tapioca pudding from the grocery store, we went to Sweet Tomatoes, a salad buffet restaurant that just happens to serve an excellent tapioca pudding. Which is exactly what it was: excellent!

National Tapioca Pudding Day

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193/365: National Pecan Pie Day

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If you’re a little bit nuts, you’ll be proud to partake in today’s food holiday. July 12 is National Pecan Pie Day!

First off, in order to make sure you’re pronouncing things correctly, here’s a clip of Harry teaching Sally how to correctly order pecan pie.

Oh, how I love that movie.

Pecan is a Native American word used to describe any nut that requires a stone to crack. Which means that a pecan is a pecan, and a walnut is also a pecan, but a peanut is not a pecan.

Far out, man.

Pecan trees are the only nut trees native to North America. They originated in the central and eastern parts of the country, and were favored by pre-Colonial Americans because of their close proximity to natural waterways, their smooth and buttery flavor, and the fact that they weren’t “a tough nut to crack,” which is more than I can say about some of my ex-girlfriends. Every autumn, Native Americans would gather pecans to make a fermented drink called Powcohicora. They would then sit around a blazing hearth and get silly-ass drunk off of nut juice. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were so enamored of pecans, they planted trees in their gardens. New Orleans, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, became a crucial hub for marketing and distributing pecans throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world. French immigrants living in that city baked the first pecan pie, and the Karo company popularized the dessert by including pecan pie recipes on bottles of their corn syrup. It soon became a Southern staple, particularly around Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving may be months away yet, but that didn’t stop Tara and I from sharing a slice of pecan pie today. For breakfast. Neither of us had ever had it before. It was a little sweet for my tastes, and definitely had a maple flavor…which actually made it perfect with a cup of coffee. 

National Pecan Pie Day

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190/365: National Sugar Cookie Day

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Is today’s food holiday sweet? You’d butter believe it! July 9 is National Sugar Cookie Day.

While chocolate chip cookies may be more popular, sugar cookies have a long and rich history dating back hundreds of years. Cookies themselves are believed to have originated from small batter cakes that Persian bakers used to test the temperature of their ovens around the 7th century before committing to baking an entire cake. Rather than throw these often hardened scraps away, they were sold as miniature cakes, and quickly caught on in popularity. Because texting hadn’t been invented yet, it would take nearly 1000 years for word of these treats to spread to Europe. “Sugar cookies” is a boring name considering some of the early monikers for this cookie, which included jumbles, crybabies, plunkets, gemmels, gimblettes, and cimbellines. The name may have varied, but the main ingredient remained the same: chocolate.

Kidding. The main ingredient in a sugar cookie is sugar.

Depending on how fine the granules are, sugar cookies can be either thin and crispy, or plump and chewy. They are one of the simplest cookies to make and, despite a lack of fancy ingredients, one of the tastiest…at least in my opinion.

We picked up some sugar cookies with frosting. That’s right. We like to kick things up a notch whenever possible!

National Sugar Cookie Day

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188/365: National Strawberry Sundae Day

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Happy Sundae! Err…Sundae. It’s a happy coincidence that today’s food holiday lands on its namesake day. July 7 is National Strawberry Sundae Day! And no, I did not stutter.

As recently mentioned, the sundae was created when conservative governments in several states banned the sale of ice cream sodas on Sundays. In order to keep their businesses afloat (joke alert!), ice cream purveyors came up with a soda-free alternative called the sundae (spelled that way to avoid offending Christians, who apparently believed that soda was the devil’s bidding). Many cities claim to be the birthplace of the sundae, including Two Rivers, Wisconsin; Plainfield, Illinois; Evanston, Illinois; New Orleans; New York City; Ithaca, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York. The exact origin is unclear, but it is generally accepted that the first ice cream sundae appeared sometime between 1880 and 1892.

The world's most expensive sundae.

The world’s most expensive sundae.

Ice cream sundaes are simple desserts consisting of one or more scoops of ice cream, topped with sauce, syrup, whipped cream, nuts, fruit, or sprinkles, or – in some cases – all of the above. Most sundaes are cheap and satisfying, but a restaurant in New York City called Serendipity 3 serves a $1000 sundae that is hailed by Guinness World Records as the world’s most expensive. Called the Serendipity Golden Opulence Sundae, this treat is made with 5 scoops of Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream infused with Madagascar vanilla, covered in 23-karat edible gold leaf, rare Amedei Porcelana and Chuao chocolates, caviar, passionfruit, orange, Armagnac, candied fruit from Paris, and marzipan cherries. The whole thing is covered in gold dragées and served in a baccarat Harcourt crystal goblet with an 18-carat-gold spoon. You get to keep the goblet, but have to give back the spoon. Seriously?

Fresh out of $1000 bills, we had to scale back our celebration of the strawberry sundae. Instead, we spent a buck and change and grabbed one from McDonald’s. I remembered that they sold sundaes, but it had been years since I’d gotten one. They were smaller than I remember, actually – but not bad. Not bad at all.

National Strawberry Sundae Day

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186/365: National Apple Turnover Day

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You’re going to flip over today’s food holiday. The 5th of July is National Apple Turnover Day!

A turnover is nothing more than a portable pie – one that you can take with you wherever you go. How convenient is that? They date back to the end of the 18th Century; in 1798, the Oxford English Dictionary defined them as A kind of tart in which the fruit is laid on one half of the rolled out paste, and the other half turned over it. Turnovers can be either sweet or savory; that same year, Sporting Magazine wrote, It is occasionally used for savoury fillings, such as meat, but a sweet fruit filling is the norm, and…most turnovers are in fact apple turnovers. Alright, then. Most recipes call for tart apples like Granny Smiths, which help to offset the sweetness of the other ingredients. As for the dough, it can be made from homemade or store bought pie or puff pastry, depending on how lazy (or talented) you are.

To celebrate, we picked up some apple turnovers from the Fred Meyer bakery. They were flaky, fruity, and worthy of celebration!

IMAG1057

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182/365: National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day*

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Midwest Mark

I scream, you scream, we all scream for today’s food holiday, especially when the flavor is wacky. July 1 is National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day!

It’s also National Ginger Snap Day, but we recently had ginger snaps in honor of National Gingerbread Day. Besides, few treats embody summer as perfectly as ice cream. And in Portland, we’ve got the perfect place to celebrate creative ice cream flavors. There was no resisting this holiday!

The line for Salt & Straw: typically long, especially on a hot summer evening.

The line for Salt & Straw: typically long, especially on a hot summer evening.

Vanilla may be America’s most popular flavor of ice cream, but thanks to companies such as Ben & Jerry’s (“Chunky Monkey,” “Cherry Garcia,” etc.), unusual flavor combinations have become a fun – and increasingly popular – draw for ice cream lovers, particularly during warm summer months. In Portland, Salt & Straw, a “farm-to-cone” ice cream shop perfectly representative of Portland’s food culture and unique vibe, opened their first location a few years ago, and were an instant hit. Not just because they pride themselves on sourcing local, organic, sustainable ingredients, but because of their creative flavors. They change with the seasons, but popular choices include Pear With Bleu Cheese, Honey Balsamic Strawberry with Cracked Pepper, Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout, and Arbequina Olive Oil. Salt & Straw pairs with local vendors and restaurants for some very clever and unusual flavors. It doesn’t hurt that their ice cream is very creamy and smooth, made with 17% butterfat and very little air in the churning process. It truly is delicious, and has become the city’s newest Voodoo Doughnut, an overnight sensation garnering big press. Both Saveur Magazine and Oprah’s O Magazine have named it one of the best ice cream shops in America, a can’t-miss destination for foodies in the Rose City.

Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero.

Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero.

After dinner, we made a beeline for Salt & Straw. Along with everybody else in Portland, apparently. That’s what happens when you cross a sultry summer evening with a trendy boutique ice cream shop. We ended up waiting in a line 40 people deep for about twenty minutes. Well worth it, though. Tara got Chocolate Blueberry Rice Krispy Treats while I opted for Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero. Both were delicious, and I think you’d agree, very creative flavors!

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181/365: National Ice Cream Soda Day

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You just may float on a happy haze when you celebrate today’s perfectly summery food holiday. June 30 is National Ice Cream Soda Day!

June 20 was also National Ice Cream Soda Day, so I suppose if you didn’t get your fill back then, today’s your encore. We chose to celebrate the vanilla milkshake on that day instead so as not to repeat ourselves. Just to keep us on our toes, there’s also a National Root Beer Float Day coming up in August. Knowing that, we should have opted for something a little more unique today, but laziness got the better of us.

Ice cream sodas, or floats, go by the name “snowballs” in the U.K. and “spiders” in the land Down Under, where women work and men plunder. They are exactly what their name implies: ice cream served in a soft drink. Ice cream sodas were invented in 1874 by Robert McCay Green in Philadelphia. According to legend, during that city’s sesquicentennial celebration, Robert ran out of cream for the flavored sodas he was selling on a particularly hot day, and substituted ice cream instead. But Robert explained in an interview that his creation was no accident: he wanted to invent a new treat to draw customers away from a competitor who had a bigger, fancier soda fountain. He experimented by mixing vanilla ice cream with soda water and a choice of 16 different flavored syrups. This new treat was a big hit, and Green was so proud of his invention, his will stipulated that “Originator of the Ice Cream Soda” be carved on his tombstone when he died.

While teens loved the tasty treat, many adults did not, and the drink was actually banned by some conservative local governments who believed that soda, which was marketed as a “miracle cure” (for what – skinniness?), was a controlled substance that should not be served or purchased on Sundays. In an effort to boost business, soda fountains came up with a treat that contained ice cream but no soda. They coined the new dessert a “sundae” that they could serve on “soda’s day of rest.”

Now, that’s clever!

To celebrate, Tara and I made root beer floats. I mean, what other type of soda-and-ice-cream combination can ever top the classic?

National Ice Cream Soda Day

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179/365: National Tapioca Day

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Midwest Mark

We’re going back to our roots to celebrate today’s food holiday. June 28 is National Tapioca Day!

Tapioca is a starch that comes from the cassava, or manioc, root, a plant native to South America. Spanish and Portugese explorers exported it to the West Indies, and it quickly spread to other tropical and subtropical regions. It’s a major source of carbohydrates and an important food source for half a billion people worldwide.

Odds are, when you think of tapioca, you think of tapioca pudding. I know there are other culinary uses for tapioca – I’ve used it in a beef stew recipe once – but  really, it works best in pudding. So, pudding it is!

I have always been fond of tapioca pudding. Tara had never actually tried it until last year, and though she was skeptical, ended up liking it quite a bit herself. Ours tonight was nothing fancy – pudding cups again – but pretty good, nonetheless!

National Tapioca Day

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