263/365: National Rum Punch Day

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Avast, ye scurvy dog! I might just make you walk the plank if ye don’t be participatin’ in today’s food holiday. September 20 is National Rum Punch Day!

20130920_184628I’m not sure why pirates are so closely linked with rum. Actually, now I do. (Be careful if you click on the link, though – the skull and crossbones wallpaper might give you a headache and/or make you dizzy).  Rum punches date back centuries, to around the time of Christ; archaeological excavations in Pakistan have uncovered distilleries and “grog shops” where, it is presumed, ancient Pakistanis danced around with many a lampshade on their heads. The word is derived from the Hindi panch, and traditionally referred to a beverage made with five ingredients: alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and tea or spices. The British East India Company (those guys again!) brought rum punch to England in the 17th century. From there, it spread throughout Europe and beyond. By the 18th century, most American taverns specialized in rum punch; during Colonial times, it was the most popular drink around. In fact, Benjamin Franklin even printed a recipe for rum punch in his 1737 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Some of the oldest rum punches are Planter’s Punch and Bajan Rum Punch; the latter even inspired a national rhyme that helped bartenders remember the key ingredients: “One of Sour, Two of Sweet, Three of Strong, Four of Weak.” Which translates to one part lime juice, two parts sweetener, three parts rum, and four parts water. A 1908 recipe for Planter’s Punch appearing in The New York Times reads,

This recipe I give to thee,
Dear brother in the heat.
Take two of sour (lime let it be)
To one and a half of sweet,
Of Old Jamaica pour three strong,
And add four parts of weak.
Then mix and drink. I do no wrong —
I know whereof I speak.

I think it’s great how bartenders long ago came up with clever little poems to describe their drinks. They were a talented lot back then, that’s for sure! In honor of National Rum Punch Day, Tara and I decided to hit up our favorite Portland tiki bar, Hale Pele. After all, they’re known for their rum concoctions. All I can say is: holy cow, these packed a wallop!

Hi, there.  Tara here.  Yes, those rum punches do pack quite the wallop.  So much so that Mark is now sprawled out on the couch and mumbling about feeling ‘spinny’.  Oh, I do love that husband of mine.  🙂

National Rum Punch Day

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262/365: National Butterscotch Pudding Day

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today we celebrate the happy marriage of butter and brown sugar: September 19 is National Butterscotch Pudding Day!

I was surprised to learn that butterscotch really is just a combination of the two ingredients mentioned above. A recipe in the “Housewife’s Corner” section of an 1848 newspaper for “Doncaster butterscotch” calls for one pound of butter, one pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of treacle, boiled together. Mmm…treacle! (Treacle is simply uncrystallized syrup, but I had to look this up. I was afraid it was something far more disgusting). It was advertised as “The Queen’s Sweetmeat” (huh?) and billed as the best emollient for the chest in the winter season. As for the name itself, its exact origins are hazy. “Butterscotch” may refer to the method of cutting or scoring the confection into pieces before it hardens, a process known as “scotching.” It’s also possible that “Scotch” is derived from the word “scorch,” or is a reference to its creation in Scotland.

Butterscotch isn’t always a confection, and butterscotch pudding is a great example: it is flavored with brown sugar and butter for the taste of butterscotch, but isn’t actually made from a confection.

To celebrate, we bought some butterscotch pudding cups. We sure have had a lot of pudding holidays this year! Didn’t feel like going all out and making it from scratch, either.

National Butterscotch Pudding Day

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261/365: National Cheeseburger Day

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Quick playing patty-cake and march your buns down to the nearest fast-food joint for today’s quintessentially American food holiday. September 18 is National Cheeseburger Day!

Or, grill ’em yourself. Either way, it’s hard to go wrong with a food that is so closely associated with the U.S. of A., though in reality hamburgers have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Way back in the 11th century, Mongols carried flat patties of meat with them on long horseback trips. The Mongols brought their meat to Moscow (how’s that for alliteration?), and Russian sailors carried them over to Hamburg, Germany. From there they spread to New York, but the first person to actually place a meat pattie between two slices of bread is open for dispute. There are several claims for its invention; while the Library of Congress officially recognizes Louis Lassen as the inventor of the hamburger – he began selling one at his lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut in 1900 – Wisconsinite Charlie Nagreen allegedly tried selling fried pork meatballs at a county fair in Seymour in 1885, but when customers had difficulty carrying them around, he flattened the meat and named it after the Hamburg steaks that German immigrants were familiar with. Others who claim to have invented the hamburger include Oscar Weber Bilby, Frank and Charles Menches, Fletcher Davis, and German Otto Kuase. About the only thing agreed on is that White Castle invented hamburger buns. Things are just as murky with the cheeseburger; once again, multiple parties claim to have been the first to add cheese to the sandwich. Credit is generally given to Lionel Sternberger, a fry cook at his father’s restaurant in Pasadena, California in 1926. He is said to have added a slice of American cheese to a sizzling hamburger patty just to see what would happen. I’ll tell you what happened: delicousness happened! The cheeseburger has been a mainstay of American casual dining ever since.

To celebrate, Tara and I stopped by our favorite local fast-food burger emporium, Burgerville, to take advantage of their special. Burgerville is recognizing the food holiday by offering a free Pepper Bacon Cheeseburger with the purchase of another one. Throughout this year’s challenges, very few businesses have capitalized on the associated food holiday, which has surprised me. I suppose they’re simply unaware of them? I’d think advertising that it’s a certain food holiday when that item is on your menu would be a great marketing ploy and could be worth a little extra business, at least.

Which is why blogs like ours exist, folks…

Can't see the cheese because of the bacon, but it's in there, folks!

Can’t see the cheese because of the bacon, but it’s in there, folks!

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260/365: National Apple Dumpling Day

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Midwest Mark

We’re going to have to gang up on you if you don’t help us celebrate today’s food challenge. September 17 is National Apple Dumpling Day!

Whenever I think of apple dumplings, my thought automatically turn to The Apple Dumpling Gang, a 1975 movie starring Bill Bixby, Don Knotts, and Tim Conway. I don’t remember much about it, other than the fact that it features stagecoaches, gold, and orphans.

The original Apple Dumpling Gang.

The original Apple Dumpling Gang.

Apple dumplings aren’t traditional “dumplings” in the sense that they aren’t boiled – though apparently, the original recipe for apple dumplings (credited to Susannah Carter) actually did call for boiling. Apple dumplings are a Northeastern U.S. invention closely associated with the Amish, which means in order to properly enjoy them, they should be consumed by the light of a kerosene lamp. Apples are peeled and cored and placed on a portion of dough. The hollowed-out center is then filled with butter, cinnamon, and sugar, and the pastry is sealed. They are then baked until tender. This sounded both tasty and intriguing, so we decided to go ahead and make our own using this recipe from allrecipes.com.

The result? Well, they were a little overcooked. The apple inside the pastry was delicious, but the sauce caramelized and was too hard to really enjoy. I think with a little less baking time, these would have been really good.

National Apple Dumpling Day

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259/365: National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You’ll be toast if you don’t take advantage of today’s food holiday. September 16 is National Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Day!

OK, you don’t have to toast cinnamon-raisin bread in order to enjoy it. But it sure helps! Especially with a pat of butter on top; the toast makes the butter melt, where it seeps into every little crevice, filling them with its rich goodness.

YES! YES! YES!

Oops, sorry. Cinnamon raisin bread is classified as a sweet bread; different versions have existed since the 15th century, but oddly enough, raisin bread was invented by Henry David Thoreau, the famed author, poet, and philosopher best known for Walden. According to historical accounts, while baking bread at his home on Walden Pond one day, Thoreau tossed a handful of raisins into the dough. Hardly a culinary stretch, but the housewives of Concord, Massachusetts were used to baking in a very particular manner, and this breach of protocol was quite scandalous at the time. Stunned though they were, one taste was enough to convince them that ol’ Henry was onto something good.

Our brief honeymoon ended today, and it was back to reality for us. We picked up a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, and toasted it (with butter, of course) for dessert this evening. Yum!

National Cinnamon Raisin Bread

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258/365: National Creme de Menthe Day*

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If you like your foods in mint condition, today’s your day. September 15 is National Crème de Menthe Day!

It’s also National Linguini Day and National Double Cheeseburger Day. We might have been inclined to celebrate double cheeseburgers today, but National Cheeseburger Day is coming up on Wednesday, and that would be some serious beef overkill. Since we’re staying at the Oregon coast one more night and already have a special dinner planned that does not involve linguini, we decided the easiest holiday to tackle was Crème de Menthe.

I originally thought this referred to those little green-wrapped chocolate-covered Andes mints that hotels like to place on your pillow, but Tara informed me that Crème de Menthe is actually an alcoholic beverage. Oops. Technically both are correct, but the holiday seems to refer to the booze and not the candy. This mint-flavored liqueur comes in two varieties: white (which is actually clear) and green. To make crème de menthe, dried peppermint or Corsican mint leaves are steeped in grain alcohol for several weeks before filtering and adding sugar. It’s the main ingredient in several popular cocktails, including the Grasshopper, the Stinger, and the Exploding Kermit. (OK, I made up that last one – but if there was such a thing as an Exploding Kermit, you can bet your ass it would contain crème de menthe. With a bacon swizzle stick, to represent Miss Piggy. Oh, the possibilities…)

The crème de menthe figures prominently in many works of literature. Kurt Vonnegut, D.H. Lawrence, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming all wrote books in which main characters favored the drink. (But never Bond…James Bond. He always stuck with his martini – shaken, not stirred).

To celebrate this holiday, we purchased a bottle of crème de menthe and brought it along with us. We weren’t really sure what to do with it, and after all the drinking we partook in over our wedding weekend, we weren’t exactly dying to “tie one on” again. I ended up brewing a cup of coffee and adding a shot of creme de menthe. It looked disgusting – it resembled avocado-colored coffee – but actually, didn’t taste too bad. We were pleasantly surprised!

National Creme de Menthe Day

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257/365: National Cream Filled Doughnut Day

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Here comes the bride, all dressed in…well, not white. It’s a second marriage for us both, and we’re going very casual. September 14 is Mark and Tara’s wedding day! And, since this is a food blog and it ought to be pointed out, National Cream Filled Doughnut Day, as well.

Not all doughnuts contain holes, and it’s a good thing; otherwise, it might never occurred to some intrepid baker (or technically, fryer) to fill a doughnut with cream. I’m not going to go into a lot of doughnut history today – busy getting married and all – but I’ll leave you with a few interesting facts. In the U.S., 10 billion doughnuts are made every year…but Canada has more doughnut shops per capita. Nobody knows exactly where doughnuts originated, but many historians credit Dutch immigrants for bringing their olykoeks (“oily cakes”) to the U.S. in the 1800s.

Busy as we were today, we made time to not only celebrate today’s food holiday, but incorporate it into our wedding. Since our theme is casual and quirky – I wore a tuxedo t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops – we stopped by Portland’s famous Voodoo Doughnut to pick up cream-filled doughnuts in lieu of a cake. This doughnut shop is a must-stop tourist destination and there are long lines snaking around the side of the building at all hours of the day and night. They are known for their unusual doughnut flavors, such as the Bacon Maple Bar; others are topped with Fruit Loops, Cap’n Crunch, Oreos, Tang, and bubble gum dust, to name just a few. We negotiated in advance to get some heart-shaped doughnuts for the occasion. And then, when we went to pick up our order…they had no record of it.

But they went above and beyond to accommodate us, made up for their mistake, and only charged us for 2 doughnuts. Cheapest wedding “cake” ever!

National Cream Filled Doughnut Day

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256/365: National Snack A Pickle Time*

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Friday, September 13 is your lucky day if you love pickles! It’s the holiday that is a real mouthful: National Snack A Pickle Time.

Not “day,” mind you. “Time.” I don’t know who came up with the name of this holiday, but it’s a real doozie. It’s also National Peanut Day which, despite being more straightforward and easier to say, didn’t appeal to us as much. We’ve already gone nuts with the legumes in other celebrated dishes this year, so we might as well get our pickle on!

Also, on a personal note, this is a very special weekend for Tara and I: we are getting married tomorrow. Today, we are setting out for the Oregon coast, where we rented a beach house for the festivities. It’s going to be a pretty small gathering, just 14 of our closest family members. Lest you think a little event like a wedding is going to prevent us from participating in our food challenge, guess again! The celebrated foods over the next few days are pretty easy, and we are incorporating tomorrow’s into the theme of our wedding. Let’s just say everything sort of lined up perfectly for the type of ceremony (read: casual and quirky) we are having.

People have been getting pickled for as long as alcohol existed. And people have been pickling foods since the Mesopotamians pick(l)ed up the habit in 2400 BC. While cucumbers are most commonly associated with pickles, virtually any vegetable or fruit can be pickled: it’s just got to be submerged in a brine that consists of salt and vinegar. Pickles have long been revered as being nutritional, having healing powers, and serving as beauty aids. Cleopatra attributed her good looks to a diet rich in pickles, and Julius Caesar fed pickles to his troops to provide them with physical and spiritual strength as they set out to conquer the world. Even Shakespeare made reference to pickles in Anthony and Cleopatra when he wrote, “What say you? Hence, Horrible villain! or I’ll spurn thine eyes like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head: Thou shalt be whipp’d with wire and stew’d in brine, Smarting in lingering pickle.” Death by pickle juice? How horrible! (“Unhairing thy head” doesn’t sound very pleasant, either). ‘Twas Christopher Columbus who introduced pickles to the New World, planting cucumbers in Haiti for the sole purpose of pickling. In fact, pickles were a mainstay on long ocean voyages, providing sailors with a snack that didn’t spoil and prevented scurvy. What’s not to love about a pickle?

I do love pickles and they happen to be a favorite snack of mine, so this holiday was hardly a stretch. I can often be found hunched over the kitchen sink, munching on a pickle after a hard day at work or coming back from running errands. I suppose most people would reach for a piece of fruit, but not me. Naturally, we had plenty of pickles on hand, so Tara and I snacked on a pickle before embarking on our trip to the Oregon coast.

See you on our wedding day!

National Snack A Pickle Time

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255/365: National Chocolate Milkshake Day

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If you’re cuckoo for frozen cocoa, today is really going to tickle your fancy. September 12 is National Chocolate Milkshake Day!

National Chocolate Milkshake DayWe’ve already paid homage to the vanilla milkshake and coffee milkshake, so by now you should be familiar with the history of this frozen treat. If not, click on either of the links and immerse yourself in the world of Walgreen’s employee Ivar Coulson. One thing I did not mention previously: milkshakes got their name because they were originally served in bars. If the customer liked the milkshake, he shook hands with the bartender; if not, he skipped out without leaving a tip. Fun and random fact: it would take 3.2 million average-sized milkshakes to fill an Olympic-sized pool. How fun would that be to swim in? Feel like making your own chocolate milkshake? Here’s an easy and fun recipe from Hershey’s. The term “I drink your milkshake” became a pop culture catchphrase after the film There Will Be Blood was released in 2007.

There’s not a lot else to discuss today, so let’s get down to business. Tara and I stopped by McDonald’s for chocolate shakes. I’m partial to vanilla myself, but it’s hard to complain about a frosty cold shake on a warm summer afternoon!

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254/365: National Hot Cross Bun Day

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today’s celebration may cost you one a penny, two a penny, or – with inflation – most likely a bit more. September 11 is National Hot Cross Bun Day!

Why this religiously significant meal is celebrated in September is beyond me. It’s usually eaten on Good Friday, but I suppose since that date fluctuates widely every year, 9/11 is as good a day as any. These small, toasted buns are decorated with a cross made of white icing to celebrate the Crucifixion. The ancient Greeks were the first ones to mark cakes with a cross, and the Saxons did the same to honor the goddess Eostre (most likely where the word Easter was derived). There are many superstitions surrounding Hot Cross Buns, including:IMAG1472

  • Sharing a hot cross bun with somebody else will ensure friendship throughout the year, especially if you say “Half for you and half for me, Between us two shall goodwill be” at the time.
  • Hot cross buns baked or served on Good Friday will not spoil or mold during the following year.
  • Giving somebody who is ill a piece of a hot cross bun will help them recover.
  • Hanging a hot cross bun in  your kitchen will protect it from fire and will make all your breads rise perfectly.
  • Taking a hot cross bun on a sea voyage will prevent a shipwreck.
  • Because there is a cross on the buns, some people believe they should be kissed prior to eating.

Interesting! We were all ready to bake our own hot cross buns from scratch; we even dragged out the bread machine and put it on the counter. And then, my mom called. “Guess what I found in the freezer? A package of hot cross buns!” How fortuitous. She had purchased these from Safeway right before Easter – of course, because that’s when they’re traditionally eaten – and for some inexplicable reason tucked them into the freezer and forgot about them. Her oversight benefitted us, though. We went over for dinner tonight, and for dessert, had the hot cross buns. These were topped with lemon, which I had never seen before, but still pretty good.

IMAG1470

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