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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202/365: National Junk Food Day*

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Midwest Mark

They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so we’ll use the term “junk” lightly when we celebrate today’s food holiday. July 21 is National Junk Food Day!

It’s also National Ice Cream Day, but I’m going to scream if I have to eat ice cream again. We’ve had multiple versions of that holiday already, with more to come. If you don’t believe there can be “too much of a good thing,” go ahead and try this food challenge next year. You’ll be as sick of pies and cakes and ice cream as we are, trust me.

The term “junk food” was coined in 1972 by Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and is defined as a food that has little or no nutritional value and is usually high in fat, sugar, salt, and/or calories. In other words, the typical American diet! (Not that we can really be blamed. A 2008 study showed eating junk food sends chemical signals to the brain that stimulate our senses in the same way that drugs like heroin and cocaine do. Oreos really can be addictive. Who knew?!). While the slang term has been around for only 40 years, junk food itself has existed since the dawn of time, back when neanderthals were dipping sticks in beehives and scraping out honey. Junk food is usually categorized by group, and includes salted snack foods, candy, sweet desserts, fried fast foods, sugary carbonated beverages, and Hot Pockets, which deserve their own special category. Some foods straddle the line between healthy and junk food. Like popcorn. I prefer to think of that as a bag full o’ hot vegetables, but I suppose the addition of butter and salt actually lands it in the junk food category. Other foods that can go either way, depending on the ingredients used and method of preparation, include hamburgers, pizza, and tacos. For example, a Doritos Locos Cool Ranch taco from Taco Bell is undoubtedly junk food, while a fresh carnitas taco from a street vendor is not. How’s that distinction? Clear as mud?

Today was ripe with possibility, since so many different things can be considered junk food. But things did not start out promisingly. On the way back from camping, we stopped at the Pig ‘n Pancake in Astoria, and I ordered Eggs Benedict with fresh Dungeness crab. Oops. Nothing even remotely “junky” there, nor were Tara’s sourdough pancakes. “We’re being too high-falutin’, babe,” I told her, so we aimed our sights lower. By the end of the day we had consumed some chips with zesty bean dip and queso, and frozen pizza for dinner. Whew! Talk about a save!

National Junk Food Day

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201/365: National Lollipop Day*

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You deserve a licking if you’re not a fan of today’s food holiday. July 20 is National Lollipop Day!

This is also the first post we are scheduling to publish. (Remember, we write the majority of these ahead of time)! We’ve gotta do it this way since we’re camping this weekend and  Internet service is hard to come by in the wilderness. Besides, we’re too busy making S’mores and keeping raccoons away from our food in order to worry about blog posts this weekend, so we’re happy to let Technology do her thing.

Yes, technology is a she, in case you were wondering.

It’s also National Fortune Cookie Day, but Confucius say no lookie for cookie in middle of forest. So, lollipops it is!

A man named George Smith, owner of the Bradley Smith Company – who manufactured candy and other sweet confections – claimed to have invented the modern lollipop in 1908, putting candy on a stick to make it easier to eat. He named the treat after his favorite racehorse, Lolly Pop, and trademarked the name. But lollipops have probably been around in one form or another for as long as man has roamed the earth. Prehistoric dudes are believed to have scooped honey from beehives using sticks, and licking them so as not to let any of the sweet nectar go to waste. Archaeologists have found evidence that ancient Chinese, Arabs, and Egyptians all made candied fruit and nut concoctions that were served on a stick to make them easier to eat. In the 17th century the English enjoyed soft boiled sugar candies that they placed on sticks for easier eating. Though the candy wasn’t hard, the concept is pretty much the same. During the Civil War children were given hard candies on the tips of pencils as treats. So at best, Smith reinvented something that had been around since the dawn of man. Nice try, George. He allowed his trademark to expire during the Depression, when people were too busy trying to put scraps of food on the table to enjoy a treat like a lollipop, and the name fell into the public domain.

To celebrate, we bought a bag of Dum Dums and enjoyed lollipops around the campfire.

National Lollipop Day

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200/365: National Daiquiri Day

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Don’t rum away if you’re a fan of classic cocktails: July 19 is National Daiquiri Day!200_members

It’s also the 200th day of the year, which means our food challenge continues to roll right along. Reaching our 200th challenge feels like a momentous occasion, much the way that # 100 did. We’re more than halfway there and loving every minute of this! And this weekend is tricky, since we’re going camping. Tent camping, too – no wussy cabins and stoves for us. Luckily, our food challenges over the next couple of days lend themselves well to the Great Outdoors.

National Daiquiri DayDaiquiris are considered one of the “6 basic drinks” listed in David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. They consist of rum, lime, and sugar, and may be served blended (frozen) or on the rocks. In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders stormed the town of Daiquiri, Cuba during the Spanish-American War. The military’s greatest coup from this invasion turned out to be a cocktail recipe named for the town: it was given to the Army and Navy Club, and soon became a popular drink with U.S. soldiers thanks in large part to wartime rationing of whiskey, vodka, and other spirits in the 1940s. No such ban on rum existed, so our brave boys made do with daiquiris. The cocktail was also a favorite of writer Ernest Hemingway, who – let’s face it – never met an alcoholic beverage he didn’t care for. In his novel Islands In The Stream he wrote, That is what we are. No one in between. How could we be wrong? Sail away with me to another world, where we’ll rely on each other, uh-huh.  Oops…wrong Islands In The Stream. My bad. What HEMINGWAY wrote was, It reminded him of the sea. The frappeed part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color. How poetic! Ernest even came up with his own version, dubbed the Hemingway Daiquiri. What the name lacked in originality it made up for in rum: Hemingway’s drink had double the alcohol and none of the sugar. The author once downed 16 of these in one sitting. The drink was also a fave of John F. Kennedy, which means it was also probably a fave of Marilyn Monroe and the mob, right? Frozen daiquiris made with a variety of flavors became popular over the years thanks to their convenience and versatility, but I’m thinking those Mafiosos prefer the good ol’-fashioned shaken and pulverized version, if you know what I mean.

Since campsites don’t usually come equipped with blenders, we had to get creative and buy a “pouch” from the grocery store. This premixed daiquiri is frozen in advance, and when you’re ready to drink, you simply cut open the package and suck it down. Mmm! Nothing screams “wilderness” like a roaring campfire, marshmallows on a stick, and a frozen daiquiri. I’ll have to add a photo of our actual beverage later. Bottoms up! (Which is probably something JFK said to Marilyn, but now we’re beginning to sound like a gossip column so we’ll just end things there)…

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199/365: National Caviar Day

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Midwest Mark

I’ve always considered people who like caviar to be a little fishy, but I never say that out loud because I’d hate to egg them on. Nevertheless, today is their big day: July 18 is National Caviar Day!

Caviar is considered a gourmet product frequently associated with the wealthy. After all, Robin Leach used to talk about “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”  Caviar is the processed and salted roe, or mass of eggs, from a female fish – traditionally the sturgeon. These tiny eggs are usually black, but may be red, gold, or gray, as well. When people first discovered that caviar tasted good (and who exactly was the first person to stick a mass of slimy fish eggs on his tongue anyway?!), sturgeon were so abundant that the price was quite low. Russian czar Nicholas II enjoyed it so much he started taxing fishermen, and the product became associated with wealth and royalty. For hundreds of years sturgeon were believed to only inhabit the Black and Caspian seas, but then this little slab of land called “America” was discovered, and sturgeon were found swimming in the Hudson and Delaware Rivers on the East Coast and the Columbia River on the West Coast. Caviar was so plentiful and easy to come by that bars started serving it for free, like peanuts and pretzels, because it was salty and that encouraged people to drink more. By the turn of the century, America was the world’s biggest supplier of caviar, responsible for 600 tons a year, or 90% of the world’s supply. Eventually, overfishing wiped out the majority of sturgeon, and the price of caviar crept up. In 2012, true caviar sold for $2500 a pound. There are less expensive versions available, made from the roe of salmon, steelhead, trout, lumpfish, and whitefish.

There are certain etiquette rules for serving caviar. You should never use a metal spoon, as this can affect the flavor. It’s best served with chilled vodka. A traditional preparation involves placing diced onion and hard-boiled egg on a toast point and topping with a generous dollop of caviar, with lemon slices on the side. We followed those rules, minus the lemon. I had tried caviar once before, but it was Tara’s first time. She was a trooper…but she very nearly vomited. I’m not exaggerating. I actually stepped away from her as she was gagging and dry heaving. Luckily, nothing came up. Funny thing is, I asked her afterwards, “So? Did you like it?”

Yeah. Neither one of us did. I have no idea why something so disgusting is considered a delicacy. To each their own, I suppose.

National Caviar 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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197/365: National Corn Fritters Day

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Midwest Mark

I’d better cob-ble together some facts in order to educate you on today’s food holiday. July 16 is National Corn Fritters Day!

Corn fritters originated in the Deep South, and are related to hush puppies. No surprise there; isn’t everybody related to everybody else down South? (This is the part where I could insert a gratuitous joke about cousins getting hitched and follow that up with a real belly-slapper over inbreeding, but I’ll take the high road instead. Wouldn’t want to offend any Southerners, after all). Corn fritters are closely associated with cowboy cuisine, but in fact, might have originated with the Native American culture. All we know for sure is, they are made with corn kernels, egg, flour, milk, and butter, and may be either fried or baked. They are similar in appearance to Johnnycakes, a flatbread made of cornmeal.

Seeing as how we live about as far from the South as you can possibly get while still calling the United States home, corn fritters aren’t exactly commonplace up here. Meaning, we had to make our own. No big deal, though – they’re very easy. We used the following recipe from Bisquick, with a slight modification (the addition of green chilies):

1 egg
1/4 c. milk
1 c. Bisquick
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 4 oz. can diced green chilies
Black pepper

Blend together egg, milk, and Bisquick. Stir in corn. Add pepper to taste. In a wok or frying pan, heat 2 inches vegetable oil. Using 2 teaspoons, gently drop a rounded teaspoon of fritter batter into hot oil. Fry 6-8 fritters at a time, turning until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

They were simple to make, and delicious! We weren’t sure what type of dipping sauce to use, so we opted for ranch. I think a spicy chipotle mayo would have been even better.

National Corn Fritter 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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195/365: National Grand Marnier Day

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Orange you glad we get to raise our glasses to toast another alcoholic beverage today? July 14 is National Grand Marnier Day!

Grand Marnier is an orange-flavored liqueur invented in 1880 by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle. It’s made with cognac brandy, bitter orange essence, and sugar. In other words, it’s high-end stuff (and also explains why I usually just substitute generic triple sec in cocktail recipes calling for Grand Marnier – but there’s no cheating allowed today). Grand Marnier is a popular ingredient in a large variety of drinks including the Cosmopolitan, Margarita, Sidecar, Dirty Harry, Grand Mimosa, B-52,The Bloody Smash, The Maced Marnier, The Ace Marnier Smash, Frosty Smash, The Smace, The Grand Hound, The Blood Pug, The Clarke, The Nogley and the Grand Marnier Fireball. I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to walk into a bar and order a Blood Pug someday, just for the hell of it! The original name of the drink was Curaçao Marnier after the Caribbean island where the oranges used in the liqueur were grown, but a friend of Alexandre’s said the name “wasn’t grand enough.” Hence, Grand Marnier!

Since I don’t have a lot of background info to discuss, I thought I’d take a moment to give you a glimpse into some of the behind-the-scenes action here at Eat My Words. For instance, did you know these posts are usually written ahead of time? Sometimes days and days ahead of time, as a matter of fact. At one point we had ten posts all ready to go. I’ll research the food history, come up with a few funny asides, and save it as a draft, filling in the blanks – I rarely know the specifics of what we are eating or drinking until the actual day, and of course I can’t take a picture of the actual food until it’s right there in front of us (all photos are mine, and are of the actual food or beverage we are about to consume) – when I’m ready to post. It didn’t start out this way, but since the majority of challenges are completed in the evening, I quickly learned that it was a lot of work after an otherwise long day to research and write these posts, so having it done ahead of time would be advantageous. The same was true with weekends. We’re usually on the go and busy doing other things, so having posts written in advance allows us to  maximize our enjoyment of that time off. Only recently have I been writing even further ahead. Case in point: as I’m typing these words, it’s actually Tuesday morning, not Sunday evening. Shh. Most of the time the process is seamless and nobody is the wiser, but sometimes plans change and I forget to make corrections to the already-written post. For instance, a couple of weeks ago we had planned to be in Seattle, so I had written that we were there. Then we decided to delay our trip, but I forgot to delete one line in which I said we were “busy with family obligations in Seattle.” Which, of course, Tara’s mom caught. Oops. The lesson to be learned is: edit, edit, edit!

This weekend, we really were in Seattle. (He says, past tense, even though we aren’t leaving for three more days. Just go with the flow, okay? If anything changes/d, I’ll fix this). Now, for the actual, LIVE part of the post:

When we got home, we enjoyed Grand Marnier two ways. We took a shot straight up, and it was smooth and tasty. We wanted to jazz things up a bit and do something unique with this ingredient as well, since we’ve admittedly been coasting by lately, so Tara found a recipe for shrimp marinated in a mixture of tequila, lime juice, Grand Marnier, cilantro, and cumin and served on a bed of romaine with crispy tortilla strips. We grilled those to go alongside steaks, and ended up with a second great way to enjoy this most excellent beverage!

Grand Marnier two ways: in a shot glass, and as part of a marinade for grilled shrimp.

Grand Marnier two ways: in a shot glass, and as part of a marinade for grilled shrimp.

There's Grand Marnier in there, too!

There’s Grand Marnier in there, too!

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194/365: National French Fries Day/National Beans ‘n Franks Day

Posted on July 13, 2013 by Midwest Mark

If you’ve ever played “one potato, two potato” as a kid (or an adult – hey, I’m not judging your arrested development!), today’s holiday just might ap-peel to you. July 13 is National French Fries Day! It’s also National Beans ‘n Franks Day, and we decided to do something rare and double dip. That is, celebrate both food holidays. I think we’ve only ever done this once before all year.

Despite the name, french fries aren’t really French. These deep-fried potatoes – known as “chips” in the U.K. and certain countries Down Under (which is kind of cute, but also confusing, because they call chips “crisps” and it’s all one big slippery slope into anarchy from there) – were actually invented in Belgium. The Spanish introduced potatoes to Europe in the 16th century, and before long the Belgians were frying up thin strips of potatoes in place of the small fish they could no longer fry when the rivers froze over during the winter. A French army officer named Antoine-Augustine Parmentier began championing the lowly potato in his country, where it had previously been viewed as unfit for human consumption in the mistaken belief that potatoes caused diseases. No wonder the French have a reputation for being snooty!  He began hosting dinners for famous guests like Benjamin Franklin,  King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette, during which potatoes would be served in an effort to prove that they were not only edible, but delicious. It wasn’t until a great famine in 1785 that the French realized hey, maybe we can eat these, after all. A decade later fried potatoes – called frites – were all the rage. When they were introduced to America, fast-food chains named them “French fries” in an homage to their European heritage, not realizing that the Belgians had actually been making them for a good hundred years longer. Which is all fine, I suppose. Belgian fries just doesn’t have the same ring to it, you know?

Beans ‘n franks is a quintessentially American dish in which hot dogs are cut up and cooked in the same sauce used to make baked beans. The two had been served together for decades, until one day somebody – whose name is sadly lost to history – decided it was too much work to take a bite of a hot dog and then scoop up a forkful of beans, so what the heck, let’s just mix ’em together and save all this time and trouble. Presumably, of course. There isn’t a lot of history available on the origin of this particular dish, and my motto is: when in doubt, make stuff up!

I kid, I kid.

To celebrate, first we opened a can of Beanee Weenees in the morning. Nothing says breakfast like beans ‘n franks! Later in the afternoon, we were visiting Capitol Hill in downtown Seattle (we’re in the Emerald City this weekend) and we dropped by Dick’s Drive In for an order of fresh-cut fries. Both were wonderful!

Beans 'n franks.

Beans ‘n franks.

National French Fries Day

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