“I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.”
Groucho Marx, ‘Groucho and Me’ (1959)
Today is:
~ National Chocolate Mint Day
1764 Gottlieb Sigismund Kirchhof was born. He discovered glucose, developed a method for refining vegetable oil, and also experimented with brewing and fermentation.
1847 The Donner Party is rescued after being snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas. Almost half of the original 87 members died, and some of the survivors seemed to be well fed considering the ordeal they went through. Cannibalism itself is not a crime, and no charges were ever brought.
1855 Bread Riots in Liverpool.
1903 Tsingtao, China's first brewery, was founded by German settlers. (Some sources say it was 1897).
1906 Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (W.K. Kellogg Company) was founded by Will Keith Kellogg to manufacture breakfast cereals (cornflakes).
1913 Cracker Jack began to put prizes in each box.
1976 Iceland broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain when the two couldn't settle their disagreement on the 'cod war' fishing rights issue.
1985 Cherry Coke was introduced. Actually, soda fountains had been making them for decades.
1999 The world's largest strawberry shortcake was created in McCall Park, Plant City, Florida, the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World. It was a Guinness record for the world's largest strawberry shortcake, over 6,000 pounds.
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DID YOU KNOW?
BANANAS
Supposedly, one of the first shipments of bananas to reach the colonies was in 1690 at Salem, Mass. They tried boiling them with pork. It took nearly 200 years after that culinary disaster for bananas to catch on with North Americans. Today, average consumption is over 30 pounds.
There are more than 500 different varieties of bananas.
Bananas trees are not trees. The banana plant is a giant herb.
Unripe bananas have about 25% starch and only 1% sugar. Natural enzyme action converts this high starch content to sugar, so ripe bananas have a 20% sugar content.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans knew the banana as the "Indian Fig".
The terms 'bee's knees,' 'the cat's pajamas,' and 'Yes, we have no bananas' were all coined by American cartoonist Tad Dorgan.
One variety of banana, the 'Ice Cream Banana', is BLUE. It turns yellow like other bananas when ripe, and has a taste like vanilla custard and a marshmallow texture.
‘Red bananas’ are maroon to dark purple when ripe, and even the fruit inside can have a slight pinkish color.
The average banana contains .6 grams fat.
Until the early 1800s in Hawaii, most banana varieties were 'kapu' - forbidden for women of Hawaii to eat, under penalty of death.
The very heart of the trunk of a banana 'tree' - inside the layers of bark fiber, is a white tube. It may be cooked, and has a taste and texture similar to bamboo shoots.
India, with rich bio-diversity of banana and plantain, is the largest producer and consumer with estimated production of 16 million tonnes of bananas annually. India's domestic production alone exceeds the entire world trade.
