Cheese Fondue Day

Jazz Festival-- 14 Mother's Day- 31

On this date ninety years apart, two events shaped the cuisine and culture of Southeast Louisiana. In 1803, during negotiations to sell New Orleans to the United States, France's Foreign Minister Charles Talleyrand offered to throw in the entire Louisiana territory for a couple million dollars more. It took Robert Livingston by surprise, but he and Thomas Jefferson felt they couldn't turn the offer down. The Louisiana Purchase drastically changed futures of both the United States and New Orleans.Ninety years earlier, in1713, the Peace of Utrecht was signed. What are now the Maritime Provinces of Canada were ceded by France to England. The territory included the French colony of Acadiana, in the present Nova Scotia. French settlers were told to pledge allegiance to the English crown. Many who refused were deported, and wound up in the bayou country southwest of New Orleans. Living in isolation there for two centuries, they developed the Cajun culture and cuisine.

Today in 1868, the rule of the shoguns of Japan ended. Nevertheless, that ruling class continues to be honored by dozens of sushi bars around America that bear that name. Shogun Restaurant in Metairie--New Orleans's first sushi bar--continues to serve and remains delicious.

It's Cheese Fondue Day. Cheese fondue--the original Swiss kind, followed much later by beef fondue and chocolate fondue--rises and falls in popularity. Right now it's in a lull. The Melting Pot, a national chain, serves a complete fondue dinner with many different ingredients in both the pot and at the end of the sticks. Fondue has never really caught on in New Orleans, probably because it's thought of by most as a cold-weather thing.

Partridge, Kansas 67566 is a small town of 260 people in the south central part of the state. It stands at the junction of US 50 and KS 61, just up the road from Hutchinson, 58 miles west-northwest of Wichita, in the prairies. It stands at the junction of two transcontinental main lines, those of the historic Santa Fe and Rock Island railroads. The people raise a lot of cattle and wheat. The nearest restaurant is the Dutch Kitchen four miles up US 50. Interesting fact: eleven percent of the working women in Partridge are waitresses.

sinker, n.--A doughnut, especially one made so heavy that it sinks you'd think it would sink if you threw it into a bucket of water. Sinker is an American slang expression that came to be used in the Northeast in the late 1800s, when the habit of dunking doughnuts into coffee became popular. "Sinker" has also been defined as a doughnut which, when fried, sinks to the bottom of the oil vat. But such a thing would be considered a very bad doughnut indeed.

Cheese is a beautiful finish to a meal, but is a bad beginning. It puts the appetite to rest, just when you should be most ravenous.

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America was founded on this date in 1938 by O.C. Cash and a couple dozen guys who harmonized with him. The organization is alive and well across America.Today in 1956, Elvis Presley exploded onto the pop charts with his first Number One record, Heartbreak Hotel. It was the best record he ever made. We always wondered whether the restaurant in Heartbreak Hotel were any good. Our suspicion is that the cooking was one cause of the heartbreak.