It's Eat Your Vegetables Day

Fourth of July 17

On June 19, 1910, Father's Day was celebrated for the first time. The place was Spokane, Washington. It's only recently that Father's Day has become a serious dining day. This is because, really, nobody cares about pleasing Dad. If you forget Mother's Day, that's a capital offense. Forget Father's Day? Eh. I think the reason more people are taking their fathers and grandfathers out to a meal on that day is that the wives and kids want to go out, and Father's Day is a fitting pretext. I also believe that most fathers, given their true wishes, would stay home while everyone goes out, as long as nobody tells him what to do. For a change.

Today is Eat Your Vegetables Day.Today is Eat Your Vegetables Day. Because it's good for you, reduces incidence of mustache cancer, etc., etc. Most of us actually like vegetables. I could be a vegetarian if I didn't like steak so much. It's easy to understand why some people don't like their vegetables. It's because diners expect to get a vegetable side dish with their entrees at no added cost. Because it's free, restaurants and cooks feel little pressure to give the sides much attention. This is true even in some expensive, allegedly gourmet places.Some restaurants, fortunately, take a different tack. They buy unusual vegetables (baby turnips, salsify, broccoli raab, pea shoots). They don't treat these with particularly more care than the neighborhood cafe does its peas and mashed potatoes, but it at least creates an illusion that they care. At the lower end of the prices spectrum, the few restaurant that try to make their vegetables special usually do so by melting cheese all over them.If you don't believe all of this, ask a vegetarian how tough it is to get a good vegetable plate in most restaurants. Such a thing is a collection of afterthoughts.It is getting better. A few restaurants are going after locally-grown vegetables with much greater interest. But the problem remains: the typical diner is much more interested in the protein on the plate, which must be done well. He won't pay extra for vegetables (except, curiously, in a steak house, where the vegetables are no better than in the places where they're free). And so the pressure is down on the vegetables.

A restaurant with excellent vegetable side dishes probably does everything else excellently.

In New Orleans, Flounder Street runs for one long block from Hayne Boulevard, along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. It's across from where the Star Casino used to dock before Hurricane Katrina, and just east of the Lakefront Airport. The entire length of Hayne was once lined on its lake side by fishing camps, where no small number of flounders and other local fish were caught and joyously eaten. The camps are gone forever (there weren't many left even before the hurricane), but the houses on Flounder Street have mostly been rebuilt. There's a good seafood restaurant on the lake end of Flounder Street: Deanie's. (It has no connection to Deanie's in Bucktown or the French Quarter).

salsify, n.--A root vegetable with the shape and size of a carrot, ranging in color from light brown to almost white. It derives what fame it has through its nickname, "oyster plant." The roots, when cooked, really do taste faintly like oysters. The vegetable is native to Europe and western Asia, but is widely grown in this country. The broad leaves are also edible, but uncommon. The plant grows a pretty purple flower; it's in the aster family.

Jimmy Buffett's song Cheeseburger In Paradise hit its high point on the charts today in 1978 at only Number Thirty-Two. It gets played a lot more than bigger hits of the time. It's the food reference, I tell you. . . On this date in 1972, the song Brandy was released by a one-hit wonder called Looking Glass. Brandy, I know you'll recall, was a fine girl. . . The last major hit on the pop charts by a classic big band--that of Jimmy Dorsey, no less--made it to Number Two on this day in 1957. It was a song about how to cook a steak: So Rare.

This was the day in 1919 when the comic strip Barney Google premiered. It evolved over the years into Snuffy Smith, which is still being published. I hear that Snuffy lately has turned his skill at distilling "corn squeezin's" into making small-batch bourbons aged in oak for twelve to fifteen years. But he still refuses to pay the "revenooers," so it's still illegal. I haven't tried the stuff myself.

Mumtaz Mahal died today in 1631, from complications during childbirth. Her husband spent the next twenty years and a lot of his wealth (he was the Mughal emperor, so no problem) building her tomb. It is the Taj Mahal, one of the most photographed sites in the world. Its name has been applied to hundreds of Indian restaurants, including one here in New Orleans. The Taj Mahal on Metairie Road serves good food, but the place gives no hint of its namesake's grandeur.

While we're in India, let's ask Amrita Rao--model and actress--if she'd mind joining us for dinner at Saffron Nola. She was born in Mumbai today in 1981.

Today was the premiere, in 1942, of the greatest radio mystery series of them all, Suspense. The scripts, stars, and production were good enough that the shows still hold up today. It ran weekly for twenty years, until the last day of radio drama on CBS. For a long time its sponsor was Roma Wines, the biggest-selling wines in America at the time. It was generic plonk from California, made before California winemakers realized how good their wines could be. . . This is the day in 1994 that police followed O.J. Simpson's white Bronco around Los Angeles. The chase was on live TV, and it wound up in a fantastic trial that we ran gavel-to-gavel on WSMB. It constantly pre-empted my radio show, but it brought many new listeners to the show who had never heard of me.

David "Stringbean" Akeman, who played the banjo and did corny comedy on "Hee Haw," was born today in 1915. . . Actor Mark Linn-Baker stepped onto the Big Stage today in 1954. . . Jello Biafra, the lead singer for the Dead Kennedys on their album Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, was born today in 1958.

"An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh."--Will Rogers."Approaching the stove, she would don a voluminous apron, toss some meat on a platter, empty a skillet of its perfectly cooked a point vegetables, sprinkle a handful of chopped parsley over all, and then, like a proficient striptease artist, remove the apron, allowing it to fall to the floor with a shake of her hips."--Bert Greene, American food writer.

"With small beer, good ale and wine,O ye gods! how I shall dine!"--Unknown.

This was the day in 1919 when the comic strip Barney Google premiered. It evolved over the years into Snuffy Smith, which is still being published. I hear that Snuffy lately has turned his skill at distilling "corn squeezin's" into making small-batch bourbons aged in oak for twelve to fifteen years, but I haven't tried the stuff myself.

Tilsit, (German), n.--A pale yellow cow's-milk cheese made commercially in Germany and nearby countries. Its history allegedly began with a mistake. Dutch farmers trying to make their familiar Gouda stored the cheese in a place that was too moist. Instead of tightening up into the uniform texture of Gouda, the cheese formed interior cracks, which admitted bacteria that sharpened the flavor and aroma of the cheese. Another story has it that the cheese was created in Russia by Swiss emigrants trying to duplicate Emmentaler, but the damp-cellar anecdote remains. Tilsit is like a sharp Havarti. (In fact, Havarti may have evolved from Tilsit.) It's a good snacking cheese, and goes well with Riesling wines.