National Chocolate Day

Halloween...3, Thanksgiving...31.

Today is the birthday of one of the two or three most influential figures in the history of cooking and gastronomy. Auguste Escoffier, called the Emperor of Chefs, was born in France in 1846. His abilities as a chef were formidable, if what was written about him was true. More important was the legacy he left behind: a careful code of methodology for French chefs. What we came to know as French haute cuisine was largely defined by Escoffier. His name appears on countless restaurants, gourmet societies, and products.

Today is Wild Foods Day. Much in vogue among urbane chefs, wild plants and animals are the most primitive of foods for humans--and all other animals, for that matter. Most plant foods on our tables are now cultivated, involving species that have been altered for that purpose so long ago that most of the plants they evolved from are now gone. Still, we eat plenty of wild foods, most notably in the seafood department. But even fish has become subject to the manipulations of man. While nobody would say that wild foods are always better than cultivated ones (wild strawberries are certainly not), it is true of many foods. Wild catfish, for example, is much superior to farm-raised.It's sobering to realize that most wild plants and animals are inedible, or not very nourishing. Animals, which eat only wild foods unless we've adopted them, tend not to be fat. When the first settlers came to what is now America, despite the fertility of our lands, many of them starved to death.There's a good book about these matters by Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma. Read it to get a realistic view of where our food comes from. And for women like my wife and my daughter , it is National Chocolate Day. What more needs to be said?

Hen Creek begins high on the northern slope of 8464-foot Chicken Peak. The creek runs north four miles before entering Fivemile Creek, which pours into the Salmon River. More poultry: Chicken Spring is on the south side of Chicken Peak, and Rooster Creek begins two miles west of it. You could not be a chicken (literally or slangily) to travel this geography. It's rugged wilderness in the Rocky Mountains of central Idaho, about 110 miles north of Boise. The nearest restaurant is fifteen miles away in Riggins: The Rodeo Club Bar & Grill.

poulet de Bresse, n.--A French breed of chicken considered by many (certainly by French chefs) to be the finest chicken in the world. It is so distinctive that the birds having rings put around their blue-footed legs, and no discriminating chicken connoisseur would buy a Bresse chicken unless he saw that ring. (They're sold whole, of course.) They're allowed to range free in the yard for the third and fourth months of their lives, after which they're brought into the chickenhouse and given chickenfeed for a couple of weeks, so their meat will get lighter in color. They're harvested at four months old. These would be ideal for those three French hens we're supposed to get today.

If you can't see how much pepper is in the glass shakers on a restaurant's tables, it's because they haven't emptied and cleaned the shakers in years. What does that indicate about the restaurant's other practices?

You can darken a brown sauce or gravy by stirring in a small amount of instant coffee. You won't taste it.

Today in 1965, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri was completed. It symbolizes the gateway to the West that St. Louis remains. Many of those who see it for the first time are surprised that it's silver, not gold. Not, in other words, like the McDonald's arches. And a story I read in a magazine (National Lampoon, I think) said that it was originally planned as a tall spire, with a revolving restaurant at the top. But the narrow center section started to bend, the top leaned all the way over, and the revolving restaurant screwed that end into the ground. They decided just to leave it alone, call it an arch, and hope nobody saw what happened.

The Irish painter Francis Bacon was born today in 1909. . . Actress Annie Potts hit The Big Stage today in 1952. . . Bob Veale, a strikeout artist who pitched in the major leagues for twelve years, was born today in 1935.

"The greatest dishes are very simple."--Auguste Escoffier, the "Emperor of Chefs," born today in 1846.He may have been the first chef to make that statement, but he certainly was not the last.

"I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin."--Hilaire Belloc.