Thursday, February 27th, 2020
First Mardi Gras. Gerry For Pepsi. Liz. Saccharin. Langouste. Steinbeck. Strawberries. Strawberry, AZ.
Today is one of several candidates for the birthday of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In 1827 on this day, students who were home from French schools put on masks and paraded through the city, celebrating the last day of freewheeling eating and drinking before Lent. It would be another thirty years before the celebration jelled into the first major parade of Comus. The first recorded celebration of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama--which claims to have had it first--was this date in 1703.
Food In Politics
Today in 1985, Geraldine Ferraro--the first major female candidate for Vice-President of the United States--appeared in a Diet Pepsi commercial on television. She was allowed control of the content of the spot, and more or less made it into a speech about women's rights. Nevertheless, she was criticized by many for doing this. Walter Mondale and Ferraro had lost the election in 1984 against the unbeatable second-term Ronald Reagan.
Annals Of Food Research
Today in 1879, saccharin was created in the lab at Johns Hopkins University by Constantine Fahlberg and Ira Remsen. It was the first artificial sweetener, about three hundred times as sweet to the tongue as sugar. That comes at the price of a slight chemical or metallic aftertaste, which I find can be masked almost completely by using a little real sugar with it. Saccharin didn't hit the big time until World War I, when there was a shortage of sugar in the United States. Its use declined in the 1970s, when tests seem to indicate that it's a carcinogen. It carried a warning label for years. However, since then its safety has been confirmed, the label is gone, and it's in pink packets everywhere.
Edible Dictionary
langouste, n., French--The French name--widely used even outside the Francophone countries--for the large crustaceans from tropical waters. The species most common in our part of the world is the spiny lobster, found in restaurants throughout the Caribbean and in Florida. It's only distantly related to the cold water Maine lobster (homard). The main difference is that langoustes lack the large claws of a Maine lobster. Langoustes also have extremely long antennae covered with spines. Despite the taxonomical differences, spiny lobsters can be cooked in most of the same ways Maine lobsters are. However, the standard preparations for spiny lobsters are broiling or grilling, rather than boiling.
Deft Dining Rule #362: Tropical spiny lobsters should be affordable enough in any restaurant that serves them that you can get two of them for the price of a steak. If not, you're being ripped off.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez: If you're going to add cut-up lobster tail meat lobster to a soup, bouillabaisse, bisque, or the like, put it in no more than five minutes before serving. If it's already cooked, it just needs to be in there long enough to heat it through.
Food In Literature
John Steinbeck was born today in 1902. His gripping, important novels of unfortunate people in the American West have--for some reason--titles that refer to food: The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row. Food is at best in the deep background in all those, of course.
Alluring Dinner Dates
Today is Elizabeth Taylor's birthday, in 1932. She had dinner at the now-extinct Christian's once. Owner Chris Ansel asked if she would autograph a menu. She said she would if he'd pick up the check for dinner. Chris said, "Never mind."
Food Calendar
Today is National Strawberry Day, although the strawberry industry doesn't seem to know about it. Strawberries worth celebrating. Here in Louisiana (where the strawberry is the official state fruit), the strawberry season is in high gear, after beginning well before Christmas last year. (They seem to appear a little earlier each year.) That schedule owes to our southerly latitude. Strawberry harvests will radiate north over a great deal of the rest of the country for months.
Strawberries are unusual in that they carry their seeds not inside but outside the fruit. A botanist would jump in here and say that what we call the seeds are actually the fruits, and what we call the fruit is really a much-expanded base peg. That said, we note that few fruits can match the fragrance and lusciousness of big, ripe strawberries at the peak of the season. When they're at their best, the best way to eat them is all by themselves--no cake, no whipped cream, no sugar, no saccharin.
Unfortunately, the goal of the agricultural industry is to grow big, colorful strawberries that stay that way long enough to make it to the supermarket and stay there for a week or more. To do that, they've developed strains that resist ripening while appearing to be ripe. That's why they don't have the fragrance and the sweetness we remember of old.
We are lucky enough to have a strawberry expert on staff. My daughter Mary Leigh is a strawberry fanatic. We buy them for her year-round and get her crop reports. The most glorious time, she confirms, is when the Louisiana strawberries are sold by the flat from trucks on the sides of roads--which is right now. She has been known to eat two-pint containers of strawberries before we even get home. It's a lot better than other sweets she could be eating. Full of Vitamin C and fiber. And, most important, full of juicy, sexy deliciousness.
Delicious-Sounding Places
Strawberry, Arizona 85544 is in the beautiful, wooded, mountainous center of the state, 107 miles north-northeast of Phoenix. It's an affluent community with many retirees; the average price of a home is $400,000. About a thousand people live there. The town is in Strawberry Valley, with the towering Mogollon Rim to the north creating a dramatic vista. Lots of places to eat in Strawberry, including the Strawberry Lodge and the Mogollon Steakhouse in the center of town. Uncle Tom's Food Court is two and a half miles down the road.
Food Namesakes
Today in 1912, Lord Herbert Kitchener opened a railway from Khartoum to El Obeid in Sudan. . . Pro basketballer Chris Dishman was born today in 1974. . . Film actor Alan Fudge was born today in 1944. . . NFL Hall Of Fame player Raymond Berry was born today in 1933. . . Singer Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas was born today in 1971.
Words To Eat By
"Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign that something is eating us."--Peter De Vries, American author, born today in 1910.
"All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely."--Lawrence Durrell, English author, born today in 1912.
"All the ingenious men and all the scientific men in the world could never invent anything so curious and so ridiculous as a lobster."--Charles Kingsley, British writer and clergyman of the 1800s.
