November 20, 2017
Days Until. . .
Thanksgiving: 3. Christmas: 33. New Year's Eve: 40.
Food Calendar
National Roast Duck Day. Roast duck is a dish that only ambitious diners order in restaurants. Chef give their duck dish added attention for that reason. It also alerts the kitchen that the table is likely to be more discriminating than most. So make sure somebody orders duck at your table tonight.
It's also a great enhancement to the Thanksgiving table.
Seven Days Till Thanksgiving
This would be the perfect day to buy the ham, if you'll have one on the table for Thanksgiving. You don't need to do anything to it beforehand, but it's such an important part of our dinner that I I can't take the risk that I can't find a Chisesi ham in the stores. Just keep it in the refrigerator until Thanksgiving morning, and you'll have that potential problem avoided. I've already told you, but as each day passes, the chances of your getting a desirable restaurant reservation for Thanksgiving dwindles.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Gingerbread Island is a small lump of land rising from the tidal Seekonk River, which separates Providence and East Providence, Rhode Island. The island is just south of an abandoned railroad bridge over the river. There's nothing on Gingerbread Island, and all my efforts to figure out why it has that name have come up with nothing. However, something about gingerbread puts me in a Victorian frame of mind, which leads me to suggest having lunch or dinner at Victoria's, just over the west bank of the Seekonk.
Edible Dictionary
Jonathan apple, n.--An American apple variety whose name is more familiar than the apple is common. It's one you won't see in the supermarket, but very possibly you will in roadside stands all over the Eastern half of the country. Jonathans are a little on the sour side, which its fans mentions as its best quality. The smooth skin that fades from red into yellow, but when you bite into it you find that it's tougher than most apple skins. It's not known for certain where it came from or who Jonathan was, but it first came to public attention in the 1820s. The tree is only a little taller than a man.
Annals Of Popular Food
Today in 1965, Kellogg's introduced Pop Tarts. They were unfrosted, thin, flat rectangles of something like pie dough filled with an even thinner layer of something like preserves. The original flavors were strawberry, blueberry, apple-currant, and cinnamon. They were a big hit, especially with kids, and most especially with kids who'd been forced to eat the likes of raisin bran for breakfast until that time. The frosting was added a couple of years later, sweetening the Tarts further and, of course, making them even more popular.
Today's Worst Flavor
Today in 2002, the State of Louisiana set a bounty on nutria, at four dollars per animal. The gigantic rodent, introduced to the state's swamps by Edward McIlhenny of Tabasco fame, found the place very much to its liking and continues to eat vegetation voraciously, such that marshes are denuded in spots. An earlier effort to promote the eating of nutria meat--in which quite a few local chefs were involved--failed badly. With good reason: in texture, appearance, and taste, nutria is unappetizing. What would you expect from a big orange-toothed rat? The things are still running amok.
Food Namesakes
Alistair Cooke, long-time host of Masterpiece Theatre, was born in Britain today in 1908. . . A movie called Nuts, starring Barbra Streisand, premiered today in 1987. . . Drew Ginn, Australian Olympic rower in 1996, was born today in 1974. . . Dutch World War II resistance fighter Ferdinand van der Ham was born today in 1916. How appropriate! . . Pro football quarterback Greg Cook was born today in 1946. In a class by himself was R.W. "Johnny" Apple, who not only has a food name but was a food writer, mostly for the New York Times. That interest was secondary to his main gig, which was as a political reporter and analyst for the Times. His writing about food, however, was clearly fired by real passion. He was as knowledgeable about where to eat anywhere (including New Orleans, where he visited often) as any of the Times's restaurant critics. Today is his birthday, in 1934. He died in 2006.
Words To Eat By
“More than any other in Western Europe, Britain remains a country where a traveler has to think twice before indulging in the ordinary food of ordinary people.”--Joseph Lelyveld, long-time editor of the New York Times.
Words To Drink By
"It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.--Thomas de Quincy, British writer of the 1850s.
