The Food Almanac: June 30, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and saying.
Eating Calendar
Today is National Ice Cream Soda Day. This sounds like one of those hot dogs-apple pie-baseball kinds of things, but when's the last time you had an ice cream soda? Even ice cream parlors rarely have them onymore. The reason: the lack of the kind of soda fountain making an ice cream soda requires. It mixes carbon dioxide with water, then shoots it in a thin, string-stream into the other soda ingredients. And that you don't see too much since around 1980.
Here in New Orleans, an ice cream soda is very likely to be a nectar soda. The flavor "nectar" is unique to this city. A pink syrup best known these days as a sno-ball flavor, it blends the flavors of almond and vanilla with a little citric acid to produce a distinctive and delicious hybrid.
Appetizing Places
Soda Springs is in the mountains in the southeast corner of Idaho. The nearest major city is Ogden, Utah, 140 miles south. But Soda Springs is substantial in its own right, with 3,400 residents. It was known as Beer Springs in the late 1800s, when it was the point where the California Trail veers south from the Oregon Trail. It was incorporated as Soda Springs in 1896. The springs of the name are very impressive. It's a geyser that shoots up 100 feet every hour on the hour. It was created in 1937 by drilling down to a spot where warmish water came into contact with carbon dioxide. It is the only full controlled geyser in the world. Soda Springs has quite a few restaurants, of which the most appealing is The Trail, right in the middle of town. Try a soda.
Edible Dictionary
birch beer, n. — A variation on root beer, created in the 1880s as a competitor to the new and highly successful Hires Root Beer. It genuinely does use birch bark and sap as one of its flavoring ingredients, along with herbs and vanilla. It has a lighter flavor and color than root beer. Some varieties of birch beer are very pale or even colorless. It's more popular in the Northeast and into Canada, but birch beer was common in New Orleans in the 1950s through the 1980s because it was the primary fizzy beverage sold by Royal Castle, a chain of hamburger restaurants. Royal Castle is still in existence in its hometown of Miami.
Food Inventions
Today in 1896, James Hadaway received a patent for the first electric stove. Electric stoves are roundly derided by those who cook with gas, and there's no doubt that gas is preferable. However, those of us who are forced by circumstances to cook on electric stovetops soon learn to adapt to their operating quirks. I am one of these unfortunates, and I'd say that I cook as well on an electric element as I could on gas. The worst problem: skillets and saucepans must have absolutely flat bottoms. As for electric ovens, I prefer them to gas.
Deft Dining Rule #188
The best table in most restaurants is the one that's most isolated one in the main dining room, especially if it's next to a window.
Annals of Food Research
The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt. It was the first time any serious standards were brought to bear on the food supply in this country. Although its effect was overwhelmingly salubrious, it did ultimately remove from the market certain gourmet items that involve an above-average risk. A modern example of that would be raw milk and cheeses made from it.
Eating Around the World
Today in 1755, the government of the Philippines — which was more or less controlled by that of Mexico and, in turn, by Spain — declared that all Chinese food vendors owned by non-Catholics (which would be most of them) must close. It was the Far Eastern version of the Inquisition.
Food Namesakes
Shirley Fry, an Australian tennis player who won her share of the major tournaments, was born today in 1927. . . On this date in 1967, Cookie Rojas pitched in relief for the Phillies. Afterwards, he could say that he'd played all nine positions on the team. . . Frankie Lymon of the rock group the Teenagers was born today in 1942. Later they would make Sprite out of his namesake fruit.
Words to Eat By
"Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos." — Don Kardong, writer and running enthusiast.
Words to Drink By
"Man being reasonable must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication;
Glory, the grape, love, gold — in these are sunk
The hopes of all men and of every nation"
— Lord Byron