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Today in Food History

- The Ides of March
- National Pears Helene Day
- Capistrano has their swallows, but Hinckley, Ohio has Turkey Buzzards. They return to the town each year on (or about) this same day each year, for the summer. They winter in Dade County, Florida.

1858 Liberty Hyde Bailey was born. He was a world famous American botanist who studied cultivated plants. He was dean of Horticulture at Cornell University for 15 years.

1889 Melville Reuben Bissell died. Bissell invented the carpet sweeper in 1876. Almost every restaurant and hotel I have worked in that had carpet, also had Bissell or similar carpet sweepers.

1891 Sir Joseph William Bazalgette died. A British civil engineer, he designed the main sewer system for London.

1980 McDonald's test marketed Chicken McNuggets in Knoxville, Tennessee. They are so popular that they have to look for a second supplier.

Sourced from Food Reference

Cooktubeuk clothing lanuching soon

I will soon be launching my food related clothing range all available to buy via paypal.

T shirts will be priced from only £10.99.

Today in Food History

- National Potato Chip Day
- National Pi(e) Day (2012)

1794 Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin.

1903 President Theodore Roosevelt established the first U.S. national bird sanctuary to protect pelicans and herons nesting on Pelican Island, near Sebastian, Florida.

1946 Jim Pons of the music group 'The Turtles' was born.

1958 'Tequila' by The Champs is #1 on the charts.

Sourced from Food Reference

Red meat increases death, cancer and heart risk, says study

A diet high in red meat can shorten life expectancy, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School.

The study of more than 120,000 people suggested red meat increased the risk of death from cancer and heart problems.

Substituting red meat with fish, chicken or nuts lowered the risks, the authors said.

The British Heart Foundation said red meat could still be eaten as part of a balanced diet.

The researchers analysed data from 37,698 men between 1986 and 2008 and 83,644 women between 1980 and 2008.

They said adding an extra portion of unprocessed red meat to someone's daily diet would increase the risk of death by 13%, of fatal cardiovascular disease by 18% and of cancer mortality by 10%.

The figures for processed meat were higher, 20% for overall mortality, 21% for death from heart problems and 16% for cancer mortality.

Today in Food History

- National Cocoanut Torte Day
- St. Ansovinus' Day, patron of harvests

1764 Charles Grey, 2nd Earl, was born. Earl Grey was supposedly given the recipe for Earl Grey Tea by a Chinese mandarin with whom he was friends (and/or whose life either he or another British diplomat saved).

1813 Lorenzo Delmonico, famed restaurateur was born at Marengo, Switzerland. In 1851 he joined his uncles in their catering and pastry shop in New York City. He transformed the business into one of the most famous restaurants in the country.

1893 The original Waldorf Hotel opened. It had 450 rooms and almost 1,000 employees.

1915 Wilbert Robinson (Uncle Robby), manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, attempted to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane. Someone had substituted a grapefruit instead, which virtually exploded in his glove on impact, covering him with grapefruit pulp and juice, much to the amusement of his team.

2006 While a Poultry and Food Science professor at Cornell University from 1949-1989 he developed chicken nuggets (keeping the breading on was the key), turkey ham, poultry hot dogs and many other products. He founded Cornell's Institute of Food Science and Marketing in 1970, and in 2004 was inducted into the American Poultry Hall of Fame.

Sourced from Food Reference

Today in Food History

- National Baked Scallops Day

1841 Orlando Jones of Middlesex, England received a U.S. patent for a process to make starch from rice or corn.

1894 Coca Cola was first bottled by Joseph A. Biedenham of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Before that it was only mixed to order at the soda fountain.

1912 Juliette 'Daisy' Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the USA in Savannah, Georgia.

1929 Asa Griggs Candler died. In 1887, Asa Candler, a wholesale druggist, purchased the formula for Coca-Cola from John S. Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, for $2,300. He sold the company in 1919 for $25 million.

1930 Mahatma Gandhi began his march to the coastal village of Dandi, to protest the British salt monopoly.

1993 Christian Kent Nelson died. He was the inventor of the Eskimo Pie in 1919 in Iowa.

Sorced from FoodReference

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

-National Crabmeat Day

1822 Charles Graham of New York received a patent for artificial teeth.

1839 The French withdraw from occupying Veracruz, Mexico and 'The Great Pastry War' ends.

Sourced from FoodReference

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

- Farmers Day
- National Peanut Cluster Day
- China: Festival of the Earth Goddess

1824 Jean Jacques Regis de Cambaceres died. A French politician and gourmet, a contemporary and rival of Talleyrand and Carême. The dinners he gave were famous, and Cambaceres closely supervised the food preparation. He refused to admit late-comers, and was also said to have demanded complete silence while dining.

1902 Tom Blake was born. The inventor of the modern surf board.

1923 The Coca Cola 6 bottle carton was introduced.

1941 American author Sherwood Anderson supposedly swallowed a toothpick or a swizzle stick while at a cocktail party in the Panama Canal Zone, and died of peritonitis.

1992 Christian K. Nelson inventor of the Eskimo Pie died at age 98.

Sourced from Food Referen

Today in Food History

- National Crown Roast of Pork Day
- National Cereal Day (see 1897 below)
- Feast of St. Perpetua, patron of cattle.

1804 John Wedgwood, the son of Josiah Wedgwood of pottery fame, founded the Royal Horticultural Society.

1849 Luther Burbank was born. American horticulturist, he developed many new varieties of fruits and vegetables, including the Burbank Potato (1873), the Shasta Daisy, over 100 varieties of plums and prunes and 10 varieties of berries.

1897 Dr. John Kellogg served corn flakes for the first time to his patients at his hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan. They wouldn't be sold commercially until 1906.

1914 The Coca Cola Bottler's Association was formed.

Sourced from FoodReference

Today in Food History

- National Chocolate Cheesecake Day

- National Frozen Food Day

1899 Aspirin was patented by Felix Hoffman of the German company, Bayer. (Aspirin was originally developed by Charles Frederic Gerhardt in 1853, but he never followed up on it and it was soon forgotten).

1912 Nabisco debuts the Oreo cookie. A red letter day in the history of cookies! (Some sources say 1909).

1930 Retail frozen foods go on sale for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Various fruits, vegetables, meat and fish were offered for sale. Clarence Birdseye had developed the method used to successfully freeze foods on a commercial scale.

Sorced from FoodReference

BBC News - Tesco plans to create 20,000 UK jobs over two years

As Tesco plans to create 20,000 new jobs, will this really help the millions of unemployed professionals, or will it just be minimum wage positions. Also the other question that has be asked is do we really need any more Tesco's, as small independent shops close and our high street become ghost towns is this really good news in the long term?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/business-17252738

Fasting for Lent? McDonald's targets religious customers with new Fish McBites

McDonald's might not be the most obvious destination for those wishing to practice abstinence during the season of Lent.
But the fast-food chain seems to be making a play for a more pious crowd with its latest innovation - Fish McBites.
The new snack was first reported on Tuesday, a day before the start of the Christian season of fasting.

Innovation: Fish McBites have hit McDonald's branches just in time for Lent

It was pictured at a McDonald's branch near Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, which may strengthen the impression that it is aimed at the faithful who have denied themselves the pleasure of meat.

Is food past its best before date good enough for your family?

In these tough times, we’re all looking for ways to make our money go further... and to feed our families for less.

When it comes to doing the weekly shop, can you stretch the budget even further without missing out on the brands you want?

Short date shopping sites claim that they can slash your grocery bills by up to 60% with goods that are past or close to their best before date. And as the recession continues, online retailers are reporting a boom in sales as the trend moves into the mainstream.

The owners of www.approvedfood.co.uk claim their customers saved an astonishing £3.9million last year alone by ordering goods at a fraction of the supermarket and recommended retail prices.

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

- National Cheese Doodle Day

1558 Francisco Fernandes supposedly introduced smoking tobacco to Europe.

1836 Charles Goodnight was born. He is said to have devised the first 'chuck wagon' from an Army wagon in the 1850s or 1860s, with various shelves and compartments for food, equipment, utensils, medical supplies, etc.

1868 C.H. Gould of Birminghom, England patented a stapler.

1893 Emmett J. Culligan was born. He was the founder of the water treatment company that carries his name. (“Hey, Culligan Man!”)

1910 Momofuku Ando was born in Taiwan. Mr. Ando was the founder of Nissin Food Products, and invented 'Instant Ramen' noodles.

1965 ‘Pepper’ Martin, baseball player died.

1991 Patent # 5,000,000 was issued to Lonnie O. Ingram of the University of Florida. The patent was for a genetically engineered form of the E. coli bacterium that converts plant material into ethanol.

Sourced from FoodReference

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

- National Pound Cake Day

1634 Samuel Cole supposedly opened the first tavern in the U.S., in Boston. What took so long?

1792 Samuel Slocum was born. He invented a machine to make pins with solid heads and a machine for sticking the pins in a paper holder for sale.

1792 Oranges were supposedly introduced to Hawaii.

1927 Ira Remsen died. An American chemist, co-discoverer (with Constantine Fahlberg) of saccharin, the artificial sweetener. (The FDA has required warning labels, since 1972, on products using saccharin because it is a suspected carcinogen).

1994 John Candy died. Canadian comedian and actor, member of 'The Second City' comedy troupe.

Sourced from FoodReference

London 2012: Food and drink rules hit Olympics fans

Spectators at the Olympic Games will not be allowed to take drinks or liquids in more than 100ml containers, like sunscreen, into 2012 venues.
Games organisers Locog have set out forbidden items in their ticket terms.

Sports fans and family groups have raised concerns about heat and expense at the 27 July-12 August Games.

But Locog said free water would be available across the venues, and the rules, including on how much food people can take, were being finalised.

London 2012 - Begin your journey here

London 2012: Latest Olympic news, sport, features and programmes from the BBC

Food is listed as a restricted item on Locog's website, but a spokesman said how big a picnic people would be able to carry in was "still under discussion". As was the size of sunscreen bottle that would be allowed.

He said security checks on people entering the Olympic Park site and other venues would be on a par with the "mag and bag" security seen at airports, where bags go through magnetic scanners and people are searched and where liquids in more than 100ml containers are banned.

BBC News - Has Britain fallen out of love with lager?

 

The sales of larger are much higher than those of bitter / ale but the lager sales are falling, have people changed their drinking habits?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/magazine-17211485

 

Tesco's cuts back its double the difference promise

Tesco has cut back its promise to refund double thedifference on products bought for less at Asda.

The retailer will now refund only the difference, having claimed shoppers were misusing the promotion in a bid to make money.

The move marks the second time Tesco has backtracked on the promotion. Last month the supermarket placed a £20 limit on refunds after it was targeted through a number of consumer website advising shoppers on how to make major savings through the scheme.

Tesco said it made the latest change to protect the scheme after an attack from a “cottage industry of savvy and determined people” that “identify products which are on short-term promotion in Asda then buy them at Tesco”.

The retailer also claimed shoppers were recycling coupons “just to make money”, adding: “Price Check has given our customers confidence in our prices and transparency.

“But some people have misused the scheme to cash in. So we have taken this step to protect Price Check for the majority of our customers.”

A spokeswoman for Asda said: “Clearly they found it hard to make a promise they couldn’t keep.”

about the skint foodie

I found this blod while researching into my food passion and loved the about page.

about

about the skint foodie

• charmed life • cool job • platinum amex • business class• turbo-charged coupé
• prada/agnès b/nicole farhi • nobu/racine/club gasgon • life-changing shitstorm
• alcoholism • depression • breakdown • pills/vodka/stanley knife • closed curtains/bailiffs
• home repossession • bankruptcy • homeless hostel • community mental health team
• temporary council flat • housing association flat • voluntary work • hope • relapse • try again

 

Soured from The Skint Foodie

Soul food: the Skint Foodie blog

The Skint Foodie is proof you can eat well for less. For the blogger behind it, it is also a life-saver

The Skint Foodie's meals are carefully planned, such as these masala lamb cutlets with tarka dal and naan bread. Photograph: theskintfoodie.com

It is apposite that the two things salvaged from the Skint Foodie's previously affluent life are kitchenware and books. Cast-iron saucepans are neatly stacked, while one wall of his London flat speaks of a literary appetite, alphabetically arranged, from Amis to … well, I didn't poke around in the lower reaches, not when there are raisin-and-saffron biscuits from nearby deli Persepolis on the table.

The Skint Foodie blog launched last month with 200 recipes, and posts on eating well for less; already he has had interest and praise from publishers, literary agents and writers such as Tim Hayward, Jay Rayner and India Knight. Does he feel like a food writer? He laughs. "No, definitely not." He's been "shocked, awestruck by the reaction. I was in tears," he says. "I've not had any human feedback for years and to get some validation was incredible."

The Skint Foodie's name is Tony. He doesn't want to be fully identified, or to go public yet, reflecting: "There are still a lot of people to whom I need to make amends." There is also his mental health to consider; much of last year was swallowed by crippling depression, and although he is well at the moment, it is of a recurring nature. "Since 2005, the longest period I've been fully functioning has been about four or five months, from about October 2010 to March last year, and then I crashed."

The People's Supermarket: where even the smell of baking bread is genuine

In a high street rigged against independent shopkeepers, this co-operative food shop has won a battle for survival

The People's Supermarket on Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, London, has been saved. Michael Mulcahy and Osman Zein behind the counter. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

If you've never been to the People's Supermarket, I think you'd be surprised at how normal all the stuff is. There are sections of top-end delicatessen-ery, the rococo biscuits for the same price as a pair of trousers in Primark; there's Haribo bears, for the universal price of not very much. There is no manic "buy this, get that free" promotional activity – they use the food that won't last much longer in their own kitchen, which is, as the head cook, Paul Batho, soberly puts it, "a real profit centre in the business".

Kellogg's crisps up its bottom line by snapping up Pringles

The cereals giant Kellogg hopes to add some more snap, crackle and pop to its financial results with the acquisition of Pringles.

The $2.7bn (£1.7bn) deal adds the famous tubes of saddle-shaped crisps into a portfolio that includes Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Special K and Cheez-It crackers. Pringles brings in revenues of about $1.5bn, tripling the size of Kellogg's non-cereal snacks division and adding 1,700 employees.

At a stroke, Kellogg becomes the number 2 snack company in the world, after PepsiCo's Frito-Lay, which owns Walkers Crisps.

The company got a second chance to buy Pringles after the current owner, Procter & Gamble, pulled out of a deal to sell to Diamond Foods, which has become embroiled in an accounting investigation and signalled last week that it was not in a position to follow through on the acquisition.

Ken Perkins, an analyst at Morningstar, said Pringles faced intense competition from other crisps businesses, but that intense competition was a fact of life.

Victorians paid 13 times more for food shop

Supermarket prices may have risen well above Mervyn King’s inflation-based target in the past year or two, but we’re still spending far less on food than 150 years ago.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of The Grocer, we compared this week’s Grocer 33 mystery shopping basket (cost £93.95), with an equivalent ‘basket’ from 1862. The basket would have set a customer back an eye-watering £1,254 - 13 times the amount paid today, based on an average earnings measure of inflation.

Although wages have increased substantially over the past 150 years, the decrease also reflects big supply chain advances.

Once-exotic items have, unsurprisingly, come down in price the most. In 1862, pineapples were rarely traded, but when they were, sold for 5s. That’s £149 in today’s money, or nearly two days’ pay for a builder working in 1862, who earned 2s 10d for a day’s labour.

Best of British? Just 44 of top 150 brands now UK-owned

Burton’s Foods, licensee of Cadbury biscuits, was bought by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Apollo Global Management in 2009.

• Scottish firm Wiseman took everyone by surprise in January when it sold up to German dairy giant Müller - which recently moved itself… to Luxembourg.
  
• Burton’s Foods, licensee of Cadbury biscuits, was bought by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Apollo Global Management in 2009.
  
• Princes, founded in Liverpool in 1880, was bought by Tokyo’s Mitsubishi Corp in 1989 - making it the most far-flung of Britain’s Biggest Brands.
  
• Founded by three Cambridge grads in 1999, it began selling up to CCE with a 20% stake in 2009 - and Coke secured the majority share in 2010.

Of Britain’s 150 Biggest Grocery Brands, just 44 are now UK-owned, exclusive data from The Grocer can reveal.

In a report highlighting the cosmopolitan nature of Britain’s supermarket shelves today, brands hail from 15 countries, including the US, Germany, France, Austria, Thailand, Japan and even Guernsey.

But it’s the continuing sublimation of British-born brands into foreign-owned multinationals and private equity shells that is most striking. Of the 91 brands in the list created and developed in the UK, only 36 are British owned today.

And more foreign owners are pitching up every year. Since the start of 2011, a total of 44 British food and drink companies have fallen into foreign hands, according to Grant Thornton. Loss of British ownership invariably means lost tax revenue. As well as Cadbury’s integration into Kraft’s European HQ in Switzerland, where corporation tax is much lower than the UK, Robert Wiseman will be subsumed into Müller, which is based in Luxembourg.

For some, the cost of losing UK ownership is also paid in more than just tax. “Kraft’s announcement of 200 job losses in December shows just how much ownership matters,” said Unite officer Jennie Formby.

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

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1799 The first U.S. weights and measures law was passed by Congress. Actually it did not set standards, but rather required the surveyor of each port to test and correct the instruments and weights used to calculate duties on imports. Basically each surveyor was on his own in setting the standards to be tested.

1887 Harry E. Soref was born. Inventor of the laminated steel padlock, founder of the Master Lock Company in 1921. The company became well known in 1928 when it shipped 147,600 padlocks to federal prohibition agents in New York for locking up speakeasies they raided.

1901 The Martha Washington Hotel opens in New York City. It is the first hotel exclusively for women.

1904 Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) was born. Writer and cartoonist. A few of his childrens books were 'Green Eggs and Ham,' 'One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish,' 'Scrambled Eggs Super!' and 'The Butter Battle Book'

1930 Actor John Cullum was born. He played the restaurateur on the TV show Northern Exposure.

1962 The Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man' premiered. It is about aliens who arrive here ‘to serve man,’ but not quite in the way we assumed. Their manual on how ‘to serve man’ turns out to be a cookbook.

1989 A phone call to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile begins a chain of events that results in an 11 day embargo of Chilian fruit. The anonymous phone call, and another one on March 9, warns that Red Flame grapes on the way to the U.S. have been injected with cyanide. Over 2 million crates of Chilean fruit is impounded and 20.000 Chilean food workers lose their jobs. Consumers in the U.S. and several other countries stop eating grapes of any kind for a month. No real evidence of contamination was found.

Sourced from FoodReference

TODAY IN FOOD HISTORY

- National Pig Day
- National Fruit Compote Day
- Wales: St. David's Day. Welshmen wear leeks in their hats today.

1784 E. Kidner opened the first cooking school in Great Britain.

1927 Harry Belafonte, singer, actor, was born. His biggest hit was "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song" in 1956.

1970 U.S. commercial whale hunting ended.

1989 Jack Dietz set a world's record for watermelon seed spitting, 66 feet 11 inches. There are contests in many locations throughout the U.S. in the spring and summer.

1989 A 75 year-long ban on beer was lifted this day in Iceland.

1990 The British Royal Navy began issuing rum rations to sailors as early as 1655. The Royal New Zealand Navy was the last navy in the world to end daily rum rations for sailors in 1990.

2002 McDonald's announced in a press release that it has agreed to pay 10 million dollars to Hindu and vegetarian groups to settle lawsuits over its use of beef flavoring in its French Fries.

Sourced from Food Reference