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National Frozen Food Day

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Today is National Frozen Food Day, which honors the pioneering work of Clarence Birdseye. While living in Canada, he learned from the Inuit how to fish through a hole in the ice. He noticed that the day’s catch froze almost instantly, tasted fresh, and didn’t turn to mush like conventional slow-frozen foods when thawed. Convinced he had discovered something revolutionary, he developed a freezing machine and patented it in 1927.

It took time for the world to catch up. Railroads used ice for its refrigeration “reefer” cars and wouldn’t accept responsibility for possible spoilage. Markets had no freezers to store the fish. Although home refrigerators were available, separate compartments with room for more than a few ice cube trays wouldn’t be introduced until 1940. Birdseye ran out of money, sold his company to Postum Cereals (now Post Consumer Brands), and took a job there.

With the company’s financial resources, Birdseye began the painstaking process of convincing the public what a boon frozen food could be to busy mothers and families. In March 1930, he placed display freezers into several stores in Springfield, MA, stocking them with 27 different foods from haddock to spinach.national frozen food day

Fifty-four years later, Senate Joint Resolution 193 requested that Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States of America, officially designate March 6th as Frozen Food Day. Proclamation 5157 reads, in part:

…The international frozen food industry started in the United States. Frozen vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish were first packaged and offered to consumers in 1930, contributing greatly to the convenience of life and freeing consumers permanently from the cycle of limited seasonal availability of many foods.

Between 1935 and 1940, frozen foods became available to the public on a large scale. During World War II, ration point values posted in stores and carried in newspapers focused public attention on frozen food. Frozen food became a part of the space age when Apollo XII astronauts took frozen meals on board. Seventy-two frozen food items were stored on the Skylab for a five hundred-day supply of meals for the crew…

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim March 6, 1984, as Frozen Food Day, and I call upon the American people to observe such day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighth.

Ronald Reagan

national frozen food day

TV dinner in the Reagan White House

Happy National Frozen Food Day!

Make a Gift Day

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Today is Make a Gift Day. The holidays are nearly here; time is running out. Save your cash and make something by hand. It’s fun to do, and a homemade gift will mean much more to your loved ones than something you buy in a store.

Here are seven ideas to get you started. (And be sure to make enough to keep some for yourself!)

  1. Peppermint Coconut Soap
  2. Coffee Sugar Scrub
  3. Upcycled Jewelry Magnets
  4. All-Purpose Spice Rub
  5. Flavored and Colored Sugar
  6. Punk Rock Cookie Jar Mix
  7. Lavender Bath Bombs

Or write a poem: it doesn’t have to be good.

Happy Make a Gift Day!

Eat a Red Apple Day

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International Eat an Apple DayToday is Eat a Red Apple Day. Unlike the freewheeling, any-apple-goes International Eat an Apple Day (September 17), today is all about the reds:

Delicious, Rome, Ambrosia, Braeburn, McIntosh, Cameo, Empire, Macoun, Rubyfrost, Cortland, Jonagold, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Snapdragon, Gala, Fuji, Reinette, Lady, Baldwin, Gravenstein, Liberty, Northern Spy, Cripps Pink, Sweet Tango and more

Remember the adage: Consuming an individual portion obviates the need for intervention by a medical professional during the Earth’s current rotation around the Sun. (Or words to that effect.)

National Nachos Day

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Today is National Nachos Day and should not be confused with International Day of the Nacho (October 21) or with the International Nacho Festival (October 13-15). To be honest, we’re a bit confused ourselves. To get to the bottom of this delicious mystery, let’s dig in (sorry).

Although we’re not sure why it’s celebrated on November 6th, the origin of National Nachos Day is this: In 1943,  Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya inadvertently invented nachos at a restaurant in Piedras Negras, Mexico. (To pinpoint the exact date it happened would strain credulity, wouldn’t it?)

A group of officers’ wives whose husbands were stationed in Fort Duncan Airbase in Texas crossed the border to have dinner at the famed Victory Club. The women were more than fashionably late: the restaurant had closed, and the cook had gone home. The ladies were hungry.

Anaya’s son related the legend in an interview in the Sun Sentinel.

“My father was maître d’ and he said ‘Let me go quick and fix something for you.’ He went into the kitchen, picked up tostadas, grated some cheese on them – Wisconsin cheese, the round one – and put them under the Salamander [a broiling unit that quickly browns the top of foods]. He pulled them out after a couple minutes, all melted, and put on a slice of jalapeno.”

Whether Mamie Finan, one of the wives, or Anaya himself christened the dish Nacho’s Especiales is a matter of debate among snack historians. This much is certain: the dish was a hit. Somewhere along the way, the name was shortened to nachos. Anaya’s original recipe appeared in St. Anne’s Cookbook in 1954.

national nachos day

Ignacio Anaya went on to work at the Moderno Restaurant in Piedras Negras, where his original recipe is still used. He later opened his own establishment, appropriately named Nacho’s Restaurant, also in Piedras Negras.

By 1960, when he sought to claim ownership of the nacho, it had already been around for seventeen years and was in the public domain. To honor Anaya’s creation, Piedras Negras hosts the International Nacho Festival every year.

The snack’s popularity grew in 1976 when businessman Frank Liberto began selling a modified version at sporting events in Arlington Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers. That first year, sales totaled $800,000.

Liberto’s secret? He altered one ingredient, creating a pourable processed cheese product with a long shelf life that didn’t need to be heated. We can’t tell you the formula’s secret, proprietary ingredients; just that, by the Food and Drug Administration’s standards, it legally can’t be called cheese. But that’s never stopped anyone from tucking into a bowl of nachos. Better snacking through modern chemistry, right?

In 1978, the treat became available at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium, where iconic sports announcer Howard Cosell was covering Monday Night Football with Don Meredith and Frank Gifford. At some point, a plate of nachos was brought up to the booth.

national nachos day nachos

The broadcasters needed to fill some dead airtime, so Cosell decided to riff on the snack’s name. “‘They brought us this new snack—what do they call them? knock-o’s or nachos?’” recalls Liberto. “He started using the word ‘nachos’ in the description of plays: ‘Did you see that run? That was a nacho run!’”

Cosell and others used the word for weeks afterward, helping Liberto’s nachos branch out from their Texas birthplace. Ignacio Anaya invented the original nacho. Frank Liberto modernized them, turning them into a concession snack and a profit machine.

Ignacio Anaya died in 1975. A bronze plaque erected in Piedras Negras honors his memory and October 21 was declared the International Day of the Nacho. Why was that date chosen? Was it his birthday? The date he died? We don’t know.

So there you have it, folks. Hungry yet?