National Chocolate Soufflé Day

National Chocolate Soufflé Day is on February 28th in the United states.

Another day celebrating a dish that contains chocolate, and that is also a sweet dessert.

The soufflé is a type of baked cake made from egg whites beaten to a soft peak meringue, as well as a base such as cream sauce, purée or purée. It is also combined with other ingredients, and can be sweet or savoury depending on what those ingredients  are. In this case, it is a sweet dish, and the primary ingredient is chocolate. The name means "to blow up" which is what the dessert does - it becomes puffed up and fluffy after cooking, although it does fall again quite quickly. It is quite a difficult dish to make properly, and it isn't unknown for it to never properly puff up.

Often made in individual ramekins, the dish is frequently pierced and filled with a liquid sauce of some type - the type depending on the type of soufflé. In the case of a chocolate soufflé, chocolate sauce could be poured in.

National Hot Breakfast Month

National Hot Breakfast Month is in February in the United States.

Breakfast is technically the first meal of the day after rising. There are many different foods that are traditionally eaten for breakfast, both hot and cold. Given that February is the middle of winter, it makes sense to have a hot breakfast.

There are a number of different things that would be suitable for a hot breakfast. One of the simplest is, of course, toast, which could then be topped with butter and marmalade or other preserve. Another popular choice is porridge, sometimes with honey added.

A rather larger choice, and one that is eaten throughout the day, and not just at breakfast, is the Full English (or Irish, or Scottish, or Welsh or others) Breakfast, which involves things such as bacon, sausages, fried eggs, black pudding, fried bread, baked beans and fried mushrooms.

National Pistachio Day

National Pistachio Day is on February 26th in the United States.

Pistachios are a type of culinary nut, rather than a botanical one, as they are actually a seed. The pistachio is related to the cashew.

Pistachios have been eaten for a long, long time. There are references claiming that they have been eaten since at least nine thousand years ago. The tree originated in the Middle East, but has since spread around the globe. The pistachio comes inside a distinctive shell, which is splits partially open when the seed is ripe, like a cooked mussel, when purchased.

The seed is also green in colour with a distinctive flavour. Like many culinary nuts, pistachios are used in both sweet and savoury dishes, and can be eaten as a snack, raw, roasted and with such things as salt added.

Like many nuts, pistachios contain a lot of different nutrients. They are also considered to be a hazardous product to ship, due to their tendency towards spontaneous combustion.

National Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day

February 25th is National Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day in the United States.

Yet another day featuring chocolate, and another food that's been covered in chocolate. This time its peanuts.

Peanuts, despite the name, aren't a type of nut but are instead a type of legume (a bean). There are a variety of different candies that could qualify as chocolate covered peanuts. There are candy bars, such as the Snickers, which have peanuts in them, and are chocolate.

There are individual chocolate covered peanuts, rather than clusters - M&M's are possibly the most well known branded type, but you can just have ones similar to chocolate covered raisins, without the colourful candy shell of M&M's.

You can also have chocolate covered peanut clusters. These are similar to the individual chocolate covered peanuts, but each is made from a cluster of several peanuts that have been covered in chocolate, not just one.

National Tortilla Chip Day

National Tortilla Chip Day is on February 24th in the US.

Tortilla chips, although they are considered to be Mexican food, were actually first produced in Los Angeles in the mid-twentieth century.

The chips are customarily made from yellow corn, but other colours - blue, white and red - are also available. The triangular chips were originally intended to use up tortillas that had been discarded because they were misshapen. The rejected tortillas were cut into triangles and fried.

Tortilla chips, which are often sold as a bagged snack food (where they may be coated with various flavours), are now an essential part of Tex-Mex cooking, in particular appetisers. They are often served with dips, such as salsa, guacamole and chilli con queso. A larger starter is nachos, which uses tortilla chips as well as other ingredients, including the aforementioned sauces, as well as such as sour cream, meat, refried beans and jalapeños.

National Banana Bread Day

National Banana Bread Day is on February 23rd in the United States.

This is another food that is pretty much what it sounds like - it's bread made with bananas.

Banana bread started becoming popular in the US in the early to mid twentieth century. It is often a type of quick bread - bread which is leavened with ingredients other than eggs or yeast, such as baking powder, which can result in a bread that is moist and more like a cake than a bread. Some recipes do resemble traditional breads more, and use yeast.

Banana bread is made using bananas that are very ripe; if fact, too ripe for normal usage, which makes it a good way of using them up rather than throwing them away.

Other ingredients can be added to the bread, such as raisins, nuts and chocolate chips.

National Grapefruit Month

National Grapefruit Month is in February in the United States.

The grapefruit is not, as the name suggests, related to the grape, but actually to the orange and another citrus, the pomelo. They originated in Barbados in the 18th century, and are a hybrid plant. It is believed  that they are a naturally occurring hybrid, rather than one that has been bred, but this is not known for definite.

Grapefruit do resemble an orange, being comprised of lots of individual segments within a thick rind. The taste of the grapefruit itself is acidic, and is often quite sour. Sweeter varieties are also available, in particular the reds and pinks. Normal varieties are usually the whites.

Grapefruit is a popular breakfast fruit, where the fruit is cut in half and the segments are cut out, although it is usually sweetened when eaten like this. There are special grapefruit spoons for eating it in this manner.

Like most fruit, grapefruit is a good source of many nutrients and beneficial supplements. The juice does have some negative reactions with various drugs, though, inhibiting them.

National Sticky Bun Day

National Sticky Bun Day is on February 21st in the United States.

What is a sticky bun? Well, the term can refer to a whole range of different sweet rolls that bear some similarities. These are often dessert or breakfast rolls, or pastries.

The sticky bun is not that recent an invention; they date back to the Middle ages, and were common in Germany. One reason they are not even older is due to one ingredient commonly used - the spice, cinnamon, which used to be rather rarer and more expensive.

The dough of a sticky bun, which may contain the aforementioned cinnamon, or perhaps brown sugar, is pressed into a baking pan. The pan is first lined with the "sticky" ingredients, such as honey and maple syrup, as well as perhaps nuts, sugar and butter. The lining then coats the surface of the buns, making them sticky.

In theory, the resulting cooked pastry would be torn apart into separate pieces. This isn't always as easy as it sounds, especially with homemade sticky buns.

National Cherry Pie Day

February 20th is National Cherry Pie Day in the United States.

It might not be quite as American as apple pie (as the saying goes, even thought the dish pre-dates the US), but cherry pie is still a favourite dish and also a traditional American dessert.

This is a pie made with a cherry filling. There are two main types of cherries, tart and sweet, and tart cherries are traditionally used in cherry pie, which give a tarter taste to the finished pie, and how sweet it is is easier to control.

This is a traditional dish in North America, both the US and Canada, as well as Germany and Austria. This is a rather odd time of year to celebrate it, though; it's traditionally eaten at the height of the cherry season, which is July, not February. It can of course be refrigerated now, but it would have been expected that the day would fall in summer, not in winter.

Cherry pie is usually served with cream, whipped or pouring, or ice cream.

National Chocolate Mint Day

National Chocolate Mint Day is on February 19th in the United States.

Chocolate mint, or mint chocolate, refers to a wide range of different chocolate confections, from candies to drinks.

There are a variety of different mint flavours that are used in chocolate mints, such as spearmint, peppermint and crème de menthe. For the candies, these can be hard or soft. They may have a hard interior made from mint, such as with the Peppermint Pattie, or a soft one, such as in the After Eight. The mint may be, as in these two examples, a soft or hard centre or, alternatively, it can also be used to infuse the chocolate itself, or embedded in pieces throughout it.

Dark (or bittersweet) chocolate is the type of chocolate most commonly used for chocolate mints, but both milk and white chocolate are used too. With a wide range of flavours, chocolate types and manufacturing methods, there are truly many different possible flavour variations on chocolate mints themselves, without even considering such things as drinks and cookies.

National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day

National Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day is on February 18th in the US.

Now this is one of the extremely specific celebrations. Not just crab. Not just flounder. But crab-stuffed flounder.

Flounders are a group of flatfish which lay on the bottom of the sea waiting for their prey. Flatfish, as the name suggests, are flat, and camouflage themselves on the bottom. Interestingly, their eyes migrate as they become an adult because of this.

Crabmeat is harvested from the inside of the exoskeletal crabs. This meat can then be taken and stuffed into other foods, in this case flounder.

This isn't going to be the easiest dish to make, as you're going to need a source of fresh crab - not too difficult - and flounder. The latter can be harder to obtain.

National Cafe au Lait Day

National Cafe au Lait Day is on February 17th in the United States.

Café au lait is French for coffee with milk, and does sound rather like white coffee, which is simply coffee with added milk (or other whiteners, such as creamer). So what's the difference between the two then?

In café au lait, the milk is warm for one thing, which sounds not dissimilar to a latte, but again, that's a different drink. In normal white coffee, the milk is cold. In America, café au lait refers to a specific way of serving coffee.

In the US, café au lait uses French pressed or drip coffee as a base, rather than the espresso used in lattes, although in other countries, espresso is the drink used. The milk is warmed, rather than steamed, as it is in lattes.

So a café au lait uses warmed, but not steamed, milk, rather than cold.

National Almond Day

National Almond Day is on February 16th in the United States.

Almonds come from the almond tree. The fruit of the tree has a hard shell, inside which is the seed. This seed is the almond, as almonds are not a botanical nut but rather a culinary one.

Almond tree are native to a region stretching from the Middle East to India. Since then, it has been spread to Africa, Europe and the Americas, with the US now being the largest producer of almonds, notably in California.

Almonds can be eaten raw and toasted, but they are also a popular ingredient in a wide variety of dishes, both sweet and savoury. Almond milk is an increasingly popular non-dairy milk substitute. Almond flour is another derivative of almonds, resulting in a gluten-free flour that can be used in baking.

Like many foods classed as nuts, both culinary and botanical, almonds are nutritionally rich with a range of different nutrients and minerals in them.

National Gumdrop Day

National Gumdrop Day is on February 15th in the United States.

Gumdrops are a type of colourful sweet (candy). They are made from gelatine or pectin and tend to come in bright colours. Individually quite small, they are shaped like a truncated cone and are covered in sugar. They taste of different fruits, with the colour of the gumdrop intending to represent the flavour.

With their small size and bright colours, as well as being eaten like any other candy, gumdrops are also popularly used in baking and other related crafts to decorate other foods.

As well as the fruit flavoured gumdrops, there are also spice drops. These look the same as gumdrops, but they are instead flavoured with spices rather than fruit, which tend to have sharper flavours.

National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day

February 14th is National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day in the United States.

February 14th is also St Valentine's Day, so it's only appropriate that today be a day that celebrates a type of chocolate.

The rather vague name of cream-filled chocolate covers a wide variety of, usually fairly similar, individual chocolates that can be found in assortment boxes of the type that are common today.

These are an inner cream centre with an outer chocolate covering. The chocolate can be of any type - milk, bittersweet or white - and so can the centre. The cream, or fondant, filling can be flavoured in many different ways. Fruit flavourings, such as orange and strawberry, are popular, but there are other types.

It can also be taken rather more literally, as a chocolate filled with cream, but this is much rarer, and would be more fragile and much quicker to go off, the type of chocolate that would need eating fresh or keeping refrigerated.

National Tortellini Day

National Tortellini Day is on February 13th in the United States.

Another national day celebrating another type of pasta. This dish, like most pasta dishes, comes from Italy, believed to be the old region of Emilia in northern Italy, which is part of today's Emilia-Romagna.

Rather than a flat or noodle pasta of some type, tortellini are instead ring-shaped stuffed pasta. A similar type of pasta is tortelloni, which is identical but for size.

The pasta can be stuffed with many things. Meat is popular, as is cheese, but there are also vegetarian variants of it. Really, there is no limit to what you can use to stuff the pasta with, as long as it will cook that way. Tortellini is often served in a broth, typically beef or chicken, rather than being served with a pasta sauce, but there's no reason why a sauce couldn't be used instead.

National Plum Pudding Day

National Plum Pudding Day is on February 12th in the United States.

For anyone British, this is a rather unusual day to be celebrating the plum pudding, also known as the Christmas pudding, for the dessert is traditionally served on Christmas Day, not partway through February.

The pudding is a boiled pudding containing dried fruit. It is made from dried fruits, egg, suet and various spices, and typically has a high percentage of alcohol. Plum puddings are usually made well in advance of use, at least a month, and they can keep for a long time due to the alcohol acting as a preservative.

There are different recipes for plum pudding but there is one thing they have in common - the recipe does not use plums! This was due to the Victorians calling raisins "plums." The dish dates back to the 17th century at least, and the ingredients that made it up, in particular the spices, would then have been very expensive, thus Christmas would have been the time to have such an extravagant dessert.

Once cooked, there are different ways of serving the pudding. Some traditional ways are flambé, where brandy is poured over the pudding and ignited, or with cream or brandy butter. These all tended to be expensive ways of serving.

National Peppermint Pattie Day

National Peppermint Pattie Day is on February 11th in the United States.

This is a day celebrating a chocolate mint confection that is branded, rather than a generic one. The full name is properly the York Peppermint Pattie, named after York, Pennsylvania and manufactured by the York Cone Company.

Although this particular candy is a trademarked variety, the general concept itself, which is simply covering a peppermint interior with chocolate, is common and pre-dates it. What makes the York Peppermint Pattie different is that prior versions all had a soft interior, and the York variety was instead hard. The patties could be snapped. This was, in fact, the final test for the patties after manufacture, whether they could be snapped or not. If they couldn't, that pattie (or rather the batch) was a second.

As with many mint and chocolate candies, the chocolate exterior of the original York Peppermint Pattie is made from bittersweet, aka dark, chocolate, rather than milk or white.

National Cream Cheese Brownie Day

February 10th is National Cream Cheese Brownie Day in the United States.

This is another variation of the popular dessert, the chocolate brownie, which is a cross between a cake and a cookie. As well as the traditional ingredients that can be found in the normal chocolate brownie, such as chocolate or cocoa powder, flour, butter, eggs and sugar, there is also the addition of cream cheese.

Cream cheese is a type of cheese that is soft and mild and often high in fat content. Although the definition of cream cheese can vary, in the US it has to have at least 33% milk fat. Other countries may require an even higher fat content.

Although a cheese, cream cheese is adaptable and can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes. In cream cheese brownies it is often used to top the brownies to create, in combination with the chocolate, a marbled finish.

National Bagels & Lox Day

National Bagels & Lox Day is on February 9th in the United States.

The bagels part of this popular brunch dish is self-explanatory - it's a bagel, a bread product that originated in Poland but is now strongly associated with New York, traditionally formed in a ring which is boiled in water before being baked. The bagel is often sliced in half and lightly toasted.

The lox part of the dish is not as easy to understand, as it derives from the Yiddish word for salmon. The salmon in this case is a brined salmon fillet (brining is also fairly self-explanatory; the food in question is steeped in brine). The lox would then be sliced thinly.

The lox would usually be accompanied on the bagel with cream cheese. Other ingredients may also be used as a garnish, such as tomato and sliced red onion. The bagel would normally be served open, but can be served closed like a more traditional sandwich.

National Molasses Bar Day

National Molasses Bar Day is on February 8th in the United States.

Molasses bars can be types of cakes or cookies, depending on what ingredients are used. The primary ingredient in the all is the one that they are named after - molasses. The end result tends to be a chewy biscuit or cake.

Molasses, which is known as treacle in Britain (the black type, not to be confused with such as Golden Syrup), is a black, thick by-product from sugar beet and cane when they are refined into sugar. Although both sugar cane and sugar beet can be used to make molasses, the end products are not the same.

Molasses, as used in molasses bars, would normally be cane molasses. One variation of cane molasses is thrice-boiled resulting in what is called blackstrap molasses, which has much of the sugar content removed, and is used as a health supplement. Molasses used in cooking would not normally have gone this far.

National Fettuccine Alfredo Day

National Fettuccine Alfredo Day is on February 7th in the United States.

Fettuccine is a type of pasta whose name means little ribbons, for that's what it is - flat ribbons of pasta.

Fettuccine Alfredo is a dish based around this pasta. Fettuccine Alfredo is really a very simple dish to make. The pasta is cooked and then tossed with Parmesan (also known as Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and butter. The cheese is melted and and emulsified by the pasta.

This dish is named after, and by, Alfredo di Lelio in the early 20th century, although versions of the dish date back to the 15th century.

There are variations on this simple dish, especially in America. Ingredients may be substituted and the cheese may be thickened. Other ingredients may be added, to make it more of a single dish, rather than a side, such as chicken, shrimp and broccoli. Cream and egg can be added to make it richer.

National Frozen Yogurt Day

National Frozen Yogurt Day is on February 6th in the United States.

Frozen yogurt, or yoghurt, is what it sounds like. It's a dessert made from yoghurt that has been frozen.

Frozen yoghurt is similar to ice cream, and the technology that was used to make ice cream was, in the 70s, tried on normal yoghurt. This was not an instant hit, as the taste was not that popular with consumers, as it is more tart than ice cream. The tartness can range from slightly to much more. Recently, it has become much more popular. Frozen yoghurt is lower in fat than ice cream, and therefore not as unhealthy. Powder mixes are available, making it easier to make frozen yoghurt at home. The tart flavour has become much more accepted by consumers, and is sometimes even a selling point.

Flavourings and other ingredients are added to the yogurt, just like they are to ice cream, and it is used in much the same way.

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Chocolate Fondue Day is on February 5th in the United States.

Fondue is originally an Italian, Swiss and French dish in which melted cheese is served in a pot. The cheese, which normally has other ingredients added to it, is then kept warm by a small burner underneath. Diners, using long forks, dip items, such as bread, but meat and vegetables are also used, into the cheese which have been cut up into bite size pieces.

A chocolate fondue is very similar, only instead of melted cheese, melted chocolate is used instead. Again, the chocolate has items dipped into it using long handled forks, but in the case of a chocolate fondue, these are things such as fruit, pastry or marshmallows.

One modern variant on the chocolate fondue is the chocolate fountain, in which the chocolate falls down stepped tiers in the manner of a waterfall into a basin at the bottom where the chocolate is kept warm.

National Homemade Soup Day

National Homemade Soup Day is on February 4th in the United States.

Soup is a popular warming dish in the middle of winter, so this is an appropriate time to have a day celebrating soup. Whilst most soup may be purchased pre-made these days, before the advent of canning it was much more common to make your own. It is still not too difficult to make your own soup, even if it is a bit more complex than simply opening a can - or, for fresher soups, a refrigerated cardboard container - and heating it up.

Homemade soup, like all soup, can vary tremendously, from the very simple to the very complex, from a clear, thin soup to one so packed with ingredients that it's essentially a stew. It all depends on how far you want to go. Ingredients used, such as vegetables, can be left in chunks or blended to make a thicker, opaque soup.

There is one easy way of making homemade soup. It is possible to buy appliances that do it all. Add the ingredients to the machine which then blends them and, in a manner that reduces the amount of cleaning, also cooks the soup afterwards. You can't get much easier than that when it comes to making your own soup.

National Stuffed Mushroom Day

February 4th is National Stuffed Mushroom Day in the United States.

Whilst stuffed mushrooms can be a tasty dish, you really need the right type of mushroom in order to successfully make it. Some types of mushrooms, such as small, button mushrooms, closed cap mushrooms or some of the more exotic types such as enokitake, a mushroom popular in Asia, are not really suitable for stuffing.

The type of mushroom that works best is one that is reasonably large and reasonably flat. The centre stalk of such a mushroom can be removed, leaving more room (the stalk can then be used in the recipe, if desired) which can then be filled. Once the mushroom has been filled, it can then be topped, and cooked, usually either by grilling or by baking in an oven.

Cheese and breadcrumbs are two popular topping types for adding on top of whatever fills the mushroom. Cheese, in particular soft, or cream, cheese, is also popular for using in the filling itself.

This is not to say that mushrooms other than flat ones cannot be stuffed, but the method is a bit different, and technically isn't really stuffing. The mushroom in question would have the, again, often cheese-based, filling added around it, and then the whole would be encased in breadcrumbs and deep fried.

The larger type of stuffed mushroom would be most likely used as a vegetable accompaniment to a main meal, whilst the smaller type would often be served as a starter, perhaps with a dip.

National Cherry Month

National Cherry Month is February in the United States.

Cherries are the fruit of many different trees, which are stone fruits, or drupes, that have a fleshy exterior and a stone inside. Although there are many different types of cherry, many of which may bear fruit, those that are actually eaten come from a fairly limited number of species, which usually are cultivars of the sweet cherry, although the sour cherry, which is used in cooking, provides a number of cultivars.

Cherries grow throughout Europe, northern Africa and western Asia. The fruit itself has been consumed since prehistoric times, although these would have been from wild trees rather than cultivated ones. The name comes from the Greek name of a town in what is now northern Turkey where the first cultivated cherries may have come from. Today, Turkey is still the largest producer of both sweet and sour cherries.

Cherries can be eaten raw and are also used in cooking and as a flavouring. The cherry itself does not contain much in the way of nutrients.

National Carrot Cake Day

February 2nd is National Carrot Cake Day in the United States.

Given that carrots are a vegetable - and not one that is merely treated like a vegetable, but one that actually is - rather than a fruit, they may seem an odd choice to make a cake from, and one that is a sweet dessert cake.

Carrot cakes are made from mixing carrot in with a batter which results in a cake rather like a quick bread. The baking process softens the carrot and the resulting cake is moist and will keep longer than most. The cake itself is usually glazed or topped with something, rather than plain. Other ingredients may be added to the cake too.

The reason for using carrots is sugar. The portion of the carrot eaten, the orange taproot, stores a lot of sugar. In fact, carrots have one of the highest percentages of sugar of any vegetable. Sugar beet has more, and that vegetable is grown for its sugar content. Consequently, carrots are very sweet and the sugar is what makes them a suitable ingredient in a sweet cake.

National Baked Alaska Day

National Baked Alaska Day is on February 1st in the United States.

Baked Alaska may not be from Alaska, but this dessert is named in honour of that state, although back when it was first named, Alaska wasn't a state, nor even a territory, but was first administered by the military. The state-to-be had recently been purchased (in 1867) for $6.2 million from the Russian Empire. The dish was named by Charles Ranhofer, the chef-de-cusine at the famous Delmonico's Restaurant in New York.

The dessert is made from ice cream, cake and meringue. A pie dish is lined with slices of cake, with sponge and Christmas pudding being two of the most popular. Inside this is placed the ice cream. The dish is then topped with meringue and placed, very briefly, in an extremely hot oven until the meringue is browned. The ice cream should still be frozen if this is done correctly, due to the brief cooking time and the insulating effects of the meringue.