National Papaya Month

June is National Papaya Month in the United States.

Papaya is a fruit that comes from the papaya, which is also known as the pawpaw, tree. When ripe, papaya are a large, soft and orange fruit that is filled with small seeds. Papaya is considered to be a tropical fruit, and is currently the third most popular fruit of this type, after mango and pineapple.

like many types of fruit, papaya can be eaten in different ways and has a number of different culinary uses. As is common with fruit, the papaya can be eaten raw, but it is also popular as a dried fruit. It is also used in recipes as a meat tenderiser.

It can also be used unripe, and in such cases is often used in stews, salads and curries.

The fruit is also used in traditional medicine and is a good source of various different nutrients.

National Almond Butter Crunch Day

June 29th is National Almond Butter Crunch Day in the United States.

This is a type of candy (or sweet) in which almonds, not surprisingly, play an important role in the recipe. In general, it is very similar to the related candy, peanut butter crunch.

The almonds can be used along with butter to make this candy or, if you want to cut a stage out, almond butter can be purchased, which is very similar to peanut butter.

The mix for this recipe is quite simple. Along with the almonds and butter - or almond butter - the other ingredients are chocolate chips and brown sugar. Rather than making individual pieces of the candy, a sheet of it would be poured out and left to harden, after which it would then be broken into smaller pieces.

National Tapioca Day

National Tapioca Day is on June 28th in the United States.

Tapioca is a plant extract. It comes from the cassava plant, which is also known by other names such as yucca, and which originated in the region of present-day Brazil. This is a very old domesticated plant, as it is believed to have been first domesticated over 10,000 years ago. The plant has since been spread across the rest of the world, done by the Europeans after they arrived in the Americas, and is know grown in many different countries.

Tapioca itself is a starch that is extracted from the root of the cassava plant and is used as a thickening agent in many foods. It can also be used as a flour, for making bread, and as an ingredient in other dishes. One of the most well-known tapioca dishes is probably tapioca pudding, which is a sweet dessert pudding made from cream, milk or coconut milk as well as tapioca, and can vary in consistency from thin to thick enough to eat with a fork.

National Orange Blossom Day

June 27th is National Orange Blossom Day in the United States.

This may seem an odd thing to celebrating, as it doesn't seem to be a typical foodstuff. Orange blossom is, as the name suggests, a fragrant flower from the orange tree. The fragrance means that it is used in fragrances, but it is also used in cooking.

Rather than adding the blossom directly, what is normally used in cooking is orange blossom water. This is a delicately flavoured water similar to rosewater, except that it is made from orange petals, rather than those of the rose.

Orange blossom water is commonly used in Middle Eastern and French cooking, primarily in baking and desserts. Two popular recipes using it in the US are marshmallows and scones.

National Chocolate Pudding Day

National Chocolate Pudding Day is on June 26th in the United States.

Chocolate pudding is a name which can be used to refer to a whole range of dessert dishes - all of which contain chocolate as a major ingredient or as a flavour.

In the US, chocolate pudding usually refers to the most popular type there, which is a variety of chocolate custard. This custard uses starch as a thickener, rather than eggs, and the custard is first boiled and then chilled. This chocolate pudding may be eaten as a dessert in itself or, alternatively, may be used as a filling in another dessert. The mixture consists of sugar and milk, starch as a thickener and chocolate and vanilla as flavourings.

In the UK, chocolate pudding is a steamed or baked version, which contains more ingredients than the US variety, and which is at the end rather similar to cake in texture.

National Strawberry Parfait Day

June 25th is National Strawberry Parfait Day in the United States.

This is another day celebrating a type of parfait. In this case, it is probably celebrating the American parfait, not the original French frozen dessert which dates back to the nineteenth century, and definitely not the savoury British meat paste, or pâté.

American parfaits are layered desserts, comprised of layers of parfait cream, ice cream and gelatins, that are served in a tall glass and then topped with whipped cream and fruit. In many respects, it actually resembles a sundae of some type. An alternative version of the American parfait is made using layers of yoghurt, granola, nuts or fresh fruit.

For this particular day being celebrated, whichever version of American parfait is made, the fruit used is, of course, strawberries.

National Pralines Day

National Pralines Day is on June 24th in the United States.

There are different types of pralines; one is a variety of sugar candy, the American type, whist similar, resembles fudge in texture as it also uses milk or cream, there is a type of chocolate cookie, or biscuit and there is also the Belgian praline.

Both types contain nuts; the sugar candy is made using whole or powdered nuts and sugar syrup, whilst the second variety contains either whole or powdered nuts.

Praline is believed to have been created in France in the 17th century and were originally whole almonds that were coated in caramelised sugar. Almonds are not the only nuts used to make pralines, as others, such as pecans, are also used. Praline is used as a filling in many chocolates.

Another variety is Belgian pralines, which are chocolates that are filled with a fondant centre.

National Pecan Sandies Day

June 23rd is National Pecan Sandies Day in the United States.

It's entirely possible, especially if you don't hail from the United States, that you don't know what pecan sandies are, and the name is only half useful. The useful part is the word pecan - pecans are a type of nut from the pecan tree, a type of hickory native to North America, and they are a culinary nut, not a botanical one, as pecans are actually a drupe, with the stone or pit surrounded by a husk.

The "sandies" part of the name is the rather unhelpful part. They are actually a type of cookie (or biscuit) that has pecans - usually chopped - folded into the mix. Other ingredients may be added, as is common in most cookie recipes. The company Keebler makes a branded Pecan Sandie biscuit.

National Chocolate Éclair Day

National Chocolate Éclair Day is on June 22nd in the United States.

Éclairs in general are a, usually oblong, type of pastry that originated in 19th century France and whose name comes from the French word meaning "flash of lighting" because they are eaten so quickly. There are different types of éclairs.

Éclairs are made from choux (pronounced "shoe") pastry, which is a light type of pastry made from eggs, butter, flour and water and which lacks a raising agent. Instead, the water content of the pastry, which is high, is what causes it to rise when cooked.

After éclairs are baked they are then filled with such as whipped cream, chiboust cream or a flavoured crème pâtissière. After this, they are then iced; in the case of the chocolate éclair, the icing is naturally chocolate.

National Peaches and Cream Day

June 21st is National Peaches and Cream Day in the United States.

This is really quite a simple dish, as it requires no cooking and very little in the way of preparation. Peaches, which would usually be fresh, as well as being split open and having the stone removed, would be served in a dish and topped with cream. The cream could be single, double, whipped, pouring or aerosol for example, depending on personal preferences.

Peaches themselves are a fruit that is consumed and produce all over the world, with the People's Republic of China being the largest producer of them, well over the next rival, as more peaches are currently grown in the PRC than the next nine countries combined. They are related to both the cherry and the plum and, although it is usually marketed as a different fruit, the nectarine is of the same species.

National Ice Cream Soda Day

June 20th is National Ice Cream Soda Day in the United States.

Ice cream sodas, which are also known as spiders, snowballs, coke floats and ice cream floats, largely depending on the country, are a drink that, to no great surprise, contains ice cream and a soft drink, the latter being the soda part of the name, or, alternatively, carbonated water and a flavoured syrup.

Supposedly invented in the late 19th century in Philadelphia by Robert McCay Green, after he ran out of ice to cool his drinks and instead started adding ice cream to them.

Ice cream sodas come in many different varieties, some more well known than others, and they are apparently responsible for the creation of the ice cream sundae, after the drink was banned on religious days.

National Candy Month

June is National Candy Month in the United States.

This is probably one of the most unhealthy, yet sweet, months around. Candies, which are also called sweets, are a type of confectionery that typically is made using large amounts of sugar, hence the unhealthy bit. There are sugar free types of candy around, made for diabetics, but the range of sugar free candy pales in comparison to that of regular types.

The original candies used honey as a sweetener, as this was prior to the discover of sugar. Honey candies have been discovered dating back thousands of years and were made by many ancient civilisations. Originally, these candies were generally just things that were coated in honey, such as fruit and flowers, but also including things like insects. Candies were also often prescribed to help with stomach problems, but started to spread to other uses as they became cheaper to make.

Every culture and country around the world has their own candies, and they come in a wide variety of different sizes, shapes and flavours. They may be individually wrapped, but this is not a requirement.

National Cherry Tart Day

June 18th is National Cherry Tart Day in the United States.

A dessert dish that is similar to the pie, so what is the difference between a pie and a tart? Tarts and pies both have pastry bases, but tarts have an open top which isn't covered in pastry, even a lattice. Another, related dish is the flan, and quite often all three terms - tart, pie and flan - will be used interchangeably, even though a pie without a pastry top should properly be known as a tart.

Tarts can be sweet or savoury. This one, naturally, is a sweet dish, with it containing cherries. There are different types of cherries, and some types are much more suitable to be used as a filling in baking than other are.

National Apple Strudel Day

June 17th is National Apple Strudel Day in the United States.

Strudels first became popular in the 18th century Hapsburg empire and spread through the various countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They are a type of layered pastry, and are traditional in all the countries of the former empire, and are similar to dishes such as baklava.

Apple strudels, or apfelstrudel as they are known, are probably one of the most well known types of strudel and date back to the very late 17th century (the first known recipe dates to 1796), or even earlier. An oblong pastry jacket which is made from unleavened dough, which consists of flour, oil or butter, and salt, contains the apple filling.

This apple filling is normally made from cooking apples (which are different to eating apples, and aren't nice to eat uncooked), which are grated, along with raisins, bread crumbs, cinnamon and sugar.

National Fudge Day

June 16th is National Fudge Day in the United States.

Fudge, at its most simplest, contains only a handful of ingredients, although this doesn't necessarily make it easy to cook. It is a type of confectionery that is usually soft and sweet once cooked. The base ingredients for making fudge are milk, butter and sugar. The sugar is heated to what is called the soft-ball stage, or 240 °F (116 °C). It is heating the sugar correctly that can be the most difficult part of making this dish.

As well as the base ingredients, other things can also be added to the mixture, usually after heating the sugar but before allowing the mix to set. Flavourings are often added, and sometimes appropriate colourings to go with them. Chopped nuts and dried fruit are also commonly added. Chocolate is popular too, both in the mix and to coat the cooked fudge.

With the limited number of base ingredients, fudge is not too difficult to cook at home although, as mentioned, heating the sugar correctly can be tricky, so a sugar thermometer is recommended to help with this.

National Lobster Day

National Lobster Day is on June 15th in the United States.

Lobsters are large, clawed marine crustaceans. In its most general usage, the name lobster also includes other crustaceans, such as scampi, its culinary use is much more specific. When it comes to culinary lobsters, the term just refers to the clawed lobster, so ordering lobster in a restaurant won't get you a plate of scampi.

Lobsters are one of the more expensive types of seafood around and are therefore a valuable marine crop, although originally lobster was considered a food of last resort, or for lower classes, not a luxury food. The traditional method of cooking lobster is involves boiling or steaming them alive. There are other methods of cooking them, though, and the prior two are actually illegal in some places.

There are various different ways of cooking lobster, with the simplest being to cook the lobster and eat it from its shell.

National Strawberry Shortcake Day

June 14th is National Strawberry Shortcake Day in the United States.

Another day celebrating something that is just what it sounds like - a shortcake made with strawberries.

Shortcakes are a type of cake or, in the American usage, biscuit, which are crumbly breads that have been leavened with baking powder or baking soda. They are primarily made from sugar, flour, butter, milk or cream, salt, the baking powder or soda and, sometimes, eggs.

In this version of the shortcake, sliced strawberries are mixed with sugar and left to sit. They are then placed between two layers of shortcake, along with whipped cream, and more whipped cream and strawberries are added to the top of the cake.

Other variations of the strawberry shortcake do not actually use shortcake, but sponge cake instead. The original, American recipes used pie crust instead of sponge cake or shortcake.

National Kitchen Klutzes

June 13th is National Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.

Rather than a day celebrating food and cooking, this is one that celebrates those that can't cook. Klutz is usually used to describe a clumsy person but is here being used to describe anyone who has had problems cooking, especially those that are repeated sufferers of kitchen disasters.

Just there are many ways of cooking, there are therefore many ways in which problems can arise. From undercooking food to burning it to simply dropping it on the floor, even the most experienced and skilled cook can have things not go to plan. This doesn't have to be something major; it can be something fairly minor that means the dish is ruined, or at least doesn't turn out the way it was intended to do.

National Peanut Butter Cookie Day

National Peanut Butter Cookie Day is June 12th in the United States.

This is yet another day celebrating a type of cookie and yet another day celebrating something made using peanut butter (whose creation is credited to US educator George Washington Carver, who was promoting peanuts as an alternative to cotton as a cash crop and had a recipe for peanut butter cookies using chopped or crushed peanuts) - both types of days are rather popular.

This cookie, just as it sounds like, use peanut butter as the primary additional ingredient in the cookie dough.

Peanut butter cookies are usually made with a criss-cross pattern on the top of them. This pattern is created by pressing a fork into the dough before the cookies are baked. The reason why this is done isn't decorative; it was originally done in order to help the cookies cook evenly, but is now a standard part of making the cookies.

National Corn on the Cob Day

National Corn on the Cob Day is on June 11th in the United States.

Corn on the cob is the freshly picked ear of a type of cereal crop, maize, which has been cultivated in the Americas since Mesoamerican times. The variety used is that which has a high sugar content, and thus is therefore known as sweet corn.

The leaves are stripped from the outside of the corn, and the cob is then cooked. Popular ways of cooking it are by barbecuing, grilling or boiling it, in each case it is cooked until the corn kernels affixed to the cob are tender. The kernels themselves are eaten directly from the corn - special skewers can be purchased that stick into each end of the cob allowing it to be easily eaten - and it is frequently slathered in butter after being cooked and eaten that way.

Herb & Spice Day

Herb & Spice Day is on June 10th in the United States.

Both herbs and spices are plants that are used either as flavourings for food, or as food themselves, although generally only herbs tend to be used in the latter case. They can also be used for medicinal and cosmetic purposes. A herb, in the culinary meaning of the word, is the leafy green part of a plant that is used in cooking.

Spices, which are also plant parts and are also used as flavourings as well as medicinal and cosmetic uses, may seem fairly similar to a herb. The difference is in the part of the plant that is used. Rather than using the green, leafy portion of the plant, spices come from any other part, such as the root, for ginger, the bark, for cinnamon and the seed, for caraway.

Spices have historically been the most expensive and, even today, some are still expensive, in particular saffron and vanilla. During the Middle Ages, black pepper was literally worth its weight in gold.

National Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day

June 9th is National Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day in the United States.

This is another one of the more specific national days, celebrating not just a pie, but a pie that has two specific ingredients - strawberries and rhubarb.

Rhubarb, although it is usually treated as a fruit, is actually a type of vegetable. It grows from rhizomes and has long, thick stalks topped with large leaves. The stalks are the part which is eaten - other parts of the plant are poisonous. Rhubarb stalks are quite firm and need softening in order to be made into a pie, so they would usually be pre-cooked before used to fill the pie shell. Rhubarb is also quite tart to the taste, so this is usually countered with something sweet; in this case, strawberries.

National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

June 8th is National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day in the United States.

This type of food has some different names. Firstly, doughnuts may also be called donuts. Secondly, jelly is also known as jam, depending on the country.

These are not the glazed ring doughnut type, and lack the toroidal "doughnut" shape of that type, but they are still made from deep fried pastry. The inside of the doughnut has been filled with jelly, or jam, which is a preserve made from fruit. Different flavours of fruit filling may be used; two common types in Britain are raspberry and strawberry, but other flavours such as apple can also be found. These doughnuts are often dusted with sugar, but they can be glazed or topped with other confections, just like the ring doughnut.

National Chocolate Ice Cream Day

June 7th is National Chocolate Ice Cream Day in the United States.

Another day which celebrates something that's just what it sounds like. Chocolate ice cream is a self-explanatory name, as it's ice cream that's flavoured with chocolate. Chocolate ice cream is not just one thing, though, as there are many different varieties and variations, just as there are different types of chocolate.

Chocolate ice cream is one of the most popular flavours, and the standard type dates back to 17th century Italy. Cocoa powder is blended with the ice cream, which adds the flavour and gives it its distinctive brown colouration.

Other, often more expensive, varieties of chocolate ice cream can have actual chunks of chocolate added to the mixture, and these can be of different types, such as dark, white and milk.

Other ice creams can be based on or use chocolate ice cream, such as rocky road.

National Doughnut Day

National Doughnut Day is on June 6th in the United States.

Doughnuts, which are also known as donuts, come in a range of different types and shapes. They are a fried dough product which is normally served sweet.

The two most common shapes of doughnut are the ring doughnut, which shape is also known as a doughnut, that is a toroid with a hole in its centre, and which is commonly topped with any number of different glazes and confectionery products, and the filled doughnut. The latter style has no hole, but is instead filled with such as creams, custards and fruit preserves. Filled doughnuts may also be topped with glazes and other items, just like the ring doughnut.

Doughnuts are available in other shapes, and many countries have their own variations. The churro, for example, is a Spanish variety that is a thin, ribbed cylinder, often dusted with cinnamon and served with melted chocolate.

National Gingerbread Day

June 5th is National Gingerbread Day in the United States.

The name gingerbread is a pretty good description of what it actually is. Gingerbread is a bread product that has been flavoured with ginger.

Ginger is a spice and the name refers to the root, or rhizome, of the plant zingiber officinale, which originated in southern China. The spice has since been spread across the rest of the world, and is used in both sweet and savoury dishes. As well as the ginger, gingerbread is normally flavoured with treacle, or molasses, instead of sugar.

Gingerbread comes in a wide range of products, all of which have gingerbread in the name. These range from types of cakes, to items more reminiscent of a biscuit, or cookie.

One common gingerbread item is the gingerbread man, which is a biscuit/cookie that is shaped in a rough semblance of a man, or woman's, figure. The figure is then usually adorned with such as icing and small candies, to add features to it.

National Cheese Day

June 4th is National Cheese Day in the United States.

Derived from milk, cheese is an incredibly versatile and diverse form of food that is found all over the world. There are many hundreds, if not thousands, of different cheese types available, with variations constantly being created. Different cheeses can have different textures, range from soft and spreadable to quite hard, and have different tastes. Other ingredients can also be added to cheese, such as fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices and other, more unusual items, such as alcohol, flowers and toffee.

Mould is also commonly added to cheese, creating cheeses such as the distinctive, and quite often strongly flavoured, blues. Cow's milk is most commonly used when making cheese, but goat, sheep and buffalo are also used. Different cheeses can be used in sweet and savoury dishes - soft cheeses are quite commonly used in sweet items, such as cheesecake, but they can still be used in savoury ones too. Cheese making dates back to at least 8,000 BC, but it is not known where it originally came from.

National Egg Day

National Egg Day is on June 3rd in the United States.

Eggs are a very versatile food, and there are both many different types of eggs and many different ways of cooking them. One of the simplest ways of cooking an egg is the boiled egg, whether this is soft boiled with a runny yolk (popular with bread, or toast, "soldiers") or the hardboiled egg with a hard yolk. As well as being cooked by themselves - with other methods including fried, scrambled and poached - eggs, or their separate parts, yolks and whites, are also used as ingredients in many more complicated dishes.

Eggs can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. They are, particularly the whites, an important ingredient in many sweet dessert dishes, such as cakes.

Chicken eggs, which are probably the most common type of egg around, have different colours to their shells, such as white and brown. The shell colour only means that the egg is from a different breed of hen.

Today, free range eggs are often more popular than battery farmed eggs.

National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day

June 2nd is National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day in the United States.

The term rocky road is used for a lot of different dishes that all have the same name. Most of these dishes contain similar ingredients, and they may well derive from the rocky road dessert which dates back to the 19th century.

This particular rocky road variant is, of course, ice cream. William Dreyer claimed to have invented the ice cream in 1929 California, when he chopped up walnuts and marshmallows and added them to chocolate ice cream.

Those three ingredients - ice cream, nuts and marshmallows - are the traditional ingredients for the ice cream, but there are, naturally, different variations of the dish that use other ingredients, either instead of or in addition to.

National Hazelnut Cake Day

National Hazelnut Cake Day is on June 1st in the United States.

Another one of the more specific days, this one is celebrating just what it sounds like - hazelnut cake, or a cake made with hazelnuts.

Cakes can be made into hazelnut cakes by simply adding hazelnuts to the recipe. These would usually be chopped, but alternatively hazelnut flavouring or paste (paste is commonly used in confectionery) could be used to simply flavour the cake, perhaps with hazelnut pieces used to decorate it. The precise way in which they are used will differ depending on the recipe, but one thing they will all have in common is that they will have hazelnuts in them somewhere.

Hazelnuts, like so many things with "nut" in the name, are not botanical nuts, but are culinary nuts. They come from the hazel tree and, like so many nuts - whether true or culinary - are a good source of nutrients, and are rich in protein and unsaturated fat.