National Stuffing Day

Brian Teutsch [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

National Stuffing Day is on November 21st in the United States.

Stuffing is commonly served with roasts, particularly types of poultry, such as roast chicken. It may either be cooked inside the roast, in an existing cavity or perhaps in a manufactured one, if the roast in question is made from a cut of meat that has had a pouch made in it, or in a separate dish. Even though roast poultry may be the most common dish to use stuffing these days, fish and other meat may use it as well. During holiday seasons, turkey and goose are the most common roasts to use stuffing, although at other times it is part of the traditional British Sunday lunch. When the stuffing is inside the roast in an existing cavity, that roast may take longer to cook and may end up being overcooked or not cooked enough. It is therefore a good idea to cook stuffing outside of a roast.

Stuffing itself normally consists of some sort of bread mixture, with that used for poultry consisting of breadcrumbs along with salt, pepper, onion, celery and sage. Other ingredients may also be used, with chestnuts being a common one in the UK, especially at Christmas. Typically, different types of stuffing will be used for different foods.

Banana Pudding Lovers Month

home made banana pudding. Photo courtesy of Stu Spivack

Banana Pudding Lovers Month is in November in the United States.

This is a commercially created holiday created by, perhaps naturally, a pudding company. Namely, Rodgers' Pudding Company.

This is a dessert pudding that, of course, uses bananas in it. In its most common variant, it rather resembles an English trifle and is a dish associated with Southern cuisine in the U.S.

To make the pudding, cookies, particularly vanilla wafers or ladyfingers, vanilla flavoured custard and sliced fresh bananas are placed in a dish. These are placed in layers, and then more layers of the same are repeated with the dish then topped with either meringue or whipped cream. This would be a refrigerated dessert, but there are also baked variants of the dish.

There are even two banana pudding festivals; the National Banana Pudding Festival in Tennessee and the Georgia State Banana Pudding Festival in Georgia.

National Split Pea Soup Week

The second week of November is National Split Pea Soup Week in the United States.

Split pea soup, which can also be simply called pea soup, is an old dish that dates back over two thousand years, to Greece in 400 BC - or even earlier. The pea had definitely been cultivated between 500-400 BC by both the Greeks and Romans, and vendors on the streets of Athens sold hot pea soup.

Split peas are the seeds of the pea plant which have been dried, peeled and split. Pea soup can also be made from fresh peas as well. Split peas, however, store well, and split pea soup is an effective way of using them. In Britain, pease porridge - pease was the old world for pea - was a staple food for many years.

Garden pea soup, made with fresh peas, does not tend to be as thick as split pea soup is. This can vary, though, and does depend on how the soup is prepared. The colour of the soup can also vary, from greyish-green to yellow. Many old pea soup dishes still exist, in one form or another, around the world.

The American type of split pea soup is, unlike most other soups of the same type, thinner than soup made with fresh peas - whereas in most cases it's the other way around. It also usually contains visible peas, as well as vegetables and pork. Pea soup in the U.S. generally refers to a smooth puree.

International Stout Day

PDPhoto.org [CC0]

November 7th is International Stout Day.

Stouts, today, are dark beers, although the term originally just mean strong beers. Stouts are not porters, another type of dark beer, although they are linked, and several drinks were called "stout porters".

Porters are a drink that originated in London in the early 18th century and, should you be wondering where the name came from, was especially popular with porters. Porters were stronger in flavour, went longer without spoiling and were cheaper.

Porter was then exported to Ireland, with a brewery in Dublin run by Arthur Guinness brewing his own; today, that is perhaps one of the best-known stouts. The beer became black through the use of black patent malt and also gained a stronger flavour. The word "stout" took on the meaning "strong" and was therefore applied to strong beers.

Today, a stout can be recognised by its black colour and, especially in the case of Guinness, its cream-coloured head.

National Fig Week

The first week of November is National Fig Week in the United States.

Figs are the fruit produced by a tree which is known as the Common Fig. This was one of the first plants to be cultivated, rather than simply being harvested as it grew in the wild. Samples of domesticated figs have been found dating back over eleven thousand years, which means that they pre-date the earliest known use of domesticated rye and wheat by one thousand years. The fig has cultural and religious significance in many places and cultures, with fig leaves, for example, being mentioned very early on in Genesis in the Bible.

The earliest trees were native to parts of the Middle East and western Asia, but have since been spread across many other countries, where they are grown both for their fruit and for ornamental purposes. The Middle East, and parts of the Mediterranean coast, are still where the majority of figs are grown today, with currently only two producers in the top ten, the United States and Brazil, not hailing from that region. Turkey is the largest fig producing country.

Figs can, and are, eaten fresh, but they are also fried and used in jams. Ripe figs do not tend to transport or keep well after being picked, so most commercially available figs are in dried or otherwise preserved or processed forms. One common use of processed figs is in the Fig Newton, or the generic fig roll, a cookie (or biscuit) that has a filling made from figs.

National Calzone Day

Deryck Chan [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

November 1st is National Calzone Day in the United States.

Calzones are a type of Italian pizza but, unlike the more common flat pizzas, these are folded and baked in an oven, although in Italy some street venders sell small ones that have been fried.

The ingredients that go into a calzone can vary, just like they can with a regular pizza. Cheese is a typical ingredient, with mozzarella being common but not the only one. Ham, salami and vegetables can also be included, and different varieties can have different ingredients. Plus, making your own choice means that effectively a calzone can be stuffed with the full range of ingredients that can be found in a normal pizza. They are also often topped with such as marinara or other sauce.

With calzones being folded and baked, their taste is different, as the juices can combine inside. In addition, it is not really possible to have a "slice" of calzone as there is nothing to cut into slices. This is the reason for vendors in Italy selling small calzones; these can be eaten whilst standing.