National Champagne Day

Agne27 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

December 31st, is National Champagne Day in the United States.

As today is also New Year's Eve, and it's traditional to welcome the New Year with a glass of bubbly, this is a pretty logical day to celebrate the drink.

Champagne is a sparkling wine, which uses secondary fermentation to add the distinctive fizz. Not every sparkling wine is champagne though, and in many places it can only refer to the sparkling wines produced in the champagne wine producing region of France, it being a product with a "controlled designation of origin."

Champagne, despite being French, owes a lot of its success to its popularity with the British. The British developed a taste for the bubbly whilst the French still preferred their wines pale and flat. Wines were popular in Britain, and the country had the wealth to buy them, but lacked the ability to produce them.

The bubbles did cause a problem in the early days of champagne production - the bottles simply couldn't withstand the pressure and would explode. Fortunately, that tends not to happen now. Even so, it is wise to be careful when opening a bottle of champagne, as the cork can fly off with a lot of speed.

National Bacon Day

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

National Bacon Day is on December 30th in the United States.

Bacon is a type of pork that has been cured and then cut into slices. There are two primary types of bacon, side, or streaky, bacon and back bacon, which has more meat and less fat.

Bacon is used in many dishes. It is popular in cooked breakfasts, especially such as the Full English and the regional variants, in sandwiches and for wrapping roasts, vegetables and seafood. More recently, it has started turning up in a whole variety of other dishes, from chocolates to ice cream. The full range of bacon-related dishes now available has grown exponentially.

Bacon can also be flavoured. It can be smoked using different woods and other substances, from chilli to sugar to honey to maple syrup can also be used.

There are also a number of bacon variants that do not contain pork. Turkey bacon is one of the more well-known ones, but there are also soya-based bacons suitable for vegetarians.

National Cookie Exchange Day

Gandydancer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

National Cookie Exchange Day is on December 22nd in the United States.

Yes, this is another holiday related to cookies (or biscuits, in other countries). This time, however, it's a holiday celebrating giving them to others, rather than about a specific type of cookie, and the Christmas season is a season of gift giving. Cookies can be given to others, or exchanged with others; perhaps for different cookies, perhaps for something that isn't a cookie at all.

Cookies are frequently bought pre-made, but they are also one of the easiest dishes to bake. The most basic cookies only contain flour, sugar and a fat, but adding extra ingredients makes them more interesting. In some cases, they don't even need baking at all. So, top make that exchanged cookie mean more, why not make it a homemade one as well?

National Kiwifruit Day

December 21st is National Kiwifruit Day in the United States.

Kiwifuit, also known as kiwi fruit, to distinguish them from Kiwis, which are both flightless birds from New Zealand, and New Zealanders themselves (though outside New Zealand they are often simply called kiwis as well), are a type of fruit that are actually native to northern China. Even though they are commonly associated with New Zealand, they were not introduced to that country until 1906. The kiwfruit were first commercially exported from New Zealand though, but China is the largesy producer by far.

Kiwis are about the size of an egg and are covered in brownish, fibrous skin which is removed before consumption. The inside of the fruit has a soft texture and has green or golden flesh with many tiny, edible, black seeds. Kiwi fruit are normally eaten raw.

National Coquito Day

charlene mcbride [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

December 21st is National Coquito Day in the United States.

So, what is a coquito? It's a drink that originated in Puerto Rico and the name is Spanish and means "Little Coconut". It is a drink that is traditionally served at Christmas, and it has a number of similarities to eggnog.

Not surprisingly, for a drink called Little Coconut, it does contain coconut. Coconut cream and coconut milk are combined with sweetened condensed milk and rum; Puerto Rican rum is naturally in the traditional recipe, but other rums could also be used. Spices and seasoning are also added to the drink, with vanilla, cinnamon and cloves being the most common. It is garnished with cinnamon or nutmeg.

One way in which coquito does differ from eggnog is that it is served cold, whilst eggnog is served warm. Considering eggnog originated in countries that are cold at Christmas, and coquito in a place that definitely isn't, this is not surprising.

National Sangria Day

Evan Swigart from Chicago, USA [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

December 20th is National Sangria Day in the United States.

Sangria, which derives from the Spanish "sangre" meaning blood due to its' dark red colour, is a traditional summertime drink popular in Spain and Portugal that has also become popular in the UK and US. Given that it's a popular summer drink, celebrating it in the middle of winter seems a trifle odd. The earliest forms of the drink were popular in Spain, as well as in Greece and, rather more oddly, England.

The drink is a type of punch. Although sangria is normally alcoholic, non-alcoholic versions can also be made. The majority of the drink consists of red wine to which chopped fruit including lemons, limes, apples, oranges, peaches and melon to name a few, are added. A sweetener and a small amount of brandy are also added, although soft drinks such as Sprite or Seven Up can replace the brandy.

When made with white wine it is known as sangria blanca, or white sangria. In Europe, only if the drink is made in Spain or Portugal can simply be called Sangria; those from other countries must be labelled as being from that country, such as French sangria.

National Ice Cream Day

December 13th is National Ice Cream Day in the United States.

Given that ice cream is a cold dessert, having a day celebrating a food often associated with warm summer days in the middle of one of the coldest months of the year may seem a trifle odd. Still, ice cream desserts are popular all year round, even if ice cream cones may be rather less common in December.

Ice cream is, usually, made from milk or cream that is flavoured, sweetened and then frozen. Different flavours of ice cream - and there are many, many flavours, from the plain to the bizarre - come in different colours, the colours often associated with the flavour. Ice cream can mean different things to different people, even though such as frozen yoghurt is considered to be a separate food. Ice cream can be eaten on its own, but is also used in a wide range of other dishes, from drinks to sundaes to milkshakes to cakes to hot dishes, such as Baked Alaska.

Image: Lotus Head from Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

National Gingerbread House Day

Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

December 12th is National Gingerbread House Day in the United States.

What is a gingerbread house? Well, it's a house made of gingerbread. Essentially, a gingerbread house is a rather individual form of cookie. It's made from cookie dough that is cut into the appropriate shapes - walls, roofs etc. - then baked and assembled. The most common type of material used is a crisp ginger biscuit made from gingerbread, but they can also be built from dough that is moulded into shape then baked.

Gingerbread, and gingerbread houses, are both associated with Christmas, so December is a logical time of year to celebrate them. Once the house is assembled (melted sugar tends to be used as "mortar", as does royal icing), it is decorated with such as icing to represent snow. Candies can be used to further decorate the house, or even make parts such as the roof. Gingerbread houses can range from a simple gingerbread cabin to a full-blown mansion, and just about any type of building has been made into a gingerbread house at some point. Even entire villages have been made this way.

National Lager Day

December 10th is National Lager Day in the United States.

Lager, which is the German word of storage, is a type of beer. The name originates from the practice of storing, or "lagering," beers in caves to keep them cold. As refrigeration methods improved, so did the popularity of lager.

Lagers are available as pale lagers, or dark. Pale lagers are the most widely consumed and available beers worldwide. These are golden coloured drinks at the high end of the alcohol scale for beers that were developed in the 19th century.

Dark lagers which, as their name implies, are darker than pale lagers and range from amber to a dark reddish brown, were more common prior to the emergence of pale lagers, as until that point lagers were predominately dark.

Lagers do not have to be just drink either. There are uses for them in cooking too - although some lagers do not react well to heating.