National String Cheese Day

National String Cheese Day (sometimes called National Cheese String Day) is celebrated on September 20th in the United States.

String cheese is a type of cheese where the manufacturing process causes the cheese to become stringy. Mozzarella cheese commonly becomes stringy when heated. In the United States, string cheese is used to refer to cylindrical pieces of cheese, called "cheese sticks," usually either mozzarella or a combination of that cheese and cheddar. String cheese can be eaten by pulling "strings" of the cheese off the cylinder, and it is commonly eaten as a snack food.

This day was apparently founded by Galbani Cheese back in 2017.

Image: Chris Hsia from United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

National Ice Cream Cake Day

National Ice Cream Cake Day is on June 27th in the United States.

An ice cream cake is pretty much what it sounds like; a cake made with ice cream. However, there are different types of ice cream cake. The most common variant sees the cake part baked as normal, cut to shape if needed, then frozen. The ice cream used is shaped if needed, and everything is assembled whilst frozen. Whipped cream is often used as a frosting; for one thing, other frostings will not stick successfully to the frozen parts.

The first ice cream cakes were made from biscuits and cream and in the Victorian era - the earliest recipes for ice cream cakes date back to the 1870s - bombes were made of ice cream and fruit in decorative moulds. These were sometimes lined with cake and biscuits. Today, the ice cream cake is a popular Fourth of July dessert in the US, and is often garnished with whipped cream, red berries and blueberries.

 Image: Debs (ò‿ó)♪, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

National Moonshine Day

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

Moonshine is an alcoholic drink, usually a high proof distilled spirit, associated with the illegal production of alcohol, and with good reason. Moonshine was intended to be produced illicitly, without government authorisation, and therefore without paying tax on it. In most countries, it is still illegal to distil spirits in such a fashion, and moonshine made this way also tends to lack government interference from a safety point of view.

In modern times, though moonshine may, and is, still distilled illegally, there ae commercial products that are fully legal that are being sold as moonshine. Given that this is done legally, with all licenses and duties paid, it's technically not moonshine.

Image: Jane023, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

New Beer's Eve

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New Beer's Eve is on April 6th in the United States.

The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed on January 16th, 1919. One year later, on January 17th, 2920, Prohibition went into force in the United States as the Volstead Act went into effect, which prohibited the production, sale and transport of "intoxicating liquors."

On December 5th, 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, making it once again federally legal to, for all intents and purposes, make, sell and drink alcoholic beverages, including beer, though some states remained dry.

The Twenty-first Amendment went into effect on April 7th. New Beer's Eve falls on April 6th, celebrating that.

National Strawberry Day

February 27th is National Strawberry Day in the United States.

The strawberry is yet another food that has a name that is not actually accurate. Rather like how few things called nut, especially those with nut in the name, are actually nuts in the botanical sense, many fruits with berry in the name are not actually berries in the botanical sense. The strawberry is an aggregate accessory fruit - which were once called by names such as false fruit or spurious fruit.

Strawberries are a comparatively modern fruit, in domesticated terms, with domestication only beginning with the growth of the first garden strawberry being in Brittany in France in the late 18th century. The fruit was mentioned in Roman literature in regards to its medicinal use, which is, even at around a couple of thousand years old, still quite modern compared to many fruit species.

Although the strawberry was being raised in gardens, especially in France, prior to the introduction of the garden strawberry, most strawberries were either wild strawberries or cultivated from them.

Strawberries are a very popular fruit, used in many different ways. They can be eaten as-is, but are also used as ingredients in jams and other preserves and pies, as well as many desserts including ice cream. They are popular in combination with dairy products. Strawberries are an excellent source of flavanoids and vitamin C. They are also a comparatively easy plant to grow at home, and can be grown almost anywhere. Today, the United States is the world's largest producer of strawberries.

National Pizza Day

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February 9th is National Pizza Day in the United States.

Pizza is a well-known Italian dish that usually consists of a round, flattened base of leavened wheat-based dough that is topped with a variety of ingredients. A pizza would normally have tomato and cheese as the basic toppings, with many other additional ones possible. However, as pizzas have spread across the world, both the dough and the basic ingredients have started to diverge from the traditional recipes.

The first known reference to a pizza dates from the 10th century in Laizo in Italy. The modern pizza was invented in Naples. Since the popularity of pizzas spread, it is now a common fast food and takeaway dish in many other countries, as well as being available from supermarkets, both fresh and frozen, and being a common restaurant food, though some of what is sold as pizza would probably be unrecognisable as such to someone only accustomed to the traditional Italian dish.

National Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

National Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day is on February 1st in the United States.

This is one of the more unusual holidays around, as February is not known to be a warm month of the year in many countries, and certainly not in the region where it was founded. Florence Rappaport of Rochester, New York, invented the day back in 1966. Rochester is a cold place in February, and she apparently decided to serve her children ice cream for breakfast to distract them from the snow and ice outside. Since then, the holiday has spread around the world.

Ice cream itself is a frozen food typically eaten as a snack or for dessert. It is flavoured, with a wide range of different things, some of them distinctly odd, and usually sweetened.

Image: Nicolas Ettlin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons