Blue Crab Beignets

Ingredients

18 oz. Phillips lump crab meat
6 eggs
4 Tbsp. creole seasoning
¾ c. green bell, diced
¾ c. green onion, diced
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
3 Tbsp. salt
4 ¾ c. sifted flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 ½ c. milk


Preparation Instructions

1. Whisk the eggs until frothy. 
2. Sprinkle the Creole seasoning on the crab meat and add to the eggs. 
3. Stir in the peppers, onions and garlic. Add the flour and baking powder and then add the milk. 
4. Fry at 350°F degrees until golden brown.

Today’s Food History

On this Day In History

1822 Charles Graham of New York received a patent for artificial teeth.

1839 Famous Food Fights
The Great Pastry War ended this day. A brief conflict began on November 30, 1838, between Mexico and France caused by a French pastry cook who claimed that some Mexican Army soldiers had damaged his restaurant. The Mexican government refused to pay for damages. Several other countries had asked the Mexican government for similar claims in the past due to civil unrest in Mexico, without any resolution. France decided to do something about it, and sent a fleet to Veracruz and fired on the fortress outside the harbor. They occupied the city on April 16, 1838, and through the mediation of Great Britain were promised payment of 600,000 pesos for the damages. They withdrew on March 9, 1839.

National Crab Meat Day

Early crab recipes called for tiny amounts of the meat because crabs were so tough to harvest and shell. Nowadays, crab meat comes fresh, frozen, canned or even imitation — no cracking required!  


Here are just a few dishes you can make with crab meat:
Classic Crab Cakes
Creole Crab-Stuffed Avocados
Steamed Snow Crab Legs
Corn & Crab Fritters
Crab Dip
Crab & Artichoke Appetizer Pizza

National Crown Roast of Pork Day

HAPPY....

I didn't know that this was an actual thing.  I do not eat pork and I guess that's why I wasn't aware of this day.

A crown fit for a serious fan of the other white meat - March 7 is National Crown Roast of Pork Day!

Turn your normal meal into a royal feast with this white-capped crown of pork glory.

Known as the crown roast, pork loin is gathered into a circle with the rib bones pointing upwards like the peaks of a crown. Usually, this contains two rib racks, or 12 ribs from one pork loin, tied together with twine. This also means "Frenching" the ribs - slightly cutting and cracking the bone so they can be molded into a crown.

The meatiest part of the impressive crown roast is at the bottom, facing inwards. And any serious pork fan knows that the rib portion of the loin is one of the choicest and tastiest cuts.  (Compliments of Eatocracy)

National Cereal Day

Some Cereal History
Americans at the time of the Civil War were increasingly plagued with gastrointestinal issues due to their unhealthy, meat-based diet. Reformers of the 1860s viewed too much meat consumption as unwholesome, both physically and spiritually. It was believed by some that a high-protein diet contributed to lust and sloth and that constipation and other maladies of the gastrointestinal tract were God’s punishment for too much pork and beef.

But before cereal took on loads of sugar, cartoon characters as marketing mascots and high profit margins of today, it was a food product of quite a different animal.  Cereal back then was quite literally hard to swallow. Made of dense bran nuggets the cereal was so hard it had to be soaked overnight to make digestion not so taxing. Its taste was pretty bland, too.


The Kellogg Brothers
Bran nuggets’ inventor Dr. James Caleb Jackson operated a sanitarium, a health resort of sorts, in which patrons would come to convalesce, improve their health or enjoy the restorative spa treatments available. One of the patrons would go on to form the Seventh Day Adventist religion. One of the members of her new church was John Kellogg, a skilled surgeon whose dedication to healthy food for his patients led to the creation of granola. 

With the help of his brother, Will Kellogg, the pair would continue to invent healthy, meatless breakfast foods until inadvertently concocting a process that allowed wheat to flake. Two years later corn flakes were formulated and they became an immediate success.


Charles William Post
Charles William Post would get in on the act while recuperating from his second nervous breakdown in 1893. He just so happened to be at the same sanitarium that the Kellogg brothers attended.  His visit there inspired him to open his own spa and to further his interest in coffee products and breakfast foods. By 1897, he was selling what is today known as Grape-nuts and his own brand of corn flakes otherwise known as Post Toasties.

Food of the Day *Ginger*

Ginger or ginger root is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family (Zingiberaceae). Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal. The distantly related dicots in the Asarumgenus have the common name wild ginger because of their similar taste.

Ginger cultivation began in South Asia and has since spread to East Africa and the Caribbean.^[2]

On This Day in Food History…

• 1899 Aspirin was patented by Felix Hoffman of the German company, Bayer. Aspirin was originally developed by Charles Frederic Gerhardt in 1853, but he never thought it important enough to patent.

• 1912 Nabisco debuts the Oreo cookie. The Oreo is considered largest selling cookie of all time.

• 1930 Retail frozen foods go on sale for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Various fruits, vegetables, meat and fish were offered for sale. Clarence Birdseye had developed the method used to successfully freeze foods on a commercial scale.

National Oreo Day

The Oreo by far was one of my favorite past time as a child.  I used to eat them with milk. I would eat the cream first and then dip cookies in milk.  I cant have them due to allergies unless I want to go to the ER.


How do you enjoy the Oreo?

Five Food Facts about Oreos

1. In 1912, Nabisco had a new idea for a cookie – two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between.
2. The first Oreo cookie looked very similar to the Oreo cookie of today, with only a slight difference in the design on the chocolate disks.
3. Little did they know that the Oreo cookie would become the largest selling cookie of all time.
4. The origin of the name Oreo is unknown, but there are many theories, including derivations from the French word ‘Or’, meaning gold (as early packaging was gold), or the Greek word ‘Oreo’, meaning beautiful, nice or well done.
5. Starting in January 2006, Oreo cookies replaced the trans fat in the cookie with non-hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Celebrity Food & Wine Show

The Celebrity Food & Wine Show in Tenafly is sponsored by Giants of Generosity, and Gunter Wilhelm Cutlery.  

Premium ticket holders will enjoy Chef Maneet Chauhan from TV's "Chopped" and Chef Guy Mitchell from the White House Chef Tour as they demonstrate their cooking skills, followed by a two-chef cook-off, judged by Ms. Lori Stokes of ABC's Eyewitness News and then the Grand Tasting event, for $75 per adult.  

General admission ticket  holders get entry to the Grand Tasting Only part of the event. Tickle your culinary taste buds at one of the three, 4-hour Grand Tastings by sampling a bonanza of fine foods from the area’s finest restaurants and wine vendors for just $55 per adult. There will be some light jazz and a Cork Pull Fundraiser where you can win a variety of fine wines. 

In this unprecedented 2-day joint fundraising effort we will be raising funds to help those in need through Giants of Generosity, members of our interfaith community, the National Multiple Scleorsis Society - New Jersey Metro Chapter, (YCS) Youth Consultation Service, and we will also be collecting breakfast cereals, canned fruits and vegetables, and pasta for The Office of Concern food bank in Englewood, NJ

Garlic Sauteed Spinach

Recipe courtesy of Ina Garten


Ingredients 

1 1/2 pounds baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons good olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped garlic (6 cloves)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Lemon
Sea or kosher salt, optional


Directions

Rinse the spinach well in cold water to make sure it's very clean. Spin it dry in a salad spinner, leaving just a little water clinging to the leaves.

In a very large pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic over medium heat for about 1 minute, but not until it's browned. Add all the spinach, the salt, and pepper to the pot, toss it with the garlic and oil, cover the pot, and cook it for 2 minutes. Uncover the pot, turn the heat on high, and cook the spinach for another minute, stirring with a wooden spoon, until all the spinach is wilted. Using a slotted spoon, lift the spinach to a serving bowl and top with the butter, a squeeze of lemon, and a sprinkling of sea or kosher salt. Serve hot.

National Banana Cream Pie Day

Nearly one out of five (19%) of Americans prefer apple pie, followed by pumpkin (13%), pecan (12%), banana cream (10%) and cherry (9%)

Until the early 1900′s Pie was considered a breakfast food.

In England, Oliver Cromwell banned the eating of pie in 1644, declaring it “a pagan form of pleasure”

“Wet bottom” molasses pie, Shoo-fly pie, were not originally made to eat. They were used to attract flies from the kitchen. They would stick to the pies

Early colonists cooked their pies in long narrow pans calling them “coffins”  Round pies were not common until the early 1800′s.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

• 1799 The first U.S. weights and measures law was passed by Congress. Actually it did not set standards, but rather required the surveyor of each port to test and correct the instruments and weights used to calculate duties on imports. Basically each surveyor was on his own in setting the standards to be tested.

• 1887 Harry E. Soref was born. Inventor of the laminated steel padlock, founder of the Master Lock Company in 1921. The company became well known in 1928 when it shipped 147,600 padlocks to federal prohibition agents in New York for locking up speakeasies they raided.

• 1904 Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) was born. Writer and cartoonist. A few of his childrens books were ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ ‘One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish,’ ‘Scrambled Eggs Super!’ and ‘The Butter Battle Book’

Food of the Day *Spinach*

I picked spinach today because it is a great source of fiber and vitamins.  

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is an edible flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant (rarely biennial), which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to triangular-based, very variable in size from about 2–30 cm long and 1–15 cm broad, with larger leaves at the base of the plant and small leaves higher on the flowering stem. The flowers are inconspicuous, yellow-green, 3–4 mm diameter, maturing into a small, hard, dry, lumpyfruit cluster 5–10 mm across containing several seeds.

Spinach has a high nutritional value and is extremely rich in antioxidants, especially when fresh, steamed, or quickly boiled. It is a rich source ofvitamin A (and especially high in lutein), vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, folate, betaine, iron, vitamin B₂, calcium,potassium, vitamin B₆, folic acid, copper, protein, phosphorus, zinc, niacin, selenium and omega-3 fatty acids. Recently, opioid peptides calledrubiscolins have also been found in spinach.

Polyglutamyl folate (vitamin B₉ or folic acid) is a vital constituent of cells, and spinach is a good source of folic acid. Boiling spinach can more than halve the level of folate left in the spinach, but microwaving does not affect folate content. Vitamin B₉ was first isolated from spinach in 1941.

Iron

Spinach, along with other green leafy vegetables, is considered to be rich in iron. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture states that a 180-g serving of boiled spinach contains 6.43 mg of iron, whereas a 170-g ground hamburger patty contains at most 4.42 mg. However, spinach contains iron absorption-inhibiting substances, including high levels of oxalate, which can bind to the iron to form ferrous oxalate and render much of the iron in spinach unusable by the body. In addition to preventing absorption and use, high levels of oxalates remove iron from the body. But some studies have found that the addition of oxalic acid to the diet may improve iron absorption in rats over a diet with spinach without additional oxalic acid.

Calcium

Spinach also has a high calcium content. However, the oxalate content in spinach also binds with calcium, decreasing its absorption. Calcium and zinc also limit iron absorption.^[15] The calcium in spinach is the least bioavailable of calcium sources.^[16] By way of comparison, the human body can absorb about half of the calcium present in broccoli, yet only around 5% of the calcium in spinach.^[Wikipedia]