Day: April 5, 2018

books recipe

Strange foods: Polish Beaver Tails

Polish people love their Beaver Tails. However, they are not the pastry version found at Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada. They are actually from the living animal. 300 years ago, beavers were considered to be part of the fish world by Polish people. Compendium ferculorum, albo Zebranie potraw (A Collection of Dishes) is a cookbook by Stanisław Czerniecki written in 1682 with the recipe for the Polish dish. Lucky for the beaver, it has become somewhat of an endangered species in Poland. Can I please get some Nutella and sugar on my tail, please! Like the dodo bird, this recipe has fallen by the wayside.

literature

Food from the past: The invention of the pop top beer can

Words sometimes like food can be digested with delight.  In 1963 Schlitz started nationally using pop-top cans for their beer. Three years later cans were out-selling beer in bottles. Pulitzer Prize writer John Updike wrote a thirst-quenching bit for The New Yorker in 1964 about the progress of man using the beer can as a simile.  This is one meaty morsel of literature to bite into.

grubbits menu

Menus from the world: McDonald’s Hawaii Saimin Soup

McDonald’s Hawaii has quite a unique menu in their restaurants. They offer Saimin soup to their patrons. The Hawaiian-style ramen noodle is a staple on the islands. They also serve Portuguese sausage and Spam with rice on their breakfast menu.
“Saimin is a soup with egg noodles served up in a hot broth that has kamaboko (fish cake), char siu (barbecued pork), and nori (seaweed). In the late 1960s, this Hawaiian Saimin was added to the regular menu as the first local “ethnic” dish added to a McDonalds in its long history.”