June 10: National Iced Tea Day and National Herb and Spice Day

National Iced Tea Day

Normally, I drink my tea hot no matter what the temperature.  Most people think I'm crazy for doing that, especially when they learn I typically don't sweeten my tea.  However, every now and then, I find myself drinking iced tea and when I saw that today was National Iced Tea Day (and June is National Iced Tea Month) I figured I'd celebrate by making a pitcher of iced tea. 

I used a black tea called "Carolina Iced Tea" that I bought at a store in Chapel Hill, NC.  I brewed it strong then poured it still hot over ice.  I add no sugar to my iced teas (just like my normal tea) which allows for guests to add sweetener to their preferences.  I believe that while any tea that is good served hot is still good served iced, I find that the fruity and black teas are better than the white and green teas or the roiboos and herbal tisanes.  Some people add lemon to their iced tea, but I prefer not to.  In my opinion, iced tea is best enjoyed on a hot summer day while outside.


National Herb and Spice Day

Herbs and spices are awesome.  They add such flavor to dishes, sometimes making your food really pop.  TLC lists the 10 must have spices for American kitchens..  SimpleBites lists their top spices they believe need to be stocked in every kitchen and Simple Dollar lists their top 10 for spices to make your food tasty while keeping it cheap.  Confused by all the spices you see at the store?  CNN has a quick guide to a lot of spice and herbs.

As for which top 10 spices and herbs I couldn't live without?  Crushed red pepper, cayenne, cumin, ginger, thyme, black pepper, rosemary, garlic, bay leaf, and cinnamon.  Yeah, I'm one of those strange people who only has salt around if I'm living with roommates.  When baking, I often found that I could omit it from recipes or I could find a salt-free recipe.

June 9: National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day

I still maintain that the best strawberry rhubarb pies are from the The Purple Pie Place in Custer, South Dakota.  I have some great memories of the strawberry rhubarb pie from there, including a very special one where a friend and I ate a whole one by ourselves.

After my previously detailed mishaps with making pie, the logical thing would be for me to just buy a pie to celebrate today.  Or at least, use a recipe while baking a pie.  I like to think I'm normally pretty logical, but today, maybe due to a serious lack of sleep, my logic went something like this: "Oh, hey, I have some rhubarb still in the freezer from when I tried making rhubarb pie.  I think I have some frozen strawberries....but I don't have that many....I'll make mini pies!"

The lesson I learned today?  I should really master making pies before I even attempt mini pies. 


Instead of buying pie crust or sticking to a recipe I've already used and liked, I decided to try a new pie crust recipe.    It came out pretty good.  I felt the dough was a little dry and kept crumbling when I was rolling it, but it's not bad - just passable.  I lightly sprayed a standard muffin pan and pressed the dough into six of the cups.  The pie crust never realy developed the nice tan or light brown color that is usually associated with perfect crusts.

The pie filling however?  That was just tossing the frozen rhubarb and strawberries together, sprinkling on half a cup of sugar, scooping some into each lined cup, and putting the remainder back in the freezer.  See the major problem here?

I forgot flour or some sort of thickener.

As a result, the filling bubbled up and oozed all over.  It was rather messy.  It was also a little difficult to get the "pies" out of the cups, so next time I try something like this, I'll use my silicone cupcake liners.  The "pies" were tasty, if a bit tart. 

If you're looking to make your own strawberry rhubarb pie, a few days ago The Kitchn posted a strawberry rhubarb pie.  You can also try one from the ever helpful Food Network.  Just follow the directions if you're not a big pie-making person.  Don't repeat my errors - I do that often enough myself.

June 8: National Jelly-filled Doughnut Day

So the first thing I did this morning after waking up was look at the calendar.  After a "Oh, oops, I forgot to post" moment, I realized today's holiday was something I definitely wanted to honor.  I'm not a huge doughnut fan, but I do love doughnuts with filling.


So how best to celebrate today's food observance?  Well, I decided to do something I've never done before: I went to Krispy Kreme.  Prior to today, I have eaten Krispy Kreme doughnuts that people have brought into work and I have been to the little tiny Krispy Kreme in the Excalibur in Las Vegas, but this was the first time I've been to a true Krispy Kreme.  (Being a nutrition student, I don't normally seek out high-calorie, high-sugar foods.)  It was definitely an experience to see how everyone enjoyed being there.  Lots of young children were excitedly watching doughnuts being made.  (By the way, have you heard of the Krispy Kreme Challenge?  There is no way I could eat a dozen doughnuts and still run, but one of these days I'd like to at least see this event.)

I bought a dozen doughnuts of various flavors, including a few jelly-filled ones.  I'm the kind of person who cuts doughnuts and chocolates into multiple pieces (mainly because I want to try them all and I want to make sure everyone else gets to try them too) and I must admit that the ones I've tried so far are pretty good.  The jelly-filled doughnut I bought for today was filled with a delicious raspberry jelly that was slowly oozing out of the doughnut while I took pictures.  It was quite tasty.

In the United States, the term "jelly-filled doughnut" is used to describe pretty much any doughnut with a jam, jelly, or fruit filling - whether it be a Berliner or a Sufganiyot.  If you're looking to make your own jelly-filled doughnuts, pastry injectors make it so much easier.

June 7: National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (belated post)

Whoops!  Forgot to post yesterday!  Here's the post for yesterday, June 7, National Chocolate Ice Cream Day.


The vanilla vs. chocolate is a popular debate when it comes to ice cream.  I'm very much on the "Meh, they're both okay; I'll take strawberry or a fruity sorbet, please" team.  Still, chocolate ice cream is great for those days when you feel like your chocolate dessert doesn't have enough chocolate.  (Chocolate lava cake always goes well with chocolate ice cream.)

If you've got an ice cream maker, Alton Brown's recipe for chocolate ice cream seems very popular, but David Lebovitz touts his as the easiest ever.  No ice cream maker?  Real Simple has you covered with a chocolate ice cream recipe that doesn't require an ice cream maker.  Vegan?  Check out Bay Area Bites for three recipes, including one for Rich Chocolate and Banana Almond Milk Ice Cream.

Are you a teacher?  Check out these suggestions for including chocolate and ice cream throughout your curriculum.  And, of course, the history of chocolate ice cream is covered by Food Timeline.  Apparently, chocolate ice cream has existed since at least the 18th century.

June 6: National Applesauce Cake Day (and maybe a belated National Frozen Yogurt Day)

National Applesauce Cake Day

Sometimes, I wonder why some foods get observations and others don't.  Actually, since starting this project, I wonder that almost daily.  Today raised that question for me because I've always thought of applesauce cake as a pretty basic cake.  I suppose it gets a observance day because it's such an easy cake to make and very hard to mess up if you're following a recipe.

The first time I made applesauce cake was (you guessed it) for a class.  That happened to be the time I made 5 different cakes in 3 days. I froze about a third of each cake, tried to get my roommate to eat some (she could only eat so much, too) and then finally just took the cakes in to work.  I was very popular at work that week.

For the applesauce cake, we used this Better Homes and Gardens' Applesauce Spice Cake recipe.  As with all correctly made applesauce cakes, it was very moist.  While it wasn't a heavy cake, it wasn't exactly light either.  It fell somewhere in between, as most cakes do.  When it came time to write up our observations of the cakes, mine basically boiled down to: "It tastes like Christmas."

All the spices in that cake made my place smell wonderful.  And it felt like it was November or December.  That applesauce spice cake recipe would be an excellent thing to take or make for a holiday brunch or party.



Belated National Frozen Yogurt Day..... maybe?

So it seems that even thought most places note that February 6th is National Frozen Yogurt Day, some sites and news outlets are claiming that National Frozen Yogurt Day is celebrated twice a year - Feb.6 and June 4. This confusion may have stemmed from the fact that June is National Frozen Yogurt Month.  Since it seems unfair for frozen yogurt to get two days and a month, I'm gonna stick with February 6th as National Frozen Yogurt Day.

June 5: National Gingerbread Day

What?  National Gingerbread Day is in June?!  When I think of gingerbread, I think of December.  Perhaps it's because of all the gingerbread houses I see around Christmas, some of which are extremely gorgeous. 

But after looking at the calendar and talking with a friend, I realized that gingerbread can be a year-round treat.  Gingerbread doesn't necessarily refer to the thick, hard cookies that are used to make gingerbread houses.  Gingerbread can be a soft, moist cake or it can be a denser cake.  It can be paired with lemon or orange flavors or be combined with chocolate for a heavenly treat.  Gingerbread can be in bars or as cupcakes.  Want a really decadent treat?  Try gingerbread cheesecake.  Of course, if you prefer to drink your calories, you could always have a gingerbread cocktail.

The Swedish love their gingerbread cookies - apparently, you can't have a business meeting in Sweeden without their being some sort of gingerbread cookie.  When it comes to Swedish cookies, I'm most familiar with the Anna's Ginger Thins cookies.  The Anna's are vastly different than the gingerbread used during the holidays to make gingerbread houses.  They're good cookies, with a nice crisp snap to them, and they go great with tea during the summer.  (Yes, I don't care how hot it gets - I'm still drinking hot tea.)

If you're looking to make your own gingerbread today, All Recipes has a large collection of gingerbread recipes.  And while you're noshing on your gingerbread, be sure to check out the history of gingerbread in Europe.

June 4: National Cognac Day and National Cheese Day

National Cognac Day

I don't drink a lot of hard liquors.  Good gin, tequila, and the occasional fruity alcohol like Midori... sure, I'll do shots of those.  But things like moonshine, whiskey, and cognac?  Ugh, no.  Those are definitely a case of "develop a taste for it."

So I had to do a little searching on cognac when I saw that today was National Cognac Day.  What is cognac?  Well, apparently it's a type of brandy.  It seems that it once referred to brandy solely from the Cognac region of France, but a lot of people these days use it to refer to any good brandy.  In honor of today, YumSugar has a Cognac 101.

If you're a cognac drinker, raise a glass and consume in your favorite way.  Or, perhaps, today you'll want to try it a new drinks recipe.  DrinksMixer has over a hundred different recipes for cocktails with cognac as an ingredient.


National Cheese Day

Okay, this day is just trying to be difficult now.  Cheese?  That's it?  Not a specific type of cheese?  Britain alone produces over 700 different types of cheese.  Soft, hard, yellow, white, blue, with fruits, creamy, goat, cow, etc....  I love the fact that both Wisconsin and California have their own respective cheese webpages.  It makes sense, considering the milk industries in both states have always been butting heads.  There eventually had to be spillover to their cheese industries.

I've been very good at trying different cheeses the last few years.  I'm not allergic, just lactose intolerant, so I can usually manage a bite before I need to start taking pills to eat more cheese.  Since I don't eat cheese very quickly and I'm never sure if I'm going to like a particular cheese, I tend to buy my "Meh, I'll try it" cheese from Whole Foods' "$4 and under" section so I can buy my cheeses in small amounts.  I'll use them in quesadillas, on salads, or just to nosh on every now and then.

One nice thing about this day?  It's in June, which is National Dairy Month.