Elliot Essman’s Wine Pages Many Americans enjoy learning about wine. Some American wine aficionados spend enormous sums on wine collections, specialized glassware designed to get the best out of particular varieties of wine, temperature controlled wine storage devices, and wine cellars; it may be difficult to distinguish between true lovers of wine and the “wine …
Vegetarians fall into four distinct types. The largest group are lacto-ovo-vegetarians; they do not eat meat but consume eggs and dairy products. Lacto-vegetarians avoid both meat and eggs but consume dairy products. Vegans consume no animal products of any kind; not even honey. A fourth group consists of those who occasionally eat fish but no …
Potatoes, tomatoes, and the various forms of lettuce are the top three vegetables in the United States in terms of popularity (the tomato is scientifically a fruit, but functions as a vegetable for food purposes). Fruits and vegetables are grown in every state, but California, Florida, and a few other states like Washington remain giants …
For any American growing up in the 1950s or 1960s, “TV Dinners” took over part of the brain, part of the heart, whether you liked them or lot, even if you rarely ate them. C.A. Swanson & Sons used “TV Dinner” as a brand name only for about ten years after they introduced the frozen …
Trans fats are on their way out of the American diet. Trans fats are created when vegetable oils are partially hydrogenated, a process that retards spoilage and allows the oils to be used in a number of industrial food processing applications. Some trans fats occur naturally in some vegetables and dairy products, but it is …
The American feast of Thanksgiving Day (held the fourth Thursday of November) varies little from region to region or from year to year. While the Thanksgiving custom has religious roots and is given religious significance by many Americans, it is technically an official secular holiday, as it is not associated with any one particular religious …
Food classifications in the United States don’t always work out neatly. This is especially true with the term “Tex-Mex.” To some, the term is synonymous with a Mexican-American food hybrid that is not of great culinary interest. To many, however, Tex-Mex describes a great American food tradition. It might be best to look at the …
On the sixteenth day of December 1773, in response to a minuscule tax on tea levied without their consent by the Parliament in London, a number of otherwise respectable citizens of Boston, dressed as Indians, forced themselves aboard a merchant ship crammed with tea and, over a period of three hours, threw 342 chests of …
The term “tailgating” came into being from the notion that sports fans would open the tailgates of their station wagons, cook, serve and enjoy food and companionship in the parking lot of an arena or stadium before attending a sporting event. Over the decades tailgating has become an elaborate activity. Specialized equipment, from barbecue trailers …
Sweeteners have played a part in American history and food culture since colonial days. When the first English-speaking settlers came to the eastern coast of North America in the 1630s, sugar was a luxury, only for the rich; by the time of the American Revolution in 1775, sugar, and its concentrated form molasses, were commodities. …