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Half-eaten cookie found inside 1529 manuscript

When it comes to marking a book page, we all have our habits. Some fold the page corner back lightly, others use fancy bookmarks or ribbon to save their spot. All reasonable methods to choose from, but someone had other ideas—food. Recently, a librarian found a 1529 manuscript with a half-eaten cookie stuffed between two pages. The strange situation went viral when Cambridge University Library Special Collections tweeted a photo of the cookie stuffed inside the book, a copy of St. Augustine dating back to 1592. The library tweeted a photo of the scene with this gentle reminder for guests: Today’s unexpected discovery in a 1529 volume of Augustine. For future reference, we have acid free paper to mark your place. Please don’t use baked goods.” The cookie appears to be chocolate chip, but it’s believed to have happened about 50 years ago, according to The Vintage News, and before…

This is why we eat ham on Easter

Holidays are chock-full of timeless traditions, perhaps in no category more steadfastly than food. What’s Thanksgiving without turkey? Halloween without candy? New Year’s without some bubbly? And of course, what would Easter dinner even be without a briny, salty ham? But aside from simply tradition, how did pigs come to play such an important role in our annual spring feast? It really just has to do with practical considerations and timing. Traditionally, pigs were slaughtered in the fall as temperatures cooled. This would allow the meat to stay fresher for much longer. Before refrigeration, farmers would set aside any unsold meat to be cured, or preserved, as to not waste food or income. That cured meat was finally ready to eat each year right around Easter. Also read, Why do eat chocolate bunnies on Easter? These days, slaughtering schedules don’t play an important of a part as simply our preference. While…

How Americans became so obsessed with pumpkins

Halloween and Thanksgiving are quickly approaching, but the spirit of the season has already been here for weeks. By early August, retailers were stocking shelves with pumpkin-flavored foods. Starbucks began selling it’s famous Pumpkin Spice Latte back on Aug. 27, and pumpkin beer has been available in bars for just as long. People associate pumpkins with fall, and as they look forward to the season, the demand for pumpkin everything increases. According to Nielsen data, sales of pumpkin and pumpkin spice-flavored items skyrocketed in 2017 $488.7 million – up from $286 million in 2013. But this hasn’t always been the case. There was a time when pumpkins weren’t celebrated as they are today — with products bearing their beloved image and contests cheering on their gigantic size. “American colonists were less than enthusiastic about pumpkins,” said Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon. The colonists were accustomed to eating a diet of domesticated meats and…

Why do we give apples to teachers?

These days, it’s more likely for a teacher to be seen with an Apple iPad on her desk than a Golden Delicious. But it wasn’t that long ago that giving a crisp, shiny apple to a teacher on the first day of school was common practice. But where did this tasty tradition start? The true origin is mostly a mystery, though we do know that the apples have long served as a symbol of knowledge and education. From Greek references to a divine fruit that helped Hippomenes win a race for Atalanta’s hand, to Adam and Eve’s lesson of right and wrong, apples have been at the core of human history for a very long time. So how did they wind up on the desk of teachers in America? Gifting fruit has long been associated with surviving hardships throughout history. In the 1700s, poor families in Denmark and Sweden gave…

Can you guess the 10 oldest restaurant chains in America?

Travel back in time in America 60, 80, 100 years. You already know you would have to give up your laptop, your cell phone, and your Starbucks, but could you count on anything being the same? It turns out, yes. Believe it or not. Some of America’s biggest fast food mega-empires were built starting as early as 1919! Of course, they were much smaller scale, but some menu items even remain the same. So which of our fast food favs could we eat at on our trip to the past? Here are the 10 oldest fast food restaurants in the county: 10. McDonald’s Year founded: 1955 Cracking the top 10 list, is the most successful fast food chain of them all. McDonald’s got its start in 1955 when Ray Kroc saw the potential of a small California burger shop where the owners, Dick and Mac MacDonald, had developed some unique…

What’s the difference between an English muffin and a crumpet?

When it comes to breakfast breads, most of us are carb-loving connoisseurs. Toasts like wheat, rye, and sourdough are just the beginning. Scones, muffins — both blueberry and bran, biscuits and bagels make their way into our morning meal more commonly than we’d care to admit.  And of course you know the English muffin. It’s the sturdy, humble base to your oozing Eggs Benedict and the spongy exterior of your McDonald’s McMuffin. English muffins, and all of these other common carbs, are sold in the bakery and bread aisles of just about any grocery store nationwide. So that leaves the crumpet.  What the heck is it? You’ve probably joked about tea and crumpets in your best stuffy-English accent before, but did you really know what you were talking about? Have you actually ever seen one in the States? English muffins and crumpets are two entirely different creatures, but they have…

Why do we eat chocolate bunnies on Easter?

It’s hard to imagine what a chocolate rabbit has to do with anything in the religious realm. I mean, we’re not complaining — It’s a deliciously adorable Easter treat enjoyed by millions across the globe. But it’s just that, well, how did a milk chocolate mammal become the unofficial symbol of Christianity’s spring holiday? According to Time, the origins of Easter can be traced back to the pagans who celebrated Eostre, the goddess of fertility. Of course, reproduction is what rabbits do best, so it’s fitting that Eostre’s animal symbol was a bunny. Fast forward to the eighteenth century. Christian holidays had long since taken favor over pagan holidays, but some of the symbols and imagery were reappropriated. Part of the tradition of the Easter holiday in Germany included the folklore of an egg-laying rabbit named “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” As Germans immigrated to the United States in the 1700s, so too…

The man who invented sliced bread and the origins of the popular phrase

Lots of things are declared “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” but have you ever wondered, just what timeline we are talking here? Sliced bread is one of those inventions that seems like it should have always been part of our diets, and the accompanying phrase, forever part of our vernacular. But it’s much more recent than you would expect. So when was this ubiquitous food staple first invented? Bread is one of the world’s most commonly prepared foods — it’s also one of the oldest. There is evidence of humans making crude variations of the stuff as far back as the Neolithic era. Sliced bread, however? That’s a different story. For perspective, Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Bennett, and Betty White are all older than sliced bread. The first automatically sliced commercial loaves of bread didn’t hit production until July 6, 1928, in Chillicothe, Missouri. It was all made possible…

The first TV dinner was a Thanksgiving feast

While you may not think America’s most celebrated homemade holiday feast has anything to do with a modest frozen TV dinner, the two forever share a slice of history. The first mass produced TV dinner was, in fact, literally made from Thanksgiving leftovers. As the story goes, in 1952, someone in charge of purchasing at Omaha-based C.A. Swanson & Sons seriously overestimated how much turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 520,000 pounds of frozen turkey to unload, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas had a light bulb idea. Thomas, having been inspired by the neatly packaged Pan Am Airlines airplane food, ordered 5,000 aluminum trays. He recruited women, armed with scoops and spatulas, to run his culinary assembly line, and work began making mini Thanksgiving feasts full of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas, and sweet potatoes, thus creating the first-ever TV dinner. The original TV Dinners  sold for 98 cents…

This is why Coca-Cola cans are red

It’s one of the most memorable logos in the world. You see just a glimpse of the product and know it’s a Coke thanks to that highly recognizable shade of red. But why did the company chose this shade in the first place? Some fans think the red color came from some of the company’s first nationwide advertisements, which featured the now-iconic Christmas Santa Claus wearing a classic red and white suit, holding a bottle of Coke. But Santa didn’t begin popping up in Coca-Cola ads until the 1920s, and by that time the brand was nearly 40 years old. “It goes all the way back to the beginning,” said Coca-Cola Archivist Ted Ryan. The real story of Coke’s color red is essentially one of a happy accident. More than 130 years ago, Coca-Cola was distributed in large barrels at drug stores and pharmacies all across America. Alcohol was distributed…