Krcu's A Harte Appetite

Every culture feeds on the belief that eating certain dishes on New Years Day brings good fortune. Perhaps the Chinese have the most New Years food rituals. They take two weeks to ring in the new year and during that time literally everything eaten is considered auspicious.

It turns out, that the question "what is a sugar plum?" is not that easy to answer. I found at least eight distinctly different definitions of the term. Some citing chocolate, some fondant, and others coriander as a chief ingredient.

Over seventy-five years ago Irving Berlin wrote what has become the most recorded song of all time: "White Christmas." It’s easy to understand how Berlin, born in a town near Siberia, could feel nostalgic about a winter snowfall.

German lebkuchen the Cadillac, or the Mercedes Benz of spice cookies, was probably the first cookie traditionally associated with Christmas. Lebkuchen may also very well be the oldest form of cookie know to human kind.

Research shows that the traditional depiction of the first Thanksgiving may not be altogether accurate. In fact, whatever happened at Plymouth 400 years ago, it may not have been the first Thanksgiving at all.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, putting together a Thanksgiving Day menu is not particularly challenging. After all, the fundamentals of the holiday meal are hardly open to debate.

I’m grateful to Roman Catholic nuns for their role in inventing and perfecting some of the most heavenly pastries on earth. Collectively called convent sweets because they originated in the convents of Italy, Spain, and particularly Portugal as far back as the 15th century, they ultimately made their way far beyond the Iberian peninsula.

Over the Millennia civilization has progressed and so has breakfast cereal. Among the earliest of modern cereals was granola, still a staple today, although these days you have to be careful with granola because some of it is little more than cookies masquerading as health food.

Though candy corn is available year round, 75% of its annual sales occur around Halloween. Thus each Halloween Americans buy some 35 million pounds of candy corn which works out to about 9 billion kernals.

Where would you find the most authentic Chicken Kiev? Probably Ukraine. The definitive Peking Duck? Certainly Beijing. The perfect Swedish Meatballs? Obviously Sweden. Or maybe Ikea. And where would you go to find the ultimate Greek yogurt? That’s not so easy a question to answer.