Tortellini Day - February 13

February 13th is a special day for Italian stuffed pasta lovers - Tortellini Day!

The tortellini are stuffed pasta dumplings in the shape of a ring reminiscent of a shell, usually in a mixture of meat, cheese or vegetables (especially spinach, sweet potatoes and pumpkin).

The tortellini originates from Emilia, Bologna and Modena in Italy. They are served mostly with soups or in a creamy sauce and ragout (meat sauce). The sauces they are served with are usually based on butter, olive oil, tomatoes, mushrooms and cheeses and their taste is done so that they do not even exceed the taste of the tortilla filling.

The origin of the name Tortellini is from the word "Tortellini", which in Italian means cake.

The first time the tortellini is mentioned in history is in 1664, in the book "The Economy of the City in the Villa" (L'economia del cittadino in villa) in which it is described as butter-cooked. Originally the tortellini was meant to recycle the leftover meat from the tables of the rich nobles for the poor in the area.

In 1842, the French bibliographic traveler Antoine Claude-Pasquain described the tortellini stuffed with beef, egg yolk and Parmesan cheese.

The big brother of the tortellini is the tortelloni. This is a larger version with vegetable filling, served with sauce and not with soup.

Members of an organization called the "The Learned Order of the Tortellini" in Bologna, Italy, wear special tortellini-shaped hats, in red and gold, for their meetings. They also wear a ribbon around their necks with a gold tortilla pendant. Members of the Order dedicate their lives to preserving the traditional tortellini.

Source

There are many ways to make tortellini. In honor of the tortellini day, learn how to make it stuffed with what you like, and use the tens of thousands of recipes on the net. Another option is to go out to an Italian restaurant and order a tortellini.

Con appetito!

 February 13 is also Radio Day and Madly In Love With Me Day

Pasta coloring pages

Coloring pages of pasta, one of the most delicious and beloved foods in the world. Pasta is a celebration of food, so why not color it? Here are paintings of pasta that you can paint for your enjoyment. To print the coloring page of pasta you would like to color, click on it and then click Ctrl+P.

World Pasta Day- October 25

World Pasta Day, celebrated on 25 October each year, is a day that people around the world celebrate the existence of the doughy culinary pleasure molded into funny little ways, which called Pasta.

Pasta is a staple of the Italian cuisine, and the first evidences for it were in communities in Sicily, in 1154.

Pasta is one of the favorite dishes on food consumers worldwide.

There are more than 600 shapes of pasta known to mankind, and their names are descriptions of their forms. Spaghetti ("Cable"), noodles ("little worms"), rotini ( "spirals"), fusili ( "skills"), tortellini ("little cakes"), linguine ("little tongues"), Conchiglie ("envelopes"), fettuccine ("small ribbons"), contact ("spikes") and Capellini ("fine hairs").

  The idea behind the pasta day assigned by World Pasta Congress in 1995, is that if you want to celebrate the pasta day at home, gather all family at the table, eat spaghetti and meatballs and behaved like real Italian, that means speak aloud to one another, Lick your fingers with Kiss movement and Say 'Eccellente!'.

Spaghetti animated gifs

Noodle Day - October 6

Noodles have been around for over 4,000 years. They are popular all over the world and come in a variety of shapes: flat, round, curved, tubes and many others. They can be made from rice, buckwheat, wheat, with or without eggs and even beans and zucchini. The noodles are made from dough that has not been puffed and has undergone a process of stretching or rolling and cutting into various shapes.

National Noodle Day falls on October 6th and the best thing to do to celebrate it is of course to eat noodles!

A little about the history of noodles:

Noodles were invented in China in 2000 BC.

Noodles came to Europe and became popular in it, especially in Italy, in the 13th century. There is a legend that Marco Polo is the one who brought the noodles to Europe when he returned from China, but this is not true. He was not the first and it is possible that Arab merchants were the ones who brought them there first.

In 1789 Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States and its third president, returned to the United States after several years as ambassador to France and brought with him a machine for making pasta.

In 1958 the Japanese invented ramen noodles. They have become very popular because of their ease of preparation - they come dry and you just have to pour boiling water on them to soften them.

Some more facts about noodles:

Each region in the world has its own traditions and history around noodles. In Italy there is pasta, in China Noodles, in Vietnam rice noodles, in Japan ramen and more and more: each country has different techniques and ingredients for making its traditional noodles.

If you are health conscious, or you are on a low carb or gluten sensitive diet, there are still plenty of noodles for you! People love noodles so much that they invented noodles from foods like black beans, mung beans, quinoa, shiitake mushrooms, kelp seaweed and even zucchini. So do not limit yourself! You can still join in the fun of National Noodle Day.

A bowl of Chinese noodles

October 6th is also Mad Hatter Day

Foldable Pasta Drying Rack- Plastic Spaghetti Noodle Dryer

National Mac and Cheese Day- July 14th

 How much we love food days, especially food days that contain macaroni and cheese 😊.

Macaroni and cheese, or "Mac & Cheese", is a dish that contains cooked macaroni and cheese sauce, usually cheddar cheese. The dish can contain additional ingredients like meat, vegetables and bread crumbs but the necessary ingredient is the cheese sauce.

Originally, the macaroni and cheese were prepared as an oven-baked pastry. But you can also cook or get the Mac & Cheese as a packaged dish, fry in a pan or heat in a saucepan.

The sauce that accompanies the macaroni is the Mornay Sauce (French: Sauce Mornay), which is a  béchamel sauce in which shredded or grated cheese is added. Add salt and spices such as black pepper and nutmeg to the sauce.

Mac & Cheese is considered in the United States and Canada as a comfort food, a food that usually contains a high amount of carbohydrates and fats that are eaten to encourage mentally.

The history of the Mac and Cheese

As early as the 14th century there is a record of pasta dishes with cheese in the Italian cookbook, Liber de Coquina, where a dish of pasta and parmesan was presented. In the Middle Ages, a dish of fresh, hand-cut pasta appeared that was incorporated into a mixture of melted butter and cheese in the English cookbook The Forme of Cury.

The first modern recipe for macaroni and cheese is included in Elizabeth Raffald book from 1770, The Experienced English Housekeeper. Raffald's recipe is for Béchamel sauce with cheddar cheese - a French-cooked Mornay sauce - mixed with macaroni, with scattered parmesan baked until bubbling and golden.

The Experienced English Housekeeper

Macaroni and cheese became a popular dish in Britain during the 1920s in both fast food and upscale restaurants.

In the United States, President Thomas Jefferson and his slave chef, James Hemings, met macaroni and cheese in Paris and returned with the recipe to Monticello, Jefferson's mansion. Jefferson was so fond of the pasta with the cheese, that he made detailed notes on the preparation process. In 1793 he asked the US Ambassador to France William Short to buy him a pasta machine but apparently the machine did not fit, as he later imported both macaroni and Parmesan cheese to Monticello. In 1802 Jefferson served "macaroni pie" at a state dinner Since then, baked macaroni and cheese have become a popular dish in the US among the upper class.

In the mid-1980s, Western U.S. cookbooks included recipes for macaroni and cheese dishes. Factory production of the main ingredients made the dish affordable, and the recipes made it accessible. But as mac and cheese became a popular dish in popular cuisine, it lost the attraction of the upper class.

Mac & cheese came to Canada by British immigrants who came from other parts of the British Empire. Mac and cheeses are very popular in contemporary Canada. The most popular brand of macaroni and cheese packages is Kraft Dinner. Mac & Cheese is seen as the national dish of Canada, before Poutine (a dish of potatoes, cheese and sauce found in Quebec). It is said that Canadians eat more mac and cheese than anywhere else in the world.

How to celebrate Mac & Cheese Day?

Of course the way to celebrate Mac & Cheese is to eat a good meal of macaroni with cheese. You can make your own recipe from home or make it from a package.

A pack of Mac & Cheese - just warm and serve! (source)

If you're vegan, no problem - there's also a pack of vegan Mac & Cheese on the iHerb website that Vegans recommend at.

Vegan Mac & Cheese (link)

July 14 is also SpongeBob's Birthday