C Is For Cookie, That's Good Enough For Me

Get a cold glass of milk ready, because today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.

It’s hard to imagine that the chocolate chip cookie -- now an American classic -- was actually created inadvertently in 1930. No matter what the Discovery Channel says, let’s agree this was truly the best accidental invention of all time (taste it, penicillin!). Ruth Wakefield, co-owner of the Toll House Inn (a well-regarded Massachusetts watering hole), ran out of baker’s chocolate while making “Butter Drop Do” cookies, and decided to substitute bits of a Nestle Semi-Sweet Chocolate bar. Rather than melting into the batter, the chocolate bits became pockets of gooeyness and made the cookies even tastier. In exchange for Mrs. Wakefield’s original recipe (which is, to this day, printed on the back of bags of Nestle’s chocolate chips), Nestle offered her a lifetime supply of their chocolate.

So what did we learn from this story, kids? As Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus says: “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!” Words to eat by.

And now, a couple public service announcements from our favorite lover of chocolate chip cookies, the Cookie Monster.

His interview on NPR:

Cookie Monster appears on The Martha Stewart Show, wreaks adorable havoc, and offers Martha a date with Bert:

Proper OM NOM NOM NOM form with a chocolate chip cookie:

It's Pi Day! It's Pie Day!

You guys, we're celebrating a mathematical constant today! The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter = π.

Did you know that the first Pi Day was celebrated in 1989 at our very own Exploratorium museum in San Francisco? Thanks to Larry Shaw, a bearded physicist affectionately nicknamed “Prince of Pi,” people around the world now celebrate this holiday every March 14th. At this year’s Pi Day extravaganza at the Exploratorium people will participate in a Pi Procession that culiminates at the Pi Shrine, circle it 3.14 times, and sing a song in honor of Albert Einstein’s birthday. We think the event is also a fantastic opportunity for a Pi Rap Battle, like this one from “Pi Daddy” at Fort Vancouver High School:

Wait, you wanted something else? Something tastier? PIE? The SF Chronicle recommends these pie places, but ZeroCater has a soft spot for our vendor partners, of course. Many of them specialize in flaky crusts and tender filling. Peasant Pies and Three Babes Bakeshop serve both savory and sweet pies:

Pies
And if it’s pizza pies you’re craving, Paxti’s offers Chicago-style deep dish while Pizza Nostra makes thin crust pies.

Pizzapie
Our love for pie is as irrational as pi, so whether you're celebrating Pi Day or Pie Day, we hope you enjoy!

Celebrate The Lunar New Year By Eating Like A Dragon

Today marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year, and 2012 is extra special. It’s the Year of the Dragon -- cue drum rolls, gongs, all the bells and whistles. The only Chinese zodiac sign represented by a mythical creature, the dragon is widely considered the most auspicious sign as well. This particularly fortunate year may result in a baby boom in Asia! More immediately, families around the world will enjoy many days of traditional festivities, including some glorious and gluttonous feasts.
 
In Chinese culture, many New Year dishes are considered lucky because their names are homonyms for positive values. The word for green onions sounds like “intelligence, “fish” sounds like “riches,” and “apple” sounds like “peace.” The shapes and colors of food also serve as inspiration. Long noodles are equated with longevity, while the golden color of potstickers and spring rolls evokes wealth. Some associations are little murkier -- who knows why barbecued duck connotes fidelity -- but check out these interesting lists from the Chicago Tribune and Time Out New York. If you’re looking for a full-blown New Year food project, try this recipe for New Year’s Cake (nian gow in Chinese) from San Francisco Chronicle writer Lynne Char Bennett. The chewy stickiness symbolizes a family’s cohesiveness.

Chicken-close-up

Vietnamese New Year treats are delicious as well, and food is an extremely important part of the holiday. In the Vietnamese language to celebrate Tết is to ăn Tết, which literally means "Tết eating." If you celebrate Tết you’re bound to see (and hopefully taste) some bánh tét (sweet or savory bundles of glutinous rice stuffed in banana leaves) or mứt tét (dried fruit candies):

Vietnewyear

In Korea the first day of the lunar calendar is called Seoul-nal and the must-eat dish is a rice cake soup called tteokguk. The white oval shapes of the rice cakes symbolize a bright and prosperous new year. A common Korean tradition says that one ages another year on this day, rather than one’s birthday. It’s also said that one must eat a bowl of tteokguk to become a year older. Here’s what you’re getting into:
 
Tteokguk-korean-rice-cake-soup-1

So 新年快樂, chúc mừng năm mới and 새해 복 많이 받으세요! Enjoy the many flavors of the Lunar New Year.

Ready...Set...Coffee Break!

TGIF everyone, and happy National Coffee Break Day! On January 20th the National Coffee Association reminds us to take a break and bond with friends and colleagues over a cup of coffee.

The ZeroCater team frequently enjoys coffee in the afternoons from Jackson Place Cafe, a little oasis that’s replete with old-world charm and most importantly, Blue Bottle coffee.

Coffee

A few of us have started ordering a specialty coffee drink with a half dozen names: wet macchiato, cortado, bica pingada, pingo, garoto, cortadito, tallat, trencat, gibraltar or africano. Oliver Strand describes the drink and its origins in a New York Times post called “A Cortado Is Not a Minivan”:

is a coffee drink that sits at the midway point between a macchiato and a cappuccino. It’s about four ounces total — a little less than two ounces of espresso topped with a little more than two ounces of steamed milk — which makes it strong but small, easy to drink quickly and milky enough to seem indulgent.


Most of all, it’s balanced. You taste the coffee. You taste the milk. And if it’s well crafted — the milk stretched (steamed for volume) and spun (steamed for temperature and texture) so that it has the tight bubbles of a latte — it’s deeply satisfying.


Img_20120119_145506
 
Here in the office we also held a little “ugliest mug” contest for our in-house drinks. Nudity inadvertently proved to be a theme.
 
Img_20120119_160506

Are you taking a coffee break yet? No break time is complete without a funny video. Here’s one of our favorites, depicting a particularly outspoken new employee, Terry Tate, Office Linebacker (warning: contains strong language):

YOU KILL THE JOE, YOU MAKE SOME MO’! YOU KNOW THAT, BABY!

Hello 2012, Goodbye Martha and Happy Spaghetti Day

Happy New Year, everyone!

Here at ZeroCater we’re looking forward to another year of sending you meals that cause you to make “many girlish squee-ing sounds” (actual customer quote, names removed to protect the easily excitable).

Over the holidays, being the foodies we are, we noticed there are a lot of food holidays out there. In December alone there was National Cotton Candy Day (December 7), National Pumpkin Pie Day (December 25), and National Cookie Day (December 4), all of which are vastly superior to Microwave Oven Day (December 6) -- wtf? -- and vastly inferior to National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day (December 16). The most interesting food holiday last month was probably National Roast Suckling Pig Day (December 18), while the strangest was arguably National Baking Soda Day (December 30).

In 2012 we’ll be celebrating some of our favorite food holidays here on our blog! Today, dear readers, is National Spaghetti Day.

Fun fact about spaghetti: The world record for largest bowl of spaghetti was set in March 2009 and reset in March 2010 when a Buca di Beppo restaurant in Garden Grove, California, successfully filled a swimming pool with more than 13,780 pounds (6,251 kg) of pasta.

Funny spaghetti-related things: spaghetti cat and The Flying Spaghetti Monster

In other news, The Martha Stewart Show is going off the air in April due to poor ratings. Sorry, Martha. Pretty sure more people would have watched your show if they’d seen the episode where you and Snoop Dogg make mashed potatoes and he teaches you “fo shizzle” and other important vocabulary words: