Tag Archives: trivia

“He Who Goes to Bed Hungry Dreams of Pancakes!”

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pancakes1Guess what?  It’s National Maple Syrup Day!  I know, right?  Yesterday it was “Chocolate Covered Anything Day” and today it’s “National Maple Syrup Day.”  With heartfelt apologies to the partridge, the pear tree and the swimming swans, I think this week’s line up might be a little more fun than the 12 days of Christmas (except for maybe the golden rings…)

At any rate, National Maple Syrup Day, whether real or make-believe, is very good news for me because my cupboard is bare, and now I have the perfect excuse to pull a “breakfast for dinner” maneuver and serve up pancakes!  (This, by the way, buys me a couple of hours of celebrity status with my girls).  In honor of the event, I pulled together a little pancake trivia for ya’:

Did you know…

Aunt Jemima pancake mix was the first pancake mix sold commercially?  (Yep.  It debuted in St. Joseph, Missouri and became popular at the Colmbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.)

Get this…

The world’s largest pancake breakfast was in 1999.  71,233 pancakes served 40,000 people.  (Oh man.  I just thought about all of the dishes.  My head might explode.)

Here’s a little tidbit for ya…

The first pancake dates back to early Greece.  (Opa!)

Guess what?

It is common in France to touch the handle of the frying pan and to make a wish while the pancake is turned, holding a coin in one hand.  (If I wake up tomorrow with cap toe Lanvin ballerina flats, you’ll know this really works!!!)

And consider this…

The world’s largest pancake was cooked in England in 1994.  It weighed three tons and had an estimated two million calories.  (Jillian Michaels arrived on the scene the next day to make everyone do a “last chance workout.”)    🙂

Check it out…

Pancakes are also known as: griddlecakes, flapjacks, wheatcakes and flannelcakes.  Crepes and blins also fall into the “pancake” category.  (In my house, syrup is also known as “sauce.”  Ketchup and Ranch dressing also fall into the “sauce” category).

Size this up…

One pancake aficionado actually ran a marathon while continually tossing a pancake for three hours, 2 minutes and 27 seconds.  (I wonder if he was wearing a windbreaker circa 1985?)

Please pass the maple syrup…

I’m Full of Beans

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I love jelly beans. The ORIGINAL jelly beans, not the Jelly Bellies. (You can underscore that for effect.) The problem with this little love of mine, is that decent, traditional jelly beans are very hard to find. Occasionally I get lucky and find a large bag of Brach’s Original jelly beans at a random drug store, and I try to stock up, but they never seem to last as long as I’d like. And the best, absolute best, are produced by See’s Candy, but these beans are only sold during the Easter season, and they only come in very small bags, so you have to order like 100 if you’re shooting to satisfy cravings throughout the remaining 11 months of the year.

My girls and I always jump into little boutique candy stores in our version of a “Holy Grail filled with jelly beans” quest, and though we can find Jelly Bellies in every flavor from cherry to vomit (which my Harry Potter groupie thinks is a riot), we can never just find the good old-fashioned beans. This creates some sort of existential candy dilemma for me. I want to fall to my knees and scream to confectioners everywhere, “When did the world get so complicated? Can’t we just hold on to one last simple thing? Does everything have to be doctored, enhanced and super-sized (or in the case of the jelly bean, miniaturized)? Is there nothing left that is pure? Why is this happening? Where is this going? Am I all alone in my search for the original jelly bean?”

Yeah…I should have gone to Juilliard.

At any rate, in the absence of actual jelly beans, what my daughters and I have accumulated instead is jelly bean trivia.  Apparently we’re full of beans as well as useless information!

Did you know…

My friend the jelly bean hails from a Middle Eastern confection known as the Turkish Delight, which was also made of soft jelly and coated in confectioner’s powder.

Get this…

The earliest known appearance of the jelly bean was during the American Civil War, when William Schrafft, of Boston, led a program to send jelly beans to soldiers.

Try this on for size…

The standard flavor of a red jelly bean is cherry. Yellow? Why lemon, of course.

And for your next Trivial Pursuit party…

In U.S. slang in the early ’20s, a “jelly bean” was a young man who made great efforts to dress very stylishly, presumably to attract women because he had nothing else by which to recommend himself.

Here’s one for ya’…

The outside of a jelly bean is basically the same colored hard candy coating found on a Jordan almond (which I also love!).

No way…

It takes seven to 21 days to make a single Jelly Belly.

Get ready…

April 22 is National Jelly Bean Day! That’s only eight months away!  Yip-Yip-Yippppppeeeeeeeee! (And I’m not even on a sugar high!)

Holy cow…

16 billion jelly beans are produced each year before the commencement of Easter festivities.

You don’t say…

Though everyone knows Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans, who knows Ronald Reagan started eating jelly beans while trying to kick his smoking habit? He never gave them up (the beans, not the cigs).

And now, dear friends, you can never say you don’t know beans about beans!