For National Fortune Cookie Day, July 20th, the perfect drink.

Make it with vodka or rum: The choice is yours. Ganbei!
 
RECIPE: FORTUNE COOKIE COCKTAIL

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

Good luck come with a Fortune Cookie Cocktail? (photo courtesy R A Sushi)

2. PLACE all ingredients except garnish in a cocktail shaker. Shake for 60 seconds.

3. POUR into the glass.

4. GARNISH with the fortune cookie on the rim. If the cookie doesn’t lie well on the rim, serve it on the side. If you have extra fortune cookies, you can break them into smaller pieces and add a few to the center of the top as a garnish.

[3] Taking lollipops to the next level: art. From MolassesCandy.Blogspot.

July 20th is National Lollipop Day.

According to the National Confectioners Association, eating sugar from a stick likely dates to prehistoric man, who licked honey off the stick he used to scrape it from the beehive.

The ancient Arabs, Chinese and Egyptians made fruit and nut confections candied in honey, which may also have been eaten from sticks, owing to the stickiness of the confection.

What we think of as a lollipop may date to Europe in the Middle Ages, when sugar was boiled—creating hard candy—and formed onto sticks as treats for the wealthy. They were the only people who could afford sugar. For that reason, the confection didn’t cross over to the mainstream.

By the 17th century, sugar was plentiful and affordable. In England, boiled sugar (hard candy) treats were popular. The word “lollipop” (originally spelled lollypop) first appears in print in 1784, although it did not always apply to hard candy on a stick.
 
YANKEE INGENUITY: PATENTING THE NAME

It took a while, but in the U.S., on October 13, 1931, the name “Lolly Pop” was officially registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the Bradley Smith Company of New Haven.

The company began to produce Lolly Pops in 1908, but it took years to convince the Patent Office to grant an exclusive right to the name.

Though lollipop is a generic term today, George Smith of the Bradley Smith Company was the first to apply it to hard candy on a stick. He was inspired by the success of a local confection being produced in West Haven called Reynolds Taffy, a chocolate caramel taffy on a stick (the type now made by See’s Candies). The name itself, Lolly Pop, was reportedly inspired by that of a racehorse Smith had seen at a local fair.

Unfortunately, the Patent Office uncovered the old English term, lollipop, from 1784, where it was described as “a hard sweetmeat, sometimes on a stick.” They refused Bradley Smith’s initial registration.

The trademark was finally granted after the company proved that Lolly Pop was an original spelling and its first use. During the long registration battle, other producers used the name freely until the Bradley Smith Company won its patent.

Over the years the term Lolly Pop, and its variant spelling Lollipop, became interchangeable; and so universally used that the trademark could not be maintained (source). (Now you understand “Kleenex Brand Tissues” and “Sanka Brand Coffee” (italics ours).
 
HOW LOLLY POPS WERE MADE

At the Bradley Smith Company, Lolly Pops were produced by cutting off a chunk of warm hard candy and pushing in a stick. This was all done by hand. In the process of inserting the stick, the candy was formed and slightly flattened out by the palm.

Later, Max Buchmuller, a foreman at the company, invented and patented a machine to insert the sticks. The machine featured a continuous chain of split molds, which, when filled and closed, shaped the Lolly Pop. An automated plunger pushed the sticks into the candy.

The first Lolly Pops sold for a penny. Bradley Smith distributed the sweets and around the world, shipping them everywhere from England to China (source).

As lollipops evolved, they were made in shapes, embedded with flower designs (photo #3) or actual flowers, accented with gold leaf, inscribed with endearing expressions, and merged with other candies, like Tootsie Pops. Some artisan lollipops are raised to the level of art (photo #2).

Whether you reach for art or a give-away lolly from the doctor’s office, enjoy National Lollipop Day!
 
 
Watch the Chordettes sing the 1958 hit, “Lollipop.”
  

July 19th is National Daiquirí Day, honoring a rum drink conceived by a mining engineer on a hot Cuban evening in 1898.

Here’s the history of the Daiquirí—named after the town in which it was created—as well as the original Daiquirí recipe.

The Frozen Daiquirí never took off the way the Frozen Margarita has. While it can be made in a blender with ice like any frozen drink, it is more like granita than the velvety-smooth purée that pours forth from a frozen drink machine.

Nor, do we have room in our small apartment to store a frozen drink machine. (But if you do, you can have one for a few hundred dollars—photo #1.)

While there’s nothing like a frozen drink poolside, we also like it as a light summer dessert.

Lacking said frozen drink machine, we’ve had to take the “granita” approach, crushing ice in a blender.

But Ciao Bella suggests another approach: Mix sorbet into your drink. The result: splendid!

You can use any flavor of sorbet. While the most popular frozen drink flavors might be mango or strawberry, we’re particularly fond of Ciao Bella’s Blueberry Passionfruit, Blood Orange (photo #3), and Peach Sangria. (O.K., the mango and strawberry are also great.)

Here’s Ciao Bella’s recipe. If you want a different flavor, e.g. blueberry or mango, use the corresponding fresh fruit and sorbetto.

If you want more sorbet than the recipe calls for, go ahead!
 
 
RECIPE: FROZEN STRAWBERRY DAIQUIRÍ

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. WHISK the ingredients together inn a chilled mixing glass (we kept ours in the freezer until ready to mix).

2. POUR into a serving glass, garnish and serve. If you prefer to use a blender, chill the pitcher in the freezer.
 
 
Variations

[2] If your heart’s desire is a frozen drink machine, you can have one for $329 from Margaritaville Cargo.

[3] Make whatever flavor you like, matching the sorbet to the fresh fruit for muddling and garnish (photo courtesy Ciao Bella Gelato).

[1] Chilled strawberry soup with a drizzle of vanilla yogurt. Here’s the five-minute recipe from Carlsbad Cravings.

[2] Pineapple gazpacho. Here’s the recipe from Urban Accents.

[3] Honeydew-cucumber gazpacho with fresh herbs and green chiles. The recipe is in the article (courtesy Rio Luna).

[4] Rio Luna premium canned chiles (courtesy Rio Luna).

Here’s more history of gazpacho.

Over the centuries, gazpacho has evolved in many directions, in terms of regional ingredients and styles. The blender and food processor have enabled versions with silky textures.

More recently, chilled fruit soup has been called “gazpacho.”

Is every chilled soup gazpacho? Of course not (think of vichyssoise).

Many food terms are adapted for marketing purposes. The category to which this recipe belongs has long been called chilled fruit soup. But Pineapple Gazpacho is more relatable and has more pizzazz than Chilled Pineapple Soup, doesn’t it?

A chilled purée of strawberry soup should not be called gazpacho, any more than a chilled purée of pea soup.

But if your fruit soup contains a variety of ingredients, including herbs, like conventional gazpacho (and the recipe below), we’ll allow it.

Yes, we are the Food Police.
 
 
RECIPE: HONEYDEW & GREEN CHILE GAZPACHO

Prep time is 20 minutes plus overnight marinating.

For a main lunch dish, add some protein with grilled or boiled shrimp or scallops. Supplement with crusty bread and olive oil, or a half sandwich.

In fact, the next time you’re putting shrimp or other seafood on the barbie, grill some extra for another day’s chilled soup garnish. The seafood not only provides popular flavor; it looks great.

You can also serve fruit gazpacho for dessert, enhanced with a scoop of lemon or lime sorbet.

Ingredients For 4 First Courses (1-1/2 Cups Each) or 2 Lunch Dishes

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the melon, cucumbers, mint, cilantro, vinegar and salt in large resealable bag. Refrigerate overnight to marinate.

2. REMOVE herb sprigs from bag. Transfer contents of bag to blender. Process until mixture is almost smooth.

3. ADD the chiles and the remaining ingredients. Blend until completely smooth. Serve chilled.

More recipes on the website.
 
 
MORE CHILLED FRUIT SOUP RECIPES

Wild chiles have been a part of the diet in the Americas since about 7500 B.C.E.

While the first chile may have been domesticated in Bolivia, the oldest known traces of have been found in bowls in Ecuador, dating back 6,100 years.

Chiles were carried to different parts of Latin America, where soil, climate and cross breeding created many different species. Today there are six species of chiles in the genus Capsicum.

But how did we get so many different spellings for the chile? And why are chiles called peppers?

 
And by the way:

Chiles are a fruit, not a vegetable. Here’s the difference between fruits and vegetables.
 
 
ABOUT RIO LUNA

Rio Luna is a brand of the world’s largest producer of green chiles, the U.S.’s largest producer of jalapeños.

The products are USDA certified organic, certified kosher by OU, and non-GMO. As a bonus, chiles are fat-free, low-calorie and low-cholesterol.

Discover more at RioLunaPeppers.com.