Your 14 October food & drink takeaways
The start of UK Coffee Week, the start of National Baking Week – and a literary heroine who perfectly embraces both.
Just some of food & drink delights that 14 October brings to the table.
Click on the links for extra helpings.
A curated taster menu of every day’s food & drink associations
Celebration days
2024
"UK Coffee Week {header photo} raises funds for Project Waterfall, the charity that provides clean water, sanitation and education to coffee-growing communities across the world."
2024
National Baking Week (14-20 Oct)
"National Baking Week 2024 was established to celebrate the tradition of baking and the pleasures of creating delicious baked goods. While it is not associated with a specific organisation or historical event, it has grown in popularity and joyful celebration of homemade treats and baking creativity."
"To raise awareness of an indigenous Serbian red wine grape variety and raise the profile of Serbian wines at an international level."
Canada: Thanksgiving Day (second Monday in October)
"“Canadians very much appropriated the traditional Thanksgiving dinner from America. . . The conventional spread of turkey, gravy, potatoes, squash and rolls, with cranberry sauce on the side and pumpkin pie for dessert, is very typical across Canada.”
Latin America: Día de la Raza (Columbus Day)
* Also 12 October depending on country
"A type of food eaten on Dia de la Raza is the hot tamale, which is cornmeal dough wrapped and cooked wih corn or other vegeables. Another traditional food eaten in Costa Rica is Gallo Pinto. Gallo Pinto has rice mixed with black beans, served with sour cream, scrambled eggs and fried plantain."
Unofficial
USA: Dessert Day
Food in writing
1908
English writer E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View – a satirical commentary on the romantic life in Italy and England of Lucy Honeychurch, a young woman growing into the conventions of society – was published on this day.
“Who is she?” he asked the vicar afterwards.
“Cousin of one of my parishioners. I do not consider her choice of a piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if anything, disturbs.”
“Introduce me.”
“She will be delighted. She and Miss Bartlett are full of the praises of your sermon.”
“My sermon?” cried Mr. Beebe. “Why ever did she listen to it?”
When he was introduced he understood why, for Miss Honeychurch, disjoined from her music stool, was only a young lady with a quantity of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going to concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee and meringues."
Food birthdays
1644
English Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania and creator of food and eating aphorisms such as ‘Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it’
1955
American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, the only US chef to operate two three-Michelin star restaurants
"Thomas Keller is known for applying American flavours to French classics."
1987
American vegan chef
