Your 16 October food & drink takeaways
On World Food Day, the power of muffins to console a famous wit’s earnest character and how, according to a Nobel Prize winning novelist, ‘meaning to life’ can be found in the walls of a cow’s stomach.
Just some of food & drink delights that 16 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
"Only when everyone enjoys the human right to adequate food will we be able to achieve other human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a blueprint for a more equal and just future for all people everywhere. And we all have a role to play. As consumers, we can exercise rights and call on governments to tackle inequality and poverty, make healthy food choices to increase their availability, reduce food waste and protect the environment."
"Bread has been a vital part of our diets for centuries, transcending borders and cultural difficulties. However, today's consumers are seeking more from their daily bread – they want it to be healthier, more sustainable and more globally inspired. In response, bakers and food producers are embracing a wave of innovation."
National Baking Week (14-20 Oct)
Unofficial
USA: Liqueur Day
Food in writing
Famous Irish novelist, playwright and wit Oscar Wilde was born on this day in 1854.
In one of his most celebrated comedy of manners plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, young man-about-town Algernon reveals his go-to in trying times:
"When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy."
German Nobel Prize winning novelist Gunter Grass – born on this day in 1927 – arrived at a completely different comfort food in his through-the-ages fable The Flounder (an extract cited as one of the top 10 memorable meals in literature by The Guardian):
"When you are feeling cold inside – try the walls of the cow’s second stomach. When you are sad, cast out by all nature, sad unto death, try tripe, which cheers us and gives meaning to life."
Food art of the day
Our Lady of the Fruits of the Earth by pre-Raphaelite English painter Frank Cadogan Cowper, born on this day in 1877.
