When it comes to pie, it’s considered an American dessert icon and in fact, a well-known quote can end with “…as American as Apple Pie.”  However, there’s more to the humble pie than you may think, so I present to you 10 Things to Know About Pie.

The  Romans Have It: The first pie recipe was published by the Romans and was for a rye-crusted goat cheese and honey pie.

Let It All Hang Out “Coffyn-Style”: The crust of the pies in England use to be referred to as ‘coffyn’. There was actually more crust than filling. Often these pies were made using fowl and the legs were left to hang over the side of the dish and used as handles.

Mince Me Out: In 1644, Oliver Cromwell banned the eating of mince pie on Christmas, declaring it a pagan form of pleasure. The ban remained in effect for 16 years.

Can I Have Eggs with my Pie?: Pie as a dessert is a relatively recent development – in the 19th century fruit pies were more commonly a breakfast food.

No Glory for Ice Cream: At one time it was against the law to serve ice cream on cherry pie in Kansas.

The Great Pretender: Libby’s canned pumpkin was introduced to America in 1929. Libby’s is not actually pumpkin but another kind of squash called a Dickinson that also has orange flesh.

Rumor Has It: It is rumored that the Apple Marketing Board of New York used slogans such as “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” and “as American as apple pie”, and thus “was able to successfully ‘rehabilitate’ the apple as a popular comestible” in the early 20th century when prohibition outlawed cider production.

A Pie By Any Other Name: Boston Cream Pie is actually a cake; cheesecake is actually a pie (a tart, technically).

That’s a Lot of Pie: If you lined up the number of pies sold at U.S. grocery stores during Thanksgiving, they would span more than half the globe.

Apple Pie is Top Dog: One out of four Americans prefer apple pie, followed by pumpkin or sweet potato (17%), anything chocolate (14%), lemon meringue (11%) and cherry (10%)

It’s easy to lose a sense of time on YouTube, especially when you run into some hilarious videos that revolve around food.  Check out some of really funny finds below and enjoy and be sure to check out the original Funny Food Videos That Will Make You Giggle by clicking here!

They dined, they wrote and were voted the most helpful.  Congratulations to our top 3 winners for October’s Menuism Restaurant Reviewer Contest. Between the 3 of them, they garnered 100+ helpful votes.  Wow!  This trio definitely knows their stuff and apparently, many of you agreed.  Hat’s off to them and if you’d like to keep up with their reviews, check out their profiles below.

sunshyne76 from Corona, CA

Food_Posse_Miami from Miami, FL

Goodeatin from Miami, FL

As you can see, all three of our winners also received some prize money and if you’d like a chance to compete, than be sure to click this link to get more info on the November Menuism Restaurant Reviewer Contest. Good luck and maybe, in a month, we’ll be announcing you as winner as well.

More than 400 years ago cattle ranching was introduced to the Rio Grande do Sul region of Brazil. Cowboys, called Gauchos herded these cattle, and like the cowboys of Texas created a new style of cooking. It is their way of cooking, churrasco (shoo-rhas’co), that has inspired traditions carried on worldwide today. Since they had no way of preserving food, the gauchos would gather together after butchering a cow, and skewer and cook the large portions of meat immediately over a wood burning fire. Originally the standard formula for Brazilian style barbecue was to coat meats in coarse salt.

The meat would then sit for about 30 minutes to absorb the salt before being cooked.  Later a salt-water baste was used to keep meats moist during the open fire cooking process. Beef was typically never seasoned. The slow-cooked meat basted in its own juices and resulted in tender, flavorful steaks.  Poultry and lamb, however are spiced with a rich marinade the night before cooking.

The popularity of Brazilian Barbecue has lead to the founding of dozens of restaurants, popping up all over the world. Churrasco, which is also referred to as Brazilian barbeque,  is usually served “Rodizio” ou “espeto corrido” (all-you-can-eat). Waiters carry huge cuts of meat on steel spits from table to table, and carve off slices onto your plate (use the tongs to grab the meat slice and don’t touch the knife edge with your silverware to avoid dulling the edge).

Traditionally, you are given a small wooden block colored green on one side and red on the other. When you’re ready to eat, put the green side up. When you’re too stuffed to even tell the waiter you’ve had enough, put the red side up. Most churrasco restaurants (churrascarias) also serve other types of food, so it is safe to go there with a friend that is not really fond of meat. Churrascarias are definitely not vegetarian/vegan friendly restaurants and make sure that when you dine at a Brazilian BBQ steakhouse that you plan on eating lightly, if at all, before or after your meal.  This is a protein fest that’s definitely going to knock you for a loop if you’re not prepared.

Ready to get your meat on?  Take a look at a listing below of some Churrascarias to check out for yourself.

Churrascaria Riodizio Tribeca
221 W Broadway
New York, NY 10013
(212) 925-6969

Espetus Churrascaria
1686 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 552-8792

Fogo de Chao
133 N. La Cienega Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
(310) 289-7755

Picanha Brazilian Grill
501 Castor Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19149
(215) 743-4647

Tucanos Brazilian Grill
110 Central Ave SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(505) 246-9900

It’s Turkey Time and time to give thanks for the November Menuism Restaurant Review Contest?  After all, how often do you have the chance to make some money just by writing about your fun and maybe, not so fun restaurant outings?  Three chances to win and if you’re top dog, you win a cool $100.  That’s a nice bit of change that can go towards your holiday shopping.  So check out that new restaurant you’ve always wanted to dine at or re-visit old favorites.  Afterwards, put fingers to keyboard and tell us all about that restaurant, from meal to ambiance to service.  We want to know it all.

Now there’s even more chances to win with both 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes that are available.   The criteria for winning entries will be on how helpful other Menuism’ers find your reviews to be.  So what makes a review helpful?  Check out a past Menuism article called 5 Tips Towards Writing a Great Review for some ideas or you can even  emulate some of our Featured Reviewers, who have done a fantastic job sharing their dining stories with all of us.

In the end, it’s all about quality, not quantity.  So how can you improve your chances? Things to do could include giving dish reviews and uploading pictures and when combined with your informative review, those will definitely get you those “helpful votes.”  You can even encourage friends to sign up to Menuism.com and vote for your reviews or even contribute some of their own.

Now it’s time to get out, dine out and than get your fingers a-typing.  With a total of $170.00 in prize money, think of what you can do with any part of those dollars  Enjoy a Sunday brunch.   Purchase a lovely bottle of wine.  Get that new kitchen gadget you’ve been eyeing. You won’t have a chance of winning, if you don’t even try, so let’s see what you got.

Menuism Restaurant Review Contest

How to Enter:

• Dine out and than post your restaurant review to the Menuism website.  There are no limits to the number of reviews per month. No need to manually submit your reviews to the contest

Restaurant Review Criteria:

• Winners will be decided based on the number of helpful votes for the reviews they’ve written in the given month with awards going to the top 3 users with the most helpful votes.  Click here to see if you’ve made it to the Leader Board and click here to get more info about how the Leader Board works!
• Reviews must have 50 words or more to qualify.

Announcement of Winner and Prize:

• After the contest due date, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place Winners will be  announced the first week of the following month.

• PRIZES:
  • 1st: $100
  • 2nd: $50
  • 3rd: $20
  • Profile Badge for Each Winner!

Rules:

• Reviews that are considered inappropriate, vulgar or lacking information will not be considered.
• Winners who do not claim their prize within 7 days of the announcement of the winner will forfeit prize money, but not the award.

Ready to get started? Sign up for your free Menuism account and start writing reviews!

November is now here, so we’d definitely love to see all of your great quality reviews. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line at abby@menuism.com.

By Abby C. Abanes
Menuism Community Manager

Minutes, Hours and Days are flying by and soon the October Menuism Restaurant Review Contest will be history.  If you haven’t already, be sure to post reviews about your latest restaurant outings and encourage friends, family, co-workers or whoever you’d like to give a helpful vote to each of your reviews.  The three top Menuism Reviewers with the most votes can win cash prizes.  To refresh your memory about the rules, click here! So come on, get those fingers a typing because how often can you truly say that eating out can actually pay you.   The October Menuism Restaurant Review Contest officially ends October 31, 2009.

According to the Food Timeline Web, food historians have yet to pinpoint exactly where the name of the cupcake originated. There are two theories. One, the cakes were originally cooked in cups. Cupcakes were convenient because they cooked much quicker than larger cakes. When baking was done in hearth ovens, it would take a long time to bake a cake, and the final product would often be burned. A practice soon developed where the cakes would be baked in a variety of small containers, including tea cups.  Gem pans, early muffin tins, soon became common in households around the turn of the 20th Century and cupcakes were eventually baked directly in those as well.

The second theory is that the ingredients used to make the cupcakes were measured out by the cup. Some say that the first “cup cakes” weren’t even baked in cupcake pans — they were simply regular-sized cakes. It was all about the measuring, but there was a shift from weighing out ingredients when baking to measuring out ingredients. It has to do with the way ingredients were measured in late 19th century America.

Back then, most ingredients were measured by weight on a balance scale, but measuring ingredients by cups replaced that system when it was found that cup measurement saved time. A cup could just be dipped into the flour or sugar instead of having to go to the trouble of weighing each ingredient. Interestingly enough, cupcakes were sometimes called “number” cakes, because they were easy to remember by the measurements of ingredients it took to create them: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda.

Would a cupcake by any other name taste just as sweet? It would if it were called a fairy cake. In Great Britain however they are known as fairy cakes because they are the perfect size for a group of fairies to pleasantly enjoy. Since their creation, cupcakes have become a pop culture trend in the culinary world. They have spawned dozens of bakeries devoted entirely to them. While chocolate and vanilla remain classic favorites, fancy flavors such as raspberry meringue and espresso fudge can be found on menus. In the end, who cares who they came to be. We’re all just thankful that they are!

Looking to get your cupcake fix?  Then check out some of these cupcake bakeries that will hopefully put a smile on your face.

2 Girls and a Cupcake
140 SE 1 Ave
Miami, FL 33131
(305) 373-8001

Little Cupcake Bakeshop
9102 Third Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11209
(718) 680-4465

Saint Cupcake
407 NW 17th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 473-8760

Sweet Pockets Cupcakes
4338 Paces Ferry Rd
Atlanta, GA 30339
(770) 431-6611

Vanilla Bake Shop
512 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 458-6644

Menuism reviewers are truly awesome! Whether they found an unexpected tasty gem of a restaurant or took it for the team after having a terrible meal, we truly applaud all their efforts in giving us the scoop on where we should be spending our hard-earned money on. On that note, I’d love to introduce you to those reviewers who we feel really contribute quality content to the site as well as quality information to fellow Menuism’ers. Our Featured Reviewer today is ninathomas from California.

I’m a wife and mother who lives in Corona,CA. I’ve been a teacher for 10 years, mostly middle school, but currently teach in a women’s prison.

1. How did you find out about Menuism?

Menuism sponsored the IE Foodies Meetup Group, where I am a member and Asst. Organizer.

2. What about Menuism first appealed to you?

I like that its regular folk like me just giving their opinion on restaurants.

3. What restaurant did you write your first review about?

Sushi Palms in Moreno Valley, CA

4. What is your food philosophy?

While good food is worth every calorie, great food is packed with flavor without packing on the pounds!

5. What are your favorite restaurants?

Shogun Kitchen, Mimi’s, Buca Di Beppo

6. What are your favorite cuisines?

Sushi, Indian, Italian

7. What are your favorite comfort foods?

Chicken Pot Pie, Meatloaf, and Garlic Mashed Potatoes

8. What is the best meal you ever ate and why?

The dinner I reviewed at Sensi. It was the most incredible food I’ve ever tasted.

9. Do you have any favorite cookbooks (if any)?

The Cook Yourself Thin Cookbook and some old cookbook I inherited from my mom that no longer has covers and is probably 40 years old.

10. What words of encouragement would you give to first time Menuism reviewers?

Share your experience, just how you see it! Don’t get caught up in trying to sound like a “foodie.” You’d be surprised how many people will apprecitate the same features of the food and service that you do.

If you’d like to be able to keep up with ninathomass reviews, click here to check out her profile!

If there is a Menuism reviewer who has really helped you make great dining choices and you’d like to see him or her be a Featured Reviewer, than be sure to message me or send me an email at abby@menuism.com.

By Abby C. Abanes
Menuism Community Manager

Have you ever had an experience where you ate at a restaurant and really enjoyed a particular dish, returned and only to find it no longer on the menu?  There could be a lot of reasons why that dish is MIA, but these days, more restaurants are focusing on creating seasonal menus. Simply, the dishes will change according to the time of the year due to the availability of certain ingredients.  Although it is possible to get strawberries in the winter and squash in the spring, you really get the most flavor and nutritional value from foods that are in season; hence, winter strawberries will not be as sweet and enticing as during the spring/summer months.

If you really think about it, seasons form the natural backdrop for eating. Stop for a second and envision a vegetable garden in the dead of winter.  Now imagine this same garden on a sunny, summer day.  When looking at this side-by-side comparison of these two seasons, it’s quite clear that a delicate strawberry plant probably would suffer in colder temperatures, while the hearty squash may fare a little better.  Today, it’s really easy for us to forget about seasons when we eat because modern food processing and worldwide distribution has made food available all year long.  What we find on our grocery shelves in July would be the same things we’d find in December, but is that really that an advantage? For some yes, but not as much for those who enjoy savoring the season’s best at their peak of flavor.

Don’t despair if that favorite dish of yours is gone.  It just means that the Chef really cares about the food that he or she wants to present to you and would rather please, than disappoint your palate.  It doesn’t mean that the dish won’t return at a more opportune time.  If a restaurant doesn’t have a seasonal menu, here are some things for you to keep in mind when ordering.  The availability of any of the fruits and vegetables below are still quite dependent upon where in the world you live, and what is available at your own market. At least, it’s a good start and will hopefully, make you more aware of the quality of ingredients that show up on your plate.

Spring:

• Apricots (start)
• Artichokes
• Arugula
• Asparagus
• Beets
• Carrots
• Chard and other greens (particularly in colder regions)
• Cherries (seasons starts some places at the end of spring)
• Fava beans
• Fennel
• Fiddleheads
• Garlic scapes/green garlic
• Grapefruit
• Green onions/scallions
• Greens (particularly in colder regions)
• Kohlrabi
• Kumquats (end)
• Leeks (end)
• Lemons
• Lettuce
• Morels
• Nettles
• Spring onions
• Navel oranges (end)
• Parsley
• Pea greens
• Peas (garden, snap, snow, etc.)
• Radishes
• Rhubarb
• Scallions/green onions
• Spinach
• Strawberries
• Turnips

Summer:

• Apples (late summer)
• Apricots (early summer)
• Avocados
• Basil
• Beets
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Boysenberries
• Cantaloupes
• Carrots
• Chard
• Cherries
• Chiles, fresh
• Corn
• Cucumbers

Autumn:

• Apples
• Artichokes (second crop)
• Arugula
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Broccoli raabe, rapini
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celeriac/celery root
• Celery
• Chard
• Cranberries
• Edamame
• Eggplant (early fall)
• Fennel
• Figs
• Garlic
• Grapes (early fall)
• Green beans (early fall)
• Horseradish
• Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes
• Kale
• Kohlrabi (late fall)
• Leeks
• Lemongrass
• Lettuce
• Limes
• Mushrooms (wild)
• Okra (early fall)
• Onions
• Parsnips
• Pears
• Peppers (early fall)
• Persimmons
• Pomegranates
• Potatoes
• Pumpkins
• Quinces
• Radicchio
• Radishes (all types)
• Rapini
• Rutabaga
• Salsify
• Scallions
• Shallots
• Shelling beans (early fall)
• Sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes
• Sweet potatoes
• Turnips
• Winter squash

Winter:

• Beets
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Cabbage
• Cardoons
• Carrots (storage)
• Cauliflower
• Celeriac/celery root
• Celery
• Clementines
• Escarole
• Fennel
• Grapefruit
• Horseradish
• Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes
• Kale
• Kiwi
• Kohlrabi
• Kumquats (late)
• Leeks
• Lemons
• Mandarins
• Onions (storage)
• Oranges
• Parsnips
• Pommelos
• Potatoes (storage)
• Radishes (large varieties)
• Rutabaga
• Salsify
• Shallots (storage)
• Sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Tangerines
• Winter squash

It’s easy to lose a sense of time on YouTube, especially when you run into some hilarious videos that revolve around food.  Check out some of really funny finds below and enjoy!