What is your favorite snack? In Texas when I was growing up everybody would order a coke for their drink, only to be asked “Do you want a Dr Pepper, root beer, or a Coca-Cola? This shows my age because we went on “coke dates”! Even today we ask if someone wants to stop at a drive-thru for a coke, regardless of what they want to drink.
I found some interesting facts when I begin to think about this Southern way of thinking.
Of interest, Charles Elmer Doolin was a candy maker from San Antonio, Texas, during the
Depression. He got hooked on the first local version of a fried corn chip…the Frito.
Mr. Doolin promptly bought the recipe and the business, making it his life’s work to perfect the flavor of Fritos. After varying the recipe, he created his own hybrid corn, and developed a conveyor-belt manufacturing unit to make the chips more efficiently. Along the way, he also invented the Cheeto.
In 1955, he opened the Casa de Fritos restaurants. One was in Disneyland and the other in Dallas.
Pix of Frito Pie: Recipes developed for the Frito, including one of my favorite “go to” dish, Frito Chili Pie, which was invented by his mother. Ironically, Mr. Doolin was a healthy eater…a vegetarian who avoided fat and salt.
Now for Dr Pepper which is the oldest carbonated soft drink among popular
soft drinks in the United States. The unique Dr Pepper mix originated in Waco, Texas at a small town drugstore called Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store. Most people agree Charles Alderton, the pharmacist at Morrison’s, created the Dr Pepper mixture while working. He spent a lot of time mixing fruit syrups and coming up with new flavors for their carbonated soda machine. He later named his creation, containing 23 different flavors, Dr Pepper.
Px on right of Morrisons Drug: The drink became so popular that the drug store owner, couldn’t keep up with the demand. Every establishment that served soda fountain drinks wanted his Dr Pepper syrup. The period in ‘Dr Pepper’ would later be removed.’ While Alderton was a brilliant pharmacist, he had no desire to take the Dr Pepper drink any further and handed it over to Morrison, the drug store owner, and a man by the name of Robert Lazenby. He was a professional beverage chemist and he and Morrison subsequently worked to improve the drink and take it even further in the market. Due to the drink’s colossal success the two started what we now know as the Dr Pepper Company.
The real defining moment was at the 1904 World’s Fair when Lazenby and his son-in-law J.B. O’Hara graced the crowds with the Dr Pepper drink. Nearly 20 million people showed up to the fair and tried the addictive drink. Over the years the drink went global, emerging on the market around the world. It also held many different marketing slogans like ‘the friendly Pepper-Upper’ and ‘King of Beverages’.
At one point Dr Pepper sued Coca-Cola for trademark infringement when they came out with a Dr.Pibb, which was not only similar in name but tasted similar to Dr Pepper. Coca-Cola was forced to change the name to Mr Pibb, a drink you can still buy today. Now you can enjoy the Dr Pepper flavor with a hint of vanilla or with reduced sugar, called Dr Pepper Zero, which was invented in the United Kingdom. The actual flavors in the Dr Pepper drink are said to be kept in two different vaults. The top secret information is a mystery that still pulls at the curiosity of Dr Pepper lovers today.
You can still visit the Dr Pepper Factory in the small town of Waco, Texas, for a guide through the
many stages of Dr Pepper’s history. The now nationally known soda started in this unlikely city which still cherishes the drink to this day.
What is your favorite snack? Do you ever drink Dr. Pepper and Fritos or Cheetos together?
To one lucky reader who leaves a message, I will give you an eBook copy of my newest Kasota Spring Romance on Amazon or a $10.00 Bath & Body Works gift certificate.
We had such a great special week about Spuds and Spurs, and it intrigued me to learn more about the food staple we all grew up on. It’s my go-to starchy vegetable.
A potato disease commonly known as the Potato Blight destroyed potato crops across Europe which led to the Irish Potatoes Famine. In 1845 from 1/3 to 1/2 of the cultivated potato crops were lost. The destruction continued the following year when 3/4 of the crops were destroyed the first report of starvation death came into existence. The effect of the failure of potato crops was felt throughout Europe but it was devastating in Ireland in particular since over three million Irish people were totally dependent on potatoes for food. Fortunately, what caused the fungus that created the blight is now totally eradicated. I’d show you some pictures of what the blight did to the potatoes, but they would have to be blurred out because they are so ghastly. It wasn’t until 2013 that the true strain of the virus that caused the crop failure was identified. It was HERB-1.
I was flipping through an old book about the Oregon desert the other day when a photo caught my eye of a vine climbing up the side of an old cabin.
I’m a coffee drinker, as were many of the folks who settled the west. Pioneers, cowboys, ranchers, farmers, miners and townsfolk all loved coffee, but the process of making it wasn’t as simple as it is today. Green beans were roasted in a skillet over a fire, then put into a cloth bag and crushed with a heavy object. The grounds were dropped into a pot of water and boiled. The roasting beans had to be tended to carefully, because if one bean burnt, the flavor of it ruined the entire batch. Home roasted coffee could be quite foul if the roasting process went amiss.
Arbuckle developed a special glazing process using egg and sugar to preserve the flavor of the beans, and then bought the rights to a patented packaging system and began selling roasted coffee beans in one-pound paper bags. By 1881, his company was operating 85 coffee roasters. His coffee was billed as the “coffee that won the west”.
helped them do that. It also kept their insides warm and helped wash down meals. A camp cook usually kept several pots of coffee going at once, and it wasn’t uncommon to leave the old grounds in the pot and simply add new. One camp cook wrote that he used about 175 pounds of beans a month.
Tea: The first Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, or A&P, opened in 1859 on Vesey Street in NYC. Its rows of tea bins contained teas from around the world. By 1880, there were 95 A&P stores from Boston to Milwaukee.
In my neck of the woods, the Texas Panhandle, we celebrate New Year’s Day with a larrupin’ serving of black-eyed peas and cornbread. When I was growing up, we also had corned beef and cabbage. Now, I confess that Mama won out. Daddy, being from the North, said black-eyed peas were thrown to the hogs, but I guess to keep peace she added mincemeat pie to the holiday menu. Such wonderful memories.
