National Cheese Doodle Day!

Today we celebrate National Cheese Doodle Day!  This day is observed annually on March 5th.

If you love cheesy cheese curls, get ready for a flavorful treat and an orange finger.  One of my favorite snacks is the crunchy curls or sometimes the cheese puffs.  It is just so addictingly delicious and even finger-licking good when you try to clean those cheesy flavor powder stuck on your fingers and making them orange in color.

Cheese puffscheese curlscheese ballscheesy puffscorn curls, or corn cheese are a puffed corn snack, coated with a mixture of cheese or cheese-flavored powders. They are manufactured by extruding heated corn dough through a die that forms the particular shape. They may be ball-shaped, curly (“cheese curls”), straight, or irregularly shaped.

Cheese puffs were invented independently by two companies in the United States during the 1930s. According to one account, Edward Wilson noticed strings of puffed corn oozing from flaking machines in the mid-1930s at the Flakall Corporation of Beloit, Wisconsin, a producer of flaked, partially cooked animal feed. He experimented and developed it into a snack.

Cheez Doodles became the most popular brand of the snack on the East Coast. They were invented—or “developed” as he called it—by Morrie Yohai, who was president of the King Kone Company in the Bronx, which he owned with his father and cousin.  Wise Foods was one of the snack companies owned by Borden, and Cheez Doodles were under their wing. Wise Foods has since been bought out several times, but Cheez Doodles continue to be made.

So, today, celebrate this day by grabbing a bag of Cheese Curls and start snacking those delicious cheesy curls to share with friends.  Share on social media using #CheeseDoodleDay.

1946 Churchill delivers Iron Curtain speech

In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.

Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech. Churchill began by praising the United States, which he declared stood “at the pinnacle of world power.” It soon became clear that the primary purpose of his talk was to argue for an even closer “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain—the great powers of the “English-speaking world”—in organizing and policing the postwar world. In particular, he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union. In addition to the “iron curtain” that had descended across Eastern Europe, Churchill spoke of “communist fifth columns” that were operating throughout western and southern Europe. Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II, Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was “nothing which they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.”

(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-delivers-iron-curtain-speech)