Today we celebrate one of my favorite appetizers, Nachos. This day is observed annually on November 6th.
Nachos is commonly popular in some restaurants as an appetizer before ordering your entrée and also popular snack food during game days at the ballpark or during picnic gatherings or home parties. It is usually the first snack that goes fast every party because everyone loves it, especially when dipping it on some melted nacho cheese.
Nachos is a Tex-Mex dish from northern Mexico that consists of heated tortilla chips or totopos covered with melted cheese. An elaborated version of the dish includes other ingredients like adding some salsa, sour cream, and jalapeños.
Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya created the dish in 1943. His original version of nachos consisted of fried corn tortilla chips covered with melted cheese and sliced jalapeno peppers. He created a new snack for the soldiers at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass when they arrived at the Victory Club restaurant, having little ingredients in his kitchen after closing for days.
When he was asked what is the dish called since they really loved it, he said “Nacho’s Especiales” after his own nickname. After becoming popular and his recipe was printed in the 1954 St. Anne’s Cookbook, it continued to swiftly spread throughout Texas and the Southwest.
Nowadays, restaurants across the country, serves nachos with different variety of style and toppings, like beef, chicken or seafood, aside from salsa, sour cream, jalapeños, and some guacamole to spice up the dish.
So, today, celebrate this day by having some nachos party with family and friends while watching a game or just simply getting together for a day. Share on social media your favorite recipe using #NationalNachosDay.
1860 Abraham Lincoln elected president
Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.
Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and former Whig representative to Congress, first gained national stature during his campaign against Stephen Douglas of Illinois for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. The senatorial campaign featured a remarkable series of public encounters on the slavery issue, known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln argued against the spread of slavery, while Douglas maintained that each territory should have the right to decide whether it would become free or slave. Lincoln lost the Senate race, but his campaign brought national attention to the young Republican Party. In 1860, Lincoln won the party’s presidential nomination.
In the November 1860 election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Breckinridge and Bell. The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publicly threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abraham-lincoln-elected-president)
