British Yorkshire Pudding Day – 4th February 2024 – On British Yorkshire Pudding Day, the first Sunday of February, this baked pudding is honored for its centuries-long stalwart place in the British food lexicon.
Get ready to raise a steaming goblet of gravy, because the most glorious day of the year is nigh! That’s right, folks, National Yorkshire Pudding Day is upon us, gracing the UK with its eggy, fluffy, and utterly delicious presence on Sunday, February 4th, 2024
As proud Yorkshire folk, we can confidently say: absolutely! that Yorkshire Pudding is truly British. While other parts of the world have adopted their Yorkshire pudding traditions (bless their cotton socks!), the original, the one and only, hails from the rolling hills and hearty appetites of Yorkshire. So, on February 4th, let’s celebrate our culinary heritage and give the Yorkshire pudding the respect (and gravy) it deserves. For more details on how you can celebrate this delicious food head to Yorkshire Pudd website.
World Nutella Day – 5th February , 2024 – Nutella is a spread flavored with hazelnut and cocoa. First introduced in Italy in 1964, the product is popular throughout the world.
Did you know? World Nutella® Day was established on February 5th, 2007, by Sara Rosso, an American blogger and a Nutella® lover just like you.
She thought Nutella® deserved a worldwide celebration day, and all Nutella® fans agreed!
They began celebrating Nutella® by sharing pictures, ideas, inspiration, and recipes on social media: that’s how World Nutella® Day became a global phenomenon.
But the story doesn’t end here: in 2015, Sara transferred World Nutella® Day to Ferrero (the makers of Nutella®), so that it could live on and grow for years to come. From then on, every year we celebrate fans who share Sara’s love of Nutella on World Nutella® Day.
Valentines Day – 14th February, 2024 – Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14, and we are ready to shower our significant others with love and tokens of our affection. This day of love is celebrated in so many ways, it is always exciting to see what new traditions are included or created year after year.
Some say it began as a wild pagan festival. Others blame Chaucer. But who is Saint Valentine and why do we celebrate him?
The earliest possible origin story of Valentine’s Day is the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Occurring for centuries in the middle of February, the holiday celebrates fertility. Men would strip naked and sacrifice a goat and dog. Young boys would then take strips of hide from the sacrificed animals and use it to whip young women, to promote fertility.
Lupercalia was popular and one of the few pagan holidays still celebrated 150 years after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire.
When Pope Gelasius came to power in the late fifth century he put an end to Lupercalia. Soon after, the Catholic church declared February 14 to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine.
Real Bread Week – 17 to 25 February 2024 – Created and run by the Real Bread Campaign since 2010, #RealBreadWeek is the annual, international celebration of Real Bread and the people behind its rise. Each year, bakeries, baking schools, mills, schools, care homes, youth and other community groups around the world bake special loaves and run classes and other activities. Meanwhile countless people bake at home, some with their children other family members, colleagues or friends, and take to social media with photos of themselves with loaves they’ve baked or bought.
As well as celebrating making Real Bread by hand, Real Bread Week 2024 echoes its origins by inspiring people to dust off and use an underemployed bread machine, or pass it on to someone who will.
According to research carried out in 2023 for independent not-for-profit organisation Recycle Your Electricals, there might be around 1.4 million bread machines going unused in UK homes. Rather than asking anyone to shell out for a new machine, the Real Bread Campaign suggests people find a second-hand one from a trusted source, such as some charity shops or a reputable dealer that tests used electricals before selling.
National Cherry Pie Day – 23rd February 2024 – Observed annually on February 20th, it is National Cherry Pie Day. This is a day for all cherry pie lovers to eat their favorite pie for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. According to the American Pie Council, pie came to America with the first English settlers. The early colonists cooked their pies in long narrow pans calling them “coffyns” like the crust in England. As in the Roman times, the early American pie crusts often were not eaten, but simply designed to hold the filling during baking. It was during the American Revolution that the term crust was used instead of “coffyn”.
Historians believe that the Greeks actually originated pie pastry. The pies during this period were made by a flour-water paste wrapped around meat; this served to cook the meat and seal in the juices. The Romans, sampling the delicacy, carried home recipes for making it (a prize of victory when they conquered Greece).
The early colonists cooked their pies in long narrow pans calling them “coffins” like the crust in England.
We Brits eat millions of pies every year, making them the nation’s ultimate comfort food. So, join us in embracing National Pie Day – yet another fantastic opportunity to celebrate all that’s great about this truly delicious national food!
Pancake Cake/ Shrove Tuesday – 13th February 2024 – Every year, the city of London turns into a pancake haven, with restaurants and homes cooking up delightful variations of the highly addictive batter cakes and crêpes. However, given that this day changes date every year according to Easter, it can be hard to remember when it is, and why exactly we celebrate it.
The ‘shrove’ in Shrove Tuesday comes from the word ‘shrive’ which means ‘absolve’, so the day is intended to be as much about the admission of sins and absolution as it is about eating cooked batter.
Shrove Tuesday is marked annually as the day before Ash Wednesday. It comes from the word ‘shrive’ which means to absolve and is seen as an opportunity to confess to sins before the beginning of Lent.
Colloquially known as Pancake Day, the celebration falls exactly 47 days before Easter Sunday. Therefore, next year Shrove Tuesday is 13th February 2024!
Cornish Pasty Week – 26th February – March 3rd 2024- Cornish Pasty Week returns this year with a brand new initiative raising funds to help alleviate food poverty. Anyone making or selling genuine Cornish pasties is invited to participate by agreeing to donate either a specific amount of money from every Cornish pasty sold during the week, or a fixed lump sum of their choice, to Devon and Cornwall Food Action, a local charity helping to combat food poverty.
In 2023, Cornish Pasty Week introduced the Cornish Pasty Community Fund, with pasty makers raising a whopping £14,500 for a local food redistribution charity.
This year the fund will support a new initiative to encourage cookery within Cornish schools.
Funds raised during Cornish Pasty Week will provide schools across Cornwall and Scilly with the resources they need to offer children regular cooking activities, whether that is to buy equipment and ingredients or to run cooking clubs or other fun food initiatives. Professional pasty makers will also host sessions in schools teaching children how to make Cornish pasties.
Schools will be able to apply for a share of the Community Fund simply by filling in an online form, saying how much money they need and what it will be used for. The Association will select the winning bids against a set of criteria. Schools can register their interest HERE.
The Cornish Pasty Community Fund is generated by anyone who makes or sells Cornish pasties donating a specific amount of money from every pasty sold during Cornish Pasty Week. The minimum donation is 1p per pasty.
Source: National Day Sustain Web Cornish Pasty Association Yorkshire Pud Nutella National Geographic Arments Pie & Mash Sky History
