Today is National Pepper Pot day.  I had no idea what that even meant and so my search began.  Come to find out a Pepper Pot is a spicy woman who would just as soon finish the plumbing job under the sink than to listen to men argue about how to do it.

For a woman to be called a Pepper Pot is actually a very large compliment.

On another note back when Washington was trying to figure out what to do about the British and his troops were freezing their butts off at Valley Forge they didn’t have a whole lot of food available.  They resorted to eating everything they could find and one of those dishes contained tripe as the main meat.

I have never eaten tripe, but I suppose if I was starving it might just be a good thing to eat.

They put the tripe in a large pot, added water to cover it and started it boiling.  Then they called everyone together and said “Hey dudes, if you want to eat something that will taste good, you best go gather up something to put in this pot of tripe”.  Well, they could have said that, but it doesn’t matter because the troops came through with loads of vegetables they gathered from the local area.  Potatoes, carrots, dried peas, parsnips…you name it…and it was cut up and put into the pot and boiled up.  Lots of pepper was added because that was the main spice they had available.

As the pot simmered  the soup became just like a stew and the men ate it with much enthusiasm, sopping up the juice with biscuits.

We all know the rest of the story as that soup was just the ticket to get them kick started and down they swept upon the British and kicked them out of the country.

My take on the soup theory was that it tasted good because that was all they had to eat.  It made them so angry to have to resort to eating the cows stomach that they decided in order to get out of the fix they were in at Valley Forge they would have to go kick the British’s butts in order to find a better food supply.  Which they did.

So, enjoy the Pepper Pot day!

Bears Butt

Dec. 29, 2012