What kinds of crackers to put in your food storage Bread sticks, chips, crisps, crackers or pretzels, all are worthy of storage in the prepper's pantry! You need only worry about consuming too many crackers, such as saltines, if water is in scarce supply.Check the expiration date and pack the kinds of crackers you love. Cracked pepper crackers Black pepper is one of the world's most popular spices. It adds just the right amount of kick to a variety of foods without overshadowing their flavors. The reason you can’t get a straight answer for all crackers Randy is they are all made with different ingredients and have different nutritional values. White crackers like Saltine crackers are not a good option, brown, wholewheat may be better but still high in carbs so you won’t be able to have many. On the other hand, something like Dr.
Christmas crackers are festive table decorations that make a snapping sound when pulled open, and often contain a small gift and a joke. They are part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Commonwealth countries such as Australia (where they are sometimes known as bon-bons), Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.
A cracker consists of a segmented cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper with a prize in the middle,[1] making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled apart by two people, each holding an outer chamber, causing the cracker to split unevenly and leaving one person holding the central chamber and prize.[1] The split is accompanied by a mild bang or snapping sound produced by the effect of friction on a shock-sensitive, chemically impregnated card strip (similar to that used in a cap gun).[1] One chemical used for the friction strip is silver fulminate.[2]
Tradition[edit]
Crackers are typically pulled at the Christmas dinner table or at parties. In one version of the cracker tradition, the person with the larger portion of cracker empties the contents from the tube and keeps them. In another, each person has their own cracker and keeps its contents regardless of whose end they were in. Typically these contents are a coloured paper hat, a small toy, a small plastic model or other trinket, and a motto, a joke, a riddle or piece of trivia on a small strip of paper.[3] The paper hats, with the appearance of crowns, are usually worn when eating Christmas dinner. The tradition of wearing festive hats is believed to date back to Roman times and the Saturnalia celebrations, which also involved decorative headgear.[1]
Christmas crackers are also associated with Knut's parties, held in Sweden at the end of the Christmas season.
History[edit]
The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of cracker bonbons and the pulling of crackers from 1847.[4]
Tom Smith[edit]
Tradition tells of how Tom Smith (1823–1869) of London invented crackers in 1847.[5][6] He created the crackers as a development of his bon-bon sweets, which he sold in a twist of paper (the origins of the traditional sweet-wrapper). As sales of bon-bons slumped, Smith began to come up with new promotional ideas. His first tactic was to insert love messages into the wrappers of the sweets (similar to fortune cookies).[7]
Smith added the 'crackle' element when he heard the crackle of a log he had just put on a fire.[7][8] The size of the paper wrapper had to be increased to incorporate the banger mechanism, and the sweet itself was eventually dropped, to be replaced by a trinket: fans, jewellery and other substantial items.[9] The new product was initially marketed as the Cosaque (French for Cossack),[9] but the onomatopoeic 'cracker' soon became the commonly used name, as rival varieties came on the market.
The other elements of the modern cracker—the gifts, paper hats and varied designs—were all introduced by Tom Smith's son, Walter Smith, to differentiate his product from the rival cracker manufacturers which had suddenly sprung up.[8]
Tom Smith merged with Caley Crackers in 1953.
A memorial water fountain to Tom Smith and his family stands in Finsbury Square, London.[10][11]
Art[edit]
Do Graham Crackers Expire
A Christmas cracker is the subject of The Party Favor, an oil painting by American artist Norman Rockwell.[12][13] The painting appeared as cover art for The Saturday Evening Post on 26 April 1919.[14]
Record[edit]
The longest Christmas cracker pulling chain consisted of 1081 people and was achieved by The Harrodian School in London on 10 December 2015.[15]
Flight restrictions[edit]
Passengers on commercial flights in and to the United States are explicitly prohibited from carrying Christmas crackers on board or in checked baggage.[16] In the United Kingdom, rules vary by airline and airport.[17]
References[edit]
- ^ abcdMcAlpine, Fraser (7 December 2011). 'Part 3: Crackers'. A Very British Christmas. BBC America. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
- ^'Christmas Crackers USA'. Archived from the original on 14 December 2016. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- ^Rarely, they can be much more substantial. In 2009, Harrod's offered a version of Christmas cracker retailing at $1,000: 'Harrods Luxury 6 Christmas Cracker Collection: Bling it up this festive season!'
- ^OED, Second edition, 1989; online version November 2010.. Retrieved 23 December 2010. Earlier version first published in New English Dictionary, 1893.
- ^Peter Kimpton (2005) Tom Smith's Christmas crackers: an illustrated history, Tempus ISBN0-7524-3164-1
- ^Margaret Baker (1992) Discovering Christmas customs and folklore: a guide to seasonal rites, p.72, Osprey Publishing ISBN0-7478-0175-4
- ^ abFletcher, Damien (22 December 2011). 'Christmas traditions: The history behind crackers, mistletoe, turkey, stockings, tinsel, mince pies and more'. Daily Mirror. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
- ^ ab'History of the Christmas Cracker'. History. Tom Smith Crackers. Archived from the original on 27 August 2013. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
- ^ abCallow, Simon (2009). Dickens' Christmas. London: Frances Lincoln. p. 138. ISBN978-0711230316.
- ^'London Christmas Past: The Invention Of The Christmas Cracker' (5 December 2012) Londonist
- ^'How Finsbury Square Gave The World A Christmas Tradition' (5 December 2014) Londonist
- ^'Wikiart.org, Norman Rockwell, The Party Favor'. Wikiart.org, Visual Art Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
- ^'The Party Favor'. ARC (Art Renewal Center). Retrieved 20 December 2018.
- ^'Saturday Evening Post cover, April 26, 1919'. Best Norman Rockwell Art. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 20 December 2018.
- ^Guinness World Records; online version.
- ^'What Can I Bring?'. Transportation Security Administration. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
- ^'Flying with Christmas crackers 2018: Find out if your airline will let you travel with the festive faves this Xmas'. APH (Airport Parking and Hotels). Retrieved 7 March 2019.
External links[edit]
Media related to Christmas crackers at Wikimedia Commons
So last year I finished off one box. This year I hadnt really bothered the other two boxes (the kind that have four long narrow packs of crackersinside the box)...
Then recently I went to eat some from a breaker pack in one of those remaining two boxes....
I suppose they were just slightly 'expired' (by the MFG Standards anyways) at the time of purchase....
And eating them wasnt even possible (despite having toppings worth roughing it for all ready to go), as they tasted like... paint.
Not quite as bad as oil based paint, at least, nor quite like epoxy paint (which I surmise has no taste as its such a perfectly hard material), butdefinitely like 3 day dried latex acrylic paint.
So naturally I decided to dump each breaker pack into the fire, as the cats surely wouldnt walk within five feet of them...
And they were unfit for the compost setup as they have salt...
And I'll tell ya, they would probably make for halfway decent firestarter kindling, as you'd think I had just dumped shards of pine particle board onthe fire when I poured the 7 breaker packs into it rather quick like... So naturally I got to wondering, maybe that's exactly how dried latex paint would burn...
How Long Do Crackers Last
Meaning of course I went and grabbed a big 'slap' of dried latex paint and threw it in there (the sort of patch you peel out of a paint bucket afterits fully dried for a few days, and then left to dry in the sun for a few more)...Do Saltine Crackers Expire
I snip you not, I seriously had this most perfect specimen of latex paint on hand for this most ultimately serious example of a controlled scienceexperiment ever contemplated... So I threw it in there...
Could still see many crackers not yet burnt because they didnt get far enough in there...
And the patch of latex paint in the fire next to the crackers (no pun intended), had the most astounding results...
It burned both 'faster' and 'slower' than the cracker did!
It managed to do this simultaneously (which is without a doubt a truly indisputable marvel of all known and fictional science theory)...
But after many minutes of advanced enhanced exotic calculations, and my nose, without any doubt whatsoever roughly the same amount of energy expelledfrom the patch of dried latex paint as would have roughly the same dried mass of saltine crackers (that smelled like three day old dried latex paint)would have...
AND, the smell of the fire didnt change at all from one moment before the latex paint was added (while the crackers were still going at it), andafter!!!