It's National (insert food here) Day!

Capriole Farm's Sofia from Antonelli's Cheese Shop. © Ryan Schierling 

It's National Cheese Lover's Day!

What a coincidence, because I do happen to love cheese. But Julie loves cheese even more than I do – there are some stinky cheeses she celebrates that I can only wrinkle my nose at and refer to as our old neighbor Damir did, calling them "foot cheese."

How wonderful that we can celebrate this love with a nationally recognized holiday!

But then I was curious... who comes up with these things? Are they actually sanctioned by any particular legislative body or are they just divvied up and assigned at random to days of the year? So I queried the internets, and apparently, the President of the United States can declare, by proclamation, a special event or day. And so he does – there are hundreds of national food days (and weeks! and months!) that I had no idea even existed.

See, I didn't get any emails on January 14 saying it was "National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day," or last December 30, which was "National Bicarbonate of Soda Day." Heaven forbid I miss out on celebrating "National Something On A Stick Day" March 28, or "National Deviled Egg Day" November 2.

Though, with all due respect, I am probably going to skip "National Gumdrop Day" (Feb. 15) because they're foul and disgusting sweets, "National Candied Orange Peel Day" (May 4) for  the exact same reason, and "National Play-Dough Day" (Sept. 18) because that's only a food holiday if you're in kindergarten.

Sadly, there is no National Chicken-Fried Steak Day. But, rest assured, I will be contacting lobbyists and trade associations about this oversight immediately.

If the United States can celebrate play-dough as a food, then they can most certainly make room for the national dish of Texas. Oh, wait, that's chili (Feb. 25). Well, we've got to be able to squeeze a day off for CFS in there somewhere.