Adventure Comics #505 (2009)
Written by Geoff Johns
Artwork by Francis Manapul
Colors by Brian Buccellato
[ . . . ]
Chef’s Note: Good dog ❤
Chef’s Note: Happy National Picnic Day!
Chef’s Note: A loaf of bread, a nice hunk of cheese, and… um… something yellow/orange in a tupperware container?
There’s an earlier scene with Ma Kent where she’s cooking something on the stove-top in a frying pan with a spatula. I know she’s famous for her apple pies and her oatmeal cookies, but you don’t make either of those in a frying pan.
I’m flummoxed as to what this could be? Anyone have any ideas? Mr. Manapul?
The French might have invented the word “picnic,” pique nique being found earlier than “pic nic.” (The meaning, aside from the probably connotation of “picking,” is unknown.) It originally referred to a dinner, usually eaten indoors, to which everyone present had contributed some food, and possible also a fee to attend. The ancient Greek “eranos,” the French “moungetade” described earlier, or modern “pot luck” suppers are versions of this type of mealtime organization. The change in the meaning of the term, from “everyone bringing some food” to “everyone eating out of doors” seems to have been completed by the 1860s. The impromptu aspect, together with the informality, are what the new meaning has in common with the old; there is a connotation too of simple food, which may be quite various, but which is not controlled, decorated, or strictly ordered into courses. Picnics derive, also, from the decorous yet comparatively informal sixteenth-century “banquets” mentioned earlier, which frequently took place out of doors…Not very long ago, picnics were rather formal affairs to our way of thinking, with tables, chairs, and even servants. But everything is relative: what was formal then made a trestle-table in the open countryside seem exhiliaratingly abandoned. The general feeling of relief from normal constraints…”
—The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolutions, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners, Margaret Visser (Penguin, 1991)