So many days and ways to celebrate food in February

The menus for the next couple of Monday Munches are:

• Monday, Feb. 10 — Italian wedding soup, Italian salad (greens, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, peppers, artichokes and cheese) and maple syrup granola bars.
• Monday Feb. 17 — baked spaghetti with meat sauce, coleslaw, garlic bread and Ruth’s Congo bars.

People seem determined to conquer February doldrums by celebrating food. From National Baked Alaska Day on Feb. 1 and Frog Legs Day on Feb. 29 — with National Pork Rind Appreciation Day and days celebrating pizza, fettuccini Alfredo, clam chowder, brownies, gumdrops, cabbage, carrot cake, ice cream, cherry pie, bagels and lox, tortellini, pancakes, Jell-O, and oatmeal in between — February’s theme seems to be “Let’s eat!”

Here are two other special February days of note:

• Feb. 9: Read in the Bathtub Day
• Feb. 14: International Book Giving Day

The newest addition to the Little Free Library at the Charlotte Grange, 2858 Spear Street, is a reminder that reading to and with children should start as early as possible. Sandra Boynton’s “Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book” is sure to get a toddler repeating woof! yap yap! arf arf arf! bow wow wow wow! over and over — with great pleasure.

A new addition for primary graders, “Boiled Bugs for Breakfast and Other Tasty Poems” by Jack Prelutsky, will produce giggles and guffaws. These two volumes join a great variety of books for older children.

Children of every age enjoy, and profit from, hearing books read aloud. Teaching grades 7-9, I devoted one entire period each week to reading aloud. The mother of an eighth grader notorious for her many fights set foot in the school for the first time to find out if I had any more books like the ones her daughter was bringing home. Mom wanted to read them, too.

Then, finding myself assigned to a group of 22 third graders clumped together as the rotten readers, children with the lowest marks on standardized tests, I shocked my colleagues who expressed concern I was “taking time from skills training” by reading aloud to those kids for an hour every day.

Every day.

Parents in that working-class neighborhood were stunned. For the first time their kids, who had loudly proclaimed a dislike of books, began talking enthusiastically about them. Parents searched for “those special books” at the library and bookstores because kids wanted to hear “those stories” again and again. By late spring, those “rotten readers” scored at grade level and above on standardized tests.

Look at the beautiful Grange Hall and that wonderful Little Free Library out in front, carefully designed by Stuart Robinson as part of his Eagle Scout project. Take a look and then celebrate International Book Giving Day by taking a child to this library, where books are available for kids from 8 days to 18 years. And thank the senior center board of directors, the Flying Pig Bookstore and Cindi Robinson for their ongoing contributions to this worthy effort.

Speaking of books, The Washington Post ran a poll about which adults read and where they get their books. Bonus data: This article also includes titles of books readers were least likely to finish.

Since the fourth Thursday in February is National Chili Day, now might be a good time to read about chili hot enough to strip paint, a chili gastromasochists have likened to molten lava. The New Yorker titles this article about culinary extremists and exhibitionists “Fire Eaters.”

I enjoy a tasty bowl of chili, but when a writer describes people finding “near-death experiences in a bowl of guacamole,” I say it’s infinitely better to read about it than try to eat it.

Whatever food you choose, remember this: You can celebrate Feb. 9 by reading in the bathtub.

Presidents Day, Feb. 17 this year, now honors all presidents, so think of Thomas Jefferson’s great legacy, the rare and unusual vegetables grown at Monticello (https://tinyurl.com/yzfxcdse), including asparagus bean, sea kale, tomatoes, rutabaga, lima beans, okra, potato pumpkins, winter melons, tree onion, peanuts, “sprout kale,” serpentine cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, orach, endive, chick peas, cayenne, “esculent rhubarb,” black salsify, sesame and eggplant.

There’s a long history of first ladies distributing produce grown on White House grounds. During the Civil War, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln regularly visited local hospitals to distribute strawberries and other fresh fruits to wounded Union soldiers. During World War II, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden, encouraging Americans to grow their own food to supplement food shortages during the war.

Michelle Obama declared that the White House kitchen garden, which she directed to be planted on the lower South Lawn in 2009, “has been one of the greatest things I’ve done in my life so far.” Continuing a long tradition of growing vegetables and fruits on the White House grounds, this garden has supplied the White House kitchen with about 2,000 pounds of fruits, vegetables and herbs each year.

Meals aside, the current president gets one thing right: Continue to fill our school classrooms with our history. Be sure to celebrate the sonnet Emma Lazarus wrote in 1883 to raise money for the construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. In 1903, her poem, including these words, was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”