Flavor of the Month (1937)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

    Greetings from the Library of Congress.

G.O.P.--I don't know what went wrong when I checked the WASHINGTON POST the first time.  I knew I did something wrong.  I was going to re-check it and I found those same few  1882 "G.O.P."  Fred Shapiro beat me to it by a few minutes.  I hate that guy.
   The "grand old party" was applied to the _Democratic_ party.  The initialism "G.O.P." become popular after 1881 or so's "G.O.M."--for Gladstone, the grand old man.  I have to revise the whole thing into a paper, but I'll wait until PUCK and LIFE (both comic but very political magazines) full text becomes available on the American Periodical Series online.

FLAVOR OF THE MONTH--OED has 1946?
   14 April 1937, WASHINGTON POST, pg. 13 ad:
"I wish we could buy ice cream like this!"
(...)  P. S.--Have you tasted Buttered Pecan Ice Cream?  It's the Sealtest "Flavor of the Month."
_Southern Dairies Ice Cream_

JALAPENO--The first WASHINGTON POST hit is 20 December 1896, pg. 10, about people from Jalapa, Mexico.  The first relevant hit, "D. C. Cooking Goes Cosmopolitan," is 9 November 1951, pg. C1.

PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS--I went crazy looking for pre-1981 hits for this in some databases.  I used portobello/portobella/portabella/portabello.  Google has a large number of hits for all four.  The NEW YORK TIMES had 1985 at the earliest, and the WASHINGTON POST isn't any better.  There's a publication by the American Mushroom Institute (AMI) that probably has it, but OCLC Worldcat says  that's in the Trademark Office and I don't feel like walking all over town today.

PAD THAI--The first WASHINGTON POST hit is 14 May 1978, pg. SM38, in a review of the Siam Inn restaurant.

POZOLE--
   9 February 1941, WASHINGTON POST, pg. ?:
   In Guadalajara the native dish is "pozole," made with corn, meat and chili sauce.

   23 July 1950, WASHINGTON POST, pg. 59:
   Pozole soup, traditional around Guadalajara, is a hog's head soup with cacahuazintle, dried sweet corn with dark blue or black kernels.

BLIMP--Someone asked me about this.  No real early hits, but a mega-ton of bad "hits," like "bump."

EVANS DIGITAL FROM AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY--The librarian here (the one who gave me the WASHINGTON POST secret password) hasn't heard of it.  They don't have it yet.