Being a 14th century alewife in England also had its on-the-job perils.  Read more about it here.

Months later, Harper joined his cabinet to eat a lunch featuring the rib meat and liver of a seal. Even before he had digested this meal, the prime minister criticized the EU.  “There is no reason the seal industry should be singled out for discriminatory treatment by Europeans or any other nation, and I've been very outspoken on that,” he said.

Officials in that colony voted to allow its residents to pay their taxes in rice.

Grover Cleveland

A frustrated Cleveland wrote a friend: "I must go to dinner, but I wish it was to eat pickled herring, Swiss cheese, and a chop at Louis’ instead of the French stuff I shall find." Awaiting dinner on another night, President Cleveland caught the aromas of corned beef and cabbage coming from the servants’ quarters. Cleveland ordered his valet to take the dinner prepared for him "down to the servants and bring their dinner to me."

To which flavor is Netanyahu most devoted? Pistachio. Correction: make that "artisanal pistachio."  According to The Times:

In a country facing severe cuts in government spending after an election that focused largely on the struggling middle class, and with the Netanyahus’ supposed taste for the high life already under scrutiny, news of the prime minister’s weakness for artisanal pistachio ice cream raised a national outcry.

Shelly Yacimovich, the leader of the center-left Labor Party, summed it up as a Marie Antoinette moment and noted that Mr. Netanyahu was the one who always spoke of cutting the fat. “If there’s no bread, eat ice cream,” she wrote on her Facebook page, adding, “Shall we laugh or cry?”

Rosa Parks was born on this date in 1913. This courageous woman inspired many civil rights supporters in 1955 by refusing to give up her seat in the section of an Alabama bus designated only for white customers. Her action added momentum to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and civil rights advocates eventually prevailed.

As could be expected, Parks' childhood eating habits reflected Southern culture, including dinners that featured catfish, fried ham and other meats. But in her adult years, she became a vegetarian.

Yet Poe managed to extend one compliment to the city: its pumpkin pies were "delicious." 

"There would be no delicious food to eat," predicted Sangkum. "If you ate more than allowed, the government would learn about it from your children in secret and you would be taken out and shot." Perhaps these warnings struck many Cambodians as far-fetched rhetoric, but the future would show these predictions were surprisingly accurate. One of the first achievements that Pol Pot's regime proclaimed was that it had successfully achieved communal eating through most of the country.

In four years of Pol Pot's rule, roughly 1.7 million Cambodians died from torture, starvation or disease.

Eugene Debs

President Woodrow Wilson refused to commute Debs’ sentence, but his successor was more forgiving.  President Warren Harding explained that he agreed to let the Socialist leave prison on December 24, 1921 "because I want him to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife."