Eatcyclopedia is our ever-expanding glossary of food terms, and we'll be highlighting a term from it each weekday. The entries include definitions and, where applicable, pronunciations and country of origin - all spelling bee competitor style. Want us this use it in a sentence? Okay, here goes.

Use: The albumen is the white part, the yellow the yolk and that stringy thing is the chalaza, which anchors the two of them in place.

Read the full entries for "egg, albumen, egg white, yolk".
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While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday and the most delicious finds on TV.

Today's fortune reads: A trifecta of tastes will soon come your way.

July 20 not only exists as National Fortune Cookie Day, but it's also National Lollipop Day and National Hot Dog Day(!) - which could inadvertently be combined to make it National Corn Dog Day ... but let's not get complicated.

Though counterintuitive, those crunchy cookies often served at the end of Chinese meals didn't actually originate in China at all. According to The Oxford Companion to Food and Drink, "the origin of the fortune cookie is elusive, perhaps shared, born in California, and related to Asian immigrants."

Not until 1993 did Wonton Food Inc. actually begin producing the fortune cookies in China.

What's on TV?

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In cooking, the process of clarification entails straining out extraneous muck from liquids so that they might be pure, clear and ideal for consumption. With this series on the world's dietary tribes, we're attempting to do the same. Future installments will explore the foodways, politics and beliefs of vegans, raw foodists, pescetarians and other culinary collectives.

Today, we're delving into the dietary restrictions of twelve religions in the hopes of cooking up a little interfaith understanding. Learn which group looks to yogurt and fresh vegetables for enlightenment and whose holy men eschew the digestive effects of legumes and crucifers.

Bahá’í
Off the menu: Alcohol
Why: While they're not strictly forbidden, practitioners maintain that living a simple life, free from alcohol and mind-altering drugs is beneficial to spiritual development. Many Bahá’ís are vegetarians.
Also: During the holy month of Ala, Bahá’ís abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset to more fully focus upon their spirituality and love of God.

Buddhism
Off the menu: It varies, but many Buddhists are vegetarians and refrain from the use of alcohol.
Why: Buddhists, like Hindus, believe in reincarnation and that the soul may at some point inhabit an animal. Thus, they abstain from killing living creatures. Buddhism also calls for a constant awareness of the body and mind, and it is thought that alcohol dulls this focus, and increases the possibility of negative karma while under its influence. FULL POST