How your favorite candies got their names. Kit Kat The current and most famous form of Kit Kat consists of a bar of four “fingers” of cookie wafers covered in chocolate. That’s a bit different from the first iteration of food sold under the name. The Kit-Cat Club was a place where late 1800s London […]
Readers sometimes ask if we’ll ever run out of things to write about. No way. Origins are a good example: as we recently discovered, even lowly snack foods can have fascinating (and delicious) origins.
Today’s consumers are more sophisticated than ever, and they’re hip to the often wily ways of advertising. That means in order to get noticed and sell their wares, companies have to get a lot more creative…and strange. Here are some companies that promoted their products by making other, bizarre products. Pizza Shoes Are $300 basketball […]
Doughnuts (or donuts) have been around for ages. But where did they come from? Oily Cake When Dutch settlers arrived in what’s now New York in the 17th century, they brought with them something called olykoek, or “oily cake.” They were much like today’s doughnuts in that they were fried balls or discs of sweetened […]
The turkey (or ham) is usually the star of the show, but we think that the other foods that make up the traditional Thanksgiving dinner are all something to give thanks for. Stuffing Sure, you could make your own stuffing, or you could buy a box, add it some butter and hot water and be […]
There’s a “holiday” for anything and everything anymore, but the humble and wonderful sandwich is truly deserving of its own day. Here are some origins of some legendary ‘wiches. Elvis Sandwich One of those pieces of trivia everybody seems to know regards Elvis Presley’s affinity for peanut butter sandwiches. As a kid, he liked peanut […]
It’s America’s favorite sandwich cookie, and it’s stayed the same for decades. Recently, however, Oreos seem to have gone a little mad. OREOOPS To generate press and differentiate itself over its competition, Nabisco has rolled out dozens of new Oreo flavors over the past couple of years, from Caramel Apple to Candy Corn to Swedish […]
Here’s to the pioneers behind some of the biggest innovations in American history: the people who made fast food what it is. First fast food restaurant The first to offer quick food on the go: A&W. Beginning in 1919 they served their draft root beer at a walk-up stand in Sacramento, California, and soon began […]
Wine is usually just some fermented grape juice, but it could be just about anything. Wines are made out of sunflowers, strawberries…and this stuff, too, if you’re feeling adventurous. Asparagus Wine Oceana County, Michigan, is the “Asparagus Capital of the World.” That means they’ve got a lot of the stalky green vegetable that makes urine […]
The science of how processed foods and consumer products are made is absolutely fascinating…and a little stomach-turning, too. Raisin the Steaks A number of tangy, Worcestershire sauce-like steak sauces, such as A1, contain raisin paste. That’s just dried grapes—raisins—mushed into a paste and mixed up with the other herbs, spices, and flavorings. It’s traditionally been […]
When Uncle John was a kid, the basic food groups were meat, bread, vegetables, and dairy products. Uncle John always wondered why they left out the other basic food groups: coffee, candy, cold soup, fish sticks, corn dogs, and salad dressing.
Myth: It doesn’t come from chocolate milk-giving cows. Truth: Everything else in this article. Columbus brought cocoa back to Europe from the Americas in the early 1500s, but it didn’t catch on. After Spanish explorer Cortez overran the Aztecs a few decades later, he brought cocoa to Europe again, although he added sugar and cinnamon […]
Or rather the words breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast That’s easy—it’s an English word that developed to connote the first bit of food taken after a person wakes up. They’ve been sleeping, and so not eating, which means any food is “breaking the fast” they’ve been engaged in. Dinner As late as the mid-20th century, […]
Love it or leave it, the most famous canned meat in the world turns 80 years old this year. Here are some facts about Spam:, that pink loaf of salty, porky goodness. The Beginning While Spam has routinely and endlessly joked about as a mystery meat, it’s really just pork and ham. In the ‘20s, […]
As summer winds down, here’s a look at the subtleties that separate two favorite treats of the season. Pretty much everywhere you go in the United States in the summer, it’s going to be hot. Fortunately, there are some coping mechanisms. Some are more appetizing than others: such as the wide variety of cold, sugary […]
It’s hard to enjoy the finer things in life when the finer things are so expensive. We’ll skip the caviar and stick to our good ol’ beef jerky. Wait, that’s expensive, too?! What’s going on here?
Stuff your brain with some stories about these snacks that are great for stuffing in your face.
Is there a more beautiful sight in the world then to walk into the breakroom at work and find a big pink box of doughnuts? Just sitting there, waiting, full of delicious doughy treats covered in icing, glazes, nuts, and, if you’re really lucky, sprinkles. But while it’s no mystery why doughnuts are so delicious […]
