What’s in a spoonful of sugar besides 48 calories? Disney’s Mary Poppins advised that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way.” Medieval doctors and monks agreed – they used sugar as medicine. Sugar and human history are married. For bette

Chickpeas. They’ve been around for a long time. Chickpeas grew wild until they were domesticated nearly 10,000 years ago. While most of us know them as hummus or falafel, they have a far greater reach. Today they’re the second most widely grown legume in the world. Huh? Are we talking

  It began as a mistake. According to Joyce White, CBS Sunday Morning Food Historian, the recipe for fudge came from chocolate caramels. “Someone in Baltimore,” she believes, “messed it up, or “fadged” it.” Get it? Making fudge is tricky. Basically, it’s sugar, butter, cream, or

Let’s face it. There are a lot of nuts in the world. Whether politicians, your next-door neighbor, or the family member that gets everyone angry at holiday dinners, there’s no shortage. The real nuts – the ones we eat – tell a similar story. Statistica forecasts a growing nut (and see

  It happened in 1826. Every Christmas, cadets at the West Point Military Academy held an annual drunken egg nog party. Then the grim Superintendent, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, imposed monastic discipline. That meant no alcohol. A cadet could be expelled for breaking the rule. &nbs

To eat it, not eat it, or re-gift it. That is the question. Johnny Carson, comedian and original TV host of The Tonight Show, once said, “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep passing it around.” Mmmm. When was the last time you ate fruitcake? Or received it

  Gingerbread. It goes back thousands of years, traveled The Silk Road, baked in images of royalty, and celebrated in Medieval feasts. What is gingerbread? Wikipedia describes it as a “broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and

What are sufganiyot? They’re deep-fried yeast donuts usually with sweet fillings and toppings. Some call them jelly donuts. However, there’s a lot more to the story than what meets the belly. An old Israeli folktale claimed that when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden,

  Latkes and Hanukah. They go together like coffee and cake or peanut butter and jelly. Latkes are popularly known as “potato pancakes.” Cuisines around the world have their own versions, like the Irish boxty, Korean gamja-jeon, and Mexico’s tortas de patatas. Let’s be real. Who

  Most of us call it stuffing. It’s got a lot of different names and has been around for a very long time. Probably long before any written records. No one knows for sure. Look at is this way. You have meat, fish, or another animal ready to roast. No insides. Only an empty cavity