Whaddya Think, Doctor Fink?

  How does a humble penny candy end up in The White House, The Space Shuttle, and eaten enough each year to circle Earth six times? Meet the Jelly Bean. No one knows where it began. Food experts believe it was the love child of Turkish Delight – a jelly candy covered with powdered sugar that’s been around for thousands of years – and seventeenth century hard-shelled Jordan Almonds served to French Royalty.   The “parents” came to America. One

  It doesn’t have anything to do with weed (pot) and everything to do with what’s inside. Basically, a pot pie is meat and vegetables baked inside crusts. It’s been around for thousands of years. How about singing a song of sixpence with a bit of truth? Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The birds began to sing – Wasn’t that a dainty dish To set before the king? According to Wikipedia, “a

  An Amazon tee shirt proclaims, “I’d go through hella for some Nutella.” Would you? Nutella’s founding company, Ferrero, is the third largest chocolate confectionary on Earth, selling in 170 countries, with 37 production plants on 5 continents, and 7 specialized hazelnut processing locations. Ferrero earns over $17 billion a year. According to Facts.net, a jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds. If you line them up they would circle the planet twice. Head back to the 1800s when

Omelets are awesome. They’re ancient. No one is sure who invented them – maybe a French chef, a Roman, or a Persian? Most will guess it was the French chef. That makes sense – after all the word comes from the French. The recipe appeared in a 1769 cookbook by Edward James Rimmel, who, according to Michelle Stanley in Food, described it as “a pancake made of three or four eggs well beat and put into a frying pan with

Would you eat that? You already have. Boiled sugar is everywhere – in foods, sauces, beers, flavors, colors, and sweets. Its origin is a mystery – perhaps one thousand years ago? Or maybe it was around since humans first started cooking over a fire? People from the midwest and western U.S. call it karmel. Easterners say kar-a-mel. Spanish say caramelo and Israelis say kar-a-MEL. How do you say it? The magic lies in the chemical process called caramelization. Caramelization is

  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 better and for worse. We’re born with the passion for sweet. Meredith F. Small wrote in Live Science, that our love of sweetness is “the fault of our primate heritage.” Simply put, we

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 about those round, bumpy little things? Susan Bell, of University of Southern California, calls it “The small but mighty chickpea.” She believes that chickpeas might be the answer to the

  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 milk. Some recipes use condensed milk, corn syrup, or cornstarch. You can add anything from nuts and marshmallows to peanut butter and M&Ms. Flavors range from chocolate, rocky road, and vanilla to green tea,

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 seed) market of nearly $2 billion. That’s a lot of crunch. It began with prehistoric humans. How Stuff Works described a “recent archeological excavation in Israel [where] they found remnants

  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.   West Point in the 1800s: Wikimedia Commons   What’s egg nog without a touch of rum, whiskey, or bourbon? It began with posset, a Medieval British hot drink made of milk curdled in wine or