Today, most of us brew our tea with tea bags. We don’t know how much trouble it was to brew tea before these bags were invented! The tea bag truly is a modern convenience and a clever one, at that. Therefore, it’s surprising to hear that the tea bag was invented by accident in 1908. […]
Food History
Best Cereal Box Prize Ever: Free Long Distance Calls!
As much as the TV cartoons influenced my devotion to Cap’n Crunch — which has waned but never truly wilted — there were also free prizes in the boxes which were a bit more high-quality (to a kid’s mind) than other cereal-box prizes. They’d have comic books and all sorts of great things. One famous […]
Iconic Fast Food Signs of America
If you drive along any of our country’s back roads, there is one feature that is ubiquitous: the fast food sign. Sadly, however, the variety of signs you will see along our roadways has been reduced to a relative handful of fast-food giants. Some of the old historic players, which helped build the fast-food industry […]
Are Cucumbers Really Cold? Is That Why We Say Cool as a Cucumber?
Yes, the inside of cucumbers are cooler than their surroundings, but that doesn’t mean as much as you think. If you were to pick up a room temperature cucumber and insert a temperature probe into it, you’d find it to be somewhat cooler than the temperature of the room. You may even find it to […]
Who Invented Eggs Benedict?
It would be natural to assume that everyone’s favorite brunch dish (isn’t it?), Eggs Benedict, was named after an actual person. But, there are so many stories about who this person we simply can’t be certain who invented the dish. Also possible is that the dish is a modern rendering of an old French dish, […]
Why Do We Say ‘Take That With A Grain Of Salt?’
I am an expert on everything in the culinary world. You may want to take that with a grain of salt, because, if you believe it, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona you may like. In the previous sentence, you may understand the allusion in latter idiom without explanation. Arizona does not border […]