Tasha Kostyuk on UnsplashAmerican kids who grew up in the 1990s knew about Kinder Surprise the way they knew about Swiss chocolate, which is to say secondhand. A cousin in Germany had them. Somebody's mother…
Nadin Sh on PexelsSomewhere in southwest France, a person at a dinner table is pulling a large white napkin over their head. Under the cloth they put a whole roasted songbird into their mouth, feet…
Nothing Is From Where You Think. Food history is mostly a record of people getting inspired by each other's dishes and occasionally getting the origin story wrong afterward. A dish arrives somewhere new and gets…
Yes, All Of This Really Happened. People love bragging rights, and food records happen to be one of the easiest ways to claim a small piece of history. Somebody, somewhere, decided that eating six eggs…
Small Habits Add Up Faster Than You Think. Grocery bills climb every year, and it rarely feels like any single trip caused the jump. You buy the pre-cut vegetables because it saves ten minutes, or…
Inflation Did Not Play Fair. A dollar went a long way in the mid-1970s. Wages were lower then, so the comparison is not perfectly fair, but the gap between those prices and current ones can…
Gone or Weirdly Immortal. Fast food companies spend enormous amounts of money creating mascots, only to abandon most of them within a decade. Sometimes the audience they were designed for grows up and moves on.…
The Window Sees Everything. A drive-thru shift is eight hours of cars rolling past a four-foot window, and most people in those cars forget that anyone is looking back. The worker taking your order has…
Some of This Advice Used to Save Lives. Every kitchen runs on rules that nobody in the room can source. They get handed down at the counter as half instruction, half warning, and questioning one…
