The New York Times this week ran a fascinating little Q&A with Richard Wrangham, a primatologist and anthropologist, who argues that neither tools nor meat-eating led to the ascend of man. Wrangham believes that it was our ancestors' ability to manipulate fire and use it to transform chewy raw ingredients into something palatable Cooking, in [...]

As part of Y&H's totally random attempts to inject culinary history into this blog, I've pinched this nugget from the "1943" section of The Food Chronology. It helps explain why Hawaiians love Spam, why Brits have no taste, and why Soviet troops were able to defeat the Germans at Murmansk.