Mildly interesting

Mik

She's seen a lot of history, up close and personal.

I wonder what the status of Hamas is today.

jon-nyc

jon-nyc

Mik

Tomatoes, along with potatoes, corn, and peppers, are all native to the Americas, so they didn’t exist in Europe before 1492.

The Romans were eating things like olives, lentils, cabbage, and a surprising amount of fish sauce called garum, but no pizza toppings or spaghetti sauce as we know them.

Tomato sauce as we know it in Italy didn’t appear until the early 18th century. Even though tomatoes arrived in southern Europe after Columbus brought them from the Americas in the 16th century, they were initially grown mostly as ornamental plants because some Europeans thought they were poisonous.

It wasn’t until the 1600s and 1700s that people in Naples and other parts of southern Italy began experimenting with cooking tomatoes. By around the 1730s, recipes for a simple tomato-based sauce started appearing in Neapolitan cookbooks, usually combined with olive oil, garlic, and herbs. This eventually evolved into the classic Italian tomato sauces we associate with pasta today.

alt text

jon-nyc

It’s more weird that in 1500 there were zero potatoes in Europe and now we think of it as ‘traditional’ food in Germany, Eastern Europe, Ireland, etc.