When did humans settle on all the stuff we eat?

i don't know who hurt that person, but I feel like food innovation is at an all-time high. Constantly I see new stuff being experimented on and new combinations of food items. plant-based/vegan popularity has really elevated those food innovations as well, with ever more plants being used to make new foods. Just yesterday I made myself a vegan omelet with vegan cheese. And it was amazing.

I tried vegan cheese at a food show recently. It tasted more like cheese than cheese does!

I try to incorporate a couple of plant-based meals every week and it's getting easier to make something good every time.
- You don't happen to know which one it was, do you? We vegans are always on the hunt. Although tbh, I don't miss the "sour, milky" taste. I find it very weird...
Definitely. Everyone wants to make the next viral food thing on TikTok. A lot of it might be dumb, but by the time it filters out of TikTok and onto other platforms, it's usually the best stuff.

Yeah, this just isn't the case, there's a metric fuckload of experimenting going on, most people just aren't willing to try any of it.

Today, I brought my own food to work: rice with red lentils, peas, unsweetened peanut butter and some black caraway seeds (+ normal caraway, vegetable broth, a little vinegar)

And yeah, as I'm telling people this, I realize that they probably want to hear a recipe name, like "risotto" or "rice curry", but I have no idea what it is. I started cooking with rice and red lentils, kind of like a curry, but then the rest just happened spontaneously.

It always feels like I've discovered this great secret that you can just combine edible things and it generally leads to something edible.
- I can only speak for myself, but I do not want you to name whatever that is
Seriously. Not even experimenting, but just looking at other cultures' cuisines as a start. In the states we barely even pickle things that aren't cucumbers. The seafood situation in the middle of the country is nothing compared to the coasts, and what's acceptable on the coasts is a fraction of what gets eaten in Iceland or Japan.

People generally don't want to expand their palates. Anyone who wants to try new things can look to countless dishes around the world they've never even heard of.
Tell me about it. My wife thinks I'm a freak for putting lettuce in my peanut butter and honey sandwich.

Just this year, Oreos made a Sour Patch Kids Oreo. It was terrible, but don't pretend like there aren't people out in the world committing food crimes. Taco Bell is committed to lowering the bar on what humans are willing to eat, don't disservice their hustle.

What's wrong with the Legally Allowed Amounts of Silica Crunchwrap Supreme?
- Look, they were brave enough to find out how big you could make a cheez-it, and then shoved that inside a Crunchwrap. I'm not brave enough to make disparaging comments about an entity so powerful.
- It makes my teeth itch.

If you wanna go back to tuna mayo and olives gelatin aspics from the 60's go right ahead.

And I bet that was not the worst 'food' of this era.
- LoL probably not

We make new kinds of sandwiches all the time...

Me too. The latest sensation: Avocado and canned peas.

I mean realistically humans have been perfecting two things for at least a hundred thousand years.

Killing and cooking.

Killing, maybe. But if you've ever tried it, there's no particularly good way to cook a human.
- Idk. I've heard it's very similar to cooking pork.

I'm going to follow this to glean interesting food combinations, as it seems they're being posted below. 🙂

I think the comic doesn't account for all the food experimentation going on in the world. One bias -- people only post their wins. Not their many, many "L's".

For example, I eat cottage cheese as part of my diet. I also consume this supplement called Zena 'Supergreens'. One night, I thought hey...cottage cheese gets paired with fruit. Why not pair it with this fruity Supergreens powder, see what happens? Nasty, gloppy, with clumps of overly sweet coagulated powder. Do not recommend.

Anyway I'm sure people all around the world are doing wacky experiments just like that every single day. And if we're lucky, they post good ones on the internet & we can all try it out. 🙂

This is the spot to share with everyone the viral trend of vanilla ice cream with olive oil and sea salt.

I get the sea salt, because sweet and salty can be a good combination, but...olive oil?
- It's fat, which our tongues always like, and mildly bitter, which compensates the salt while still letting it enhance the vanilla flavor. Completing the flavor triad. It also coats the mouth making the ice cream feel extra creamy.

My wife makes sandwiches out of cheese and honey. She insists it's a flavour combo that works, but I just can't support it.

It goes well with soft cheeses like goat cheese or cream cheese.
good cheese boards come with a little cup of honey all the time
- Or jam, grapes, etc.
What kind of cheese is she using?
- It's cheddar, which is a fine cheese - by itself.
I am also curious, want to know the cheese. 🤔

What about finely sliced apple, mixed with honey & cheese??? 🤔🤔🤔
- Cheddar. No apples in this house, we have allergy issues.
Dude, maple syrup, pecorino and grapes. You can thank me later.

Anything is a sandwich if your poor enough.

A lot if what we as a society have settled on is also because of economy at scale logic. There are many things that are delicious but won't keep well outside of a small window in specific conditions. Or have less yeild than common alternatives. And sadly many clients simply don't want to try new things.

I suggest for anyone that can, try your hand at fermentation, especially if you have room for a garden. There is so much you can do from making your own koji to lacto-fermenting Nasturtium berries. There are many new flavours for you to discover and share with friends.

Another idea is to learn more about local foraging and seeking out local Mycological societies to learn about mushrooms in your area.

I tried a new food combo as a kid. I liked Nutella, and I liked tangerine slices in syrup. So I combined them.

Mom made me eat it.

It didn't taste like a chocolate orange?
- Not really. It was horrible.
The way you said Mom made me eat it -- I felt that 🥲😭😂

Watch Ordinary Sausage on YouTube. He is a pioneer in developing new and exciting foodstuffs.

I mean, just never. What people eat is a function of what is available/cheap/tasty/trendy at any given time, and I doubt the availability of both ingredients and "ideas" (recipes and techniques globally, trends for better/worse) has ever been higher globally, let alone in "developed" countries.

Depends on the culture and time if you ask me.

Just get on TikTok. Those goofy kids constantly make weird food combos. Sometimes they're actually good!

My wife's been really into foraging lately and I've learned you can eat so many random weeds found all over the place.

peanut butter, hot sauce, fried egg, cheese, and mayonnaise sandwich

Hit in Thailand

I do most of the cooking in my family, and I'm one of those people who will often look at recipes when I'm doing something new, but mostly just do simple dishes and wing it. I'll often try and incorporate things we have. All of which is to say, there's a nontrivial amount of experimenting, which isn't always a good thing.

I remember serving a noodle casserole, and there were some scrunched up faces around the table. My wife asked what the fuck the chewy things were, and I said smoked oysters (which the family loves). They've made fun of me for years on that one

In all honesty, I thought it tasted pretty good.

try bbq'd cheese-stuffed peppers wrapped in bacon.

Only tangentially related, but the cheapest (by weight and per unit) type of hamburger patties at my local Costco this month are Impossible Burgers.

If you’re not familiar with these, they’re completely vegan, made from soy protein, but the texture and flavor is almost identical to beef. They cook like beef, taste like beef, and “bleed” like beef. And (for a few weeks, at least) they’re cheaper than beef.

That’s a new and exciting sandwich IMO.

Time to introduce this person to china’s wet markets…

I think we've all had our fair share of those.

Oysters and kiwi

If you travel, you'll find very interesting combinations of flavors. As a few modest examples, I recently came upon paprika flavored and cheese and onion flavored Pringles, and awhile back i had sake flavored kit kats.

Travel more! Plenty of flavor experimentation going on