By Ben Marks — On December 16, 1773, when Samuel Adams and his fellow Sons of Liberty boarded three British East India Company-flagged ships to hurl 340 chests of Camellia sinensis—worth almost $2-million today—into Boston Harbor, tea was already an expensive commodity worldwide. But what offended Adams was not the price of tea itself so much as the fact that taxes had been levied on these precious leaves without the consent of England’s increasingly independence-minded Colonists. It was that act, taxation...

Cooking With Glass: How Pyrex Transformed Every Kitchen Into a Home-Ec Lab

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — Maybe your dad used a Pyrex measuring cup whenever he made pancakes, or your roommate always baked her famous lasagna in a rectangular Pyrex pan, or your grandmother had a set of the brightly colored Pyrex mixing bowls on her kitchen counter. That's why, for most of us, it's impossible to recall the first time we encountered Pyrex: Almost from its debut in 1915 as the first glassware for cooking, Pyrex has been a ubiquitous part of the American kitchen. To celebrate the Pyrex centennial, the...

Irma Harding, the Woman Who Taught Rural Moms to Kick Canning and Start Freezing

By Ben Marks — In 1935, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration, almost 90 percent of America’s farms lacked power. When darkness fell, millions turned to fire for illumination. During harvest months, with no electricity for refrigeration, countless farmers’ wives and daughters devoted a good chunk of their waking hours to pickling and canning fruits and vegetables for the coming winter. But by the end of World War II, only half of rural Americans spent...

Easy-Bake Evolution: 50 Years of Cakes, Cookies, and Gender Politics

By Lisa Hix — I have a confession: My brother and I destroyed my Easy-Bake Oven. I had the 1981 Mini-Wave model, the boxy, yellow microwave style, which was, in my 7-year-old mind, the only kind of Easy-Bake there was. One day, my 4-year-old brother had a brilliant idea—to “cook” a green plastic steak from our 1972 Mattel Tuff Stuff Play Food set. After all, we should be able to cook a steak, right? It fit into the slot perfectly, and for some reason, I didn’t try to stop him. The plastic steak, of...

Mr. Chemex: The Eccentric Inventor Who Reimagined the Perfect Cup of Coffee

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — As part of our modern obsession with artisan-everything, today's pickiest coffee drinkers insist upon a hand-brewed cup made right before their eyes. At the cornerstone of this trend is the undisputed king of pour-over coffee, the Chemex Coffeemaker, which graces the counters of hip homes and cafes around the globe. But this ingenious device is nothing new: In fact, the Chemex company has been making the exact same brewer for more than 70 years, proving the staying power of great...

Making, and Eating, the 1950s' Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — Poring over vintage cookbooks and food advertisements is equal parts intriguing and repulsive: People willingly ate things like "Shrimp Aspic Mold" and "Chicken Mousse"? Unlike the menus on contemporary food blogs and in best-selling recipe books, mid-century cooking seems guaranteed to make you gag, thanks to its mismatched flavors, industrial ingredients, and gelatin overload. Often the strangeness of this era's food stemmed from innovations being tested on our nation's taste...

The Cold, Hard Truth About Popsicles

By Ben Marks — During the past couple of years, artisan ice pops, what you and I know generically as popsicles, have outpaced those hipster favorites, cupcakes, in the race to be America’s most popular nostalgia dessert. Like cupcakes, popsicles are portion controlled, which limits over-consumption by those watching their waistlines. Unlike cupcakes, today's ice pops are a healthy sweet, usually made from organic fruit picked at the height of the season. No wonder trendy ice-pop shops and ( is ice pop in...

The Colors of Fiesta

By Maribeth Keane — I started as a collector and I’m a web designer, so I thought I would design a website from my passion. I threw it up there and people just found me and it started to take off. Fiesta is made in West Virginia, and I’m from West Virginia originally. I was a thrift store fanatic in college, and I would see this unmarked colored dishware that just really caught my eye. That was probably Riviera, because Fiesta would be marked. People would know Fiesta, but Riviera wouldn’t be marked, so...