h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Been sorting through some.

It's not just the food, but the origins and the stories of them being made and for who.

I wonder if the people who first discovered coffee could have imagined how the beverage would morph into today's coffee scene. At first, they would not have been able to have decaf with soy milk and sprinkled cocoa and nutmeg.

http://www.ncausa.org/about-coffee/history-of-coffee

I'm an old goat, myself.

I've cut back a bit on coffee consumption in the last week or so. I may ease back into it if all goes well, though.

You had smileys for and in your first post. The ancient Romans enjoyed ground meat sandwiches. They were also big on salads. They would have invented pizza if they had had New World sooner. Alas, their ships could cross the Atlantic, but getting back to the Mediterranean was easier said than done.

I read something, probably in a cookbook, possibly ''Our Ancient Ancestors, China, Greece and Rome'' by Jeff Smith. The theory was that pizza evolved from the foods that were bought to the Collieseum to be eaten while watching the gladiators etc. The audience would bring olive, olive oil, meats, cheese and flat breads for lunch and dinner.

That sounds about right.

Naples claims to be the birthplace of pizza, but who knows? Along the beach at Herculaneum (next to Pompeii), the Romans ate flat bread topped with meats and cheeses. Maybe they sometimes put sauces on top and grilled them. That sounds a lot like today's pizzas, though tomatoes would not have been part of their diet yet (tomatoes came form the new World, which Europeans knew little about until the 1400s.

The first sauce may have been the meat broth or juices from cooking, similar to au jus here.

Ancient Rome had grains, breads, olives, olive oil for many uses, legumes and vegetables as well as meats and fish.

Those flat breads could have been topped with bean pastes or olive oil, fish and vegetables.

https://recipesforourdailybread.com/roast-beef-po-boy-new-orleans/