No environment on Earth is as alien as space, or as challenging when it comes to providing nutritious, appetizing food. The techniques that have served humans since prehistoric times don’t work without gravity—there can be no fire, and simple techniques like boiling or frying are impossible. It’s also difficult to eat—making peas stay on your fork is child’s play compared to dealing with food crumbs in microgravity. As space voyages have become longer and people have stayed for over a year, the problems have multiplied. Foss’s talk will include the stories of astronauts coping with well-intentioned but often terrible ideas, and how we deal with the longest distance from the kitchen to the dining room in history.

About the speaker
Richard Foss has been writing about food and drink professionally since 1986, and has contributed to over thirty different publications, including articles in the Encyclopedia of World Food Cultures and the Oxford Companion to Sweet. He has taught culinary history at Osher Institute/UCLA Extension, is on the board of the Culinary Historians of Southern California, and is the California Curator for the SoFAB Institute and Museum of the American Cocktail. His book on the history of rum was released by Reaktion Books in April of 2012. His current book is “Food in the Air and Space; the Surprising History of Food and Drink in the Skies,” and he is finishing a book on the farm-to-table movement.

Free and open to the public.