Cooking started out straightforward: put food over a fire and turn it occasionally until it looks and smells ready. What have people done when fuel wasn’t available, and what have opportunists done when a source of free heat presented itself? People have cooked using heat from volcanoes, hot springs, automobile engines, weapons, and other ingenious methods. Richard Foss will present a light-hearted history of culinary innovation from prehistory to the present day.

Richard Foss has been writing professionally since 1986 and has contributed to over thirty different publications, including the Encyclopedia of World Food Cultures and the Oxford Companion to Sweets. He taught culinary history at Osher Institute/UCLA Extension, and is on the board of the Culinary Historians of Southern California. His book on the history of rum was released in 2012. “Food in the Air and Space; the surprising history of food and drink in the skies,” followed in 2014. He is is curating an exhibition called “Cooking Up A New West” that will open at the Autry Museum of the American West in 2021.