This is silly. Everyone knows you serve isopods with a side of doritos.

This is a fun topic with much overlooked potential for engaging the public's interest in space. To date there has never been actual 'cooking' in space. Astronauts have always relied on what is essentially a kind of camping food or military rations. But if we hope to one day live in space that, of course, means growing food there, which in turn means preparing and cooking that food. We've done much experimentation with growing plants in space, but what about cooking? The processes will be different and even how we design recipes would be different because, in a spacecraft or space habitat, food tastes differently. Few people are actually looking into this. It's a wide open field of exploration.

Recently, I've been promoting the idea of a kind of home and garden show of space where people who are normally excluded from any participation in space programs--designers, architects, artists, and DIY enthusiasts--can explore the possibilities of a future space lifestyle by designing their own mock-ups of habitat interiors. (a relatively easy proposition because, in fact, most permanent space settlements will be all about interior design as they would be relatively simple structures outfit by retrofit) Exploring the possibilities of food in space would be a great addition to that lifestyle exploration. What sort of foods are more likely to be produced early in a settlement's development, relying on things like hydroponics? How do you prepare them? What new technologies might be involved, like kitchen automation, food 'printing', tissue-cultured meat or other protein alternatives? You could really engage people's imaginations with this.