Kremlin-shaped cake by cakediva.com

This week's Cakehead of the Week award goes to the Russians for launching the first man-made satellite first. Today is the 50th anniversary of the paradigm-shifting event. We want to take this opportunity to revisit how far Space Food has come since the early days of the space program. The NASA website provides an overview of the astronaut dining evolution.

John Glenn, America's first man to eat anything in the near-weightless environment of Earth orbit, found the task of eating fairly easy, but found the menu to be limited. Most agreed the foods were unappetizing and disliked squeezing the tubes. Freeze-dried foods were hard to rehydrate and crumbs had to be prevented from fouling instruments. Eating on the Gemini missions improved somewhat. Bite-sized cubes were coated with gelatin to reduce crumbling, and the freeze-dried foods were encased in a special plastic container to make reconstituting easier. Gemini astronauts had such food choices as shrimp cocktail, chicken and vegetables, butter-scotch pudding, and applesauce.

Apollo astronauts were the first to have hot water, which made rehydrating foods easier and improved the food's taste. These astronauts were also the first to use utensils via the "spoon bowl," a plastic container that could be opened and its contents eaten with a spoon. Thermostabilized pouches were also introduced on Apollo. The task of eating in space got a big boost in Skylab. Skylab featured a large interior area where space was available for a dining room and table. Eating for Skylab's three-member teams was a fairly normal operation: Footholds allowed them to situate themselves around the table and "sit" to eat.

[from NASA and Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum exhibit on Food in Space]