From the Algonquin to Elaine’s, from the Minetta Tavern to the Monkey Bar, native New Yorker and BU alum Delia Cabe visited New York bars past and present to write about the literary patrons who found inspiration in them. In her book Storied Bars of New York she writes about such authors as Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Walt Whitman, and Ernest Hemingway and their favorite bars and cocktails. Come to the meeting and learn how Jay McInery likes his martini and all about the Gramercy Park bar where O. Henry was inspired to write “The Gift of the Magi.” Cheers!

Boston was once a hub of candy making. From Baker’s and Lowney’s Chocolate companies to Necco wafers to Squirrel Nut Zippers, which were caramel and peanut candies
before they were a jazz band, all sorts of sweets were made in the Boston area.
On Wednesday, October 17, Rhea Becker, a journalist (People magazine, The Tab, Boston Globe) and Jamaica Plain resident, who grew up sampling the wares in her father's candy store.
She will tell us all about candy’s prominent place in Boston area history. Bring your sweet tooth. Candy tasting after the talk.

Just as the force and flow of ancient glaciers deposited soil and shaped hills, our decisions about property, policy, family, and food also shape the landscape. So much of what we value—a clean environment, local food, a diverse landscape, and a varied economy—comes together in Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve. The Reserve is the result of vision and hard work, and is adapting as it moves into a new generation. Beyond seasonal farm visits to pick apples or cut a Christmas tree, the Reserve needs policy and public support. Farming isn’t antique, it is current and vital to our future... More than just a cookbook, Bread & Beauty: A Year in Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve traces some of the Reserve’s history, but also the contemporary challenges faced by family farms trying to establish a new generation, new farmers seeking land and markets, and the shared community efforts required to preserve this special place.

Every day, noodle shops around the globe ladle out quick meals that fuel our go-go lives. But Ken Albala has a mission: to get YOU in the kitchen making noodle soup. This primer offers the recipes and techniques for mastering quick-slurper staples and luxurious from-scratch feasts. Albala made a different noodle soup every day for two years. His obsession yielded all you need to know about making stock bases, using dried or fresh noodles, and choosing from a huge variety of garnishes, flavorings, and accompaniments. He lays out innovative techniques for mixing and matching bases and noodles with grains, vegetables, and other ingredients drawn from an international array of cuisines. In addition to recipes both cutting edge and classic, Alabala describes new soup discoveries he created along the way. There's advice on utensils, cooking tools, and the oft-overlooked necessity of matching a soup to the proper bowl. Finally, he sprinkles in charming historical details that cover everything from ancient Chinese millet noodles to that off-brand Malaysian ramen at the back of the ethnic grocery store. Filled with more than seventy color photos and one hundred recipes, A World of Noodle Soup is an indispensable guide for cooking, eating, and loving a universal favorite.

Sonya Gropman & Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman recently co-wrote the only cookbook about German-Jewish food: The German-Jewish Cookbook: Recipes and History of a Cuisine (HBI Series on Jewish Women) This cookbook features recipes for German-Jewish cuisine as it existed in Germany prior to World War II, and as refugees later adapted it in the United States and elsewhere. Because these dishes differ from more familiar Jewish food, they will be a discovery for many people. With a focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients, this indispensable collection of recipes includes numerous soups, both chilled and hot; vegetable dishes; meats, poultry, and fish; fruit desserts; cakes; and the German version of challah, Berches. These elegant and mostly easy-to-make recipes range from light summery fare to hearty winter foods. The Gropmans—a mother-daughter author pair—have honored the original recipes Gabrielle learned after arriving as a baby in Washington Heights from Germany in 1939, while updating their format to reflect contemporary standards of recipe writing. 

Laura Shapiro was a columnist at The Real Paper (Boston) before beginning a 16-year run at Newsweek, where she covered food, women’s issues and the arts and won several journalism awards. Her essays, reviews and features have also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Gourmet, Gastronomica, Slate and many other publications. Her first book was Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (1986), which the University of California Press has reissued with a new Afterword. She is also the author of Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (Viking, 2004), and Julia Child(Penguin Lives, 2007), which won the award for Literary Food Writing from the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2008. Her work is represented in the Library of America’s American Food Writing, The Virago Book of Food, and Best Food Writing 2002.  She is a frequent speaker and panelist on culinary history, and contributed a regular column on a wide range of food topics to gourmet.com, the Gourmet magazine website. During 2009-10 she was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In June 2012, the New York Public Library opened an exhibition called Lunch Hour NYC, co-curated by Shapiro and Rebecca Federman of the NYPL. Read Edward Rothstein’s review in the New York Times Here. For more information about the exhibition, click Here. More recently, Shapiro was featured in Michael Pollan’s Netflix documentary series Cooked (2016).

John F. Carafoli is an author, consultant, blogger and internationally know food stylist. After graduating from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he was an art director/designer and creative director for advertising agencies and publishers in Chicago. Returning to his East Coast roots, he began a career in food writing and food styling, starting with the Boston Globe.

John will describe his exploration of the Italian enclaves in New England and the evolution of Italian-American cuisine through profiles of the people, places, and communities and interviews with local chefs, pizzeria owners, butchers, and specialty shops purveyors. Alongside these stories will be a mix of historical and modern photos as well as classic recipes passed down through generations and from establishments that still thrive today. Part historical record, part travelogue, part cookbook, his talk will provide a fascinating glimpse into the region's rich Italian heritage as depicted in his book: Great Italian American Food in New England: History, Traditions & Memories.

The Library of Congress has designated American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons one of the eighty-eight "Books That Shaped America." Its recognition as "the first American cookbook" has attracted an enthusiastic modern audience of historians, food journalists, and general readers, yet until now American Cookery has not received the sustained scholarly attention it deserves. Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald's United Tastes fills this gap by providing a detailed examination of the social circumstances and culinary tradition that produced this American classic.

Situating American Cookery within the post-Revolutionary effort to develop a distinct national identity, Stavely and Fitzgerald demonstrate the book's significance in cultural as well as culinary terms. Ultimately the separation between these categories dissolves as the authors show that the formation of "taste," in matters of food as well as other material expressions, was essential to building a consensus on what it was to be American. United Tastes explores multiple histories—of food, cookbooks, printing, material and literary culture, and region—to illuminate the meaning and affirm the importance of America's first cookbook.

Claire Cheney founded Curio Spice Co in 2015. She is an adventurous, self-taught cook who has traveled throughout the world. Over the last decade she has visited spice farms and communities in over 12 countries sourcing the best spices to bring back to her native New England. She is passionate about the need to only source sustainably grown spices. Visit Claire's blog, Aromatum to learn more.

Claire owns the Curio Spice shop in Cambridge.

Curio has been featured in:
The Boston Globe: Best of the New
Bon Appetit: 15 Spice Blends we can't live without
The Kitchn: These 5 Boston Shops are a Must for Food Lovers

She will bring along spices and her spice mixtures to accompany the talk.

How many otherwise well-educated readers know that the familiar orange carrot was once a novelty? It is a little more than 400 years old. Domesticated in Afghanistan in 900 AD, the purple carrot, in fact, was the dominant variety until Dutch gardeners bred the young upstart in the seventeenth century. After surveying paintings from this era in the Louvre and other museums, Dutch agronomist Otto Banga discovered this stunning transformation. Joel Denker will discuss this story and many more from his book The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat (Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy)

As the world gets hotter and rainfall more erratic, the type and availability of ingredients for daily meals are changing. 

With support from the Government of Canada and the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund, the Canada-UNDP Climate Change Adaptation Facility (CCAF) has been supporting six least developed countries and small island developing states (Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Haiti, Mali, Niger and Sudan) to strengthen climate resilience and enhance food security. 

The “Adaptive Farms Resilient Tables” cookbook features traditional recipes from these six diverse countries all engaged in the CCAF. This innovative publication examines how climate change is impacting the food supplies of vulnerable people, and how these people are changing the types of food they grow and eat.  It celebrates the people and places that are producing, preparing and consuming food in these countries, as the climate is changing, and provides lessons from their adaptation experiences.

In addition to 18 recipes, the cookbook also includes information on issues of food security and water scarcity, compares crops and culinary cultures across countries, and highlights the connection with the global Sustainable Development Goals.

OMUSUBI & ONIGIRI
An ancient food that’s still the single most popular item at modern convenience
stores, Japan’s rice bundles can be found tucked into lunch boxes everywhere.
Whether formed into classic triangles, cute pandas or pressed into colorful
layers the basics are few – cooked rice, some filling and perhaps a wrapper –
but the possibilities nearly infinite.
Join us on May 16, 2017 for a slide-illustrated talk by Elizabeth Andoh as she
guides us through a thousand years of Japan’s culinary history seeking out the
origins and contemporary configurations of Japan’s beloved rice bundles:
omusubi and onigiri.
Elizabeth Andoh, has made Japan her home for decades. She took her formal culinary training at the Yanagihara School of Classical Japanese Cuisine in Tokyo and established her own culinary arts program there, A Taste of Culture, 45 years ago. She is the author of 6 books including the award-winning WASHOKU: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2005). Elizabeth offers opportunities to delve into the ways of the Japanese kitchen in Tokyo, and on line through the Craftsy platform. Details on her website: www.TASTEofCULTURE.com

TICKET & EVENT INFO‚ RSVP TODAY

http:/ /bit.ly/BESPOKE-SOWA

Making its national debut. BESPOKE aims to enrich the culinary and intellectual worlds of all present.

There will be keynote speeches by Dr. Amy Trubek (Vermont Professor and author of Taste Of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir) and Adam Sharp (formerly Twitter's Head of News, Politics, and Elections).

A 4-person panel will address the issues of Power, Labor, and Class in the Food Industry. Speakers include Chef Josh Lewin of Juliet, Yamilla Ruiz of Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), Alexandre Galimberti of OXFAM, and Dr. Amy Trubek. Thiswill be followed by a series of talking circles pairing 10-12 guests with each of the day's speakers, along with Chef Mary Dumont of the upcoming Cultivar.

Former Gourmet correspondent Rob McKeown and Oxford board member Doug Duda will Chair the day. All proceeds go to Piggy Bank and American Friends of Oxford Symposium Charities.

Jeri has been a member of the Culinary Historians of Boston for years. Her books include "Food on the Rails: The Golden Era of Railroad Dining (Food on the Go)", "Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making", "Pudding: A Global History" , and many more. She has shared her thoughts on these topics over the years and we can't wait to hear what she will be teaching us about this Spring.

Julia Child is synonymous with French cooking, but her legacy runs much deeper. In this presentation, her great-nephew and My Life in France coauthor Alex Prud'homme, will recount the myriad ways he has unearthed in which she profoundly shaped how we eat today. He shows us Child in the aftermath of the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, suddenly finding herself America's first lady of French food and under considerable pressure to embrace her new mantle. We see her dealing with difficult colleagues and the challenges of fame, ultimately using her newfound celebrity to create what would become a totally new type of food television. Every bit as entertaining, inspiring, and delectable as My Life in France, Prud'homme's new book The French Chef in America uncovers Julia Child beyond her "French chef" persona and reveals her second act to have been as groundbreaking and adventurous as her first.

Inspired by the Milan World Fair of 2015, centered on food, a multidisciplinary event was organized that unearthed ancient recipes for a popular audience. “Eating Archaeology” brought together disciplines commonly understood as fundamentally different: the tangible experience of gastronomy and the erudite pursuit of archaeology. To this end, the semester-long program paired graduate students in the fields of culinary arts, archaeology, and food history to research and recreate ancient recipes dating from the Greek Bronze age to the American Colonial period. Patania will discuss the exiciting results of this research and event.

As an Italian living in America, Patania says that for her, cooking is a way to be reminded of home. “I brought a pot from home, and when I cook with it, it reinforces my identity,” she says. “Humans have been immigrants and emigrants forever. What do you bring with you to new places? Tools, and what you eat. These are ties to previous lives, and a way to feel at home. This is archaeology at its best. Food is archaeology. It’s not a pot in a museum.

Chitrita Banerji, a Bengali-American writer, grew up in
Calcutta, India, and came to the United States as a graduate student. She received her Master’s Degree in English from Harvard University. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and travels frequently to India.

In her writing, Banerji uses both fiction and nonfiction to examine the relationships between memory, history, culture, religion, and food. She is the author of several books on the food and culture of her native India, the latest being Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices, published in the United States in 2007. Time Out, London, listed it among the best new food books of 2008. Her work has been included in Best American Travel Writing 2006.

Her first novel, Mirror City, is published by Penguin Viking.

Over the years, Boston has been one of America’s leading laboratories of urban culture, including restaurants, and Boston history provides valuable insights into American food ways. James C. O’Connell, will share his fascinating look at more than two centuries of culinary trends in Boston restaurants, presenting a rich and hitherto unexplored side to the city’s past. His new book Dining Out in Boston shows that the city was a pioneer in elaborate hotel dining, oyster houses, French cuisine, student hangouts, ice cream parlors, the twentieth-century revival of traditional New England dishes, and contemporary locavore and trendy foodie culture. In stories of the most-beloved Boston restaurants of yesterday and today—illustrated with an extensive collection of historic menus, postcards, and photos—O’Connell reveals a unique history sure to whet the intellectual and nostalgic appetite of Bostonians and restaurant-goers the world over.

Tom will discuss Revolution! Conflict! and Gluttony! In his eclectic book of food history, Food Fights & Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste, he takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they ate provoked culinary upheaval around the world as ingredients were traded and fought over, and populations desperately walked the line between satiety and starvation. Parallel to the history books, a second, obscurer history was also being recorded in the cookbooks of the time, which charted the evolution of meals and the transmission of ingredients around the world. The history of food is filled with mythical origin stories, dubious recipes, and fierce nationalism. Secret History of Taste explores the mysteries at the intersection of food and society, and attempts to make sense of the curious area between fact and fiction. He will share some of the fascinating, forgotten stories behind everyday dishes and processes. Among many conspiracies and controversies, the author meditates on the connections between the French Revolution and table settings, food thickness and colonialism, and lemonade and the Black Plague.

Barbara Wheaton, one of the founders of the Culinary Historians of Boston and honorary curator of the culinary collection at the Schlesinger Library, will be our speaker in May.

She will discuss her database, “The Cook’s Oracle,” in which she is logging every recipe, ingredient, and technique in the majority of cookbooks published in America and throughout Europe. The database will allow researchers, scholars, and just plain people to look at the way cooking has changed – or not – over the centuries.

For example, they’ll be able to see the way blancmange evolved from the fourteenth-century sickroom dish made with capon flesh to Fannie Farmer’s dish of the same name, made without capons, but still recommended for the sick and convalescent. It will show how cooks timed dishes, judged the stages of sugar boiling, and knew when an oven was hot enough long before they had mechanical devices to help them. And much more.

This promises to be a fascinating, thought-provoking evening.

It's a little-known fact that the US military is behind much of the science used in creating processed foods. Ever since Napoleon, armies have sought better ways to preserve, store and transport edibles for battle. As part of this quest, the American army spearheaded the invention of energy bars, restructured meat, extended-life bread, cling wrap, cheese powder, TV dinners, active dry yeast, instant coffee and much more. After World War II, as part of our national policy of preparedness, the Defense Department enlisted industry—huge corporations such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson, and Unilever—to help. It’s a good deal for both sides: the companies get exclusive patents or a jumpstart on a breakthrough technology; the army gets a ready supply of rations manufacturers should there ever be a World War III. But there’s a catch. The traits prized in soldier sustenance—imperishability, durability, affordability and appeal to a broad range of palates—have ended up dominating our grocery store shelves and refrigerator cases, often to the detriment of consumer health.

In addition to a detailed discussion of the origins of various supermarket items, this talk will cover the history of combat rations from antiquity to the present (think prosciutto!), the invention of canning during the Napoleonic Wars, the impact of the Spanish-American War’s “embalmed beef” scandal on the country, and the military’s 20th-century transformation of the nascent field of food science.

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo is the author of Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, published in August 2015 by Penguin Random House. The book, the first ever on the topic and based on original research using declassified Defense Department documents and archived food science journals, received considerable national coverage. Pieces were written about it in Bon Appétit, NPR’s The Salt, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and Popular Science, among many other places, and recorded segments about it appeared on Marketplace, PRI The World, the BBC, Reuters and Gravy—and the coverage will be continuing with interviews coming up on Morning Edition and America’s Test Kitchen. She’s also written for publications such as the Atlantic, Salon, Slate, the Boston Globe, the Boston Business Journal, Gourmet, Saveur and PBS and NPR blogs, and has worked as a public health consultant, a newsmagazine editor and a public policy researcher.

It’s no surprise that sugar has been on our minds for several millenia. First cultivated in New Guinea around 8,000 B.C.E., this addictive sweetener has since come to dominate our appetites-whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks, or even pasta sauces-for better and for worse. In this presentation, Andrew F. Smith will offer a fascinating history of this simultaneously beloved and reviled ingredient, holding its incredible value as a global commodity up against its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity.

As Smith demonstrates, sugar’s past is chock-full of determined adventurers: relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugar’s simple but profound hold on our palettes. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell-from barons to slaves, from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil, the sweet tooth.

The birth of blogs in the 1990’s provided a new medium for untrained middle-class women who love to cook to reach other women who also love to cook. Somehow, with neither computer skills nor formal culinary training, these bloggers succeed in creating virtual communities of passionate followers and their cookbooks are instant bestsellers.

As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Back in the 18th century, the cookbook and recipe format that we still recognize today came into being when untrained middle-class women identified and spoke to a new audience: young inexperienced women who needed help preparing family meals with neither mother nor grandmother close at hand. With none of the formality of professionally trained male chef’s cookbooks, these early women cookbook writers developed many of the strategies used by today’s food bloggers to such tremendous success.

This presentation promises to inspire you to pull out your favorite teas, fire up the stove, and get steeping!

In her new book, Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea Annelies Ziderveld teaches how to romance your oat porridge with rooibos, jazz up your brussel sprouts with jasmine, charge your horchata with masala chai! Annelies Zijderveld’s deliciously inventive tea-steeped recipes include:

1. Matcha Chia Pudding Parfaits
2. Earl Grey Soba Noodle Salad
3. Green Tea Coconut Rice
4. Chamomile Buttermilk Pudding with Caramelized Banana
5. Earl Grey Poached Pears with Masala Chai Caramel Sauce

Rosana Yin-Ting Wan was born in Hong Kong and migrated to the United States as a child.  Although she primarily grew up in Houston, Texas, she also lived in various places including Upstate New York and San Francisco.  She started her undergraduate work at University of Houston-Downtown in Houston, Texas and later transferred to Suffolk University in Boston where she received her B.A. in History, with honors, in 2011. 

Since relocating to Boston, she continues to pursue her studies in the history of the American Revolution, 18th century culinary culture, and fine arts.  In the summer of 2012, while volunteering at the Boston National Historical Park, she did a televised interview with Sean Hennessey, the public affairs officer of the park for the SinoVision TV station on how the National Park Service plays a major role in preserving Boston History. Then she worked as a Park Ranger for the Adams National Historical Park. Later she became a seasonal park interpreter for the Pilgrim Memorial State Park, with the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She received the 2014 Outstanding New Interpreter Award from the DCR.  She is a former re-enactor of the Charlestown Militia Company, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. She is an independent scholar, a museum docent, and serves as a sergeant in the Army National Guard. 

She is the first recipient of the John C. Cavanagh Prize in History at Suffolk University in 2011 and a member of the Phi Alpha Theta (National History Honor Society).

She has recently published the book The Culinary Lives of John & Abigail Adams: A Cookbook, by Schiffer Publishing, LTD. It focuses on the food culture during their lifetime (1735-1826), both at home and abroad. Each recipe is based on their correspondence and cookbooks published during the late 18th century and early 19th century.

Immediately after attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines and imprisoned thousands of American civilians who spent the war years deprived of food. Among them was Natalie Crouter, a remarkable Boston-bred woman who kept a diary that describes how a deep longing for food preoccupied every internee. In this lecture with illustrations, author Barbara Haber will share her research of Natalie Crouter's detailed wartime diary. Haber, the former Curator of Printed Books at the Schlesinger Library, developed a collection of more than 16,000 volumes on cooking and food for the library, established the Radcliffe Culinary Friends, co-founded the Radcliffe Culinary Times and was one of the founding members of the Culinary Historians of Boston.

The author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals, she has written for Harvard Magazine, Yankee Magazine, Notable American Women and many other publications. She currently serves on the awards board of the James Beard Foundation and has served on the governing board of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Jason Karakehian is a Massachusetts native and has studied mycology and its history as an avocation since 2009.  He is an active member of the Boston Mycological Club, Friends of the Farlow Herbarium and the New England Botanical Club.  Jason recently published a paper in the journal Mycologia on the fungal genus Angelina and is currently coauthoring a paper on the early 19th century illustrations of fungi by Louis David von Schweinitz.  Also in process is an account of the antebellum mycological correspondence of Charles James Sprague of Boston and Rev. Moses Ashley Curtis of the Carolinas.  Other activities include tracing the history of botany in MA though the archives of the Boston Society of Natural History, housed at the Museum of Science, Boston.

To the early European colonists in America, mushrooms were mere excrescences of the earth – when they were noticed at all.  Native Americans regarded them to have ceremonial importance but as a whole, little is known of their dietary use.  It was not until the early 19th century when a systematic account of our nation’s fungal flora commenced.  Later, the deprivations of the Civil War would force one clergyman/scientist to begin “experimenting” with eating different species of locally foraged mushrooms.  Others soon followed and began to raise awareness of the potential of this food source in the popular press.  Declarations of “wasted food” along with news of accidental poisonings and the arrival of unabashed mycophagist immigrants from Italy and eastern Europe challenged American culture to reckon with the dangers and potential of mushrooms.  With the formation of the first mycological clubs in the northeast and a dedicated governmental effort to educate the public, the effort was joined to popularize the edible mushroom.

New England is the birthplace of the American diner, and Mike Urban will bring together the best of them and share with you their best recipes for comfort food, New England style. Celebrate the food, culture, and funky architecture of these scrappy culinary icons with recipes, color photos, interviews with owners, and heartwarming stories from a broad array of customers.

Diners were born in New England (Rhode Island, to be exact), and they have a long and colorful history as local eateries of distinction because of both their menus and their buildings. Though many diners have gone by the wayside in the past half century, there are still plenty around, and each has at least a dish or two for which they’re best known and that keep customers coming back year after year. The New England Diner Cookbook celebrates every facet of these diamonds in the rough. Along with diners that have perfected the tried-and-true items like corned beef hash, clam chowder, and malted milkshakes, many have developed relatively sophisticated menus that include distinctly New England delicacies like Lobster Chow Mein, Butterscotch Indian Pudding, and Portobello Mushroom Fries.

Mike is the author of The New England Diner Cookbook: Classic and Creative Recipes from the Finest Roadside Eateries

In roughly one hundred years – from the 1870s to the 1970s – dining on trains began, soared to great heights, and then fell to earth.

The founders of the first railroad companies cared more about hauling freight than feeding passengers. The only food available on trains in the mid-nineteenth century was whatever passengers brought aboard in their lunch baskets or managed to pick up at a brief station stop. It was hardly fine dining.

Seeing the business possibilities in offering long-distance passengers comforts such as beds, toilets, and meals, George Pullman and other pioneering railroaders like Georges Nagelmackers of Orient Express fame, transformed rail travel. Fine dining and wines became the norm for elite railroad travelers by the turn of the twentieth century. The foods served on railroads – from consommé to turbot to soufflé, always accompanied by champagne - equaled that of the finest restaurants, hotels, and steamships.

After World War II, as airline travel and automobiles became the preferred modes of travel, elegance gave way to economy. Canned and frozen foods, self-service, and quick meals and snacks became the norm. By the 1970s, the golden era of railroad dining had come grinding to a halt.
Food on the Rails traces the rise and fall of food on the rails from its rocky start to its glory days to its sad demise. Looking at the foods, the service, the rail station restaurants, the menus, they dining accommodations and more, Jeri Quinzio brings to life the history of cuisine and dining in railroad cars from the early days through today.

From the Hardcover edition:Food on the Rails: The Golden Era of Railroad Dining (Food on the Go)

Cognac – an illustrious and elegant amber brandy – is currently one of the most fashionable components of high-end mixed drinks, consumed in the world’s coolest bars.
Many cultures have played a part in the history of the beverage, from the Dutch who made brandewijn or ‘burnt wine,’ to the Spanish colonials in Peru and California who produced the first brandies in the New World.

Brandy: A Global History takes readers on a journey from the alchemists of the Middle Ages to present-day mixology hotspots, chronicling the history of the drink and the beautiful locations in which it is produced. For those inclined to imbibe, the book offers advice on buying, storing and serving brandy, and features classic and new cocktail recipes for both connoisseurs and first-time drinkers to enjoy.

Cooking with live fire goes way beyond the barbecue grill. Rediscover the pleasures of a variety of unconventional techniques, from roasting pork on a spit to baking bread in ashes, searing fish on a griddle, roasting vegetables in a fireplace, making soup in a cast-iron pot, baking pizza in a wood-fired oven, cooking bacon on a stick, and much, much more. Includes 100 recipes for everything from roasted rabbit and fish chowder to baguettes and burnt cream.

See her Book at Amazon: Cooking with Fire: From Roasting on a Spit to Baking in a Tannur, Rediscovered Techniques and Recipes That Capture the Flavors of Wood-Fired Cooking

Before the rise of high-protein modern-day wheat—cultivated to be easy to harvest and to provide us with fluffy industrial breads—there were the ancient wheat varieties such as einkorn, emmer (better known as farro), spelt, and Kamut.

How are they different from modern-day wheat? What about claims that they are easier to digest, offering help to people with gluten-sensitivities? Where you can you find them? How do you cook and bake with them? Ancient grains expert Maria Speck will discuss these wheat varieties, which she has examined closely for her next cookbook. She will introduce their unique character, their textures and flavors, and answer questions.

Bio: Maria Speck is the award-winning author of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals (Ten Speed Press), her first cookbook. It received the coveted Julia Child Award and the Health and Special Diet award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), as well as a Gourmand Award. The cookbook contains 100 Mediterranean-inspired whole grain recipes—from amaranth to wheat berries.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post selected Ancient Grains as one of the top cookbooks of 2011, and Cooking Light magazine named it one of the 100 best cookbooks of the past 25 years.

Maria's next cookbook, Simply Ancient Grains, will be published in spring by Ten Speed Press. Raised in Greece and Germany, Maria has a lifelong passion for whole grains. She is a veteran journalist and food writer, and has contributed to Gourmet, Saveur, and Gastronomica. She also blogs at www.MariaSpeck.com.

Before Julia Child introduced the American housewife to France’s cuisine bourgeoise, before Alice Waters built her Berkeley shrine to local food, before Wolfgang Puck added Asian flavors to classical dishes and caviar to pizza, the restaurateurs and entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century were changing the way America ate. Beginning with the simplest eateries and foods and culminating with the emergence of a genuinely American way of fine dining, This talk will take members on a culinary tour of early-twentieth-century restaurants and dining as described in the book Repast. The innovations introduced at the time—in ingredients, technologies, meal service, and cuisine—transformed the act of eating in public in ways that persist to this day.

Each year the Culinary Historians of Boston join together for a banquet celebrating a specific historical period or Cuisine. This year the Banquet is titled "A Taste of Morocco" !

In her book Arabesque, Claudia Roden writes about the Moroccan Cuisine "Moroccan cooking is the most exquisite and refined of North Africa, especially famous for its couscous, its multilayered pies and delicately flavored tagines, its marriages of meat with fruit, and its extraordinary combinations of spicy, savory and sweet. Styles of cooking go back hundreds of years. Some are rooted in the rural traditions of the indigenous Berber populations of Morocco, while an important grand style is a legacy from the Royal kitchens of the great Moroccan dynasties that has echoes from the medieval Bagdad and Muslim Spain."

More information with date and time coming soon.

Please research, read and learn and engage yourself in this most scrumptious cuisine and cook for all a dish of your choosing to bring to the banquet. Write a short memo describing how and why you were inspired by this dish and tell us all the ingredients and how it was cooked. This is your assignment for the Banquet.

Member Mohamed Maenaoui provides us with the following starting point:

Major elements of the Moroccan Cuisine

Condiments

Harissa: a red firry sauce (but green version, but rare), made mainly from red chilies, and enhanced with garlic, caraway seeds, and coriander. In my version, I add red vinegar to increase the shelf life, and add to it another layer of flavor.
Chemoula, green & red: most often used as a fragrant marinade for fish, but it could also be used for meat, poultry, or vegetables
Pickled lemon
Ras al hanout, a spice mix made of twelve to twenty or more spices, depending where you buy it from. It is an all purpose mixture, but usually added to tagines.

Moroccan cuisine uses a liberal amount of many more spice, herbs, condiment, among them: cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, caraway seeds, fenugreek, nutmeg, fennel seeds, black and white pepper corns, cilantro, parsley, thyme, oregano, basil, etc

Kemia, Meze, and Spreads

Khobiza (marsh mellow greens) spread
Bissara, dry fava beens spread
Zaarlook, kind of ratatouille, with eggplant, zucchini, and sweet peppers
Briwats, filo pastry stuffed with fresh cheese, ground lamb, beef or chicken

Main Dishes

Lemon chicken tagine with olives
Slow braised beef short ribs with prunes and roasted almonds
Couscous and vegetables with chicken, lamb, or beef
R’fissa with m’ssaman, shredded like pasta, and dressed a brothy stew of chicken, lot of white onion, seasoned with fenugreek, herbs, smen (aged clarified butter, lot of umami!)
Chicken bastilla (usually squab) very rich, but delicious. You could find in some great restaurant of Paris, San Francisco, New York

Sweets

Kaab al ghazal (gazelle horns) stuffed with ground almond, orange flower water, and cinnamon.
Briwat be louz

Resources

An intro to Morocco cultural history by Prof. Abdellah Laroui.

Facebook Links:
Moroccan Cooking
Paula Wolfert

Two Directions for Moroccan Cuisine

Paula Wolfert talks about “what makes a tajine a tajine”:

And finally, Paula Wolfert, the chronicler of Moroccan cuisne website.

Bob Frishman has repaired, restored and sold antique clocks for more than thirty-two years. In 1992, he founded Bell-Time Clocks, named after a Harper's Weekly engraving by Winslow Homer depicting New England mill buildings and workers. In 2002, he came home from an auction with two clockwork roasting jacks which he gave to his wife, Jeanne Schinto, connecting with her fascination with the history of food. What followed was an investigation into the history of these ingenious gadgets. Bob will explore this topic with us while sharing his passion for historic time keeping devices.

Darra Goldstein, Founding Editor of Gastronomica and Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Sweets, will offer an insider’s look at how a volume of this magnitude is put together. With over 600 detailed entries on all aspects of sweets throughout the world, the Companion will be more than a listing of candies, cakes, and pastries. It will also contain material on the chemistry, biochemistry, history, culture, and visual culture of sugar and other sweeteners throughout time. Following a brief discussion of the book’s contents and how to conceptualize and accomplish a large project like this, the presentation will open up to the group for a conversation about approaches to food history and culture in publishing.

For the early Christians, “pagan” referred to a multitude of unbelievers: Greek and Roman devotees of the Olympian gods, and “barbarians” such as Arabs and Germans with their own array of deities. But while these groups were clearly outsiders or idolaters, who and what was pagan depended on the outlook of the observer. Treating paganism as a historical construct rather than a fixed entity, Prof. Christopher Jones' book Between Pagan and Christian uncovers the ideas, rituals, and beliefs that Christians and pagans shared in Late Antiquity.

Michael Reiskind, vice-president and historian of the JP Historical Society,
has been researching Boston's historic breweries for twenty years. His talk will been on:
Lost Breweries of Roxbury & Jamaica Plain.

In 1900, Boston had the most breweries per person of any
city in the country - and the overwhelming majority of them
were in the Stony Brook area of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

During the heyday of Boston breweries, this area was the center of the industry with at least 24 breweries along the banks of the Stony Brook. Learn about the
history of brewing in Boston and the people who established the breweries in our city.

Yoshio Saito is the author of Okonomiyaki: Japanese Comfort Food
The talk will be about Japanese comfort food, centering around Okonomiyaki in a few different regional styles. Okonomiyaki is seldom seen in the US and not in Boston.

There is one take-out place in New York City.
Chef Saito will discuss this very popular dish in Japan.
Also, you will have a chance to taste some of the dishes.
He completed a professional Okonomiyaki School in Japan, run by Otafuku Sauce Company.

Rachel E. Black, PhD is Assistant Professor & Academic Coordinator of the Gastronomy Program, Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 tel. 617-358-6291 fax. 617-353-4130

Women played an exceptional part in constructing a highly acclaimed regional cuisine in Lyon during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1935, the restaurant critic and culinary writer Curnonsky declared Lyon the gastronomic capital of France. Gastronomes and early culinary tourists held lyonnais cuisine in high esteem for its honesty and lack of artifice. Women often ran the kitchens in the small restaurants in Lyon that earned critical praise in the Interwar years. This was a moment when women claimed an important place in an otherwise male dominated field—professional cooking. Critics and gastronomes declared female chefs—les meres--the guardians of culinary tradition. Focusing on the lives of Eugénie Brazier and Françoise Fillioux, this article will explore the changing gender dynamics in France from 1890-1935 and the historic conditions that made it possible for a small group of women to rise to prominence in the culinary arts.

Rachel E. Black is Associate Editor Food and Foodways
and has written
Porta Palazzo: The Anthropology of an Italian Market
and
Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass

The talk will survey the extant medieval Arabic record of the sandwich, impressively extensive and varied, to controvert the dominant western view that the sandwich was ‘invented’ in eighteenth-century England. Brick-oven spongy and crusty breads and thin malleable varieties were used by Arab cooks to make sandwiches, called awsat and bazmaward. These sandwiches were popular snacks purchased from the food markets, and offered as hors d’oeuvre before the main hot meal. The medieval Arab sandwich was not an isolated accomplishment: its lineage and culture can be seen in the evolution of some of today’s widespread sandwiches, such as shawirma, in whose dissemination Middle-Eastern immigrants were a key factor. Immigrants from Sicily, where the Arabs ruled for centuries, transmitted the sandwich culture to other shores, as far away as New Orleans, whose national sandwich is the muffaletta, said to be of Sicilian origin. The article further provides the missing Arab link for this popular ‘Western’ sandwich by outlining its Arab origin, including its name.
Along with the talk there will be a brief demo showing how the medieval sandwich was made by following one of the recipes. Sampling of medieval sandwiches will be offered, too.

Sandra L. Oliver, noted food historian and celebrated author, will lead an intensive three-day workshop in historic recipe research. Each participant selects a recipe and an alternative they would like to research. Class time is divided between lecture and discussion time, and Oliver will teach a method of conducting the research. Each participant will use a combination of resources both real—books in the room—and virtual—online resources via computer—to conduct research. Participants are encouraged to bring a computer with wireless capacity. The workshop concludes with a cooking afternoon to test your recipe on the final day in the 1786 kitchen at the Visitor Center at Hall Tavern.

The all-inclusive registration fee includes course materials, meals and four nights (Sunday-Thursday) lodging at the Deerfield Inn. Fee for double occupancy: $765; fee for single occupancy: $1,115; fee for commuter: $415 (no lodging and breakfast); fee for traveling companion (not attending workshop) with a double occupancy participant: $440.

Morocco produces a large range of Mediterranean fruits and vegetables and even some tropical ones. Common meats include beef, mutton and lamb, chicken, camel, rabbit, and seafood which serve as a base for the cuisine. Characteristic flavorings include lemon pickle, cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil and dried fruits. It is also known for being far more heavily spiced than most Middle Eastern Cuisine. However, this representation may be misguided since most Morroccan dishes are not hot spicy, but complex blends of flavors, recently accompanied by the traditional Tunisian fiery condiment Harissa.

Mohamed Maenaoui will take us on a journey through the flavors, traditions, complexity of his fascinating ancestral cuisine.

Please join us for a photographic survey of Central Asian foodways and its role in nationalism along the Silk Road. Dr. Mack will provide an overview the region's culinary culture based on his travel and work in Chinese and post-Soviet Central Asia during the last 25 years.

Dr. Glenn R. Mack is an educator, author, cook, and researcher. Originally trained as a Sovietologist, Glenn covered the Soviet Union as a photo editor for 7 years in Moscow and New York with Time Magazine. After the fall of the USSR, he spent a year in Central Asia studying the culinary culture and history of the region.

The CHOB Annual Banquet provides an opportunity for members to enjoy studying, preparing, and (of course) eating foods from a specific historical period or region.

This year, the Historians are taking on the challenging cuisine of Morocco. Starting with Mohammed Meoumani's presentation in April, members will choose or be assigned recipes for the full range of Morroccan cooking from appetizer, main, and dessert courses to breads and beverages. The vast variety of spices and combinations represented by this refined North African cuisine.

Barbara Rotger has had a passion for food for as long as she can remember. She has followed that passion through gastronomy courses, completing her Masters degree and subsequently working at the Gastronomy Program at BU.

In this presentation she will share some of her path through the wonderful world of gastronomy as well as some of the cherished recipes she has collected along the way.

Inspired by her own family history, Ms. Nathan set off to learn more about the often hidden history and foods of French Jews.  Within this rich agricultural country, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Provençal Jewish food developed side by side and often melded with French regional cooking.  While the Jews of Alsace cooked with goose fat and sauerkraut, those of the south cooked with oil and garlic. Since some Jewish families in Provence, for instance, have been there for over two thousand years, it is hard to differentiate Jewish from Provençal food customs. Fougasse, a bread with holes, traditionally mixed, kneaded and shaped at home, then brought to a communal oven for baking was, for example, the holiday bread for Jews. This diversity of origin goes beyond region and all blend together in the French people, including its Jews.

The Roger Smith Cookbook Conference is scheduled for February 7- 9, 2013 at The Roger Smith Hotel in New York City. It is an eclectic gathering of those who publish, write, edit, agent, research, or simply buy and use cookbooks. On Thursday, February 7, five workshops will explore issues in researching, reading and publishing cookbooks: Introduction to Cookbook Publishing; Reading Cookbooks: A Structured Approach and Structured Dialogue with Barbara Ketcham Wheaton; The Wild World of Self-Publishing; and The Way to Look: How to Do Research with Cookbooks, and Cookbook Publishing 360. (There is a separate registration fee for the workshops. Pre-registration is a must; no walk-ins.) Friday and Saturday, February 8-9, are the core of the conference program with 32 panels. On each day, concurrent sessions will take place on a broad and stimulating range of topics, from manuscript cookery books and class and politics in cookbooks, to cookbooks in the digital age and the culinary app. Join 103 writers, publishers, editors, agents and academics in New York in February. Explore the exciting list of participants and read many of their bios at: http:// cookbookconf.com/participants

Conference registration includes lunch, coffee, and receptions for both Friday and Saturday.
For more information and to register, go to: http://cookbookconf.com or email us at cookbookconf@gmail.com with questions. --

Jeri Quinzio is a long time member and friend of the Culinary Historians of Boston. She is also a freelance writer specializing in food history and the author of Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making.

In this presentation, she will provide a heart-warming discussion on Pudding - the topic of her most recent book: Pudding: A Global History (Reaktion Books - Edible)

Pudding: A Global History explains how puddings developed from their early savory, sausage-like mixtures into the sweet and sticky confections we are now familiar with, and he describes how advances in kitchen equipment have changed puddings over time.

!!!!! Every Dish Has A Past: A Workshop in Historic Recipe Research
        March 18, 2013 - March 20, 2013, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
The deadline for registration is March 1, 2013 !!!

Our March speaker, Sandra L. Oliver, noted food historian and celebrated author, will lead an intensive three-day workshop in historic recipe research in Deerfield, MA. Each participant selects a recipe and an alternative they would like to research. Class time is divided between lecture and discussion time, and Oliver will teach a method of conducting the research. Each participant will use a combination of resources both real—books in the room—and virtual—on-line resources via computer—to conduct research. Participants are encouraged to bring a computer with wireless capacity. The workshop concludes with a cooking afternoon to test your recipe on the final day in the 1786 kitchen at the Visitor Center at Hall Tavern.
Registration includes 3 nights stay Sunday, March 17 to Wednesday (morning), March 20 at the Deerfield Inn Carriage House and all meals. Commuter registration option available. Traveling companions not attending the workshop may come and share in meals for an extra cost. The workshop is limited to 15 participants.
To learn more or to register, go to: Every Dish Has Past Workshop

What You Need Know About Maine Food. Since moving to her Maine island home twenty-five years ago, food writer and historian Sandy Oliver has had to learn a thing or two about Maine food traditions. Then while assembling her newest book, Maine Home Cooking, quite a few insights came gradually into focus. In her talk, Sandy will sum up her education so far.

Ina Lipkowitz, professor of English at MIT where she leads classes on fiction and the Bible, will be our February speaker. Her book, Words to Eat by, explores the stories behind 5 of our most basic food words, words that reveal our powerful associations with certain foods. The book tells a remarkable story about the evolution of our language and culinary history. Using sources that range from Roman histories to Julia Childs’ recipes, lyrical which shows how saturated with French and Italian names the English culinary vocabulary is. But the words for our most basic foodstuffs-bread, milk, leek, meat, and Apple-are still rooted in Old English. The Wall Street Journal review called the book “a hymn into the comforting, honest pleasures of food and at the same time a perceptive account of the ways in which many of our tastes were determined hundreds and indeed thousands of years ago.”

That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Opening the door of an ordinary refrigerator, Susanne E. Freidberg tells the curious story of the quality stored inside: freshness.

Summer Shack’s Jasper White, writing for The Wall Street Journal, had this to say about CHB member Elisabeth Townsend’s book on lobsters. “Elisabeth Townsend’s concise but rich Lobster: A Global History offers a journey through lobster’s prehistoric and recorded history, exploring scientific, environmental and culinary matters. . . . She also does an outstanding job of documenting and explaining the modern controversy over the treatment of lobster: Is boiling alive inhumane, for instance, and if so what method might be better? . . . Most of all, [this books reminds] us that our long relationship with lobsters is tied up with our relationships with one another.”J. Elizabeth Towsend will give a talk on her book.

Nancy Harmon Jenkins invites you to join her and Chef Roberto (“Jerry”) Zanieri for a magical six-day full immersion in the delights of springtime Tuscany:
AMOROLIO/FOR LOVE OF OLIVE OIL
An Extra-Virgin Intensive for Food Writers, Chefs, and Others Interested in Deepening Their Experience of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

When: May 20 to 26, 2012
Where: Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort in the green rolling hills of the Mugello northeast of Florence
What: An unusual opportunity to expand and deepen your knowledge of extra-virgin olive oil.

For more information see: AmorOlio

In her book, Patricia Herlihy takes you for a ride through vodka’s history, from its mysterious origins in a Slavic country in the fourteenth century to its current transatlantic reign over Europe and North America. She reveals how it continued to flourish despite hurdles like American Prohibition and being banned in Russia on the eve of World War I. On its way to global domination, vodka became ingrained in Eastern European culture, especially in Russia, where standards in vodka production were first set. Illustrated with photographs, paintings, and graphic art, Vodka will catch the eye of any reader intrigued by how “potato juice” became an international industry.

In his lively account of the American tuna industry over the past century, celebrated food writer and scholar Andrew F. Smith relates how tuna went from being sold primarily as a fertilizer to becoming the most commonly consumed fish in the country. In his book, American Tuna, the so-called "chicken of the sea" is both the subject and the backdrop for other facets of American history: U.S. foreign policy, immigration and environmental politics, and dietary trends.

Nancy Harmon Jenkins invites you to:
AMOROLIO/FOR LOVE OF OLIVE OIL
An Extra-Virgin Intensive for Food Writers, Chefs, and Others Interested in Deepening Their Experience of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

When: October 15 to 21, 2011
Where: Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort in the green rolling hills of the Mugello northeast of Florence
What: An unusual opportunity to expand and deepen your knowledge of extra-virgin olive oil. Read More

Author and CHB member Becky Sue Epstein will discuss her new book, Champagne: A Global History. In the book, she discusses Champagne’s history and the celebrities who made it famous - from Dom Perignon to the widow Veuve Cliquot. She also discusses the difference between Champagne and sparkling wine. And she answers questions such as – Is French Champagne really better than other sparkling wines? How does the wine get fizzy? And why does it stay that way? Ms. Epstein is also the author of The American Lighthouse Cookbook (Sourcebooks/Cumberland, co-written with Chef Ed Jackson).

Richard W. Wrangham, the Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. His talk is titled “Cooking and the shaping of the household.” Cooking is a cultural universal, and in all but the most exceptional circumstances cooked food is an obligatory component of the human diet. Cross-culturally cooking is also the most female-gendered of all domestic activities, since the responsibility to produce an evening meal normally falls on wives. I argue that the gendered structure of the human household arose largely as a result of the biological requirement for cooked food, because this system both allowed wives’ resources to be socially protected from petty theft, and also gave husbands predictable evening nourishment. Historical changes in gender roles within urban households show that this system is not biologically embedded. Recent developments in food practices in the urban industrialized world, including cheap restaurant meals and pre-cooked meals, may be particularly important influences on the breakdown of traditional domestic gender roles.

Longtime CHB members Kathleen Fitzgerald and Keith Stavely will discuss their latest book, Northern Hospitality: cooking by the book in New England. The book includes nearly 400 annotated recipes dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The authors explore the methods and meanings of the recipes for everything from pottage to pie crust, from caudle to calf's head.

Robert S. Cox, author of Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism, called Northern Hospitality “elegantly written, well-conceived, and compelling…a delight to read.”

Tea master Allan Palmer will demonstrate and discuss the 400-year-old Japanese tea ceremony, “chanoyu.” He will describe the symbolic importance of the various implements used in the ceremony and share some details about the highly structured meal that is served before tea called kaiseki. Mr. Palmer says of the tea cermony, “Although Chanoyu is primarily a social act, it is filled with deep spiritual significance and symbolism.”

(image taken from Wikipedia: Japanese Tea Ceremony)

Andy Smith will talk on “Starving the South: How the North won."

See: http://andrewfsmith.com/

Les Dames d'Escoffier, Boston Chapter is sponsoring a Green Tables event to promote foods grown on local farms. Green Tables is an initiative of Les Dames d'Escoffier International which showcases the work of LDEI chapters engaged in linking urban and rural farms and gardens to school, restaurant and kitchen tables. Please explore the resources and tools they offer to further this initiative in your community, and join us as we celebrate the work underway. Dinner includes locally raised beef from Open Meadow Farm, pork from Blood Farm and Verrill Farm produce, all paired with wines from Gordon’s Fine Wines and M. S. Walker, Harpoon Beers, Sangria and soft drinks. Why go to the supermarket for foods shipped from distant factory farms when you can feed your family nutritious, locally grown food? You can purchase meats that come from humanely-raised, pasture-fed animals which is important to their health and yours. Come and see why it benefits you to support your local farms, and have fun at the same time! See Feast on a Farm for more info.

Architectural historian Elizabeth Cromley will speak about her new book The Food Axis: Cooking, Eating, and the Architecture of American Houses. Blending architectural and social history with the necessity—and the passion—for food, Ms. Cromley examines the development of the American house by viewing it through one very specific lens: the food axis. She traces changes in food spaces through the years and explores the habits surrounding all aspects of food in the home. Professor of Architectural History at Northeastern University, Ms. Cromley is the author of Alone Together: A History of New York’s Early Apartments and coauthor, with Thomas Carter, of Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes.

Lynne C. Anderson will give a talk on her new book “Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens” Through stories of hand-rolled pasta and homemade chutney, local markets and backyard gardens, and wild mushrooms and foraged grape leaves—this book recounts in loving detail the memories, recipes, and culinary traditions of people who have come to the United States from around the world. Chef and teacher Lynne Anderson has gone into immigrant kitchens and discovered the power of food to recall a lost world for those who have left much behind. The enticing, easy-to-prepare recipes feature specialties like Greek dolmades, Filipino adobo, Brazilian peixada, and Sudanese mulukhiyah. Together with Robin Radin’s beautiful photographs, these stories and recipes will inspire cooks of all levels to explore new traditions while perhaps rediscovering their own culinary roots.

Note: At this meeting we were told about the Food News Journal by Marylène Altieri and promised a link. Here it is: Food News Journal Home Page