Oral and written history project on foodways during quarantine

The Center for Food and Culture is collecting oral histories and also written answers to online questions (if you prefer) on comfort foodways during the pandemic. Help them... and future researchers... by participating HERE.

Many local and state historical societies, colleges and others are collecting  writings from regular folks on their current experiences. Maryland His. Soc. calls their project "Collecting in Quarantine" and Mass. His Soc "What are your covid-19 experiences?"

From the Center for Food and Culture website -

FINDING COMFORT/DISCOMFORT THROUGH FOODWAYS

“The various aspects of foodways can be broken into three categories: product (recipes, meals, menus); processes (production, procurement, preservation, preparation, presentation, consumption, clean-up/disposal); and concepts/performance (contexts, symbolism, meanings). Each one of these parts is being challenged by the pandemic, and as with all systems, each part affects the others. Is it possible to take each of these parts to see how connections through it might be made or affirmed? Is it also possible to see how the “social distancing” necessary to keep us all healthy is also disrupting some of the connections that we had—connections that we now realize gave us a sense of comfort?

The Center for Food and Culture is documenting ways in which people are finding comfort through the connections that foodways can give. Participants can volunteer to be interviewed or respond to questions on the website. Interviews will be archived and used for an online exhibit. This project is partially funded by the Association for the Study of Food and Society and by the Ohio Humanities Council.”

For more information HERE or contact the Director at Lucymlong  @  gmail.com (compress spaces around @ ).

More virtual food and drink history talks with 16 additions since Aug 1, through Nov.  HERE

Aug 10 Mon 7pm Get in grained. The Story of Grain HERE

Aug 11 Tue 6:30-8:30  The History of Scotch Whisky $6  HERE 

Aug 11 Tue 7pm Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug. Facebook live at Revolution Books New York  HERE

Aug 12 Wed 2pm Real Bread Bakers. Screening and panel discussion  $5 (half goes to a Glasgow food fund) HERE.

Aug 12 Wed 7-8:30 Whiskey, Boxing, and Politics: The Lost New Orleans of Big Jim Comiskey, (1897-1972) Hermann Grima House HERE .
Great talk in July, now available on tape for a short time - Cradle of the Cocktail: The Rise of Drinking Culture in 19th Century New Orleans. Dr. Kristen Brooks (PhD in some aspect of history of alcohol)  HERE

Aug 12 Wed 7:30 The Archaeology of Beer. $6 HERE

Aug 12 Wed 8pm Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore. Darra Goldstein. Culinary Historians of Chicago. HERE Will not be recorded.

Aug 13 Thu 1-2:30 A nice cup of tea: a history of tea drinking. UK Tours Online £11.37 HERE

Aug 13 Thurs 6:30pm Cooking by the Book: Celebrity Chefs, Cookbookery, and the Changing Landscape of American Cuisine. HERE

Aug 15 Sat 10:30 Foods of 18th-century tenant farmers. Gunston Hall, VA  cooking in a house HERE

Aug 15 Sat 1-2:30 DIY Ginger Ale and Vanilla Extract Workshop - A Virtual Program HERE

Aug 17 Mon 9-10 Spirits of Latin America - Book Talk. HERE

Aug 18 Tue 11am Food for Thought: a lecture about Food in Art £11 HERE

Aug 19 Wed 7 Colonial Milling & Brewing. Stratford Hall, VA  HERE

Aug 19 Wed 11:30am From Foraging to Farming: How Our Skeletons Changed. Smithsonian HERE

Aug 20 Thurs 12pm  Early Mills and Milling Seminar and baking with author William Rubel, speaker Tony Shahan of Newlin Grist Mill museum PA. HERE Join Rubel's Facebook page Bread History and Practice for future topics and details HERE

Aug 20 Thur 5pm Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning by Dr. Rafia Zafar. Culinary Historians of N. Cal.  HERE

Aug 20 Thur 7pm How Corn Changed Itself and then Changed Everything Else. Highland Park Historical Society. IL archives@highlandparkhistory.org HERE

Aug 22 Sat 10-4 Maryland Iron Festival: Mountains, Metal and Malt - Virtual Edition. blacksmiths, traditional food preparations, more. Repeated on Sun. HERE

Aug 22 Sat 10:30am Garden. Collecting seeds . Gunston Hall, VA HERE Tape will be HERE

Aug 25 Tue 5:30-7 Tracing the Incredible History of Tea $10 HERE

Aug 25 Tue 6:30-8  The American Coffeehouse $7 HERE

Aug 25 Tue 7pm African American Foodways Cooking Demonstration. Stratford Hall HERE

Aug 26 Wed 10am Living History at Home: Quansheba’s World. She was "a free woman of color who helped run a tavern in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War."  NY His Soc and virtual behind-the-scenes of the Museum of the Am Rev. HERE

Aug 26 Wed 2pm Mr. & Mrs. Novice: Victory Garden Propaganda During WWII. HERE

Aug 26 Wed 4pm Sugar in Settler Colonial Culture in Canada: What Home-Ec Cookbooks Reveal. HERE

Aug 26 Wed 6:30-8  The History of Gin $6 HERE

Au 27 Thur 2pm All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battle for Women's Right to Vote. Laura Kumin. HERE

Aug 27 Thurs 4pm Bread Baking as Opportunity. 20 min talk by author and CA baker Josey Baker at Fermentology  HERE

Please consider donating to the non-profits.

©2020 Patricia Bixler Reber
Researching Food History HOME