As We Eat

Suffrage for women spanned seven decades; a span of time in United States history that ranged from the California Gold Rush through the American Civil War through the end of the Great War (WWI). Born from the desire to achieve political agency commensurate with the reality of women's contributions to society, there were many actions taken to draw collective consciousness to the “Great Cause.”

Many suffragists have made history for their bold acts of civil disobedience, but less discussed are the quieter tactics meant to gently persuade women and men without triggering further backlash. Building on themes of feminism and food studies, Leigh and Kim turn the pages on how suffrage cookbooks helped to build and sustain a movement.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

Seneca Falls Convention

How Suffragists Used Cookbooks As A Recipe For Subversion

The Top-Secret Feminist History of Tea Rooms

"To Make the Whole World Homelike": Gender, Space, and America's Tea Room Movement

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food

All Stirrup Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battles for Women’s Right to Vote

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook: The 1886 Classic

Washington Women’s Cookbook

Gifts for Suffragists

Woman's Suffrage Cookbook and Tea Towel Gift Set by Alison Gardiner Designs

19th Amendment Mug from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild Store

We would love to connect with you

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Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

And please subscribe to As We Eat, Going Places. Eric and Leigh will be traveling in their converted van sharing stories of food culture from the road.

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As We Eat, Going Places

In this episode, Leigh and Kim discuss the history of feminist food studies and how this particular critical lense offers uniquely modern insights into how we view traditional roles held by women in the realm of food. We discovered that until recently, topics relevant to feminism have not been addressed in depth - such as discussions about the value of food preparation in creating family identity, how community cookbooks both preserve culture and function as tools of resistance, and power dynamics behind how food is produced, distributed, cooked, and eaten. 

Both of us were particularly inspired by Laura Shapiro titled “I Guarantee”: Betty Crocker and the Woman in the Kitchen which unpacks the cultural impact of a famous but fictional figure - Betty Crocker of General Mills - from packaged foods to cookbooks to television and radio. We previously covered Betty’s origins in Episode 20: Grain Empires, but dig deeper into how this character influenced the cooking habits of American homemakers as well as their perceptions about the value of their contributions to the home - especially in contrast to culinary great Julia Child.

Along the way we discuss the nature of creativity in the kitchen, and how feeding others performs the critical work of defining and creating “family life.” Leigh and Kim share perspectives on the personal work of cooking and how that dynamic can shift whether one is cooking for self or for others. Finally, discuss efforts by a now-defunct USDA Bureau of Home Economics between 1925 and 1962 to quantify the often invisible work performed by home-makers in farm and rural communities.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

The Femisphere: Foodies and Food Politics - Ms. Magazine

A Feminist Guide to Cooking - Contexts, American Sociological Society

Recipe Digitization Project @ Food.Her.Story

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food

Why We Cook: Women on Food, Identity, and Connection by Lindsay Gardner

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Mary Douglas

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

And please subscribe to As We Eat, Going Places. Eric and Leigh will be traveling in their converted van sharing stories of food culture from the road.

👇🏻

As We Eat, Going Places

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes.

With consumer food waste at an all-time high, and with grocery stores steadily on the rise, Leigh and Kim chew on what those sell-by, best-by, and other food “expiration” labels really mean. We also dive into the history of Major Grey’s style sweet mango chutney and how this tasty accompaniment to Indian made its way from the Indian subcontinent to grocery stores shelves around the world.

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

And please subscribe to As We Eat, Going Places. Eric and Leigh will be traveling in their converted van sharing stories of food culture from the road.

👇🏻

As We Eat, Going Places

MORE GOOD STUFFSources We Found Helpful for this Episode

Chutney Recipes and Cooking Tips - The Spruce Eats

Food Keeper App

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Scrap Vegetable Broth - Garlic & Zest

Left-over Squash Pancakes - Jamie Oliver

Preserved Lemons - OMG! Yummy

Mango Chutney - National Center for Home Food Preservation

Classic Major Grey’s Chutney - Saveur

South African Fruit Chutney - The Spruce Eats

Boxing Day Chutney - lovinghomemade

Idli with Almond Butter and Persimmon Chutney - Ken Albala

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

In Eating Across America, Kim and Leigh talk about diners and more specifically, the Harvey House concept helps to create travel communities and good manners.

To start the conversation, Leigh recalls how her hometown diner played a role in community building. She shares the definition of a diner from the sounds of conversation, diner coffee culture, serveware, and interior decor.

In an effort to understand diner culture, she discusses the evolution of the diner from a small lunch wagon in Rhode Island to pre-manufactured diners fabricated by the Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company. 

These small mom-and-pop shops have weathered two World Wars, the Great Depression, by skillfully adapting themselves to the wants and needs of their communities.

A location for politicians to meet constituents, scenes from popular movies, and even subjects for songs and pieces of art, the diner has become an American icon. A place where your food comes quickly, but the conversations are slow and easy.

To continue with the theme of eating in community, Kim dives into an establishment whose purpose was to provide an eating service to railway passengers.

After testing two locations along the Kansas Pacific Railway line, Fred Harvey determined that there was a market for a high quality food service for people on the railways. This led to the development of the Harvey Houses that would dot the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line from Kansas to Arizona. 

These eating houses offered a consistently high quality experience in a very short amount of time making it easy for passengers to enjoy white table cloth experience in the time it took the train to take on necessary fuel and/or water. The service also helped to develop rail travel and would ultimately result in dining cars being introduced to passenger trains.

If you’d like to visit one of the still-standing Harvey Houses, visit La Posada in Winslow, Arizona which is also a Harvey House museum. 

Whether it’s an American diner or an iteration of the Harvey House, these eateries provide travelers with a sense of familiarity.

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

And please subscribe to As We Eat, Going Places. Eric and Leigh will be traveling in their converted van sharing stories of food culture from the road.

👇🏻

As We Eat, Going Places

MORE GOOD STUFFSources We Found Helpful for this Episode

La Pasada Hotel

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

Harvey Houses of the Southwest, Richard Melzer

The Harvey House Cookbook, George H. Foster and Peter C. Weiglin

The American Diner Cookbook, Elizabeth McKeon

In 2021 we were delighted, bemused, beguiled, and blessed with stories that ranged from Presidential food fights to how foods can put us in the mood. We discovered beliefs of foods whose properties make us strong, lucky, or virile. We shared stories of holiday traditions that are treasured for their ability to hold within them memories or celebrations past, present, and future. And we were honored that you came along for the ride!

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

And please subscribe to As We Eat, Going Places. Eric and Leigh will be traveling in their converted van sharing stories of food culture from the road.

👇🏻

As We Eat, Going Places

For Great Britain and its Commonwealth nations, Boxing Day offers a unique proposition - a day of rest and respite after a busy holiday season full of cooking, baking, and eating to our hearts’ content. For Kim, Boxing Day is meant to be spent with new books, but for her family in South Africa, it was a day to bring leftovers to friends. Behind the final door of our 2021 Alimentary Advent Calendar lies some wild theories about how Boxing Day earned its name.

MORE GOOD STUFF

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

Happy Boxing Day, Smithsonian

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Anything you like; 

Kim has an enormous backlog of reading to do starting with: 

The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell

Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Atlas Obscura

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Shortbread Cookies - Pastry Chef Online

Hot Milk Tea - Sweet Steep

Whipped Coffee - Pastry Chef Online

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. Your thoughts are very important to us!

 

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Jule Kake (Christmas Bread) a sweet, rich bread spiked with citron, candied cherries and sweet raisins adorns many a Scandinavian Christmas table. This recipe has been passed down through four generations of Norwegian ladies with fortitude and a strong sense of family and community.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODESources We Found Helpful for this Episode

Carole Bell

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

North Wild Kitchen by Nevada Berg

Modern Scandinavian Baking: A Cookbook of Sweet Treats and Savory Bakes

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Jule Kake - The Heritage Cookbook Project

Jule Kake - Savor the Flavor

We would love you to connect with us

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Please review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. You thoughts are very important to us!

 

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Behind Door 24 of the Alimentary Advent Calendar is the Feast of Seven Fishes, an Italian-American Christmas Eve seafood feast that speaks to both Old Worlds and New. Acclaimed food photographer Andrew Scrivani takes Kim back to his childhood on Staten Island and forward to his own modern, multicultural celebration of Christmas Eve.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODESources We Found Helpful for this Episode

The Chef John Mitzewich Podcast
By Chef John Mitzewich & Andrew Scrivani

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

That Photo Makes Me Hungry: Photographing Food for Fun & Profit

By Andrew Scrivani

Heirloom Kitchen: Heritage Recipes and Family Stories from the Tables of Immigrant Women by Anna Francese Gass with Andrew Scrivani

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Frutti di Mare - Chef Dennis

Clams Oreganata - Orsara Recipes

Linguine and Calamari - My Gourmet Connection

We would love to connect with You

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We really value your thoughts.

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Leigh’s memories of a traditional Norwegian flatbread made with potatoes includes an anxiously awaited goodie box, debates of the best (right) way to eat it and learning at the side of the best lefse maker she knew.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

Foodtime

Lefse Time

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Modern Scandinavian Baking: A Cookbook of Sweet Treats and Savory Bakes

Last Word on Lefse: Heartwarming Stories and Recipes Too!

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Lefse - The Spruce Eats

Grandma Greene’s Rosettes - As We Eat

Sweet Soup (Sot Suppe) - As We Eat

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on 

Podchaser or Apple Podcast. Your thoughts are important to us!

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Fluffy popped kernels of corn are a great treat for watching movies on a cold wintry evening, and they make modest, memorable garlands for holiday trees and mantles. Today for the As We Eat Alimentary Advent Calendar, we peek behind Door 22 to reveal a magical Christmas memory from Kim’s past.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

National Popcorn String Day, Foodimentary

DIY Popcorn Strands, The Pioneer Woman

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Foodimentary: Celebrating 365 Food Holidays with Recipes, by John-Bryan Hopkins

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Vintage Popcorn Balls with Karo syrup - Vintage Recipes

Ornament Popcorn Balls - Michelle’s Party Plan-it

 

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Rate and Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We thoughts really matter to us!

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes