The Journey of Mollie’s War: WACs and WWII

Using her mother’s letters, Cyndee takes you on a romantic and always frightful journey of an American WAC during the height of WWII. She discusses women in the military during WWII and in particular, her mother’s experiences as a member of the Women’s Army Corps by taking you on a journey from inspiration to publication.

From ‘Peanut Weddings’ to ‘Beef Stands’: The Socio-Culinary History of Chicago’s ‘Italian Beef’

Italian Americans have contributed a considerable number of portable fast foods to regional and local cuisines around the United States, some of which have become extremely popular at the national level. One such food which, despite its frequent discussion in recent food-related media, has remained very much a local dish is Chicago’s ‘Italian beef’. As a sandwich filled with thin slices of roasted beef, this product at first blush looks to be an Italian-American take on the mainstream Anglo-American roast beef sandwich, and popular food writers have accordingly sought its origins in terms of some single ‘inventor’ whose culinary and entrepreneurial stroke of genius came to be imitated by other small entrepreneurs and thus the dish gradually became established throughout the city and ultimately its suburbs. The idea of seeking an individual responsible for the invention of a given dish is common but often misguided, and in the case of Italian beef it is especially so.

The Turkey, An American Story

Food historian Andrew F. Smith’s sweeping and multifaceted history of Meleagris gallopavo separates fact from fiction. Smith presents the turkey in ten courses, beginning with the bird itself (actually several different species of turkey) flying through the wild. Learn practically every aspect of the iconic bird, including the wild turkey in early America, how it came to be called “turkey,” domestication, turkey mating habits, expansion into Europe, stuffing, conditions in modern industrial turkey factories, its surprising commercial history of boom and bust, and its eventual ascension to holiday mainstay.