Join us on Monday, November 16, 2025, 7 PM via Zoom (from Denmark)
Presented by Priya Mani
Priya Mani is rare three-peat having visited us previously us in 2021 and 2022 on Stone Flowers (lichens). She returns to talk about her book Spiced: Recipes Celebrating Spices from Around the World. Continue reading
Corned Beef on Rye: Remembering Chicago’s Jewish Delicatessens: celebrates the iconic Jewish delis that helped define Chicago’s culinary and cultural image and weaves together nostalgic recollections and in-depth interviews with more than a dozen food experts and deli owners and comparisons between Chicago’s beloved institutions and those in New York City. There are sections of the book dedicated to remembering the delis across Chicago that flourished during the 20th Century and those which dominate the deli dining experience today.
In American Bacon, Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on bacon’s story from “most dangerous food in the supermarket” to pop culture and gastronomic phenomenon. Continue reading
Linda Eilks grew up on a farm outside of Oakford Illinois. After careers at both IL Extension and U.S. Department of Agriculture, she retired and moved into a home within the village of Oakford. There she was faced with an abundance of pecans falling from the trees in her yard. Continue reading