Presented by Ramona Thomas,
Chief Sweets Officer, My Chocolate Soul
MyChocolateSoul.com
“I love candy. Always have. Now, I get to make chocolate that other people love” says Chocolatier Ramona Thomas of My Chocolate Soul. Join us as Chef Ramona shares her journey from mathematics and education to chocolate and why starting and running an all-natural sweets business is so important to her and to the dessert industry. Continue reading
Presented by Gary Fine, PhD
Please read notice carefully for this Monday evening event at the
Niles Historical and Cultural Center
Drawing on the observations of three years spent in the company of dedicated amateur mushroomers and professional mycologists. Gary Alan Fine explores the ways in which Americans attempt to give meaning to the natural world, while providing an eye-opening look inside the cultures they construct around its study and appreciation. Continue reading
Presented by Sarah Peters Kernan, PhD
The early centuries of cookbook production in England were filled with a dazzling variety of manuscript and printed texts. “Cookeries” from 1300 to 1700 ranged from basic, undecorated texts to lavishly illustrated cookbooks. In her extensive research, Sarah Peters Kernan, PhD, has examined numerous manuscripts and printed cookeries in libraries across the United States and Europe. Continue reading
Presented by Carolyn Nadeau, PhD
Drawing from concrete data on the recipes and their primary and secondary ingredients in Montiño’s 1611 court cookbook, Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería [The art of cooking, pie making, pastry making and preserving], this essay examines concepts of taste as presented in this culinary artifact. Data analysis of close to 5,000 individual references to ingredients allows today’s scholars and gastronomes to gain access to what was being prepared in the royal kitchens and to establish for the first time the culinary scaffolding for what was eaten at court in early seventeenth-century Spain. Continue reading