Political banqueting helped start their 1848 revolution that was followed by dozens and dozens more revolutions all over Europe. In 1900 the French government had an elaborate food fight with the Paris City Council. It started when the president invited every mayor in France, all 36,000 of them, to lunch. He threw in a free trip to Paris and the World’s Fair. As you may have guessed, for the president to treat all those mayors to lunch there must’ve been really big trouble simmering.
We’re going to find out why the president of France and the mayor of Paris fought each other with food and we’ll use the food to figure it out. The October 21st talk and PowerPoint will show how to use food to do historical detection. There were clues everywhere: in the menu(s), in the champagne bottles and in the leftovers!
To put us in appetite we’ll open with a brisk look at assorted American and Chicago political banquets, including that amazing shindig the Los Angeles County sheriff threw.
Nancy Turpin holds a Ph.D. in European History and a Master’s degree in French literature. She teaches European and World history in several Chicago area universities and colleges, including Kendall (Culinary) College. Nancy has also worked as a Big City newspaper reporter, a Backwoods Bowling Alley Bar Tender and short order cook, a translator-interpreter, etc. etc..
She lived and worked in France off and on from the 1960s to the 1990s. The years of her Loire Valley bookstore, Nancy often ended the 10-hour workday with multi-course meals served to lingering customers in the apartment over the shop. It was a snap: she’d call butcher, farmer and grocer in the morning and they’d send their assistants around to the bookstore later with their bicycle baskets full of leg of lamb, fresh eggs and farm cheese and a cornucopia of seasonal vegetables. Wine was never a problem because helping with grape harvest in nearby Saint-Nicholas de Bourgueil every autumn gave her a year’s supply of table wine!
Program was hosted at Roosevelt University.