Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah (Shore)

By Flo Selfman

Podcast

Eggplant Vegetable Pie

Having been a top singing star, Dinah Shore became a pioneer television personality with “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show,” which showcased her distinctive voice and relaxed Southern charm from 1951 to 1963. In 1970, she returned to television as host of “Dinah’s Place,” an NBC morning show that covered homemaking, crafts, child-rearing, health and beauty—always with a song, of course, and usually a cooking segment, either by Dinah or her celebrity guests. Many leading chefs got their first national exposure on “Dinah’s Place.” Continue reading

The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City

Robert Lemon,
Author, Geographer, Documentary Film Maker

Listen to presentation via Podcast

Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America’s melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a public street corner into a bustling business. Continue reading

Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue

Adrian Miller (Submitted by Adrian Miller)

Presented by Adrian Miller
Food Writer, Attorney, Certified Barbecue Judge

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Join us as James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller discusses the history of African American barbecue culture from his book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. Black Smoke describes how African Americans inherited a type of cooking that fused Native American meat smoking and European grilling techniques that became known as “barbecue.” Continue reading

Pizzeria Uno and the Mysterious Origins of Deep-Dish Pizza

The only photo of Riccardo and deep-dish pizza known to exist (March, 1945)

Presented by Peter Regas
PizzaHistoryBook.com

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Who invented deep-dish pizza? Is there a more controversial question in Chicago food history? There’s little doubt the pizzeria at 29 East Ohio Street in Chicago- originally named “The Pizzeria” later renamed “Pizzeria Uno”- served the original deep-dish pizza. But despite decades of debate and speculation, no one has definitively identified who created the pizza style that now has a market niche worth hundreds of millions of dollars and that -rightly or wrongly- branded Chicago, as a deep-dish pizza town. Continue reading

Ossoli Cookbook: A fundraiser for the first public beach in Highland Park, Illinois

Presented by Highland Park Public Library’s Cookbook Club
with Highland Park Historical Society and Us!
 
 
We are encouraging people to prepare a recipe from this antique community cookbook and discuss the results. This cookbook is available online via the University of Illinois. Certainly you are welcome to sit in on the discussion and not have cooked anything!

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