Food for Thought
Introduction to a Blended History
From June 1996 through May 2009, I wrote a column for ChiMe titled “Cheap Eats.” But then, between retooling my career and caring for my mother, I needed to take a break. Parents gone, four books written, a lot of magazine articles published, ten years as a “Road Scholar” with Illinois Humanities, a fair bit of travel—and I finally thought that perhaps it was time to come back. However, I also thought that, after a substantial break and with more years and experience behind me, I should rename the column. So now it's “Thought for Food”—because I know more, and because it won't always be cheap. However, to save our webmistress Barb Pohl from unnecessary work, I thought we could just continue to use the format she created for archiving “Cheap Eats,” with dates being the indicator of which era you’re accessing.
Hope this will continue to aid members in their pursuit of interesting food—and help them appreciate the complexities of food history and how remarkable it is that we have access to so much today—both quantity and variety.
Should you be interested in a little more background on what set me on this course, check out the introduction to the original column.
NOTE: All the terms and measures employed in both Food for Thought and Cheap Eats recipes are standard American. For those of you who might be accessing these recipes from places where these terms and measures are not used, some explanations and conversions are available here.
