Category Archives: People

Hawaiian Food Flag

As one component of the final project for my AMST 202 class at Honolulu Community College this semester, students were asked to create a food flag. And as I’ve mentioned in this past blog post, I love food flags! A flag is a symbol of national identity – we salute flags, we sing to flags,Continue reading “Hawaiian Food Flag”

Global Family Meal

This semester I taught an online graduate level course on American culture to a mixed nationality group – two students from the University of Hawaii studying abroad in Tongji, China, and four students from Tongji who are about to study abroad in Hawaii at UH next year. Food became a way for us to talkContinue reading “Global Family Meal”

Rosa Parks’s Pancakes & Amelia Earhart’s Waffles

Happy Women’s History Month! Today we’re hitting the archives. Imagine a tip jar: Amelia Earhart’s Sour Cream Waffles versus Rosa Parks’s Peanut Butter Pancakes. Who’s the winner!? I feel a taste-test coming.

Homeless for Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was probably unlike yours – calm and quiet with almost zero hustle and bustle in the kitchen.  I spent the day making Thumbprint cookies with raspberry/cloudberry jam centers for men at The Sleeping Room (the local men’s shelter in Muncie, IN), before serving them dinner.  The menu: from-the-box stuffing, from-the-can green beans, 2 cans cranberry sauce,Continue reading “Homeless for Thanksgiving”

Meatballs: Italian, Iranian, and Ikea

I grew up eating small, thumb-sized beef meatballs microwaved from their frozen plastic bag and then dumped into a pot of 2 cans of 99 cent Hunts spaghetti sauce. It was heaven.

Porta Palazzo – Turin, Italy

Part of my grant included my meeting and networking with Dr. Simone Cinotto, Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (a food studies university run by the farm-to-table organization Slow Food International). Fortunately (!), Dr. Cinotto suggested we meet in Turin at Porta Palazzo – the largest open-air market in Europe.Continue reading “Porta Palazzo – Turin, Italy”