CHoWLine - Back Issues

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April 2004

Program: "Washington Area Farm Markets: The Future of Local Food"

Presented by Ann Yonkers, Tom Tyler, and Rubin Shuster. Ann Yonkers is an Eastern Shore farmer, trained chef, and president and director of Farm Fresh Markets. She organized the Dupont Circle Market in 1997 and another in St. Michaels in 1998 and specializes in eco-culinary enterprises. Robin Shuster is the director of Local Foods, a Washington nonprofit that runs the Mount Pleasant Farmers' Market. Her passion is discovering and encouraging small farmers and artisans who grow or create traditional foods. Tom Tyler is an Arlington County Extension Agent for Environmental Horticulture. He develops and supervises community-based educational programs in sustainable gardening and landscape practices for residents and industry.

Important Information about Parking on Campus:

No parking is permitted in the circle in front of the Library or on the Quad. You may park in metered spaces (no charge on Sunday) in the parking lot on the right inside the W Street entrance, or in the campus metered parking garage off Whitehaven ($1.50/hour). Parking on W Street is not encouraged.

Future Meetings

May 2: Annual Meeting. Program" Sustainable Seas" by Carole Baldwin, research zoologist at the National Museum of Natural History.

May 23: Excursion to Sally and John Waltz's farm near Smithsburg, MD

Report: March 14 Meeting

CHoW president Claudia Kousoulas reported that Claire Cassidy will present nominations at our April meeting for 2004-2005 membership year officers, to be elected at our May 2 meeting. Bruce and Cathy Gaber and Sara and Betty Hill volunteered to check out potential future meeting places. Sally Waltz outlined plans for our visit to their farm in May. (More about this in the May issue.) Claudia also announced that the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) is looking for volunteers to serve as greeters, hosts, and to provide other help at their meetings on April 21-24 at the Convention Center at Baltimore Harbor. Anyone interested should contact Jeanne Speight (410) 527-6151 Jeanne_Speight@mccormick.com.

CHoW member Marnie Keller, who is with Wimmer Cookbooks, talked about the history of community cookbook publication, and her remarks are included at the end of this issue. There was the usual wonderful array of tasty foods at our annual cooperative dinner, each having been prepared from a recipe in a community cookbook. The foods we enjoyed, the sources of their recipes, and the members who brought them were:

Vanilla Wafers, Friendly Favorites (AFSC, 1952) - donor unlisted
Chocolate Pecan Refrigerator Pie, Baptist Church Cookbook (Munfordville, KY, 1950) Bettye Robertson
Mango Lassi, Bannockbake (Bannockburn Elementary School, Bethesda) Claudia Kousoulas
Soda Cracker Pie, Neighboring on the Air (Evelyn Birkby) Dianne King
Charleston Poppyseed Cake, Charleston Receipts CiCi Williamson
Schwartzbrot, Food and Customs of the Black Sea Germans (1988) Sophie Frederickson
Cajun Crawfish Cornbread, Gateway!New Orleans Kristen Donnelly
Pink Stuff, The Authorized Texas Ranger Cookbook (Johnny Harris, Hamilton, TX 1994) Bryna Freyer
Hummingbird Cake, A Heritage of Good Tastes (Old Town Alexandria VA) Kari Barrett
Csoroge, Our Heritage (Hungarian Women's Club, Ellwood City, PA) Debbie and Jack Warner
Cream Cheese Spread, Charleston Receipts (Junior League of Charleston 1950) Kay Nelson
Teatime Tassies, Virginia Hospitality (Junior League of Hampton Roads) Jane Mengenhauser
Grape Salad, What Can I Bring? (Junior League of Northern Virginia) Amy Snyder
Double Chocolate Miniature Cupcakes, Composition for Cooking, Opus II (Madison Symphony Orchestra League, 1980) Felice Caspar
Broccoli/Cauliflower Salad, Maryland 4-H Cookbook Vicki Pierson
Artichoke Dip and Marinated Asparagus, Memphis in May International Festival Cookbook Nancy Higgins
Wine Jelly Dessert, The National Symphony Orchestra Cookbook Elisabeth Castleman
Marinated Chicken Wings, Northwest Federation Rock Hounds' Cookbook Bruce and Cathy Gaber
Carrot Cake, Political Potluck (Outagamie[WI] County Democratic Women, 1965) Shirley Cherkasky
Baked Chicken Pot Pie, The Best of Cooking (Sabillasville, MD) Sally and John Waltz
Eggplant Casserole, SMS Cookbook (St. Margaret's School) Katherine Livingston
Sesame Noodles, Feeding Ourselves: A Community Cookbook (Takoma Park/Silver Spring Co-Op) Jill Sandor
Hot Roasted Pecans, Cooking in the Spirit (United Church of Christ, Annapolis) Debbie and Jack Warner
Cocobana Bars, We Cook in Caracas (1944) Zina Pisarko

News from Other Organizations

On April 4 the Culinary Historians of Chicago will celebrate its 10th Anniversary with a special presentation and the announcement of the establishment of a scholarship program to make awards to college students in the culinary arts and food history. This scholarship will be the first of its kind in Chicago.

The Advisory Committee for the Peacock-Harper Culinary History Collection has been acquiring special books for the collection, which is housed in Special Collections in Newman Library at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. The Committee also has established two endowed scholarships for students interested in using the Collection in their studies. An online newsletter, "Culinary Thymes," is available at http://spec.lib.vt.edu/culinary/CulinaryThymes.

April 25-27: "Eating as a Moral Act: Ethics and Power rom Agrarianism to Consumerism," a symposium organized by the Office of Sustainability Programs of the University of New Hampshire, will explore the connections among eating, ethics, and the ability of citizens and communities to shape a sustainable food system through their food choices. For registration information: www.sustainableunh.unh.edu/fas/eating_moral_act.html; El Farrell, el.farrell@unh.edu; (603) 862-5040.

Food in Museums

"The Nut Museum: Visionary Art of Elizabeth Tashjian," on view until June 6 at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. The exhibition offers a retrospective of Tashjian's paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the 1930s to date. Tashjian created the Nut Museum in 1972 on the ground floor of her large home in Old Lyme, using the dining room as the main exhibition gallery for her nut paintings, as well as her collection of nuts, nutcrackers, and nut-related memorabilia. The Museum closed in 2002, and Tashian, 93, currently resides in a nursing home. Her art, collections, and papers have been preserved by Connecticut College's program in museum studies. The exhibition was organized and curated by the College's director of museum studies.

On The Reading Table (April Meeting)

Meeting e-notice, Culinary Enthusiasts of Wisconsin, April 2004.
Meeting notice, Culinary Historians of Boston, VOl. XXIV, No. 4, March 2004.
Meeting notice, Culinary Historians of New York, March 2004.
Meeting e-notice, Foodways Group of Austin, March 2004.

Community Cookbooks by Marcie Keller

Statistics on How Prevalent Cookbooks Are in American Society

• Last year Americans bought almost 600 million cookbooks.
• The average American owns 15 cookbooks.
• Three out of ten women collect cookbooks.
• Some cookbooks have been printed continually for over 50 years.
• On average, a bookstore buyer spends eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
• At least half of all people who buy cookbooks only buy them to read. They are referred to as "armchair cooks."
• Americans still use cookbooks 78 percent of the time when they are gathering recipes, while 15 percent refer to the Internet.
• In one year, 97 million people give or receive a book as a gift; the most popular category is cookbooks.
• There are 24,000 new food and wine titles published in the world every year.

Wimmer Background Wimmer began in 1946 and has become a leader in the field of self-publishing. Built on a foundation of community cookbooks, Wimmer has helped thousands of nonprofit organizations, individuals, and corporations capture favorite recipes, stories, and memories in one of the most authentically American book forms. The fund raiser cookbook would not be the success it is today without the innovation and vision of Wimmer Cookbooks' employees and publishers.

Why Do A Community Cookbook?

• Fund raiser
• Gift item
• Promotional keepsake that tells an organization's story
• Bolster a sense of community
• Feed egos!
• Share tried-and-true recipes (recipes are usually triple-tested)
• Preserve local/regional heritage

Past The earliest community cookbooks began during the Civil War as fund raisers for medical units on both sides of the conflict. They were small and simple but it didn't take long for women to see they could adapt this form of book and use it for fund raising for other purposes. The size and complexity of these books grew quickly with illustrations, household hints, government facts, and domestic guidelines for manners, axioms, prayers, etc.

Present Cookbooks in general have evolved into a cultural icon all their own, and community cookbooks are no exception. They are now as sophisticated as any trade published book. Artfully designed, with sidebars explaining food technique tips or sharing stories related to the theme of the book, they are considerably more than a list of ingredients and instructions. With the explosion of television cooking shows and culinary personalities, Americans continue to beat records annually in buying cookbooks. Nonprofits now employ sophisticated marketing techniques: sponsorship from corporate entities, promoting to cooking stores such as Sur La Table, and distribution in major book chains. End users are grateful to have such a nice token in exchange for making a contribution to a worthy cause.

Market sectors include (but are not limited to): Junior Leagues/women's groups; schools; religious organizations; philanthropic groups (museums, symphonies, etc); hospitals and health nonprofits (raising funds for the cure of a disease); any group trying to raise money or tell its story through food.

Future We see trends were community cookbooks will continue to be produced with a high-end appeal with color pages, more elaborate binding, etc. We also see a surge in cookbooks manufactured through Internet publishing and print-on-demand technology (digitally printed copies). Web sites (such as ours due to launch this spring -- www.cookbooksondemand.com) can harness the power of a database in allowing customers to key in recipe ingredients and instructions, select the graphics they want, choose the print run (one copy to limitless), and five days later get their completed cookbooks in the mail. This advance in capabilities will allow more groups than ever before to produce a keepsake cookbook, particularly for young people today who are very attuned to Internet functionality and commerce.

As long as there are food lovers and groups of people, it's safe to say that there will always be community cookbooks around to tell their stories and celebrate their love of food!

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