Greater Midwest Foodways: Midwest Eats! April 29, 30 May 1

Midwest Eats!
Foodways of the Great Depression

SAVE THE DATE – APRIL 29, 30 & MAY 1, 2011
Kendall College, Chicago, Illinois


This three-day event begins on Friday, April 29 with a panel discussion on events leading to the Great Depression of 1929-1941: Dust bowl, farming crisis and urban conditions. After a break, food writer and film historian Michael Gebert will lead a discussion by showing film and newsreel clips illustrating food and cultural conditions. Dinner will feature a replication of a “Relief Banquet” from May 7th, 1938. The ingredients will reflect 8 cents of ingredients for a “Typical Chicago Family Relief Budget,” with culinary students interpreting this meal.

The main event is on Saturday, April 30th from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Kendall College where Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance will host a symposium featuring topics on life, culture and foodways during the Great Depression during the morning. After lunch, personal stories of how people survived in the city and rural areas.

Refreshments will be offered throughout the day. Lunch will feature a 1930’s menu featuring foodstuffs originating during the Depression. It will illustrate how imaginative home cooks, thriving food companies and resourceful restaurants survived by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g food costs through those trying times

On Sunday, May 1st there are three optional tours: Victoria Matranga, Curator of Kendall College’s Culinary Curiosities, will personally guide visitors through their antique food production equipment. Chicago Public Radio’s David Hammond and Bruce Kraig will lead an expedition through Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, in operation since the late nineteenth century and now a well-recognized source for some of the tastiest Mexican street food in the United States. Primrose dairy farm in St. Charles is a living history museum circa 1933. A small group will cook lunch at a wood fired stove in a kitchen building with a hand pump for water and a radio run by a car battery.

Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance welcomes anyone to the table who has an interest in Midwest food culture or who define themselves as Midwestern regardless of race, creed or arbitrary political borders. We encourage participation from all walks life from academics to food enthusiasts, chefs to grill masters to home cooks, farmers to heirloom gardeners, food scientists, students and industry.

Registration opens on March 1st, though members will receive advance notice. Visit http://www.greatermidwestfoodways.com for updates and information for planning your visit to Chicago.

Don’t miss this fourth symposium by Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance that celebrates, preserves and promotes the diverse food cultures of the American Midwest from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains.

Call for Presentations:

Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance celebrates preserves and promotes the diverse food cultures of the American Midwest from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Our fourth symposium examines culture and foodways of the Great Depression from about 1929 to 1941. This symposium includes lectures, audience participation, food samplings, silent auction, book signings and tours. We seek presentations based on research, fieldwork, scholarship and professional experience, though geared to an informed popular audience.

Proposals may consider: positive aspects of life, home gardens, meatless recipes, stretching the grocery dollars, restaurant businesses, food company history, World’s Fair foods, farms and farming, food advertising, farm bureaus, or other topics pertinent to the times. Some ideas to consider include:

1. Making Do in the Hard Times Kitchen: Continuity of traditions and how people adapted them during the Depression. Illustrate how imaginative home cooks, thriving food companies, and resourceful restaurants survived by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g food costs through those trying times.

2. Rural foodways during the Great Depression: how they survived and often helped their city cousins.

3. Old and New: ingenuity and production in the pre-World War II era.

4. High and Low Dining during the Great Depression. Here we can explore high class and low class restaurants, from French cuisine to greasy spoons.

5. Food in Popular Culture. An example might be “Our Man Godfrey,” a famous comedy about a rich family compared to homeless people and it also refers also to the end of Prohibition.

6. Food and travel writing during the Great Depression: cookbooks, authors, newspaper columns, radio advice, manufacturers' pamphlets, WPA and more good stuff.

7. Surprise us with unexpected knowledge on Depression foodways and culture.

Proposals should be one page in length and contain the following:

• Name of the presenter along with two professional references concerning presentation skills and qualifications-just names will do;
• Title or theme of the presentation;
• Brief description of the subject matter to be discussed;
• Please anticipate a presentation length of 20 minutes with extra time allowed for questions.
• Your preferred presentation format, i.e., interactive lecture, panel discussion, group presentation.

Proposals should be electronically submitted no later than January 15, 2011 to GreaterMidwestFoodways@gmail.com; to Catherine Lambrecht. For more information, please contact Cathy2. For background information, read about Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance at www.GreaterMidwestFoodways.com. Note: Programs are recorded for broadcast on demand by Chicago Public Radio.

Midwest Eats!
Foodways of the Great Depression

APRIL 29, 30 & MAY 1, 2011
Kendall College

900 North Branch Street, Chicago – FREE PARKING
(West of Halsted Street, North of Chicago Avenue)

Registration now open!

Program
Speaker Biographies
Maxwell St. History and Tour
Wood fire stove cooking class at Primrose Farm, circa 1933
Accomodations


Friday, April 29th at Kendall College from 2 pm until 7 pm

Margaret Rung, PhD, Director, Center for New Deal Studies at Roosevelt University and panelists on events leading to the Great Depression.


The Depression Comes To The Black Metropolis
Christopher Robert Reed. Professor Emeritus, Roosevelt University

Chicago's black community responded to the advent of the Great Depression in several unusual ways: By promoting greater citizens' involvement in forcing the establishment to alleviate widespread economic distress, and by modifying its dietary habits to meet the scarcity of available, affordable food resources. Today's soul food delights received a boost from past experiences with more meatless meals.


Cities and urban life as they transitioned from "prosperity" to depression.
James Wolfinger, Associate Professor of History at DePaul

Life radically changed for the worse for many Americans as the country moved from relative prosperity to depression in the 1920s and '30s. This presentation examines conditions in America's major cities, focusing on how the depression impacted ordinary people and changed urban society.


Down on the Midwestern Farm During the Great Depression: Dust Bowl and Economics
Bruce Kraig, Professor Emeritus, Roosevelt University

Everyone knows about the great Dust Bowl that destroyed agriculture and drove farmers from their land in wide swaths of the Great Plains. But many do not know that the farm economy collapsed as food prices were deflated and surpluses could not be sold. Rural poverty was just as great as in cities, and in many ways, even worse. The federal government was forced to intervene on a number of levels and this set American farm policy for the next half century-and more.


Nightclubs and Bread Lines: Depression Era Foodways On Film
Michael Gebert, freelance writer, blogger about food at Sky Full of Bacon and movies at Nitrateville.com

Perhaps no historical event went so quickly and directly onto movie screens as the Great Depression. Food writer and film buff Michael Gebert will talk about how Depression Era foodways were reflected in films of the period, and show clips depicting food in every context from soup kitchens to glitzy nightspots and from Automats to home kitchens.


Relief Dinner served on May 7, 1938 in the Gold Room of the Congress Hotel in Chicago.

Replication of a menu made from 8-cents of ingredients. This will be served at Kendall College.

Saturday, April 30th, from 9 AM to 4 PM at Kendall College


8 AM - Registration

9:00 AM: Conference commences with Bruce Kraig, Ph.D.


This Land is Whose land?
Anne Mendelson, Author, Culinary Historian

How some well-known and not well-known Americans met various challenges of the Great Depression by making their own new beginnings -- spatial (for instance, by moving halfway across the country), political (say, by agitating on behalf of causes), professional (for example, by adopting a new life's work) , and personal (for example, by falling in love and starting families).


Break


Community Canning in the Depression: A case study
Deanna Pucciarelli, PhD.

In this presentation, I will provide commentary and photographs that delineate Ball Corporation’s role in food assistance to Muncie residents during the Depression. We will look at the public projects that the corporation led and the involvement of the community.

From 1923 through 1924, Muncie, Indiana, considered ‘Middle-class America’ was studied in depth by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, husband-and-wife sociologists. They would return to Muncie in 1935 to measure change in social structure as a correlate to the Depression. Long an industrial town with a history in manufacturing, Muncie also had a significant family farm economy. Ball Corporation established businesses in Muncie as far back as 1888 and had become synonymous with canning. The company employed a large proportion of the Muncie workforce in its various factories and played a significant role in daily discourse. Most households in suburban Muncie grew vegetables in their backyards. To help ease food cost burden to families, Ball Corporation set up community canning operations so that backyard garden produce could be canned for the winter. Ball Corporation also provided company land for apartment dwellers to grow food in community gardens.


Co-Eds at the Co-op: Student Depression-Era Foodways at Old Normal
Gina L. Hunter, PhD and Victoria Moré.

In this presentation we draw on data from oral histories and archival documents to examine student foodways at Illinois State Normal University during the Great Depression. During this era, enrollments soared at “Old Normal” as teaching again became an attractive profession for both women and men. Most students lived in boarding houses and rented rooms around campus. Some heated meals in their rooms; others worked for their board; many brought food from the family home. One Rural Education student describes “living on peanut butter and pork and beans” and her envy of a housemate who dined on canned meat from her nearby family farm. A soda at the corner Co-op or a hamburger from Meltham’s was a special treat.

Such are the stories we have uncovered through the Old Main Project (oldmain.illinoisstate.edu), an archeological and oral history investigation of the first building of Illinois’ oldest public university. Our interviewees, alumni from 1935-1940, have shared their memories of working, living, and studying on and around campus. Many describe the ways they “made do” or “got by” and all relate feeling “lucky to be” at ISNU.

In this presentation, we will share information we have gathered through oral histories, photos, and artifacts that together create a picture everyday life and common foodways of students. We invite ISNU alumni and other audience members to share family stories of depression-era student foodways.


Greater Midwest Foodways Heirloom Recipe Competition
Catherine Lambrecht


1930's Restaurant menus, postcards and books.
Peter Engler


Lunch


No Longer does the Holiday Table Groan Under the Weight of Food
Whitney Lingle,

This presentation looks at holiday meals during the Great Depression. What traditions were upheld and which were altered to fit the family budget? Many components of holiday meals were simply produced on a smaller scale, but as processed foods like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Spam entered the marketplace they incorporated into holiday meals. What did they replace? Radio shows, cookbooks and newspaper columns all advised families on ways to trim the budget while still enjoying the festivity of their favorite meals. These media outlets focused on putting your best foot forward while entertaining (even if the crown roast was made of frankfurters).


Steaks and Shakes and the Great Depression
Robert Dirks, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University

This paper recounts the early history of Steak and Shake, a hamburger chain started in Central Illinois during the Great Depression. My presentation begins with a description of founder Gus Belt’s original restaurant, a place he called “White House Steak and Shake.” I maintain that the key to its success at a time when many existing “white-box restaurants” (e.g., White Castles, White Taverns, White Towers) were closing was not the food. Rather, it was Belt’s insightful grasp of the Depression mentality and his talent as a showman. Belt made Steak ‘n Shake all about T-bones and porterhouses, marquee lights, heavy china, and bright boys and girls eager to take orders. His talent as a restaurateur was such that for the price of a hamburger he not only catered to customers’ hunger but served up a bit of fantasy. Sending people away feeling that they had been treated in a special way and making customers feel a little bit better about themselves was central to Steak n Shakes’ success amidst the Great Depression.


Break


Beer Production after Prohibition: Setting the Stage for the Rise of the Mega-breweries.
Michael Agnew, Certified Cicerone, A Perfect Pint

The 1930s set the stage for the rise of the Midwestern mega-breweries that ultimately came to dominate the US brewing landscape. Prohibition had dealt the industry a serious blow that many smaller, local breweries didn’t survive. Reduced demand put additional pressure on those that did. Only breweries that could afford to adopt new cost-cutting technologies to achieve economies of scale would survive.


Concluding remarks followed by beer tasting.


The American (Bad) Dream: Soup Kitchens and European Immigrants in Chicago in the 1930's
Katerina Nussdorfer, PhD Candidate at University of Vienna in Austria

This paper deals with an introductory investigation of the hardships of Eastern-European immigrants to the U.S.A. during or before the Great Depression Era, in urban areas like Chicago, and who, though escaping difficult lives and seeking to find better prospects in the "land of promises", were met with unemployment and hunger, which were in part remedied by the emerging of the soup kitchens (initiated by Al Capone but later on administered by other non- and government agencies).

Wood Fire Stove Cooking Class
with Seleena Kuester

Sunday, May 1, 2011
10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Primrose Farm
5N726 Crane Road
St. Charles, IL

Cost: $40 per person.


Miss that down home cooking? Come out to Primrose Farm to learn the basics of wood stove cookery and combine farm-fresh ingredients with historic atmosphere. Everyone will participate in the preparation and cooking. You will learn how to operate and cook on a wood stove for a fully hands on class. It should be a really good time! Enjoy the fruits of your labor in a real, traditional dinner.

We will prepare a meal of food and ingredients available in the 1930's. This menu will be posted once it is available. The butter on our biscuits we will have freshly churned. Once the meal is completed, we will enjoy it together. While dining, water will be heating on the stove for clean up afterwards. A tour of the farm is included.

Primrose Farm is a living history farm with the mission of providing interpretive experiences showing the impact of technology and social change on the lands and farm families of the Fox Valley. Amenities include a mid-19th century barn, milk house, pump house, hog house, sheep barn, chicken house, farmhouse, community garden plots, demonstration plots and farm discovery trails.

Seleena Kuester is a museum educator for the Lake County Discovery Museum & Bonner Heritage Farm. She has worked in museums and living history for over 10 years and learned to cook on a wood stove while interpreting life in 1880s Schaumburg at Volkening Heritage Farm.

Midwest Eats!
Foodways of the Great Depression

Kendall College School of Culinary Arts
900 North Branch (west of Halsted) in Chicago. Free parking.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 29, 30 and May 1.

Registration
Program Information
Speaker Biographies
Accomodations

Midwest Eats! Foodways of the Great Depression is a three-day culinary history event not to be missed. This is for anyone interested in food, history and culture during the 1930’s Depression era.

Midwest Eats! opens on Friday afternoon with a panel discussion led by Margaret Rung, Director of New Deal Studies at Roosevelt University, with Christopher Robert Reed, James Wolfinger and Bruce Kraig. They will review events leading to the Great Depression of 1929-1941: Dust bowl, farming crisis, African-American urban experience and the difficult transition from prosperity to depression with food scarcity impacting the lives of city dwellers.

Perhaps no historical event went so quickly and directly onto movie screens as the Great Depression. Food writer (SkyFullOfBacon.com) and film buff (Nitrateville.com) Michael Gebert will talk about how Depression Era foodways were reflected in films and newsreels.
Friday closes with a dinner replicating a “Relief Banquet” from May 7th, 1938 at the Gold Room of the Congress Hotel. This menu reflects a “Typical Chicago Family Relief Budget,” of eight cents of ingredients (circa 1938) with Kendall’s culinary students interpreting.

Saturday is the main event held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Kendall College. The day begins with Anne Mendelson on how Americans met the various challenges of the Great Depression. This was often an opportunity for new beginnings either politically, socially or by simply moving.

Deanna Pucciarelli, PhD, discusses Ball Corporation’s role, as a leader in home food canning, in food assistance to Muncie, Indiana residents during the Depression. We will look at public projects the corporation led and the involvement of the community.

Gina L. Hunter, PhD, and Victoria More will jointly present college student Depression-Era foodways. Some students heated meals in their rooms; others worked for their board; many brought food from the family home. One rural student describes “living on peanut butter and pork and beans” and her envy of a housemate who dined on canned meat from her nearby family farm.

Catherine Lambrecht will provide highlights from Greater Midwest Foodways Heirloom Recipe Competitions at Midwest state fairs. Peter Engler will introduce his collection of 1930’s restaurant menus, postcards and books.

A hearty lunch is part of the deal featuring a 1930’s menu with Booyah soup-stew from Wisconsin and Minnesota, mac and cheese, coleslaw from South Dakota, corn pudding from Illinois, gelatin salad, yeast rolls from Indiana and Harvest Cake from Indiana. Most recipes are from Greater Midwest’s Heirloom Recipe competitions. This meal illustrates how imaginative home cooks, thriving food companies and resourceful restaurants survived by s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g food costs through those trying times.

The afternoon begins with observations on how the holiday table no longer groans under the weight of so much food. Creative efforts to remain festive are challenged. Where once was a rib roast, there now is a Crown Roast of Frankfurters!

Next Robert Dirks, recounts the history Steak and Shake. How founder Gus Belt’s talent as a restaurateur was such that for the price of a hamburger he not only catered to customers’ hunger but served up a bit of fantasy. Sending people away feeling that they had been treated in a special way and making customers feel a little bit better about themselves was central to Steak n Shakes’ success amidst the Great Depression

Michael Agnew will present how the 1930s set the stage for the rise of the Midwestern mega-breweries that ultimately came to dominate the US brewing landscape.

On Sunday, there are two optional tours:

A lecture and tour of Chicago’s Maxwell Street. Before taking to the streets, Lori Grove presents a history overview, starting at 10:30 AM, at Barbara’s Bookstore, 218 S. Halsted, Chicago. Afterwards David Hammond and Bruce Kraig will lead an expedition through Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market. This market has been in operation since the late nineteenth century and now a well-recognized source for some of the tastiest Mexican street food in the US.

Visit Primrose dairy farm in St. Charles, a living history museum circa 1933. Learn the basics of wood stove cookery as you prepare a meal from ingredients and products available during the 1930’s. This summer kitchen has a wood fueled stove, hand pumped water and a radio run by car battery. After lunch, you clean up before touring the farm with its mid-19th century barn, milk house, pump house, hog house, sheep barn, chicken house and farmhouse.

Directions to each location is at Greater Midwest’s website http://www.greatermidwestfoodways.com

More detailed information, prices and registration are on Greater Midwest’s website http://www.greatermidwestfoodways.com. Or for registration only, call (847) 432-8255.

Pricing:
Friday and Saturday package: $100.
OR Friday seminar with dinner: $45
OR Saturday with lunch: $65
Sunday: Maxwell St.: $10
Primrose Farm wood fired stove class (limit : $40

Food enthusiasts, historians, educators, chefs, culinary and history students, restaurateurs, and business colleagues are welcome. Kendall is located. The symposium is sponsored by The Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance, Kendall College of Culinary Arts and the Center for New Deal Studies of Roosevelt University.

HI,

It's nice to see a mention: The fascinating anthropology of Midwestern food: The Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance preserves the region’s culinary character.

Regards,

Midwest Eats program to re-create Depression food, a very nice article by Dave Hoekstra from the Chicago Sun Times.

8-cent Relief Meal circa 1938 (image by Rene G)


This meal will be served at Kendall College on Friday evening.

Regards,

Hi,

When I visited Rick Kogan's Sunday Papers show on WGN, I brought something for show and tell: Crown of Frankfurters



You can hear the podcast here.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:I brought something for show and tell: Crown of Frankfurters

Wow! Don't know if I want to run away screaming or take a giant bite.

Disturbing but still, somehow, tempting.

I am signing up for the Maxwell Street Market. Pray for nice weather. Is there anything on the registration page that gives an end time? Just curious.

HI,

We meet at Barbara's Bookstore at 10:30 am for a program on Maxwell Street's history. At 11:30, we hit the streets.

You are welcome to drift away as early or as late as you want.

Does this help?

Regards,

G Wiv wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:I brought something for show and tell: Crown of Frankfurters

Wow! Don't know if I want to run away screaming or take a giant bite.

Disturbing but still, somehow, tempting.

That was two pounds of frankfurters. I am bringing the party-sized version on Saturday.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:HI,

We meet at Barbara's Bookstore at 10:30 am for a program on Maxwell Street's history. At 11:30, we hit the streets.

You are welcome to drift away as early or as late as you want.

Does this help?

Regards,

Sounds good to me.

Online article about this event is now one of the top-five viewed on Suntimes.com.

This is a major logistics undertaking, and congrats in advance to C2 for spearheading it.

To take the edge off the subject du jour, Michael Killmer of Templeton Rye will make a good stiff cocktail before sitting down to a replication of an 8-cent Relief Banquet on Friday evening.



Regards,

Relevant to this event, John Drury's Dining in Chicago (1931) is available, free, for downloading or viewing online: http://www.archive.org/details/dininginchicago00drur.

This book is full of fascinating information and some charmingly helpful advice: “Tortillas…very thin pancakes made of corn flour" and "Escargots bourguignonne is nothing but snails with bourguignonne sauce -- and a very delicious dish, too."

Aside from that, this is a first-hand compendium of impressions and data-points from many places long-gone, but several that closed within memory and two that still exist (Berghoff and Won Kow).

Here's an interesting sandwich approach that seems to have been forgotten: "Newest of the American dishes, which has made a great hit, is the inner-toasted sandwich, served only in Walgreen drug stores. It is a good-sized bun with its insides toasted and filled with various meats or other foods -- beef saute, chicken salad, frankfurter, melted American cheese, or tuna fish salad.” (205)"

David Hammond wrote:Relevant to this event, John Drury's Dining in Chicago (1931) is available, free, for downloading or viewing online: http://www.archive.org/details/dininginchicago00drur.

This book is full of fascinating information and some charmingly helpful advice: “Tortillas…very thin pancakes made of corn flour" and "Escargots bourguignonne is nothing but snails with bourguignonne sauce -- and a very delicious dish, too."

Aside from that, this is a first-hand compendium of impressions and data-points from many places long-gone, but several that closed within memory and two that still exist (Berghoff and Won Kow).

Here's an interesting sandwich approach that seems to have been forgotten: "Newest of the American dishes, which has made a great hit, is the inner-toasted sandwich, served only in Walgreen drug stores. It is a good-sized bun with its insides toasted and filled with various meats or other foods -- beef saute, chicken salad, frankfurter, melted American cheese, or tuna fish salad.” (205)"

On Saturday I will give a brief talk on the life and work of John Drury as an introduction to a hands-on viewing of some menus and postcards from restaurants mentioned in Dining in Chicago (1931) and A Century of Progress Authorized Guide to Chicago (1933).

Speaking of tortillas, here's part of a menu from El Puerto de Veracruz, one of Chicago's earliest Mexican restaurants. You could get menudo, chiles rellenos, lengua guisada and much more. I don't think I have any 1930s menus listing snails.



And here's the seafood section from an old Won Kow menu.



Walgreen's Inner-Toast sandwich was sort of a hot dog bun that they somehow toasted the inside of before stuffing in the fillings. They also served carbonated Dubl Rich Chocolate Malted Milks ("Everybody likes them.").

Wow, shrimp dishes for 75 cents.

Walgreen's, eh? You don't mean the dreaded Wags, do you?

Rene G wrote:Speaking of tortillas, here's part of a menu from El Puerto de Veracruz, one of Chicago's earliest Mexican restaurants. You could get menudo, chiles rellenos, lengua guisada and much more. I don't think I have any 1930s menus listing snails.

[/img]

About EPdV's offerings, Drury notes they serve “gallina con molle poblado, which is chicken with a thick sauce made, as its name implies, from 'everything in the kitchen'"

"Gallina" would be rooster and "molle poblado" (populated mole?) might very well be "mole poblano." I'm not sure what the reference to "everything in the kitchen" means, though "poblado" may have some idiomatic meaning that I'm not aware of. Maybe it means "lots of stuff in there..."?

Pie Lady wrote:Wow, shrimp dishes for 75 cents.

Walgreen's, eh? You don't mean the dreaded Wags, do you?

Only 50 cents for shrimp chop suey! A complete meal of soup, fish loaf, pepper beef (or chop suey), egg foo young (or noodles), rice, almond cookies and tea could be had for $1.10.

The Walgreen's menu is from 1931, over four decades before the first Wag's. Back then most of their stores had fountains. "There's nothing tastier, nothing more satisfying, than Walgreen's Inner Toast—the sandwich that's always hot and always delicious. Served in a crispy, crunchy inner toasted wrapped roll. Fifteen cents never bought a more enjoyable food delicacy than this! Treat yourself—today—at your nearest Walgreen fountain."

David Hammond wrote:About EPdV's offerings, Drury notes they serve “gallina con molle poblado, which is chicken with a thick sauce made, as its name implies, from 'everything in the kitchen'"

"Gallina" would be rooster and "molle poblado" (populated mole?) might very well be "mole poblano." I'm not sure what the reference to "everything in the kitchen" means, though "poblado" may have some idiomatic meaning that I'm not aware of. Maybe it means "lots of stuff in there..."?

As you can see from the list of daily specials that was once clipped to the menu, "mole poblano" is what Drury probably intended.



There are a number of errors in Drury's descriptions of foreign dishes but I'm impressed with how much he got right. Back then such fact checking must not have been an easy task.

Rene G wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:Wow, shrimp dishes for 75 cents.

Walgreen's, eh? You don't mean the dreaded Wags, do you?

Only 50 cents for shrimp chop suey! A complete meal of soup, fish loaf, pepper beef (or chop suey), egg foo young (or noodles), rice, almond cookies and tea could be had for $1.10.

The Walgreen's menu is from 1931, over four decades before the first Wag's. Back then most of their stores had fountains.

I have this vague recollection, and it could possibly be a false memory, but I seem to recall a young Ron Popeil giving demonstrations of one of his amazing innovations at the old State Street Walgreens (long before the Pocket Fisherman).

HI,

Friday's events begin at 2:00 PM later today at Kendall College. Dinner will be at Kendall College, beginning with a High Ball made with Templeton Rye, then onto a replication of an 8-cent Relief Banquet from May, 1938.

Saturday's events begin at 9 AM. Please note that our Rene G will have an interesting contribution:

John Drury, Ace Chicago Restaurant Reporter of the 1930’s

At the beginning of the Depression Chicago Daily News reporter John Drury wrote Dining in Chicago (1931), a remarkable collection of restaurant reviews. It was followed two years later by A Century of Progress Authorized Guide to Chicago. These books provide fascinating insight into public dining in Depression-era Chicago—from chili parlors and sandwich counters to diverse ethnic choices to haute cuisine. After a brief introduction to Drury's life and work, attendees will be free to examine Drury's books as well as some original Chicago menus and postcards from the restaurants he wrote about.

Rene G has spent many hours poring over John Drury's archives at the Newberry Library.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:That was two pounds of frankfurters. I am bringing the party-sized version on Saturday.

The frankfurter crown roast was one of many highlights of the symposium. Here's the big boy coming out of the oven.



Within minutes of being put on display, people started decorating it.



The symposium took place at a culinary school. It was inevitable.

Cathy2 wrote:Midwest Eats program to re-create Depression food, a very nice article by Dave Hoekstra from the Chicago Sun Times.

8-cent Relief Meal circa 1938 (image by Rene G)


This meal will be served at Kendall College on Friday evening.

Regards,

What is sitting on the left hand corner next to the bread?

jlawrence01 wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:Midwest Eats program to re-create Depression food, a very nice article by Dave Hoekstra from the Chicago Sun Times.

8-cent Relief Meal circa 1938 (image by Rene G)


This meal will be served at Kendall College on Friday evening.

Regards,

What is sitting on the left hand corner next to the bread?

It's an apple. But for the dinner, we actually had an apple crisp.

That was a wonderful tour of Maxwell Street, and I'm already planning another trip as soon as possible. I'm as excited to return as I was to arrive for my first time yesterday. Plus, I want to make my friend eat smut.

Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance

Midwest Eats!
Foodways of the Great Depression

APRIL 29, 30 & MAY 1, 2011
Kendall College, Chicago, Illinois

This event was recorded by Chicago Amplified of Chicago Public Radio as part of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance Fourth Annual Symposium.

Just us for our Fourth symposium on the diverse food cultures of the American Midwest, we will focus on the Great Depression’s impact on our culinary traditions. We’ll explore an 8-cent Relief dinner, holiday celebrations, newsreels and Prohibition’s end. Learn first-hand how Midwesterners ate during the Great Depression with lectures and tastings.


Margaret Rung, PhD, Director, Center for New Deal Studies at Roosevelt University and panelists on events leading to the Great Depression.

The Depression Comes To The Black Metropolis
Christopher Robert Reed. Professor Emeritus, Roosevelt University

Chicago's black community responded to the advent of the Great Depression in several unusual ways: By promoting greater citizens' involvement in forcing the establishment to alleviate widespread economic distress, and by modifying its dietary habits to meet the scarcity of available, affordable food resources. Today's soul food delights received a boost from past experiences with more meatless meals.


Cities and urban life as they transitioned from "prosperity" to depression.
James Wolfinger, Associate Professor of History at DePaul

Life radically changed for the worse for many Americans as the country moved from relative prosperity to depression in the 1920s and '30s. This presentation examines conditions in America's major cities, focusing on how the depression impacted ordinary people and changed urban society.


Down on the Midwestern Farm During the Great Depression: Dust Bowl and Economics
Bruce Kraig, Professor Emeritus, Roosevelt University

Everyone knows about the great Dust Bowl that destroyed agriculture and drove farmers from their land in wide swaths of the Great Plains. But many do not know that the farm economy collapsed as food prices were deflated and surpluses could not be sold. Rural poverty was just as great as in cities, and in many ways, even worse. The federal government was forced to intervene on a number of levels and this set American farm policy for the next half century-and more.


Nightclubs and Bread Lines: Depression Era Foodways On Film
Michael Gebert, freelance writer, blogger about food at Sky Full of Bacon and movies at Nitrateville.com

Perhaps no historical event went so quickly and directly onto movie screens as the Great Depression. Food writer and film buff Michael Gebert will talk about how Depression Era foodways were reflected in films of the period, and show clips depicting food in every context from soup kitchens to glitzy nightspots and from Automats to home kitchens.


Templeton Rye of Iowa, its history during and just after the prohibition
Michael Killmer, Brand Manager of Templeton Rye

History and anecdotes of Templeton rye, which has been made privately for decades though it bottled its first legal bottle only in 2006.


Conference commences with Bruce Kraig, Ph.D.


This Land is Whose Land?
Anne Mendelson, Author, Culinary Historian

How some well-known and not well-known Americans met various challenges of the Great Depression by making their own new beginnings -- spatial (for instance, by moving halfway across the country), political (say, by agitating on behalf of causes), professional (for example, by adopting a new life's work) , and personal (for example, by falling in love and starting families).


John Drury, Ace Chicago Restaurant Reporter of the 1930s
Peter Engler, Scientist and Culinary Historian

At the beginning of the Depression Chicago Daily News reporter John Drury wrote Dining in Chicago (1931), a remarkable collection of restaurant reviews. It was followed two years later by A Century of Progress Authorized Guide to Chicago. These books provide fascinating insight into public dining in Depression-era Chicago—from chili parlors and sandwich counters to diverse ethnic choices to haute cuisine. After a brief introduction to Drury's life and work, attendees will be free to examine Drury's books as well as some original Chicago menus and postcards from the restaurants he wrote about.


Community Canning in the Depression: A case study
Deanna Pucciarelli, PhD.

In this presentation, I will provide commentary and photographs that delineate Ball Corporation’s role in food assistance to Muncie residents during the Depression. We will look at the public projects that the corporation led and the involvement of the community.

From 1923 through 1924, Muncie, Indiana, considered ‘Middle-class America’ was studied in depth by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, husband-and-wife sociologists. They would return to Muncie in 1935 to measure change in social structure as a correlate to the Depression. Long an industrial town with a history in manufacturing, Muncie also had a significant family farm economy. Ball Corporation established businesses in Muncie as far back as 1888 and had become synonymous with canning. The company employed a large proportion of the Muncie workforce in its various factories and played a significant role in daily discourse. Most households in suburban Muncie grew vegetables in their backyards. To help ease food cost burden to families, Ball Corporation set up community canning operations so that backyard garden produce could be canned for the winter. Ball Corporation also provided company land for apartment dwellers to grow food in community gardens.


Co-Eds at the Co-op: Student Depression-Era Foodways at Old Normal
Gina L. Hunter, PhD and Victoria Moré.

In this presentation we draw on data from oral histories and archival documents to examine student foodways at Illinois State Normal University during the Great Depression. During this era, enrollments soared at “Old Normal” as teaching again became an attractive profession for both women and men. Most students lived in boarding houses and rented rooms around campus. Some heated meals in their rooms; others worked for their board; many brought food from the family home. One Rural Education student describes “living on peanut butter and pork and beans” and her envy of a housemate who dined on canned meat from her nearby family farm. A soda at the corner Co-op or a hamburger from Meltham’s was a special treat.

Such are the stories we have uncovered through the Old Main Project (oldmain.illinoisstate.edu), an archeological and oral history investigation of the first building of Illinois’ oldest public university. Our interviewees, alumni from 1935-1940, have shared their memories of working, living, and studying on and around campus. Many describe the ways they “made do” or “got by” and all relate feeling “lucky to be” at ISNU.

In this presentation, we will share information we have gathered through oral histories, photos, and artifacts that together create a picture everyday life and common foodways of students. We invite ISNU alumni and other audience members to share family stories of depression-era student foodways.


Greater Midwest Foodways Heirloom Recipe Competition
Catherine Lambrecht

Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance is dedicated to celebrating, exploring, and preserving unique food traditions and their cultural contexts in the American Midwest. Catherine Lambrecht gives us the highlights from Greater Midwest Foodways Heirloom Recipe Competitions at Midwest state fairs. She is a founding board member of Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance and is program chair of Chicago Foodways Roundtable.


No Longer does the Holiday Table Groan Under the Weight of Food
Whitney Lingle

This presentation looks at holiday meals during the Great Depression. What traditions were upheld and which were altered to fit the family budget? Many components of holiday meals were simply produced on a smaller scale, but as processed foods like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Spam entered the marketplace they incorporated into holiday meals. What did they replace? Radio shows, cookbooks and newspaper columns all advised families on ways to trim the budget while still enjoying the festivity of their favorite meals. These media outlets focused on putting your best foot forward while entertaining (even if the crown roast was made of frankfurters).


Steaks and Shakes and the Great Depression
Robert Dirks, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University

This paper recounts the early history of Steak and Shake, a hamburger chain started in Central Illinois during the Great Depression. My presentation begins with a description of founder Gus Belt’s original restaurant, a place he called “White House Steak and Shake.” I maintain that the key to its success at a time when many existing “white-box restaurants” (e.g., White Castles, White Taverns, White Towers) were closing was not the food. Rather, it was Belt’s insightful grasp of the Depression mentality and his talent as a showman. Belt made Steak ‘n Shake all about T-bones and porterhouses, marquee lights, heavy china, and bright boys and girls eager to take orders. His talent as a restaurateur was such that for the price of a hamburger he not only catered to customers’ hunger but served up a bit of fantasy. Sending people away feeling that they had been treated in a special way and making customers feel a little bit better about themselves was central to Steak n Shakes’ success amidst the Great Depression.


Beer Production after Prohibition: Setting the Stage for the Rise of the Mega-breweries.
Michael Agnew, Certified Cicerone, A Perfect Pint

The 1930s set the stage for the rise of the Midwestern mega-breweries that ultimately came to dominate the US brewing landscape. Prohibition had dealt the industry a serious blow that many smaller, local breweries didn’t survive. Reduced demand put additional pressure on those that did. Only breweries that could afford to adopt new cost-cutting technologies to achieve economies of scale would survive.


The American (Bad) Dream: Soup Kitchens and European Immigrants in Chicago in the 1930's
Katerina Nussdorfer, PhD Candidate at University of Vienna in Austria

This paper deals with an introductory investigation of the hardships of Eastern-European immigrants to the U.S.A. during or before the Great Depression Era, in urban areas like Chicago, and who, though escaping difficult lives and seeking to find better prospects in the "land of promises", were met with unemployment and hunger, which were in part remedied by the emerging of the soup kitchens (initiated by Al Capone but later on administered by other non- and government agencies).


“Chicago’s Maxwell Street”, Arcadia Publishing, Inc. 2002, co-authored by Lori Grove and Laura Kamedulski,
presented by Lori Grove

The Maxwell Street Market, created by a city ordinance in 1912, transformed an early residential street into a thriving marketplace for nearly one century in Chicago. Although its geographic boundaries shifted over time due to urban renewal and expressway construction, the informal bartering on Maxwell Street and discount shopping on Halsted Street remained constant. The Maxwell Street Market was rooted in Old World European traditions that became transplanted in an urban environment and created a distinctive marketplace known worldwide. Businesses that started there included Vienna Beef and NABISCO, fueled by 19th century entrepreneurs who pushed our nation forward with their innovation, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. In the marketplace, vendors, merchants, foods, and merchandise all contributed to the unique character Chicagoans and others called “Maxwell Street.”

Food ARts magazine highlights my Crown Roast of Frankfurters in their March edition:

http://www.foodarts.com/news/front-burn ... ssion-fare

At their request, I made a slideshow describing how to make it, though they never linked to it. This can be found here: http://www.greatermidwestfoodways.com/i ... rters.html

2013 may be the year of the Crown Roast of Frankfurters!


Image by Rene G

Regards,