Anne Mendelson talks about how Americans—some well known, others not as well known—met various challenges of the Great Depression by making their own new beginnings. These beginnings were spatial, political, professional, and personal.

Anne Mendelson has been a culinary historian and food writer for more than 25 years. She has collaborated with chef-restaurateur Zarela Martinez on three cookbooks: Food from My Heart (Macmillan 1992), The Food and Life of Oaxaca (Macmillan 1997), and Zarela’s Veracruz (Houghton Mifflin 2001). She is the author of Stand Facing the Stove (Henry Holt 1997), a biography of the authors of The Joy of Cooking, and Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk through the Ages (Knopf 2008). A former contributing editor for Gourmet Magazine, she currently holds a fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation.

This event was recorded as part of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance Fourth Annual Symposium “Midwest Eats! Foodways of the Great Depression,” which focuses on the Great Depression’s impact on our culinary traditions.  Other events from this symposium recorded by Chicago Amplified—listed in the order they were presented—are as follows:

Midwest Eats!  Foodways of the Great Depression
Nightclubs and Bread Lines: Depression Era Foodways On Film
Templeton Rye of Iowa: Its History During and Just After the Prohibition
This Land is Whose land?
John Drury, Ace Chicago Restaurant Reporter of the 1930s
Community Canning in the Depression: A Case Study
Co-Eds at the Co-op: Student Depression-Era Foodways at Old Normal
Greater Midwest Foodways Heirloom Recipe Competition
No Longer does the Holiday Table Groan Under the Weight of Food
Steaks and Shakes and the Great Depression
Beer Production after Prohibition: Setting the Stage for the Rise of the Mega-breweries
The American (Bad) Dream: Soup Kitchens and European Immigrants in Chicago in the 1930s
Chicago’s Maxwell Street

Recorded Saturday, April 30, 2011 at Kendall College.