Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the harvest season and the rural past. They decorate the front of their houses with pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with elaborately carved jack-o’-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any historic ties to the crop.

The Gilded Age was defined by extremes of wealth and want, and those extremes played out dramatically in the ways Americans ate. For the elite, daily meals were extravagant and formal banquets became complicated rituals of luxury and intentional waste. While a wealthy minority feasted, many other Americans struggled to feed themselves, and hunger and misery were widespread among the rural poor and those in city slums.

Howdy Holmes, CEO of the Chelsea Milling Company, will present a talk on the family-owned milling company that produced the first baking mixes sold in the U.S. The company's best known and best-selling mix is Jiffy Mix corn muffins, which accounts for over 90% of its retail sales. _This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor._

Italian beef and hot dogs get the headlines. Cutting-edge cuisine and big-name chefs get Michelin stars. But Chicago food shows its true depth in classic dishes conceived in the kitchens of immigrant innovators, neighborhood entrepreneurs, and mom-and-pop visionaries.

Culinary journalists Monica Eng and David Hammond will discuss their new book, Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, in which they draw on decades of exploring the city’s food landscape to serve up 30 can’t-miss eats found in all corners of Chicago.

Join Librarian Juli McLoone from the University of Michigan for a taste of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA). Founded by culinary historian and adjunct curator Janice Bluestein Longone and her husband Daniel T. Longone, JBLCA is recognized across the country as a premier collection documenting the production, promotion, preparation, and consumption of food and drink, with a particular focus on the American experience. Areas of particular strength include community and charity cookbooks, immigrant cookbooks, and food-related ephemera.

Lisa McDonald is the co-author of Tea for Dummies, a guide to enjoying the delicate flavors and health benefits of the world’s second most popular beverage. She will discuss research on tea’s benefits, where it’s grown, how it’s processed and how it’s enjoyed around the world. Lisa is the proprietor of TeaHaus, a tea store, tea room and café in downtown Ann Arbor.

This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor.

In her book Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine, Kelley Fanto Deetz draws upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. She reveals how these men and women were literally "bound to the fire" as they lived and worked in the sweltering and often fetid conditions of plantation house kitchens.

In this presentation based on her new book, Detroit Tiki, join author Renee Tadey on a journey through the history of tiki-themed destinations in Detroit.

The International Museum of Dinnerware Design was established in 2012. On its tenth anniversary, Margaret Carney, the director and curator of the museum, will share stories of delicious exhibitions, interweaving culinary delights along the way.

Margaret Carney is a ceramic historian who holds a Ph.D. in Asian art history. Curated IMDD exhibitions include The Art of High Chair Fine Dining, Cake, Butter, Breakfast and the upcoming 2023 invitational and juried exhibition, Entomophagous Dining.

Journalist Micheline Maynard will discuss her new book, Satisfaction Guaranteed: How Zingerman's Built a Corner Deli into a Global Food Community. Certain businesses are legendary, exerting immense influence in their field. Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of those places.