The Prairie Landscape

Detours - The online magazine of the Illinois Humanities Council

Food

Food

Courtesy of USDA, photo by John Collie

Location: Fort Kent, Maine / Date: August 1942
This issue of Detours explores in detail how food defines and comforts us. In his article "Listen to that Scent! Travelling Tastes and Smells among Greek Immigrants," David Sutton explores the connection between memory and food culture, particularly among immigrants to the United States. Much along the same lines, in "Fair Shares for All," John Haney writes a food-themed tribute to his recently deceased father, tracing his memories of a what he calls a "working class" childhood in England back through meals of "stewed eels, condensed-milk sandwiches, and sausages shimmering with lard." Michael Washburn's Q&A with the legendary Charlie Trotter gives us an inside look at how this world-renowned chef thinks about the intersections between food, memory, and American culture. Laura Letinsky's photographs do with images what many of the articles here do with words. Her decidedly off-kilter still-lifes express the simultaneous celebration and nostalgia that food often produces. Take a look inside as the IHC celebrates food.