Third Thursday, Nov. 21 at Bixby Memorial Library 7 PM
American Food History: From Dinner Pails to TV Dinners

Food is both a passion and a concern for many in today’s fast-paced world, whether you are a reality food show junkie, an amateur baker blogging about your newest creations, a parent concerned about your child’s nutrition, an activist fighting for transparency in food labeling, or a politician pushing for food legislation to limit portion sizes at fast food restaurants.

But the focus is mainly on what we eat rather than how we eat. In her new book THREE SQUARES: The Invention of the American Meal (Sept. 2013), food scholar and historian Abigail Carroll fills us in on the story behind our modern eating habits, serving up a soup-to-nuts history of the American meal, from pease porridge and cornmeal mush to tuna-noodle casseroles and TV-Time Popcorn. Along the way she helps relieve the guilt many of us feel over such supposed transgressions as repeatedly failing to keep to the “sacred” family dinner, snacking between meals, and eating on the go.

Carroll explains that our eating habits have never been stable and that the eating patterns we try so hard to adhere to today are relatively recent inventions that evolved over time and will continue to evolve going forward.

As THREE SQUARES demonstrates, a variety of influences—Native American, French, and British—formed our forebears’ eating habits and determined the way we dine today. Drawing on travel journals, early cookbooks, advertisements, and a host of other primary sources, Carroll has written the first in-depth examination of the American meal. Only by understanding the history of the American meal, she shows, can we help determine its future.

Abigail Carroll is an author and food historian who has taught in the Gastronomy Program at Boston University and has published articles in a variety of publications, including the New York Times. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Boston University and makes her home in Vermont.

For additional information on this and other programs in the Bixby Library’s Third Thursday series please contact the library at (802) 877-2211. All Third Thursday events are FREE and open to the public.

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