Grape tomatoes and chopped parsley brighten this quinoa salad. / AFR photo by Carol Guensburg Quinoa isn’t just a superfood of the moment. This is the International Year of Quinoa, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization has decreed, touting the native Andean highlands plant for its “exceptional nutritional qualities … and its potential contribution …
Carol Guensburg has been cooking family meals since she was 9, the bossy second of six kids in central Wisconsin. From there, it was just a few steps to a career-long interest in the science and sociology of food. Just out of college, she became features editor of the Kingston Daily Freeman, a small daily in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she looked into everything from the socioeconomics of family farms to the science behind clear consommé. She developed a passion for Cuban food and other Florida fare while working for the Miami News, then eventually became the Milwaukee Journal’s food editor. She also ran a University of Maryland program for working journalists, where she oversaw projects on subjects including school food and childhood obesity. She is an editor at Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C. She once baked for Julia Child – a decadent chocolate cake on which Carol flubbed the finale of piping whipped cream from a pastry bag in front of a classroom of Julia fans. Mais oui!
By Carol Guensburg
Florida celebrates 500 years of fusion cuisine
When Spain staked a claim on present-day Florida 500 years ago, it accelerated the fusion of Old and New World foods started by Columbus and affecting global food choices today. Spanish explorers brought supplies that included, among other things, cattle, pigs and citrus fruits, plus olive oil to protect their cheeses and spicy sausages from drying out. …
Moravian ‘lovefeast’ heralds Easter
In the run-up to Easter Sunday, Camille McDowell has been reviewing her shopping list, verifying ranks of volunteers, and generally trying to head off bedlam at a massive church breakfast beginning late Saturday night in Winston-Salem, N.C. “We’ll feed close to a thousand people in varying shifts,” says McDowell, groaning in mock dread at the …
Hungering for the right to vote
One hundred years ago this weekend, thousands of American women hungering for the right to vote converged on Washington, D.C. Their 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade – staged on that March 3 to capitalize on crowds gathering for the next day’s inauguration of Woodrow Wilson – reportedly was the first major civil rights demonstration in the …
Popcorn wins for best grain in a leading snack role
When the Academy Awards are handed out Sunday night, will it be “Lincoln”? “Argo”? “Zero Dark Thirty?” And, for those watching and noshing at home, will it be buttered? Salted? Crisped with a sugar coating? We’re talking popcorn, which has long played a starring role among movie snacks. Film fans’ love affair with popcorn goes …
Mardi Gras is the final course for “Treme”
Mardi Gras traditionally offers the last blowout before a period of fasting and denial. This year’s bash in food-obsessed New Orleans also will mark the beginning of the end for “Treme,” the HBO series dramatizing the city’s struggles after Katrina. The show will wrap filming Feb. 12 on its fourth and final season, bringing …
N.J. restaurateur champions Latin American cooking
While “Gran Cocina Latina” celebrates great Latin cooking in countries throughout this hemisphere, the cookbook’s inclusive vision “is very American,” author Maricel E. Presilla says. “The fact is, we live in a country that’s actually Latin American, too. This book couldn’t have been written anywhere else,” Presilla explains. “The Latin American presence – you’re not …
U-Mich culinary archive stocks ingredients for scholarship
While appraising the late Julia Child’s books, Jan Longone got a call from the Boston lawyer overseeing the transaction. “He asked, ‘How can a cookbook be worth a thousand dollars?’ ” she recalls. “I sent him records from the dealers’ catalogues. People underestimate the value of culinary history.” At 79, she has spent decades striving …
At a Slow Food Café, diners give thanks
After months of temptation, Eileen Cumming finally succumbed to the aromas wafting from the basement kitchen where Slow Food’s University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter hosts its weekly Wednesday lunch café “I meditate on Tuesday nights upstairs. I’ve been smelling the food for a year,” said Cumming, pushing a wisp of salt-and-pepper hair from her face as …
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