The
FOOD Museum is committed to
connecting people of all ages
with the essential subject
of food.
The
FOOD Museum celebrates food,
and through its collections,
educational programs, publications
and website engages people
in an exploration of what
we eat and how we eat it,
where it came from, how it
has evolved, what its impact
is on the world, and what
its future may be.
The
FOOD Museum is committed to
the identification and preservation
of sites and artifacts associated
with our rapidly disappearing
local and global food heritage.
GOALS
To tackle childhood obesity
by giving school children
enlightening offbeat experiences
that nudge them away from
poor food choices and towards
healthy eating, child by child,
and family by family.
To
actively promote the preservation
of food heritage sites by
recognizing community initiatives
from around the world.
To
delve deeply into food issues
affecting people, places and
the planet itself.
To
locate an appropriate permanent
home for The FOOD Museum,
its collections and the
Global Food Heritage Project.
More
watermelon videos here including:
"watermelon love" a video
ad for Japanese square watermelons;
an adorable video of a child eating
a watermelon slice;
a performance by "Watermelon
Slim"
and a watermelon rotting before
your eyes.
The perfect hot
weather fruit, watermelon is precisely
that, about 92% water. Known early
on as a source of liquid in Africa,
where it probably originated, the
watermelon is considered a member
of the cucumber family of plants.
African watermelon patch (illustration
by Else Bostelmann)
The mangosteen
has only one fault; it is impossible
to eat enough of it, but, strictly
speaking, perhaps that is a defect
in the eater rather than in the
fruit. It would be mere blasphemy
to attempt to describe its wonderful
taste, the very culmination of culinary
art for any unspoilt palate.
--Eric Mjöberg, author of "Forest
life and adventures in the Malay
Archipelago" 1930
Licorice
candy used to be made exclusively
from the hard, dried, yellow root
of Glycyrrhiza glabra.
A member of the pea family and native
to southeastern Europe, licorice
grows about four feet high. The
plant has bluish purple and white
flowers that resemble the blooms
of the sweet pea.
Licorice has been
discovered in the tombs of Egyptian
pharaohs, including that of Tutankhamen,
who lived from 1356 to 1339 B.C.
Perhaps their subjects intended
that in the afterlife, the rulers
should drink mai sus, a
sweet, licorice-flavored drink still
enjoyed in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians,
as well as the Greeks and Romans,
used licorice as a cold and cough
medicine. Ancient Indians and Chinese
knew the root and believed that
consuming it increased their vigor
and strength.
In the A.D. 800's,
the Moors grew licorice in Spain,
which they occupied from 711 to
1492. In the 1500's, the plant arrived
in England with Roman Catholic monks
of the Dominican order. The friars
established a thriving licorice
industry near Pontefract Castle
in northeastern England. Pontefract
became known for its lush licorice
fields and for its candies, called
Pontefract Cakes. These days, the
licorice fields of Pontefract are
long gone, but the candies still
produced there carry a picture of
Pontefract Castle.
The Global
Food Heritage Project identifies
the places connected with our
food heritage and spotlights
the efforts to preserve these
sites today.
"The
Blue Plate was a roadside joint I
thought was way out in the country.
When I was about six, that's where
I had my first hamburger not made
by my Mom---I loved standing at the
little window as my Dad ordered the
food, then waiting to hear our number
called. My task was to pick up the
napkins, straws and forks. The ketchup
and mustard were not in tiny, impossible-to-open
plastic rectangles. They were in big,
messy jugs. Everybody ate at picnic
tables under the trees and the burgers
were hot,moist and dripping from the
grill."
Most
of us have childhood memories of
food places--maybe a restaurant,
or a cider mill--maybe an old watermill,
thick with flour dust, or a market
where the vendors gave us free pieces
of fruit. As more and more cookie
cutter chain restaurants served
by a food supplier with all frozen
preapportioned meals spread across
the US and some of the rest of the
world, much is being lost--Healthy
food. Local sourcing. Personal stories.
And more. What about local orchards
and groves? Old vineyards, breweries
and fishmarkets? Whatever happened
to that creaky old farm with the
perfect blackberries? The big open
air city market right downtown?
The ranch where you could see exactly
what your future side of beef was
eating?
As
we lose our connection with our
food, and with the people who grow
and process it, we lose much of
our cultural history and identity.
We are out to preserve food heritage.
Food heritage sites
and food-related exhibits are also
where people, especially students
and children, can connect with food.
Most people live in urban or suburban
settings and have little opportunity
to see food production in gardens,
farms or ranches. In many areas,
outdoor food markets have dwindled.
Busy families either eat fast food
out, or convenience food in, and
infrequently dine together. One
consequence of these factors in
the developed world may well be
the rising obesity rates among many
people, including children.
The Global Food Heritage
Project exhibit continues here.
Museums
About Food & Eating
Clockwise from top
right: Chef Escoffier Museum's traditional
French kitchen;
Agropolis Museum's "Banquet
for Humanity" art installation;
Japan's Ramen Noodle Museum;
USA's Farmers Museum; Agropolis'
"Kitchens of the World"
exhibit; Italy's Olive Museum.
"A
food museum is a museum about food,
pure and simple. Museums
about food are a relatively new
museum category, one generally overlooked
by traditional guidebooks. Yet,
the public's interest in food history
and traditions is clearly on the
rise.We
are not out to determine what makes
something called a museum technically
legitimate. Our purpose is to pinpoint
places that illuminate food history
for the public. We are after the
spirit of inquiry and enthusiasm
for a subject, for the places that
not only preserve the past but also
bring it to life. Food-related museums
and food heritage sites include
professional academically accredited
institutions, avowedly commercial
public relations ventures, earnestly
unsophisticated operations, and
variations on all three."
---from
Gastronomie! Food Museums
and Heritage Sites of Franceby Tom Hughes and Meredith
Sayles Hughes
True
food museums, as we think of them,
are few and far between. Furthermore,
they are a relatively recent fusion
of disciplines that combine the
history of art, agriculture, food
industry; natural and social sciences;
archaeology; ethnography; geography;
together with the emerging academic
fields of gastronomy & culinary
studies.
Let's
add
a National Museum of Food &
Farm to the USA's Smithsonian network!
The United States is
one of the only developed nations
that has not honored its food and
farm heritage with an up-to-date
public-friendly facility. Continued
here.
Guerande
Peninsula
France's Historic
Salt Industryand
More
You can't eat the
bright white light out in the Marais
Salants, the salt marshes of the
Guerande-- from the Breton Gwen
Ran, or "white land"---though
maybe it's bottled up in the flashing
bubbles of the champagne you drink
as you sniff the salty sea essence
of the local oysters, before slliding
them down the throat. The houses
here are white or pastel, the sun
bounces off the flats with a not
unpleasant glare, and even the salt
workers themselves, traditionally
at least, wear white breeches.
Salt is not just
a happy condiment, it is an essential
life ingredient, and the primary
means of preserving both food and
drink before refrigeration. To the
Romans it was one more good reason
to invade Gaul. In the sixteenth
century the insidious salt tax extended
to the western parts of France,
causing active revolts. According
to French food historian Maguelonne
Toussaint-Samat, the rabble of Bordeaux
evidently grabbed the bureaucrat
who administered the tax, cut him
up, and salted his parts, much as
they would have ministered to a
fattened pig. And by the time of
the Revolution, the then centuries-old
salt tax, mixed with famine after
a poor grain harvest, was a further
incitement to overthrow the aristocracy,
who, naturally paid no salt tax.
Salt, too, we discovered
not only has color---gray salt is
the most reminiscent of the sea---but
also perfume. Experts can apparently
sniff out the difference among salt
from mines, salt of the sea, sea
salt skimmed first from the surface
of the flats, and salt from below,
slow to appear after evaporation.
My nose for salt was sadly undeveloped,
though a faintly brackish, slightly
geranium-leaved aromatic scent did
begin to take vague olfactory shape.
A
remarkable union
of three separate salt-related
institutions comprises what we would
call a salt museum, perhaps the
finest in the world.
Photo credits
(clockwise from upper
right): http://www.zillions.org/Features/Lunch/lunch001.html;
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_608.shtml;
http://www.sampson.k12.nc.us/Countypage/Child%20Nutrition/nutritio.htm
An increasing number
of parents, educators, elected officials
and interested citizens in the USA,
United Kingdom and other economically
developed nations are concerned
with rising obesity rates among
children, teens and the adult population.
Reforming school lunches is one
of the many solutions being discussed.
School lunch reformers are looking
to re-create relationships with
food that existed a half century
or so in the USA, lasting longer
in parts of Europe and still found
in various societies around the
world. These largely bygone food
traditions involved: eating locally
produced fresh seasonal ingredients,
families vegetable gardening, cooking
and dining together. To get a glimpse
of how it used to be a quarter century
ago: read
this 50's childhood food memoir.
Buy
our book! (Click
here to make your purchase.)
Christmas is coming, so snap up
this one for your foodie friends
and family members hunkered down
in armchairs, waiting for fuel prices
to drop. Or get the book for active
foodie travelers bored with all
the usual sites. Gastronomie! Food
Museums and Heritage Sites of France
is the first extensive exploration
ever of French food historic sites,
from the Saffron Museum in Boynes
to the Chocolate Museum in Biarritz,
from the oyster beds of Ile d’Oléron
to the melon statue in Cavaillon.
No one else delivers
you this kind of book, food-lovers,
packed with colorful photos from
our trek and from The FOOD Museum's
collections. We traveled over 10,000
kilometers around France (someone
had to do it) to bring you the backstory
of French food. Who is “we?”
Meredith Sayles Hughes and Tom Hughes,
founders of The FOOD Museum.
Rémi Krug,
chair of the Institut des Hautes
Études du Goût, writes
of Gastronomie! Food Museums and
Heritage Sites of France: “
We are delighted that the book is
shining light on what is at the
very heart of French culture and
art de vivre. The Hughes’
guide explores the historical background
behind the rich cuisine and taste
of France today. It artfully illuminates
the creative spirit, dedication,
and high professionalism that are
preserving gastronomic history in
sites across the country.”
"History celebrates the battlefields whereon
we meet our death, but scorns
to speak of the plowed fields
whereby we thrive.
It knows the names of the
kings' bastards but cannot
tell us the origin of wheat.
This is the way of human
folly."---Jean
Henri Fabre (1823-1915)
"First
we eat, then we do everything else."
M.F.K.
Fisher
(1908-1992)
Copyright
Issues
To the best of
our knowledge, all the images and
editorial content on our site are
copyrighted images and content controlled
by us, or are a part of the public
domain. Those images and editorial
content not under our control or
ownershop come from public websites
and user contributions. So far as
we know, none are bound by copyright
restrictions. If you see an image
or content that you know to be under
copyright on the The Food Museum
Online website, please notify us
immediately at <foodmuseum.com>
so that we can take corrective measures.
Images from our collections must
be cleared by us for use.
Official
Web Disclaimer
Information in The Food Museum Online
is provided by many different people.
While we try to keep it accurate
and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee
that it always will be. If you see
something in a document that should
be corrected or updated, contact
us with your concern. Be sure
to give the full URL (Web address)
of the document in your message.
Unless otherwise
noted, the Web information may not
represent official statements or
views of The Food Museum.
Visit
our companion site for The
Potato Museum,
the world's largest collection
and first museum on the subject.
The FOOD Museum
needs to eat too!
Please keep us fed--you'll support the
website and help bring lively, multi-cultural
food programs to schools across the
country.
