From Jamestown to the Blue Ridge: Cooking Up 400 Years of Culinary History in Virginia - April 20-21, 2007 - Owen's Banquet Hall, Virginia Tech Campus

From Jamestown to the Blue Ridge: Cooking Up 400 Years of Culinary History in Virginia - Blacksburg, Virginia

Due to the tragic events at Virginia Tech, "From Jamestown to the Blue Ridge" has been cancelled.

Virginia Tech's Visual and Broadcast Communications podcast on the upcoming conference can be viewed here: http://www.podcasts.vt.edu/culinary_history.mp3

This symposium on 400 years of food and cooking in Virginia features presentations on the culinary history of Virginia by a wide range of culinary experts, historians, and cookbook authors, including food writer Barbara Haber. Beginning with the foods eaten in Jamestown and the early days of the Virginia colony, speakers focus on plantation and slave foods, the Civil War era, and progress to foods of the present day. Virginia Tech's famed Civil War historian, James I. Robertson, Jr., discusses Civil War rations and their impact on common soldiers. Enjoy an exhibit of the Peacock-Harper Culinary History Collection at Virginia Tech, with its colonial manuscript cookbooks and period cookbooks from England. In addition, participants may tour the historic 1774 house and buildings at Smithfield Plantation near the Virginia Tech campus. This unique symposium celebrates the rich gastronomic legacy of Virginia and its impact on the United States. A grand finale banquet featuring historic foods, Virginia wines, and keynote speaker and food writer, John Egerton, ends this delicious journey into the past. Renowned American poet, Nikki Giovanni, introduces Mr. Egerton.

Who should attend this unique celebration of the beginning of America's food? Food writers and editors, culinary historians, Civil War historians, early American history experts, chefs, dietitians, cooking teachers, students, food producers, winery owners/vintners, librarians, cookbook collectors, book lovers, food lovers...anyone interested in how food traditions helped shape our country from colonial times at Jamestown through the Civil War and on to present times - this symposium is for you.

The American Dietetic Association is offering 9 CEUs to members for attending the Jamestown to the Blue Ridge: Cooking Up 400 Years of Culinary History in Virginia. There is no charge for the CEUs and for further information please contact Ellen Coale, R.D. at (540)552-7904.

Sponsored by The Peacock-Harper Culinary History Committee

For More Information Contact:
Cynthia Bertelsen
Peacock-Harper Culinary History Collection Committee
540-552-8655
Email: cbertel@usit.net
Or visit the Committee's Web site at: http://www.culinarycollection.org

The culinary collection at Virginia Tech University Libraries began in late 1999 when Dr. Ann Hertzler, founder, planned with Foods, Nutrition, and Exercise Department faculty and staff members, and Gail McMillan, Director of Digital Library and Archives, the care of several boxes of donated cookbooks. The cookbooks, approximately 631, had been stored in the department. Thus began the Peacock-Harper Culinary Collection; the original donated books came from in the private collections of Dr. Laura Jane Harper, Dean, College of Human Resources and Education, and Mrs. Dora Greenlaw Peacock, wife of Dr. Markham Peacock, Professor Emeritus, and former Head, English Department. The Collection brings to the public and students over two centuries of historical information about the domestic sciences, including customs, eating behaviors, food choices and habits, social and economic history, and scientific and technological progress. (http://spec.lib.vt.edu/Culinary)