Club Welcomes Food Historian

Community Club President Julie Fehler with Dr. Alice Ross and general program chairman Ruth Collins

The Community Club of Garden City and Hempstead was pleased to welcome noted food historian and author, Alice Ross, Ph.D. to their February 7 th general program held at the Garden City Casino. Professor Ross is the author of the historical cookbook, "The Taste of Brookhaven, 400 years of History in the Kitchen," which was published in 2005. It traces the parallel of cuisine and local history developments, linked together page by page and era by era.

Dr. Ross told the group that the project came about when she was approached to do a historical cookbook for the celebration of the 350 th anniversary of the town of Brookhaven. It gathered momentum of its own, and became something of a passion for her, the natural next step in her ongoing love affair with Long Island food history.

This began in 1976, when bi-centennial museum celebrations undertook cooking demonstrations, and out of her long-time fascination with food and cookery, drew her to join a variety of committees. The woman's movement and the development of social history, all of which emerged at that time, only strengthened the lure, and it grew slowly but surely into a career. Local histories, she said, have combined with foodways strengthening the connection in powerful ways.

Dr. Ross earned her Ph.D. at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1996, where she wrote her dissertation, "Women, Work and Cookery, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, 1880-1920." She is currently an adjunct professor at Hofstra and NYU and was most recently senior editor and contributor for the acclaimed "Oxford Encyclopedia of food and Drink in America." She offers workshops in hands-on historical cookery at the Alice Roth Hearth Studios, where students learn how to cook using fireplaces, cookstoves and antique pots and utensils from her own collection. These activities are supported by her definitive library of early cookbooks and studies, prints and ephemeral.

Dr. Ross is, of course, an ardent eater, cook and gardener and has raised a large family that continues to enjoy her passions. For the past 25 years she has also been one of the professional pioneers in the current mushrooming of academic food history.

The club thanked Ruth Collins and her general program committee for finding this speaker. Marge Maher and Joan Kuster handled arrangements, Jo Krawczyk and Josephine Cotugno greeted members and guests at the door, Phyllis Dima and Ruth Labosco provided the refreshments and Grace Murphy crated the decorations on the tea table.

The next general program will take place on Wednesday, March 7, at 1:30 p.m. at the Garden City Casino and will feature guest speaker Natalie Naylor. A professor of history at Hofstra University for over 30 years, Dr. Naylor will present a slide lecture entitled "WPA Murals in Garden City and Hempstead." It will include special works of art created for display in public buildings during the 1930s.

To learn more about the Community Club and its vast variety of programs, trips and fine arts classes and how you may become a member, please call their office at (516) 746-0488 on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.