One year, six quilts: Let’s put these babies to bed
In the quilting world, they are called UFOs. Unfinished objects. Any sewer worth their seam ripper has a whole stash of them. Projects they’ve started with a rush of creative […]
Category Archives: history
What better Christmas surprise than a living link to Sweden?
Just when I thought my Sweden story was coming to an end, a new chapter began. A few weeks before Christmas, I received an email from a man named Ronney. […]
Daydreaming about the Swedish homeland (and hedgehogs)
Hedgehogs are apparently all over Gotland, and I didn’t see a one. Mainland Sweden has hedgehogs too, but so does this island 60 miles offshore. Four months ago, my sister […]
After 124 years, Sweden beckons, so here I go
In 1892, my great great grandmother got on a boat. She was 37 years old and living on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea with her two […]
Ten years later, I’m still in love, in mourning and in rainbows
Troy died 10 years ago today.
If you’ve known me for any length of time for the past 15 years, that name has come up.
Troy was my best friend. Like, that best friend at the top of the best friend pile who is secretly your favorite.
Sleeping under a quilt that’s older than all of us
When I come home to visit Mom and Dad, I sleep under a fern. Bigger than a dog, smaller than a car, it’s a fuzzy green orb looking soft from […]
Rooting for Tami Taylor, Friday Night Feminism and a damn good TV show
I just finished the 76th and final episode of “Friday Night Lights.” I was late to the FNL game, even though I’d heard people rave about the soundtrack, because I […]
Culinary historian Laura Shapiro headlines Women & Food Symposium on January 18
Oh, buddy. I can’t tell you how excited I am to share here that next month, UT’s Food Lab is hosting a Women & Food Symposium that will feature Laura […]
Idgie Threadgoode, Iggy the cat and Addie the tomboy
See that cute little tomboy in the lower right hand of that photo? That’s me in fourth grade. Playing team sports year-round and growing more aware by the day of […]
Guest Post: Fifty Years After The Feminine Mystique, remembering Peg Bracken
(Editor’s note: This is another guest post from my friend Kimberly Wilmot Voss, who has written a number of excellent pieces for the Feminist Kitchen in the past year or […]
Happy birthdays, sad birthdays and all the stories in between
Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She’ll likely be celebrating the day quietly with my parents in Aurora, the Missouri town in which she has lived for more than 60 of […]
Should we resist or give in to Titanic impulses?
Happy New Year’s Eve! We’ve made it to the end of 2012, despite predictions that the world might come to an end a week or so ago. This is a […]
On coffee, death and making moments that make a life
“It’s a pleasure to be here with you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to be.” That’s how Michael Fratkin starts his stirring TEDx talk about the […]
Wading through stories to figure out which ones to tell
This woman has a story to tell. Her picture is painted on a whitewashed wall inside Texana Trails and Lodge, a bed and breakfast in La Grange that we’ve come […]
Guest post: Writing Women into Culinary History
(Editor’s note: I’m so happy to welcome Kimberly Wilmot Voss back to the Feminist Kitchen. You’ll remember that she’s the Florida journalism professor who wrote a guest post about Phyllis Diller […]
Don’t forget the catfish in the bathtub
Statesman editorial writer Alberta Phillips wrote a beautiful remembrance in today’s paper about her grandmother, Esther Harrison, who was part of the Great Migration, the exodus of more than 6 […]
A tribute to Jane “Cool” McCool
Jane McCool, a pioneering P.E. teacher in Aurora, Mo., who created the still-in-existence Sweetie Babes dance troupe, passed away this week. She introduced hundreds of young girls to physicality and sport in an era when this was almost unheard of, and she was the “girl coach” opposite my grandfather, who coached basketball and football. That’s how my grandmother and Jane became friends, a relationship that lasted to the the very end.
But Jane wasn’t just a lifelong athlete. She was a foodie, too. She taught me how to make fettucine alfredo, which was perhaps the gateway dish into the crazy food life I lead now.
RIP, Cool McCool.
Celebrating Mother’s Day by digging up family history
You don’t have to be lonely old Eleanor Rigby to be buried along with your name. After Mary Jane Murrell raised her eight children, she took in two of her […]
July Book Club: “A Mess of Greens” by Elizabeth Engelhardt
I feel like a bigger “Hunger Games” fan girl than ever after tonight’s Feminist Kitchen book club + film series at Thai Fresh. Katniss/Jennifer Lawrence-as-breadwinner, the meaning of hunger, our […]
January book club: “The Help”
I can’t believe November has almost ended and I still haven’t posted about the next book club. (I blame the Thanksgiving Staycation of 2011 in which I did such domestic […]
