Tammy: Hi, this is Tammy Proctor. Welcome to another episode of Eating the Past. I am joined in the studio here with my lovely co-hosts. We're here to talk about a really great collaboration with the library between the Eating the Past radio show and an exhibit that is still up at the Merrill Cazier Library, and so I'm going to send this over to Sarah to introduce herself and tell us a little bit about the exhibit.
Sarah: Thanks, Tammy. This is Sarah Barry. I'm the digital archivist over at USU Libraries in Special Collections and Archives. We spotlight the show. It's our five-year anniversary of Eating the Past, and then that's coupled with some food history and just some great items that sort of tell the story of food history, food culture.
And that exhibit was opened in September and it will be open until November 23. So definitely get in there if you haven't already seen it. Just in that main lobby of the library,
Tammy: And all of us got to be part of the opening. It was really fun, really crowded, really great food, and so we thought we maybe just talk about some of the things that we're excited about with the exhibit. So, Jamie…
Jamie: Well, just as Sarah just said, there's just so many interesting artifacts from USU Special Collections and Archives on display in the exhibit, and Tammy really started Eating the Past as a video blog series with the library as a way to explore food history using the cookbooks from the historic cookbook collection, and we see a lot of those items on display.
I think one of the older ones is the “Diet of the Diseased.” It's really a medical text from 1633, but it also explores how spices might interact with health. And then there's lots of ephemera, such as a menu from the Northern Pacific Railway's Yellowstone Park Line, where you could get two mutton chops for 75 cents, a steak for $1, and a 35-cent celery and apple salad.
Evelyn: And there's an adorable little menu from the Union Pacific Railroad that is the two bears.
Sarah: Oh, the children's menu.
Evelyn: Oh, the children's menu is so cute.
Tammy: One of the other really fun interactive pieces, and this was Sarah's idea, was well, it's a recipe box, and not only can people take a recipe away, we've reproduced some recipes from the show. Then you can also leave recipes. So, Sarah, what are you doing with those recipes?
Sarah: Oh, this is one of my favorite things. You know, because food is so communal in nature, it tells so much of a story about our culture and who we are, where we came from.
So, you are encouraged if you do stop by. You're welcome to leave a recipe. It can be something that you make up or something that you use in your family. But what we're going to do with those is we have accessioned those into the library special collections as its own community recipe collection, and the plan is to make those publicly available.
So, we'll have a lib guide out where you can look through those and kind of track where they're coming from. We have one from the UK. There's a Brazilian beans recipe in there.
Jamie: Feijoada.
Sarah: Oh yeah. sounds right. But yeah, well the plan is just to make those available. And we'll have them up online, and then it's just going to be kind of a rolling thing here and there. We'll just do some recipe collections and add those to the existing collection.
Evelyn: And it's really an extension of part of what you've got in the exhibit, which is a number of community cookbooks where people are getting together and celebrating their community's food ways, and this is like the digital version of it.
Sarah: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we'll have the physical ones. The great news is there are people taking these recipes as well, which is fantastic.
That's what they're for, and so I'm just trying to capture photographs or scans of them. So the ones that remain, we will hold in physical form, but we'll mostly have in digital form as well. But yeah, I mean, our students, our faculty-they are from all over the place, and so this is your story, USU. This is us. This is us as a community, and this is kind of an opportunity to capture what we think of as home, what's comfort, what's our food.
Evelyn: And I think community members can come in and contribute recipes as well.
Sarah: The library is open to all, so you are welcome to come in. It is free. It's just right there in the lobby. And my son actually put a little recipe in. It's the one he makes Oreo rolls. So yeah, kids, adults, it doesn't matter. We, we want them all.
Tammy: Okay, well, please come out. The exhibit is in the atrium of the library, and we hope that you'll have a chance to enjoy it while it's still up for the next month.
Evelyn: It really is beautiful. Get there,
Tammy: And thanks for listening. You can find this and other Eating the Past episodes at UPR
