A Road Scholar Program by Penelope Bingham

Today’s American food scene includes new ingredients and ethnic cuisines undreamed-of by previous generations of cooks in this country. National food-and-cooking media – magazines, television, the Internet, and more than 1500 new cookbooks each year – make this "New American Cuisine" familiar in every corner of the United States. Are traditional American dishes and cookbooks now obsolete for all practical purposes, useful primarily as nostalgic mementos or historical records? This program invites the audience to consider the place of American cookbooks and recipes from the past – distant and recent – in the 21st Century American kitchen.

Penelope Bingham holds degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Chicago and has been an avid collector and appraiser of cookbooks for many years. Her personal collection of cookbooks now exceeds well over 2,000 volumes, and she has given numerous programs on American culture and cookbooks to libraries and professional organizations around Illinois.

This event is Free and Open to the public. For more information, please contact Terri Lundberg, 815.239.2768.