A Road Scholar Program by Penelope Bingham

Richard Nixon craved cottage cheese with catsup, Ronald Reagan kept his jelly beans handy in the Oval Office, and George H. W. Bush famously refused broccoli.  But what would our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, eat?  From cornmeal mush in a log cabin on the American Frontier to Charlotte Russe à la Parisienne at the White House, the food on Lincoln’s table and the cookbooks of the period shed light on both Lincoln’s story and that of the United States. This program invites the audience to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Bicentennial with the recipe for his Favorite Cake, and to think about this era of unprecedented expansion and turmoil, which set in motion changes in America and to its foodways that continue into the present.

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 Laura Frizol, 815.223.2341.