SOUP HIATUS
Re-Thinking Soup is on break.
Will resume:
TUES Aug 20 | 12:00- 1:00 PM
Chicago Cultural Center, Spontaneous Interventions Exhibit
78 E. Washington St. Chicago, IL 60602 - first floor .
Re-Thinking Soup season has "simmered" to a close. We will be on hiatus June and July but back in action for the special Soup-on-the-Move we mentioned that was (and still is) in the works. Sorry to toy with your soup emotions but we are ironing out logistics with the Chicago Cultural Center, the site for this off-campus culinary experience. So get out there and enjoy the sun and we'll see you, rain or shine, on Tuesday August 20th at high noon at the Chicago Cultural Center, inside the Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good exhibit.
No force on the globe brings people together on a daily basis with the same consistency and manner than the cultivation, preparation, and eating of food. For more than a century, Hull-House has worked to nourish people and teach the importance of nutrition while linking these issues with an historical commitment to peace, democracy, economic and cultural sustainability. For the past 5 years thousands of visitors have sat, sipped soup and broke bread with us as activists, farmers, doctors, economists, artists, and guest chefs joined each month to present their knowledge, ideas, and projects and foster a space where we can move toward solutions.
Reformers at the Hull-House linked labor, women's rights and international concerns to food in innovative and instructive ways. We strive to preserve this legacy by engaging in contemporary expansive conversations about food.
Thank you to all for your continued support and participation in this enterprising monthly free program. We look forward to more soups and conversation.
Here is a look back at this Spring's Re-Thinking Soup programs.
January 15, 2013 - Chicago Victory Gardens and the Peterson Garden Project
Featured Guests
LaManda Joy, Master Gardener and Founder of the Peterson Garden Project
About
Seventy years ago a city full of people who had never gardened before transformed every available urban space into food gardens.
The Victory Gardens of WW2 are a faint recollection of communities collectively rising up to feed themselves with what little
resources they had available. Today, communities are doing the same thing and scalable models are being developed, based on the
WW2 blueprint, to make urban food production by the masses the norm, not the exception.
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February 19, 2013 - African American Food Traditions, honoring Edna Lewis
Featured Guests
Chef Kocoa Scott-Winbush, and jazz violinist Samuel “Savoirfaire” Williams
Soup of the Day
Black-eyed peas in tomato & onion sauce
About
Re-Thinking Soup honors chef and author Edna Lewis (1916-2006), long considered an African American trailblazer in the culinary world.
Lewis co-owned and cooked at Café Nicholson, a restaurant in New York City, renowned for its fabulous cuisine and frequented by
Bohemians and artists throughout the 1940s and 50s. During the mid-twentieth century, female chefs were few and far between and black
female chefs a rarity. And yet Edna Lewis became beloved for her creative, resourceful and delicious Southern cooking, a style that
can be traced to her early life on her family's farm in Freetown, Orange County, Virginia.
Chef Kocoa Scott-Winbush and 4 guest performers will read excerpts of Chef Edna's writings from two of her highly acclaimed cookbooks, The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor. Readings will be paired with the violin virtuosity of Samuel "Savoirfaire" Williams, a local, classically trained jazz violinist.
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March 5, 2013 - Behind the Kitchen Door - Sustainable Restaurants: Labor Practices, Working Conditions and Wages in American Restaurants
Featured Guests
Saru Jayaraman, author of Behind the Kitchen Door, Director of the Food Labor Research center at University of California, Berkeley, co-founder of the Restaurant
Opportunities Centers (ROC) and Chicago ROC.
About
In Behind the Kitchen Door: What Every Diner Should Know About the People Who Feed Us, Saru Jayaraman, follows the
lives of restaurant workers in New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit,
and New Orleans. Her groundbreaking exploration situates labor and the work of the 10 million restaurant workers- servers,
bussers, dishwashers and cooks- who comprise the second-largest private sector workforce in the United States at the center
of the conversation about sustainability within our food system.
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April 9, 2013 - Ramen Dreams
Featured Guests
Chef Keizo Shimamoto
Soup of the Day
Ramen, Tsukeman style
About
A screening of Ramen Dreams starring Chef Keizo Shimamoto paired with a lively video chat with Chef Shimamoto about his enthusiasm for ramen. Don't miss this opportunity to explore the complexities of this dish through different regional interpretations, ingredients and styles. Slurping is allowed.
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May 21, 2013 - Soul Food Junkies and Soul Vegan
Featured Guests
Soul Vegan
Soup of the Day
Asparagus Soup
About
Soul Vegan will be leading us to examine the relationship between diet, community health, and tradition while screening portions of Byron Hurt's documentary, Soul Food Junkies.
Soul Food Junkies is a thoughtful exploration of the deeply personal connection we have with food, class and race disparities in the US food system. Is it fair to indict soul food as a major contributor to various health and wellness problems that plague the black community? What eco-sustainable traditions and food practices have black folks been using to maintain health, and how can a wider reclamation of these practices support progressive food politics and decrease health disparities?
Together we will think through culturally specific alternatives that address the intersection of environment, economics and tradition.
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and
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RE-THINKING SOUP PROGRAMING
PAST SEASONS
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About Re-Thinking Soup:
Every month, the Hull-House Museum hosts a modern day soup kitchen that is a public and communal event where we gather together and eat delicious, healthy, soup and have fresh, organic conversation about many of the urgent social, cultural, economic, and environmental food issues that we should be addressing.
Jane Addams was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and worked on many issues in her life to create the conditions of peace to flourish. We meet in the historic Residents' Dining Hall, where Upton Sinclair, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein and other important social reformers met to share meals and ideas, debate one another, and conspire to change the world. Activists, farmers, doctors, economists, artists, and guest chefs join us each week to present their knowledge, ideas, and projects and foster a space where we can move toward solutions.
The bread is provided by Nicole Bergere, who grinds the grains and uses all natural ingredients and no preservatives for her baked creations. Please visit her website here.
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THE HEIRLOOM SEED LIBRARY
Seed saving is the most secure way to ensure sustainable food systems and healthful food access. By adapting this habit of conservation we are not only fostering biodiversity, but the notion of multiculturalism as well. Saving and planting seeds allows us to gather and conserve what we share culturally: food. The Seed Library asserts the connection between social, environmental and economic systems within the Chicago community. By providing free and regionally-adapted seeds to any seed library card holder, there is an opportunity for people to grow their own heirloom vegetables and to know where their food comes from. The library provides as a network as well, allowing urban farmers and gardeners to share their interest in sustaining a diverse bio-culture and educate novice farmers about the dangers of a monoculture. Hull-House Heirloom Seed Library seeks to confront food related issues and works to build a community through food.
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Click to view pictures from when Re-Thinking Soup went on the move to London!
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Re-Thinking Soup funded in part by
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* All views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum or the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Architecture and the Arts.