Click here to return to the main page.

From Hardtack to Home Fries

Book Group Discussion Guide

From Hardtack to Home Fries by Barbara Haber

One: Feeding the Great Hunger: The Irish Famine and America
About American Reformer Asenath Nicholson, the Irish Famine and Irish Immigrants

  • Discuss the reluctance of the Famine-stricken Irish to eat rice and corn in the absence of potatoes. Do you have personal experience of the resistance of immigrant groups to anything but their accustomed food?
  • How was the plight of the Irish in America different or the same as other immigrants that you know of in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
  • Discuss how other women newcomers to this country helped preserve their cultural heritage by cooking the food of their forbears.

Two: Pretty Much of a Muchness: Civil War Nurses and Diet Kitchens
About Confederate and Union Women Cooking for Sick and Wounded Soldiers

  • What significance is there in the fact that many Civil War nurses were widows or spinsters? Discuss what struggles they had in dealing with male authorities in military hospitals.
  • Compare the food served in Civil War military hospitals to what is now commonly prepared for the sick and injured at home and in hospitals.

Three: They Dieted for Our Sins: America's Food Reformers
About 19th and 20th Century U.S. Food Reformers and Modern Diet Cookbooks

  • What do the diets promoted by Sylvester Graham and John Henry Kellogg tell us about what Americans ate and drank in the 19th century?
  • Compare the diets promoted by these food reformers with the eating plans of today's leading diet reformers, such as Drs. Atkins and Dean Ornish.
  • What are your favorite diets and/or diet cookbooks? Talk about your own experiences with diets and how they compare with those described in this chapter.

Four: The Harvey Girls: Good Women and Good Food Civilize the American West
About Frederick Harvey, His Restaurants and Waitresses, and the U.S. Frontier

  • What do the experiences of the Harvey Girls tell us about opportunities for working-class women in 19th century America?
  • How have changes in cross-country transportation impacted on food available to today's travelers and the way it is served?
  • Watch the once-popular movie musical, The Harvey Girls, with Judy Garland, available at most video rental stores, and discuss how Hollywood romanticized this episode in western American history.

Five: Home Cooking in the FDR White House: The Indomitable Mrs. Nesbitt
About the Roosevelt's Housekeeper and Whether She Served Bad Food

  • How do we know that Mrs. Nesbitt was not a good cook - besides the testimony of people who dined at the Roosevelt White House?
  • Why did the Roosevelts put up with her bad cooking?
  • Have you found it to be true that good bakers like Mrs. Nesbitt are not usually good cooks - and vice versa? And if it is true, why?

Six: Cooking Behind Barbed Wire: POWs During World War II
About Women Nurses and Civilians Caught in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor

  • Compare the plight of Natalie Crouter and Elizabeth Vaughn during their imprisonment in Japanese camps. How did their responsibility as mothers impact on the way they responded to their situation?
  • Compare the response of civilian and military women captured by the Japanese to their predicament to that of men like Jerry Crouter and Commander Thomas Hayes.

Seven: Sachertorte in Harvard Square: Jewish Refugees find Friends and Work
About Harvard Wives, Refugee Women and the Window Shop Restaurant and Gift Shop

  • Discuss the unique ways in which the Window Shop assisted Jewish refugees from Nazism. Are there lessons to be learned from this adventure in volunteerism, with women-helping-women?
  • Compare the stories of the women of the Window Shop with what you know of the plight of other refugees from more recent wars abroad.

Eight: Food Keeps the Faith: African-American Cooks and Their Heritage
African American Women as Successful Cooks, Restaurateurs and Culinary Historians

  • Discuss how cookbooks by African-Americans and members of other racial or ethnic groups help to commemorate and celebrate their identity, connecting them with one another and their ancestral homeland.
  • Why has the preparation of food been such an important way for African-Americans to earn a living?
  • How has some of the food described in this chapter become popular not only among African-Americans but Americans generally and many Europeans and Asians?

Nine: Growing Up with Gourmet: What Cookbooks Mean
About Cookbooks, Cookbook Collecting, and Their Relationship to Our Lives

  • What do cookbooks mean to you? Do particular cookbooks connect you to your past, your place of origin, or your forbears? Do you collect and read cookbooks for pleasure or only cook from them?
  • Which are your favorite cookbooks - and why?

 

Click here to return to the main page.