Culinary Lecture Series Begins March 28 at The Collection

In conjunction with the exhibition What's Cooking in New Orleans? Culinary Traditions of the Crescent City, The Historic New Orleans Collection is launching a weekly series of free lectures beginning Wednesday, March 28. Each lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. and will be held at The Collection, 533 Royal Street. Speakers will cover a range of topics.

Columnist and author Lolis Eric Elie will open the series with a look at Southern and New Orleans cuisines on Wednesday, March 28. Elie, whose column appears in the Times-Picayune three days each week, will explore how Southern food is not one cuisine, but several. His lecture, South of South: Creole Cooking and the Cuisines of the South, looks at the ways in which New Orleans cuisine is closely related to the disparate tastes of Southern cooking but in other ways is a distant relative.

Discussion of New Orleans and Southern Cuisines
Kicks off Spring Culinary Lecture series

Wednesday, March 28
Lolis Eric Elie To Present First Free Lecture at THNOC

March 19, 2007, New Orleans, LA, In conjunction with the exhibition What's Cooking in New Orleans? Culinary Traditions of the Crescent City, The Historic New Orleans Collection is launching a weekly series of free lectures beginning Wednesday, March 28. Each lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. and will be held at The Collection, 533 Royal Street. Speakers will cover a range of topics sure to whet many appetites.

Lolis Eric Elie Kicks Off Series
Columnist and author Lolis Eric Elie will open the series with a look at Southern and New Orleans cuisines on Wednesday, March 28. Elie, whose column appears in the Times-Picayune three days each week, will explore how Southern food is not one cuisine, but several. His lecture, South of South: Creole Cooking and the Cuisines of the South, looks at the ways in which New Orleans cuisine is closely related to the disparate tastes of Southern cooking but in other ways is a distant relative.

A recognized expert on New Orleans food and culture, Elie is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country and the producer of a television documentary on the book. He is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing (University of North Carolina Press). Elie?s food writing has appeared in Gourmet, the Oxford American, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Spring Culinary Lecture Series Schedule:

Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. at The Collection, 533 Royal Street
All events are free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
For reservations, call (504) 598-7171.
More details are available at www.hnoc.org.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
South of South: Creole Cooking and the Cuisines of the South
by Lolis Eric Elie

Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Screening of the documentary We Live to Eat: New Orleans's Love Affair with Food, produced for the exhibition What's Cooking in New Orleans?
by Kevin McCaffrey, Filmmaker

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
To be determined
Wednesday, April 18
Open-Hearth Cooking
by Richard Scott, Curator of Collections at the Hermann-Grima/Gallier Historic Houses

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
To be determined

Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Present at the Creation: The Birth of Louisiana Gumbo and the Case for a St. Domingue/Haiti Connection (1791- 1810)
by Dana Little, former journalist with The New York Times, Smithsonian, and Saturday Review who is currently writing a comparative culinary history of St. Domingue/Haiti and New Orleans

Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Plantation Kitchen
by Dr. Jack Holden, a nationally recognized preservationist of both early Louisiana architecture and gardens.

The exhibition What's Cooking in New Orleans? Culinary Traditions of the Crescent City explores the city's 300-year culinary love affair through an eclectic display of cookbooks, menus, kitchen gadgets, and images from yesterday and today. These items chronicle the colorful art of Creole cooking, from the earliest interactions between Native Americans and European settlers to the multifaceted, multiethnic culinary customs of today. The interactive components of the exhibition allow patrons to keep the city?s culinary traditions alive and well by sharing their favorite memories and recipes. What's Cooking in New Orleans? is on display at 533 Royal Street. The exhibition is free and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and NOW ON SUNDAYS from 10:30 a.m. -4:30 p.m. The exhibition is appropriate for all ages.

Founded in 1966, The Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, research center and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South region. For more information about The Historic New Orleans Collection, please visit www.hnoc.org or call (504) 523-4662.

The Historic New Orleans Collection - Preserving our Past for a Brighter Future.

The Historic New Orleans Collection
Contact: Mary Mees
(504) 598-7138
marym@hnoc.org

Contact: Teresa Devlin
(504) 598-7170
teresad@hnoc.org