madbaker | It's a clunky name. But an interesting group.

CHoNC - Culinary Historians of Northern California - is about six months old, if I remember correctly. They generally meet once per month in Berkeley and have an hour-long talk about food. Then dinner.

j_i_m_r found out about them and we went to their Nov 8 meeting. The speaker gave an overview of the melting pot cuisine she had growing up: her grandparents were Iraqi observant Jews who emigrated to Bombay, then later to Shanghai. In the fifties they went to Vancouver.

The talk was interesting. It's a smallish group of mostly amateur historians. Dinner was at a local Chinese restaurant that was pretty good. JIMR and I were outed by one of the founders when we said we were interested in medieval and Renaissance food; she responded "Oh, SCA?" (But not in a derogatory way.) One of the members was Alice Medrich; JIMR and I managed to not go fanboy on her. Mostly.

I don't want to take the group over with SCA people, but they are always looking for speakers.

ppfuf and G-M could redo their Collegium class on feasting, perhaps. If I managed to put together a Collegium class on Ouverture de Cuisine, I might try it out there as well.

In summary, worth going to and worth going back.