KENNEBUNK — The Kennebunk Free Library Genealogy Group will host Sandy Oliver, a pioneering food historian, at 10 a.m. Nov. 12.
Nearly all food, according to Oliver, from baked beans and brown bread to chowder and pumpkin pie as well as the meals when they’re eaten, like the upcoming Thanksgiving, has as much of an ancestry as the people eating them. Almost no dish is invented but rather is the result of evolution and development, and reflects technological and social change as well as family tastes and preferences. Oliver will talk about this and more on Nov. 12.
She began her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. Besides her work in food history, Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds that appears in the Bangor Daily News. Her work regularly appears in Downeast Magazine, Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Her most recent book is “Maine Home Cooking: 175 Recipes from Downeast Kitchens.”
Oliver lives on Islesboro, where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.
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