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Great food. History. The incredible contributions of women to history. Imagine combining these things together, celebrating all three in one place.


That's what this blog will be about -- my attempt, ideally, each day, or as often as I can, to note the birthday of a woman famous or not so famous, who made or is making an impact on the world. If we know what food she loved most, or what was enjoyed in her time and place, we'll talk about it, too. 

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Elisabeth LeBrun: France in Turmoil Gave Us An Artist to Remember

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  She seemed to like self-portraits. And there is Nothing Wrong with that. Because in my opinion, self-confidence is a beautiful thing. You need it when you are a largely self-taught artist, and a woman at that – a woman working to survive in the 18 th  century, trying to keep your neck out of the guillotine of the French Revolution. Such was the life of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, born April 16, 1755. Besides, one of the best of her self-portraits, in my opinion, is a tender depiction of her with her daughter. She is smiling, slightly open-mouthed. It’s an “awe-sweet” work of art for our modern eyes. It was a scandal to her contemporaries. You didn’t depict people, especially yourself, with an open-mouthed smile, not by the rules of art in 18 th  Century France. Maybe all the people with rotten teeth resented people who had nice ones to show off. Of course, Elisabeth painted plenty of portraits of other people, including various members of royalty. She was a Royalist, certa...
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Nelly Bly: Into the Darkness to Make a Difference. And a Taste of Curry

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  History is like a great big ball of bread dough. Every day – every second of every day – history happens. The dough ball swells as the yeast of time goes to work on it. And so no human brain can possibly contain every important date or every noteworthy person who ever lived. And there is no way that a single book – or even a shelf of encyclopedias, or these days, even a website – could cover the rise and fall of every nation and empire from the ancient Americas across to the lands of Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The classroom classics of decades ago shift and make way for newer ones. And yet, we try. We who love people and history, we try. We learn places and people and events and we labor all our lives to blow off the dust, to keep the light shining, to bail with our little buckets the sand that is constantly pouring into the hole. So Nellie Bly. That's her pen name. She was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran.  Today, May 5, is her birthday. May 5, 1864, in Cochran...
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Antoinette Brown Blackwell

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 The little, one-time farming community of Henrietta, N.Y., is today overshadowed by nearby Rochester. But on May 20, 1825, a girl was born in Henrietta who would make a big mark in American history. Antoinette Blackwell was blessed with forward-thinking parents, who recognized her high intelligence early in her life, and encouraged her abilities. She was preaching in her local Congregational church while still a teenager.  Read that last sentence slowly and thoughtfully.  The world outside Henrietta and Rochester was not quite so tolerant. Brown would spend the rest of her life battling the obstacles of her day set up against women in church leadership -- and against women in general. Nonetheless, in 1852 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in America.  "Our sister in Christ, Antoinette L. Brown, is one of the Ministers of the New Covenant, authorized, qualified, and called by God to preach the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ," declared the Rev. Luther...
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