The Food Museum

08/16/2023

As climate change tightens its grip on Iraq, amber rice is the latest casualty. Farmers are grappling not only with a loss of income, but a way of life.

07/10/2023

Villagers who have kept pre-Hispanic milpa methods alive for years are seeing new markets spring up in the Yucatán

07/06/2023

Pierre Thiam and Garrett Oliver are on a mission to introduce brewmasters to fonio, a small and mighty west African grain

06/26/2023

When environmentalist and pacifist Joan Carulla came to the city after growing up during Spain’s civil war, he created an ‘allotment in the sky’ that helped pioneer organic farming

06/26/2023

For some, it’s a startling side effect.

06/24/2023

The first McDonald’s restaurant was opened in 1948 in San Bernardino California. Today we tend to think of McDonald’s as the pioneer fast food franchised restaurant. But by the time that first McDonald’s opened, there were already over 100 Dairy Queens.

In 1938 in Moline, Illinois, John Fremont McCullough and his son Alex developed a way to make soft-serve ice cream. They convinced a friend to offer the product at his ice cream store in Kankakee, Illinois, and it was an immediate smash hit with his customers. Realizing they had a great business opportunity but needing a better way to dispense the ice cream, the McCulloughs soon discovered a freezer invented by Harry Oltz of Hammond, Indiana that dispensed a steady flow of ice cream. The rest, of course, is history.

The McCulloughs opened the first “Dairy Queen” (taking its name from the term the elder McCullough used for “cow”), in Joliet, Illinois on June 22, 1940, eighty-three years ago today. By 1947 they had over 100 franchised locations and just three years later they had over a thousand. Today there are more than 6,000 Dairy Queen locations, in 27 countries.

The first American fast food chain restaurants were White Castle, and that is a story for another day.

06/22/2023

Del Monte launches investigation after guards at huge pineapple farm are alleged to have killed three men in the last four years, leaving relatives distraught

06/20/2023

06/19/2023

It could have been a gift from a runaway enslaved person. Maybe it wasn’t.

05/30/2023

Chavez, a mainstay at the Five & Dime General Store for 25 years, died at age 58 Saturday.

05/30/2023

A study is under way in the water-scarce region to see if commodity farmers can use the regenerative technique of cover cropping as a way to adapt to rapidly changing weather conditions