Winter has finally started to loosen her grip where I live in the northern US, and color is returning to the landscape. Buds have begun to appear on the trees, cherry blossoms are blooming (perhaps alarmingly early?), and the first hopeful flowers have broken through the soil to remind us that sunshine and warmth are on their way. Meantime of course in the southern hemisphere, summer is turning to fall, and days are growing shorter. This year’s symposium theme of Gardens, Flowers, and Fruit has had me thinking of the growing cycle even during the coldest months, reminding me that the dorm ..read more

It’s hard to believe that we’ve reached the end of 2023. Looking back on all of our Kitchen Table activities, from the monthly Conversations, Kitchen Labs, Sifter Asks, and Wiki Club to the incredibly successful Symposium in July… what a delicious year it has been. In just the past few months, we’ve had several opportunities to share experiences and insights, flavors and fragrances as noted in this brief selection from our autumn season. At the end of October, we dusted off the Kitchen Table Conversations and laid out a fresh spread for friends old and new. With moderator C ..read more

It all begins so humbly: a tiny seed, a little kernel of an idea. The hopeful symposiast has her eye on the perfect spot for a garden, er… I mean, for a paper. The call for papers is out, and the hopeful symposiast knows that submitting a proposal for the 2024 Oxford Food Symposium is not much different from the tending of her garden. With the right seeds, some good light and regular nurturing, she’s certain she’ll have a lovely flower by summer.             The seed of her idea could come from anywhere, whether it’s a lively conversation ..read more

Nourish the Body, Feed the Soul” Our Sunday Lunch, last meal of the Symposium Weekend, will be a collaboration between this year’s four OFS Young Chefs taking inspiration from their Muse – Korean-born chef and ceramic artist, Jinok Kim-Eicken.    The OFS Young Chefs – Andiswa Mqedlana from South Africa,  Shannon Compton from the United States, Jonas Palekas originally from Belarus, now residing in the Netherlands, and South Korean-born New Yorker Minwoo&nb ..read more

Rules and rituals inform both the quotidian and the extraordinary events of our lives. Our Keynote speakers will launch our investigations into our daily and anniversary practices by contextualizing how rules and rituals—past, present, and potentially futuristic ones—give us reassurance, anchoring us in tradition and identity, or, when violated, create discomfort or even cultural upheavals. Focusing on religious and secular belief systems, extreme performances in the service of tradition, and modes of challenging expectations through the breaking of taboos, we look forward to three thought-pro ..read more

Knife and fork at the ready!   This year’s communal meals, masterminded  by Meals Co-ordinator, Trustee Gamze Ineceli, will be prepared, as usual, by our invited chefs in the kitchen at St Catherine’s working with the College’s Head Chef Tim Kelsey.  Our lunch and dinner programme – designed (as always) to reflect and expand on the year’s subject – is shaping up as best-ever.  Meanwhile, Director Ursula Heinzelmann promises we won’t go thirsty.   Friday’s inaugural dinner is in the capable hands of Lebanon’s most prominent food activist, Kamal ..read more

Everyone who attended recent Kitchen Tables will already be aware that we are now recording the live discussions, and that they are available to all those who bought tickets, whether they attended the event event or not, to be downloaded as podcasts from the event page.   Which means that there’ll no longer be a need to prepare edited digests of the chatlines since all ticket-holders can listen to the real thing live or anytime later at their leisure  – not forgetting that if you’re were there and wo ..read more

This time of the year deserves a rest from the present. Talking of Rules and Rituals as practised in the past, none more useful that those laid down by Rev Sydney Smith (1771–1845). Wit, populist, writer, man of the cloth, Reverend Sydney campaigned against the inherited privileges of the British aristocracy, proposed the creation of allotments for the poor to grow vegetables, and campaigned vigorously against child-labour.  A serious trencherman who considered the secret of happiness to be a good digestion, many of his most memorable aphorisms involve dinner, among them:&n ..read more

At the Kitchen Table on January 18th, Jennifer McLagan (Bitter, Blood, and Odd Bits), and Naomi Duguid, (The Miracle of Salt) explored the effect of bitter and salt on the palate.  What follows is a rough digest of the extremely lively chatline. PERCEPTIONS OF TASTE Bitterness is a matter of degree of acceptability: young dandelion leaves are milder than full-grown, and this is true of all wild leaves; bitterness in roots, ie. cassava, has to be leached (buried or treated with lye or both), which is a very ancient habit.  I’m rediscovering bitter lo ..read more

Rituals and rules for celebrations, particularly those that mark the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, was (loosely) the subject of our Kitchen Table on Thursday December 15, 2022.  A pot-luck gathering hosted and guided by Ursula Heinzelmann with contributions from Gamze Ineceli and Elisabeth Luard, everyone present brought their own stories of the ways in which we mark moments of change in all our lives.  TELL US A STORY SO WE DON’T FORGET I don’t think rituals have or will ever disappear – by which I  mean patterned, repeated  ..read more