Holy Food: Recipes and Foodways from Cults, Communes, and New Religious Movements

Christina Ward is a food historian and writer. She was recently featured in Padma Lakshmi's new television series exploring immigrant foodways, Taste the Nation. Her second book released in January of 2019, American Advertising Cookbooks-How Corporations Taught Us To Love, Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O earned positive notice from Florence Fabricant in the New York Times, Christopher Kimball of Milk Street Radio, and numerous other journalists and readers. Her 2017 publication, Preservation-The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation, and Dehydration, explores the history and science of food preservation while sharing 100 fool-proof recipes that make the science real. She has contributed to Serious Eats, Edible Milwaukee, The Wall Street Journal, and The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel.Christina, despite klutziness, is often found in classrooms and community kitchens with sharp knives and spilling vinegar into unsuspecting handbags while wildly gesticulating as she teaches folks how to make perfect pickles. She makes regular guest food expert on Fox6 News Real Milwaukee television program and on public radio stations across the United States. Christina can trace her Milwaukee and Wisconsin roots to the early 1800s. Her love of history comes from her father, who instilled the idea that we are all manifestations of our ancestors. She prides herself on having a hungry mind interested in learning about people, the foods they eat, and the stories that arise from that convergence.