“Food helps make connections between people now to people in the past, to make them ‘real.’” – Machelle Wood (March 20, 2019)
Machelle Wood
Photo By/Courtesy of
Machelle Wood is the educational and special events coordinator at the Magoffin Home State Historical Site in El Paso, Texas. In the food story that she shares for EPFV, she speaks of how food and the emotions it evokes always seem to root her back to what she defines as home: El Paso. At the Magoffin Home, she is proud to offer cooking demonstration classes. The recipes for these demonstrations are gathered from the first cookbook published in El Paso by the Ladies’ Auxiliary for YMCA. For Wood, food powerfully communicates the humanity of those who lived in the past, and through the senses this past is felt vividly in the present.
"Historical recipes humanize the past."
Videos
1. Cooking at the Mogaffin Home
2. Machelle's Full Food Story (Audio)
Resources
Scholarly Reflection: “Food and the Senses: Remembering the Past, Living the Present, Shaping the Future”
Scholarly Sources: “Food in Museum Setting”
Videos
1. Cooking at the Mogaffin Home
2. Machelle's Full Food Story (Audio)
Resources
Scholarly Reflection: “Food and the Senses: Remembering the Past, Living the Present, Shaping the Future”
Scholarly Sources: “Food in Museum Setting”