Local women chefs and food writers discuss sustainability, activism

While cooking — that most essential of sustainability tasks — has long been women's work, female familiarity in kitchens has rarely translated into success in the restaurant world.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the Friends of Women's Studies Living Archives series presented its latest installment, a panel of women chefs and food experts discussing culinary diversity and growing food activism movement in Houston and around the globe.

Video of the Nov. 29 conversation, Stirring the Pot: Houston Cooks and Food Activists, featuring four women panelists discussing their role in the local food chain, is now online. Click on the image at the right to play the video.

The panel in the Rockwell Pavilion built on the work of moderator Dr. Monica Perales' Fall 2010 oral history seminar, which documented the many ingredients in Houston's food chain.

Panelists included restaurateurs Irma Galvan and Anita Jaisinghani, farmer's market organizer and author Pam Walker and food journalist Janice Schindler.

The FWS Living Archives panels are an extension of the University of Houston's Women's Archive and Research Center, which collects the oral histories of Texas women and the papers of individual Houston women who've made history, and Houston area women's organizations. If you'd like to join the mailing list for future events sponsored by the Friends of Women's Studies and by the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, please contact wost@uh.edu.

Join the Friends of Women's Studies.

Also, video of the Living Archives panel discussion Green Women: Houston Environmentalists is online.