












































A Letter from the Editors: 
 

 
 
Dear Readers, 
 
 
Greetings from Digest co-editors Michael Lange (on-going), Janet Gilmore (in-coming), and Diane Tye 

(out-going). Janet began transitioning into the new co-editorship in June 2016. She has relished regular 

exchanges with Diane and Mike since then as she adapted to editorial customs and the ebb and flow of 

the annual publication round. Diane’s first edits for several submissions smoothed the way, and her 

capable management leaves us almost ready to complete the first 2017 issue. Congratulations, Diane, 

for half a decade of the new Digest, and thank you for leaving it in such wonderful shape that it is a 

pleasure to assume. Two University of Wisconsin-Madison Folklore Studies graduate students, Chrissy 

Widmayer and Jared Schmidt, have been helping with proofreading and style sheet updates. Ali Sousa 

again prepared the issue’s website, and University of Wisconsin-Madison Art History graduate student 

Morgan Lemmer-Webber substantively updated links and content in the respective html, pdf, and 

InDesign formats. Many thanks to the Samuelson prize judges, and to the Editorial Board for peer 

reviews, suggestions for themed issues and American Folklore Society annual meeting Foodways Section 

sessions, and the willingness of some to mentor Samuelson prize contestant submissions into Research 

Note form. It has been a lot of fun coordinating with all who have submitted work for this and coming 

issues. 

 

This Late Fall 2016 issue of Digest (5:2) brings you the two prize-winning essays from the 2016 Sue 

Samuelson Best Student Paper on Food and Foodways competition as well as a Research Note from 

another competitor in the field of nine. Both first-prize winner Rachel Hopkin’s “Way of the Croissant” 

and Honorable Mention winner Daša Ličen’s “The Authentic Blend” focus on legendary continental 

European food traditions. Both suggest distinctive culinary histories and geographies, one for the 

French croissant, and one for an intensified selection of Istrian local foods. While Hopkin explores how 

several historical and contemporary folkloristic theories apply to the food item, Ličen examines how 

Istrian food experts shape concepts of an Istrian food heritage through contemporary rhetorics of local 

foods and “the Mediterranean diet.” 

 

In our Research Note section, Yvonne Lockwood announces the donation of her and William G. 

Lockwood’s culinary collections to the Michigan State University Libraries-Special Collections. Sabine 

Merta explains the riches food scholars may find in literature from Dresden’s spectacularly popular 

1911 German Hygiene Exhibition. And Christine Widmayer begins to stage a feminist foodways 

argument to frame ethnographic documentation of her mother’s preparation of hummoth kibbeh, the 

author’s father’s specialty Detroit Chaldean food. In the Amuse Bouche section, Elizabeth Berton-

Reilly continues an American-ethnic foodways theme that lurks in this issue by reporting on an Estonian 

émigré’s Christmas Eve special food and gift-giving re-creations in a displaced persons camp in 



Germany after World War II. She quotes particularly from the woman’s unpublished cache of written 

stories and poems. 

 

The issue concludes with Book Reviews of five food related titles, including three of Lucy Long’s 

productive 2015 compilations that represent the work of many contributors to Digest, the Foodways 

Section and AFS meeting sessions, and many other Folklore, culinary history, and food studies 

colleagues. We also get to admire the culinary writings of 20th century women journalists, and 

contemplate the politics and food/commodity sourcing of “freegans.” Thanks to all who took the time 

to read and report expeditiously on these works for us. 

 

May you all enjoy reading these contributions as much as we did working with them and their authors. 

 

Janet Gilmore and Michael Lange, editors 
 


