Through the Culinary Friends, a fund-raising group founded by Haber, monthly programs relating to food are offered to the professional chefs' community. Titles in that series, begun under Haber's leadership, include Issues in the History of Food, French Cooking Before the Revolution and a weeklong workshop called The Cookbook as Social History. The last workshop is led by a prominent food historian who lives in the area, Barbara Wheaton. And Haber herself, who is writing her own book about food and cultural history, gives lectures and speeches around the country, as well as abroad. Some of the titles listed on her resume give an outsider pause.
People today feel sensual if they eat a fattening food.
The lecture also aims to dispel a myth or two, starting with the legendary harems of the Ottoman Empire. They think it was sexual, when it was really about making coffee. A home without a kitchen may not be your ideal, but at the turn of the century some early feminists felt the home should be a place of relaxation and rest, not work. Their dream was to professionalize all aspects of housework, from laundry to child care to cooking. Hence, no kitchen needed.