The TV dinner represented a change in the way Americans were thinking about food. Introduced in 1954 by Swanson & Sons, of Omaha, Nebraska, it offered women--more and more of whom were working outside the home but still assumed to be responsible for cooking--an alternative to time-consuming meal pre

From the moment when, in 1963, Julia Child whisked up an omelet on the pilot for her new cooking show, The French Chef, Americans wanted that whisk for their kitchens, just as they came to want any tool or utensil that Julia used. Certainly, egg beaters of all sorts were common in American kitche

Since the 1950s, demand has soared in the United States for cookbooks featuring diverse ethnic cuisines. Reflecting a heightened interest in foods and flavors from various cultures, the explosion of ethnic cookbooks—and ethnic restaurants and markets—serves to educate the general public while

Whether convenient, fast, organic, processed, gourmet, ethnic, or local—the foods available to Americans have never been more plentiful and diverse, or more ripe for discussion. Coupled with big changes in who does the cooking, where meals are consumed, and what we know (or think we know) about

A field trip to the grocery store can give you a look at how traditional foods from around the world are now part of American culture.  In this activity, students will use discussion prompts and a worksheet to make the most of their visit. This activity is part of an OurStory module entitled

Playing, singing, and cooking can bring learning about trains to life! Part of an OurStory module entitled All Aboard the Train!, this activity includes tips for incorporating special terms used by railroad workers into playing with trains, cooking a train café car menu, or singing trai

In the early days of electronic computers, memory was not as efficient or inexpensive as it is today. To save memory space, programs stored as few digits as possible for dates. In COBOL, for instance, January 1, 1999, was stored as 010199. As Year 2000, or Y2K for short, approached, it became app

This website allows students to take a tour of Sturbridge village, a living history museum that replicates rural live in the nineteenth century. Students who use this site will gain an understanding of early rural American life by navigating an illustrated map, searching an online artif

For hundreds of years, seacoasts, rivers, lakes, and canals have had a big impact on the ways America has changed as a country.  By using this OurStory module from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, children and adults can enjoy exploring lighthouses and the maritime hist

What kinds of food do you eat? How do the foods you eat today compare to the types of foods that sailors ate during long voyages of the past? In this activity, students will cook one or more historical maritime recipes and then compare the foods they eat to what was served on ships in the past. I