Rachel Laudan says it very plainly:

Yeah, my new book, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History will be out very soon.

You can read Mastering Grain Cookery, the first chapter, peruse the Table of Contents, and find out lots more.

And an interview The Kitchen at the Center of History about the why and how I wrote Cuisine and Empire by Elatia Harris appeared on the lovely blog, The Rambling Epicure.

About herself, she says:

Raised on an English farm (mixed dairy and arable), I studied sciences, first math, physics and chemistry, then a degree in geology.  Fascinated by how science works, I went on to a PhD in history and philosophy of science from University College London, then years teaching and writing about history of geology, technology, and scientific change in American universities.

At the University of Hawaii, I discovered an amazing local food culture which I described in  The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage. It won Julia Child/Jane Grigson Prize in 2004.

In the mid 1990s, my husband and I decided to try new free lance careers so we resigned our academic positions and moved to  Mexico. I enjoyed trying my hand at expert witnessing, script writing, teaching graduate seminars in Mexican and Argentinean universities, publishing in non-academic venues ( Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times, Gastronomica, and Saveur), speaking and keynoting for professional associations and universities ( in 2005 I was Scholar-in-Residence at the Dallas meetings of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and in 2008), and co-editing the Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science.

Best of all though was the time to learn Spanish, to make a wonderful circle of Mexican friends, to get a new perspective on the Americas, and to write Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, the story of what I would say is the most important human technology.

In 2012, we moved to Austin, Texas where I am a visiting scholar in the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas.  Cuisine and Empire will appear later this year with the University of California Press.

Should you want more details, like everyone who has passed through academia I have compiled my doings into that curious, obsessive art form known as my Curriculum Vitae.

Writing down my thoughts is wonderfully helpful in clarifying what puzzles me. I am on several wonderful listserves and discussion groups but it would be boorish to inundate them with posts on problems that probably only interest me. So here you’ll find me trying to work through all kinds of unfinished business.

If you’d like to jump in, I will be thrilled. In my dream world, blogs are a way of building an intellectual community that transcends geographical and institutional boundaries.

Comments or questions are welcome.