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Jane Conway and Randi Ramsden discuss Extra! Extra! Eat All About It!: Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers

Name: Jane Conway and Randi Ramsden discuss Extra! Extra! Eat All About It!: Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers
Start: 2025-10-30
End: 2025-10-30
Location: McMillan Memorial Library

Oct 30

6:30 PM

Wisconsin Rapids

Join Jane and Randi as they explore the foods and fads that shaped our state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Event Details

Thursday, October 30, 2025

6:30 PM

Free and open to the public

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Location

McMillan Memorial Library

490 East Grand Avenue

Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494

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About the Event

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McMillan Memorial Library welcomes Jane Conway and Randi Julia Ramsden to its Authors @ McMillan series, discussing their new book Extra! Extra! Eat All About It!: Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers

A blend of cookbook and bite-size history, Extra! Extra! Eat All About It! offers a unique glimpse into the Midwestern culinary landscape between 1870 and 1930. Fifty recipes selected from Wisconsin newspapers are served alongside brief essays that dig into the history behind the food trends of the time. In lively prose, historians Jane Conway and Randi June Ramsden reveal how coconuts and oysters made their way to 1800s Wisconsin, how the state came to lead the nation in commercial pea canning, how bakers gauged the temperatures of their wood-burning stoves, and how our predecessors really did slip on banana peels, among other flavorful facts.

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For two years, Jane Conway and Randi Julia Ramsden worked together on the National Digital Newspaper Program at the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 2019, they began researching, cooking, and writing for the “Cooking Up History” series, which appeared on the WHS website and social media platforms and provided the inspiration for this book. Conway has a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Oregon, and Ramsden has a master’s degree in American Studies from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

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