Shailaja Kumar, Friend of Vandita Garg, Board Secretary, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhomechi, #thisischicago, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Suzanne Franklin, Board Member, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is a collection of recipes and stories can be used as a way to connect with others and facilitate conversations about race, culture, and identity over a new recipe.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
We are the stories we tell!
Years ago, my husband and I were Peace Corps volunteers in the remote village of Beysehir Turkey. We were young and very idealistic and were assigned to teach English in schools. Speaking very little Turkish, we felt overwhelmed and challenged navigating each day.
After several lonely months, one family opened their home and hearts to us. It was a passport into each other’s worlds. As we practiced our Turkish and became familiar with Turkish culture, they shared with us their lives and their dreams. We cherished our weekends together sharing meals and friendship. Their willingness to accept us was such a generous act and a lesson that has endured with us throughout our lives.
I first learned of Turkish lentil soup one memorable fall day. A neighbor of our family hosted us to dinner. I remember sitting with the mother and daughter of the house as we talked and laughed together. They embraced me as a daughter and a sister. They taught me not only how to make this delicious soup but, so much more in life. When I close my eyes, I can see us practicing Turkish and talking about our lives as we sipped Turkish tea, chopped onions, picked fresh tomatoes from their garden, and served this yummy soup with freshly baked bread for dinner. It was a wonderful afternoon that has lingered until now.
Whenever I make this soup, which has become a family legend, I think of that afternoon and smile and, share this story with all my guests and the many life lessons it has taught me.
Opening windows to other cultures is why I am so proud to be a board member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance. In these challenging times, we especially need to open our hearts and our wallets to help in the work of Alliance whose mission is to promote, connect, and support a more diverse and inclusive Chicago. At this critical juncture, please stand with me in making a difference by making a donation today.
The recipe is in the link. A donation is not required to view the recipe. Any donations made will support the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s mission to promote, support, and connect museums and centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive and equitable Chicago.
Peter Vega, Executive Director, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is a collection of recipes and stories can be used as a way to connect with others and facilitate conversations about race, culture, and identity over a new recipe. Make a cultural dish and sit down with family and friends and have a discussion of the culture it represents.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
During our time in quarantine, my partner Stephen and his sister, Carolyn, and I decided to start cultural culinary adventures on the weekends! We alternated weekends on who would decide the menu and cultural cuisine. On my weekend, I wanted to make something that reminded me of home. One option I thought of was the delicious Puerto Rican family recipes that I have yet to perfect myself, however, I made it a personal goal to make Puerto Rican food more often in general. So, I thought about other dishes that remind me of home and New York City pizza and bagels immediately came to mind.
As of May, I’ve lived in Chicago for seven years, but New York City is home and more specifically the Bronx. I grew up on East 220th Street and Carpenter Avenue in the Northeast Bronx where in the 60s, this neighborhood was predominantly Jewish and Italian-American. As a kid in the 90s, living in the Bronx, children my age would hang out with their friends to eat cheap pizza. So I would indulge in the delicious cuisine of the New York pizza joints and Jewish delis that were such foundations of the community.
For my first Taste from Home recipe, I decided to share a Jewish deli classic, bagels and lox. At a young age, I learned the word lox is derived from the Yiddish word for salmon. I made my family a weekend brunch of homemade bagels and all the fixings, including capers, pickled red onions, tomatoes, and cream cheese. When I eat a bagel and lox, I am immediately brought back to my life in New York City.
Taste from Home is a storytelling initiative that promotes cultural understanding. Food elicits vivid memories especially when tied to cultural traditions, holidays, or simply experiences that remind us of family and home. We hope you can join us in sharing a Taste from Home story of your own.
The Chicago Cultural Alliance promotes and supports museums and cultural heritage centers that help us deepen our knowledge of the cultures in Chicago. I hope you can help us to promote cross-cultural experiences for a more inclusive Chicago by making a donation to the Alliance today.
The recipe is in the link. A donation is not required to view the recipe. Any donations made will support the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s mission to promote, support, and connect museums and centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive and equitable Chicago.
Peter Vega, Executive Director, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
I am humbled and honored to have the opportunity to lead the Chicago Cultural Alliance as its Executive Director and to advance its mission to support, promote, and connect museums and cultural heritage institutions.
The Members of the Alliance have taught me that museums and cultural heritage institutions are more than hosts for cultural events and performances. These institutions are pillars of their communities, neighborhoods, and the city overall. They are critical to the development of cross-cultural understanding by preserving and protecting the identity and characteristics of all the diverse cultures that make up the mosaic that is Chicago.
This is why it is imperative that we all participate in today’s historic Black Lives Matter movement. We must collectively support our Black communities and share the burden they’ve carried alone for hundreds of years. They need support from all of us. We must embrace, share, and amplify one another’s cultures, histories, and traditions.
Taste From Home was created to remind us of what makes us similar. Food and stories within each of our cultures help us to learn more about one another and celebrate our diversity, similarities, and differences. I hope you can join us in this celebration by participating in Taste From Home.
Tell us a story about your family and friends and how you all come together to celebrate your culture with food! The Chicago Cultural Alliance wants to elevate more diverse voices in our city. We do this by supporting cultural heritage museums and centers that promote and support cross-cultural understanding, diversity, and inclusion. We hope you will consider making a donation to help us continue this vital work.
Andrew Leith, Conservation and Collection Program Manager, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
My name is Andrew Leith. I am the Conservation and Collections Program Manager at the Chicago Cultural Alliance. I have been at the Alliance since the beginning to 2017 but my relationship with this incredible organization dates back considerably further than that. You could say the Alliance and I came of age together over the past 16 years. When I was a young anthropologist in undergrad at Loyola University Chicago, I began volunteering as a facilitator for a recently minted program known as Cultural Connections through the Field Museum’s Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC). It was through that formative experience with community collaboration that I came to visit several of the city’s treasured cultural centers and became friends with amazing community stakeholders such as Soo Lon Moy, Dorothie Shah, and the late Stanley Balzekas Jr. As it so happens, that program evolved into the Chicago Cultural Alliance.
I love my work. I am honored to be invited into the museum collections spaces our Core Members call home. It is a privilege to work hand in hand with these visionaries I now call friends to help to care for their collections.
Though it has many iterations, my Grandmother’s particular recipe for haluski derives from an old Slovak mountain dish comprised of potato dumplings and fried cabbage. My great-grandparents brought it with them from the village of Klenovec, Slovakia to the United States when they immigrated in 1912. Simple, hearty, and cost-effective, it fed five children on the family farm in northern Wisconsin during the Great Depression. I grew up loving Grandma’s haluski and spent many happy moments helping her to prepare it—consequently learning how to replicate the recipe myself. As with many old recipes, it is the product of experience, taste, touch, and smell rather than any proper written instructions. A dash of this and a scoop of that—this recipe is very forgiving and can be easily adjusted. Today, I continue to use my great-grandmother’s heirloom cutting board whenever I prepare haluksi, and the smell of frying cabbage evokes memories of my grandmother’s kitchen and her stories of a Slovak-American upbringing. This is a tradition I look forward to share with my own son.
The recipe is in the link. A donation is not required to view the recipe. Any donations made will support the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s mission to promote, support, and connect museums and centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive and equitable Chicago.
Vanessa Vergara, Board President, Chicago Cultural Alliance
Taste from Home is a collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Why I serve as Board President of the Chicago Cultural Alliance:
I believe that cultural heritage matters and should be valued, shared, celebrated, and preserved. If you do not know where you come from, you will never know where you are headed. My cultural heritage is my personal compass. My parents and grandparents emigrated from the Philippines so our family could pursue the American dream.
I am proud to serve as the Board President of the Chicago Cultural Alliance because our work connecting, promoting, and supporting centers of heritage is so critical. Being in the middle of a global pandemic reminds us all to get back to the basics. What do we need to survive and thrive? Working on this essay about my Lola’s punch transported me out of this pandemic and back into my childhood. My childhood was greatly influenced by my heritage as a Filipino American raised in a family of recent immigrants. I also learned something new about my own understanding of my personal history as you will soon learn!
Who taught you this recipe & how did you learn it?
I learned this recipe by watching my Lola (grandmother in Tagalog) and Mom make it ever since I was a kid. I experienced this recipe by taste, enjoying many wonderful servings of Lola’s birthday punch.
What culture/country is this dish from?
This recipe is a product of the Filipino-American culture. My Lola invented it!
In the process of working on my Taste From Home essay, I learned that this punch is not actually a recipe from the Philippines as I had originally thought. I found out from my Mom that my Lola had invented this recipe for me! My Lola wanted to come up with something special for my first birthday and created this masterful birthday refreshment. Her punch was such a hit that our punch bowl had to be refilled twice during my first birthday party.
When do you normally eat this dish? Is it for a holiday or a celebration?
You would typically serve this punch at a birthday party. This recipe is also associated with any large family celebration, such as Christmas or New Year’s. Anytime we have a large family gathering, you can guarantee, Lola’s punch will be served.
Why is it important to you?
This recipe is important to me because it symbolizes joy, family, and love. It will forever be the iconic taste of my childhood. It transports me back to simpler times when the world seemed less complicated and more innocent.
Growing up in a large, boisterous Filipino American family, some of my fondest childhood memories revolved around birthday celebrations. Now I find myself at a time when my family and I cannot gather for large celebrations (or any celebrations for that matter). Instead, we are setting up hazy, family Zoom calls and FaceTime sessions which are a poor substitute for being together, in person, with those you love.
I now realize how easily I took for granted the memories of being able to gather for large family celebrations around a huge bowl of Lola’s heavenly punch. Those memories are my plane ticket out of this pandemic. That is why heritage and personal history matters. Memory is a transformative gift that can take you anywhere, anytime.
Even during a global health crisis, you can leave it all behind, even if for just a short time, and learn something new about yourself and carry those memories with pride and share them with others. I encourage you to take a journey, without hesitation, and find your own plane ticket out of the pandemic to a destination in your personal heritage and share it with others with joy and pride!
Colleen McGaughey (she/her) is the director of development at the National Public Housing Museum, where she leads the strategic direction of the museum’s fundraising efforts with a focus on creative and community-centric approaches.
Mario Longoni
Board Member
Mario Longoni is a cultural anthropologist (“Lead Environmental Social Scientist”) in the Keller Science Action Center at the Field Museum. For over 20 years, he has worked with individuals and organizations to surface and activate cultural and natural assets (specific strengths and characteristics) to help communities meet the challenges they face.
Rob Fojtik
Board Member
Rob Fojtik is Vice President for Neighborhood Strategy at Choose Chicago, the city’s official tourism and convention promotion bureau. In this capacity, Rob oversees efforts to promote and support Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods to visitors from near and far. Programs include the award-winning Neighborhood Content Creator program that leverages resident-made digital content, and Chicago Alfresco, a $2.5 million placemaking initiative created in partnership with the Chicago Department of Transportation to transform public spaces into community plazas for outdoor enjoyment.
Before coming to Choose Chicago, Rob was a Senior Advisor to Mayor Lightfoot on economic development and international relations at City Hall, as well as LGTBQ+ affairs and the expanded outdoor dining program. In this role, he also worked to recommend and place over 150 civic leaders and residents onto City boards and commissions. Prior to government service in the Lightfoot administration, Rob ran her winning campaign in the crowded 2019 Chicago mayoral race as Chief of Staff. In past lives, Rob has worked as a public affairs manager for a Fortune 500 company downtown; had misadventures in management consulting, art sales, and personal cheffing; and spent time in Washington DC working for former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Rob also served a one-year appointment at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence as a policy advisor on Central and Eastern Europe. In this role, he was part of the NSC’s interagency process to develop a comprehensive sanctions regime on Russia as a consequence of its 2014 invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
After receiving his BA in Slavic Languages and Literature at Northwestern University, Rob lived and worked in the Czech Republic teaching English and tending bar before moving to Washington, D.C. to pursue a MA from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CERES). He enjoys cooking, learning foreign languages, hiking with his partner and their dog, and visiting Chicago’s many neighborhoods.
Paul Durica
Board Member
Dr. Paul Durica is the Director of Exhibitions at the Chicago History Museums and worked in a similar capacity at The Newberry Library. From 2015-2020, he served as the Director of Programs and Exhibitions with Illinois Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Prior to that he drew upon his work as a writer, researcher, and teacher to produce a series of free and interactive talks, walks, and reenactments focused on narratives from Chicago’s past that resonate with its present.
These public history programs led to collaborations with cultural institutions in the city such as the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Chicago History Museum, Newberry Library, Chicago Architecture Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Chicago Cultural Center among others.
Each program made use of both his original research and the skills of the arts organizations, community groups, local businesses, and publications that acted as my partners. Some of these programs, such as the full-scale reenactment of the Haymarket Affair in 2011, involved recruiting and directing over 300 volunteers and 1,000 participants.
To produce these programs successfully, he wrote grants; managed budgets; generated web content; worked closely with program partners of varying sizes and resources; and identified, engaged, and sustained a diverse multi-generational audience.
Lynessa Rico
Board Member
Dr. Lynessa M. Rico is the Associate Chair of the Business Psychology Department at the The Chicago School of Professional Psychology Chicago campus. She is also a business mentor at 1871.
Lynessa is a results-driven Strategic Consultant with over 25 years of experience enabling leaders to meet strategic business objectives by identifying and aligning business growth opportunities with strategic direction of culturally diverse organizations. By leveraging her strategic experience in identifying and impacting business growth opportunities and maximizing profits in retail firms and higher education institutions, Lynessa leads workshops focused on the creative mindset, women’s entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence, and the value and application of design thinking within entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Her services also include consulting with and educating leadership on emotional intelligence, the power of design thinking and the creative mindset, and leadership styles to support inclusive, creative workplaces. She has presented to leadership and innovation teams in small, mid-size, and Fortune 500 companies.
Lynessa received her undergraduate degrees in Marketing and Management from Wichita State University. She then went on to earn a master’s degree in Business Administration from Wichita State University with a focus in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. After earning her master’s degree, Lynessa received her doctorate in Business Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology where she successfully completed her dissertation titled, “The Relationship Between Personality Types and Color Preference for Color Combinations.” Her current research interests include women’s entrepreneurship, design thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and entrepreneurship self-efficacy.
Outside of work and research, Lynessa enjoys mentoring start-ups and judging pitch competitions. Lynessa currently resides in Chicago, Illinois with her four cats. She is an avid long-distance runner, having completed 5 full marathons (and counting), and enjoys watching musical theater.
Briana Thomas
Board Member
Briana Thomas is the Museum Associate at the Abrahamic Center for Cultural Education (a core member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance). She wears many hats including developing exhibition content, facilitating community programs (children and adults), liaising with visitor artists, and other responsibilities. Her previous experience in the nonprofit space includes her tenure as the Financial Empowerment Coordinator at AMERICORPS Sharing Life Center as well as engaging with the public at the Dallas Arboretum. Her past professional experience has remained rooted in marginalized communities. It is their needs,discourse and histories that she has routinely been tasked with protecting and showcasing in the face of poor infrastructure, and willing ignorance. Creating safe spaces is an ancestral practice she has inherited.
