Food Archives - Infinite Women

Fumiko Yoshitada

Co-inventor of the rice cooker

Eliza Jane Burnett Dodson Ashley spent more than thirty years as the cook in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, serving from the administration of Francis Cherry to Bill Clinton. Her 1985 book Thirty Years at the Mansion garnered her national attention.

Dianne Davidson

Australian viticulturist and company director

Katherine Jones

1600s Viscountess Ranelagh and woman of letters

Nina Zagat

Co–founder of the eponymous Zagat guide

Dawn M Blackman Sr.

As Dawn M. Blackman Sr. tells the story, “I was a city girl … I did not know a thing about gardening. Then, in 2003, I started gardening with 10 neighborhood children.” That project, started in her 50s, grew into Randolph Street Community Garden.

Florence Simpson

Florence Simpson came to the WAAC having worked with the Women’s Legion, an Army-sanctioned women’s volunteer unit tasked with cooking for the troops. By the end of 1915, the 41-year-old Simpson had risen to Commandant of Cooks for the Legion and was hard at work establishing business-like practices.

Norma Shirley

Jamaican chef Norma Shirley built a reputation in the U.S. serving “New England food with Jamaican flair” at her Massachusetts restaurant in the late 1970s. But as she told Essence magazine, “It’s my dream to open another restaurant in Jamaica where Blacks would be the majority clientele.”