Tasty Cults and Holy Food with Christina Ward

Right Where You Are Sitting Now

This week, Ken and Marck pull up their chairs at the dining table and feast upon the banquet of American cults and their delicious offerings. Our head chef this week is the lovely Christina Ward of the legendary Feral House Publishing.

This week: The history of Feral House Publishing and Adam Parfry’s legacy, How foods are influenced by religious movements, UFO cults in America and much more.

Joining me at the dinner table is Marck Satyr

Main theme by Simon Smerdon (Mothboy)

Music bed by chriszabriskie.com

Get Christina’s book in the UK here – https://amzn.to/40714Wz

Get Christina’s book in the US here – https://amzn.to/490XAca

Christina Ward Bio:

Christina Ward is an author, editor, and seeker. She is also the Vice President and Editor of Feral House, a publisher noted for their books on outré topics. She had the distinct pleasure of riding around town in the Wienermobile with Padma Lakshmi on the hottest day in July of 2019 for “Taste the Nation.” Her current book, Holy Food: Recipes and Foodways from Cults, Communes, and New Religious Movements (September 26, 2023).

Her previous book, American Advertising Cookbooks-How Corporations Taught Us To Love, Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O, earned positive notice from Florence Fabricant in the New York Times, Christopher Kimball of Milk Street Radio, and numerous other journalists and readers.

Her 2017 book, Preservation-The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation, and Dehydration, explores the history and science of food preservation while sharing 100 fool-proof recipes that make the science real. She is a contributor to Serious Eats, Edible Milwaukee, The Wall Street Journal, The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, Remedy Quarterly, and Runcible Spoon magazines. Christina makes regular guest expert on Milwaukee television programs and public radio stations across the United States, delighting in ‘working blue’ before 8 am.

She contributed to and edited the 2021 book Bawdy Tales & Trifles of Devilries for Ladies and Gentlemen of Experience under her nom d’amour, Lady Fanny Woodcock. She has guided, edited, contributed to, and in a few (unnamed) instances, rewritten, over fifty books. She has an interest in the lives of forgotten “difficult women” and bringing their stories to readers. Christina regularly contributes to academic and educational conferences on the topic of transgressive art. In her spare time, she is the certified Master Food Preserver for Southeast Wisconsin and always picks up the phone to answer pressing questions about jelly that won’t set and soft pickles.
Christina can trace her Milwaukee and Wisconsin roots to the early 1800s. Her love of history comes from her father, who instilled the idea that we are all manifestations of our ancestors. Her interest in cooking began out of childhood necessity to feed herself and her siblings while her father worked in a factory. She prides herself on having a hungry mind interested in learning about people, the foods they eat, and the stories that arise from that convergence.

If you asked 8-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up—my answer was always the same—a writer.