The Kitchen Sisters Present

We enter the secret, steamy, myth-laden world of Emily Dickinson through her kitchen.

For five years Davia's father, Lenny Nelson, asked her to go to Rattlesden, England, to visit the Air Force base where he was stationed during WWII and to find an old photograph hanging in the town pub honoring his 8th Air Force squadron. Lenny died on Christmas Eve last year. In his honor, we share the journey with you.

A journey into the mysterious and controversial world of raw milk.

During World War II, in desolate inland internment camps in the US, like Manzanar, Topaz, and Tule Lake some 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans lived for the duration of the war — their traditional food replaced by US government commodities and war surplus — hotdogs, ketchup, spam, potatoes — erasing the traditional Japanese diet and family table.

A story from the plazas of Portugal, where small ornate kiosks that served traditional snacks and drinks once graced the city and brought people together. Neglected by time and pushed into abandonment by a dictator’s regime that suppressed public conversation and gathering, this tradition is now being revived, drawing people back to public space.

“Nobody can soldier without coffee,” a Union calvary man wrote in 1865. Hidden Kitchens looks at three American wars through the lens of coffee: the Civil War, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The "Hummus Wars" and the battle for the Guinness World Record title for the world’s largest plate of hummus and the deeper meanings of this Middle Eastern food war. And more Hidden Kitchens stories of war and peace and food from Israel and Ramallah.

A road trip through the hidden kitchens of Lebanon, with kitchen activist, Kamal Mouzawak, a man with a vision of re-building and uniting this war-ravaged nation through its traditions, its culture and its food.

Six generations of Mohawk Indian ironworkers, known for their ability to work high steel, have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Hundreds of Mohawks still commute to Manhattan each week from reservations in Canada to work on the city’s skyscrapers and bridges. In September 2001, a new generation returned to the World Trade Center site […]

A Hidden Kitchens story about London’s long tradition of urban garden allotments — and the story of Manor Garden Allotments, a 100 year old community, that found itself in the path of London’s 2012 Olympics.

Sometimes it’s the kitchen that’s hidden, sometimes it’s the food itself. Blacksmith Angelo Garro forges and forages, recreating in wrought iron and in cooking the life he left behind in Sicily. The Kitchen Sisters join Angelo along the coast of Northern California as he follows the seasons, harvesting the wild for his kitchen and his friends. And […]

Each fall, the Ojibwe tribes of northern Minnesota harvest wild rice by hand. It's a long process that begins with families in canoes venturing into the tall grasses, where rice is poled and gently brushed with knockers into the bed of the canoe. We journey to White Earth Reservation to see how one tribe is supporting itself and changing the diet of its people through community kitchen projects.

Sometimes life without a kitchen leads to the most unexpected hidden kitchen of all—The George Foreman Grill. How immigrants and homeless people without official kitchens use The George Foreman Grill, hidden crock pots, and secret hot plates to make a meal and a home. Featuring an interview with boxing champion and grill-master, George Foreman about his life and growing up hungry.

Many Kitchen Sisters stories are born in taxi cabs. Hidden Kitchens was conceived in the back of a Yellow. Each time The Kitchen Sisters took a cab in San Francisco they noticed the driver was from Brazil, specifically the same town in Brazil, Goiânia. Cab ride conversations led to talk of music and food. That’s when the story of Janete emerged, a woman from their same hometown who came every day after dark to the industrial street outside the cab yard and set up a makeshift, rolling, Brazilian night kitchen.

We travel to the Mississippi Delta into the world of Lebanese immigrants who began arriving in the 1800s soon after the Civil War. Clarksdale — where barbecue and the blues meet traditional Lebanese meatloaf