NUTRITION OUR HISTORY, FROM GREENS TO BEANS A country's culture is not just the result of politics, wars and legislation but also of cuisine, as demonstrated in a recent exhibit, America the Bountiful: Classic American Foods from Antiquity to the Space Age. In the exhibit, Louis Grivetti, a professor of nutrition, and research assistants Jan Corlett and Cassius Lockett explore the role of 10 foods that are important in the history of American cuisine: beef, wheat, greens, chicken, beans, potatoes, turkey, corn, apples and pork. The display has been presented at UC Davis, UCLA and in several major cities and is now on the Web. Grivetti, Corlett and Lockett spent six months looking through diaries, historical accounts, oral histories, maps and menus at Shields Library, Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island--known for its extensive culinary museum--and the Library of Congress to create the 11-panel display. Included are fun food facts, literary and diary excerpts, photographs and paintings. Each panel focuses on a specific time period and a popular food of the era, from remote antiquity to the future of food at our nation's tercentennial. "There's a richness in American food," Grivetti said, adding that the wealth of material available "defied belief." The exhibit holds only about 1 percent of the information they obtained. The project was funded by Hidden Valley in celebration of the 25th anniversary of its original ranch salad dressing. Here's a small taste of what the exhibit has to offer: * Amelia Simmons wrote American Cookery, the first American cookbook, in 1796. The cookbook featured a stuffed turkey recipe that remains popular today. In cooking this and recipes like it, Colonial families occasionally used a dog running on a treadmill to turn the turkey on a spit. * John Chapman (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed) was not a frontiersman who randomly planted apple trees across the country. He was an entrepreneur who created a chain of successful apple nurseries that, by 1801, ran from the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania to as far west as Indiana. * In 1916, the first electric refrigerators were available to the American public--for $900 apiece. * Steak roast dances were popular during the early years of the Cold War. At these events, three 50-gallon oil drums--made into charcoal grills--were used to prepare 14-ounce steaks while people danced. Visit the exhibit on the Web at www.lib.ucdavis.edu/exhibits/food/index.html.