Fifth Annual Recipe Exchange Offers Vintage Recipes to Sample

Join the Texarkana Museums System on Saturday, September 24, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. at the P. J. Ahern Home for this year's Community Recipe Exchange.  Share your favorite recipes and sample some of ours! Admission is free when you bring a recipe to share. Registration is advised. For more information, please call the Texarkana Museums System at 903-793-4831 or sign up at TexarkanaMuseums.org/Events. 

Since 2017, the Texarkana Museums System has hosted a yearly event to invite the public to celebrate Texarkana’s food culture. Inspired by the 20th century boom in use of canned foods, this year’s recipe exchange features recipes found on canned food labels or that list a canned food as an ingredient.

“Every cook has a go-to recipe they’ve collected off a can of vegetables or a pot-luck favorite that calls for a can of Cream of Mushroom,” explains TMS Curator, Jamie Simmons. “We want to celebrate the creativity it takes to turn a can of soup into a sumptuous dinner.” 

The event is free, but guests should bring at least one recipe, handwritten or printed, to donate to the Wilbur Smith Research Archive’s Texarkana Foodways collection. Guests are encouraged to bring a sample of their dish to share. The Texarkana Museums System will provide samples of 3 vintage recipes from the collections along with copies of the recipes for guests to take home. 

The Texarkana Foodways Collection includes cookbooks, handwritten recipes, and restaurant menus from the 19th and 20th centuries along with personal histories and descriptions of family food traditions. All donated recipes e are made available through the TMS Wilbur Smith Research Archive. 

This event is hosted by the Texarkana Museums System at the P. J. Ahern Home, 403 Laurel, in historic downtown Texarkana, Arkansas. For more information on this or future events, please contact the TMS at 903-793-4831, email Ahern@TexarkanaMuseums.org, find us on Facebook or check out our website www.TexarkanaMuseums.org.