Summer 2026 TCU Magazine Gathers Around Food
Food is never only food.
It is memory, labor, chemistry, culture, comfort, invention and care. It is how families pass down stories, how communities define themselves and how scholars ask better questions about health, sustainability, access and belonging.
The summer 2026 issue of TCU Magazine began as a theme and became something closer to a prism, refracting through every school, every discipline, every kind of ambition at TCU.
“I thought food would give us a fun, accessible issue,” editor Caroline Collier said. “And it did. But it also ventured into complex territory. Food is where some of the deepest questions live, about care, about equity, about what knowledge is actually for. This is one of the most substantive issues we’ve ever made.”
The major feature, “Food for the Soul,” gathers a roster of Horned Frog culinary figures – a barbecue entrepreneur, a food journalist, a fourth-generation restaurateur and others – around the dishes that shaped them. Complemented by the Magazine’s Horned Frog Foodies digital series, the story follows the plate into family history, identity, ambition and joy.
Also on the Menu:
Food as Medicine
Jason Wyrick ’96 lost more than 100 pounds and reversed his diabetes through diet.
Now a vegan chef, meal delivery founder and cookbook author, Wyrick is part of a larger
conversation about food as clinical care.
Growing It Right
From holistic ranching in Colorado to crops grown beneath solar panels to student-led
food recovery on campus, Horned Frogs are reimagining what a resilient food system
can look like.
The Bread Basket of North Texas
In People of the Wheat, history professor Rebecca Sharpless traces how one grain helped shape Dallas-Fort
Worth. Her story moves from early settlers to commercial bakeries and regional identity,
revealing wheat as both an economic force and a cultural inheritance.
The Science of Whiskey
Eric Simanek, the Robert A. Welch Chair of Chemistry, has found an unusually effective
gateway into science: whiskey. Through his book Shots of Knowledge, public lectures and workshops, he uses the barrel, the bottle and the tasting glass
to make chemistry feel less remote and more alive.
A Fort Worth Original
Chris Reale ’17 grew up learning from the titans of the Fort Worth dining scene before
studying food management at TCU. Now managing partner of the iconic Paris Coffee Shop,
a member of TCU’s Nutritional Sciences Advisory Board and drummer in a metal band,
Reale embodies a certain Fort Worth alchemy: rooted, restless and entirely original.
The Art of the Table
Lorie Fangio ’84 turned a love of French cooking into A Taste of Paris, a small-group
culinary travel company that sells out a year in advance. Through classes, speaking
and immersive trips, she shows how food can become an invitation into culture, conversation
and courage.
Built for the Budget Kitchen
TCU nutritional sciences students and a computer science student design team created
IDLMeals, an app for college students learning to cook with limited money, equipment
and confidence. The result is practical, personalized technology in the service of
care.
