Category Archives: Food

Stony Point Part the Second

31 Thursday Jul 2014

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DSC_5121

No, it’s not my photo of the Young Mr: I didn’t even take a real camera on this trip. These top two photos are thanks to Gary V’s Flickr stream.

Here the kid is eating. I think he spent most of the weekend eating. There are some fine calves in the 10th Mass, aren’t there? Look what a well-fitted pair of overalls can do for you.

10th MA and 2nd RI: Mr S, Mr HC, Mr P, YM, Mr FC, Mr B, Mr  H

We all benefited from hanging around Niel DeMarino’s historic bakery. Broken cookies are just as delicious as whole, if not better, and the ginger cakes were the best I’d ever had. It’s a pity that one can’t really bake in camp…

Mr S thinks I should tell the story of my 90-minute stint in solitary at Stony Point, but I’m not quite prepared for that.

Instead, I shall recount the Hose Water Coffee.

As fans of the 18th century know, orange water and rose water are not uncommon flavors in the receipts found in Hannah Glasse or Amelia Simmons‘ cookbooks.

Hose water is something else again. It is not improved with age.

At Stony Point, there was water at a stone ‘bubbler’ (props to those who used this Rhode Island term for the street furniture known elsewhere as a drinking fountain), which was hard to see in the gathering dusk the night we arrived. There was also a hose, proximate to a saw horse with a sign for Pedestrian Only traffic, and just down the path from our tents.

Colonial breakfast on a rock

Our kitchen, dining table, and parlour

Following Heather’s excellent advice, I planned to make cold coffee overnight so that we could be caffeinated in the morning. Lazily and unwisely, I used the hose to fill the pitcher of doom that first evening.

What is the essence of tire? L’eau latex? That’s what we had: strong coffee with a strong base note and unmistakable top note and bountiful middle notes of hose. Did we drink it? Of course we did: we were up at 5, and coffee was not provided until 8:30, when we all had second breakfast.

Saturday night, I skulked back to the bubbler and filled the pitcher again for Sunday’s coffee. This time, the clear, strong liquid was redolent only of coffee, and was judged better than the hot coffee (which had, in fairness, not been made with hose water, either). I’ll definitely repeat the coffee experiment, though I think I can use a little less coffee to water– not that I measured.

An Insomniac Dreams of Pudding

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting

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Thomas Rowlandson, 1756–1827, British, Gypsies Cooking on an Open Fire, undated, Watercolor and with pen and brown ink and pen and gray ink on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Thomas Rowlandson, 1756–1827, British, Gypsies Cooking on an Open Fire, undated, Watercolor and with pen and brown ink and pen and gray ink on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Once again, I’m sleeping 18th-century-style, but without of the luxury of sleeping late. What wakes you in the middle of the night? Whatever woke me, I finally fell back asleep after 4:00 thinking of what to make for Stony Point.

This will be a cold camp, with very limited cooking, which presents a stiff challenge for the caffeine-dependent, as I must confess I am. (There are gentlemen in the expected party who are also not quite themselves until they’ve had their coffee, too, and they know who they are.)

I’m up against it, this time, given how I will be spending the week leading up to Stony Point (very busy) and that Friday (giving a talk in Newport, instead of baking). As a devoted fan of breakfast, I usually spend the Fridays before a weekend event baking and assembling the provisions for the weekend; this time, however, I will be crossing and re-crossing a bridge.

As I considered prepping a pork-apple-and onion pie Thursday night for Mr S to bake on Friday morning, and the logistics and food safety concerns associated with transporting and eating meat, it finally came to me: Indian pudding. Simpler, easier, filling: all the remains to be done is to talk the Young Mr into eating it, though when presented with no other option, he may acquiesce, at last, to reality.

The HFF: Historical Food Fortnightly

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, History, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

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2f053ddd402318588e6c094c0ec0e6b4Every now and again Facebook proves itself useful: without following Dobyns & Martin Grocers, I would not have known about this interesting cook-along, the Historical Food Fortnightly.

The challenges look interesting, and I particularly like the seasonal fruit/vegetable one. This seems like a wonderful chance to cook historical recipes using seasonal, local ingredients, and I do like to remind people that historical eating is grounded in seasonal, local, eating. Plus pounds of raisins and sugar and gallons of alcohol.

Your local historical archive (or whichever one contains the works relevant to your interests) can be a great place to get started assembling documentation on local eating. Receipts for foodstuffs can be mixed into other accounts (cotton for your daughter, a parasol, a pair of shoes for your wife, 5/8 yard pink silk satin self) but you can still quantify tea, sugar, spices, Madeira, and flours. I find fresh produce somewhat harder to track–you won’t count what is growing behind your house– but fear not, New Englanders! Some of that hard work has been done for you.

A bill of fare for August

A bill of fare for August

J.L. Bell of the fantastic Boston 1775 blog wrote the book-length historic resource study General George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts, which I read before we went up to the “Washington Takes Command” event last July. (That sentence just seemed crazy, even to me…yes, I read 650 pages plus the event program to prepare for a 6-hour event…)

The report can be downloaded as a PDF, and if you’re looking for food, where you want to go is Chapter 6, Daily Life at Washington’s Headquarters (page 173 and following). On pages 195-197 the Steward’s Purchases are listed, sorted by Fruits, Vegetables and Grain, Spices and Flavorings, etc.

While Washington was maintaining (or causing to have maintained for him) a Genteel Household, the list of purchases is helpful in documenting the variety and types of foods available in Cambridge. I suspect that similar kinds of documentation exist in the historic resource reports or room use studies for places like Gunston Hall.

I cannot manage to keep up with the Historical Sew Fortnightly right now– things went pear-shaped in December— but we have to eat, historically or otherwise!

Dirt Stew & The King’s Oreo

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting

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What Lights through Temple window Break?

What do you do when the kettle tilts off the pothook and spills onto the floor?
Scoop the food back in and keep cooking.

That’s how you make dirt stew, with just enough ash to keep the texture interesting at the bottom of your bowl, plus ham, onion, turnips, parsnips, potatoes and carrots. If you wash the inside of the kettle later in your motel bathtub, you will add to the list of very bad things you’ve done in the bathrooms of temporary accommodations.

On Saturday, the original event plan called for a camp kitchen demonstration; this was nixed because a long string of permissions could not be obtained in time, so we fell back on bringing the three sticks and two kettles. Outdoor fires of all kinds were nixed Thursday because of red flag warnings, and after downpours Friday night followed by rain on Saturday afternoon, we ended up cooking in the back room of the Temple building.

Third from the left, Mr S in the ‘Ugly Dog’ coat.

Some of us were too focused on getting food into the kettle to tidy up the surroundings, and that is why you need several people in any group: someone has to keep their head and clean up the wreckage of previous occupants. Fortunately for us, Mr McC managed that while the Young Mr swarmed around like a cat wanting its dinner, I cut vegetables and Mr S stewed about spilling the stew.

In the end it was a cozy evening boiling roots and hearing stories. I took no photos because that would have ruined it, but Mr S kneeling before the fireplace in the Ugly Dog coat and overalls as the last of the light came through the watery glass made a Vermeer-like and beautiful sight.

On Sunday morning, Our Musician Friend (who has turned his coat, and now sports yards and yards of lace and a bearskin hat nicknamed Lamb Chop), produced a package of Oreos from his haversack, and the Young Mr and I took the King’s Oreo with pleasure and no commitment.

An 18th Century Feast

21 Friday Mar 2014

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from Jane Austen’s World blog

On Saturday last, we were delighted to attend a long-anticipated and much delayed birthday celebration for George Washington, combined with a quarterly unit meeting and workshop. We are multi-taskers, because it is pretty easy to talk and sew, and talk and eat, though sewing and eating is more challenging and potentially more dangerous.

I got some progress made on Bridget’s gown, Mr S started a knapsack, the Young Mr played video games with the other boys and they all took the adjutant’s dog for many walks. Our hosts have a very neat house with fireplaces that work, and a bee hive oven that works (those of us who live with Don Draper’s Ossining kitchen may be jealous) so are able to cook in an accurate and delicious manner.

Bridget’s dress, in process.

Honestly, I don’t know where all the food came from: I would not have thought the kitchen could hold so much, as I do not think ours could! Roast chicken, fish cakes, carrot pudding (of which I am quite fond), brown bread and beans, turnip sauce, more bread of a different recipe, a chocolate torte, onions and apples, and surely more things I have forgotten.

We had a lovely time, talked about a lot of things, and came home well-fed. On Wednesday, I made ‘buttered onions another way,’ since the Young Mr deigned to eat it, and thought it would be delicious another time. Apples and onions  go well with pork, and someday, when I have time, I’ll try Indian pudding. Just because I have a 1960s kitchen with all-electric appliances doesn’t mean I can’t try.