Catch Up: Two Weekends Ago

As much as I posted about my CZT experience last week, I didn't tell you about our excursions around Providence, a city none of us had visited before.  Unfortunately, the 30-degree/40 mph/snow squalls weather wasn't conducive to any outdoor activities such as Slater Mill, Coggeschwall Farm, or the Roger Williams Zoo that was most recommended to us.  But we did do a few fun indoor things, starting with the Culinary Museum on the campus of Johnson and Wales.  A history of American food and restaurants, mainly, we saw a great exhibition on diners, complete with diner car and fake food.  There was also a section on soda shops, one on the evolution of the stove (from hearth through cast iron and beyond), and another on outdoor cooking, including the Girl Scouts!  We marveled at the exhibition of sugar sculptures--real actual sugar work on display with this amazing lattice.  And a tiny space on the history of foods in ancient China, Greece, and Rome (I think.  Might have been some Aztecs, too.)  The only downside of the whole place?  No cafeteria!

So we searched for local places and Mama found this amazing old hot dog stand, officially called the Olneyville New York System Hot Wieners and Sandwiches.  There were neon signs, chrome bits, wacky signs (buy 1 for the price of two, get second free!), older male staff full of characters, and even bar stools just like the ones in the exhibit.  We had their hot dogs--which are wieners with flat ends in a steamed bun covered in some kind of ground meat and raw onion plus a smattering of seasoning somewhat like nutmeg--and french fries and cheesesteaks and a coffee milk, Rhode Island's signature drink made with coffee syrup.  It was all a riot of local color.

That evening, foregoing another meal, we wandered around downtown near our hotel, the Hotel Providence.  There was a craftsy store (full of artsy things, NOT a craft store), a used bookstore, and two Korean-Japanese places with one that sold bubble tea and other drinks.

LOVED this at the craftsy store Craftland

Exhausted, we spend the evening watching mediocre television--introduced the kids to "Deadliest Catch!"

 Before my Zentangle class began on Sunday evening, we spent the day around town.  Mama and the kids dropped me off at First Unitarian of Providence, which is a 200+ year old congregation in a lovely old building on an amazingly preserved historical street called Benefit.  (We had also marveled at historic Federal Hill the day before.)  I only heard some of the typically Unitarian service because I was distracted by the architecture.  It had the usual somewhat awkward but enthusiastic UU singing (our hearts are there--with so many aging hippies--but we aren't always such great singers in a group and we can rarely keep time) and a sermon about prayer which, also in UU fashion, skipped over the "to whom it may concern" acknowledging how fraught that was for us to focus on how it affects the praying person.  Then there was coffee hour--with real china cups in the early 19th-century parsonage and a book sale!  I felt right at home and missed my own UU congregation, which we haven't seen in awhile.


Mama and the kids did come across their own spiritual message:  the sign at a church down the street said "I find your lack of faith disturbing. --D. Vader"  LOVE IT.



We went to the museum of the famous Rhode Island School of Design, which is free on Sundays.  We wandered some of the galleries, focusing on the period rooms with all of their dec arts.   Mama even analyzed an 18th-century chest for us, you know, having built a replica herself. Sis noticed right away one of the "real" Gilbert Stuart paintings of George Washington.  There were also paintings by Hudson River landscapist Cole, portraitists Copley and Sully, and also the sculpture Nydia the Blind Girl by Rogers and busts by Powers.  We didn't spend too much time in the modern wings, though we nodded at the Warhol cow wallpaper, Rothko, and Twombly.  The kids were starting to sink, Mama was antsy to miss the weather on the drive home, and I was ready to start CZT class.

So even though it was a very short introduction to Providence, we enjoyed ourselves.  And eventually we'll get back for the zoo!

More Family Food Fad Fines

I had the wonderful opportunity to sit and talk about family recipes with Gommie's older sister, Aunt Quilt, inspired by my recent reading of Fashionable Food.  Here are some of the recipes I photographed, more for posterity than for reading off the blog (I have copies of the originals):

Red Velvet Cake--I think this is Bammie's recipe (Gommie and Aunt Quilt's mother) in Gommie's writing

"The Green Stuff"--A favorite in Aunt Quilt's family

Turtle Cake

Carrot Cake, the one Aunt Quilt made for Gommie's 60th, I believe

Part 2 of Carrot Cake

The famed cheesecake of Mrs. Korm

THE custard pie recipe Aunt Quilt uses, this time chocolate.  She made Coconut Custard for Gommie's birthday,  just omit cocoa and add 2 handfuls of coconut to the custard and then sprinkle more on top of the meringue (which is just 3 whites and 6 T sugar whipped)

Mmmm, I remember buttery-pepper Pasca Manale's shrimp from childhood.

I think I remember sour cream shrimp, too.

We did Bana Caulda at Aunt Quilt's house at least once.  You simmer the above in  an electric skillet then  cook beef, shrimp, fish, and vegetables in it.

Not the family's Shrimp Remoulade but one from the local department store.

Aunt Quilt is a great baker.  Here, Sally Lunn bread.

And biscuits.

Hmmm, I didn't know there was more than cheese in cheese grits.

Watergate Salad--with Cool Whip AND mini-marshmallows!

Aunt Quilt really likes this Milk Chocolate Bar Cake.

These are from Gommie's dessert recipe files, to supplement the ones from Aunt Quilt.  On the second day of our visit, Gommie had found her great-grandmother Grammy's recipes, stashed in a 1915 cookbook put out by a baking soda company, but I totally forgot to copy those before I left.  :(  Next time.  Here are ones I did remember to copy on the last day we were in Texas.

My own typed Coca Cola cake recipe

Bammie's Christmas Lizzies

Bammie's lemon pie, apparent in Gommie's dad's handwriting

A famous "Peach Pie-Cake" recipe

A recipe card Gommie typed for her "hope chest," from Bammie's recipes

They say this is a great Poppy Seed Cake.

Grandma Hungry's sister-in-law's lemon chess pie!

Lemon Chess Pie part 2

"Sister's pralines," meaning those of Grandma Hungry's sister Blythe

Terrible name, apparently good cake--with baby food!

Gommie likes these, too!

Handwritten version, by Gommie, of Mrs. Korm's famous Cheese Cake.

Bammie's Divinity

Bammie's "Red Cake," aka Red Velvet Cake

Bammie's recipe

I think these are Great-Grandmother Hungry's Forgotten Cookies.

Great-Grandmother Hungry's Date Pinwheels

Cont.

The custard pie again.

Part 2

Family Food Fads

Mama brought me home a wonderful book from the library, Fashionable Food:  Seven Decades of Food Fads by Sylvia Lovegren.  It traces the food crazes from the 1920s to the 1990s and thus charts America's always-odd relationship to food.

You know how Michael Pollan says something akin to "eat what your grandmother would recognize as food?"  Well, I think I might have to go back further, because my grandmother started cooking in the 1920s and 1930s and, after reading this book cover to cover in just two days, I can spot the trends.  It's fascinating to know that her Tomato Aspic (yes, she made it and she I even tried it once as a tween; ick.), my dad's fondness for canned pear halves filled with cottage cheese (and sometimes wasn't there cheddar on there, too?) on a bed of lettuce as well as for canned asparagus, the family devotion to yams with marshmallows on top at Thanksgiving, and open-faced bacon, onion,cheddar, and pickle sandwiches browned in the oven come from this era?  From Gommie's mom, in the 1940s, comes Eggs a la Goldenrod and chocolate chip cookies.  Later, from the 1950s, there would be Spam cooked with brown sugar, canned baked beans mixed with bacon and bell pepper and brown sugar, shish kebabs, and Chex mix, called "trash" in my family.  There were even examples of foreign food fads, with hamburger chow mein and spaghetti with sauce from a jar, way back when Chinese and Italian were foreign.  As Gommie learned to cook as a newlywed and then a mom in the 1960s and 1970s, we get pot roast with the ubiquitous Lipton's onion soup mix (one of my all-time favorites), green bean casserole, chili con carne, Swiss steak, grasshopper pie, pumpkin bread, California dip (said onion soup mix in sour cream), rum or Tipsy balls, Tang tea, and lemon bars.  I was floored that I knew so many of the dishes from home on a regular basis and could recognize the rest from friends or one-time experiences, like nut-covered cheese balls, Jell-o Poke cake, chiffon pies, chocolate truffles, those creamy marshmallow-fruit cocktail salads, three-bean salad, and several others.

The recipes for many of the above are a bonus to all of the history (and many of the recipes are included just for edification, sounding awful), from the effects of Prohibition on fine dining (ruined it and the American palate) to the struggles of cooking under the ration system during WWII, which was then followed by the excesses of meat and alcohol in the 1950s.  A side narrative involves the influence of refrigeration and the obsession with chilled or frozen dishes.  And throughout most of the decades there was, according to Lovegrean, a huge separation between food for women and food for men, most clearly delineated by ladies luncheons and the tearooms of the 20s and 30s and the barbecues of the 50s.

What's also fascinating about the book is the continuity of sweet, creamy/gooey, and processed food (oh, the love of mini-marshmallows, Miracle Whip, Cool Whip, creamed condensed canned soup, and canned fruits and vegetables) from the 20s all the way to the present--oftentimes all mixed together!  What doesn't continue is the focus on homecooked food.  Intriguingly, Lovegren focuses on the homecook until the 1980s when all the foods and fads she discusses are clearly restaurant-based, with Alice Waters and California Cuisine, Wolfgang Puck, Paul Prudhomme, etc etc etc.  Even the recipes she includes in this part are beyond the pantry and skills of many regular homecooks.

I wonder, if she could add the last few decades, what she would write?  What were the trends of the 00s and now the teens?  She'd have to write about the rise in gluten-free and other allergen-free diets, the anti-carbs diets, the Paleo diet, and all the vegetarians and vegans.  Also, there would need to be something about the influence of the Food Network, internet food sites, the demise of Gourmet, and even Pinterest.

And yet still I make for my kids some of those dishes my mom made for us from her mom and my dad's mom.  Only, I don't use dried onion soup mix anymore.  Just real onions.


Next up:  The History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell, which is much less likely to be familiar, as it starts with ancient Egyptian bread, Viking dried fish, and Roman cheesecakes!

-=-=-=-=-=-

Note:  These are all taken from my family recipe archives and are not from the book!

Milk Toast or Eggs a la Goldenrod

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon flour

milk

hard boiled egg

toast

            Brown flour in melted butter, until thick paste.  Add milk slowly, forming white sauce.  Pour over toast, grate egg, add salt and pepper to taste.

                                                                                                                       

Gommie Hungry

Mom's Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 ½ cup sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup shortening

¾ cup brown sugar (firmly packed)

¾ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs (Eggbeaters also work)

1 teaspoon hot water

1 cup nuts

2 cups oatmeal (quick or regular; uncooked—old fashioned regular are best)

1 teaspoon vanilla

14 oz. chocolate chips

            Cream shortening until soft.  Add sugars gradually, cream until light and fluffy.  Add eggs (1 at a time), beating after each.  Add vanilla and hot water.  Sift in dry ingredients.  Add nuts, oatmeal, and chocolate chips.  Bake at 375°F for 8 minutes. 

                                                                       

Bammie (Gommie's mom)

Spam

¼ cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon vinegar

¼ teaspoon mustard

liquid from spam or 2 drops of water.

            Pour mixture over spam.  Bake at 350°F for 20 minutes.

                                                                                                                        Gommie Hungry

Baked Beans

4 slices bacon

½ cup chopped onion

2-1 lb. can Pork and Beans

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon mustard

1 teaspoon ketchup

chopped bell pepper

            Cook bacon until crip, drain and crumble.  In 2 tablespoons of drippings cook onion and bell pepper unil tender but not brown.  Add with bacon to beans and other, mixing well.  Put in 1 ½ quart casserole dish.  Bake uncovered at 350°F for 20-45 minutes.

                                                                                                                       Gommie Hungry

Trash 

1 box Crispex (2+ quarts)

2 quarts stick pretzels

2 quarts Cheerios

4 tablespoons Worcestershire

1-2 teaspoons garlic powder

1-2 teaspoons onion powder

            Spray with Pam.  Microwave 8-10 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes.

Gommie Hungry

Pot Roast

3 lb. roast (chuck, pot, shoulder)

1 package dry onion soup mix

2 cups water

6 potatoes, peeled, cut in 1” cubes

1 onion, cut 1” squares

1 package carrots, peeled and sliced

1 green pepper, cut 1” squares

            Place roast in pan with soup mix and water.  Cover with foil; bake 350°F for 2 hours.  Add potatoes, onion, carrots, and pepper.  Cover with foil and continue to bake until tender (45 minutes).

Gommie Hungry

 Hamburger Chow Mein

1 lb. ground beef

1 chopped onion

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 cup diced celery

1  1/2 cup water

1 small can sliced water chestnuts, drained

14 oz. bean sprouts, drained

4 1/2 oz. sliced mushrooms

1-2 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons cornstarch in 3 tablespoons water

            Brown beef with onion, add salt, pepper, celery and water.  Bring to boil.  Cover and simmer 15 minutes.  Add remaining vegetables, heat until hot.  Combine cornstarch and water; add to mixture.  Cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.  Serve over hot cooked rice or chow mein noodles.

Gommie Hungry

Green Bean Casserole

2-16 oz. cans whole green beans, drained (can also use frozen)

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

½ cup milk

Dash pepper

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1-2.8 oz. can of French-Fried Onions

            Combine soup, milk, soy sauce and pepper.  Stir in green beans and ½ can of onions.  Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes or until hot; stir.  Top with remaining onions.  Bake 5 minutes.

                                                                                                                       

Gommie Hungry

Swiss Steak

1 pound beef round steak, cut ¾ inch thick

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1-16 oz. can tomatoes, cut up

1 small onion, sliced and separated into rings

½ cup sliced celery

½ cup sliced carrot

½ teaspoon dried thyme, crushed

            Cut meat into 4 serving-size pieces.  Trim fat.  Combine the flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.  Coat pieces with flour mixture.  In a large skillet brown meat on both sides in hot oil.  Drain fat.

            Add undrained tomatoes, onion, celery, carrot, and thyme.  Cover and cook over low heat about 11/4 hours or til meat is tender.  Skim fat.  Serve with hot rice or noodles. 

Gommie Hungry via Better Homes and Gardens

Pumpkin Bread

Makes 2 loaves

3 cups sugar

3 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons each nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon

4 eggs

2 cups fresh or canned cooked pumpkin

1 cup oil

½ cup water plus ½ cup apricot or peach brandy (or another ½ cup water)

1 cup each chopped pecans and raisins (optional)

            Preheat oven to 325°F.  Combine sugar, flour, soda, salt, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon in large electric mixer bowl.  Mix eggs pumpkin, oil, water (or brandy) and combine with dry ingredients; beat until well mixed.  Fold in pecans and raisins.  Bake in large greased Bundt pan until cake tests done, about 1 hours and 30-45 minutes.

                       

Gommie Hungry

Tipsy Balls

Makes 100 balls

small 12-oz. box vanilla wafers (3 cups)

4 jiggers whiskey

3 tablespoons karo syrup

1 cup powdered sugar, dissolved (?)

2 cups chopped nuts (fine)

            Mix, roll in balls, coat in powdered sugar. 

Pop's mom

                                                                                              

Crème de Menthe or Grasshopper Pie

Just a note—Crème de Menthe gets much stronger with age! 

2 cups whipping cream

7 oz. marshmallow cream

¼ cup crème de menthe (or to taste)

            Whip cream and then add crème de menthe.  Then add marshmallow cream.

Pour into crust.  Freeze.  Remove from freezer 20 minutes before serving.

Crust

1 stick melted oleo

24 chocolate cookies (1 ½ cups crumbs)

            Combine and form to pie plate, chilling for 1 hour before filling.

Gommie Hungry

Tang Tea aka Russian Spice Tea

1 cup instant tea

1 cup lemonade

1 cup Tang

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

            If pre-sweetened ingredients are used, no additional sweetener is needed.  Otherwise, add 1 cup sugar.

Lemon Bars

Makes 25 bars

1 cup flour

½ cup butter, softened

¼ cup powdered sugar

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons grated lemon peel, optional

2 tablespoons lemon juice

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

powdered sugar

            Heat oven to 350°F.  Mix flour, butter, and powdered sugar.  Press in ungreased quare pan, building up ½ inch edges (8x8 or 9x9).  Bake 20 minutes.

            Beat remaining ingredients with electric mixer on high about 3 minutes or until light and fluffy.  Pour over hot crust.

            Bake 25-30 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched in center.  Cool completely in pan on wire rack.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Cut into 1 ½-inch squares.  

Gommie Hungry

And as an added bonus, 

Mrs. C's Cheese Ball

2 packages cream cheese

1 can deviled ham

            Mix cream cheese and deviled ham.  Chill.  Serve with crackers.

A New Blog to Read

Looking up alternate recipes for pounded cheese, which we had at Sturbridge Village--their online recipe has curry and mustard and pepper, but the pounded cheese they served taste of farmer cheese, cloves, and orange peel--I came across a new-to-me blog, Historic Cookery.  Historic foodways are my favorite part of living-history museums (I think that might be one of my dream jobs!), so I really enjoyed reading about the experiences of the blogger and professional historic foodways historian/culinarian, Carolina.  She posts about her experiences cooking and interpreting at historic houses in New Jersey.  I think we'll have to catch the Essex County Holiday Historical Houses Tour next year and see Carolina at work!  Until then, I've put her blog link in my blogroll.

Advent Activities: O Christmas Trees!

With rain in the forecast, we decided to ditch our plans to go to candlelight at Sturbridge Village tonight.  So we headed into NYC instead.  Not for the usual 5th Avenue promenade and visit to the Rockefeller Tree, but uptown on both the East and West sides to visit the Met and the American Museum of Natural History.

The kids didn't get into either of the audiobooks we had so we played car games--the ABC game (J and Q are hard), counting the cars (1 pt for cars, 5 for buses, 10 for trucks, -5 for police!), count the Christmas trees (more of that on the way home), then once we hit the city, we looked for iconic NYC things--taxis, food carts, police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, bodegas, fire escapes.

Our first stop was the Met, where we went straight to the medieval hall to see the creche.  All the while, Bud kept telling us that a group of Adelie penguins is called a creche.  We were a bit doubtful, having heard of colonies of penguins, even rafts of penguins.  But guess what?  I just looked it up and he's right.  A creche of Adelie penguins.

Well, there are not penguins in this creche.  Instead, we saw an elephant, a camel, numerous sheep, a donkey, an ox, some dogs, plus, of course, the Holy Family, angels, Wise Men, the shepherds, and all the Neapolitan peasants surrounding them.  It was a delightful I-spy.

  

Before we left the Met, we took a detour to the newly-installed (relatively) American galleries specifically to see Emmanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware.  We looked long and hard at the huge painting, talking about art vs. history--the sunrise halo around Washington, the stable triangle-shape of the figures in the boat, the pinnacle at the flag, the diversity of figures in the boat (Scottish, frontiersmen, African, etc), as well as how and when the actual crossing took place.  Plus the original circumstances of the creation and exhibition of the work about 100 years later.  It really is a fun painting to explore.

The kids probably could have stayed all day, but we were off across the park to AMNH.  I have long wanted to see the Origami Tree and so we headed straight to it.  And we loved it!  If I-spy was fun with the creche, it was doubly fun with all the origami animals:  koalas, owls, penguins, bunnies, pandas, hedgehogs (perhaps--they were high up!), dolphin, ducks, swan, jellyfish, foxes, lemurs, peacocks, bears, horeshoe crabs,  oh so many different critters.  Just look at the pictures.  There are over 500 figures, made by members of Origami USA, who start in July to finish in time.  Very intriguing and inspiring.

   



We visited the dioramas--both in North American mammals (bunnies!) and the hall of the Blue Whale (penguins and manatee).  Did you know that the Blue Whale hall might be the best place to stretch your back in NYC?  (Well, I bet Central Park would be good, too, but not in December.)   I spent awhile on the floor, horizontal like those around me, admiring the whale from below.  Very good for the spine!

Then we headed to the special exhibition, Global Kitchen, which is all about "food, farm to fork."  The first bit of the exhibition was perhaps too science-y for me and even too preachy (and I'm the choir!  Maybe that's why!)--gallons of water, pounds of waste, etc etc etc.  Though, as the NYTimes reviewer notes, this is an exhibition about how people have intersected with nature for sustenance and how that has totally gone awry recently with agribusiness.   But then, I prefer anthropology and social history.  There were a few history of science facts I found intriguing--kohlrabi, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, and all cauliflower actually originate from the same wild cabbage weedy-thing that has been cultivated for thousands of years; apples are 7 times less bitter than their crabapple forebears; bananas might be extinct in our lifetime because they only use one genetic family which is susceptible to a blight right now.  We had fun tasting cornbread in the Whole Foods-sponsored kitchen (mine is better!  They change the topic every two weeks).  And we liked sniffing all the different scent interactives (yeah, lavender; ugh, garlic).  We especially liked the Aztec market with its basket and bags and pots full of fish, beans, corn, tortillas, agave, iguana, turkey, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, squash blossoms, etc etc.  It was a great display.  And without wheat, cheese, chicken, or beef--several of the items we associate with modern-day Mexican food.  Or plastic or styrofoam or even glass containers!  We also loved situating ourselves at meals through the ages--a feast with Kublai Khan, ice cream with Jane Austen, reclining with Roman empress Livia Drusilla.  And cooking our own meals on an interactive computer "stove" making groundnut soup, poached eggs, grilled salmon (see here for more recipes and info).  And seeing what Ghandi usually ate (vegetarian), what Michael Phelps downs during intense training (Bud wanted to try to eat that--3 breakfast sandwiches, omelets, oatmeal, French toast, coffee, what Otzi (the 5,000 year old Iceman found in the Alps) had for breakfast the day he died (dried Ibex and some fruit, I think), and what Nobel Peace prize winner and sustainable food activist Wangari Matthai would eat.  There were also displays on cookbooks, the history of utensils, and the specific traditions of China, Morocco, France, and Korea.  The only part that fell very very short was food as ritual--two small cases cramming diverse celebrations such as Chinese New Year and Day of the Dead together, accompanied by a too-short film about different traditions.  This could have been an exhibition itself and was not properly addressed.  But the gift shop made up for the slightly rushed end--we chose several different kinds of chocolate and candies to sample on the ride home!  And so we drove home up Broadway, munching on black raspberries, peach chewies, chocolate marzipan, and "milk bottles" of condensed milk candy.

But that wasn't the end of our day!  After a two-hour rest at home (including several holiday specials I slept right through), we headed for dinner at Bloodroot--because it's Latke night for Hanukkah, where a lovely clay menorah was lit in the center of the dining room!  The kids even played the dreidl game with another little kid and his dad while we all waited for our food to come.   Then we happily gorged on porcini soup (Bud's favorite), Cambodian kanji, oatmeal bread, three kinds of latkes (potato, cauliflower, and beets, with sour cream, applesauce, and a great beet spread from the NYTimes, Selma said.  Sis loved the cauliflower latkes), halushkin (noodles and cabbage), solianka (tomato-y mushroom-cabbage dish), Jamaican jerk "chicken" with this spicy green chile spread, marinated tofu salad, and then cranberry kissl, kombucha squash roll with cream cheese (think pumpkin roll), and hot fudge sundaes!

A wonderful day of family, food, and fun.  And trees!

One of Bloodroot's cats curled up on Bud's jacket.