Thoughts on a Virginia Christmas

Here it is two days from Christmas eve in Charlottesville. l’etoile will finish dinner service on the 23rd then it is off to be with family and friends for Christmas. I just thought that I would pass some thoughts on a colonial Christmas and how some of the tradtions are still evedent today.
Christmas in colonial Virginia was very different from our twentieth-century celebration. Eighteenth-century customs don’t take long to recount: church, dinner, dancing, some evergreens, visiting–and more and better of these very same for those who could afford more. It’s certainly a short list, I tell myself, as I plan meals, go shopping, bake cookies, write three hundred cards, stuff stockings, and dog-ear or recycle the hundreds of catalogs that begin arriving at my house in October.
Attend church, stick some holly on the windowpanes, fix a great dinner, go to one party, visit or be visited. It sounds so refreshingly easy and simple and quick. But I’d miss a tree with lots of lights and all my favorite ornaments collected over the years. And if there were only one special meal, how could I hope to eat my fill of turkey and goose, both mince pie and fruitcake, shrimp as well as oysters? Materialist that I am, I would surely be disappointed if there were no packages to open on the morning of December 25.
Our present Christmas customs derive from a wide array of inspirations, nearly as various and numerous as the immigrants who settled this vast country. Most of the ways Americans celebrate the midwinter holiday came about in the nineteenth century, but we’re extraordinarily attached to our traditions and feel sure that they must be very old and supremely significant. What follows is a capsule history of some of our most loved Christmas customs. Perhaps both residents and visitors will enjoy learning the background of one or more of these rites. I offer them in the spirit of the season: with best wishes for continuing health and happiness to all!
Christmas foods and beverages. Everyone wants more and better things to eat and drink for a celebration. Finances nearly always control the possibilities. In eighteenth- century Virginia, of course, the rich had more on the table at Christmas and on any other day, too, but even the gentry faced limits in winter. December was the right time for slaughtering, so fresh meat of all sorts they had, as well as some seafood. Preserving fruits and vegetables was problematic for a December holiday. Then as now, beef, goose, ham, and turkey counted as holiday favorites; some households also insisted on fish, oysters, mincemeat pies, and brandied peaches. No one dish epitomized the Christmas feast in colonial Virginia.
Wines, brandy, rum punches, and other alcoholic beverages went plentifully around the table on December 25 in well-to-do households. Others had less because they could afford less. Slave owners gave out portions of rum and other liquors to their workers at Christmastime, partly as a holiday treat (one the slaves may have come to expect and even demand) and partly to keep slaves at the home quarter during their few days off work. People with a quantity of alcohol in them were more likely to stay close to home than to run away or travel long distances to visit family.
The Christmas Cake as we know it today comes from two customs which became one around 1870 in Victorian England. Originally there was a porridge, the origins of which go back to the beginnings of Christianity. Then there was a fine cake made with the finest milled wheatflour, this was baked only in the Great Houses, as not many people had ovens back in the 14th century.
Originally people used to eat a sort of porridge on Christmas Eve. It was a dish to line the stomach after a day’s fasting, which people used to observe for Christmas Eve, or the ‘Vigil’ as it was called long ago. Gradually, they began to put spices, dried fruits, honey etc in the porridge to make it a special dish for Christmas. Much later it was turned into a pudding, because it got to be so stiff with all the fruits and things, that they would tie it in a cloth, and dunk it into a large cauldron of boiling water and boil it for many hours. This turned into Christmas Pudding.
But it was not a Christmas cake, but a Twelfth Night Cake. Twelfth night is on the 5th January, and has been for centuries the traditional last day of the Christmas season.. It was a time for having a great feast, and the cake was an essential part of the festivities. This was slightly different in different countries, and also at different social levels.
In the GREAT HOUSES, into the cake was baked a dried Bean and a Pea. one in one half and the other in the other half. The cake was decorated with sugar, like our icing, but not so dense, and ornamentation. As the visitors arrived, they were given a piece of the cake, ladies from the left, gentlemen from the right side. Whoever got the bean became King of the Revels for the night, and eveyone had to do as he said. The lady was his Queen for the evening.
In smaller homes, the cake was a simple fruitcake, with a bean in it, which was given to guests during the twelve days of Christmas. Whoever got the bean was supposed to be a kind of guardian angel for that family for the year, so it was an important task, and usually, it was arranged that a senior member of the family would get the bean! This was observed until recently in Poland in fact.
In Britain the cake was baked as part of the refreshments offered to the priest and his entpourage who would visit on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, to bless each house in the parish. this custom died out after the Reformation in the late 16th century.. In Mallorca, the main island of the Spanish Balearics Islands, they have a similar custom which takes place at Easter.
The festive cake in Britain was revived at the end of the 17th century, and became very much part of the Twelfth night partying again. It is recorded In royal households, that the cakes became extravagantly large, and the guests divided into two side could have a battle with models on the cake! One battle was a sea battle, and there were minature water canon on the cake which really worked!
This is the Church festival of Ephiphany. The traditional day when Christians celebrate the arrival of the Magi or Three Kings at Bethlehem. It used to be the time when people exchanged their Christmas gifts. The feast was marked, as were all the old feasts, by some kind of religious observance. A visit to the church, a service or some kind, and then a folk observance which was tightly wrapped up as part of the Church activities. As we have seen, Twelve Day (the day following Twelfth Night) entailed the blessing of the home, and in some countries is still observed. But after the Reformation, these customs of the Church were banned by the Puritans, and fell into disuse. Without its religious overtones, Twelfth Night became a time of mischief and over indulgence. By 1870, Britains Queen Victoria announced that she felt it was inappropriate to hold such an unchristian festival, and Twelfth Night was banned as a feastday.
God bless and Merry Christmas from all of us at l’etoile.

Virginia Thanksgiving

Stuffing or Dressing?
As I start to plan my menu for my family Thanksgiving a few questions come to mind. Being from Virginia, born in Richmond, and currently having a restaurant in Charlottesville – just who did host the first Thanksgiving? As if the in laws were not enough for you this time of year, gently steer the conversation to our history and culinary heritage.
Stuffing in the middle ages was known as farce, from the Latin farcire (and French farcir) meaning to stuff. Farce originally denoted a brief, lighthearted play stuffed in between lengthy religious productions to keep the audience from being bored.
Forcemeat and farce were also common terms referring to a spiced chopped meat mixture, currently still in use when referring to sausage.
The term stuffing first appears in English print in 1538. After 1880, it seems the term stuffing did not appeal to the propriety of the Victorian upper crust, who began referring to it as dressing. Nowadays, the terms stuffing and dressing are used interchangeably, with stuffing being the term of preference in the South and East portions of the United States.
Oyster stuffing was very popular in the nineteenth century and remains so today. Southerners often prefer pecan, rice or cornbread stuffing. Italians like sausage in their stuffing. Dried fruit, potatoes, and apples are a favorite with Germans.
Adding more flavor to Thanksgiving’s old stuffing, many historians doubt whether the Massachusetts settlers deserve any credit for hosting the first Thanksgiving in English America. Evidence points to Berkeley Plantation in present-day Virginia, less than 50 miles upriver from that first Jamestown settlement. At Berkeley Plantation, a band of new colonists held Thanksgiving on Dec. 4, 1619. But theirs was not a festival of binging on food and drink: The colonists at Berkeley Plantation lacked the provisions and time to hold that kind of a celebration. Their thanksgiving was more religious than culinary. Still, other historians point to an earlier ceremony held at Cape Henry on April 29, 1607, when the original Jamestown settlers made land and gave thanks for their safe passage–again more of a religious ceremony than a festival.
Naturally there are turf wars over historic ‘firsts’ between Massachusetts and Virginia, but a case can be made for crediting Cape Henry and Berkeley Plantation with the first ritual of giving thanks, while Plymouth certainly set the thankful tone for ritual gorging. And the latter is far more appealing to the appetites of the average American family.
So why the confusion over the historical narrative? That entire Berkeley settlement was destroyed by a Native American massacre, reasonably leaving the tradition’s torch to their English brethren to the north. Regardless, the idea of giving thanks for what one has is relevant whether Berkeley Plantation or Plymouth gets credit for the act.

Ironically, the original destination of the Pilgrims when they left England in September 1620 was present-day Virginia where there was an existing contingent of English colonists. Instead, the Mayflower first spotted land in November off Cape Cod and thus altered the course of English expansion in America and Thanksgiving history.

Virginia Apples and Cider

I spent the better part of Sunday pressing apples with our dear friends at Red Row farm in Esmont Virginia. It is south of Charlottesville about a half hour scenic drive. Worth every effort – the cider is sweet and so wonderful.   This time of the year, with our weekly delivery of Mr. Henleys apples from Crozet has to be one of my favorites.  We make apple butter at l’etoile, pies and anything else that we can think of with them. But the pressing of cider made me wonder about how this great tradition was started, and how it fits into our culinary heritage. It is indeed a shame that fresh pressed cider is a thing of the past.

Cider Apples may be considered as a step in development from the Wild Apple to the Dessert Apple. Formerly every farmhouse made its cider. The apples every autumn were tipped in heaps on the straw-strewn floor of the pound house, a building of cob, covered with thatch, in which stood the pounder and the press and vats and all hands were busy for days preparing the golden beverage. This was the yearly process – still carried out on many farms of the west of England, though cider-making is becoming more and more a product of the factories. One of the men turned the handle of the pounder, while a boy tipped in the apples at the top. A pounder is a machine which crushes the apples between two rollers with teeth in them. The pulp and juice are then taken to the press in large shovels which have high sides and are scored bright by the acid. The press is a huge square tray with a lip in the center of the front side and its floor slopes towards this opening. On either side are huge oaken supports on which rests a square baulk of the same wood. Through this works a large screw. Under the timber is the presser Directly the pulp is ready, the farmer starts to prepare the ‘cheese.’ First of all goes a layer of straw, then a layer of apples, and so on until the ‘cheese’ is a yard high, and sometimes more. Then the ends of straw which project are turned up to the top of the heap. Now the presser is wound down and compresses the mound until the clear juice runs freely. Under the lip in the front of the cider press is put a vat. The juice is dipped from this into casks. In four months’ time the cider will be ready to drink.

The demand for cider has increased rapidly of late years, chiefly on account of the dry varieties being so popular with sufferers from rheumatism and gout. As very good prices have been paid in recent seasons for the best cider apples, and as eight tons per acre is quite an average crop from a properly-managed orchard in full bearing, it is obvious to all progressive and up-to-date farmers and apple-growers that this branch of agriculture is well worthy of attention. In the last few years, with the object of encouraging this special Apple growing industry, silver cups have been awarded to the owners of cider-apple orchards in Devon who make the greatest improvement in the cultivation of their orchards during the year, and it is hoped this will still further stimulate the planting of new orchards and the renovation of the old ones.

The peculiar winy odour is stimulating to many. Pliny, and later, Sir John Mandeville, tell of a race of little men in ‘Farther India’ who ‘eat naught and live by the smell of apples.’ Burton wrote that apples are good against melancholy and Dr. John Caius, physician to Queen Elizabeth, in his Boke of Counseille against the Sweatynge Sicknesse advises the patient to ‘smele to an old swete apple to recover his strengthe.’ An apple stuck full of cloves was the prototype of the pomander, and pomatum (now used only in a general sense) took its name from being first made of the pulp of apples, lard and rosewater.

In Shakespeare’s time, apples when served at dessert were usually accompanied by caraway, as we may read in Henry IV, where Shallow invites Falstaff to ‘a pippin and a dish of caraway,’ In a still earlier Booke of Nurture, it is directed ‘After mete pepyns, caraway in comfyts.’ The custom of serving roast apples with a little saucerful of Carraways is still kept up at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at some of the old-fashioned London Livery dinners, just as in Shakespeare’s days.

The taste for apples is one of the earliest and most natural of inclinations; all children love apples, cooked or uncooked. Apple pies, apple puddings, apple dumplings are fare acceptable in all ages and all conditions.

Apple cookery is very early English: Piers Ploughman mentions ‘all the povere peple’ who ‘baken apples broghte in his lappes’ and the ever popular apple pie was no less esteemed in Tudor times than it is to-day, only our ancestors had some predilections in the matter of seasonings that might not now appeal to all of us, for they put cinnamon and ginger in their pies and gave them a lavish colouring of saffron.

Apple Moyse is an old English confection, no two recipes for which seem to agree. One Black Letter volume tells us to take a dozen apples, roast or boil them, pass them through a sieve with the yolks of three or four eggs, and as they are strained temper them with three or four spoonfuls of damask (rose) water; season them with sugar and half a dish of sweet butter, and boil them in a chafing dish and cast biscuits or cinnamon and ginger upon them.

Halliwell says, upon one authority, that apple moyse was made from apples after they had been pressed for cider, and seasoned with spices.

Probably the American confection, Apple Butter, is an evolution of the old English dish? Apple butter is a kind of jam made of tart apples, boiled in cider until reduced to a very thick smooth paste, to which is added a flavouring of allspice, while cooking. It is then placed in jars and covered tightly.

The once-popular custom of wassailing the orchard-trees’ on Christmas Eve, or the Eve of the Epiphany, is not quite extinct even yet in a few remote places in Devonshire. More than three centuries ago Herrick mentioned it among his ‘Ceremonies of Christmas Eve’:

‘Wassaile the trees, that they may beare

You many a Plum and many a Peare:

For more or lesse fruits they will bring,

As you do give them Wassailing.’

The ceremony consisted in the farmer, with his family and labourers, going out into the orchard after supper, bearing with them a jug of cider and hot cakes. The latter were placed in the boughs of the oldest or best bearing trees in the orchard, while the cider was flung over the trees after the farmer had drunk their health in some such fashion as the following:

‘Here’s to thee, old apple-tree!

Whence thou may’st bud, and whence thou may’st blow,

Hats full! Caps full!

Bushel – bushel-bags full!

And my pockets full too! Huzza!’

The toast was repeated thrice, the men and boys often firing off guns and pistols, and the women and children shouting loudly.

Roasted apples were usually placed in the pitcher of cider, and were thrown at the trees with the liquid. Trees that were bad bearers were not honoured with wassailing but it was thought that the more productive ones would cease to bear if the rite were omitted. It is said to have been a relic of the heathen sacrifices to Pomona. The custom also prevailed in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire.

Roast apples, or crabs, formed an indispensable part of the old-fashioned ‘wassailbowl,’ or ‘good brown bowl,” of our ancestors.

‘And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl

In very likeness of a roasted Crab’

Puck relates in Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.

The mixture of hot spiced ale, wine or cider, with apples and bits of toast floating in it was often called ‘Lamb’s wool,’ some say from its softness, but the word is really derived from the Irish ‘la mas nbhal,’ ‘the feast of the apple-gathering’ (All Hallow Eve), which being pronounced somewhat like ‘Lammas-ool,’ was corrupted into ‘lamb’s wool.’ It was usual for each person who partook of the spicy beverage to take out an apple and eat it, wishing good luck to the company.

 

Fourth of July Hot Dogs

As I sit literally looking out the window from my office in downtown Charlottesville, on West Main Street – I can see Monticello.  I started thinking about the man who started this eat local movement, and the reason for the 4th of July that we all will celebrate this weekend.  I do not know if hot dogs were eaten by the founding fathers in Albemarle County or not, but I do know that all over central Virginia they will be on the 4th.

Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as far back as the 9th Century B.C. Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, is traditionally credited with originating the frankfurter. However, this claim is disputed by those who assert that the popular sausage – known as a “dachshund” or “little-dog” sausage – was created in the late 1600′s by Johann Georghehner, a butcher, living in Coburg, Germany. According to this report, Georghehner later traveled to Frankfurt to promote his new product. In 1987, the city of Frankfurt celebrated the 500th birthday of the hot dog in that city. It’s said that the frankfurter was developed there in 1487, five years before Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world. The people of Vienna (Wien), Austria, point to the term “wiener” to prove their claim as the birthplace of the hot dog. As it turns out, it is likely that the North American hot dog comes from a widespread common European sausage brought here by butchers of several nationalities. Also in doubt is who first served the dachshund sausage with a roll. One report says a German immigrant sold them, along with milk rolls and sauerkraut, from a push cart in New York City’s Bowery during the 1860′s. In 1871, Charles Feltman, a German butcher opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand selling 3,684 dachshund sausages in a milk roll during his first year in business. The year, 1893, was an important date in hot dog history. In Chicago that year, the Columbian Exposition brought hordes of visitors who consumed large quantities of sausages sold by vendors. People liked this food that was easy to eat, convenient and inexpensive. Hot dog historian Bruce Kraig, Ph.D., retired professor emeritus at Roosevelt University, says the Germans always ate the dachshund sausages with bread. Since the sausage culture is German, it is likely that Germans introduced the practice of eating the dachshund sausages, which we today know as the hot dog, nestled in a bun. Also in 1893, sausages became the standard fare at baseball parks. This tradition is believed to have been started by a St. Louis bar owner, Chris Von de Ahe, a German immigrant who also owned the St. Louis Browns major league baseball team. Many hot dog historians chafe at the suggestion that today’s hot dog on a bun was introduced during the St. Louis “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” in 1904 by Bavarian concessionaire, Anton Feuchtwanger. As the story goes, he loaned white gloves to his patrons to hold his piping hot sausages and as most of the gloves were not returned, the supply began running low. He reportedly asked his brother-in-law, a baker, for help. The baker improvised long soft rolls that fit the meat – thus inventing the hot dog bun. Kraig says everyone wants to claim the hot dog bun as their own invention, but the most likely scenario is the practice was handed down by German immigrants and gradually became widespread in American culture. Another story that riles serious hot dog historians is how term “hot dog” came about. Some say the word was coined in 1901 at the New York Polo Grounds on a cold April day. Vendors were hawking hot dogs from portable hot water tanks shouting “They’re red hot! Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!” A New York Journal sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, observed the scene and hastily drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in rolls. Not sure how to spell “dachshund” he simply wrote “hot dog!” The cartoon is said to have been a sensation, thus coining the term “hot dog.” However, historians have been unable to find this cartoon, despite Dorgan’s enormous body of work and his popularity. Kraig, and other culinary historians, point to college magazines where the word “hot dog” began appearing in the 1890s. The term was current at Yale in the fall of 1894,when “dog wagons” sold hot dogs at the dorms. The name was a sarcastic comment on the provenance of the meat. References to dachshund sausages and ultimately hot dogs can be traced to German immigrants in the 1800s. These immigrants brought not only sausages to America, but dachshund dogs. The name most likely began as a joke about the Germans’ small, long, thin dogs. In fact, even Germans called the frankfurter a “little-dog” or “dachshund” sausage, thus linking the word “dog” to their popular concoction.

 

Strawberries in Virginia

It is that time of year in central Virginia, in particular the Charlottesville area when the first produce of Spring comes to our kitchen.  One of my favorites is the Strawberry, which got me thinking:

The strawberry is a member of the rose family, with the most common varieties being a hybrid of the wild Virginia strawberry (native to North America) and a Chilean variety. The plant produces succulent, red, conical fruit from tiny white flowers, and sends out runners to propagate.

Although the plants can last 5 to 6 years with careful cultivation, most farmers use them as an annual crop, replanting yearly. Crops take 8 to 14 months to mature. Strawberries are social plants, requiring both a male and female to produce fruit.

The word strawberry comes from the Old English streawberige, most likely because the plant sends out runners which could be likened to pieces of straw. Although they have been around for thousands of years, strawberries were not actively cultivated until the Renaissance period in Europe.

Strawberries are native to North America, and the Indians used them in many dishes. The first colonists in America shipped the native larger strawberry plants back to Europe as early as 1600. Another variety was also discovered in Central and South America, which the conquistadors calledfutilla. Early Americans did not bother cultivating strawberries, because they were abundant in the wilds.

The wide distribution of wild strawberries is largely from seeds sown by birds. It seems that when birds eat the wild berries the seeds pass through them intact and in reasonably good condition. The germinating seeds respond to light rather than moisture and therefore need no covering of earth to start growing

Cultivation began in earnest in the early part of the 19th century, when strawberries with cream quickly became considered a luxurious dessert. New York became a strawberry hub with the advent of the railroad, shipping the crop in refrigerated railroad cars. Production spread to Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee. Now 75 percent of the North American crop is grown in California, and many areas have Strawberry Festivals, with the first one dating back to 1850.

 

Grits

I just returned from a trip to the Midwest to visit family, and the discussion of grits came up – me being from the south, central Virginia in fact. Well, actually our restaurant is in Charlottesville and one dish that is always on our menu is shrimp and grits. As many stars in the sky, there are recipes for this Southern classic. At l’etoile, we think that we prepare it the best in Albemarle County. Grits are the backbone, but first a little history.
Another versatile corn product is hominy, which is whole-grain, dried corn, traditionally soaked in a lye solution made from wood ashes to rid it of its outer husk. The kernels may be prepared as a starchy vegetable. Canned hominy is found in grocery stores all over the South…Grits are ground dried corn or hominy, and they must be cooked slowly for a long time.

Whole hominy or great hominy is the result of the alkaline (lye) process of removing the hull form the kernel. But the word “hominy” refers to dried and hulled corn kernels, coarsely ground and prepared for used in puddings and breads, in particular. The term “grits,” or “hominy grits,” especially in southern states, refers to finely ground hominy. Hominy grits, usually of white corn, have been called “the potatoes of the South,” so heavily have they been relied upon for starch in that region. Hot hominy is simmered over a slow heat for hours with butter, perhaps cream, and salt or sugar to taste. Grits for breakfast, served with eggs and ham or as a side dish, is a long-established dish of the South.

Eastern settlers hulled corn by both methods after cracking and pounding their corn in the hollowed log mortars and wooden pestles they called interchangeably “hominy blocks” and “samp mills.” But throughout the nineteenth century, American cooks north and south labored valiantly, and hopelessly, to squeeze the rich nomenclature of native corn dishes into the narrow confines of hominy, samp and –worst of all–grits. Anglo-Saxon grytt from bran and greot for ground had melded into “grist,” which colonists applied generically to dried, ground and hulled grain. The New Orleans Picayune only confused matters when it called hominy “the older sister of grits,” since it was the Indians who taught Creoles to thresh the hulls from dried yellow corn until the grains were white. Grits might be yellow if the hull was left on, the Picayune specified, but “the daintier preparation” was white with the hull off. Plain hulled corn was “big hominy”; grits ground superfine were “small hominy”…In the North, samp (from the Narragansett nasaump, or unparched corn, beaten and boiled) came to be indentified with coarsely ground corn however it was hulled…Grits for many reasons became strongly identified, as they are today, with the South.

Hominy. Dried, hulled corn kernels cooked in a variety of ways in breads, puddings, and other preparations. It was one of the first foods European settlers readily accepted from the Native Americans, and the word, from one or another Algonquin words, such as rockamoninie (“parched corn”) or tackhummin (“hulled corn”), was used as early as 1620. Different terms describe hominy that has been treated or ground in different ways. “Great hominy,” also called “whole hominy,” “pearl hominy” (from its pearly appearance), and “samp” (from the Narraganset nasaump, “corn mush”), in coarsely ground and prepared by scalding shelled corn in water and wood ash to separate the hulls, called the “eyes.”…If the corn is ground more finely, or ground twice, the result is called “hominy grits” or, as is usual in the South, just grits. Further grinding results in cornmeal….”Hogs and hominy” is an old southern dish of hominy and fried pork.

Thinking about gardens

It is mid March in central Virginia and I already have some seeds and a five year old daughter who is ready to plant them with me.  We were discussing what we would plant at home, and the garden behind l’etoile.  Green beans, some lettuce and peas to get us started.  She asked about the gardens in Charlottesville and the one at Monticello that we saw last fall.  She said do people plant lots of gardens in Crozet?  Then she asked about soldiers and if they planted gardens (her uncle is a Marine) and that got me thinking…..

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil “morale booster” — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. This made victory gardens become a part of daily life on the home front.

In March 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack organized the National War Garden Commission and launched the war garden campaign. During World War I, food production had fallen dramatically, especially in Europe, where agricultural labor had been recruited into military service and remaining farms devastated by the conflict. Pack conceived the idea that the supply of food could be greatly increased without the use of land and manpower already engaged in agriculture, and without the significant use of transportation facilities needed for the war effort. The campaign promoted the cultivation of available private and public lands, resulting in over five million gardens and foodstuff production exceeding $1.2 billion by the end of the war.

Amid regular rationing of canned food in Britain, a poster campaign (“Plant more in ’44!”) encouraged the planting of victory gardens by nearly 20 million Americans. These gardens produced up to 40 percent of all the vegetable produce being consumed nationally.

It was emphasized to home front urbanites and suburbanites that the produce from their gardens would help to lower the price of vegetables needed by the US War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military: “Our food is fighting,” one US poster read. In Britain the slogan “Dig for Victory” was ubiquitous.

Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor Roosevelt’s institution of a victory garden on the White House grounds, fearing that such a movement would hurt the food industry, basic information about gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture, as well as by agribusiness corporations such as International Harvester and Beech-Nut. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot “commandeered for the war effort!” and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant “Riverside” were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

In 1946, with the war over, many residents did not plant victory gardens in expectation of greater produce availability. However, shortages remained in the United Kingdom.

The Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay Fens of Boston, Massachusetts and the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, remain active as the last surviving public examples from World War II. Most plots in the Fenway Victory Gardens now feature flowers instead of vegetables while the Dowling Community Garden retains its focus on vegetables.

Since the turn of the century there has existed a growing interest in victory gardens. A grassroots campaign promoting such gardens has recently sprung up in the form of new victory gardens in public spaces, victory garden websites and blogs, as well as petitions to both renew a national campaign for the victory garden and to encourage the re-establishment of a victory garden on the White House lawn. In March 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama, planted an 1,100-square-foot (100 m2) “Kitchen Garden” on the White House lawn, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s, to raise awareness about healthy food.

The smoking process

I just pulled beef shortribs, a cured beef brisket, bacon and a couple of chickens off the smoker. To me it reminds me of the coming Spring to Charlottesville and central Virginia.  The beef is local, and the chickens came from Timbercreek Organics.  In a day these wonderful products will be on our menu.

Smoking is the process of flavoring, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to the smoke from burning or smoldering plant materials, most often wood. Meats and fish are the most common smoked foods, though cheeses, vegetables, and ingredients used to make beverages such as whisky, Rauchbier and lapsang souchong tea are also smoked.

In Europe, alder is the traditional smoking wood, but oak is more often used now, and beech to a lesser extent. In North America, hickory, mesquite, oak, pecan, alder, maple, and fruit-tree woods, such as apple, cherry and plum, are commonly used for smoking. Other fuels besides wood can also be employed, sometimes with the addition of flavoring ingredients. Chinese tea-smoking uses a mixture of uncooked rice, sugar, and tea, heated at the base of a wok. Some North American ham and bacon makers smoke their products over burning corncobs. Peat is burned to dry and smoke the barley malt used to make whisky and some beers. In New Zealand, sawdust from the native manuka (tea tree) is commonly used for hot smoking fish. In Iceland, dried sheep dung is used to cold smoke fish, lamb, mutton and whale, resulting in a unique and rather strongly smoked flavor.

Historically, farms in the western world included a small building termed the smokehouse, where meats could be smoked and stored. This was generally well-separated from other buildings both because of the fire danger and because of the smoke emanations.

Smoke is an antimicrobial and antioxidant, but smoke alone is insufficient for preserving food in practice, unless combined with another preservation method. The main problem is the smoke compounds adhere only to the outer surfaces of the food; smoke does not actually penetrate far into meat or fish. In modern times, almost all smoking is carried out for its flavor. Artificial smoke flavoring can be purchased as a liquid to mimic the flavor of smoking, but not its preservative qualities (see also liquid smoke).

In the past, smoking was a useful preservation tool, in combination with other techniques, most commonly salt-curing or drying. In some cases, particularly in climates without much hot sunshine, smoking was simply an unavoidable side effect of drying over a fire. For some long-smoked foods, the smoking time also served to dry the food. Drying, curing, or other techniques can render the interior of foods inhospitable to bacterial life, while the smoking gives the vulnerable exterior surfaces an extra layer of protection. For oily fish smoking is especially useful, as its antioxidant properties delay surface fat rancidification. (Interior fat is not as exposed to oxygen, which is what causes rancidity.) Some heavily-salted, long-smoked fish can keep without refrigeration for weeks or months. Such heavily-preserved foods usually require a treatment such as boiling in fresh water to make them palatable before eating.

Our Culinary History

Looking at my bookshelf this past weekend – I was trying to find my muse in the old cookbooks that I own.  I pulled out The Virginia Housewife and started looking through its pages and it got me thinking about the local food movement, Charlottesville and our regions place in the culinary history.

The Virginia Housewife: or, Methodical Cook
By Mary Randolph
Baltimore: Plaskitt, Fite, 1838 (1838)

This is considered by some to be the first truly American cookbook and by all to be the first regional American cookbook. This work is still in print and still forms the basis of traditional Virginia cooking. It has been praised by many culinary authorities both for its delineation of authentic Virginia foods and its careful attention to detail.

Upon its first appearance in 1824 it was an immediate success and it was republished at least nineteen times before the outbreak of the Civil War. In addition, copies appeared in the late nineteenth century and modern Southern authors often reference it.

The recipes in The Virginia House-Wife are simply splendid. It contains a number of Southern specialties, some appearing in print for the first time: Ochra Soup, Catfish Soup, Barbecued Shote (“This is the name given in the southern states to a fat young hog”), Curry of Catfish, Ochra and Tomatoes; Gumbo (“A West India Dish”), Chicken Pudding (“A Favourite Virginia Dish”), Field Peas, Apoquiniminc Cakes (a form of beaten biscuits). Clearly we are in the South.

But Mrs. Randolph knew about much more than Southern cooking; she includes recipes from England, France, Spain, the East Indies, the West Indies and New England (Dough Nuts – A Yankee Cake), among others. Her Spanish dishes are most intriguing: Gaspacho, Ropa Vieja and Ollo. We find polenta, vermicelli, macaroni and curry. We find recipes for corning, for fricando and fricassee, for haricot and matelote and salmagundi; we have a-la-modes, a-la-daubes and a-la-cremes. We learn how to caveach fish and to pitchcock eels. Mrs. Randolph tells us how to pickle several dozen items, including oysters, sturgeon, lemons, onions, nasturtiums, radish pods, English walnuts, peppers, green nectarines and asparagus.

Anyone who doubts that early Americans savored salads and vegetables need only look at what Mrs. Randolph offers. There are recipes for artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, French beans, Jerusalem artichokes, lima beans, mushrooms, onions, parsnips, peas, peppers, potatoes, potato pumpkin, red beet roots, salsify, savoy cabbage, sea kale, sorrel, spinach, sprouts and young greens, squash, sweet potatoes, turnips, turnip tops, winter squash, onions, and tomatoes.

Indeed, Mrs. Randolph has seventeen recipes using tomatoes in the various editions of her cookbook. This provides further evidence to correct the misinformation that Americans did not use tomatoes prior to the mid-nineteenth century.

We should mention Mrs. Randolph’s wondrous ice-cream recipes. There are twenty-two flavors, plus variations, including black walnut, pineapple, quince, peach, pear, chocolate, citron and almond.

Soup and its history

Food historians tell us the history of soup is probably as old as the history of cooking. The act of combining various ingredients in a large pot to create a nutritious, filling, easily digested, simple to make/serve food was inevitable. This made it the perfect choice for both sedentary and travelling cultures, rich and poor, healthy people and invalids. Soup (and stews, pottages, porridges, gruels, etc.) evolved according to local ingredients and tastes. New England chowder, Spanish gazpacho, Russian borscht, Italian minestrone, French onion, Chinese won ton and Campbell’s tomato…are all variations on the same theme.
Soups were easily digested and were prescribed for invalids since ancient times. The modern restaurant industry is said to be based on soup. Restoratifs (wheron the word “restaurant” comes) were the first items served in public restaurants in 18th century Paris. Broth [Pot-au-feu], bouillion, and consomme entered here. Classic French cuisine generated many of the soups we know today.
Advancements in science enabled soups to take many forms…portable, canned, dehydrated, microwave-ready. “Pocket soup” was carried by colonial travellers, as it could easily be reconstituted with a little hot water. Canned and dehydrated soups were available in the 19th century. These supplied the military, covered wagon trains, cowboy chuck wagons, and the home pantry. Advances in science also permitted the adjustment of nutrients to fit specific dietary needs (low salt, high fiber, etc.).
“Cereals, roasted to make them digestible and then ground and moistened or diluted with water to make a paste, either thick or thin, did not become gruel or porridge until people had the idea and means of cooking them. They may initially have been cooked by hot stones in receptacles of natural substances, and then in utensils which could go straight over the fire. Soup, in fact, derives from sop or sup, meaning the sliced of bread on which broth was poured. Until bread was invented, the only kind of thick soup was a concoction of grains, or of plants and meat cooked in a pot. Gruel or porridge was thus a basic food, a staple from of nourishment, and long held that place in Western countries, for in practice bread was a luxury eaten only in towns. A thick porridge of some kind is still the staple food of many peoples, and it is not always made of cereals, but may consist of other starch foods: legumes, chestnuts or root vegetables.”
“The etymological idea underlying the word soup is that of soaking. It goes back to an unrecorded post-classical Latin verb suppare soak’, which was borrowed from the same prehistoric German root (sup-) as produced in English sup and supper. From it was derived the noun suppa, which passed into Old French as soupe. This meant both piece of bread soaked in liquid’ and, by extension, broth poured onto bread.’ It was the latter strand of the meaning that entered English in the seventeenth century. Until the arrival of the term soup, such food had been termed broth or pottage. It was customarily served with the meat or vegetable dishes with which it had been made, and (as the dreivation of soup suggest) was poured over sops of bread or toast (the ancestors of modern croutons). But coincident with the introduction of the world soup, it began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth on its own, and in the early eighteenth century it was assuming its present-day role as a first course.”
“Our modern word “soup” derives from the Old French word sope and soupe. The French word was used in England in the in the form of sop at the end of the Middle Ages and, fortunately, has remained in the English language in its original form and with much its original sense. We say “fortunately” because it is clear that nowadays a “sop” is not a “soup.” The distinction is important. When cooks in the Middle Ages spoke of “soup,” what they and the people for whom they were cooking really understood was a dish comprising primarily a piece of bread or toast soaked in a liquid or over which a liquid had been poured. The bread or toast was an important, even vital, part of this dish. It was a means by which a diner could counsume the liquid efficiently by sopping it up. The bread or toast was, in effect, an alternative to using a spoon…Soups were important in the medieval diet, but the dish that the cook prepared was often a sop that consisted of both nutritious liquid and the means to eat it. The meal at the end of a normal day was always the lighter of the two meals of the day, and the sop appears to have had an important place in it. In fact it was precisely because of the normal inclusion of a sop in this end-of-the-day meal that it became called “souper” or “supper.