Egg Nog - setting the story straight

George Washington personally wrote the following recipe??? "...fold slowly into mixture... Taste frequently." No. Another false claim is that a travellor, Weld, wrote in 1796 that egg nog was first served at breakfast in City Tavern, Phila. No, in Maryland. Thanks to the internet, WAY too many bloggers and book authors are blindly passing these modern tales on.

Pa. German Christmas and New Years traditions

This Tuesday, Landis Valley Museum staff will do a talk on the Pa. German customs for Christmas and New Years. Below is an 1853 account of Krishkinkle, stockings with sugar plums, and for those who are bad... a visit from Belsnickel. Also baking cookies for Christmas at Landis.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Alexis Soyer - more than just a celebrity chef

What a Renaissance Man Chef! -- humanitarian (Irish Famine and later he literally shortened his life by going to Crimea to help organize feeding the UK troops during the Crimean War), designer of cooking apparatus (camp stove for army, Reform Club kitchen, soup kitchen), cookbook author, promoter, writer... oh yes, and a chef. And, as seen in the image, a tad flamboyant.

From bones to diet to migration via Isotopes

Isotopic analysis on bones (humans and animals) can determine what they ate and where they were raised. So even when buried elsewhere, such as Jamestown, their earlier home and foods can be determined. Amazing.
A couple talks explain the proceedure and its importance to learning about the food and migration of our ancestors.

Christmas talks 2021 and taped talks

Christmas – dinner by Annie Gray(De3) food & drink(1) feast in art(22) at sea(7) London railways(16) among enslaved(15) family recipes(2) Roman origins(2) Pagan festivals(20) Medieval(7,10) Georgian/ Regency(19,22) Victorian(8,15) WWII (16) Mid 1900s(6) Britain (8,9,10,17) Wales(9,16) Canada(5,12) US(9,11,15,16,20) New Eng(9,14) Germany(12,14,17) Italy(12,15,18) France(18) Mexico(8)

Yorkshire oat cakes 1814 & backstone / bakestone

Oat cake, Haver-cake, or Clap-bread were made very thin in Yorkshire. Costing one penny, the size of the ladle would change depending on the cost of the oats. Ladeled over dried meal on a board, put on bakestone, then on cloth, then hung on a creel.

Passing on your family recipes

It's Family Stories Month, so talks on kitchen tales (show and tell), share family traditions and recipes, Holiday Foods and Your Family History, Christmas festivities and family traditions, and talks on doing your family history. Its never too late to start collecting recipes and stories from relatives and writing them down.

Indigenous foodways talks

A wide variety of talks for Native American Heritage Month - Aztec coffee, na̓ʔk̓ʷulamən: Fishing and Hemp Rope, The Harvest Celebration of 1621, New Native Kitchen, and almost 30 taped talks...

November holidays - Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Stir-up Sunday talks

400 years after the first 'Thanksgiving' dinner in 1621. Image for Veterans Day or Armistice Day on 11/11 - Union soldiers with a turkey wishbone after Thanksgiving meal in 1864 by Winslow Homer.

Halloween posts and talks

'Snap-apple Night' painting, 1833, shows several games - snap-apple, diving (duck/bobbing) for apples, and divining one's future. Also snapdragon, turnip lanterns, Colcannon Night, (Soule) Cake Night and Day of the Dead (Nov 2). Click to enlarge

Korean foodways

There are several talks on Korean food coming up this week: Kimchi and the town Kimchi, temple foods, Harvest Festival, Korean food history, drinks and 3 course meals.Photo c1910-20, click to enlarge.

Baking over a fire in a "pot oven" or "cottage oven"

An interesting one minute film clip from 1950s or 60s Wales, shows a pot oven baking bread hung over a peat (turf) fire with coals. Chunks of burning peat are placed on the flat lid to bake. There is no lip along edge of the lid (so differs from dutch oven top). Excerpts mentioning Ireland and Scotland. Film clip below.

Farm fences – Stone walls, Hedgerows, Waddle fences

These endangered fences using rocks or trees/bushes should be preserved... or at least appreciated. There are several upcoming hedgerow talks and some very good talks on a variety of stone walls, that were taped.

Mustard seeds and vinegar makers in 1765

Mustard seed merchants had to wait until vinegar makers, who also made mustard, had inspected and chosen the seeds they wanted. Large scale mustard grinding from Diderot's encyclopedia. Upcoming talk on Colman, the "mustard king."

German foodways - in Germany and US

German immigrant cookbooks, industrialization caused changes in German cheese production, and Octoberfest talks.

Peach Cordial 1845

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea's Cordial recipe was included in her slim first edition of 1845 and the enlarged 1846 and 1851 editions (reprinted for 40 years). Her Peach Cordial required peaches, sugar, brandy, mace and blanched peach kernels. Born in 1793 in Ellicott City, Maryland, Lea included many peach recipes, which have been great, as have her other recipes. I have not made a cake flavored with her Peach Cordial, yet.

Mexican foodways

National Hispanic Heritage Month is from September 15 to October 15.

There are many past tape talks on cookbooks, foods and Dia de los Muertos.

Cast iron and metal pot

This unusual cooking pot is not entirely cast iron. It has a cast iron bottom which extends 3/4" up the thinner metal body. Both sections feel and sound different, and are probably from a three part mold. My great grandmother used it on her wood stove or at the large stone hearth in an outbuilding on their eastern Penn. farm. Perhaps it's a transitional iron pot from hearth to cookstove?

Edible England - national festival and UK talks

The theme for this year's Heritage Open Days is food and related topics, with online and in person activities throughout the country from Sept. 10 to 19.
Edible England search HERE and general information HERE

Dining out - Restaurants, Diners, Fast food, Street food, Picnics, Trains and Taverns virtual talks

Tapes of talks on restaurant histories, types of restaurants, eating on trains and ships, WWII municipal restaurants ('British Restaurants') and Paris' Cabarets of Death.