Getting ready for the big event!

Daunting. That’s all I’m going to say. If you’re at all like me the thought of making a steamed Victorian pudding sends shivers up your spine. You’ve heard about them and they sound mysterious, dark, and difficult. What on earth would you steam the pudding in? For how long? Why?

Luckily, I’d slightly mastered the process thanks to the other side of Dan’s family – the Scottish MacKenzie side. The year Dan and I met, he was to attend a family reunion on Prince Edward Island in Canada. I was lucky enough to go along and there I met the Scottish family. I was smitten since I am also of Scottish heritage. During our first Christmas as newlyweds I wanted to make something traditional from his family’s Prince Edward Island heritage so I emailed Donald and Marion MacKenzie to see what I could learn. They sent me a recipe for Christmas Plum Pudding and I learned that Dan grew up eating this Plum Pudding that his mother and grandmother (who had immigrated from Prince Edward Island as a young woman) made every year.  And it really was quite simple to make and so delicious. I make it every year now.

Here’s the recipe:

• 3 cups flour
• 3 tsps baking powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/ cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 c milk
• 1 c molasses
• 1 lb raisins

Mix all the dry ingredients together and set aside.

Cream butter and add eggs one at a time. Beat in molasses and then add milk alternately with dry ingredients using a mixer on low speak. Mix well. Gently stir in raisins.

Divide batter into 3 well greased tin coffee cans (which are getting very hard to find! Keep them from year to year!)

Cover top of can with aluminum foil and tie tightly with string.

Set the cans in a large pot of boiling water that comes half way up the can. Cover pot and steam for 3 hours on a low boil or simmer.

When pudding is cool turn cans upside down and work pudding out of can. The pudding can be frozen or will keep for a few days in the frig. Each pudding can feed 6 people.

Best served warm with a hard sauce over it! Yum!!!!

I usually divide the recipe in thirds and only make one for Dan and I.

Despite my pudding experience I still was worried about Aunt Lillian’s Blueberry pudding recipe. Or at least her friend’s recipe. The recipe was slipped in the book and was obviously given to her by a friend or relative as there is a note written at the bottom of the recipe to “Lillie”. Which was the first Dan ever knew that his Aunt was called Lillie!

The recipe is a true steamed Victorian era pudding – the type that fell out of favor in probably in the 1940s or so. Puddings have a fascinating history going back to ancient times. The first puddings were meat puddings steamed in sausage like casings and descend from Roman era sausage. The British seem to have invented the pudding and certainly claim ownership. In Medieval times all puddings were still meat based, but by the 17th century they were beginning to be either meat or sweat puddings. By the late 18th century all puddings were sweat and by the 19th century they were all boiled and cake-like.  Today in England they are still quite popular and while I was researching contemporary pudding recipes I found several English sites that helped me figure out how to steam the pudding. I also found English websites that sold ceramic basins in which to steam puddings, which helped me realize that my good heavy pottery bowl would do just fine. There are also numerous fluted tins to steam puddings in.

Interestingly in America, although we also steamed puddings throughout the Victorian period, we also developed a dear fondness for custard based puddings which is what most of us think of when we hear the word pudding. And now of course we think of those little boxes of instant pudding and wouldn’t even imagine making it from scratch. But obviously we still steamed puddings up through the 1930s or so because all my cookbooks have many recipes for these puddings though none quite like Lillian’s Blueberry Pudding.

For one thing, her’s calls for no eggs and for sweetener it calls for either molasses or saccharin. Yep, saccharin. I’m sure if you’re like me you’d be surprised that saccharin wasn’t invented in 1970. Nope, try 100 years earlier in 1879! It was discovered by accident and then patented and was pushed quite heavily as a sugar substitute especially during World War One. Thanks to the help of Lynne Olver and the Food Timeline she helped me date Aunt Lillian’s recipe to c. 1920 just after the War.

Here’s the recipe with my modifications:

Blueberry Pudding

• 1 1/4 c. milk (her recipe called for 1/2 cup)
• 1/2 cup molasses (or use saccharin) (I used molasses)
• 1/2 tsp each of cassia (this is cinnamon), cloves, and nutmeg
• 3 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 2 cups blueberries

The batter should be able to hold up a spoon - thick!

Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the milk and stir just enough to form a stiff batter. Fold in the blueberries. Spoon the batter into a well greased pottery bowl. Cover with aluminum foil very tightly. Place in a large pot of water, with a trivet of some kind for the pottery to rest one and  with the water coming halfway up the bowl. Cover the pot and steam the pudding for 3 hours.

(Lillian’s friend wrote in one long sentence at the bottom: “Lillie I had to use a little more milk perhaps that flour I used took up more anyway it served to stiff.” And boy was she right! More on this a bit later.)

Making hard sauce is easy!

Serve with hard sauce.

Hard Sauce Recipe from 1924 Fanny Farmer

• 1/3 c butter (softened)
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1/3 tsp. lemon extract
• 2/3 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and gradually add sugar then add flavoring until all is mixed. (The secret to this is to have super soft butter and then its a breeze).

This was a two try recipe. The first time I tried it I tried following the recipe and yes, it was too little milk so I get adding a bit more, than a bit more and a bit more each time beating and beating. Well, anyone who knows cakes knows that the more you beat it the more chewy and touch the cake will become. When the cake came out I also was too exhausted to make the hard sauce and so we tried it without. BIG MISTAKE! The combination of the very tough cake without the sweetness of the hard sauce frosting made this horrible! I almost didn’t make it again.

The covered pottery bowl in the water steamer

But I persevered and am so glad I did. The second time worked like a charm and the cake was moist with the hard sauce adding just the right amount of sweetness to this lovely Victorian-style steamed pudding. Some cautions – its very hard to pull out the finished pudding from the steam bath as there is not much room for your oven mitts and the water if very hot! Another tip – I had a heck of a time finding something large enough to steam the pottery bowl in and finally remember the huge covered pan we bought for canning. It even comes with a trivet like thing that I rested the pottery bowl on! Without this I would have been pretty stymied.

I’m super proud of myself for making this dish and feel like I’ve over come a major hurdle in Victorian cooking! What next?

The finished pudding - not beautiful but so delish!

Muffins have been around in our food culture for a long time. The word muffin first appears in print in the 18th century and appears as a recipe by the mid-18th century. I found two different descriptions of where the word came from. One source claimed it was an old French term which when applied to bread means soft. The other says its a Low German word muffe for cake.

In England muffins were round and flat and surged in popularity in the 19th century when Muffin Men roamed the streets at teatime ringing a bell to sell their wares. In America, with the invention of baking powder, muffins became the tall little cakes that we are familiar with. While they were predominently eaten in England at teatime, in America muffins were eaten at breakfast and sometimes at dinner.

Prior to the 20th century, muffins were fairly basic with not a lot of extra, exotic ingredients. By the 1920s, muffin recipes became much more prolific and added more nuts, fruits, and varieties of flours. In the 1970s muffins really took off and today we have an overwhelming variety of muffin recipes that are far more inventive that what is seen in early cookbooks

My cookbooks have the following:

1906  Woman’s Favorite Cookbook has 17 muffin recipes with only one having anything other than varieties of flours – this being a blueberry muffin.

1926 Fanny Farmer Cookbook has 15 muffin recipes, two of which are berry muffin recipes and the rest just vary the flours used.

1931 Rumford Complete Cookbook has a bran muffin recipe

1944  Fanny Farmer has 12 muffin recipes, with such “exotic” suggestions as Bacon Muffins, Date Muffins, and Orange Peel Muffins.

Aunt Lillian’s cook book has three muffin recipes, one plain, one blueberry and one just berry. Blueberries, of course, were very popular and plentiful in Maine during the summer. Here’s her recipe:

Blueberry Muffins

• 1/4 cup shortening (I used softened butter)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 2/3 cup flour (before sifted)
• 2 1/3 tsps baking powder
• 1 cup sweet milk
• 1 cup berries

I creamed the softened butter and sugar until light and smooth. I then added a beaten egg and mixed it with the butter mixture. I sifted the flour, salt and baking powder together. I then added this a bit as a time to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk. I then gently folded in the berries.

Add to greased 12 cup muffin tins until 3/4 full. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for thirty minutes. Cool and remove from tin.

Dan with the muffins - he loved them!

Once again we found the result to be less heavy and sweet than our modern muffins. They were quite good and we would definately try this recipe again. It will be interesting to compare this to the other berry muffin recipe, which has a bit more sugar.

Sorry I didn’t have more photos. I took them and they seem to have been lost by my trusty assistant, husband Dan!

There are quite a few cabbage recipes in Great Aunt Lillian’s cookbook. It’s the end of the “spring” season cabbage weather here in the south and we won’t get any more in our local Farmer’s Market’s (I’m partial to the Five Points Market that takes place right outside my museum door!) until fall.

I’ve been meaning to make the interesting sounding Cabbage and Cheese Scallop in Lillian’s cook book for quite some time, but I hadn’t found the time, or assembled the right ingredients until today – the 4th of July. And boy do I mean time! This recipe, which gave me no directions, times, or temperatures, really illustrates the difference between cooking c. 1900 – 1945 when this cookbook was created and cooking today. From start to finish this side dish took me two grueling hours over a hot stove. Hot  because it was a comparatively cool day for the south and we’d turned off the air conditioner, but once I was standing over the stove stirring a white sauce for 15 minutes I had a small appreciation (small) for Aunt Lillian cooking over a wood stove in the middle of the summer. How the heck did they do this?

I researched a bit on line to try to find the answer. If you want to take the time to read an interesting first-person account of using a wood stove in just the exact same period Aunt Lillian was using her’s (early 20th century), check out this historical society newsletter.  From this account, I learned that in the summer, women would do all their cooking for the day in the early morning when it was cooler and then let the stove die out. Which would mean your main meals of the day in the summer were always cold. Interesting, but sensible as I can’t imagine cooking in the heat over those monsters. The times they did keep the stove going were wash day on Monday and when they were canning preserves.

But I digress. Let’s start with the simple recipe in the cookbook:

• 5 cups shredded cabbage (I used an heirloom cabbage from Barking Dog Farm in Benton!)
• 1 cup finely cut cheese
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons fat
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups buttered crumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon grated cheese

Make white sauce of the flour, fat, and milk.

With those hand written instructions I began looking for similar recipes in my cookbooks and didn’t have far to look. I guess this was a popular recipe. Fanny Farmer’s 1924 cookbook had Escalloped Cabbage which gave me the hint that the cabbage must be cut into pieces and boiled, put into a buttered baking dish, and that the white sauce and seasoning should be mixed in. Then the buttered bread crumbs should be placed on top and the whole thing baked until brown.

I had no idea how to “make” bread crumbs. Like all good modern cooks I buy them in a can. So I started there by making my own bread crumbs. The 1942 Fanny Farmer (which also had a Scalloped Cabbage recipe) has directions for making bread crumbs from scratch. I’ve included this link that shows a more modern way with a cuisinart which I think is cheating. But it gives you a good picture of what they should look like when finished. I followed the 1942 Fanny Farmer recipe for making the bread crumbs.

Making bread crumbs - in the bag ready to be crushed

Now to me, making bread crumbs was a total pain. Here’s a tip – you really need to have your bread be several days old and already stale. Mine was not and it was soft and moist. So it took 45 minutes in a 210 degree oven to get to a stage where I could put the cubes in a bag and start whacking away with a rolling pin. Even then, they weren’t dry enough so for the most part they didn’t get small enough. But I had to make do with not perfect bread crumbs to which I added 1 tablespoon of melted butter and the 1 tablespoon of grated cheese. I mixed this all together and created a bread crumb topping. This was saved for when the casserole was ready.

Cabbage ready to go into the oven

After making the breadcrumbs here’s the recipe I used merging Aunt Lillian’s amounts with the Fanny Farmer directions:

• Core and shred 5 cups of cabbage
• Boil the cabbage for 10 minutes, strain and place in a buttered casserole dish
• Add 1 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper to the cabbage
• Make a white sauce in a double boiler
• Melt 4 tbs. butter
• Add the 4 tbs. of flour, whisking as you add it to create a smooth paste
• Slowly add the 2 cups of milk, whisking the sauce until it thickens for about 15 minutes
• Add the white sauce to the casserole dish
• Add 1 cup finely cut cheese to the casserole and mix everything together
• Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top
• Put in a 350 degree oven and cook for 45 minutes or until top is brown.

The whole thing from start to finish took about 2 hours and I had dirtied just about every pan in the house. The result? Again heaven. Cooking from scratch makes everything taste so much better and of course the addition of the heirloom cabbage is a plus! Our milk and butter is organic and the bread was made at a bakery.

Ready to eat

Would I cook this again. No way! It was far too much work although maybe now that I know how to make the breadcrumbs they won’t seem so daunting. But when you throw in the shredding of the cabbage and the making of the white sauce. Nah. And Dan didn’t like it finding the consistency weird.  And when reheated the next day it did not hold up well at all. This is a recipe that must be eaten the day it was made.

But the recipe did teach me quite a few new things and gave me an appreciation for the difficulty of cooking some recipes from scratch and a small hint at cooking over a wood stove in the heat.

Molasses Cookie recipe page from Great Aunt Lillian's antique cook book - recipe on top

This week I thought I’d try something fairly easy so I found Lillian’s recipe for Molasses Cookies. They seemed fairly easy and I’ve certainly made molasses cookies before.

As with all her recipes though research was required as there was nothing more than the bare ingredients listed and one tantalizing hint on what to do.

Here’s the recipe as she wrote it out:

Molasses Cookies

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup hot water
• teaspoon soda
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar & salt
• flour to roll easily
  

  I'm trying to use all vintage tools when I cook these recipes!

Thanks Lillian! Flour to roll easily. Now there’s a mystery term which left me not knowing how much flour, or what “to roll easily” meant. Was I going to roll these cookies into balls? Tubes? Or what?

Off to the cookbooks and internet to research I went and here’s what I discovered about molasses cookies.

First off, like last week’s cole slaw, cookie is a Dutch term that came to us via the Dutch who settled in New York state!  The Dutch called their little cakes, “kockje” and the term caught on in America. British settlers called them little cakes and biscuits which did not win out. One thing I’m learning here is the Dutch influenced our cooking more than I knew!

Molasses as a sweetener has been around forever and was very popular in America since the early Colonial times. My 1914 Fanny Farmer cookbook has three versions of Molasses cookies, as does the 1944 version.  Lillian’s cookbook has several versions of Molasses Cookies that I look forward to trying.

As I read through the recipes, I realized that many were for what is referred to as a Rolled Molasses Cookie, as opposed to a Dropped Cookie. And so the mysterious “Flour to roll easily” became more obvious. I would need to add enough flour to make a dough that could be rolled out with a rolling pin.

Here's how thick the batter should look so it's "ready to roll."

The 1914 cookbook also omits the amount of flour, leaving it up to the cook to create a dough the right consistency for your cookie! This type of knowledge comes with lots of cooking experience.  I finally found an early 1900s recipe on line which gave me enough knowledge to proceed.

Here’s my notes and additions to the recipe:

• Take the butter out of the refrigerator an hour before baking to soften
• Cream 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 cup butter using a pastry cutter (I don’t use modern tools – only vintage)
• add 1/2 cup molasses to the sugar and butter
• add 1 teas baking soda to 1/2 cup hot water and stir into the molasses mixture
• add 1/2 teas. sugar and 1/2 teas. salt to 3 1/2 cups flour
• add this dry mixture a little at a time to your wet mixture and stir to blend after each addition.
• you should have a stiff dough
• cover and refrigerate for 2 hours
• preheat oven to 375 degrees before your ready to bake
• take dough out of refrigerator and take half of the dough and place it on a floured surface
• roll it out with a floured rolling pin to 1/4 inch thickness
• cut circular cookies and place on a buttered (no Pam!) cookie sheet
• bake for 10 minutes

Me, taste testing the finished batch. Yummy!

The result? Divine! They were not overwhelming in molasses taste. It was quite subtle. But the taste and texture was very nice. Like little cakes. Not too sweet, but very satisfying just like the cupcakes I had made earlier.

Question? Have our recipes become so sweet and fat laden that we are on overload even when we bake from scratch? Except for the date bars, two out of three of the desserts I’ve made have been only lightly sweetened and not very fatty.

Here’s a modern version for you to look at from www.cooks.com:

Summer is here and the Five Points Farmers Market is in full swing right outside my door at work every Thursday afternoon. So I thought it would be good if I tried one of Aunt Lillian’s vegetable recipes. There’s been lots of cabbage in the market right now, so I thought I’d try her Cabbage with French Dressing, which is essentially a Cole Slaw recipe. But, it’s not like any modern cole slaw!

Now, I’m no fan of cole slaw. When you get it at restaurants, and it’s quite popular here in the south, it comes chopped very fine and so drowned in mayonnaise and sugar that to me its totally unpalatable. I just don’t touch the stuff.

Turns out cole slaw has a long history in America going back to the Dutch who brought it with them as Koolsla when they settled New York. Kool is Dutch for cabbage and sla for salad and voila you have cole slaw. The salad became popular with others beyond the Dutch community and became as American as apple pie. It is a summer staple for picnics, and here in Tennessee it is an important part of our barbeque sandwiches (placed on top of the barbeque with the bun then placed on top of the slaw).

Tennessee barbecue sandwich with slaw. Photo courtesy of Amy Evans of the Southern Culinary Association.

So, I purchased my organic cabbage from the Greenway Table folks at the market Thursday and yesterday I made this strange cole slaw. Strange because rather than dousing it with cold mayonnaise and sugar, I made a hot dressing that I poured over the shredded cabbage, which I then allowed to cool! Go figure. What I actually made was a Victorian era hot slaw, which was very popular back then.

As you know, many people today call their cole slaw “cold slaw” because we serve it cold. There also are/were hot slaws that were made with dressings that were heated and poured over the cabbage, which wilts the cabbage somewhat. My 1928 Fanny Farmer cookbook has a hot slaw recipe with a dressing similar to Aunt Lillian’s, as does my 1944 version. For that matter my 1977 Joy of Cooking still has a Boiled Dressing for Cole Slaw, but I doubt anyone today uses boiled dressings for cole slaw. Maybe I’m wrong on this though.

Here’s how things went. First I wanted to make sure I was shredding and coring the cabbage correctly. Here’s a great site that shows you exactly how in case you’ve never done it. It really is a good idea to do this by hand, rather than with the cuisinart that makes too small a cut. You want the nice long thing shreds.

Preparing to make cole slaw with organic ingredients

Here’s Lillian’s recipe with my notes included in italics:

Cabbage with French Dressing (as far as I can tell this bears no resemblance to any French Dressing)

• Core and slice cabbage into their shavings
• Layer shavings in a large bowl with salt and pepper between the layers
• In a double boiler begin the dressing
• Put into the double boiler the following:
• 1/2 cup milk
• Abeaten egg (try to choose free range – it will be the most like what they had back then)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• Butter the size of a walnut (yep, she actually wrote this! My research tells me this is 1 1/2 tablespoons)
• Stir this over the double boiler with a wire whisk until it thickens and almost comes to a boil
• 

  The thickened "French Dressing"

  • Take off the heat at that point and add 1/2 c. white vinegar and stir
• Pour this over the cabbage and stir
• Cool and serve

Wow! Does this ever taste good! Light, fresh, crisp, yummy. This bears no resemblance to the slaw we are used to that swims in mayonnaise and has no taste. You will taste the crunch of the cabbage and the creaminess of the dressing. While you are using butter, milk, and sugar, you are using no oil and what little fat is in this is being distributed over a lot of cabbage!

Great Aunt Lillian's Cabbage with French Dressing or Hot Slaw

There are a few more slaw recipes in Lillian’s cook book and we are eager to try them now. I encourage you to give this recipe a try – you will never look at cole slaw again in the same light!  And do let me know if you have a hot slaw recipe that you use. Perhaps there are more of you out there than I’m aware of.

My second attempt at cooking from Great Aunt Lillian’s cook book proved to be a daunting and time consuming experience. The cupcakes were so easy so I thought date bars would be a breeze. Boy was I wrong!

Two weeks later (my work got so in the way!) and with three attempts under my belt I now have a successful Date Bar recipe experience to share with you. Here’s some of the issues I faced in finding the solution to Great Aunt Lillian’s Date Bars.

Problem number one: Finding a vintage recipe to help me

Hand written recipe next to modern notes

Great Aunt Lillian used a wood stove up until she died in 1945 so her recipes do not include oven temperatures, times, or directions. Just the ingredients and amounts. So, for me to replicate them in my modern electric stove I need to find a similar vintage recipe that helps me figure out what to do. I search cookbooks and on line for recipes from c. 1901, when Great Aunt Lillian married Great Uncle Charles, up to her death in 1945. Here’s how Lillian’s recipe looks in her hand written cook book:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 level teaspoon soda
• 1/3 cup butter

____________________

Filling

• 3/4 lb dates
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 cup water
• juice of one lemon or orange

The recipes I found for Date Bars in early 20th century cook books I own mixed the dates into the flour and did not have this “filling” which implied a layer of batter, a filling of dates, followed by a top layer of batter. I looked on line and the closest thing I could find was a modern recipe and video on how to make them on the website, Taste of Home, for date squares.

I emailed Lynne Olver of the Food Timeline and asked if she could help me find any vintage recipes using this layering technique. She graciously sent me two samples. These recipes came from a Better Homes and Garden cook book dated 1953 and a Woman’s Home Companion cook book dated 1942.

Cooking the filling

With all of these recipes as a guide I cooked my first attempt.  I began by making the filling. All went well. I measured out the dates using my scale and cooked them for five minutes into this nice gooey filling. I set it aside and then made the dough.

The dough seemed a bit dry, really just crumbs that don’t hold together, which worried me. I patted half of them in a buttered pan, spread the filling in and then topped it with

The pan before baking

the rest of the dough. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the  whole process.

All the recipes called for baking the bars at 350. How long to cook the bars varied from 20 minutes to 35 minutes. I tried 25 and took the Bars out not knowing if its lack of firmness to the touch was just because it was warm. I hoped it would firm up with cooling.

The cooked bar

Uh, no, it did not firm up with cooling and remained a gooey sticky mess. Yuck. Obviously undercooked. I vowed to try again.

But rather than wait until I had enough dates, I got anxious and decided I would try two things different. First, I would mix dates with raisins since I didn’t have enough dates. And second, I would follow a different recipe for the filling that produced less filling. There seemed to be a lot of filling in Aunt Lillian’s recipe.

Problem Number 2: Do Not Deviate from the Recipe!

What a disaster! I never made it very far that night. I just made the filling and stopped. Raisins just don’t seem to have the same consistency as dates when cooked with sugar and water on the stove. They never broke down much with the heating and never made the nice gooey thick filling that the dates did the first time I followed Aunt Lillian’s recipe. So, lesson learned. No substitutes smarty pants!

Round Three – Success, But……

Yep, I tried again. I carefully measured, weighed, sighed, prayed, and did everything I could to make successful Date Bars. I even let them cook 15 minutes longer and yes, they are better than before. They were still pretty gooey until they cooled.  The taste – well they are VERY sweet! Too sweet really for our modern tastes.  I’m glad I finally succeeded, but Date Bars will not be on my list to make again.

However, if you’d like to try and see for yourself here is my recipe:

First, take the butter out and let it soften well ahead of time! It will make your life easier!

To make the filling:

• 2 1/2 c. dates
• 1/3 c. white sugar
• 1. c water
• juice of a lemon

Put all into a pan over medium heat. Bring to a low boil and let simmer for five minutes stirring constantly to thicken. Take off the heat.

To make the dough:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 level teaspoon soda
• 5 1/3 tablespoons butter (which is the same as 1/3 cup butter)

Mix the dry ingredients. Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until you have mixed it well.

Butter a long thin pan. Pat half the dough into the bottom, spread the date mixture on top and then sprinkle the remaining dough on top. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Let cool completely on a wire rack.

I’m looking forward to my next venture from Lillian’s cook book – Cabbage and Cheese Scallop, since the Farmers Market has lots of fresh cabbage! While there will be no fear of too much sugar for this recipe, there is the frightening 4 tablespoons of fat in the recipe……oh my!

Everyone is talking about the Slow Food Movement now and rightfully so. It’s great to get away from the additives, high fructose corn syrups, and processed foods that we, as Americans, have become so accustomed to eating. Going back to our roots and eating food made from scratch, using local ingredients, and organic products is really the way to go both for health and for the local economy.

As an historian, I have stumbled on a unique look at the Slow Food Movement. This week my Sister-In-Law mailed us two old worn cookbooks as she is cleaning house to downsize for retirement. One was quite old and was filled with hand written recipes, which I assumed dated from the the very early 20th century to the mid-20th century. The other was newer dating from around the mid 20th century.

As I poured through the recipes, I realized who the owners were. The older book belonged to Dan’s great aunt Lillian, a woman I never knew, but who I’m deeply connected to. I wear her engagement ring from c. 1909 which was purchased at Shreve Crump & Low in Boston.  Dan loved his Uncle Charles (as he called him even though he was his Great Uncle) and spent many wonderful summers at his home in Kittery Point, Maine. Lillian lived from 1879-1945 and married Uncle Charles in 1909. She probably started her cook book after her marriage and from the looks of some of the recipes cut out of newspapers she continued it up to her death

We know that Lillian cooked all her life on a wood stove as Dan remembers that Uncle Charles cooked on the same stove up until his death in 1958. Dan’s mother hated cooking on the stove when the family would come to visit for the summer, but somehow she managed. I wouldn’t have a clue on how to begin.

Thanks to the fact Lillian used a cookstove, the recipes are amazingly brief. No temperatures and no cooking times! And many times the measurements are very vague. Most of the recipes are for desserts and sweets. One wonders how many she actually used, or like many of us did she have good intentions and only write them in and never actually cook them. Some appear stained from use like the muffin, coconut drop cake, date cake, and chocolate fudge pie recipes which all appear well used, while Italian Spaghetti (no doubt very exotic at the time) appears clean as a whistle.

I’ve always loved historic cooking and done my share of it, so I thought it would be fun to try to cook these recipes. It would make me feel closer to Aunt Lillian and Dan’s ancestors and allow me a glimpse of early 20th century life in Kittery, Maine.

So, for the summer I will be cooking the recipes, trying to use local and organic ingredients whenever possible. And I will be blogging about the experience here on Unchained as a way to connect with the Slow Food Movement.

Lillian's recipe from the book

My first experiment was simply entitled Cup Cakes. Here’s the recipe as written by Lillian:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Break 2 eggs into cup and run over just a bit with milk
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder

Wow – how simple can you get! But, yet how daunting. No temperature for baking and no times. And what’s with the “run over just a bit with milk?”

Undaunted I pulled out my 1928, Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer. That gave me a bit more comfort. The recipe was quite different and I didn’t want to alter Lillian’s, but it did give me some hints. I know enough about baking to know that I needed to cream the butter into the sugar to start. Certainly not a lot of butter! I then beat the eggs in a bowl and did just as told – took some milk and dashed it over the eggs and then beat them together. Then another hint from Fannie Farmer – I sifted the flower into a separate bowl with the baking powder. Then mixed in the eggs and milk.

The batter is quite stiff, not runny!

This made just enough batter to go into a standard cup cake tin for 12 cupcakes, which I buttered before putting the batter in. But the next problem was that the 1928 Fannie Farmer didn’t have any temperatures or times either! By the 1944 edition (did I mention I collect historic cookbooks?) they are telling you to put them in a moderately hot oven at 375 degrees, but still no time. So, in desperation I went to a modern cookbook and found 20 minutes was about average.

In they went with Mac, the dog, supervising the whole thing with eager eyes!

My kitchen "helper"

After the 20 minutes I tested to see if they were done, and it was perfect! There was no mention anywhere in Lillian’s cook book about icing, so I found a confectioner’s sugar icing in the 1928 cookbook and after cooling iced them with a simple lemon icing.

The Taste Test

My frosting job is pretty bad. But you get the idea of what the cupcakes look like!

I was a bit nervous trying them. I thought how could these be good with so little butter and milk? I was pleasantly surprised as they turned out great! Dan loved them too and the dogs gave them the paws up (but they are not too picky).

Dan and I agreed that these cupcakes taste nothing like the cupcakes of today which I’m not fond of at all, especially the kind that are being sold at these trendy cupcake stores.  To me they are way too sweet and gooey. Aunt Lillian’s cupcakes were substantial and had a rich taste to them that was cakey, moist, and slightly sweet.

For a fascinating history of cupcakes check out Lynne Olver’s great Food History website. There’s even some recipes for cupcakes that look even harder to make!

Please let me know if you make the recipe and what you think of it. I’ll be interested to hear your reaction to Slow Food Movement Cup Cakes – Aunt Lillian Style!

Dan and I spent a week recently traveling in Maryland and Virginia visiting family and friends. Along the way we found some great places to experience unchained stores and restaurants.

We’ve been to Meadows of Dan, located along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Southwest Virginia many times since Dan’s brother and wife live there. It’s a very special place and we are fortunate to have access to it whenever we want!

Early spring in Meadows of Dan, Virginia

The scenery is breathtaking with rolling open pasture views, or spectacular mountain views depending on where you are.  The Blue Ridge Parkway is  a delight to drive on with wonderful scenic views, interpretive stops, and interesting places to visit like Mabry Mill.

The Mill is one of the most photographed mills in the country and when open during the season is a fascinating tour. The restaurant serves a great breakfast. Although the stone ground meal they sell in their gift shop and use to make their wonderful pancakes is not made at the Mill, the breakfast is still very good! Go early though as the lines are very long.

In the tiny town of Meadows of Dan there are a number of quaint shops. Sadly, the state decided they needed a bypass around the center of town, which has greatly hurt their tourism. It was a crazy waste of tax payer money as we have never been in Meadows of Dan when traffic warranted a bypass. This is a great example of someone not thinking!

So, if your in the area, please take the time to drive into the town. Here’s what you will find. One of the first things you’ll see is Poor Farmer’s Market. While it may look like an overgrown gas station, do get out and go in. Felicia Shelor has been running this successful store since 1983. She sells just about everything and its a great place to get sandwiches, homemade desserts, cold drinks, coffee, or  whatever. Dan and I get our Blenheim Ginger ale there, which we adore and can’t find anywhere else.

Fiber Heaven at Greenberry House

Head down the street toward the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and take a left hand jog on Concord Road (not sure if there’s a street sign). You are basically on a small street behind the main shopping district. There you will find two wonderful independent stores. Greenberry House is a one-of-a-kind yarn shop and knitter and weaver’s paradise. While Leslie Shelor (yes, Leslie is related to Felicia. They are cousins) offers low price yarns for local knitters, let’s face it, when knitters are traveling they want to see new and unusual yarns. And boy does Leslie have them! Leslie herself is a spinner and knows many more in the area. This devoted group of spinners are always coming up with beautiful, scrumptious, lovely yarns that are hand-spun and hand-died or are hand-died in an array of colors. I’m a knitter and every time I go I come away with new yarn for a project. Currently I’m working on a shawl with a hand-spun chunky burnt orange yarn that is a joy to work with. I love that its make by a local person from local sheep! Very cool!

Leslie is also a wealth of information about the area and its history as her family goes back many generations. So be sure to ask her anything! She will be happy to fill you in.

Dan browsing for books

If your not into the fiber addiction, you can head next door to Dan River Books. Right off, I have to admit I have a vested interest in this business. Dan River Books belongs to my brother and sister-in-law, Ralph Lutts and Sue Moore. But even if they weren’t relatives, I’d give rave reviews for this discount and used book store. Located in a charming restored home, the shop  is decorated with quilts, teddy bears sporting hand knit sweaters, and other crafts which are all made by Sue and other local craftspeople that are for sale.

Sue's teddies with their hand knit sweaters are for sale!

The store carries a unique selection of discounted newer books and upstairs a great selection of used books. We always find something to buy as we both love books. Dan bought a dog book for his blog research for www.dogtidbits.com and I bought a cookbook.  Both of us detest the rise of the Kindle as its destroying the publishing business.  Read books please! New ones if you can! They are precious objects which need to be kept in our lives.

One place we would not suggest you visit is Nancy’s Candy Shop. We have learned that  their “fudge” is made mainly with lard and very little butter. Their employee practices are very bad and in general they are not a “good company.” Their biggest account is Cracker Barrel, a chain that we would also not want to support.  We don’t often steer people away from a store or restaurant, but in this case, we feel we can  – and should – in good faith.

For those of you that like wineries and fine dining, Chateau Morissette is an experience you won’t forget. The setting is magnificent, the food is to die for, and the wine is excellent. We don’t go there on every visit, but when we do it’s a great occasion! If you can go for a meal – you won’t be disappointed.

Where to stay? When we went for Ralph and Sue’s wedding several year’s ago, the Lutts extended family all stayed at the Woodberry Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Again, another lovely setting overlooking a pond deep in the wood (do you get the feeling that Meadows of Dan only has beautiful scenery?). While the Inn itself has basic motel-like rooms, the setting and the great breakfasts make up for it! We had a very pleasant stay there and it was quite resonable.

I’ll end with a review of a restaurant slightly out of town on the Blue Ridge Parkway that is quite the institution, Tuggles Gap Restaurant. Many of you know I have an extreme fondness for early 20th century motel and tourist architecture and love of the history of early tourism. Tuggles Gap Restaurant and Motel fits the bill for me and the place has been for sale for years tempting me as if Russell Crowe were standing outside my door calling my name. Built in 1938 it consists of a roadside restaurant serving good food and a small motel. The website doesn’t do it justice! The restaurant is a popular stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway for travelers and you should be one of them. You won’t be disappointed.  And who knows? You might find Dan and I slinging hash behind the counter….

Remember – all roads lead to Meadows of Dan. I hope you take the time to travel the Blue Ridge Parkway and find this jewel of a place.

Dan and I took a week-long vacation recently to visit family and friends in Maryland and Virginia. Of course, when we travel we try to do as much as possible unchained. On this trip we stayed with friends in Maryland and family in Virginia. When you stay with people who don’t always hold to your unchained values, we can run into some problems. Sort of like a vegetarian who travels. But we did the best we could and had some great unchained experiences.

Once of the best parts about traveling unchained, of course, is the fact that you meet the locals and get to know the flavor of the communities you are visiting. Over the next several posts I will be highlighting some of the towns and experiences we had on our trip – not necessarily in order of our visit.

I’m actually starting with a neat town that we had lunch in on our way from Maryland to family in Virginia – Staunton. The town is conveniently located off Interstate 81 – a major north/south route that many travel. We’d wanted to stop  in Staunton for quite a while, but never had the chance to.

The Beverly Restaurant, Staunton, Virginia

It was lunch time so we headed downtown past the strip malls with row after row of chains to where we knew the good local eateries would be. Wow – were we in for a treat! After parking our car we spotted a local tourism bureau and headed in to get the lay of the land and perhaps directions to a good place to eat in walking distance. The man at the counter was not only a wealth of information, he was a delight and funny to boot! We came away armed with a map leading us to a local restaurant that had been in business for the past 35 years and hadn’t changed, lots of info on Staunton, and huge smiles on our faces from the joke he’d just told. Boy, I hope the tourism bureau knows what a gem they have in this guy!

A view of my meal - catfish, applesauce, coleslaw - yum!

Staunton has a lovely vibrant downtown with lots of neat shops. We were dying to explore, but knew that we only had time for lunch and then a visit to the Frontier Culture Museum, which I’d wanted to see for years. We then had to head on to Dan’s brothers before nightfall. Lunch was at The Beverley Restaurant. If your looking for great Southern food with old fashioned atmosphere this is it! I’m so hungry just writing about it! I had a fried catfish plate with two sides of homemade applesauce which was the best I’ve ever had and homemade coleslaw which was equally good. Dan had the country ham plate (a bit too salty for my taste for lunch) but he loved it. We were dying to try the homemade desserts but were totally stuffed. The lemon meringue was amazing just to look at though – the meringue was a mile high. We rolled out the door totally stuffed and happy and rolled down the street to our car.

Jolly Ole England? Or Staunton, VA? You decide......

The good news was that we were able to walk it all off at the Frontier Culture Museum. What a neat museum! It’s an outdoor historic site with interpretors in historic dress. You visit the European and English homes of different cultures that immigrated to America and settled in the mountain area of Virginia. They include a 17th c. English yeoman’s home, a 17th c. Scotch/Irish tenant’s home, and a 17th c. German peasant’s home. They are in the process of building a home of an African to represent the slaves who were brought to America. On the other side of the museum you can visit an 18th c. cabin, an early 19th. c. home, and a later 19th . c. farmhouse to see the development of life in that area of Virginia.

Dan in front of his ancestral hearth - his family is from England as well!

We had some interesting conversations with the interpretors and learned quite a bit. I was particularly interested in the three homes and how they were interpreted as I have ancestors from all three areas – English Puritans who came over were yeoman farmers in 17th c. England, a 17th c. Scotch/Irish ancestor who was a weaver and came over as an indentured servant, and French/German Huguenot ancestors who came from Palatine Germany to found New Paltz, NY. It was great being able to see how my ancestors might have lived, worked, etc.

Yes, of course at the end of the tour we stopped in the museum store to see what we might purchase. We bought a stuffed duck for Faith our dog who is a lab mix and loves stuffed animals.  They had the usual books about the area, but one thing that did stand out was they sold the hand made items their black smith made in the Scotch-Irish Forge. That was pretty neat. They also sold pottery brought in from Northern Ireland.

While we didn’t spend the night in Staunton, our relatives have spent a weekend there and highly recommend the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in downtown. Built in 1924, this hotel has been recently renovated, and looks quite charming. And so nice to be able to walk to everything downtown! They went to Staunton specifically because of the American Shakespeare Center and their Blackfriar’s Playhouse. This group has recreated an Elizabethan playhouse and preform not only Shakespeare, but many other period plays that are never performed in any other theater. It looks like loads of fun and Dan and I are planning a long weekend soon to Staunton to check it all out more thoroughly.

For a look at all the things to do in Staunton check out their tourism website. Whether your planning a trip, or stopping along the way on the Interstate, Staunton is definitely a good unchained destination.

Unchained in America was recently cited in a comment on Zero Hedge, an online financial media outlet in an article about the Move Your Money Campaign which is sweeping America.  We’re thrilled when our blog makes it into national media sites, here in reference to not only keeping your money local, but also shopping local.

I had read about the Move Your Money Campaign a few months ago in my copy of Yes! Magazine and was intrigued by the campaign. The idea was started by three big shots sitting around eating dinner after the financial crisis. They decided that one thing they could do to make a difference was to pull their money – and I imagine they have a lot more money than I do – from their big corporate banks and move it to small community banks.

“Community banks are typically more conservative about how they manage their money, they’re more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them, and they’re more inclined to make loans they know will get paid back. In other words, they have the values that more people would want banks to have,” the friends explain on the Move Your Money website.

If you go to the website you can find a link where you can type in your zip code and find local banks where you can move your money. I did and found the local banks I thought I’d find, Bank of Cleveland, Southern Heritage, and Athens Federal. I did not find my bank, First Tennessee, which has branches across the state.

First Tennessee in Cleveland

After reading the article in Yes!, Dan and I had considered moving our money from First Tennessee, but decided not to for a variety of reasons. First Tennessee feels and acts like a local bank to us. We know all the bankers and tellers at our bank on a first name basis and are treated with great customer service. First Tennessee contributes heavily to all the charities in our community – which does not happen with all the big banks in our city. Their staff serve on non-profit boards and get involved in the community.  There just was no way we could see that they weren’t a community bank so we kept our money with them.

But we do encourage you to read about Move Your Money and consider your local community banks. They give so much to their communities! I know that Bank of Cleveland, Southern Heritage and Athens Federal are all great banks that have helped Cleveland immensely. Local is the way to go whether its with your shopping or your bank!

I’d be interested to know about your banking experiences. Drop us a line on the Unchained blog!