Plain But Wholesome: Adventures in Mormon Pioneer Food

Pioneer Trek!

2012-01-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

I checked my email this morning and found a note from a neighbor in my small town. She was recently appointed to be the "food chair" for the Pioneer Trek which will be reenacted this summer. In this celebration of Mormon history, teenage boys and girls don old-timey looking clothes and pull carts through the mountains to re-enact the handcart disasters of 1856. My neighbor saw the blog and thought it looked like a fantastic resource, and wondered why we hadn't chatted sooner.

And then I realized I haven't really written much about trail food here on the blog.

I think I should establish a "Pioneer Trek" area of the blog that is accessible only by a subscription fee. I could give lots of explicit recipes and diary entries, tailored specifically for LDS Pioneer Trek leaders. Wouldn't that be a gold mine? Priestcraft here I come!

But back to the subject, I forwarded this lovely little quote I found in the diary of John Jacques, who was part of the Martin/Willie disaster. He was talking about the handcart company, accompanied by several beeves intended for slaughter, crossing a long waterless stretch of prairie. When the beeves finally smelled the water hole ahead for that night's campsite, they stampeded to the water and wallowed around in it. Jacques wrote, “But it was all the water available and so it was used to cooking purposes— making coffee, tea, bread and porridge or hasty pudding, which when made was quite black, but was eaten and drunk nevertheless.”

So then we would need to put this together with another primary source telling us about "hasty pudding." You can find such references in Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery, 1853. Its basically gruel made from either flour or cornmeal. Sounds tasty eh? I'll have to check back to make sure they put some mud or dirt in, just for accuracy. Shall I submit an invoice to the Stake President? Or just write it off as in-kind tithing?

Bill of Fare: what some Mormons ate...

2012-01-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

As I worked at finishing up the last of the images for the publisher I had occasion to visit the Special Collections at University of Utah's Marriott Library. I must say Walter is among the most helpful and kind of any library personnel I've met in the course of this adventure.

Walter brought out an original 1863 copy of a book by Richard Burton called City of the Saints, which is a travel memoir written by a British fellow passing through Utah in 1860. In this book is a reproduction of the Bill of Fare for the 1860 Territorial Ball. It exhaustively lists the menu for this upper crust dinner. The book is also available through Google books online here if you want to read the whole thing. That's where I got the image below.

So... which of a hundred interesting things on the menu surprised you the most?

Oliver Evans

2012-01-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

I just received two images from the Library of Congress, scanned by my brother from the original text. The text is Oliver Evans' The Young Mill-wright and Miller's Guide. It is of course the most common guide to "how to build your own flour mill" for American millers in the 19th century, and likely used in Utah as Mormon pioneers set up their first flour mills. It was originally published in 1795 but with reprints and revised editions in 1823, 1834, 1850 etc. It is still in print today, published by the Sociey for Preservation Of Old Mills (SPOOM).

The images below were stolen from another online source as the images I received are reproduction quality and too large for Blogger to download and host. Even so, the images are more than a hundred years old and free of any claims for copyright or royalty. The same images should appear in my book as supporting historical documents which describe the state of flour milling in Utah in the 1850s. I think they are just nifty. Check this out!

Yesterday I received permission for using 50 photos from Utah State Historical Society. The final manuscript and images have all been delivered. I've signed the contract with the publisher (University of Utah Press). They tell me it will be in their Fall catalog, coming out in October. Getting closer. Now just typsetting, proof reading, indexing, etc., etc.

Historical Fruit Trees

2012-01-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends. I hope your holiday season was filled with opulent indulgences of seasonal and historical foods. I certainly came out of it with a pound or two or more to lose. You?

I'm working on the images for the book. I turned in the final draft of the manuscript and signed the contract during the holidays. Now I'm just nailing down the images. We decided to not do any "food porn" glamour shots of dishes made from the historical recipes. Instead we're going with mostly historical images like those from my last post, augmented with a few modern photos of historical properties. So I went out and took pictures around northern Utah. Here's a couple of interesting shots that tell a little food story...

The photo above is of a pear tree, about 160 years old, planted at the site of Brown's Fort, the first Mormon settlement in Ogden, Utah. These days the site is managed by Weber County Parks and is called "Fort Buenaventura," a name that never existed in historical documents but makes a good marketing hook. Brown's Fort (a.k.a. Brownsville) was settled by James Brown, a veteran of the Mormon Battalion campaign. About a dozen families lived at Brown's Fort. The pear tree is still alive, but quite beyond bearing.

The photo above is of a pear tree grafted from a scion of the historical pear tree. This pear tree, also quite unpruned and neglected, is planted in the garden area near the recreation of Brown's Fort. I believe it bears fruit. It is about ten years old. If you wanted to steal a historical pear, the fort is located off west 24th Street in Ogden, just over the viaduct and down past the baseball diamond.

I have read that there are several historical apple trees in the urban Salt Lake City area. I also believe that This Is The Place grafted scions from historical trees about five years ago, but that these trees have died from neglect. Such seems to be the case with our historical properties more often than not.

Do you know of any historical food elements on the landscape near your home?

Historical Photos & Images

2011-11-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

I've been working on finding photos for the book. Here are some historical photos for your enjoyment. These photos are all from Utah State History, archived online. They have a great searchable database that you can browse.

A buffalo hunting scene. Peregrine Sessions chased buffalo in this manner in 1847, and brought 1,800 lbs of meat back to the camp.

Fruit grown in Toquerville, famous as a wine making region in the 1860s. I just love that dusty coating of yeast.

Interior of a bakery in Helper, Utah. The large wooden box on the right is for proofing dough. The oven is the hole in the wall behind the baker.

A wheat field, harvested in shocks by hand.

A bakery in the boom town of Corinne, Utah, about 1869, out of a tent. And a book store behind it.

All In...

2011-11-15T13:31:00.001-08:00

I was looking for historical photos online and stumbled onto the blog for the Mount Pleasant Pioneer Relic Hall. I think I've mentioned this blog before here. It's like peeking through the scrapbook of your mother's cousin: interesting in unexpected ways. At any rate, the following recipe was posted there.

At the bottom is a note indicating the recipe came from "Wilhemina Henrietta Morrison Eriksen." With the recipe titled, "Finnan Haddie with Tomatoes (Fish)" and the attributed author having the Scandinavian last name of Eriksen, and the recipe coming from the heavily Danish area of Sanpete Valley in Utah, I thought this would likely be a Danish recipe.

Isn't it curious that nobody ever seems to collect the provenance for these things? It would seem to me that these things are important. When did Wilhemina come to Utah? Or was she born here? Was she a 20th century pioneer? Where were her parents from? How old is this recipe?

It turns out that both of her parents, William Morrison and Margaret Cruikshank, were from Scotland. They came to the Sanpete Valley in the 1850s and Wilhemina was born in 1859. Finnan haddie is a traditional Scottish dish made with smoked haddock. Here Wilhemina adapts the recipe for used with salted dried fish, similar to the salt cod that Brigham Young's wife might have used to make codfish gravy. Apparently, immigrants continued to insist on maintaining their maritime foodways even while living a thousand miles from an ocean.

Curious...

Big News!

2011-11-08T12:39:00.001-08:00

Yeah yeah, its been a while. I haven't had anything to blog about as I haven't had any new research. For the past few months the manuscript has been going through a series of revisions and reviews, but recently (last week) the manuscript was accepted for publication by University of Utah Press. Yay! So now we're back to work getting it ready for typesetting etc.

Among other things, the editor tells me that I need to come up with some photos. Some of these will be historical, such as this image of early commercial fishing on Utah Lake...

They say they would also like some modern full color photos of some (or many) of the recipes in the book, all made up and ready to serve. Like this photo of bread from a past blog entry...

The trouble is, I've never been big on photos and I haven't taken a lot of photos as I've been cooking. I have a couple here and there, but not as many as the editor is talking about. So here's an idea... what if any interested parties wanted to volunteer? I could send you a recipe, you make it and photograph it, and send me back lovely print-ready high resolution images? Most of the recipes that will be in the book have not been published here before. So you'd get a sneak peek at them before anyone sees the book for sale. Tempting, no? Send me an email ("contact us") and I'll send you a recipe to try.

Isn't it nice to have friends?

Welsh Potatoes

2011-07-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Hello again friends. I'm plugging away on the requested revisions to the book. Originally I had written a chapter about Danish foodways, as the Scandinavians comprised about a third of the foreign born population in Utah, and in some places like Ephraim and Brigham City dominated the local culture. The requested revision is to balance the chapter with the three major foreign born populations: British Isles, Scandinavian, and German-speaking (primarily Swiss).

I hadn't thought the British foodways would be anything special. After all, how different could it be from the New England foods that typified Brigham Young's diet? Yesterday at the LDS Archives I got to reading a diary of a Welsh convert, William Ajax. He often wrote in Gaelic, particularly poems and place names. I think this shows his reluctance to leave the culture entirely behind.

Upon reaching Salt Lake City Ajax lamented that potatoes seem to be a rare item in the city, and he had none all the way across the plains. Butter likewise, he says, is rare, as are onions and cheese. Upon further research, it appears these items are mainstays for Welsh cuissine. The potato was, as in Ireland, one of the major Welsh crops, and it shows up in such dishes as potato cakes (teissenau tatws) and potato based stews such as tatws pum munud.

I've made potato cakes for years, and never thought of them as exotic or foreign. I like my welsh-influenced potato cakes much better than the latkes we have at Passover. The basic formula is just a cup of mashed potatoes, a fourth-cup flour, an egg, and a splash of milk. Like William Ajax, I like onions in lots of things, so I mince half an onion and mix that in. William also likes traditional Welsh cheddar, so I often shred a bit of that and mix it in. S & P to taste, of course, and then fry in bacon fat. Later in William's diary he made note of a kind neighbor who gave him a half pound of bacon fat. Gotta thank God for good neighbors.

The garden is going nuts these days, and I'm finishing up a chicken coop. William Ajax started his "stock" with a single laying hen shortly after entering the valley, and I hope to do the same soon. Until then...

Howdy Stranger

2011-06-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a while. Sorry about that. Sometimes I think my obscure efforts are hardly worth doing, so I stop for a bit. Then I find that these obscure efforts are the only thing that keeps me going. So here I am again.

The publishers tell me that they think archaeologists are a strong audience for the book, if it ever gets published. To that end, they want me to include more spin around material culture (read: shattered pottery mixing bowls) so that archaeologists can use my book to help them interpret what they're finding in their excavations.

So I was reading an archaeological report about findings at the original site of Goshen, circa 1860. This little town was about two miles west of the current Goshen, down near Santaquin. The original site was on alkalai soil, so crops wouldn't grow, and they had to move.

Things you can learn from that sentence alone: Utah's history is intricately tied to food history. They moved a whole town based on food and agriculture. They picked the buildings up and moved them, leaving an exquisite, undisturbed archaeological footprint. Also, we learn that if you're looking for saleratus, you can find some near the old Goshen townsite. Saleratus is what made alkalai soil. Again, food.

So, among other things I learned from the archae report: the Mormon settlers circa 1860 left a lot of broken dishes in their abandoned cellars. (Cellars: food. Dishes: food) And what sort of broken dishes? Rustic Mormon earthenware you think? Grainy, salt-glazed stoneware? Nope. Nope.

Blue Willow.

Blue willow also makes a strong showing in the DUP Museum, with good provenance among early plains-crossing pioneers. By the way, Blue Willow was first designed in the mid-1700s, and JCPenny still has a line of it in production today. Apparently, it is THE PATTERN for sentimental Mormons. I've got some in my curio cabinet. Do you?

Detective Work, part deux

2011-03-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

Pretty sophisticated huh? Deux?

Anyway, last time we saw a recipe card from Alice Hafen. Alice's recipes are often referenced as being from the pioneer tradition, and as an example of the Sanpete Valley's Danish food tradition. The recipe is transcribed as follows:

"Quick Danish Soup
1 lb. ground beef
1 qt. water
2 tb chicken soup base
1 tb. beef soup base
1 qt. water [error?]
6 carrots, diced
4 potatoes diced
1 onion chopped
2 stalks celerey sliced
1 8 0z can tomato sauce
2 tb parsely minced
1 ts salt
1 ts. M.S.G. accent
1/4 ts. pepper

Drop crumbled raw meat into 1 qt. lightly boiling water, seasoned with chicken base & beef base. Cook 10 minutes (or until meat is brown). Cool skim off fat. Add 1 more qt water, vegetables, tomatoe sauce & seasonings. Cook just until vegetables are tender. (still firm) Add water to taste. Reheat yield 12 servings."

Some of the questions I had after seeing this were, "How much does this recipe reflect the foods of Alice's Danish pioneer ancestors? How much has this recipe changed over four generations removed from Denmark?" My friend Stephen Shepherd took one look at the recipe and said, "Not pioneer, not Danish." After all, MSG, canned tomato sauce, instant processed soup base?

I first turned to The Internet (DUN Dun dun!), that definitive source of all things authoratative, and found a modern recipe for a Danish soup called "gronkaal." Gronkaal (green kale?) apparently means "green & curly things" like cabbage, kale, or spinach. The recipe I found is for a kale soup, and the recipe called for tomato sauce. Maybe modern Danish cooking has embraced a few foreign ingredients. I have a different recipe for gronkall from 1973 which doesn't call for tomato sauce or hamburger, but does call for a ham bone or ham hocks.

My oldest gronkall recipe comes from a second generation Danish immigrant, whose mother came to Utah from Denmark in 1868. I believe the recipe was transcribed in the 1930s. This one calls for 8 different kinds of greens beyond spinach as the base. It also calls for 2 quarts beef stock and pre-cooked meatballs (frickadeller)dropped into the broth. No tomato sauce, no MSG.

It looks like some elements of Alice's Danish soup maintained integrity to the original Danish tradition, and she adapted other elements to meet her tastes and needs. It seems that integrity to the original Danish formula was not the highest priority. Instead, the value was Danish identity. For whatever reason, Alice considered this dish as a reinforcement of her Danish heritage. I think that's the important idea.

As modern Mormons we don't follow the same religious behaviors as our pioneer ancestors. We place emphasis on different parts of the religion today to reinforce our identity as Mormons. And we adapt the theology to fit our needs. I don't think anyone would expect anything different. I think this is the same approach Alice Hafen took to her identity as a daughter of Danish pioneers.

Detective Work

2011-03-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went down to the Sanpete Valley to do research for the upcoming radio show (StoryRoad Utah for KSL). While I was there I learned about a blog called Pioneer Recipes. The blog is a sister to another Sanpete history blog, Mt. Pleasant Pioneer Relic Hall. Both are orchestrated by a nice woman named Kathy, who also helps to run the Mount Pleasant Pioneer Relic Hall.

When I first found the Pioneer Recipes blog, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Some of the recipes seemed to have the hallmarks of pioneer foodways, but I couldn't be sure since there wasn't any identified provenance. Without identifiers for dates, people, or places, how can we know that the recipe really is... Pioneer. However, in talking with Kathy over the weekend, she told me that many of the recipes come from Alice Hafen. That was a lead.

It turns out that Alice (1912-2010) wrote a cookbook that documented her Danish foodways as she inherited them from her mother, Margaret Peel (1880-1967). The Peel family was part of the original Danish settlement of the Sanpete Valley, going back to the first blacksmith in Mount Pleasant, Peter Madsen Peel. My friend Dale Peel is from this clan. He makes traditional Mormon pioneer-styled furniture in Mount Pleasant.

Back to Alice Peel Hafen then. Alice wrote a cookbook to preserve some of her Danish foodways. I have not seen this cookbook, and I don't know the title. Kathy tells me that it has been through two sold-out editions. It wasn't available in the Relic Hall, or in the Ephraim public library, and wasn't on sale at the Ephraim co-op. It would be quite a valuable document I think, but it wasn't available anywhere I looked.

Alice would have been at least four generations removed from Denmark (or Norway), as it was her great-grandparents who came to Utah in the 1850's. Her grandfather Christian Peel (or Pihl) was born in Independence, Missouri, 1854, as the family was enroute to Utah. Yet, Alice still held firmly to her Danish heritage and Danish foodways. The following image, a recipe card from Alice's files, comes to us from Mt. Pleasant Pioneer Relic Hall:

So the questions remaining for me are: How much does this recipe reflect the contemporary Danish foodways of the 1850s? How did this recipe change over four generations? Why did Alice hold onto this one particularly? Are there other Danish-influenced chefs and recipes in Mount Pleasant and the Sanpete Valley, or was Alice the last of the breed? In other words, what is the context?

I hope to explore some of these questions in the next blog post.

First Fire

2011-03-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Not much to say but...

Looks like pizza tonight!

Pie Night

2011-03-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

No pioneers here today. Just wanted to let you know tonight was Lip Synch & Pie Night for the ward party. I entered a banoffe pie, wife entered a pecan pie. I won "Best Most Unusual Pie" and she got second place overall. I got a certificate suitable for framing, she got a nice faberware stainless steel pie server. So there.

Nothing to see here...

2011-03-10T15:30:00.001-08:00

No new research to report. I've been working on the oven. Today I finished the main baking chamber. The firebrick was extremely dense and hard, and wouldn't cut even with a diamond masonry blade. Mostly I used the bricks in the shapes they came in. However, as you see the entry is turned on 45 degrees (due to space limitations and the pre-established location of the flue) I did have to make some cuts on the last course of the roof to accommodate. At any rate, here are some poor quality pictures.

Here is the interior. You might have to click to open the picture to see it. I had a shop light shining into the oven, but it turned out dark.

Here is the oven door. You may notice I used a steel lintel instead of an arch. Don't worry, there will be functional arches aplenty. Again, the 45 angle on the entry complicated the merger of roof to wall so that an arch was impractical, given my bricks that would not cut. The entry is 9x18, and too small for me to fit into. Fortunately my children are still small.

Here is the front elevation, such as it is. I think there's about 7,000 pounds of bricks and mortar sitting there. So far the floor hasn't cracked.

Next chore is to put some sort of sealing stucco over the whole thing, and then figure out how the chimney will work. Gosh this is taking forever.

Towards a Pioneer Food Ethic

2011-03-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made a vegetable soup for dinner, which started with me heading out to the garden to dig some carrots. We left most of the carrots in the ground through the winter, and every time the ground thawed a little I went out and dug a few. They've lasted all the way through till now, with pretty good flavor too.

We also did well with our onions last year. Our basement stays cool, so the onions kept just fine in a cardboard box. We haven't bought carrots or onions in more than six months. We haven't bought jam or jelly in more than a year.

As I was making dinner I got to thinking about how I might define a modern pioneer food ethic. It might be similar to a Slow Food ethic, but it would find greater context from our pioneer ancestors. I imagine that any two people might implement it differently, but there would be common fundamental values. Here's a trial stab at one description of what it means to follow a pioneer food ethic.

Agriculture: Our pioneer ancestors lived in an agricultural economy. Their daily meals came from their relationship with agriculture. A pioneer food ethic would have a personal agricultural connection. For some this would mean growing a garden or keeping chickens. For others this would mean a first-hand relationship with the farmers who grow their food. A personal agricultural effort allows us to access a diverse range of food beyond the grocery store.

Seasonality: Direct relationships with agriculture imply seasonal patterns. Summer meals emphasize fresh produce; winter meals utilize root vegetables and preserved foods. Pioneer food systems cycled with the seasons; we follow this pattern.

Preserves: Pioneers preserved foods for winter to optimize the harvest and nutrtitional value. We might put up preserves for similar reasons. Additionally, we preserve foods to access a diversity of possibilities that aren't available at the grocery store, and to emphasize a providential attitude.

Home Cooking: It goes without saying that pioneer foods are home-prepared, not eaten out.

Social Meaning: Food served as a social vehicle for pioneers, and continues to do so for us today. We seek to amplify the social connections facilitated by pioneer foodways. We value food exchanges, whether garden seeds and produce; one jar of preserves for another; meals shared with friends; or a warm dish given to an under-the-weather friend. We value the exchange of ideas and information that comes with the exchange of food, as we share garden tips and cooking tips when we share those foods.

Do you have any suggestions for things I haven't considered?

Wood Fired Oven Photos

2011-03-03T17:55:00.001-08:00

A week or two ago I got some explicit direction from the Press about what I need to do to make my manuscript acceptible, but I haven't done any of it because I'm working to finish the oven. Here are some photos of the latest progression of work on the oven.

Here you see the understructure. The center wall provides support for the concrete slab that will sit above it. The two arched openings are simply access to the area under the oven. The purpose to this point was to elevate the slab to a standing work level.

Here you see the hearth bricks after the slab has been poured. I put a couple of inches of sand on top of the slab and then leveled the bricks into the sand.

Here you see the arch of the roof beginning to take shape over the oven floor. The bricks for the roof came cut as keystone shapes, which made the arch a little easier to fit.

Here you see the facade, and the sidewalls of the oven door opening. The darker colored bricks and mortar are todays work. The work below has been coated with the same fine layer of brick dust that pervades everything in the basement, much to my wife's chagrin.

Here you see the bubble in my level. Though it looks pretty good in this photo, I can assure you that the actual brick work is not nearly so uniform. I am constantly vexed by this little bubble.

There you have it. Maybe I'll finish soon and be ready to get back to revising and editing the manuscript. Or maybe when the oven is done I'll spend all my time baking and never finish the manuscript. Only heaven knows...

A Whisk!

2011-02-25T17:37:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I guess my riddles are too easy. It is a whisk.

I was just excited to find it in a museum. I had read the following instruction on egg beating from Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery (1840):

Persons who do not know the right way, complain much of the fatigue of beating eggs, and therefore leave off too soon. There will be no fatigue, if they are beaten with the proper stroke, and with wooden rods, and in a shallow, flat-bottomed earthen pan.

I imagined someone holding a handful of sticks. But there we have evidence of an early whisk, to meet Leslie's description somewhat. And I was even more amazed that someone would care to preserve such an artifact for a hundred and fifty years. I mean, its just a bunch of twigs. But some granddaughter of Ole Anderson cherished that bundle of twigs. I like that idea, a lot.

What is it?

2011-02-24T17:36:00.001-08:00

I was at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum the other day (where they don't allow photos) and saw this curious object. What is it? Its not the broom made of corn straw. And I'm not talking about the little rolling pin. I'm talking about the assemblege of willow sticks, made by Ole Anderson in early Pleasant Grove days. What would possess a person to preserve such an artifact made of willow sticks for more than a hundred years?

The never-ending book saga...

2011-02-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

So I finally heard back from the publisher... again. To catch you up on the story, I first submitted a manuscript to USU Press a couple of years ago. They sat on it for a year, then submitted it to outside reviewers. The outside reviewers said "Great, overall, change this or that." So I changed this or that. Then USU Press gave it to their Committee In Charge of Approving Manuscripts for Publication (or something like that). The committee said, "In these economic times, we want to save our publishing resources for just faculty works." And with that I was back to square one.

So now I've given it to a different press, they submitted it to outside reviewers, the reviewer said, "Great, overall, change this or that." So now they say if I can make the changes in a month or so, we might be able to resubmit for another round of outside reviews, and perhaps be in production before the end of summer, publication next year, if all goes well.

They did also say they really like the manuscript, they think there's a market, they think it is an important contribution to the body of research, etc. Just needs revisions, and more revisions.

Soooo tedious.

Brigham Young, redux

2011-02-14T14:03:00.000-08:00

I just heard back from yet another reviewer for my manuscript. It looks like we're getting closer. He enjoyed reading it, said he learned new things, etc. On the "need to fix" column, he said the first couple of chapters needed some organizational focus and editing. I have a chapter about Brigham Young as an example of non-typical pioneer diets: things exotic and unusual and indulgent. The reviewer didn't like this chapter.

In this chapter I cited original diaries that showed how Brigham Young got special treatment anywhere he went. On various trips through the settlements he was wined and dined. His personal gardener (he had a personal gardener!!!) raised strawberries for him under glass frames. His children made ice cream recreationally in the summer (before electricity and refrigeration). His daughter wrote about him eating squab for breafast (butchered by his overseer, caught fresh that morning, then prepared by kitchen help). Lots of doughnuts. Codfish gravy made from salt cod shipped from Massachusets. He died after two days of feasting on watermelon.

So after recounting all this, the reviewer thought that I had portrayed Brigham Young as a self-indulgent glutton. This might turn some readers off. I suppose my goal was to show a human side of Brigham rather than as a semi-divine being. The myth tends to overshadow many realities. In reality, the man was rather portly, and his diet contributed to this.

So... would this turn you off, as a reader? How do you imagine Brigham Young?

Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts

2011-02-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

Recently I've become associated with a group of people who share many of my values for history, folk culture and traditional approaches to everyday life. Clive Romney has organized some of these interests under the umbrella called Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts. The primary purpose of the organization seems to be to create a place where people who practice "Pioneer Arts" such as storytelling, old-time dancing, wood working, lace making, etc. can be found for promotion to tourism interests. The group also has a strong educational mandate to promote pioneer arts to young people as a way of passing on the traditions. I guess the idea is that eventually the notion of a "Utah Pioneer" might have some cache similar to "Amish Country."

For me this would be helpful in promoting what I do to people who don't know that I exist. I imagine that tourism and convention people come to Salt Lake City and might want to experience a legitimate historical moment, but don't know where to find it. Clive and his crew promote my thing to that group.

Additionally, Clive Romney is working with KSL on a radio program called "Storyroad Utah." Currently four pilot episodes are in the works. I have been tasked with producing one of the four which will air to a live audience in Ephraim, Utah during the Scandinavian Festival in May. Of course the theme of that particular show will be stories about Scandinavian pioneers in the San Pete Valley. I'll probably slip a few food things in as well.

If you have a pioneer project, or if you want to be involved with pioneer arts in Utah, I recommend you get in touch with Clive and his crew. They're very nice people and they have lots of fun. If you have any pioneer stories from the Manti area, I'd love to hear from you!

Slow Progress...

2011-02-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

I've been spending my efforts on building an oven for the past month. Before starting this project I had worked as a stone mason for a couple of years. I thought this wouldn't be much of a stretch. It turns out that stone masonry is very flexible, as the mason accomodates different shapes and sizes. The brick mason is much more exacting, with a demand for straight level lines, plumb and true. The resulting work is not particularly pretty, but I hope it will be functional.

Here is the blank canvas, a spot in my basement with two masonry walls and a thick foundation.

Here are some of my raw materials, which I got for free on www.ksl.com classifieds.

A close-up of an arch to allow access to space below the oven.

Here is an overview of it all. The footprint is 8'x5'. The center wall you see there is to support the center portion of the concrete slab that I will pour next. The concrete slab will support a bed of firebricks and the chamber for the oven. More photos coming soon.

When it is all done, perhaps we can have a little baking workshop for anyone interested in trying a more traditional approach to baking. Anyone? Anyone?

We're back!

2011-01-04T07:45:00.001-08:00

Hello friends. Its been a while since I posted. Here's a brief recap: I've been building a chicken coop (all done but the roof), I'm starting work on building a brick oven in my basement (hope to finish by Feb.) and the publisher dropped my manuscript.

Yeah, it was disappointing, it set me back, I crawled into a lonely hole and stopped blogging. They sat on it for more than a year before deciding this. The editor-in-chief was very kind and encouraging, but the acquisitions board didn't have the same vision. So now the manuscript is at another publisher, who said they'd let me know by Christmas if they were going to publish, and of course the holidays got the better of that one. Still waiting to hear.

So you may remember my styrofoam proofing box that I made last fall? One of my facebook friends asked, "but what did the pioneers do, not having styrofoam or an incandescent light?" They set it next to the hearth. But this got me thinking about how we might let our lack of understanding push us to take cheater steps. I've been baking larger volumes of bread lately (25 lbs. of dough at a crack) and in the course of wondering if I might need a 20 quart mixer or bigger, I came across a short French video. The guy mixes up 50 lbs. of dough by hand in a wooden trough in a matter of minutes without breaking a sweat. And then bakes it off in a wood-fired oven. This made me think that we've really missed the boat. Let's see if the link works... ">here.

The video is long (and all in French), and they make you wade through about 45 seconds of advertising before the good stuff. The relevant section starts at about 7:15 on the counter. I found the video through another fantastic website called "The Fresh Loaf" which is a great site for helping serious home bakers hone their game.

So... are you all great fans of technology? Zealous luddites? I guess we're all here online, but what about pioneer endeavors?

Pics

2010-11-12T09:23:00.001-08:00

A mid-19th century American bakery from NPS archives.

Unidentified mid-19th century. Note the pinner apron detail.

Diderot, mid 18th century, the pastry shop.

Another from Diderot's mid-18th century encyclopedia, the bread bakery.

A French baker selling his bread. Note the cap.

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-11-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

What time is that, you might ask? Well... This evening for dinner I made chicken soup. It was the standard, no frills chicken soup made by boiling the remains of yesterday's roast chicken. Celery, onion and carrots made up the rest, with a few savory herbs to flavor. This was our fifth soup this fall, if you don't count the ramen for lunch the other day. We started out with a lovely butternut squash soup made with kielbasa sausage and cheddar cheese. Then we had miso. A few days before Halloween I made a clam chowder. On Halloween we had a curry pumpkin soup. And now chicken soup. No dumplings or noodles tonight, as we had the remains of a sourdough loaf (thanks again Dr. Wood! Buy his cultures! They're awesome!).

Yes, it is soup season. One of the historical soups I've come across (and to be included in the book solely on the basis of its provenance) is St. Jacob's soup. This one is attributed to Benjamin Roberts. The lore is that Benjamin went on the Mormon Battalion march to California and came back with this soup. Here's the recipe, from his great-granddaughter:

1/4 lb salt pork
2 good-sized potatoes, diced
2 good-sized onions, sliced
4 fresh tomatoes (or 1 no.2 can stewed)

Cut pork into small pieces and cook until brown but not crisp. Cook potatoes and onions in boiling water until tender. Add pork with some of drippings, also tomatoes, and simmer for 10 minutes. Serve with hard bread which has been toasted and cut into cubes. Seasoning should be added to taste.

So there you have it. I've seen this recipe in multiple places, always the same, with the same provenance, so it seems to be sort of famous. What baffles me though is how this recipe survived for 150+ years. You can just look at it and see that it would be rather un-notable. Try making it and see what you think might give it the merit to last so long. I'm guessing there's something missing in the "seasonings added to taste." Would it be crushed red pepper? Black pepper? Would you make a roux with the drippings? Fresh herbs? Maybe we should make some little toasts broiled with some chevre and float them on the soup? Or just season some croutons?

At any rate, send in your thoughts and reviews for this soup, and one lucky winner will get to dip into the prize bucket. Incidentally, MissC never sent her contact info to claim her prize. I can be reached at pioneerfoodie@gmail.com. Hope to hear from you soon!

Bacteria Cultures-- and another give-away!

2010-11-04T07:36:00.001-07:00

Read to the bottom for today's give-away.

In the course of experimenting with the sourdough cultures I was struck with the sophistication of food-related bacteria cultures in pioneer food. The sourdough culture requires particular feeding and fermentation temperatures. It took some doing for me to get it right; it must have been even more difficult for pioneers. Or maybe they just weren't so fussy because they didn't know all the delicate details.

To get the necessary temperature control for fermentation I followed Dr. Wood's instruction for making a fermentation box. Basically you take a cheap-o styrofoam cooler, add a light bulb and a dimmer switch on an extension cord. Come to think of it, I should use this for proofing all my loaves, sourdough or not. Here's a couple of photos.

In the future I might buy a larger cooler. Dr. Wood recommends using a flame-tip bulb instead of the 100 watt that I used. My bulb tends to get too warm. When I dim it down, it goes out. A smaller wattage or a smaller bulb would work better.

Of course sourdough is just one example of a fermented food from pioneer times. As I got thinking about it, this fermentation box is the perfect answer for salt-rising bread, which has to ferment at 115F. Sauerkraut, on the other hand, ferments well at 75, though its tolerance for higher temperatures does better than sourdough. Fermented pickles work on a similar principle. Bread generally requires yeast cultures of some sort. Fermented sausages are another example of bacteria cultures at work. Who can forget the natural yeasting of apple cider? And so on.

In short, bacteria and yeast cultures played a huge role in many nineteenth century foodways. Achieving the specific temperature controls seems to be a tricky thing for a modern home kitchen. The sophistication of Mormon pioneer foodways continues to astound me.

Today's Give-away: Congrats to Sherm for winning the last contest. Jana and MissC both come in as runners-up. If the three of you would send your mailing info to pioneerfoodie at gmail dot com we will work out your prizes.

TODAY I am giving away a pound of raw honey harvested from hives that feasted on the summer wildflowers in New York's Adirondac hills. How to win, you ask? Get a friend or two to add this blog as a "follower". You introduce them to us in the comments section. On your marks, get set, go!

Sourdough! And Give-Aways!

2010-11-01T19:54:00.001-07:00

Read to the bottom of the post if you want to enter the give-away.

A couple of months ago Sherm told me about the fine folks at Sourdough International. You can find their sidebar advert over there>>>>> The effort was started by Dr. Ed Wood, a pathologist who stumbled upon sourdough cultures in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. Dr. Wood proceeded to collect samples of sourdough from around the world, and now sells these to people like us.

Dr. Wood recently sent me some samples to review, along with his book, Classic Sourdoughs. The book is well written and easy to understand, but the best part is that it totally de-mystifies all of the bunk and hoo-hah that have grown up around sourdough culture. All this because we can trust Dr. Wood's training as a pathologist.

I tried the San Francisco sourdough culture. It is composed of a bacteria culture (which contributes the sour tang) paired with a wild yeast (which provides the leaven). The two working together make the magic symbiotically. The culture took off within the first 24 hours after hydrating, and within three days I was cooking. Here's a picture of my sourdough pancake batter after fermenting overnight:

The pancakes were much more chewy than baking powder pancakes. We added applesauce, and the tart apple made a nice compliment to the very distinct sourdough tang.

I also made sourdough bread today. Here's a picture of the culture after sitting overnight, ready to knead up with flour:

Dr. Wood is responsible for providing reliable cultures. His samples took off immediately. I am responsible for learning how to bake. This I am still learning how to do. The bread turned out reasonably, but not yet wonderful. Much of the challenge is being able to control the thermal environment. I live in a drafty old house and winter is setting in.

Naturally I have many more thoughts to share about sourdough, but let us end here with a challenge. Share with us a recipe or foodways tradition in your family that ties back to Mormon pioneers, at least one hundred and ten years ago. Identify the name of the person your tradition ties to, and a few details about that person. I'll post again in three days. Any comments following will be put in the running. The winner gets one of Dr. Wood's cultures, and a runner up will get a PBW apron!

On your mark, get set, GO!

Now we're getting serious!

2010-10-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

Okay so you've probably noticed some mysterious looking changes to the blog lately. In the next couple of days the new buttons will become functional, and there will be a couple more new buttons as well. All this is for you, my friends.

Once I get the buttons up and going I'll be doing some give-aways with pioneer-related stuff. Or at least pioneer foodie type stuff. The goal here is to increase followers, page views and comments. I've got some fantastic gourmet raw honey. I've got a couple of aprons with the site logo. I've got some of those wonderful sourdough cultures that Sherm turned me on to. And more. Its all for you my friends.

So here's the deal. When I say, "On your marks, get set..." Wait for it... I'll start giving the stuff away to those who can come up with legitimate pioneer foodways or recipes tied to particular Mormon pioneers (has to be at least pre-1900, preferably earlier). We'll post all the submissions here on the site in a special section for reader-generated content. So start thinking about how far you can trace that Christmas pudding back in your genealogy!

Seasons of Food

2010-10-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about the cyles of seasons and how they affect our food. Well, let's take that back. The seasons don't affect our food these days so much, but historically they did. As we read in the food admonitions of the D&C, "all things of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for man's benefit" (59:18), and in the Word of Wisdom, "use every herb in it's season" (89:11). But these days, we eat salad in January, and fresh beef in July.

A few modern food philosophers are still advocating a return to seasonal food. Barbara Kingsolver, in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle found that eating local to reduce one's carbon footprint also mandated eating seasonally. (I recommend this book if you want to change your thinking about food.) Michael Pollan likewise makes a strong case for eating seasonally in his gastro-philosophical work In Defense of Food: an eater's manifesto. Though most of America might eat in ignorance of their food origins, some are really taking seasonality to heart.

With the cooler weather we had our inagural soup this week. My good wife made a chowder with kielbasa sausage, butternut squash, and cheddar cheese. I had four helpings. I was excited about it because I love soup season more than salad season. It got me thinking about how my approach to food has changed over the past couple of years.

As I've been doing these pioneer food experiments I've moved more and more to a seasonal approach to food. Part of that has to do with raising my own garden. Once you plant a garden it yields so much bounty that you have no choice but to set about eating it as fast as you can. This makes our summer meals exceptionally fresh and filled with vegetables. Then as the fall harvest comes on I feel negligent if we don't put some of it away for winter. Naturally winter demands more hearty meals from preserved foods (like our sauerkraut). And by spring we're just itching for something fresh again so we plant lettuce and radishes early.

All of this seasonality leaves me feeling more connected to my food. I have a greater ownership of it, and I get just a little put out when I have to eat away from home. Further, it brings the seasons to have a more profound, almost spiritual meaning in my life. It fills me with a sense of wonder and excitement. The seasonal food celebrations also take on greater meaning: a Christmas pudding, an Easter lamb, the first tomatoes in late summer all take on a sense of celebration.

What are your favorite seasonal foodways?

Time Traveling

2010-10-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a member of an organization called the American Long Rifle Association. This was the group that got me started in serious living history about twenty years ago. The group focuses primarily on re-enactment of colonial-era backwoods characters, such as Daniel Boone's cohorts. The emphasis is primarily on flintlock rifles and walking the woods in moccasins. I think they define their period as being 1750-1810.

This past weekend a few of the crew got together at a beautiful (though mismanaged)historical site in Ogden called Fort Buenaventura. We sat around and shot target matches, told stories and ate good food. And slept out in the cold. Of course I was mostly interested in the food. I made a Dutch oven filled with bratwurst and sauerkraut using my kraut I just bottled from this year. It was delicious!

I also got to try a traditional fabric dye. A friend named Kevin had prepared a kettle with walnut hulls, and I dyed my woolen hunting frock to a dark brown.

I also attended a workshop by a friend of mine, Wendell. He demonstrated some historic approaches to preserved food. One dish he demonstrated was a chowder made with salt cod. From previous posts you may remember a discussion here about salt cod used in Salt Lake City in the 1850s, notably at the table of Brigham Young. At any rate, Wendell showed how to freshen the salted cod, and he then prepared the chowder using hard tack or ship's bread for the thickening. It was delicious.

Wendell also demonstrated "potted beef." He first marinated a beef roast in vinegar overnight. Then he salted it well. Then Wendell slow-roasted the beef. Once it was fork-tender, he cut it into small bite-sized pieces and packed it in a crock. Leaving a little head room on the crock, Wendell filled the voids with melted salted butter, and added an additional inch of butter to seal it. The crock was then stored in "a cool place" for a couple of months. We opened it for a taste, and the beef was sweet and succulent with no hint of rot or decay.

At the end of the day we all pitched in for a pot-luck meal. I had baked the day before so I put a couple of loaves in. Here are some pictures of us enjoying the meal together.

I love my friends in the ALRA.

Salt

2010-10-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

Emily Barnes, my favorite pioneer foodie, noted that her father William Stewart took hams to the Great Salt Lake to be salted for preservation. She grew up in what we might call West Kaysville today, in the 1850s.

So I thought I should try gathering salt at the Great Salt Lake myself. I tried this endeavor once ten years ago (or so) with a group of friends. We went to Antelope Island and built a fire near the lake shore. We had two large kettles in which we boiled the lake water to reduce it to salt. We worked for several hours, and came up with about two pounds to split between six or eight of us. I didn't think it was a striking success.

The Great Salt Lake is salty because it has no outflow. The Bear, Weber and Jordan Rivers flow into the lake on it's eastern shores, as well as numerous smaller tributaries from the canyons along the Wasatch Front. These streams all carry diverse minerals to the lake, but primarily salt.

Naturally the salinity of the lake is lowest where these freshwater streams feed into the lake. Salinity levels along the Wasatch Front tend to hover around 5%, fluctuating with seasonal run-off and drought cycles. When drought conditions are in effect, salinity is considerably higher. When spring run-off hits the lake, salinity drops.

The Great Salt Lake has been impacted by human inventions in the 20th century. Artificial divisions in the lake seperate the freshwater inlets from the north arm of the lake. The Antelope Island causeway and UPRR causeway both prevent free interchange of the lake's waters, causing a dramatic difference in salinity levels in various parts of the lake. In the north arm of the lake, salinity levels reach more than 20%.

Last week I thought that if I were to gather salt, I ought to go to that 20%. Wife, friends and I drove up to the north end of the lake to see the Spiral Jetty. This modern art installation is world famous. Black volcanic rock marks the shoreline of the lake. In the 1970s artist Robert Smithson used tons of this volcanic rock to make a jetty out into the lake, in the shape of a spiral. It's dimensions are enormous, running 1500 feet long. Contrasted against the white salt plains it is impressive.

To get there we drove first to the Golden Spike National Monument, west of Brigham City, and then carried on west on a dirt road for about twelve miles. The road is easily traversible in a road-worthy sedan, but the last quarter-mile is treacherous and should be walked.

Once on the salt plains we realized we had come somewhat unprepared. I brought a five-gallon bucket, thinking we could just scoop the salt up with our hands. Instead we found the salt was cemented in broad, flat, hard-as-rocks sheets. This salt was also often covered in tiny brine flies or their carcasses, and often came with particles of oolitic sand included. When we tried scooping with our hands, we came away with cuts from the sharp edges. Thereafter salt continued to sting these cuts.

Our best success was in going out into the shallow water. There, the salt formed in large, blocky halite crystals. The water kept the salt somewhat softer and we found we could break these crystals off. This required dipping our scarred, bloody hands into the salt water. Ouch! We ended up gathering about three pounds of it.

Today, here at home, we're bottling the sauerkraut. Some of the bottles need just a little more brine, so we mixed up extra using 2Tbs. salt from the lake with 1 quart water. This just covers the kraut in the bottles. The nice thing about this lake salt is that it doesn't come with iodine. The crystals are pure. Iodized salt tends to soften and discolor bottled preserves like kraut and pickles. The kraut turned out perfect, by the way. Last year's kraut was just a little too salty, so we were more careful in measuring this time.

Salt. Who'da thunk about such a fundamental food ingredient from pioneer perspective?

An Update

2010-10-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd share an update on some of the food and publishing related projects I'm working on.

Here is a link to more photos from bake day at Heber's, including our Danish pastries.

The publisher says I should finish the edits on the manuscript by the end of October, and have the illustrations by December. I went to the Utah State Historical Society archives to find photos last week, and found quite a few. I'll post some scans next week.

The sauerkraut is finished and ready to bottle, sometime this week. The whole basement smells like kraut.

Bake day this week turned out well. My baking stone is just a little short for the baguettes but the loaves turned out better than ever. We had bruschetta for dinner with bloody ripe tomatoes from the garden. Speaking of which, the garden did very well this year. There's 200 quarts of various items on the pantry shelves: stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa, peaches, pears, half a dozen varieties of jam and jelly, pickles in variety, two dozen quarts of apple pie filling, and soon sauerkraut as well.

Yesterday I picked ten bushels of apples with friends. Next week we'll crush them for cider.

So I'm curious... what sort of pioneer food projects are you working on this autumn? Do tell!

Bake Day at Heber's

2010-10-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like its been a week since we baked at the Kimball house in Pioneer Town. My friends Glenn, Susan and Scott helped with the work of it all. Here are some photos from the fateful day.

We started by building a fire at 8a.m. We had warmed the oven the night before, so we tried to get the blaze going as fast and hot as possible. Still, it seemed to take almost an hour before it was really crankin'.

Then, once the fire was going we started mixing a 25 lb. dough. This was the same basic dough I used when I made the big bake day previously, so I knew the proportions were alright. This is my friend Susan kneading.

By 11a.m the fire had burned down considerably and the coals were doing well.

The dough was rising nicely as well.

Around noon we scraped the coals out of the oven. Usually there is a mop of sorts to wash down the hearth so you don't leave a bunch of fine powdery ash to stick to the loaves. No mop here. The kitchen seems equipped for aesthetic purposes but not so much for functionality. Throughout the day I was wishing for all the things I had in my own kitchen, like assorted mixing bowls, knives, etc.

Once the hearth was sort-of clean we threw some pizzas in. Yeah, pizza is not especially pioneer-authentic. But the hearth was hot, so whatcha gonna do with that high heat?

These cooked in about 4-5 minutes each. Some who tasted them said it was the best pizza they'd ever had.

Also while the hearth was quite hot we baked a handful of small baguettes as a trial run. Not especially pretty. It was my first effort at using the baking peel and it took some learning. One of the baguettes landed on the hearth in a lump.

We formed some loaves next. No good photos of the bread rising in all the little rising baskets I made. I bought a bunch of wicker baskets at D.I. and then sewed muslin liners for them. It worked out rather well, though the baskets seem to be sized for a rather small loaf, about 1 lb.

As the loaves were rising (or maybe earlier, can't remember, but the fire in the oven says it was earlier) Susan whipped up a pastry dough.

She then rolled it out and laminated it with a pound of butter in layers.

By this time the hearth was cooled enough for bread. Initially the hearth was so hot that when I cast a bit of flour on it, the flour scorched immediately upon hitting the oven floor. We waited fifteen minutes or so and it cooled down enough. The first loaves to go in baked in about fifteen or twenty minutes as compared to the usual forty at home. Of course they were smaller, but still, it was a piping hot oven.

The last loaves to bake took considerably longer. The oven cooled off quite a bit. All in all we baked about two dozen loaves.

Unfortunately, no photos of the pastries. My hand for pastry isn't particularly light, and the finished products weren't especially pretty. However, they were delicious. After we were done baking we loaded up the dough trough and walked around the town giving our bread away. The management team seemed to find it especially toothsome. By the time we went home, there were only a couple of loaves left for each of us.

Good thing I'm baking again today...

Previews...

2010-09-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

This evening I built a fire in the brick oven at the Kimball house in preparation for bake day tomorrow. Some people say that if you fire an oven too quickly it could crack the oven, so its best to build heat gradually. So we built a fire, and once the fire was built, naturally, we cooked a pizza. Yes, I know, pizza isn't a historically appropriate Pioneer food. But it was delicious. Watch for details about tomorrow's bake coming soon.

Let's Bake!

2010-09-21T19:05:00.000-07:00

First, a big "Thank You" to my good friend Glenn for the redesign of the blog. We'll be adding some tabbed pages soon, and hope to diversify the experience. Out of curiosity, what do you think of the name? It comes from a Mormon pioneer woman who, upon reminiscing about her pioneer food, said, "Our food was plain but wholesome..." Also, thank you to Sherm for straightening out my understanding of sourdough, and introducing me to the fine folks at Sourdough International. Advert link coming soon.

But for the main business, I just wanted to invite all of my very closest friends to a baking session. On Wednesday next week (Sept. 29th) I will be baking at the Kimball home at This Is The Place Heritage Park. The home is a fairly decent reproduction of Heber Kimball's opulent downtown SLC home from the 1860s. There's a traditional wood-fired brick oven in the kitchen, and I'll be bringing my gi-normous dough trough. I think that from one firing we should be able to do three loads, maybe more than three dozen loaves. I'd love you to come and help!

I'll be starting the firing of the oven around 8a.m. and I hope to start kneading dough by 9a.m. I imagine we will have (some of) the loaves in the oven by 2p.m. and be all done by 5p.m. Perhaps we will do some lighter pastries after the oven has cooled a little. Anyone who comes to help gets to take home a loaf.

I hope that anyone interested might come join for a time, if not the day. There is a $6 admission, but I think it will be well worth it. Please RSVP in the comments if you plan to come. Hope to see you there!

Sourdough, again...

2010-09-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my King Arthur Flour catalog the other day, and they sell a sourdough culture which they claim goes back 200 years. It wasn't made exactly clear, but it seems they were saying that their culture has literally been culture-ing for that long. There was a slight nuance that might be interpreted to say, "this type of culture has been used in New England for 200 years."

So I was wondering... do any of you know of someone who has a sourdough culture to which they claim this sort of longevity? Maybe a culture which you can attribute to a Mormon pioneer seven generations ago? Or even a Daughter of the Revolution?

Dough Trough

2010-09-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today I made bread. My main ambition was to give this big dough trough a spin to see what it was all about. In a previous life I had done an oral history interview with a woman who worked as a cook on a ranch in the 1950s. She told me about baking a dozen loaves of bread every day for the ranch hands meals. I imagine she had to have a dough trough or something like it to work up that much dough. My grandmother did it on a big board on the table.

I started by multiplying my standard bread recipe which uses about eight cups of flour to make two 10-inch round loaves. I took this to the eighth power. Sixteen pounds of flour should do it. I had worked with twenty-five pounds before, but for that I had a Hobart floor mixer.

.I made a poolish last night to get the yeast going. This morning I mixed the poolish up with the remaining water and some flour to get the dough going. Here's the poolish just going into the flour
I was a little worried that the round bottom on the trough would be unweildy to work with. Once it got the weight of the dough however, it settled just fine.

I was also worried that it would be difficult to organize the dough in the trough. That wasn't a problem either. The volume was sized to fit the tool. Here's the dough after it came together.

I was also worried that kneading it would be difficult in such volume. In fact it might have been easier. I didn't knead it with the usual punch and pull. Instead I streched it out into a long flat mass, and then just kept folding the ends over again. I kneaded it for about 20 minutes once it came together. Here's the "window" test to show it well kneaded.

When it is well kneaded, you can stretch a small piece of dough until it gets thin enough to be opaque, so that you can see light through it, without tearing. Here's the dough after rising. I can't remember if I took this before or after I punched it down. Its a lot of dough.

If I had only done this much and no more, Dayenu. I really just wanted to figure out what was necessary to work with a large volume by hand. But once I had the dough, I thought I should bake it. I had to borrow bread pans from two neighbors. If I ever get to bake on a hearth in large volume, I'll have to have more brotforms for rising loaves. Making the loaves turned out to be the most tedious task. I weighed each loaf for consistency.

While the loaves were rising I had a little extra dough, so I made a pepperoni pizza.

So anyway, my oven holds 4 loaves at a time. I made sixteen loaves. Some turned out quite lovely, others stuck to the pan and had to be torn out. Some I'll give to neighbors, others will be made into croutons. This was a lot of bread.

So based on this, I think I could do even larger volumes. It mostly depends on having enough forms for rising. A bigger oven would be helpful. And it might be nice if I had a little help. All in all, it was an interesting lesson in volumes. I think that for the most part, the pioneer accounts I've read talk about larger volumes than just a daily serving.

Sauerkraut

2010-09-08T20:40:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we went to This Is The Place Heritage Park to make sauerkraut. Thousands of Mormon pioneers from Switzerland, Germany and other parts of Europe made sauerkraut from cabbages they grew once they reached Utah. Elsewhere on the blog I believe I've posted a recipe from pioneer Mary Helm. Today I just want to share photos of our adventure...

Here you see a row of cabbages dwarfed by yellow summer squash. The squash was planted late, so the cabbage had plenty of time to find its roots before it was overtaken.

Here's my hand reaching out to cut a cabbage.

Just for sense of scale... beautiful, don't you think?

First step is to peel off all the outer leaves. We found plenty of slugs and even a black widow lurking inside.

The heads all cleaned. I felt so proud of the harvest! They were bigger than any I've seen at the grocery store.

I used this old fashioned cabbage cutter over a bowl to slice it thin after quartering the heads. It didn't have all the pieces, and it sorta worked.

My good wife preferred to use a knife and cutting board, and it seemed to be just as efficient.

Next we added salt to the shredded cabbage. We used one pound and a little bit more for 45 pounds of cabbage. It worked out to about one tablespoon or a little extra for each head. After letting it sit for a few minutes in the salt (tossing the shreds to distribute) we pounded it with the poundy pounder to bruise the shreds and work the salt in.

After a good deal of pounding, the cabbage began to yield its water. We started thinking it would work into the three gallon crock. It soon exceeded the crock.

So we began adding the pounded shreds to a five gallon bucket, and mixing it thoroughly to incorporate the emerging brine to evenly distribute. In the end, we filled the bucket. After we took it home, it continued to exude more water content, and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine.

Now at home we have it weighted down with a plate and a weight on top of the plate. The kraut has to stay submerged in the brine to keep it isolated from airborne contaminants. We check it each day and clean out any suspect-looking crud. It should be done in about a month. It has begun to have a fairly funky smell, but the smell mostly stays downstairs with all the other funky old-house smells.

Its that simple!

'Tis the Season...

2010-09-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I just harvested ten large heads of cabbage from the garden. Headed now to Pioneer Town to make sauerkraut. Watch for an extended photo-documentary soon!

Yours,
~B

p.s. also coming soon, the folks at Pioneer Town said I could use the beehive oven for a bread adventure. Maybe a video documentary for that adventure...

Jealous Much?

2010-09-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Now brace yourself. Remember the "don't covet" commandment. I just want to share my latest bit of excitement.

My good buddy Cody (see previous posts) was driving down the road one day and there was a traveling flea market selling antiques from Europe. Among other things, there were several dough troughs. You may have seen dough bowls before, but these were troughs. And of course, he bought one for me. Here's a photo or two...

So how much flour do you think such a trough would hold? How many loaves would come out of it? How big an oven would one need to bake the loaves as they come, before they blow out from rising too much? I have half a mind to buy twenty pounds of flour just to see how it works, even if I can't actually bake it all efficiently.

And the best part...guess how much it cost?

Nope. You're all wrong.

$50

Hahahahahahaha!!!! Isn't Cody the best?

Thank You

2010-08-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

As you may know, the DesNews did a short piece about the blog a couple of weeks ago. As a result, alert readers from Salt Lake City to Mesa, AZ sent me pieces of their own food related archives. Today I received in the mail a spiral bound book called Treasures of the Past. Thank you, Mrs. Campos. It was produced by the LDS Relief Society as a commemorative recipe collection for the 50th anniversary of the Jefferson Ward, Salt Lake City, Utah. As such, all of the recipes in the book were required to be at least 50 years old or more. The publication date is listed as 1972.

Many of the recipes hail to the Depression era, with names like "Hoover Pancakes" or "Depression Pie." The bulk of the older recipes appear to be from 1880-1900. Several of the recipes are attributed to commercially published volumes circa 1883. A quick Google search revealed this to be Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery, then in its umpteenth reprinting, after its first printing in 1840. Incidentally, a copy of this earlier Leslie was found in the Utah Territorial Library Catalogue of 1852.

Many Danish and English recipes were also included. "Bubble and Squeak," a British recipe for boiled beef and cabbage, reflects the broad Mormon immigration from England. "Gronkaal," a Danish soup made with ham hocks, root vegetables and green kale represents Scandinavian immigration patterns. Today I leave you with this undated Danish recipe for "buttermilk soup" or kaernemaelksuppe:

Beat until very thick and piled softly 3 eggs.
Add gradually and beat thoroughly 1/2 cup sugar.
Add 2 tablespoons grated lemon peel.
Pour over the egg mixture gradually, stirring until blended 2 quarts of buttermilk.
Chill for about 2 hours. Serve soup the day it is prepared.
Makes about 2 1/2 quarts.

This is delicious on hot summer days. It may also be served as a beverage.

The Glorious 24th

2010-08-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Last week after the Deseret News piece ran, I got a call from a charming older woman in Mesa, Arizona. She had seen the piece in the DesNews and thought I might find some relevance in the history of her great-grandfather, William Morley Black. Yup, we're that close to the pioneers.

She sent a copy of his brief memoir, which recounted some of his early days as a Forty-niner. Black came west as part of a joint stock venture company headed to California, and stumbled into Utah on July 24, 1849. You may recount from other earlier posts here that the first "Pioneer Day" celebration was on that date. A party of 49ers from Boston said the Pioneer Day feast was a finer spread than they had seen in Boston. So I was interested in what Mr. Black would have to say.

He stayed with a fellow called Buck Smithson, and asked if he might eat with the Smithson family. Buck replied, "I am fearful our simple supper would not please you gentlemen. We can give you a supper of milk, meat and pigweed greens, but bread we have none. You see the flour we brought with us a year ago has given out, we have not had bread for three weeks, and have no hopes of any until our harvest comes off."

William Black of course was packing flour and cornmeal for his journey to California, so he opened his pack and gave Smithson a pan of flour. In return, he "partook of as relishable a meal as I have ever eaten." Of course Mr. Black converted to Mormonism, became a polygamist, and eventually fathered dozens of children by five wives. He passed away in 1915 at 89 years of age.

I think it interesting that two different accounts of that first Pioneer Day give different perspectives about what sort of food was available after two years in the Valley. I wonder which was more typical, or more representative of the general state of things. I have a feeling it is the impoverished station of Buck Smithson.

Yeast, redux

2010-07-29T07:44:00.001-07:00

The other evening I did a lecture and training workshop for the folks up at This Is The Place Heritage Park. We rambled over a few subjects, but of key interest was the subject of yeast. I know I've been through this before here, but there was so much discussion and argument I thought I'd better straighten a couple of things out.

First, the pioneer understanding of yeast was quite limited, from a microbiology perspective. They didn't quite understand what it was, as evidenced by this quote from the Deseret News, November 30, 1854:

To Make Yeast: Hop yeast may be most conveniently made in the following manner: Boil a double handful of hops in a gallon of pure soft water for fifteen or twenty minutes; strain off the liquor while scalding hot; stir in wheat meal or flour till a thick batter is formed; let it stand till it becomes blood warm; add a pint of good lively fresh yeast, and stir it well; then let it stand at a place where it will keep at a temperature of about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, till it becomes perfectly light. This yeast will keep from one to two weeks, if corked tight in a clean earthen jug, and kept in a cool cellar.

In other words, they didn't seem to understand the idea of growing yeast, or that it was a living thing. In fact, they believed that yeast was a dead thing, the product of decay.

In the above quote, hops are used. In our discussion it was not entirely clear about what the hops were for. Hops are a small flower that grows on a vine like grapes. Hops have astringent qualities which deter certain kinds of detrimental bacterial growth. Hops and yeast get along quite nicely however, so the hops help to keep a yeast culture pure while it is being stored between uses. Otherwise, the yeast could be invaded by other airborne bacteria and become spoiled.

The question was raised, "where does one get yeast to begin with?" The above quote assumes that you have yeast to multiply. If you don't have yeast to begin with, you can lure yeast out of the air by leaving a sugary liquid open on the table. If you look at apples on the tree or grapes on the vine, they are covered with a dusty coating of yeast, attracted to their sweetness. You could wash the apples in water, and then feed sugar to the yeasty water, and grow a culture in this manner. Airborne yeast is naturally attracted to sweet, wherever it is found.

I believe that Mormon pioneers brought yeast cultures with them. There is some argument to the contrary, but since yeast is such a fundamental part of Anglo food culture, and since we know they had the understanding of yeast in Nauvoo, it would seem ludicrous that this knowledge didn't transfer to the Rockies.

A Brief Announcement

2010-07-24T05:10:00.001-07:00

I'm up early this morning getting ready for a full day of pioneer food. We're cooking Dutch oven stuff all day, of course, with a big dinner and old-time dance this evening. What are you doing for your 24th?

But an announcement for you:
On Tuesday, July 27th I will be doing a two-hour lecture and training workshop at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, starting at 5:30p.m. It will be held at Smoot Hall, the first big red brick building as you enter the village. If you're interested in volunteering at the park, or if you want to learn more about Mormon pioneer foodways in a hands-on historical setting, I hope you'll come.

What Friends Are For

2010-07-21T21:06:00.001-07:00

I have a good friend named Cody. I've known Cody for a very long time, almost twenty years. We met each other doing historical re-enactments, and since that time we've become neighbors. Cody has even employed me from time to time. Cody is, among many other things, a stone mason. Cody is also a historic preservation general contractor. In the town where we live he has restored three historic homes from the 1870s. You can see one of his recent projects here.

Cody is also an amazing wood worker. Last winter for Solstice he gave me the coolest little candle holder that he turned on a foot-treadle lathe. And today, get ready to be jealous... today he gave me...

wait for it...

Don't you think it has a very long handle? That's to keep me far away from the fire...

Of course, when there's actually bread on the peel, the fire will be swept out of the oven, but the oven will still be hot, so ergo the long handle. Actually, I don't have a bread oven. But I often dream about a wood fired bread oven. I'll probably sleep with the bread peel tonight.

That's why Cody is such a good friend: he fuels my dreams. He was in Nauvoo recently, and he went to the bakery there. He talked my book up to the sweet little ladies in the bakery, who, it turns out, wanted to know all about historic yeast applications. I'm not sure if they're allowed to get online, but we'll send them some information anyway.

Hope your plans for the 24th are coming along! Do tell...

An Agricultural Engine

2010-07-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hello again, friends! Before we get started, let me just give a brief news update. Sometime this week (probably Tuesday) the blog here is going to be featured in the Mormon Times section of the DesNews. Not sure if its just the online or the actual print version. Also, at the end of the month I'm going to be making a presentation at the Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts quarterly breakfast. And sometime between now and then I'm going to be doing some foodways lectures for volunteers up at This Is The Place Heritage Park (a.k.a TITP), helping them to use pioneer foodways to hook visitors.

As I was doing some of the research for TITP recently it struck me that the core of the pioneer Utah economy was agriculturally based. Agriculture was their only significant production industry, and their only large scale export. In 1864 for example, historian Leonard Arrington documented 200,000 pounds of dried peaches being shipped from Utah to the mining communities in Montana. Similar shipments of wheat sustained the early settlement of Denver, Colorado in 1859.

So this brought me to look at all the elements of agriculture a little differently. Sometimes in the past I looked at the timber-framed barns of early Utah and thought, "If they could build such a large barn, why would they live in such small houses?" This past week I came to understand that the barn was an economic engine for the family farm. The barn sheltered the horses and oxen that plowed the fields. The barn supplied the clean sheltered space for threshing grain. Additional outbuildings stored corn, or helped to process milk, or preserve hams. Most of the output from these structures was headed to market. Often we think of self-sufficient homesteads, but the agricultural efforts were for cash crops, not simply home production.

So I was thinking about building a chicken coop for our family, and I got online to look at plans. Most of what you find online is very hobby-oriented, aimed at just a handful of hobby chickens. I have something bigger in mind, more than the occasional feel-good omlette. I'd like an economic engine. Something to house 50+ hens...

On a different topic, what are y'all doing for the 24th?

Irrigation

2010-07-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Before we get started, I just thought we should all give Jana the nod for her triumphal creation of Brown Bread Ice Cream in our throw-down from last time. It was a tough competition, but she prevailed in style. Yay for Jana! You can view her blog here.

So I was thinking I might not have shared my definition of "foodways" before. Actually the definition comes from my old foodie folklorist professor, Jay Anderson, a pioneer in the study of historic foodways. He says foodways is "from seed to s**t and everything in between" In other words, foodways study includes the planting of the garden, the butchering of chickens, the preparation of the meal, the eating of it, and the spreading of manure on the garden.

In that vein... yesterday was my irrigation turn. Taking turns on the irrigation ditch is an old venerated Mormon pioneer pastime. Countless feuds over the proper sharing of water hold a strong place in our Mormon traditions. Our ditch master is fond of saying, "There's two things you don't mess with in the West: a man's whiskey, and his water." I remember a talk in General Conference a couple of years ago about two Mormon farmers feuding on the ditch over the water. Eventually one killed the other. The talk was about forgiveness, I think.

This is a good water year. The reservoir is full, spilling over. There should be plenty of water for everyone. So you can imagine my surprise last week when the water seemed only half of what it should have been. We said, "Oh well," and didn't worry much. Then yesterday, again, there wasn't as much as there should have been. So I went up the ditch, gate by gate, to see where it might be going. Sure enough, someone up the ditch had their gate open and about half of my turn was going to him. Well, I corrected that. Now I'm not sure but what they might have had an arrangement to share some of the water from the person before me, but now I know I have to check the whole ditch every time.

Without water in the ditch, there will be no tomatoes in August. Till next time...

Its Ice Cream Time... again!

2010-06-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

They say its going to be 97 degrees today. Sunday will be July 4th. You may remember that last year I posted about my ice cream making adventures on the Fourth of July. I shared a recipe for ice cream that began, "Take the yolks of 13 eggs..." So here we are a year later, and I thought, "you know, we should have an online ice cream making contest. Or fiesta. Or whatever."

So here's the showdown throwdown. Post your old fashioned ice cream recipe here, and make it on the 4th. Then lets get back together next week and share our ice cream making (and eating!) experiences.

For those who need a little help, just google "historical ice cream recipe" or even "Jefferson's ice cream". I remember seeing Thomas Jefferson's recipe last year, facsimile photo of his original handwriting. Of course the purists will use a Mormon pioneer recipe. After all, what good are Mormons without our ice cream?

Can't wait to hear what you come up with!

Its My Birthday!

2010-06-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Hello again. It was nice to hear all your responses to the last post. I thank you all for the feedback. It was especially nice to hear from Annette, a colleague from my days in the museum biz.

Last week I turned the big Four-Oh. Strangely, there was no crisis attached since I used up all my crises a couple of years ago with a divorce. But I did get presents. Oh boy did I get presents! A Japanese garden pagoda, gold-toe socks, and of course wonderful hours spent with my kids. All this bores you, I know.

I also got... TWO COOK BOOKS!!! The first one was the Don Holm classic treatise on Dutch oven cooking, with notes about sourdough. I made a peach cobbler for breakfast this morning (with ice cream on the side). I also got a tasty little compilation from my sister. Regular readers here might know that I absconded with my grandmother's recipe files when she retired to the assisted living home. My sister Tawna absconded with my other grandma's cooking files when alzheimer's overpowered her. Tawna is a very motivated and energetic person. She edited the collection and self-published it on Lulu.com Its called, "Recipes from the Kitchen of Metta Hale Stauffer." Yup, the daughter-in-law from Henry Alfred Stauffer of the previous posting.

Metta (she's 92 now) is a second generation Danish American. Her mother Mary Ann Amanda Peterson came to Utah as a little girl, and they were both raised in Cache Valley and also a stint in Blackfoot, ID. In the recipe book we find a few recipes reaching back to Metta Hansen Peterson, my great-great-grandmother. One such is this unremarkable recipe for "Meat Dumplings."

1/2 lb ground meat
2 eggs
Small onion, chopped
1/2 c breat crumbs
Salt, pepper
If it needs moisture add sego milk. WOrk into small balls. Roll in flour and drop in soup.

Basically, this is Frickadeller. This Danish version of a hamburger, meatloaf or dumpling can take several forms, and might be served on a bun, stand alone, or in soup. In the course of my research I came across a very similar recipe attributed to Caroline Berg Ostermann, circa 1850. Caroline studied cuisine in Denmark before immigrating to Utah in 1868. Her frickadeller recipe came down through five generations, and is now archived in the Utah State Historical Society archives at the Rio Grande station in Salt Lake City.

Aren't I a lucky boy to receive such birthday presents?

Mush

2010-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

So over Memorial Day I went to pay homage to ancestors at various cemetaries. One stop was to the grave of Ulrich Stauffer, my great great grandfather. He was a polygamist, and his wives are all buried around his grave. I'm descended from his wife Verena, through his son Henry Alfred.

Ulrich liked to eat a particular kind of cracked wheat cereal. I believe it has to do with his Swiss heritage. In our family, we like to tell a story that he actually invented this mush, but that's not really likely. Still, we call it Stauffer Mush, and we eat it particularly at family reunions, to affirm our heritage. The traditional preparation is that it should be made rather stiff, enough that it can "stand alone" on a plate, and it is served with sugar and half-n-half. It's not bad.

While I was at the cemetary I bumped into a second cousin that I didn't know from Adam. But he was there poking around Ulrich's grave, so I figured we were related. He's also through Henry Alfred's line, but through my Grandpa's brother, whom we had always heard called "Uncle Ree." Turns out the man's name was Henry. So I asked him if his family ever had Stauffer Mush. He replied that he remembered Henry used to make it and it was delicious, but when his mother made the same mush it was terrible. We tried to figure out why and decided maybe she didn't put salt in it while it boiled. Also, he says his mother was always stingy on the sugar, and only used skim milk. Thus died the Stauffer Mush tradition in his family.

Hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day.

A Thousand Words

2010-05-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm to the point now that I have to start looking for illustrations. The reader reviewers said the book must have illustrations, and I agree. They suggested photos from the period. That's tricky because photography had only just been invented, and wasn't common in the West. Of course we're very familiar with the Matthew Brady photos of the Civil War. But out west, we were only taking pictures of architecture and groups of important men. A lot of portraits but not many pictures of food. I suppose there are DUP photos of many of the women whose recipes will be featured. Here's one of Patty Sessions:

And here's my other hero, Emily Barnes, who wrote very explicitly about her food:

I found one photo at the Utah State Historical Society of people sitting on a lawn eating watermelon. The one you see here isn't that one, but it is similar, from a later date.

Here's one I call "Portrait with sauerkraut." Its not from a Mormon pioneer source. There just aren't that many good food photos from the period. Can I still use non-Mormon photos?

Then there's this lovely image of an itenerant cider-making operation. The details are exquisite.

I'm also thinking that perhaps we should go with some line drawings in the absence of photographs. I have a box of crayons and some printer paper. Do you think I can muster the skills? Or should it be farmed out to a professional?

How Strange...

2010-05-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I've started into making a few revisions on the manuscript, as requested. As I went about it I thought, "Ya know, I should talk to some sort of Dutch oven enthusiast for a modern perspective about why people do Dutch oven cooking today..."

So I got online and started surfing around and came up with a name and phone number of someone who seemed to be in the thick of that scene. He graciously consented to a telephone interview. Over the course of nearly an hour he told me about the organizational structure of the International Dutch Oven Society, and the best way to clean your Dutch oven. Yup.

When I asked about Dutch oven traditions from his parents, he said there were none. Nope. He only picked it up a few years ago just for fun. The feeling I got was that it was a very contemporary hobby for a lot of people, having absolutely nothing to do with history whatsoever. Instead it is an alternative to grilling with propane.

How very strange it seems to me...

So I went back to revising the preface and first chapter. It turns out they were both jumbled together and the chronology was all messed up.

It doesn't make a very interesting story, does it? I bet you're even disappointed that you read all the way to the end. Nelson says, "HA ha."

This Just In...

2010-05-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while, and I'm sorry. The greater portion of my research has wrapped up, so I'm not really finding new stuff very often.

Several months ago, I submitted the finished manuscript of my book to the publishers, and they gave it to a couple of review readers. It had to be proofed for historical rigor. This called for two independent reviewers to read and make thorough comments. The reviewers are respected authorities in the field, who make a recommendation to the publisher about the worthiness of publication. These reviewers remain anonymous (so that I won't offer them bribes of homemade pies to influence their reviews). Today I received copies of the anonymous reviews. I thought I'd share a couple of juicy nuggets with you, purely by way of boasting.

Reviewer #1 said, "This manuscript contributes greatly to the study of foodways in the latter half of the nineteenth century." Whoah there! I started to feel giddy, and then read on. "This book, if published, will be of interest to scholars, history 'buff’s' fascinated with trail history, staffs of museums and living history farms, and the general public who values history." Imagine that, someone besides me thinks there might be an audience and market for the book! This reviewer went on to say that the manuscript needs some serious editing, and maybe not so many recipes but more analysis.

Reviewer #2 said, "I believe that Brock’s research is extraordinary." Heh. I think I know how to do research, but I could do better with writing and analysis of the research. This reviewer also went on to say, "Brock is to [be] congratulated for his painstaking research over two years." Then followed several pages of things that needed a strong editorial hand. But the best part of all is that this reviewer contributed a couple of recipes from her own family dating back 5 generations. I share one of these with you here.

"Molasses Candy
1 cup molasses
1 cup sugar
Butter

Boil until stringy in cold water, not so it breaks or hard. Pour in greased pan, cool, then make a roll and pull into lengths and cut in pieces."
~Anne Hess Milne
St. George, Utah
1854-1921

Thanks to everyone who helped me get this far, including all of you who read here.

Puff Paste

2010-02-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

The other day I went to my Irish Pub Cookbook for an idea for dinner. I happened to have some ham in the fridge, and some chicken in the freezer, so I ended up making a pot pie. The recipe called for pre-prepared crust, but I didn't have any (I've never had any). I went to Alice Waters' book for a recipe. Usually my wife makes the pie crusts but she was away.

Actually that one of the things I remember most about my courtship with her. We started dating in October, and then one thing and another, she came to Thanksgiving dinner and she brought pie. I was with her when she made the pie, and she whipped the pie crust out from scratch without a recipe and without measurements. And it was divine. I was in love.

But now being on my own for the crust, I went to Alice Waters. Basically she said two cups flour, one cup butter, a pinch of salt and just enough cold water to hold it together. Refrigerate one hour after mixing before rolling. So I got to thinking... I had seen plenty of pioneer recipes for pie, but never any for a crust or puff paste.

My wife learned to make her pie crust from her mother, and she's made hundreds and hundreds of pies. From everything I've seen, this rote style of learning was how the pioneers did it also-- never a written recipe or set measurements. Fortunately, some people did write things down. Mostly, they were enterprizing publishers, not pioneers.

Here's Anna Maria Collins' recipe for puff paste, from The Great Western Cookbook, 1857:

"To a pound and a quarter of sifted flour, rub gently in with the hand, half a pound of fresh butter; mix it up with half a pound of fresh butter; mix it up with half a pint of spring-water. Knead it well, and set it by for a quarter of an hour; then roll it out thin, lay on it, in small pieces, three-quarters of a pound more of butter, throw on it a little flour, double it up in folds, and roll it out thin three times, and set it by an hour in a cold place."

This seems a little excessive. Here's something more simple, from Warne's Model Cookery, 1869:

"One pound of flour; six ounces of beef suet; a cupful of cold water. Strip the skin from the suet, chop it as fine as possible, rub it well into the flour, mix it with a knife, work it to a very smooth paste with a cupful of water, and roll it out for use."

So we see that there are lots of different ways to make a pie crust. No doubt our Mormon pioneers each had their own method.

What's your pie crust? Where did you learn to make it?

Makin' Meat

2010-01-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

In May of 1847, the vangard company of pioneers sent out hunters to find meat on the plains. After an overnight excursion, they sent a rider back to the camp to fetch a wagon. The hunters hauled 1,800 pounds of buffalo meat back to camp, only to receive Brigham Young's castigation for wasting powder and lead by killing so much.

The other day I had the opportunity to re-enact this scene, in modern terms. A ranching friend of mine had four buffalo available: a five year old cow and three yearling calves. We (a few friends and I) used a horse trailer instead of a wagon, and hauled them to a local butcher. When all was said and done, we had eight hanging halves for a total of 1,900 pounds. I imagine that when all is said and done, we might lose a couple hundred pound in bone. If we were pioneers, those bones would be used as well. Here's a trail reminiscence from Catherine Camp Greer, speaking of buffalo bones:

"After we had cut the meat off the bones, they would build a big log fire and put the bones in and scrape the coals all over them and cover them with ashes until they were roasted… You have no idea how much marrow would be contained in the larger leg bones; sometimes almost a pint, and we used this for butter."

The marrow was high in fat, and therefore made good calories. As part of my book research last week I added up the calories in the daily ration afforded by the PEF regimen. Between the daily flour, bacon, dried beans and fruit, etc., the PEF pioneers received 2,200 calories in their daily ration. When balanced against the daily toll of the trail, it seems pioneers likely expended 3,500 calories for a deficit of 1,300 calories. Only through such wild sources could this deficit be made up.

I don't know if I'll go to the trouble of rendering marrow from the bones of our bison, but I'm pretty sure we'll have some tasty eating for the next year, thanks to electric deep freeze chests in the basement.

It's Seed-Time Again

2010-01-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

The Deseret News for February 5, 1853 posted the following advertisement:

"Garden Seeds For Sale
100 LBS. sugar-beet; also rutabaga or Swedish turnip, carrot, parsnip, onion, radish, lettuce, early June pea, cucumber, melon, cabbage, with a variety of other garden seeds.

The above were raised last year, and are warranted of good quality, and will be sold at moderate prices for cash, or exchange for grain, flour, or any other country produce.

EDWARD SAYERS
12th ward"

Well, I guess it is time to order garden seeds. Last year I shared my favorite seed source with you: Seed Savers Exchange. Their seed catalogue has arrived in the mail and I'm leafing through the pages and thinking about what I'll plant. Here is a link to last year's post, with subsequent links to the SSE website and online catalogue.

Several thoughts come to mind as I think about last year's gardening experience. Most prominent is the seasonality of life, which has largely been lost from modern existence. Though we did shovel snow the last couple of days, other daily rhythms are largely unaffected by the seasons. We go to work in the office the same regardless. Gardening creates a division to the seasons, with plowing, planting, irrigating and harvesting. Gardening gives a pulse to the seasons.

Gardening also gets us personally involved with our food. Food philosopher Michael Pollan suggests that the further removed we are from the production of our food, the more likely we will be to feel apathy toward unethical and unsustainable farming practices. If you have never seen the field that grows the corn you eat, you'll have no concern about whether or not it is laden with pesticides, or whether it is contributing to erosion and subsequent deterioration in water quality. Likewise with meat producers: do you know if the cows you eat live their lives knee-deep in manure? Do your chickens live confined in a cage barely big enough for their body? Gardening lets you take some personal ownership and involvement in your food. It just feels better to eat something you've grown from a seed.

Best go get your seeds ordered... only a month until its time to plant peas!

Providence of God

2010-01-15T15:30:00.001-08:00

So I was up to the archives again today...

Here's two interesting snippets about eating weeds. The first comes from Manti, in a folklore context. The original informant wasn't named, and it looks a little suspect to me. Still, its the thought that counts:

"The place where the weeds were gathered was down on the south side of the stone quarry where the Mormons first camped. After each day a-gathering, there was none left for the next day. But like the food miraculously supplied to the Israelites in the wilderness, each day, just so the Lord provided for this supply of pig weed each day."

If I think back to the Israelites, the Lord provided manna, which was described as being sweet, and could be ground to make flour for bread. Also, they received quail, which could be prepared in any number of tasty ways. I hate to doubt this person's earnest faith, but couldn't God provide something better than pig weed? Amelia Young remembered gathering quail (divinely provident) in the first days after being expelled from Nauvoo.

But then, here comes this next quote right in the face of it all. John Hyrum Barton (1868-1944) quipped, "We considered pigweed greens a dessert." Being on the later end of settlement, perhaps he never experienced the extreme hunger as did the early settlers. Still, pigweed is no dessert. I dare you to try some this summer.

Random Stuff

2010-01-05T21:27:00.001-08:00

I have a laundry list of things to fix in the manuscript before I can send it back to the editor for another round. Most of the things to fix require a trip to the archives. For example, I have a note where I said something about the seasonality of food patterns. I stumbled across something where Brigham Young advised not to eat a lot of beef in the summer time, but instead to eat more cheese, eggs and small poultry. But I didn't write down exactly where I saw it, so I have to go back and look it up again.

So today I went to the archives at the Church History Library (the new one) in SLC. And of course I found a jillion things BESIDES what I was looking for. For example:

In Leonard Arrington's (former historian for the Church) book, Great Basin Kingdom (an economic history of the Church in the 19th century) I found a discussion about the "Consecration Movement" incidental to the Reformation of 1856. The Reformation was this thing where the Church leaders decided that the members were too lax in their religious observances, so they made everybody get baptized again as a show of commitment. Plus, they made everyone legally donate their property to the Church as a show of commitment. Then all the property was given back to the original owners as needed. If you ever go down to the county courthouse and look up property deeds, you'll see it all there. And there in Arrington's book he gave the record of Brigham Young's deed to the Church of all of Brigham Young's property. He deeded the stuff to himself as Trustee-in-Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. On his list of stuff donated (which totalled about $199,625, itemized), the last item was an African servant girl, valued at $1,000.

Also, I found a new recipe for "Lumpy Dick" which comes to us from Johanna Lindholm (1836-1909) a Swedish immigrant who landed in Tooele. "Dick" refers to a sort of pudding. Pudding is a very vague term. But here you go:

Lumpy Dick
Heat milk scalding hot--in a large pan. In a bowl beat an egg with a fork a few moments then add some sugar, pinch of salt & grated nutmeg, flour enough to use up the egg--rub between your hands till about like rice, then stir into the hot milk cook a few moments and serve with milk or cream.

On the same document I found this additional recipe for faux coffee, probably of a later date:

"Delicious Mormon Postum"
Parch seed peas--be careful not to burn. Grind to a powder--steep one heaping teaspoon to each cup of water. Serve with sugar and cream.

A trip to the archives is always good for a blog entry.

Christmas Goodies!

2009-12-29T08:28:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, Santa brought me some cooking things! (Who woulda guessed?) I got Come to the Table, a book about the Slow Food movement, its food producers and some of their recipes. I also got Alice Waters' cookbook, The Art of Simple Food. Alice is considered by many to be the founder of Slow Food in America. For those who aren't familiar, Slow Food is the antidote to fast food. Slow food is locally produced--you know the farmer who raised it. Slow food is sustainably produced--no rain forests cleared to graze cows. Instead, it is usually produced in small scale agriculture, family farms and such. And Slow Food is consumed in settings that affirm relationships. No burgers on the run. Instead we share it with people we love. Check it out: www.slowfoodusa.org

And then there was the bread. Santa gave me a couche which is a piece of heavy linen canvas used for raising French baguettes, and also this fancy reed basket called a brotform used for raising large loaves. I made a rye bread with caraway. I had to try it right away. Check it out:

And to give you a sense of scale:

Incidentally, if you want to learn to bake old fashioned loaves like these, its really quite easy (especially if your baking environment is somewhat thermally stable, which mine is not, neither the pioneers' drafty log cabins). The best starting point is the book Bread Alone by Daniel Leader.

Hope your Christmas was full of joy and peace!

Christmas day in London

2009-12-26T16:02:00.000-08:00

So I was reading ol' Wilf's diary the other day, and found this little gem from 1840, when he was on a mission in England:

"Christmas day in London... We took our Christmas dinner with Br. Morgan. He had his family at home with him. The dinner consisted of Baked Mutton, Goose, Rabbit Pies, Minced Pies, and Plum Pudding, and bread and cheese, Porter and water. We spent the evening at Mr. Albums in conversing about the things of God..."

This citation is just one example, which may or may not represent a broader cross section of what was common. If we were to use this one example as a representative sample, here's what we might learn:
Wilford (and other early Mormons) indulged in fine food for holiday occasions.
Christmas dinner was an important dinner.
Some Christmas dinners were heavy on the nice meats.
Meat pies figured prominently as main dishes.
Sweets came from the pudding, not the pie.
Starches came from bread, not potatoes.
The Word of Wisdom was not observed: "porter" is a heavy dark beer.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Pudding

2009-12-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

I've been negligent: three weeks since my last post. Terribly sorry. In that time, I've received the manuscript back from the publisher. The editor pointed out one particular criticism in my theoretical framework. I feel that folklore and oral tradition emphasizes starvation and weed-eating too heavily. My rebuttal was to write about all the times people didn't starve and had plenty to eat of diverse dishes. Apparently I did this too well, and made it sound like things were pleasant most of the time. I swayed too far in the opulent direction, so I'll have to modify some of my modifiers.

In the mean time, I also read Dickens' A Christmas Carol (in prep for the fantastic new animated movie). Here's one of Dickens' many passages describing Christmastime food (in this case a pudding):

"Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress' next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding, like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck to the top."

I wish you all such a Christmas pudding, and fine friends and family who might share it with you.

Food and Memory

2009-11-28T08:03:00.001-08:00

I was listening to some of the NPR commentary on Thanksgiving, leading up to the holiday. One chef they interviewed said something about how much of the meaning we attach to food is associated with memory, and that memory probably accounts for most of what we find desirable in the foods we go back to again and again.

That got me thinking about pioneer food, of course. In itself, there's probably not much appetizing about pioneer food, or any other multi-generational food. We have so much variety in the grocery store today that we can make much tastier morsels that we would find from pioneer days. But we attach emotional significance to the pioneer items. The carrot or plum pudding serves as an example. Danish abelskiver are not particularly tasty (they are certainly nice) but there's more emotional memory attached to them for me so they become special.

Here's our assignment for today: List three foods that are tasty on their own, and three foods that are special because of memories you attach to them.

Feasting

2009-11-25T11:59:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow being Thanksgiving, it seems we should reflect on the tradition of feasting. One of my friends tells me his extended family is going to Golden Corral for their Thanksgiving feast. Certainly, they will have access to a far greater volume of food there than will grace my table tomorrow. If feasting means volume, they win.

On the other hand, I'm guessing that even with his best efforts, my friend's feast will be over in about 30 minutes. I'm trying to figure out ways to draw my feasting out as long as possible. Unfortunately, we won't have any kids to dinner this year, but that also means we can drag it out more without snarfing. One idea is to serve corn nibblets one at a time. Just kidding, it hasn't come to that. But I am setting out a meat and cheese tray for grazing in the late morning. We have an edam, a brie, a chevre, an aged spanish raw goatsmilk, a French compte, a raw milk cheese from local Beehive Cheese, and a raw milk farmhouse cheddar that I made (less than 30 days!). My brother is bringing a blue stilton and an apricot stilton. Part of how I define feasting is staggering variety.

I'm also doing a soup course to lengthen the meal. Part of feasting for me means a lengthy marathon, leisurely for hours. For the soup, I wanted to do something light and fresh so we don't get too full too fast. Can you guess what we're having? Yup, its miso soup. It seems like a bit of a departure for a traditional Thanksgiving, but if we just use fish stock with no seafood, and green onions with tempura crisps, it should match well enough.

Of course we have to keep some traditional elements. In the past I've always made carrot pudding for dessert, served steaming hot with a lemon sauce and melting ice cream. Absolutely divine! But since I discovered a plum pudding recipe dating back 7 generations in my family, we must do that. It directs to be served with a hard sauce made with creamed butter, sugar and brandy. I've posted that recipe here previously, so check the archives.

I guess what I'm saying is that tomorrow we have a chance to do something wonderful with food and social interaction. We get to make it all happen in a way we don't have very many times otherwise. I'm excited! (Aren't you?)

"who he calls, he qualifies..."

2009-11-21T14:40:00.001-08:00

Today I'm feeling a little bit of consternation about some of the Church "callings" I've been asked to shoulder. I wonder why they ask me to do these things. I hope it might be because they see that I have some talents and skills, and they might want to put those things to good use. More often it seems that they ask me because I'm conveniently available and I said yes when they asked.

In my wife's family, she's descended from a fellow named Shadrack Roundy, who happens to be one of the several people who claim to have plowed the first furrow in the Salt Lake Valley. That is, if we disqualify the Mexican settlers who were here before the Mormons. At any rate, I was reading some of Shadrack's journal the other day. He crossed the plains multiple times as he brought one group of immigrants after another to the valley. Still, he wasn't the company captain. He wrote in his journal that some of the immigrants he was traveling with said that he should have been the captain, on account of the fine table and dinner service he laid each evening, including silverware and linen napkins.

So I'm torn... do I muse about the state of fine dining on the Mormon pioneer trail, or about the funny things that "qualify him for the work"?

Beef Bones

2009-11-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit ill the last few days with some sort of digestive complaint delivered by way of my sweet daughter. Feeling much better now. The whole time I was ill I had a yearning for a nice French onion soup, made with real beef broth from beef bones. Now that I'm feeling up to it, I went and bought some nice bread, a bit of cheese, and some beef bones. It brought me to think about a quote from John Jacques, with the Martin handcart company. He wrote,

"...a good brother came to our camp fire and asked if we were all one family. We said we were six in number... He asked if mother had no husband and she told him her husband had died two weeks ago and was buried on the plains. He had been standing with his hands behind him, then he handed us a piece of beef to cook for our supper. He left and came back with a beef bone. He said, 'Here is a bone to make some soup and don't quarrel over it.' We felt surprised that he should think we would ever quarrel over our food."

Of course, the reason he chastised about quarrelling is that the whole company was on the verge of starvation (many having already died), so quarreling was a matter of life and death. The beef bones were rich in marrow and fat, which could make the difference when each calorie mattered so much. Fortunately, I don't have to quarrel with anyone for my bones. In fact, the fam might rather eat Burger King tonight, as a prelude to the New Moon release.

Notes from Patty Sessions

2009-11-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

Patty Sessions was one of the more prolific diarists of the pioneer era. In November 1855, Patty Sessions wrote a little more than 300 words in her diary. Of those, 36 words had some food context. There are no recipes or even dishes found in those 36 words. In fact, the entries say more about her family relationships than they say about food.

Here are those 36 words:

Tuesd 6:...got 15 lb sugar
Wed 7:...PG & David brought me a peice of beaf
Sat 24:...David here went to get some Aple trees did not get any I gave him what I did not set out for PG

So long as we focus on recipes, Mormon pioneer food history eludes us. But when we look at how food items function in the context of the larger society, food can be illuminating.

That's all for today.

A Sense of Community

2009-11-01T09:31:00.000-08:00

WARNING: No Pioneers Found in This Installment.

A couple of posts ago I discussed how the Providence Sauerkraut Dinner did, or did not, help to create a sense of community. I think we often use food as a vehicle for creating community. At the Episcopal church in Ogden, they use coffee before the service to do this, and then of course the service itself with the wafer and the wine is designed to bind the community together (with a communal cup).

Last night was Halloween. Last year for Halloween we took the kids trick or treating. Some in the neighborhood wanted to do the "Trunk or Treat" at the church. Both were employed last year, and the neighborhood swarmed with ghosts and gremlins. This year, it seems the emphasis was placed on the Trunk or Treat. Very few ghosts or gremlins were to be found out and about. At the Trunk or Treat, food (sweets) are dished out in large quantities, in the most efficient manner, but there is no social interaction.

We seem to be seeing a shift in how we organize our social spaces and interactions. It seems we don't visit each other like we once did. The home is being fortified more and more as a private space which excludes neighbors and passing strangers. We seem to prefer congregating in a common public place, then retreating to the safety of our homes, instead of welcoming friends into our homes.

This is a little disturbing to me.

Cider Time

2009-10-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

As fall weather turns cold, it forces apples on the trees to make the final conversion of sugars. Then, its time to press. For Mormon pioneers, apple pies were a nice indulgence, but the main purpose of the crop was for cider and cider vinegar. Brigham Young's daughter Clarissa remembered his cellar in the orchard, where large barrels of hard cider mellowed through the winter.

Last weekend we went to the pioneer village and helped press cider. Here are some photos from that process.

One of the main points of interpretation for the visitors was that apples have yeast on their skins, so any juice from crushed apples will begin fermenting immediately. It was a surprise to many that "juice" was not a common beverage, but instead hard cider. Someone asked "What's the difference between juice and cider?" Shannon replied, "About a week." A French woman asked about this seeming contradiction to Mormon doctrine. I explained that all religions experience change; just as Vatican II under Pope John Paul revolutionized the practice of Catholicism, Mormonism today is much different than Mormonism historically.

Providence Sauerkraut

2009-10-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

The first chapter of the forthcoming book focuses heavily on this thing that happens each October in Providence, Utah. Every year for more than a hundred years, the folks who live in Providence get together for a community dinner. They call it the Sauerkraut Dinner. Originally the settlers of the town were predominantly from Switzerland. When they started the tradition, there was still a strong sense of Swiss heritage in the town. Quite a few people still spoke German-Swiss, and naturally, the dinner had a distinct Swiss flavor. The dinner was originally sponsored by the LDS congregations in town. They charged money for the dinner, and the church made a lot of money. Further, there was a bazaar associated with the dinner, and people sold homemade crafts and foods. For example, they made egg noodles, and sold the egg noodles in bags to take home. They canned sauerkraut, and sold cans of sauerkraut. The whole affair had a festive atmosphere, like a party or carnival. Maybe like a Mormon Oktoberfest.

Over the years, the Swiss heritage has been diluted as new subdivisions spring up, and as demographics change. Further, in the 1980s the Church prohibited local fundraising like that, and the tradition ended momentarily. The municipal government stepped in and revamped the dinner, and continues the tradition (sort of). Also, local congregations scaled the dinner down and now they hold it local with no outsiders invited and potluck only, no charge to eat.

Last Saturday was the municipal version of the Sauerkraut Dinner. I went and paid $9.50 to experience it. The dinner part of the experience was catered by Iron Gate Grill. There was no potluck about it. In talking to one of the chefs, I discovered that for the past three years the city required them to use sauerkraut from a professional supplier, whereas before that, it was locally made by folks in town. He told me about seeing a local farmer bring a 55 gallon drum of sauerkraut in the back of his truck, and lifting it off with a fork lift. That kind of thing doesn't happen anymore.

At the head of the line for dinner was a sign reading, "Only one time through please." The dinner was tasty. There was a tossed green salad, cooked carrots, roast turkey (and cranberry sauce), sauerkraut, real mashed potatoes and turkey gravy. The people there were mostly over 60. There were no children whatsoever. There was no entertainment during dinner. I sat with an older couple who had moved to Cache Valley five years ago, from Salt Lake City. They had experienced the Sauerkraut Dinner in their youth, and they said the food was good, but not as good as their long ago memories. The whole dinner experience was rather quiet and somber.

After dinner there was a craft show, with lots of people selling bracelets and necklaces they had made at home. There was no sauerkraut nor noodles for sale.

It seems that if children are not involved in the traditions, then the tradition will soon end. Traditions die when they fail to hold meaning for the participants. This experience brought me to think about how I help to perpetuate the traditions of my local community. It was a little sad to see it declining. Maybe a municipal event can never be as dynamic as a grass root event. I wonder how the city event was different from the ward dinner.

Salt Rising Bread

2009-10-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

The answer to last week's puzzler is... Clostridium perfringens. This little bacteria thrives in a very warm, moist saline environment, usually around 113-115 degrees Farenheit. The recipe from last time gives basic direction for creating a petri dish friendly to the bacteria. As the culture progresses, the bacteria multiplies, at the same time exuding gasses which smell like ripe cheese. This is no coincidence-- the same bacteria culture is found in many cheeses, which undergo a 100+ degree culture in their first stage of preparation.

As we mentioned a month or so ago in the post titled, "Spontaneous Generation of Mice" the Mormon pioneers didn't know anything about microbes and bacteria, but they were adept at culturing and manipulating them. This is another example of their skill. Pop cultural understanding of microbiology didn't come around until the 1890s, but Mormon pioneers kept all kinds of cultures going anyway.

In the recipe, it instructs to scald the cornmeal. It seems that it should be scalded in milk. I tried the recipe with water and cornmeal, and it failed to culture. But it worked with milk. Some recipes instruct using potato water instead of milk. If you're really interested in trying to make salt rising bread, first visit this site: http://home.comcast.net/~petsonk/

Next time: my review of the Providence Sauerkraut Dinner.

Name That Leavening Agent

2009-10-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, its been slow lately, trying to find something to blog about. So here's a pioneer game for you: Name That Leavening Agent. As you know, pioneers used both chemical and microbial agents to leaven their bread. In either case, they trapped gasses in the dough. From the following recipe, see if you can guess what is causing the gasses that leaven the bread. The recipe comes from The Practical Housekeeper, 1857. Similar recipes were referenced in the Deseret News of our era.

To Make Excellent Bread Without Yeast
Scald about two handfuls of Indian meal; into which put a little salt, and as much cold water as will make it rather warmer than new milk; then stir in wheat flour, till it is as thick as a family pudding, and set it down by the fire to rise. In about half an hour it generally grows thin; you may sprinkle a little fresh flour on the top, and mind to turn the pot round, that it may not bake at the side of it. In three or four hours, if you mind the above directions, it will rise and ferment as if you had set it with hop yeast; when it does, make it up in soft dough, flour a pan, put in your bread, set it before the fire, covered up, turn it round to make it equally warm, and in about half an hour it will be light enough to bake. It suits best to bake it in a Dutch oven, as it should be put into the oven as soon as it is light.

Post your answers in the comment box. I'll send some free saleratus to the winner, drawn at random from all correct answers submitted.

Season's End

2009-10-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

Today we decided we're not putting up anything else. The pantry shelves are loaded with the fruits of summer. We did peach preserves, crab apple syrup, hot pepper and apple jelly, salsa, chili sauce, and dozens of quarts of tomatoes. Today, I'm packing away the sauerkraut, which turned out better than expected but with room for improvement. All in all, it gave me quite a connection with the Mormon pioneers in several ways.

I really enjoyed the tangible connection I felt when I was in the garden. Reading Elijah Larkin's diary showed me how his garden was a part of his everyday pioneer life. As I planted, irrigated, hoed and reaped, I often thought of Elijah, escaping to his garden. The garden also helped me connect with the pioneers as I planted heirloom vegetables. Everyone else in the neighborhood planted hybrids. Their corn was neat and orderly and squat, thrusting all of its energy into sugary kernels. My corn was eight feet tall, gangly and chaotic. I sometimes felt like my garden was a bit of a museum, comparatively.

We're still waiting for apples to crush. We haven't yet had a really good frost. But having sauerkraut finished off says that apples can't be far behind. The Providence Sauerkraut Dinner is October 24th, if you're interested: (435) 752-9441. Tickets are $8 in advance. My sauerkraut turned out a little salty, but still very sour, with a nice firm texture. Its hard to find exact dimensions for the salt in small volume recipes. Now I have a better feel for next time.

More than anything, the season has shown me something about the nature of time in the pioneer era. Every decent food experiment I've tried has had a significant time element. The garden, for example, is an endeavor that takes multiple seasons, from spring till fall. Sauerkraut takes six weeks to ferment. Boiling jelly long enough to extract the pectin from the apples takes at least a couple of hours. Bread is all about waiting, sometimes as long as 18 hours. That time factor is probably the biggest element seperating us from pioneer foodways. We would rather open a can and have it now.

Now, I'm looking forward to eating all the food on the shelves through the winter. I love winter.

Bob Sorenson, Mormon Wine Maker

2009-10-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

As I was passing through Mount Pleasant (otherwise known as "Little Denmark,") I had heard about a wine maker who worked using all sorts of fruit. It turned out that Bob Sorenson had gone out of business a year earlier, but he consented to an interview. When we pulled up in front of his old storefront, it was nearly dark. Getting out of the car, we saw the most beautiful little apple tree. Its fruit was wine colored, skin and flesh. The fruits were chubby and squat. As he came out to greet us, Bob boasted that it was a Russian variety he had grafted from scions.

Bob comes from a Mormon heritage, a Scandinavian from Cache Valley. The Mormon wine-making tradition on the other hand came from Switzerland to Southern Utah. I asked Bob whether he thought there was any remnant of the old Mormon wine tradition from the Dixie days. He explained that many local old-timers used to stop in and share recipes with him, but that contemporary Mormon culture had no room for what he does. He saw a distinct shift in Mormon culture after World War II.

One of Bob's specialties was rhubarb wine. At its peak, his winery was the driving force behind Mount Pleasant's Rhubarb Festival, with pie eating contests, etc. As a basic Utah beverage, rhubarb wine seems to have been a staple in pioneer days. Bob shared some of his research with me, including this extract from The Farmer's Oracle. The Oracle was an agricultural newspaper published by J.E. Johnson (yes the same seedsman previously mentioned) in Utah County.

"A very good beverage can be made of the juice of the common pie-plant; it is not strictly a wine, as that dainty can only come of ripeneed fruit. Dr. Marsh gives the following receipt for making rhubarb wine, which he says is the best remedy for dysentery and diarrheas yet known.--Peel and slice the leaf stock as for pies; put a very small quantity of water in the vessel, only just enough to cover the bottom; cover the vessel and gradually bring to a slight boil, then strain, pressing out all the liquid; to this liquid add an equal quantity of water; to each gallon (after mixed) add four to six poiunds of sweetening, set aside, ferment and skim like currant wine; put it in a cask and leave it in bulk as long as possible. All wine is better kept in casks." --The Farmer's Oracle, Aug. 14, 1863. Spring Lake Villa, Utah County, Utah.

That seems like an awful lot of sugar to add, in my estimation. Bob also shared with me a recipe for rhubarb wine he received from an old-timer in the community. It followed similar lines as above, but with less sugar. The nice part was that the old-timer's recipe showed that the tradition remained active in Utah for at least 100 years. This old fellow also shared local Utah recipes for loganberry wine and potato wine.

Today it seems these traditions are pretty much dead in the Mormon community. Perhaps its just as well. Potato wine seems pretty desperate.

"Little Denmark"

2009-10-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

Last week as we drove down through the San Pete Valley, we picked up a map published by some sort of tourism commission. The map showed three different tourism "zones" in southern Utah, including one called "Little Denmark." This was essentially the San Pete Valley, including Mount Pleasant, Spring City and Ephraim and Manti. It reminded me of a folklore conference I once attended where they discussed cultural expressions that occurred spontaneously, versus consciously manipulated tourism features. Another example would be "Bridgerland" versus Cache Valley. Cache Valley extends beyond Utah's border, but "Bridgerland" (i.e. Utah's portion of the Cache Valley cultural tourism zone) ends neatly at the border.

So when we passed the sign proclaiming we had entered "Little Denmark," we started looking for expressions of Danish culture. Certainly, a hundred years ago the area was heavily influenced by Scandinavian culture. Swedish and Danish surnames marked most local businesses. When I asked locals about their heritage, most were clear that they descended from Danish pioneers. But when I looked for contemporary expressions of Danish heritage, I couldn't find any.

I specifically asked several people if they had eaten Danish food recently. Some with Danish family heritage couldn't recall any Danish food items at all. Others noted that they had eaten an apple dumpling at the Scandinavian festival held each Memorial Day weekend. It appeared that the Scandinavian festival had become the repository for Danish heritage. It holds the heritage so securely that there is none to be found during the remainder of the year.

Ephraim and Manti both have their Co-operative Merchantile building still standing. Both now house touristy little crafty shops. When I asked about Danish food, many people directed me to the Co-op as a possible source for a Mormon Danish cookbook. The Manti Co-op had nothing, but the Ephraim Co-op had several cookbooks. Some had Danish recipes, and there was one that was the production of the local women's Relief Society. This local cookbook was filled with recipes for lasagna, chile verde and hamburger/macaroni stew. This cookbook also had several recipes bearing Danish-language names, but no provenance.

All in all, I came away thinking that the "Little Denmark" moniker was all tourism and no actual Danish culture. There is a body of culture there that I believe holds Scandinavian heritage intact, but it is not evidenced in daily life.

Do you have any multi-generational ethnic heritage that you express at least once a month?

Saleratus

2009-10-01T16:36:00.001-07:00

Patty Sessions was headed out of Nauvoo in 1846. So was her husband's second wife, Lovina. What we know about the circumstances comes from Patty's diary, so perhaps the facts are a little slanted. The Sessions's were not long on the trail before tensions between the two sister wives made life difficult, with all three sharing a tent. According to Patty, Lovina refused to help with camp chores such as cooking and laundry. She told Br. Sessions lies about Patty. Br. Sessions apparently came to feel that Patty was at fault. To demonstrate his condemnation of her, Br. Sessions took away Patty's stores of saleratus and locked it up. Patty was about 45 years old at the time.

Saleratus is a chemical compound (potassium carbonate) which naturally weeps from the ground as mineral-bearing water evaporates. Coming from Latin roots, sal aeratus means aerated salt, referring to its ability to produce carbon dioxide when mixed with another acidic food element such as vinegar or tartaric acid (cream of tartar). It is used instead of soda to make biscuits. Pioneers on the trail often gathered saleratus when they found it, for example near Independence Rock in Wyoming. It is also reported to occur on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. I believe I have seen some such deposits in the past.

In Utah, pioneer settlers continued to use saleratus to leaven their biscuits. Livvy Olsen, a Danish immigrant growing up near Manti, Utah in the 1860s, remembered collecting saleratus by the wagon load near the San Pitch river.

So today I went out to see if I could find some saleratus. South of Manti a mile or so is "Manti Meadows", a property managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Most people go there to hunt ducks and pheasants. From the road, I could see bright white patches in the clay soil. We (my good wife sometimes shares my food adventures) walked a half-mile or so from the parking area, and spotted a patch of what we thought was saleratus. It crusted over the ground, with a slightly crystalline appearance, almost like salt. It seemed to be frozen in a bubbly foam. The crust was a quarter- to half-inch thick over the ground. I whipped out a small container of vinegar I had brought. A little saleratus in my palm foamed and fizzed when I poured vinegar on it. We had struck it rich!

Last night it rained considerably, so the deposits were softer than normal, and we had to be careful in collecting them so they wouldn't crumble. I imagine that if we had a dry spell, the saleratus would be more crusted and stable. Also with the rain, some sandy silt came up with the saleratus.

From what I have read, some pioneers dissolved the saleratus in a little water, and let the silt settle to the bottom. The mineral-bearing water could then be used to mix biscuits. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know how it turns out. More than anything it makes me think we don't really know much about pioneer cooking, if we've never used saleratus before.

Road Trip!

2009-09-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend is Fall Break-- four day weekend for school teachers, so we're goin on a road trip. There's supposed to be a deposit of saleratus somewhere down around Manti, where pioneers used to gather the stuff. Its a naturally-occuring carbonate similar to soda, but potasium instead of sodium. They used it like baking soda in biscuits and quick breads. Wouldn't that be cool to have some? Should I get a little extra and send it out to the die-hard readers?

Then, just down the road in the lovely community of Mount Pleasant, there's a wine maker who works from the old Mormon tradition, and makes a variety of wines from native fruit. So I'm going to try to meet with him for an interview.

Then, if there's still time or gas money, we might carry on down to Dixie, where there's a fundamentalist co-op that's making some really decent cheese. They have a website, I'll try to post a link if it turns out to be good.

Does it sound like fun? And then, oh yeah, the new D.I. opened in North Ogden, and I got a little candle warmer that I'm going to try using to culture salt-risen bread. Lots of adventures to pass the time until the publishers call...

Preserves

2009-09-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today I'm making a sort of hot pepper jelly. This isn't a pioneer recipe, but its pretty tasty. I got the recipe from my friend Kenzie, and I was surprised to see that there is no pectin in it. When she shared it with me previously, it had a definite jelly consistency. I couldn't figure out how that worked without pectin in the recipe. Maybe it was a typo.

But then I started thinking about the pioneers and their lack of pectin. So naturally I went to wikipedia.com and discovered that apples contain their own natural pectin. In fact, apples are the source of pectin when you buy pectin in the grocery store. After apples are crushed for cider, they sell the pommace (mashed pieces) to the pectin makers.

Through the course of the research, I came across a couple of different fruit preserves, and as you know, right now is the season for making preserves. The most common Mormon preserve seems to have been peaches simmered in molasses. The recipes often said to leave the skins and stones in the pot while simmering. This contributed pectin to the mix. If you simmer them for several hours, eventually it resolves into a sort of peach-flavored goop, which was used like jam, or was also used to make a filling for a pastry-lined pudding.

Another preserve mentioned was pumpkin- or squash butter. This was used in the early years of settlement before fruits were commonly available. After fruit trees were established, I did run across one source for apple butter. I imagine that the squash butter was made in pretty much the same way as apple butter, but using squash instead of apples. So here's a recipe from Elizabeth Ellet's The Practical Housekeeper: A Cyclopedia of Domestic Economy, 1857:

1610.--YANKEE APPLE BUTTER.
Boil cider down one half; put in as many apples as the liquor will contain, stew them soft; then take them out and put in fresh apples. When they are cold boil them again in the cider til they are pulpy and thick. Add different kinds of spice, a little before it is done Keep in covered jars.

Well, I better go stir the peppers. Good luck with your preserves!

And now, we wait...

2009-09-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

This morning I drove up to the publisher's and turned in two full hard copies and a CD digital copy. Here's the stats:

70,000 words (I didn't count exactly)
325 pages, Courier New font, including notes and bibliography
123 sources in the bibliography
393 footnotes
9-11th grade reading level
2 years of rather constant part-time effort (I think I went too slow, and didn't do anything at all in several different months).

They say it will be two months before I hear anything. I don't know what to do with myself now.

Sauerkraut & noodles

2009-09-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

September is the start of sauerkraut season. Cabbages should have been ready to harvest by the first of September. Sauerkraut is made by pounding salt and cabbage together in a crock or barrel, and then letting a lactic fermentation take place. The lactic acid produces the "sauer," which puts the cabbage into a state of preservation for the winter. The whole process takes about six weeks. I started my sauerkraut in mid-August, so it should be done in a couple of weeks.

In Cache Valley, Utah, there's a little town called Providence. The town was settled by German/Swiss immigrants in the 1860s. They've been making sauerkraut every year since then. This past August I talked to Ken Braegger about how he makes sauerkraut using his great-grandfather's formula. He gave me some of his sauerkraut, which I'm saving for fall.

In Providence, they have an annual feast which places sauerkraut as the centerpiece. The event is called the "Sauerkraut Dinner". It also has been happening every year in October for a hundred years (or more). In days gone by, the sauerkraut was served with home made noodles, fried. The women of the congregation made the noodles at the church ahead of time. They rolled the noodles out in sheets on the floor (the floor being covered with sheets as well), and then cut the strips and hung them to dry on the backs of the pews. Some noodles were served with the dinner; others were sold in packages as a fund raiser.

Here's a traditional noodle recipe from the pioneer era, attributed to Effie Ensign Merrill:

1 egg, 1 egg-shell water, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 cup flour
Beat egg, water, and salt. Add flour until dough is very stiff. Roll out thin with plenty of flour on a board. Flour thoroughly, fold and roll out again. Repeat, adding flour each time, then flour again and roll tightly like a jelly roll and slice very thin. Shake out into strings of dough, sprinkle into 2 quarts of soup stock and cook 10 minutes.

I like these quite well, especially with chicken noodle soup. I've never tried frying them with sauerkraut and bratwurst. I hope you enjoy them this fall with your soups. Aren't you excited for soup season? I know I am!

P.s. you might notice that I've added lables to index.

Seed Saving

2009-09-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

In 1893, A.W. Livingston published his masterwork, Livingston and the Tomato. As a pioneer seedsman, Livingston probably did more to develop the tomato as a commercial American crop than anyone. His book, now in print once again from Ohio State University Press, served as an encyclopedia of tomato varieties, with instructions for propagation and refinement. In the book, a contributor poses this advice to the question of "Should gardeners grow their own seeds?"

"This question is usually answered in the affirmative: the reason assigned being that one can grow better seeds than he can buy. The reason may have been a valid one once, and may still hold good in some cases, but to advise private parties to grow their own garden seeds is about as antiquated advice as to recommend farmers to weave their own cloth."

Granted, these were seedsmen, who made their living by selling seeds. We must also grant that in order to save seeds effectively, they should be isolated from other varieties which might cross pollinate. This would mean that you could only grow one variety of each vegetable in the garden.

In Utah, seedsman Joseph Ellis Johnson offered his catalog of more than a hundred seed varieties in 1864. All were grown from seed in Utah, for the Utah market. Seeds from eastern sources might not have seen success in Utah's hot arid climate and high altitude. Yet, on September 27 in that same year, Elijah Larkin (farming in Salt Lake City) wrote in his diary, "...I gathered my lettuce seed..."

If you're going to save seeds for next year, now is the time to do it. First you should ask, "Are my seeds open pollinated?" If your seeds are hybrid, then they won't grow again. If they are an heirloom variety, they should work. Second, you should ask, "Are the seeds pure?" If you grew pumpkins, summer squash and cucumbers all in the same patch, then the chances are good that they cross-pollinated, and whatever grows from your seeds next year will be a bizarre mix. We had a volunteer squash in the garden that we let grow for a while. It was a cross of yellow squash and cucumbers that turned out looking like zucchini. The flesh was woody and tough. We won't let any volunteers grow next year.

If you have open pollinated seed that you think is pure, there are different treatments for different kinds of seeds. Some seeds (like cillantro, radishes and lettuce) you can just let the plant go to seed, and then shake the seeds out of the seed heads into a paper bag. Other seeds take more involved processing. There's a great book called Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. She describes everything you would ever need to know about saving any kind of see you can imagine.

For tomatoes, cut the fruit in eighths, and then scrape the viscous seed blobs into a half-pint jar. Screw the lid on loosely, and set the jar on the kitchen counter for a couple of weeks until it grows a nasty mold on top, and the seeds fall to the bottom of the liquid. When you think it is ready, strain off the liquid, reserving the seeds. Spread the seeds out on a paper towel and let them dry thoroughly. When dry, store them in a paper envelope in a dark place until spring. Label the envelope.

So yeah, you can probably buy cheap seeds that require none of this effort. And if you are going to go to all the work of planting a garden, its best to not start with bad seeds. But if you're a little more adventurous in your gardening, you've probably come across some seeds that you can't buy in the store. These you would want to save. And its just nice to know that you do have some degree of self sufficiency in your soul, isn't it?

65,000 words

2009-09-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

I just printed the first complete copy of the whole book. Twelve chapters, 313 pages of "courier new" at 12 point font (10 point for the foot notes). There are still 30 errors in the footnotes that need fixing, and probably as many in the text. I've been feeding it a chapter at a time to the writing group I go to, and they've been helping me clean up the readability. Right now it reads on a high school reading level. My average sentence length is 17 words. All in all, it feels like a huge milestone passed.

Next time I'll blog about seed saving. For today, this is enough.

Lab practicum: Bread

2009-09-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

If you were to sort through the posts here, you would probably find that at least half of them are about bread. That's partly because bread was the core of the Mormon pioneer diet, so I have taken a pretty hard look at it. But also, bread is just so amazing! With the complexities of flour and the mysteries of yeast, how can you not tear into a loaf and just leave yourself astounded?

Like you, most of my food activities happen in a kitchen. In the kitchen we have cups and teaspoons to measure ingredients; thermostats to control temperature for the rising time; ovens with adjustable, stable heat; and sinks and running water to clean up. All of these things shape the way we approach food. To take these away would create a different cuisine entirely. That's what I did this weekend.

Every Labor Day weekend, thousands of people converge on Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Jim Bridger built the fort in the late 1830s (I think-- maybe 1840) as an economic hub for the fur trade. The Mormons bought the fort in the early 1850s and used it as a staging station for emigration. Then the U.S. army took possession of the fort in the late 1850s, and so on. Over Labor Day each year, the fort hosts a living historical reenactment of the fur trade era rendezvous, with other living history reenactors joining in as well. I camped for the weekend with some friends who do colonial era history, but I spent my time making bread over a fire.

I tried to approach the bread making in the style of Emily Stewart Barnes' mother, who, after living for several years with just a frying pan, found the Dutch oven as a remarkable innovation to her bread making. Without using measuring utensils, I mixed dough by hand in a wooden bowl. (At home I use a KitchenAid mixer.) Temperatures were anything but controlled; I had no idea how long it would take to raise the dough with drafts blowing through the tent and humidity from a threatening rain storm. Where I usually use 6 cups of flour, I think it took at least a cup less, and it never kneaded out to what I usually expect. Instead of using my usual couches to give form to the loaves, I raised it in the Dutch oven itself, in one great mass. And when it was time to bake, I heaped live coals under and on top of the oven. I didn't add any steam for the crust and I didn't slash the top as I usually do. I normally bake the loaves for 40 minutes-- instead I left it for an hour.

What do you know, but the loaves turned out exquisite! I was nervous at every stage of the process, having set all of my familiar crutches aside. I didn't have my Bread Alone baking book to prompt my memory of measurements. The rote memory didn't feel comfortable. But the bread turned out, in huge round loaves with a golden crust I've never achieved at home.

So if you ever want an adventure in cookery, try setting your measuring cups aside. Leave the cook book on the shelf. Count how many dishes you might muster from memory alone. You'll find yourself connecting with your inner pioneer in ways you might not have imagined.

Hard tack-- redux

2009-09-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

As you may all know, one of my big beeves is that often when people go about recreating some bit of food from the Mormon pioneers, they start with a recipe that isn't anywhere close to reflecting what the pioneers actually ate. Further, they don't think to question where the recipe came from ("provenance" as the antiques folks say). If something is printed in a Church publication, it must be True, they think. And as our last post revealed, this is not always the case. So here are just a few thoughts regarding the errors in the previous post.

First, as Sherm noted, hard tack was not ever intended to be "delicious." Its main requirement was that it keep long term. These are mutually exclusive ideas. For it to keep long term, it had to be dry as a bone, and contain nothing that would spoil. Fats, oils and milk-based ingredients spoil or go rancid. Likewise, rolling the dough out thin also means it will not last long. Thin crackers break into tiny little crumbs.

If the cracker is not thin, it will take some time to dry thoroughly. If it is not completely void of moisture it will spoil. To facilitate drying, pierce each cracker with a toothpick on a half-inch grid. Because it needs to dry thoroughly, we can't bake it at 400 degrees F. Instead, it needs to bake very slowly at a lower temperature (perhaps 200-250) for a long time (at least a couple of hours).

"...it will stay fresh as long as it is kept dry." Hmmm... actually, its not supposed to stay fresh. It's supposed to be dry. And truth be told, sailors often said that a cracker has to ripen at sea. The ripening references crackers that have gotten slightly soggy from ocean humidity, and then become infested with weevils. As the weevils tunneled through the cracker (note the implication of a thick cracker), it weakened the cracker so that it could be broken up more readily. In Melville's Moby Dick, Ishmael talks about sailors throwing such crackers into the rendering pot to fry in whale oil, making a tasty meal.

On the other hand, Melville doesn't mention "...jam, peanut butter, cheese, meat spreads, or whatever you like. Try seasoning the crackers by adding onion powder, cheese, barbecue sauce, bacon bits, herbs, or spices to the dough." The utter poppycock of this notion should be apparent on the face of things.

If you make hard tack, it should break a tooth and choke a camel. On the other hand if you want to make something tasty, why not find a credible recipe for a pioneer-era cookie? It just seems silly to try to make a sea biscuit into a cookie.

A Game for You

2009-08-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been working on honing the manuscript. I checked out a copy of Kate L. Turabian's Manual for Writers of Theses, Disertations, etc. I'm trying to remember the proper Chicago style for footnotes, and I bet that would be super boring for you guys, so here's a game instead.

This citation comes from the Children's Friend, July 1975 page 40. How many anachronisms can you spot? Post your findings in the comments section.

"Pioneer Hardtack
Hardtack is an old-fashioned flatbread or sea biscuit that was popular with pioneers and sailors because it was lightweight, compact, tasty, and stored well. And it is just as delicious today and handy, too, for hiking, backpacking, or snacking. Here is a recipe for hardtack:

4 cups flour (white, whole wheat, graham, rye, barley, or any combination of flours you like)
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups buttermilk, yogurt, cream, or sweet milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 400° and measure into large bowl.

2. Mix well and form dough into a ball, then divide dough and roll out a small portion (about the size of a tennis ball) at a time.

3. Roll dough on lightly floured surface as thin as you can. The thinner you roll it, the better the hardtack will taste.

4. Sprinkle rolled-out dough lightly with salt if you wish, cut to any shape desired, and place pieces close together on greased cookie sheet.

5. Bake until edges begin to brown. Remove cookie sheet from oven, turn hardtack over, and bake until it is crisp and dry and lightly browned.

6. As soon as the hardtack is baked, put on rack to cool. Store hardtack in airtight container, and it will stay fresh as long as it is kept dry.

This pioneer hardtack is delicious served plain or with jam, peanut butter, cheese, meat spreads, or whatever you like. Try seasoning the crackers by adding onion powder, cheese, barbecue sauce, bacon bits, herbs, or spices to the dough."

pots-n-pans

2009-08-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday before going up to the pioneer village for my weekly food adventure, I stopped at the LDS Church Historical Archives. The new building is really nice, but the service is still really slow, and it appears they still keep a very careful watch on everything they let you read. Most of the helpers are senior citizen missionaries who don't know much about history or archiving, but if you know what you want, you can usually get something helpful.

I was looking for information about ceramic pots and crocks. I have a chapter that talks about the physical artifacts of pioneer cookery separate from the perishable food itself. I had most of the chapter, but I was missing the section about ceramics. Here's what I learned.

There was a wave of potters who immigrated to Utah from Staffordshire, England. Yeah. So there were people here in Utah making pots who were as skilled as any in the world. There was also a group of potters who came from Denmark. Most of what these potters made were food containers, though they also made some flower pots and chimney tiles. I always had the impression that if you had a crock, you cherished it and protected it and passed it through generations. But yesterday I learned that crocks were considered much more disposable, a lot like we use Mason jars. As a result, Utah's annual production of crockery peaked in September. Potters boosted their production as house wives bought more to replace what had broken during the year as they got ready for the fruit harvest.

A lot of the Utah pots and crocks are marked so you can identify them, and they are highly collectible. So much that you probably wouldn't really want to collect them unless you were already crazy that way and the recession wasn't a factor in your life. So... I don't collect Utah ceramics. I just play with food. Yesterday I made sauerkraut up at the pioneer village, and I put it in a 3 gallon crock to ferment. Its not a particularly special crock. It was made by Western Pottery Manufacturing Co. in Denver, probably in the early 20th century. Any normal person would just use a plastic Homer bucket from the Home Despot.

Need a little help from my friends

2009-08-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm just about ready to start passing out copies of the manuscript I've been working on for the past year (or so) before submitting it to the publisher. Of course its about the subject at hand (mormon pioneer food). My main concern is that the tone I use might be off-putting to some, boring to others, etc. And as I've been thinking about it, I imagine that you folks out there are the main audience I would want to attract. But I really don't know you much at all. And out of the last five posts I've written, not a single comment. So sometimes I wonder if I'm just missing the mark entirely.

How about if a few of you just take a minute to introduce yourselves a bit in the comments section, and tell us a bit about what sort of cooking you do, and what interests you most in this conversation. Thanks!

"plain but wholesome"

2009-08-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

Last night for dinner I made sushi. I made the usual California rolls, because it is cucumber season of course, but I also made a spicy tuna roll. I also made a miso soup, and my wife made some quick pickles as tsukemono. It was a really nice meal. Two nights ago, I made a Thai curry. It was a yellow curry, with chicken, potatoes, and onions in a cocoanut milk base with some ground peanuts (read: peanut butter). It was pretty tasty. We eat quite a bit of Asian food in our house, but three nights ago we had taco salad. This morning I'm making hashbrowns for breakfast. How would I describe the food in our house from a general overview?

So as I'm writing this stuff about Mormon pioneer food, I'm trying to describe what the common threads were in their daily meals. Eliza Brockbank Hales summed up the diet of her youth with the preface, "I was born in a one-room home in Spanish Fork." She says, "Our food was plain but wholesome. We had milk, home-made bread, vegetables, dried fruit, and meat. Our home cured. hams were tops. We also had a barrel of corned beef and a good root cellar for potatoes, apples, vegetables and so on."

So there you have it: the typical Mormon pioneer diet. How would you describe yours?

mmm... Pudding

2009-08-15T06:33:00.001-07:00

Right now I'm working on what I hope will be the last chapter in the book before I submit to the publisher. My own palate leans toward the savory, so this chapter on sweets has been difficult going. I think I'm on a roll now though, with 3,000 words down so far.

I was very fortunate to stumble across a recipe from Sarah Annie Clark Hale, who married my great great grandfather Alma Helaman Hale. Before I say more, let me just make this preface. Puddings in the 18th and 19th century were a food group of their own. I think puddings probably showed up at half of all suppers. Puddings come in an incredible diversity of styles, shapes and flavors. Most of us are familiar with custard puddings (think blancmange or creme' fraish). Some of us still have a bread pudding or carrot pudding at Christmas time. A few of us have even tried haggis, that Scottish pudding steamed or boiled in an intestine. Of course Yorkshire pudding still has a solid place in the UK.

Sarah's pudding is a plum pudding, typical for Christmas or fancy winter occasions. When we say plum pudding, we always mean raisins. Sarah's pudding comes from the old-school tradition of mixing up a batter with eggs, flour, breadcrumbs, etc., and then boiling it in a cloth bag for hours. More modern recipes call for steaming in a specially made pudding tin, or even baking it in a ceramic dish. With no further ado, here's Sarah Hale's plum pudding.

"English Plum Pudding
2 bowls flour, 1 bowl suet, 1 bowl raisins, 1 bowl currants, 1 teacup sugar, ½ teaspoon each cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg; a little salt, 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder, 6 eggs. Mix to a stiff batter with milk. Boil 5 or 6 hours in a heavy cloth bag. For the bag use a heavy cloth about 27 inches square wrung out in warm water. Flour the inside well and pour on the batter. Pull up the corners and tie with a strong string leaving just enough room for the pudding to rise. Place upside down in a kettle of boiling water on a rack, so it wont burn on the bottom and keep boiling and fully covered with water in a covered kettle the entire time. Add more boiling water if needed during cooking."

These sweet, spicy winter puddings were often served with a sauce. Sarah also left us her sauce or "dip" recipe:

"2 cups sugar and ¼ pound butter, 1 quart of water and boil until all dissolved. Thicken as for gravy. Flavor with brandy or lemon extract. As a variation, carmelize sugar and butter and just before serving add 1 cup whipped cream. Leave out flavoring."

Well... you should probably be making a more plain flour pudding at this summer season, something more like a yorkshire, but I was so excited about this one I just had to share it.

Curd

2009-08-13T19:51:00.001-07:00

Well look at me, blogging three days in a row. I went up to the pioneer village today to play with food whilst wearing funny old fashioned clothes. You may recall I recently wrote about Louis Pasteur and his studies of fermentation. After that little adventure I looked into cheese making, since it is a fermenting process. Did you know that? Yes, its the lactose sugars that get gobbled up by bacteria in the very same way that sucrose sugars get gobbled in beer making, or glucose gets gobbled in bread making. Its all fermentation, folks.

SO ANYWAY, I found this little pioneer descrip about cheese making, from my favorite pioneer lady, Emily Barnes:
“When our neighbors wanted to make cheese, we would in turn take milk to them, so every few weeks we had a cheese.We had a tub that we kept for that purpose. We would get all the milk warm and put it in the tub; then we would cut a piece of ‘rennet’ as we called the inner skin of a calf’s stomach, and let it soak in a little warm water overnight. In the morning we would pour this into the milk, which in a little while would set up like clabber. Then we would dip off the whey for which we had a pan with holes in it; and after putting a white cloth on it we would put some large rocks on it to hold it down.”

Of course, like many descriptions, she leaves a lot out. Partly she leaves things out because she didn't know what was happening with the microbiology, but she also leaves things out just for sheer forgetfulness.

"We would get all the milk warm and put it in the tub." Here she's talking about a wooden cheese making tub. She borrowed a tub to do laundry. The wooden tub became saturated with bacteria so that by putting the milk in the tub, she essentially introduced a bacteria culture. When I made cheese today at the pioneer village, I used a quart of cultured buttermilk. The culture is what does the fermenting. Some simple cheeses simply curdle the milk but don't ferment. These must be eaten right away.

"then we would cut a piece of ‘rennet’ as we called the inner skin of a calf’s stomach" Here she is talking about the process of setting the curd. By setting the curd, she sets the stage for separating the milk solids from the whey. But she never says "curd." You'd think anyone who has a chance to say "curd" would just say "curd" at every opportunity.

"Then we would dip off the whey for which we had a pan with holes in it;" So it turns out you can't just dip off the whey. First you have to cut the curd. As the curd is cut into smaller pieces, the exposed surface area of the curds start to express whey. Whey is a clear liquid, somewhat yellowish, and good for feeding to pigs. After the curd is cut, the next step is to heat the curd. As the curd is heated, it gives off even more whey, and it cooks slightly to become more firm.

"after putting a white cloth on it we would put some large rocks on it to hold it down.” But BEFORE putting a white cloth on it, she would have mixed some salt into it. Salt inhibits some bacteria while promoting others. Without the salt, the cheese will spoil before it ferments completely. Also, salt helps to dry the whey out of the curd to make a more firm, dry cheese.

So there you go. Maybe it was her MOTHER that made the cheese while she was young, and she wrote this as an old woman remembering her youth in spotty episodes. Maybe all of these recipes I've been hunting down are full of bologna. Or is it baloney? Whatever...

An Appropriate Tone

2009-08-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to a family reunion, and I brought my little lappy along. I thought I might get someone in the fam (solid Mormon stock) to read a sample chapter and give me feedback. What happened instead is that I ended up reading a chapter aloud to a handful of adult siblings and spouses. I read the "Beverages" chapter. My older brother picked that one because he thought it would be the most salacious, and I suppose he's probably right.

I try to write like a historian, which is to say, I try to be objective. Usually that means letting the sources tell the story, instead of me spicing it up with my own notions of how things were. But of course, objectivity is usually pretty boring. Everyone who sat in for the reading said that I should let my personality come out more. And also, they wanted more stories, less analysis. I guess that also means fewer recipes, since a recipe isn't a story. Certainly, that would appeal to more of a popular audience. But I'm setting my sights on Utah State University Press, which might mean that I have to play to a more academic audience. And that means objective, not salacious.

Well, here's a little beverage related salaciousness for you. Mormon pioneer Lucia Eugenia Lamb Everett was passing through Iowa and she sent her grown son to a store near where they were camped. She wrote, “One of the boys called at the Kings Store in Iowa and enquired for a pint of brandy, the man filled the bottle, and told him the price was $1.00. He told him, ‘very well, you may turn it back on the cask as I don’t pay any such price, for brandy.’ This seems to be a fair sample of Iowa prices” Naturally, the Mormons also charged non-Mormons passing through Utah high prices when the tables were turned. Personally, I refuse to pay $1 for a pint of brandy.

Inspiration

2009-08-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to see Julie & Julia-- that new movie about Julia Child and a blogging crazy woman who made every dish in Julia's book. It was fantastic. Meryl Streep as Julia was impeccable, of course. But most importantly, it inspired me. Julia Child took 8 years to write her book. I've only been working on mine for about two years, and not very diligently at that. That blogger woman wrote every day, and cooked every day. I only write once a week. I don't make everything I write about. I'm such a slacker, and I need to do better.

I was also inspired to cook. Today I went to visit my fine friends at the Crumb Brothers Bakery in Logan, and got all jazzed about baking good bread. I came right home from the movie tonight and mixed up a batch of starter for some bread I'll bake tomorrow. I tells ya, I have a passion.

My bread isn't special, particularly. I mean, its better than just about anything you might buy at the grocery store (especially when its fresh), but really, its just bread. Its not a pioneer recipe exactly, although many old recipes I've read follow in the shadows, and I'm sure a pioneer somewhere made bread like mine. But anyway, I just wanted to share with all of you one of the things that makes me happy.

Brock's Bread:
To 1/2 cup water at room temperature, add 1/2 tsp. dry active yeast. Let it dissolve gently, and swish it around in a small bowl. Add 3/4 cup unbleached white flour. Using a wooden spoon, mix it until it is integrated, then beat vigorously for 100 strokes. Cover and let it sit out for several hours, even overnight.
In the morning, measure two cups of water at room temperature into your large bread mixing bowl. Add 1/2 tsp. dry active yeast to this water and let it dissolve gently. Next, add the starter you made the night before. Break it up with a wooden spoon until it is thoroughly dissolved and becomes slightly frothy. Add 1 cup flour, and mix well. Add 1 Tbs. salt, and continue mixing with the wooden spoon. Gradually add three more cups flour. When it becomes difficult to stir, turn it out on your floured kneading surface. Knead for 15 minutes, adding flour to total about 6 cups or so. When it is well kneaded, clean out the big bowl, grease it with butter, and turn the dough in the bowl until it is coated with butter. Cover and let rise 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
After rising, punch the dough down and cover it again. Let it rest 30 minutes. At that time, turn the dough out and briefly knead it again, just a few strokes. Divide the dough into two lumps. Shape it as desired (I use a round loaf), and set it to rise the 2nd time in whatever you have to help it hold shape. Real bakers use a form called a couche but I use little mixing bowls lined with a well floured dish cloth.
When risen, have your oven ready at 450F. I use a baking stone, preheated. Remove the stone from the oven and throw a couple of ice cubes on the floor of the oven. Close the door while you turn the loaves onto the baking stone and let the oven fill with steam. Gently turn the loaves onto the stone, and using a very sharp razor or serrated knife, score the tops of the loaves. Return the stone and loaves to the oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes, reducing to 425 when loaves start to color. Cool on wire racks, or lean against the wall to cool.

This bread gives me joy every time. I hope you like it too. Thanks to Daniel Leader for teaching me.

Spontaneous Generation of Mice

2009-08-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

I made it back to the library today after having spent the last two weeks giving quality time to the family. I had been working on a chapter about preserved foods, many of which involved fermentation. My objective at the library was to get a footnote for an assertion about Louis Pasteur's contributions to the world of food. I had written something to the effect that although he had done some work regarding yeast and bacteria in the 1860s, his work wasn't accepted as valid until much later. That was an assumption I received from several other food writers, but none of them documented their work. I wanted to find something more concrete.

An initial search of the Deseret News (that pulse of Mormondom) yielded no results. A cursory look at other food history made very little reference to Pasteur, as we have relegated him to medical history. However, looking at his work directly, I found that his initial studies in the 1850s were directly related to yeast fermentation. Yes, we have been here before.

In 1857 there was an active debate about the notion of spontaneous generation. One camp believed that, along the lines of Alchemy, you could put the right elements together and generate something completely unrelated. The origins of these ideas seem to lie in the 1600s with a guy named van Helmont. He had a notion about stuffing an old shirt into a barrel that would create the spontaneous generation of mice in the course of three weeks. Others had similar ideas about the spontaneous generation of frogs from marsh mud, or eels from river water. These ideas persisted into the early 19th century.

In this atmosphere, the question of yeast carried similar arguments. One camp held that if you combine sugar and water, yeast will spontaneously generate. The idea that yeast was a living organism was only settled in 1837 when it was first seen under a microscope. This group also believed that yeast "did its thing" only upon decay. They thought that as yeast cells died, it caused the "decomposition" of the sugars in a like manner.

Pasteur and others such as John Tyndall however believed the opposite. In a series of papers presented to French Academy of Sciences in 1859, Pasteur argued that yeast particles floated in the air, and were attracted to sugary substances which fed them. The Academy sided with Pasteur and awarded him a prize for his work. In later years, John Tyndall asserted the dusty coating on the skins of grapes was yeast (which he had verified by microscope). He put to rest the idea that yeast spontaneously generated in grape juice by showing that wine makers had inadvertently introduced yeast by crushing the whole grape with its yeasty skin.

Even so, not all scientists were convinced. In the face of this evidence, Pasteur's primary detractor Justus von Liebig continued to hold to the decomposition and spontaneous generation theories into the 1870s. Indeed, Tyndall was compelled to continue arguing against spontaneous generation into the 1880s, when Pasteur had moved on to medical applications. The broad popular acceptance of Pasteur's work in the 1850s didn't come until after his rabies vaccine proved its success. Many continued to disbelieve Tyndall's arguments about "Floating-Matter of the Air" and "animalcules" (microbial life forms) nearly to the end of the century.

Today it seems ludicrous to us, this idea that life could just sponaneously generate. Even if we don't thoroughly understand the conversion of lactic enzymes to lactic acid, we understand there is a cause and effect relationship driven by basic scientific principles. A hundred and fifty years after Pasteur, it is part of our popular view of the world. The curious thing to me is that 150 years after Darwin, many people still argue against evolution. I suppose the evolution argument requires a bigger petri dish than we have at the moment.

"Salads and such fixings"

2009-07-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

This evening I'm in charge of organizing our local 24th of July celebration. Its going to be a potluck dutch oven dinner, followed by an old-time dance (yeah, what the heck does "old-time" really mean?) with a live string band and a caller. I'm going to bring a pot of beans for my dutch oven contribution, as well as a cucumber salad. The cucumber salad is the one where you slice a bunch of cukes and onions and then rub salt into them; let them sit in the salt for half an hour, then cover with 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 cup water and 1/4 cup sugar, pepper to taste. Chill for several hours before serving. Its one of my favorite summertime salads, and our cukes are going gangbusters right now. We pick 5 gallons of cukes twice a week.

As I'm fixing the beans and salad, I'm thinking back to the words of one Isabella Rogers, born August 17, 1858: "I believe the present trend is setting too strongly towards salads and such fixings. A revival of the old fashioned dishes would be a good thing for every community." In part this is why I chose the dutch oven potluck; also because you just gotta dutch oven on the 24th of July. But what do you guys think? How would old fashioned dishes make our communities different than if we just bring salads to everything?

Food for July 24th

2009-07-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

We're coming up on that Mormoniest of holidays, July 24th, the day Brigham Young said, "This is the right place." For Mormons, food is and always has been one of the main modes of celebration. Louisa Pratt Barnes said of July 24, 1849, "“The tables were spread with the choicest varieties of things produced from the richest soil, and by our own hands labor.”

A party of 49ers passing through Utah on that first Pioneer Day was invited to sit in for dinner. Coming from Boston, they were “perfectly astonished to see the abundance and variety with which our tables were loaded, and said [they] did not believe that a greater variety could have been produced in that city.”

The trouble is, no one left a specific menu. What could that meal have been?

We know the pioneers ate lots of bread. This was the main staple of their diet. Look elsewhere in these posts for bread ideas.

They also ate lots of fruit. But in this early year of 1849, fruit trees were not yet established. If there was fruit, it would have been wild berries, in season in the canyons.

Another big Mormon feast gives an idea of what might have been served on this first Pioneer Day. In 1860 a British traveler recorded the menu for the Territorial Ball, as follows:

Bill of Fare, Territorial and Civil Ball.
Social Hall, February 7, 1860
First Course, Soups:
Oyster, Ox-Tail, Vermicelli, Vegetable
Second Course, Meats:
Roast: Beef, Mutton, Mountain Mutton, Bear, Elk, Deer, Chickens, Ducks, turkeys
Boiled: Sugar-corned beef, mutton, chickens, Ducks, Tripe, Turkey, Ham, Trout, Salmon
Stews & Fricassees.
Oysters and Ox Tongues, Beaver tails, Collard head, Chickens, Ducks, Turkeys
Vegetables
Boiled: Potatoes, Cabbage (i.e. greens), Parsnips, Cauliflower, Slaw
Baked: Potatoes, Parsnips, Beans
Hominy
Third Course, Pastry:
Mince pies, Green apple pie, Pineapple pie, Quince jelly pie, Peach jelly pie, Currant jelly pie
Puddings: Custards, Rice, English Plum, Apple souffle, Mountain, Pioneer
Blancmange Jellies
Fourth Course
Cakes: Pound, Sponge, Gipsy, Varieties
Fruits: Raisins, Grapes, Apples, Snowballs
Candies Nuts Tea Coffee

Most of the vegetables would be likely candidates for the 1849 dinner, since they could be grown in a single season. Likewise, the wild meats would be accessible, as well as domesticated beef, pork and poultry. The interesting food group here is puddings. Largely vanished from our culinary palate, puddings were a main course item for many pioneer meals. While some puddings might seem familiar (custard or rice pudding being somewhat akin to the Bill Cosby versions), other puddings would require the use of a knife. Here's a "Pioneer Pudding" circa 1860 from Martha Bitter Ricks:
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup ground suet
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
About ¾ cup milk
Mix milk with other ingredients to make a stiff batter. Put in a cloth pudding bag and tie tightly. Cook covered with boiling water for three hours. Cut and serve with brown gravy.

The treatment using a cloth pudding bag speaks of the antiquity of this pudding. By mid-19th century, pudding tins were more common, as they hastened cooking time. As a modern equivalent, this might be closest to a Yorkshire pudding, in a different shape.

For our Pioneer Day feast, I'll be bringing baked beans in a dutch oven to the potluck dinner. Hope yours is tasty too!

Generations

2009-07-14T10:56:00.001-07:00

I've been researching Danish and Scandinavian food lately. During the pioneer era, about 70% of the foreign-born emigrants were british, and about 25% Scandinavian, with the remaining 5% being assorted French, German, Swiss, Italian, etc. There were strongholds of Swiss-German in Providence (Cache Valley) Midway (Heber Valley) and St. George. Danish colonies were Hyrum (Cache Valley), and most of the San Pete valley around Manti. In the concentrated areas, Danish culture was quite pronounced.

In looking for food references, I came across a collection from my family (which I referenced last time). In that book, the author (in her 80s now) was talking about the feast for Santa Lucia she remembered in the 1920-30s. Also, she recalled a formal Christmas Smorgasbord. She noted that these days she doesn't include the lutefisk she remembered as a child, as most people didn't like it then.

Lutefisk is a dish prepared from dried cod or ling. I've found a reference from Brigham Young eating dried cod, but mostly it seemed like an exotic thing. I found two other references to dried cod from British-American sources. I also found a couple of Deseret News advertisements from the dry goods retailers Halliday and Warner in the 1850s mentioning codfish for sale (dried of course). But mostly the memoirs, reminisences and diaries of Danish emigrants don't mention Danish ethnic food. They say they ate weeds and mush for years before their farms got established. The only Danish things the pioneers report to have eaten were simple pastry sorts of treats made with milk and flour.

So there you go. It appears that our food traditions are dynamic, coming and going with the generations. It also appears that each generation latches onto what they think is meaningful, which might not be what the former generation thought was meaningful. For example, in the previous generation, lutefisk was seen as a Christmas dish. I think this is because it is a quintisentially Scandinavian dish, and Christmas is a time to celebrate heritage and ancestry. However, the generations before that used lutefisk as just a way to use up old food storage: dried fish from that nasty barrel in the closet.

So when your kids get old, will they look back on your use of foods from the cannery project as nostalgic?

Adventures in History

2009-07-10T19:23:00.000-07:00

Today I went to meet my father's second cousin's mother, whatever that doglegged relation might be called. She is 87. She remembers my great-great grandmother Sena Mikkelsen Sorensen, who was born in Cache Valley in 1860. Apparently they knew each other somewhat. At any rate, some of Sena's Danish recipes (Sena's mother immigrated from Denmark in the 1850s) have been compiled into a very brief cookbook with some of the recipes from another great-great grandmother from Sweden, Anna Lundstrom Carlson. Here's Anna Lundstrom Carlson's bread recipe, Cache Valley circa 1870ish.

"As she kneaded the golden lump, Grandma took your fingers and pressed them into the dough saying "likka dis--" like this, to teach you how to recognize the proper texture for great bread."

1 pint milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup soft butter
1 dessert spoon salt
2 cakes yeast
1 egg
Flour to the right consistency [about 7-8 cups]
Scald milk and cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast in milk with 2 Tbs sugar. Add 3 cups flour, beat with wooden spoon until smooth. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Combine remaining sugar, salt, butter, and eggs, and cream well. Add yeast and flour mixture, beat together, then add remaining flour [gradually]. Place on floured board and knead until dough is smooth and elastic. Add flour gradually to keep dough light. Place in buttered bowl and allow dough to double in size, about 1 1/2 hours. Dust with cinnamon and sugar if desired. Place on baking sheet, allowing space for expansion. Let double in size. Bake in moderate oven (about 350) 18-20 minutes."

So there's your quick fix for today.

4th of July: Ice Cream Time

2009-07-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's officially summer now, even though the cool temperatures continue. Fourth of July means home made ice cream. Clarissa Young (daughter of you-know-who) recalled her brother Feramorz (seriously folks, who names their kid Feramorz? Its as bad as Joseph Smith naming his kid Don Carlos) making ice cream with Heber J. Grant:

"Each boy furnished part of the "makings" and Mother showed them how to cook the custard, in which art they became quite expert. After it had cooled they would put it into a pail with a tight lid, set this within a larger pail, and cover with salt and ice. Then they would take turns twisting and turning the inner pail until the ice cream was frozen."

I've made ice cream using a can inside another can, and kicking it around on the floor. But back to the subject of custard based ice cream. If you google around you can find Thos. Jefferson's custard ice cream recipe from France. Or you can look on the Feeding America website (see previous posts) for recipes from historic cook books. The one I'm using today comes from Mormon Pioneer Mary Vogt Garn, born Sept 12, 1820. It makes six quarts, so I halved it for my 1-gal freezer. I'm giving you the original text however.

“Beat 13 egg yolks very lightly and add thereto four cupfuls sugar and stir well. Add to this, little by little, three pints of rich milk that has been heated to the boiling point, beating all the while, then put in the whites of the 13 eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Cook the mixture in a pail set inside another containing hot water. Boil about 15 minutes, or until it is as thick as boiled custard, stirring steadily. Pour out into a bowl to cool. When quite cold beat into it three pints of rich sweet cream and 5 tsp of flavoring. A pinch of salt is sometimes desirable to bring out the flavor. This makes six quarts of ice cream after freezing. All conditions being perfect the ice cream will be frozen within the hour, in a freezer with a hand crank and revolving dashers, if it is kept moving. The freezer should be packed with cracked ice and salt—rock salt— not the common variety— three-fourths ice and one-fourth salt.”

Helpful hints: layer the ice and salt. Every ten minutes (or so) add another layer of ice and a bit more salt. Don't pour off the melted ice water. If you want to use strawberries in the mix, you have to use A LOT of them. Two pounds would not be too much. Mash them thoroughly, and add them only after the ice cream has started to set. If you thoroughly chill everything well ahead of time, it will speed up the time required for the ice cream to set up. Once it has set up reasonably in the churn, put the can in the freezer for an hour if you want it hard, or eat it right away for softer stuff.

Isn't this fun?

Famous Faces

2009-06-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry its been a while since I wrote. I went on Pioneeeer Trek, and then we went camping, and then there was the Fiddle Festival in Idaho, and then we opened our produce stand. Its been busy.

Here's a brief recap of trek: the food sucked, except for the last day when we had a feast of smoked beef brisket, pulled pork, baked potato, etc. I had to leave for a day for a meeting down in town, and that disrupted the rising times for the sourdough I had planned to make. It rained and rained and that got in the way too. So the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

For your quick little food fact for today, consider this diary entry from John D. Lee. Yes, he's the one who in 1856 helped to massacre 200 wagon immigrants on the trail to California in the name of Mormonism (Mountain Meadows). After the massacre, he went into hiding for a short time, but talked a lot about his role. He was eventually captured and found guilty at trial, and executed twenty years after the massacre. At the time of this entry, he is in hiding near New Harmony in southern Utah.

"May 15, 1859 About 8 at night Aggathean, Rachel and Caroline, my first 3 wives, met near the east line of my pasture fence. They embraced me in their arms and wept with joy and sorrow. Brought with them excellent supper consisting of roast beef, short cake, pies, eggs, pancakes, butter and molasses.”

The next day he wrote:
"May 16, 1859 About 8 o'clock P.M. Rachel, Maryleah, Terressa, my wives, met me with hot coffee, beef steak, crab, custard, etc.”

Lee was famous for his polygamy as well as for the massacre, and boasted of his sexual prowess with his wives. Apparently, for their part the wives were handy with a dutch oven. These two menus give a good representative sample of what I think would have been common for special occasion meals. Everyday meals would more likely be just one dish with bread.

Hope your summer is treating you well. Peas are on now, also cherries. Corn is knee-high or better, and cukes are starting on. Squash is in flower. Beans are about to blossom. Happy eating!

Pioneeeer Trek

2009-06-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I leave for "Pioneer Trek" with the kids from church. Its this quasi-reenactment of the Mormon handcart expeditions of the 1850s. When I was a kid, I did one with an outfit from BYU. We walked about 30 miles in four days, eating gruel. The one I'm doing tomorrow, I understand it will be only 20 miles, and slightly better food (but only because the food will be less than authentic).

They've told us over and over, its not really a historical reenactment. Its more of a long set of initiative games aimed at building righteous teenagers. When I offered my assistance on the food end of things, they said they already had it all planned out: canned chili and store-bought biscuits. Canned chili for a crowd of 250 people... should be spectacular. Scenes from Blazing Saddles come to mind.

Last night they told us that the former recommendations of quasi-historical clothing had been suspended... for the women and girls. They are now welcome to don pants due to fears of inclement weather. Blue jeans are still prohibited for the guys. Khaki Dockers are recommended instead. My wife sewed for three days straight to get historically authentic clothing for her and daughter. She's gonna dress right, by gum. I'll try to post photos of the anachronistic fashion show.

I made up a sourdough anyway. I'm gonna take 5 lbs of flour and see which biscuits get eaten first-- mine or the storebought. I can't let this opportunity go by. After all, when will I be on the Mormon trail with a handcart and a dutch oven again?

Fast Food

2009-06-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I indulged in a little volunteerism. This Is The Place Monument in Salt Lake City also has a full scale Mormon pioneer village/settlement, and they use a TON of volunteers. Those who know me might remember I worked at TITP as their historian a dozen years ago. So anyway, I thought it might a good place to experiment with some of this food stuff I've been researching. I got all dressed up in my duds and went to do an afternoon of sharing info with visitors.

Yesterday was "free day" at TITP and they say they had about 8,000 visitors. It was busy. It was also raining most of the afternoon. I tried to work in the garden as much as I could between spats of rain. I brought my excerpts from Elijah Larkin's diary to share, and I managed to share some of it sometimes (mostly with the other volunteers). In the garden, the most I ever was able to share with people was, "Yes, this is how they grew their food. These are beans coming up here." So I never really got to talk about the research I've been doing. Even though people came to the park to see history, not many wanted to stop and talk about history. In the house, they were using the coffee grinder-- wait, I mean the "spice grinder" to show people how to grind wheat. (Some pioneers did use coffee grinders to grind wheat before mills were established).

It seems that people want fast and dirty information; condensed snippets void of context. Wheat ground in a coffee grinder. Beans in the garden. This makes me think that perhaps a more successful book would be "1,001 strange facts about pioneer food" or "101 Mormon recipes void of context." Just the quick and dirty. After all, isn't that what a blog is? Just a quickie.