How Strange...

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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.