Historical cooking introduced me to cast-iron cookware. It is almost impossible to replicate a Colonial Era kitchen without a cast-iron cauldron hanging over the fire or a Dutch oven sitting on coals with more coals piled on its cast-iron lid. I was used to cast-aluminum cookware at home; ca…
For many Americans, hasty pudding is the essence of Yankee Doodle. In that traditional song and nursery rhyme, the gathering “men and boys” of the American Revolution are declared to be “As thick as hasty pudding.”
Who’s up for a holiday road trip? It’s an old tradition. The first Christmas had Mary and Joseph traveling via donkey to the “little town of Bethlehem” for a census (I guess it was technically a business trip).
From Thanksgiving through New Year’s to Super Bowl Sunday, all seasonal festivities are celebrated, at least in part, with food. An invitation to dine with family and friends can be a joy, but it can also raise a dilemma: What to bring along as your contribution to the table?
This is the time of the year to hear that primordial call—that urge to prepare, to stash away some of the harvest’s abundance as insurance against the coming lean winter months, to defeat time by ensuring that we can taste summer even on the darkest days of winter.
On the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, a low building sprawls across a full city block but seems almost hidden by billboards and glaring yellow signs. One billboard boldly proclaims: “This is the original Nathan’s Famous.”
How’s your garden doing? Whether it’s a multi-acre tilled plot or a simple oversized planter, now is the time we begin to see—and maybe eat—some results.
We keep souvenirs as reminders of our travel experiences. In Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote about American travelers on a late 19th-century grand tour who took souvenirs by using a hammer to crack pieces from renowned architecture and statuary.
It seems contradictory to use words “premium-quality wines” and “do it yourself” in the same sentence. But at Tin Lizzie Wineworks in Clarksville, Maryland, avid do-it-yourselfers, coached and abetted by certified winemaker and instructor Dave Zuchero, produce startlingly good wines.
In one of Nature’s little ironies, I’m a food writer with a food allergy! Nothing serious, but I am calamitously allergic to fast-food fried potatoes. After just a few fries from a drive-thru window, I get totally congested, with sneezing, watery eyes, and a stuffed-up nose.
As a hardcore foodie, I wonder whether my diet can boost my ability to dodge communicable diseases such as the flu and even COVID. Can diet serve as an additional weapon to defend against the current contagions? Are there specific foods to eat more of — or less of? And what about supplements…
From the 17th into the 19th century, the “Grand Tour” was a quasi-educational journey undertaken by the wealthy to explore foreign lands and cultures. Today, many urban areas present opportunities for foodies to embark on culinary Grand Tours, without the need for a passport. The Baltimore N…
Benjamin Banneker, one of this nation’s first great scientists, lived on his family’s modest tobacco farm in Maryland’s Patapsco Valley. Born in 1731, his résumé ultimately included astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, author, publisher, farmer, and urban planner. Making his accomplishments …
Many threads makeup the fabric of our American culture. The Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Va., dramatically and engagingly brings alive the threads of the early pioneers of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
While growing up in the days before color TV, the term “smoothie” generally denoted a glib-talking, well-groomed, probably rascally gent. How did smoothie become something we feel good – or even righteous – about drinking?
Food fads: the sudden, seeming contagious craving by the public for some unlikely food, beverage, or combination thereof. How about kombucha, kale, or anything gluten-free? Or quinoa, sriracha, or food trucks?
A friend informed me that she was about to take her first camping trip. She planned to join a woman’s group for a weekend camping in a state park. Having camped a time or two myself, I gifted her with several slabs of classic camping fare: beef jerky.
According to legend, some 5,000 years ago a Chinese Emperor required that all drinking water be boiled as a hygienic precaution. While visiting a distant region, he stopped to rest and boiled some water to drink. Dried leaves from a nearby bush fell into his boiling water, and he found the r…
I experienced a gastronomic classic in a backroads café in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The place was an absolute hole-in-the-wall, but it served barbecue: Not some catsup-infused ground meat foisted by barbecue imposters; but, real slow-cooked-til’-it-could-be-shredded-with-a-fork pork! He…
Is your face chafing from wearing masks? Have your hands chapped from all the sanitizing? Are you constantly calculating a 6-foot distance from everyone? Well, maybe you oughta’ take it outside!
Tastes can be powerful memory triggers. Just one taste of horseradish returns me to childhood Passover Seders in my grandfather’s Brooklyn, New York, home. Horseradish on the seder plate represented maror — or bitter herbs — an integral element of the Jewish ritual meal.
Baking something — be it a pork chop, potato or pecan pie — requires applying heat all around the top, bottom and sides. One of humankind’s watershed inventions — the oven — does exactly that.
People have told me how fortunate I am to be a food writer. “You must get to eat some great stuff,” I’ve heard them say. Well, yeah, I have been able to taste some culinary gems, but I have also had to sample foods that can only be called challenging.
It’s a truly delicious way to help improve the Chesapeake Bay: Go eat some oysters! It seems counter-intuitive, but slurping a dozen raw, serving them steamed or in chowders, or munching them fried with tartare or cocktail sauce actually gives you an opportunity to promote the Bay’s health.
Chicone Creek empties into the Nanticoke River just above Vienna, Maryland. The placid stream flows through a shallow valley that looks primordial, much the same today as it did before the European invasion. Broad-leafed spatterdock, arrowhead, and tuckahoe swath the creek’s edges, backed by…
Just as soon as I can, I am going food shopping again in Wilmington, Delaware. As a culinary road-trip destination, Wilmington does everything its own unique way! Take pizza, for example. While other cities feud over the crust, Wilmington’s tomato pie does the whole thing differently.
A friend told me that, due to COVID-19 panic buying, her supermarket was completely out of flour and yeast. A lot of people seem to be using this period of hunkering as an opportunity to explore bread making.
Did you hunker down? Shelter in place? Self-quarantine? Or simply hang out at home, waiting for COVID-19 to become history? Regardless of the terminology used, cabin fever is an expected consequence. For many of us, the kitchen becomes our refuge.
Salami: Often maligned; the punchline or butt of jokes, salami lies at the far end of most meat lover’s pantheon of delights. Even my venerable Oxford English Dictionary dismisses salami as simply “A kind of sausage.”
Our new shepherd puppy needed a lesson in traveling to learn our on-the-road routine. An overnight to Frederick, Maryland, well known for its municipal dog-friendliness, proved an ideal first trip.
Chocolate! Some people are seemingly born loving chocolate; other people learn to love it, generally at an early age. Boomers may recall a television commercial featuring a duo of hand puppets spelling “N-E-S-T-L-E-S” and yawping out the final: “Chaw-w-w-w c’late!”
Toasting the New Year has become a nearly universal tradition. Frequently, the libation used for that toast is alcoholic. In America, beer and wine are the most frequently consumed alcoholic beverages, but recently, distilled and compounded spirits — “hard” alcohol — have increased in popularity.
I have always viewed recipes as guidance rather than instruction. I alter many recipes, scaling down ingredient amounts and corresponding cooking time. Also, much of my cooking focuses on historic recipes, written before our current measurements or technology.
Certain foods, though humble and unassuming, nevertheless become icons. Through circumstance, the foods take on meaning and importance that far exceed any gustatory enjoyment or nutritive value.
For the gastronomically inclined, a kitchen garden is designed to provide food for the table. Although I am not a particularly gifted gardener, there is something incredibly compelling about growing my own food and using that food to feed my family.
Chesapeake Bay country is laced with traditions; ways of doing things that have existed, and proven effective, through dozens of generations. Many local traditions focus on culinary customs, such as cooking oysters and baking distinctive biscuits and breads.
My mom used to tell this joke: A restaurant advertised that they could make any kind of sandwich. One day, a customer ordered an elephant on rye. The waiter noticeably hesitated, and the customer accused him of defaulting on his advertising.
A recent gastronomic road trip along Delaware’s Atlantic coast offered an opportunity to visit three culinary education “institutions.” While all three were thoroughly professional, knowledgeable, and engrossing, each was also absolutely different from the others.
Cooking the local specialties can be an essential part of a foodie’s vacation. Delaware’s beach resorts have fully embraced gastronomy as a holiday activity. Along with traditional seaside fare and a wide spectrum of restaurants, Sussex County has attracted numerous specialty providers offer…
Cooking the local specialties can be an essential part of a foodie’s vacation. Delaware’s beach resorts have fully embraced gastronomy as a holiday activity. Along with traditional seaside fare and a wide spectrum of restaurants, Sussex County has attracted numerous specialty providers offer…
The Federal News Network speaks with Recreation News Publisher Karl Teel about interesting things to do in and near the nation’s capital.
Valarie Brinsfield had a problem. Her daughter’s high school club needed a fundraising project to help provide healthcare services for mothers and babies. As a solution, Valarie suggested that the girls bake and sell a traditional favorite: sweet potato biscuits.
I became aware of the breadth of Richmond’s culinary spectrum while attending a relative’s wedding. After the rush-hour drive down I-95 and a weekend packed with festivities, I had an opportunity to walk to a nearby shopping center where I discovered Boychiks Deli. In the “backwoods” of Rich…
As with clothing, hair styles, and offsprings’ first names, foods are subject to fads. Throughout history, our national menu adds and loses items as tastes change. Availability, health concerns, public acclaim, marketing, and even politics can elevate a little-known food or beverage, and jus…
I had lunch today with the Bushong family on their farm in New Market, Va. We dined in the kitchen outbuilding eating johnnycakes and potato stew, served by the warming fire of the hearth.
I was introduced to Priscilla Farlow Melson by one of her descendants, Lewis Melson, who sent to me a copy of "Recollections of Aunt Prissy," several pages of recipes and remembrances of one of his ancestors living in Melson, a small Eastern Shore town, during the 1850s.
Before affordable refrigeration units, individual households often canned, dried, pickled, smoked, salted, and preserved a large portion of the autumn harvest. Today, preserving a portion of the harvest still offers a number of advantages.
Why do we eat the things that we eat? How did we develop our American menu? At the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum, in Oella, Maryland, the Foodways Program uses experiential archaeology to provide some answers.
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