The final selection of writing in Katharine Sergeant Angell White’s Onward and Upward In The Garden is dated March 28th, 1970. “By March,” she writes, “for those of us that live in the Northeast, the… More
The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #6: How to Keep a Greenhouse Warm in Winter, Spring Seedlings and a Whole Lot of February

Wrap it up like a big present. In plastic. That’s how to keep a greenhouse warm in winter. Luckily, our greenhouse is small so this gift wrapping is not a giant undertaking. And it might not be the right solution for any big greenhouse owners, but for us, and our 4’x6′ growing station, this method of winterization has proved itself most competent. Like a champion, it weathered our second blast of single-digit-polar vortex temperatures in early February, it withstood wind gusts of 35 mph, and it embraced this week’s big snowstorm of 6.5″ inches all while maintaining an even 70-80 degree temperature range indoors. We can officially say, with confidence, that this is an ideal solution for any small greenhouse gardeners who live in a cold weather climate and struggle to keep plants warm throughout the winter.
We got a little behind in our greenhouse diaries updates, but by no means was February an uneventful month around here. As we all know, nature waits for no one. What was exciting twenty days ago in the greenhouse has now been replaced by exciting things happening at this very moment, so this post is a catch-up, a recap, and a new surprise all rolled into one in an effort not to make it a million miles long.

Here’s a brief recap on the winterization efforts. Essentially, in less than half a day, we built a wooden exoskeleton around the shoulder and roofline of the greenhouse and then wrapped the greenhouse in one giant piece of plastic. The plastic was stapled to the wooden skeleton which was screwed together but not screwed into the greenhouse. Instead, the wood frame rests on top of the greenhouse, secured by gravity from the wooden connection at the peak of the roof.


A 5′ foot wide roll-up curtain panel was made for the door using a curtain rod at the base and more plastic sheeting. Four bungee cords hold the plastic in place along each wall and two butterfly clamps hold the rolled-up panel in place when going in and out of the greenhouse. All it took material-wise was one roll of the plastic sheeting, six pieces of lumber, a curtain rod, a handful of screws, four bungee cords, and two butterfly clamps. If anyone would like a detailed drawing on how to replicate this plastic wrap for your own greenhouse, please send us a message or comment below and we’ll be happy to lay out the steps and materials.

Most days we leave the door panel rolled up to let a little outside air seep in through the draft in the doorframe. Just before dusk, it all gets buttoned back up again. Once winter is over, we will be able to easily remove, wrap up and save this plastic/wood frame system for the cold months later in the year. Using this type of winterization method and our one electric heater has kept the greenhouse a full 50-60 degrees warmer inside than the outside temperature. So on a 25-degree night, it will stay a consistent 75 degrees in the greenhouse. Some days, when the sun is out, the plastic keeps everything so warm we can turn the heater off completely. Both the established plants and the seedlings have really thrived in this much more consistent environment.



The only downside to this method of winterizing is that all the ventilation holes, the roof window, and each side wall from the pea gravel floor to the peaked roof get completely covered with plastic so there isn’t as much free air flow or circulation happening, and the view is reduced to a gauzy, opaque landscape once inside. The trapped heat is great for keeping everything inside warm but also invites pests to come and enjoy the tropical heat.

Over the course of February, we did see an outbreak of aphids, whiteflies, and spider mites, but a simple spray of homemade garlic water and store-bought organic neem oil did the trick to clear those up quickly.

One note on the Neem oil though – it does get rid of everything. We had some mushrooms that popped up in the pepper plants in January and also two resident spiders who were helping reduce the unwanted bug population, but unfortunately, mushroom nor spider survived the neem spray. So keep that in mind if you have some critters that you’d like to keep around.

Over the course of the month, we said goodbye and hello to a few plants. The broccoli, the pincushions, and our beautiful nasturtiums all completed their natural life cycle. As much as I hated to see these three go, at least they were moving on to the compost pile for nutrient recycling. Like our sourdough starter recipe published last week, all these first-year greenhouse plants have been the best springboards – the ones that taught us so much about how to begin in the first place. Before their final send-off, I picked the last of the nasturtiums for a bouquet. It was a big colorful cheers and thank you to my most loved flower this season…

On the hello side, we said welcome to a bevy of new seedlings as they sprouted up this month. Snapdragons, foxglove, basil, black-eyed Susan vine, cucamelons, bell peppers, spicy peppers, cosmos, dill…



We harvested the orange bell pepper for a stuffed pepper recipe, the first round of collard greens for a sausage, potato, and collard hash, and the arugula for more salads than we can count. The chives, lavender, and tarragon all got haircuts and the Santaka grew five finger-long peppers.


The geraniums are filling out so much they have completely taken over one corner of the greenhouse. Their resilience from frost recovery is pretty remarkable. I can see now why these plants have a shelf-life of 50 years if paid just a little bit of attention. With the colorful nasturtiums gone, they have been such a vibrant choice for the wintertime greenhouse.


After the bell pepper was harvested and after the spider mites came to visit, I did some trimming of the older pepper plant leaves, and pretty much overnight three jalapenos grew. Now each of the three pepper plants are blooming again, Maybe we’ll be lucky and get two summer cycles out of each plant.

This week, the most exuberant grower in the greenhouse has been the mint. At 12″ inches in height now, it’s been the epitome of spring-is-right-around-the-corner joy.

Nineteen days to go. That’s how close the first day of spring is. In anticipation, another round of seed starting begins this week. On the list for March starts are cucumbers, marigolds, squash, tomatoes, okra, collards, sunflowers, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, and zinnia. To keep things interesting, Mother Nature also might be sending two to four more inches of snow our way this weekend, just as the daffodils are popping up in the garden beds. Like I said up top, nature waits for no one. And so we carry on. Snow showers and spring flowers aside, this is the perfect time to get the summer garden started.

Cheers to almost-Spring and to figuring out the greenhouse winterization plan just as a new season approaches! Have you been starting your seeds too? If so, what are you growing this year?
The Very Quick Story of the Million Typos: Corrections for the Ada Lou Roberts Post

Hot vs. warm. Leftover first draft copy. Errant punctuation gone astray. It’s a day in the life of blog writing around here. Case in study: the most recent post A 1960s Starter Recipe: The Baking Life of Ada Lou Roberts of Rose Lane Farm and Her Alaskan Sourdough Pancakes. If you are reading this latest cooking story about Ada Lou from your email inbox or mobile device, you’ll have received a version of the post that was published last night at midnight and unfortunately, contains a mess of typos. Most importantly…
- In the recipe section for the Alaskan sourdough starter, the yeast should be mixed with warm water not hot water as previously stated in the directions.
- Everything after the final cheers to Ada Lou should be disregarded. Those two paragraphs floating at the very bottom of the post were snippets of old first-draft copy that somehow got left behind after their story points were woven into other paragraphs.
As of this morning, the blog post had been completely recorrected and updated. So if you read the blog on your computer, laptop or tablet here or visit our website inthevintagekitchen.com directly, you’ll see a refreshed version that is ready for reading error-free.
I feel terrible that this post went out with so many mistakes. Proofreading is my biggest weakness, and small errors can be the hardest things to catch when you’re trying to objectively analyze your own words. This is especially true when posts require a few days or even weeks to write, as this one did.
On the positive side, at least you know the story was written by a real person and not an AI bot. We get bombarded with marketing emails daily in which companies offer to generate quick AI blog posts for In The Vintage Kitchen. If we just send them a few keywords, they’ll write a post for the blog in minutes. This style of quick content, in theory, helps add bulk to blogs and potentially increases SEO rankings, making it easier for people to find information that you want to share. But in going that route, originality is sacrificed. Rest assured, we won’t ever engage with that style of writing here on the blog. Authentic, real-life voices, thoughts, and cooking experiences are at the heart of the Vintage Kitchen. It’s the only way we know how to talk about food and history. Even if they may happen to contain a few typos from time to time, our blog stories will always be written by humans for humans. Flaws and all.
So please disregard last night’s post and accept my sincere apologies for the messy writing. If you are reading this message now in your email, visit this link to learn more about Ada Lou, her starter pancakes and the tragic childhood event that befell her family. Her story, her life-long commitment to baking, and her delicious recipes definitely deserve a second look.
Cheers to round two!
A 1960s Starter Recipe: The Baking Life of Ada Lou Roberts of Rose Lane Farm and Her Alaskan Sourdough Pancakes

{Warning: This post contains disturbing information related to a real-life event. If you are sensitive to stories about true crime, you may not want to read beyond the recipe sections.}
It could be said that Ada Lou Roberts’ arthritis launched her into the culinary zeitgeist, but that would only be a portion of the story. Also attributing was that one 1950s luncheon where forty-five attendees requested the recipe for her homemade buckwheat tea buns. And then there was her family of course who played a big part too. Her beloved mother and grandmother in particular, whispering all their kitchen secrets into her middle-aged ears, reminding Ada Lou of what she learned decades earlier as a small girl mastering the stove in her childhood home.
Ada Lou Roberts may not be a household name today, but back in the 1960s and 1970s, she was a go-to resource for bread baking. The author of three cookbooks and one novel, like many women born in the early 20th century (1907 in Ada Lou’s case) she learned how to cook from her mother and grandmother on their family farm in rural Montgomery County, Iowa. Her mother cooked every day for a large family that included seven brothers and sisters, extended family and the workers who helped out on the farm. Ada Lou’s grandmother helped out with the baking.
Many of her grandmother’s recipes were in the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch style, incorporating yeast and other natural leavenings, whole grains, seeds, and herbs, all of which they grew themselves on the farm. Ada Lou grew up braiding bread, feeding her family, learning about health, about harvest, and about happiness through time spent in the kitchen among dough balls and mixing bowls, flour sacks and family.
After Ada Lou got married, her and her husband Marcus, moved to their own farm in Kansas, known as Rose Lane. There Ada Lou continued the family baking, this time in her own busy kitchen as she raised her two boys. A diagnosis of early on-set arthritis in her hands led her to appreciate the tactile nature of kneading dough and the physical therapy it continuously provided to keep her hands active and nimble.

In 1960, she published her first cookbook, Favorite Breads From Rose Lane Farm. She was 53 years old at the time it debuted. By that point, she had been tinkering around with her family’s recipes for more than four decades, adjusting them here and there, modernizing them as American kitchens became more modern themselves. The buckwheat tea bun recipe featured prominently in the cookbook. Ada Lou said it was easier to publish one cookbook than handwrite forty five copies of the same recipe. The luncheon ladies were delighted.
Upon debut, reviewers referred to Favorite Breads as a sweet little baking book, but by 1963, it had become a highly recommended recipe collection stuffed full of valuable information. Championed by food columnists across the country, every time someone wrote to the newspaper for help, Ada Lou’s book became the answer for their bread-making woes.

In 1967, her second book Breads and Coffee Cakes with Homemade Starters from Rose Lane Farm was published. Again inspired by requests, this cookbook was born from letters written by fans of Ada Lou’s first cookbook. This time they asked for more recipes on homemade starters. Ada Lou filled an entire cookbook with them.

By definition, a homemade starter refers to a fermented dough that requires a lengthier amount of time to develop prior to baking. One common starter example is sourdough bread. The most famous sourdough bread comes from San Francisco, where the air is credited as a key ingredient alongside flour and water in creating that signature San Francisco sourdough flavor. Bakers from all over the world have tried to recreate that same sourdough taste but to no avail. It’s the air that sets it apart. Making starter recipes is a universal baking act known the world over, but it’s also highly individualistic depending on your location and your cooking environment.
In today’s post, we are featuring a starter recipe of Ada Lou’s, from her second book, Breads and Coffee Cakes with Homemade Starters. Today’s post features not bread or coffee cake but instead sourdough pancakes. It’s a weekend meal fit for kings and queens of the kitchen and anyone who likes to slow down on a Saturday and watch the overnight batter bubble and pop.

The recipe we are making today is really two recipes in one, Alaskan Sourdough Starter and Alaskan Sourdough Pancakes. There’s no note from A.L. as to the Alaskan connection for this particular set of recipes, but sourdough and the Last Frontier have had an ongoing love affair since the Gold Rush days. In the 1850s, miners from other states scampered up to Alaska with sourdough batches in hand as sustenance to carry them through all their mining adventures. Quickly, it became part of the food fabric of the state. So much so that even newcomers to Alaska today are still referred to as “sourdoughs.”


In my family, we once had a starter recipe that was traded back and forth between my aunt in California and my grandfather in Arizona for close to twenty years. It came to become an honored guest at parties and even went on family vacations with us. There are opposing memories between all the cousins now as to whether this family starter was for pancakes or for bread. One remembers sourdough bread, the other buckwheat pancakes, while another remembers sourdough pancakes and another recalls buckwheat bread. Confusion aside, we all remember it being delicious. Both my aunt and my grandfather passed away in the 1990s, so we don’t have them to set the record straight, but I think they were both pretty intrepid for tackling starter recipes to begin with and then keeping one going year after year for decades even though they lived 700 miles apart. Starter recipes are fun that way. They can be individualistic, inclusive, creative, and captivating all at once.

Ada Lou’s pancake recipe is delicious and bears that same sort of tangy, otherworldly flavor that sourdough bread evokes. Made up of simple pantry ingredients, the beauty of a good starter is in the verb itself. You just start. And then carry on. In give-and-take fashion, a portion of your very first batch gets saved out and then added to a future starter, where again a little bit of that future starter then gets reserved for the next starter after that and then so on and so on. Little portions of one combine into another. Recipe after recipe, week after week, year after year until you become like my Aunt Patti and Grandpa Phil still incorporating a portion of that same original starter into pancakes (or bread!) twenty years later. The longer your starter lives, the more incredible the flavor. Some starters have lived for more than 150 years and are still going strong.
For anyone new to the starter concept, it’s easier to explain while highlighting the steps in the recipes, so I’ll get right to the making of it. Pancake eaters await!

Alaskan Sourdough Starter
1 package of commercial dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups white flour
Prepare this one the day before you wish to use it. In a large mixing bowl, combine the yeast and warm water. Then add the salt, sugar, and flour and beat well. The batter should be thick but still pourable at this stage. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place until it doubles in bulk. (Note: I put my bowl in the greenhouse where it rested at 82 degrees for 14 hours. Other ideal places are the top of the fridge, the back of the stove, on top of a heat register or near a radiator or fireplace. Ideally, you need a draft-free spot that will surround the bowl with an equal amount of warmth on all sides).



By the next day, your starter should have doubled in bulk. It will be dotted all over with air bubbles like this…

Before you move on to the next step of making the actual pancakes, remove one cup of this starter from the bowl and store it in a covered glass jar in the refrigerator…


Once you have completed that step, you have officially begun. Congratulations! Your starter is born. The next time you make pancakes (not for this recipe below but in the future), you’ll start all over again and make a new batch of Alaskan Sourdough Starter, but instead of adding yeast next time as the recipe calls for, you’ll substitute to it with the one cup of fridge starter instead. And then following the same process as above, once that batch has risen overnight, you will again remove one cup of the starter before you make that next batch of pancakes. You’ll store it in the fridge just like you did this time, and then that starter will be ready and waiting for the third time you make these recipes later on down the road. So that each time, you’ll always be adding to and then taking away one cup of starter to be reserved for a future date.
Now on to the pancakes…
Alaskan Sourdough Pancakes
(makes 12 4″ inch pancakes)
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
Alaskan Sourdough Starter (the full recipe you just made minus that 1 cup that you just reserved in the fridge)
To the starter batter add the butter, egg, baking soda and water. Mix thoroughly. Heat your griddle or pan. Add butter or cooking oil to the pan if necessary and then cook your pancakes. Once they have browned on each side they are ready to serve.

I served these pancakes with fresh blueberries, sprigs of mint, a dollop of butter and our favorite local Connecticut maple syrup harvested from Swamp Maple Farm, just a few miles down the road from 1750 House.

After getting a complete tutorial from the owner of Swamp Maple this past November, we now have all the info we need to start tapping our own sugar maples next fall. We are already looking forward to mountains of pancakes and 1750 House syrup!

Delicate and tender like crepes with slightly salty, slightly tangy notes, these pancakes were so well-rounded in flavor that the only way I can think of describing them is as a perfect vehicle. Not too sweet, they work in harmony with the syrup, the butter, the blueberries, the mint, in such a way that no one ingredient overpowers the other. Instead, it’s just a perfect meeting of all the taste sensations. Spongy in texture, the yeast gives this stack a bit more sustenance, so that you feel energized after eating it – not like you want to go take a nap.

As with all beginning starter recipes, the sourdough taste will become more present, more fragrant, more tangy as future batches are made incorporating the reserved starter from the fridge each time. Ada Lou advises using this method below next time you want to make up another batch of pancakes using the reserved starter that’s now sitting in the fridge…

While I was making these pancakes I couldn’t help but imagine Ada Lou in her idyllic-sounding Rose Lane Farm kitchen whipping up big batches of pancakes for her hungry boys. I couldn’t wait to find a photo of her or her Kansas farmhouse to share with you so that we could all see where this gorgeous set of recipes stemmed from. Nothing surfaced though. I even went back so far in time as to try to find a photo of her childhood home in Iowa where she learned how to cook with her mother and grandmother. I didn’t find that either. I did however find something else. Something terrible.
In 1912, when Ada Lou was five years old, two of her older sisters, Ina (aged 8) and Lena (aged 12) were killed by an axe murderer while spending the night at their friend’s house. It was a horrific crime that took not only the lives of Lena and Ina but also the entire family that they were staying the night with – two parents and their four children. This all occurred in the small, quaint, good-to-know-you hometown of Villisca, Iowa where Ada Lou grew up. It was a shock to the entire community as both families were very respectable and very well-liked. The murder made national headlines. Seven thousand people attended the funeral to lay Ina and Lena to rest. Referred to as the Villisca Axe Murders, for years throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Ada Lou’s parents and investigators tried to find the murderer and the motive, but the crime is still unsolved today.
I hesitated about including this information in this post. On one hand, it didn’t seem to have a lot to do with a pancake recipe. But on the other hand, it had a lot to do with Ada Lou. Her whole baking career was based on her family and the memories, the skills, and the recipes she learned from them. First in the childhood kitchen of her Iowa farmhouse and then in her adult kitchen at Rose Lane Farm in Kansas. In those early years of her life, while Ada Lou was learning to bake at home from her mother and her grandmother, her family was grieving and trying to process the horrific tragedy that senselessly wiped away her sisters’ lives in a blink.
I wonder if all that looking back in her mid-life years, before Ada Lou published her first cookbook, was some sort of salve for her and her family’s broken heart. I wonder if baking provided some sort of comfort to Ada Lou in those childhood days. A task that busied her hands, that focused her attention, that turned her gaze towards creating something wonderful, something lovely, something good for her family that had been so devastated by such a terrible act. Ada Lou was only five when her sisters were killed, and possibly too young to fully grasp at the time what specifically happened to them. But she grew up and came of age in the anxiety-leaden aftermath of their deaths. Living day to day with the desperation of her parents’ continual questioning, continual searching for answers, for understanding.
People come to baking for all different reasons… health, creativity, entertainment, curiosity, and comfort. I wonder if baking became Ada Lou’s salvation and then ultimately her success at carrying on with life post-tragedy. I wonder if she thought of it as a way to start putting her family back together one nourishing slice of bread or pancake at a time.
Ada Lou passed away in 1983, and to my knowledge, there is no record that I have found at least, where she ever publicly spoke about what happened to her sisters or how it affected her family or affected her own life. There isn’t even any article or news story that connects Ada Lou the baker with Ada Lou the sister of two murdered girls. Maybe this is why I couldn’t find any photos of Ada Lou or her Kansas farm, even at the height of her popularity in the 1960s and 70s, when everyone was clamoring for her recipes. Maybe Ada Lou wanted to set her personal life aside. Maybe it was just too painful to talk about. Maybe the act of baking and talking about baking and writing about baking was the only way forward. The only way for Ada Lou and her family to start again.

There’s something hopeful and optimistic and anticipatory about starting a starter recipe. That’s why I decided to include the whole story of Ada Lou’s life alongside her recipes. I think her story despite its tragic start, is one of hope, bravery, and admiration. It gives context to her baking and shows her strength of character and commitment to keeping her family’s culinary talents alive. Despite the bad, she extolled the good. Memory by memory. Bread by bread, cake by cake, recipe by recipe.
I hope these starter recipes start something wonderful in your kitchen. If we’re lucky, we might all just see our 2023 starters still working their magic in 2043 and 2053, and 2063 and maybe even beyond. Keep us posted if you decide to join us in this sourdough arena – we’d love to hear how things are going in your kitchen.
Cheers to Ada Lou for showing us all about the importance of new beginnings.
The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #5: Seed Starting, The Blushing Bell Pepper and What We Learned from a Veggie Burger

Valentine’s Day is still two weeks away, but in the greenhouse love and joy and lessons are in abundance these days. From the deep red petals of the geraniums to the blushing bell pepper to a big bowl of an aphrodisiac growing on the second-tier shelf, it seems like every plant is offering up a bit of romance and wisdom in one way or another. Is this what the winter harvest season looks like? Or does this mean spring might be coming early? I don’t know. Since it’s our first year, we can only take note and appreciate what’s happening right now in the greenhouse at this end-of-January date. Let’s look…

The sun gold cherry tomato branch produced another foursome…

The nasturtiums and geranium flowers are stretching their leaves and spreading so much cheer both in color and scent…



Growing like gangbusters, the chives and the collard greens, are each overflowing from their containers…


The arugula and the parsley are keeping pace with our daily kitchen needs by enthusiastically providing continuous greens for every meal…

One of our favorite recipes we tried this week was this new veggie burger from Jenny Rosenstrach’s cookbook The Weekday Vegetarians. We modified it a bit by adding a fried egg on top and stuffing the buns with our own greenhouse-grown arugula and parsley but otherwise followed the recipe exactly.

These burgers don’t require any baking in the oven – just stovetop cooking (or hot plate, in our case) in a cast-iron pan, so it’s an especially great recipe for under-construction cooking, small space meal-making, or college dorm food. Soft and light, as opposed to many veggie burger recipes that can sometimes tend to become dry and dense, Jenny’s recipe has the consistency of crab cakes and a delicate flavor combination of mushrooms, brown rice and pinto beans. Jenny suggested sliced avocado and a spicy mayo mixture for a topper, but because of our greenhouse abundance, we substituted those two with our own version of similar flavors and textures via the creamy egg and peppery parsley and arugula. It was delicious.


Nowadays, arugula is such a common salad staple that it’s easy to forget that it was once considered a gourmet green and talked about in haughty tones. Although British and Italian immigrants are credited with bringing it to America in the 19th century, it wasn’t really until the 1980s, that it started making a more regular appearance in American cookbooks.
Paula Peck was one of the very few who mentioned it in her 1960s-era book, The Art of Good Cooking, grouping it together with “very expensive” bibb lettuce and James Beard, our favorite gourmand, described it with a sense of reverent curiosity in his 1970s American Cookery book. But none of our favorite 20th-century chefs featured it as an ingredient to create a meal around until many decades later.
Not the case across the pond though. There was nothing new about it in England, Europe and the Mediterranean. There, arugula has been enjoyed for centuries. Legend states that in Roman times it was considered an aphrodisiac and was even banned from some gardens for its love potion properties. So if you wanted to make a romantic Valentine’s dinner for your sweetheart this year, consider a big bowl of arugula along with your shellfish.

Back to the spicy atmosphere in the greenhouse, the Santaka Pepper – although pretty small in stature at just 8 inches – is getting ready to flower (above) and Liz Lemon is growing a baby (below)…

The loveliest surprise of all this week though was the bell pepper. If you have been following along with previous entries from The Greenhouse Diaries, you’ll recall that this was a mystery bell pepper plant that was either a California Wonder, producing peppers that would ripen to a deep red color, or it was the Orange Sun variety, which would turn, as it names suggests, to a warm shade of orange once mature. For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see which color it would turn.

Finally, last Wednesday, the pepper started to change. With great excitement, I’m so pleased to share for certainty now, both the color and the type of plant we’ve been growing all these months here in the greenhouse. The first blush gave it all away…

Orange Sun! Each day it gets brighter and brighter…


If bell pepper had a theme song, it would be this one…
Through wind and rain, snow and sleet, sun and clouds, the greenhouse experienced all the different types of weather possible in these past 14 days. Outside it was a rollercoaster of highs and lows, but inside the temperature held steady between 70-80 degrees, the most even stretch of well-regulated temperature all winter so far. Thanks to our trusty heater, that cozy warmth is now making it possible to start our next endeavor…

Seed starting! After late sowing in the garden in 2022, this year the plan is to get a head start so that by the time the last frost date passes in our area (typically mid-to-late April), they’ll be a collection of hearty transplants ready to make their way out to the garden beds.
Excited to get to work on what is perhaps the most optimistic of gardening pursuits, the first set of seed trays were filled with flowers… snapdragons, Mexican sunflowers and foxglove. Four days in and the Mexican sunflowers have already started popping up. Another joy!

The first time I ever grew Mexican sunflowers from seed was in 2012. I fell in love with their delicate, velvety soft stalks and their bright tangerine-colored petals. Blooming extensively throughout the season, they were a haven for bees and butterflies. That first year I was living in Georgia and they filled out into a 6′ foot by 5′ foot tall bush in a flash. That combination of heat, humidity, and full sun was a winning ticket. I haven’t had enough gardening space to try Mexican sunflowers again until this year, so I’m not sure if they will grow as large and as lush here in New England, but it will be an exciting experiment. This is how they turned out that first year (fingers crossed that we’ll get similar results and similar visitors)…

Right on track, the snapdragons and the foxglove started sprouting yesterday. As biennials, we started some in the garden last year too, along with hollyhocks, but they didn’t grow very much. It’s my first attempt growing all three from seed, so we’ll see what happens this year. Between these greenhouse seedlings and those planted in the garden last year, we’ll have two sets hopefully coming up more productively this year.

Next up on the seed starting list for this coming week are a new batch of peppers and herbs, salad greens, hollyhocks, milkweed, and pincushion flowers, which will get us set up through the month of February before more seeds get started in March. By that stage, we’ll be rounding the corner towards Spring and our one-year anniversary at 1750 House. We aren’t as far along in our renovations as we thought we’d be, but I learned a valuable lesson this week from the veggie burgers.
At one point in Jenny’s instructions, when it comes to the step about forming the actual veggie burger patties, she writes “they will probably look mushy and unappetizing, but press on.” I love that she was so candid with this insight. And I love that she uses the encouraging words “press on.” As we continue to get to know the greenhouse, the 1750 House and the landscape in which they both lay, it is such a good reminder that all worthwhile endeavors require a healthy dose of blind faith and pressing on. Without that, we’d never make it to the flowering and flourishing days. I can’t wait to see what this spring holds in terms of a kitchen and a kitchen garden. We may be in the middle of the mushy parts now, but something deliciously wonderful awaits.
Cheers to love that sprouts, to the sun’s coming out party in the greenhouse, and to Jenny for sharing recipes and reminders.

{The Greenhouse Diaries is an ongoing series. if you are new to the blog, catch up here with Week #1, Week #2, Week #3 and Week #4 here}
Breakfast with Indie: 30 Days of Homemade Dog Food

It’s been a few years since Indie has popped in to say hello on the blog. Today, she wanted to invite you to breakfast. Or more accurately, to invite you to look at her breakfast.
In 2018, we published a post on the history of dog food and how you could easily make your own. This was and still is a daunting notion for some pet owners. But back then we were on a mission to dispel the myth that feeding your dog was a difficult, complicated ordeal. In that year, Indie was six and had strictly eaten a homemade diet since the moment she bounded into our yard during a Fourth of July barbeque four years earlier.

Now Indie is nine, considered a senior dog, and still eating that same homemade diet. Over the years, that post has sparked a lot of conversation. It connected us with a batch of fellow homemade dog food comrades who championed this from-scratch form of feeding and eating, and it also spurned a lot of questions about portion sizes and nutrition and what-if-I-do it-wrong worries. I totally understand. Feeding your pet from scratch can feel like a big responsibility. But Indie and I confidently declare, if you can feed yourself, you can feed your dog.
Today’s post is just one of several coming out this year regarding nutrition, aging, and balanced meals based on vintage dietary wisdom. In an effort to explore the ways our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived, ate, and gardened back in the 20th century, we are tackling nutrition in 2023 from a variety of angles that don’t necessarily receive so much attention. This dietary dive begins with our four-legged friends, our best pals, our constant companions. Since their overall health affects our overall health and vice versa, and since our food is also suited to be their food, this is a copacetic cooking arrangement that benefits both pets and people.
Indie is so pleased to be your food guide today through the delicious land we (and she!) call breakfast. For the past eight years now, these are the types of foods that have kept her healthy and happy.

Each morning, throughout the entire month of December 2022, I photographed Indie’s breakfast. By sharing what she ate each day, I thought this might help show fellow home cooks how fun, easy, inexpensive, and healthy it can be to make your pup’s food from scratch. Albeit, it is not as easy as opening a can of condensed dog food or a bag of ready-made kibble pulled off the grocery store shelf, but for those of you that are interested in embarking on such a culinary adventure, with your dog’s overall health in mind, this glimpse will give you a good example of the types of foods that dogs can eat.

Ever since the commercialization of pet food in the United States, beginning in the 1860s, there have been debates about what to feed dogs, how much, and for what reasons. Motives have not always been scrupulous in the industry. And our pets have not always been considered worthy of high-quality ingredients. When mass farming and feed lots came into play in the mid-20th century, pet food manufacturers turned their focus towards cheaper ingredients and filler products rather than wholesome, natural foods. Even today when consumers are more educated than ever on balanced nutrition, this area of the food industry still remains complicated, obtuse, and not altogether transparent. Luckily, beginning in the 1970s small rumblings of a grass-roots movement began to emerge among pet owners – those who were concerned that their pets were not getting the nutritional attention they deserved. A focus towards more thoughtful diets that were less processed, less traveled and more custom to individual dogs began to take shape. Slowly across many decades, this passion has bloomed into a food love affair between people and pets.
So what exactly did Indie eat for breakfast last month? Let’s look…

In our 2018 post, we went through the basics of cooking for canines and how their diets have changed since the days of James Spratt and his meat fibrine biscuits in the 1860s. Refer to that post for specific information as to foods to embrace and foods to avoid, as well as notes on ratios and serving sizes. Below, we break down Indie’s breakfast bowls week by week, ingredient by ingredient, to show the simple combinations that make up a healthy dog’s diet.

Indie is an English shepherd by breed and a gourmand by heart. She weighs 55 pounds and is considered a medium-sized dog. We feed her twice a day – morning and night. She gets a fair amount of exercise every day and she is always (always!) excited to see what’s in her bowl.

We stay away from anything that contains soy, wheat, and corn, as they are known allergens which affect most dogs in one way or another. Also, we stay clear of dried fruit, beer, bones, wine, citrus, onions, garlic, seeds, cores and fruit/vegetable pits when it comes to feeding Indie, as they contain toxic elements and/or possible choking hazards. Other than that, a bounty of edible options and combinations await every day.

Primarily Indie eats what is in season, so her breakfast is never the same month by month but does follow a typical consistent pattern of one to two proteins. one to two grains, and one to three vegetables at each serving. A great deal of what we feed her is influenced by what I’m making for our human meals each week as well. Since this record was kept during the month of December, many of Indie’s breakfasts were planned around holiday meals. But you’ll notice the throughlines that stayed the same each day. Protein, vegetable, grain.

In trying to care for Indie’s health and the environment as best we can, we only feed her food that we want to consume ourselves – organic vegetables, humanely raised chicken, grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, and eggs from pasture-raised chickens. All of her meat proteins are always cooked, never raw, and we generally buy bone-in chicken with the skin on since the bones can work double-duty as a flavor enhancer while cooking and the basis of a broth once the meat is chopped up for her meal. For dinner, Indie eats in the same fashion as breakfast, but we tend to change up her vegetables so that she has a little variation between day and night. We serve all of her meals warm to the touch but not hot and never cold from the fridge.
Rice and/or oatmeal are generally daily staples and she tends to cycle through a round of vegetables every three days or so. On days that she gets extra exercise, like going for a hike, or spending a great deal of time running around the yard, then we’ll feed her larger portions. On days, when she is more sedentary or housebound due to inclement weather, she’ll receive a little less food since she’s not exercising as much. So far this balance between portion size and activity level has worked out really well. We’ve managed to keep her at her wealthy weight of 55 lbs for all eight years following this same routine.

These days, her most favorite foods are chicken, carrots, sardines, potatoes, pancakes, cheese, and oatmeal, but every year she seems to enjoy a new love only to move on to something else the next year. One year she was all about green beans. The next year it was mackerel. Then came a love affair with roasted pumpkins. Every once in a while, she’ll boycott a vegetable at breakfast or decide to only eat some of it, leaving the rest in her bowl skillfully arranged, like she’s creating some sort of art. Note the lone brussels sprout and grain of rice here…

These left-behinds are always short-lived. As rare occurrences, if a few pieces happen to sit in her bowl after she’s walked away, we just scoop up what’s remaining, and refrigerate it until dinnertime. Then it gets thrown back into the mix with her nightly meal, never to be seen again.

So how do we know that Indie is meeting all her nutritional requirements?
First off, we can see it. Her eyes are bright, her hearing excellent, her mobility flexible, her coat ultra-soft and shiny and her responsiveness quick and intuitive. She greets each day with energy, enthusiasm and an infectious amount of joy. And most importantly, her appetite is very, very healthy.
We also have assurance from the vet community as well. When we moved to New England this past spring, we got Indie all set up with a new vet so that she could get her flea and trick program started. As part of the vet’s welcome program, all new pup patients need to have an exam before they are administered the flea and tick medicine. This once-over by a vet is always a great opportunity to see how Indie’s homemade diet is holding up. Will she get a good report? Will she be deficient in some areas? Will they tell us we’ve been doing it wrong all along? Par for the course, these worries never come to light. Every vet visit she has ever had ends with flying colors in the general overall health department. This last time, she was greeted with good news on all fronts – eyes, ears, teeth, coat, mobility, energy, and responsiveness. The vet said she was in fantastic shape and couldn’t believe she was nine years old. I attribute this continual good news about her health to her homemade diet.
So feeding your pup can be as simple as that. If you make oatmeal for breakfast, cook your dog some oats too. If you’re making a big pot of chicken noodle soup for dinner, chop up some extra chicken, celery and carrots for your pal. If you are serving watermelon in the summer or roasting pumpkin wedges in the winter, toss a few extra pieces into the pup’s bowl too. All you need is protein, vegetables, and grain and then you are on your way.

Since we moved to New England, Indie’s been expanding her palate to include more homegrown garden vegetables and regional foods including slow-cooked beans, crab, cod, blueberries, apples, and the occasional bite or two of lobster roll. Just like Katharine Hepburn, she’s also decided that swimming in the Long Island Sound is her new favorite form of exercise.

With so many pet food recalls today, expensive vet visits, and food product companies importing unregulated dog food from other countries, making your own dog food from whole ingredients is one way to ensure a healthy, nutritious and fulfilling life for your pup. A gourmet world awaits once you get past the cans and the kibble.
If you are thinking about starting your pup out on a homemade diet this year, I hope this post helps your canine culinary adventures take shape. If you are already a fellow dog foodie, Indie would love to know what’s on the menu at your house.
Cheers to our pups and to healthy, homemade breakfasts! Bone Appetit!

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #4: Lessons in Highs and Lows, Triumphs and Tragedies

You might not suspect that a lot could occur in a greenhouse over a two-week period, but this time off for the Christmas break equaled quite a bit of unexpected change in our little house of wonder.
We had some pretty dramatic outdoor weather over the holiday with the lowest of lows being 6 degrees one night and the highest of highs being 58 during the day just this past Wednesday. It was a wide swing of weather for certain, but it provided a good fourteen days of observation to draw some enlightening information.

First off, the few nights of single-digit weather created a bit of havoc. It also shed some new light on an ongoing topic. Do you remember the haybale conversation from The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #3?
Well as it turns out, first-hand experience is an excellent advisor. I can see now how the haybales would have been helpful through the cold snap. Like everybody across the country during Christmas week, we experienced the freezing polar vortex temperatures with daily highs between 9-19 degrees and nightly lows between 6-12 degrees. The indoor temperatures in the greenhouse on these coldest nights, with the heater going full blast, hovered in the high 30s and low 40s, which was pretty good considering the chilly weather. The coldest area of the greenhouse was the pea gravel floor which is where the broccoli, marigolds, aloe, mint, thyme, tarragon, basil, rosemary and geranium pots sit.
Although the sun came out on most of these single-digit days, one night in particular the wind picked up and grabbed hold of a small section of the plastic covering the door frame. It was a strong enough wind to open up a small gap between the plastic and the poly carb door, so that cold air could seep in through the greenhouses’s most vulnerable area. That night the windchill forced the outdoor temperature to sway between 0 and 1 degree. Inside, the greenhouse the temperature fell to 34 degrees – the danger zone. Some problems arose.

While there was never actually any frost inside the greenhouse, there were signs of distress on the leaves of the zinnias, broccoli, mint, thyme, geraniums, aloe, basil, marigolds and tarragon. Withered plants one shelf up from the pea gravel included the tomato, the Santaka pepper seedlings, the rabbit ear cactus, the pincushion flowers, and most unfortunate of all, Liz Lemon, who had made such great strides just the week before. Everything else located the next shelf up (about 2 1/2 feet off the ground) and higher was completely unaffected. Thankfully, heat rises.

Had the haybales been placed around the outside of the greenhouse, they might have added just enough insulation to protect the plants sitting at ground level. The other thing we could have done was just to put all the ground plants up higher in the air so they would be protected by the rising warmth from the heater. So two lessons were learned…
- Add haybales around the exterior during extreme weather dips or…
- Move the plants up higher in the greenhouse to capture the rising warmth.
Luckily, the extreme weather only lasted for a few days.
The trickiest part of greenhouse management so far, is that there is so much conflicting information online and so much variation between agricultural zones and particular weather situations each year that there seems to be no definitive right or wrong way to care for your own greenhouse. Except by watching and waiting and recording how your greenhouse acts in your particular environment. What is expert advice on one site is a disaster on another and vice versa. It’s never my intention to “sacrifice ” a plant but this time spent learning is proving to be really valuable in understanding not only how things grow, but also what things grow in a New England greenhouse in the middle of the winter.
In continuation of our year of waiting and watching, the withered plants were left alone to see if they might perk back up again as the weather warmed throughout the week. The severely affected plants on the floor level received a trim, removing all damaged leaves in hopes that they might heal themselves.
On the good news front, most of the plants bounced right back including the withery, weepy, unhappy tomato branch clipping who is now getting ready to offer up more cherry sized tomatoes…

But on the bad news side, three never recovered. We lost the basil, the zinnias and the marigolds, all plants that really crave that warm summer sun. As discouraging as it was to see these carefully tended plants go, not all was completely lost on them. Their stems and stalks were added to the leaf mold piles (another garden experiment started last fall) and will contribute to the joy and beauty of the garden come spring, just in a slightly different, more composted way now.

It was a good reminder that nothing lasts forever and that there is an ideal season for everything. Sometimes one just isn’t meant to meet the other. The great thing about nature though in times like this, is that it wastes no time moping. With the lost plants now removed from the greenhouse, there was more room for what was growing well to spread out in their vacant spots. As if to add some cheer to the atmosphere, everything that could send out a bloom between Christmas and New Year’s Day did…

The broccoli infact was so quick to flower, it burst into bloom before I had a chance to harvest it for dinner one night. Exploding into a pom-pom of butter yellow flowers, it became a feast for the eyes instead of the belly. That’s fine by me. Broccoli produces one of the most beautiful, delicate flowers of all the garden vegetables, so it is a joy either way. The nice thing about broccoli also, is that its leaves are edible. We might not have enjoyed the spears but the leaves are next on the menu if the broccoli doesn’t send out any new shoots.

Also on the harvest list is the bell pepper. Currently, it’s measuring in at just under 4″ inches in length – close to mature size that makes it ready for picking soon. This pepper comes with an added dose of mystery included too. Last summer, we grew two varieties of bell peppers in the garden. Adored by slugs, bunnies and maybe a vole or two, the pepper beds were constantly being reseeded and defended all summer.
Out of time, but not yet fully grown, just before the fall frost I transplanted three of the strongest plants to see if they would continue growing in the greenhouse. Two of the three were hot pepper plants of the jalapeno and chile variety and then the third plant was a bell pepper. I thought I had transplanted an heirloom variety called California Wonder, which if not picked when green will ripen to a deep red shade. But based on its shape right now, it could be the other pepper plant we experimented with – Orange Sun – which will as its name suggests, turn a vibrant orange when ready for harvest. In both cases, the longer the pepper sits on the vine the sweeter it gets. So a surprise is in store as we wait to see what color it turns out to be…

The other green delight that really took off on a growing adventure these past two weeks was the parsley. With no extra help or amendments, it’s doubled in height since the last diary entry. The only way I can really rationalize this growth spurt is to say that we had a little help from the gods. The ancient Greeks believed that parsley was a sign of death and rebirth.

In mythology, it gets caught up in stories surrounding the baby, Archemorus, and the parsley that grew from his blood after he was killed. Later, the Romans believed that Persophone ( the Goddess of Spring, the Underworld, and of Vegetation) was in charge of guiding souls to their final resting place in the underworld. Parsley throughout Roman times adorned gravesites and funerary objects as a gift to Persephone so that she would take good care of those that perished.

Between the demise of the marigolds, zinnias, and basil and the growth of the parsley, the flowers, the bell pepper, and the broccoli, I can’t help but think that Archemorus and Persephone were at work, guiding the greenhouse through these past two weeks of dramatic winter weather. From death springs life. And parsley too.

Cheers to weather and what it teaches us, to plants that persevere in the face of difficulty, to Persophene and Archemorus, and to this brand new year full of possibilities. Hope your 2023 is off to a beautiful start!
{The Greenhouse Diaries is an ongoing series. if you are new to the blog, catch up here with Week #1, Week #2, and Week #3 here}
Reading While Eating: Five Recommended Books about Home and History Discovered in 2022

2022. It was the year of the continuing pandemic, the year of dramatic weather, the year of gratitude, of comfort food, of appreciating small details and big moments, and finally the year of being able to get back together with friends and family. It was also the year of the recommended book. It’s so wonderful to hear so much buzz about favorite book lists and recommended reads these days all from a variety of different outlets. They’ve popped up in the usual places – bookstore emails, cooking magazines and blogs but also in unsuspecting places this year too – podcasts, garden centers, even our grocery store had a section of books dedicated to staff picks. Here in the Vintage Kitchen, we have our own favorites to recommend too.
For a long-time on the blog every December, I shared a batch of books that I discovered during the year that helped fuel research for a recipe or give context to a blog story or a shop item. Then that list seeped out into other months with other recommendations, because the reading is always happening and so many books swimming on my desk, on my nightstand, on my dining table set their hooks. Sometimes it was a book about a specific person, a surprise, like Bette Davis. Sometimes it was atmospheric like the novel Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange and sometimes it was a gathering of memories about a place that made the past come to life in the present like meeting the Durrells in My Family and Other Animals or the Chamberlains in Clementine in the Kitchen. Sometimes it was even books published so long ago that they came back as new-to-the-world anniversary editions like the 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge, about the midcentury suburban home life of everywoman, India Bridge.
It’s been three years since our last book recommendation list, but I’m excited to say that our end-of-the-year wrap-up includes this tradition now taken up again. So whether you are traveling this week, and need something to read on the train, on the plane, or in the car, or you are taking a few days off to relax and wind down your 2022 festivities, I hope this list will add some interest to your December days.
Not all these books are brand new to the publishing world this year. The oldest one debuted in 1992 and the most recent was published just this past April (2022), but they were new to me so perhaps they will be new to you as well. This year, they each happen to center around the idea of home and the occupants in it. There are grand palaces, a rustic second home, a 1600s-era house passed down through generations, and a new old house ready to be revived. There are famous names attached to a few, and a long lineage attached to another. There is one house that’s continuously under construction the whole way through and then there is another house that’s patched up here and there with thoughtful consideration drawn out over generations. Through these books, we travel. To England, to Italy, to Connecticut, to Massachusetts, and then back again to England. These are family stories, personal stories, and cultural stories, but above all, they are human stories that connect us to places and people we call home. I hope you find them as fascinating as I did. And I hope they spark a conversation or two once read over a meal shared. That’s always how we like to talk about books around here.
Let’s take a look at this year’s favorites…

Living in A Foreign Language (2008)
Fans of the tv show, L.A. Law will know Michael Tucker and his wife Jill Eikenberry. They were regulars on the show for eight years spanning the 1980s-1990s in career-defining roles that still get them noticed around town. Michael’s memoir, Living in a Foreign Language, is about his purchase of a centuries-old farmhouse called Il Rustico in Italy’s Umbrian countryside just outside of Spoleto. Flanked by olive groves and herb gardens, it was initially intended as a second home to supplement but also maybe swap Michael and Jill’s L.A. lifestyle. Only there is one hitch. Jill wasn’t looking to change much about their life in Los Angeles.

When Michael, an unapologetic house collector, sold his wife’s dream home in Big Sur, seemingly on a whim, he tried to convince her that Italy was the answer for the next chapter of their lives. Jill, not quite as swept up in this international escapade as her husband, eventually, warms to the idea of prosciutto for breakfast, of afternoons spent in Italian language classes, and of nightly dinner parties with new friends. Michael on the other hand is all in, right from the beginning. Not knowing the language, not knowing the real estate market, not knowing anything about maintaining ancient stone houses or the country they sit on, Michel jumps in feet first with enthusiasm and a wine glass in hand.
Traveling back and forth between Italy and the U.S., Michael spends much of his adjustment time by himself, getting to know his new house in Italy while Jill is back in California. He is confounded, disoriented and enchanted by everything. He feels the heat of the sun, the twinkling light as it shines through the olive trees, the step at the top of the stairs where centuries of dwellers have walked before him. He hears the melodious Italian accents but cannot fully understand them. He doesn’t know where to deposit his trash or service his car or handle the necessary day-to-day tasks that defy international boundaries. But that is of little consequence. He’s in Italy. Realizing a dream. And really that’s all that matters. In one lovely paragraph in particular, he states his desire for this new adventure in this new land. To immerse himself in the circadian rhythm of time and place. There at Il Rustico, he didn’t want to douse the house with his L.A. energy, his American expectations, and his forced agendas. He wanted instead to fall in step with the natural rhythm of his surroundings. To experience the house, the property, the country, as it was not as he wanted it to be. Isn’t that a lovely sentiment?
Funny and thoughtful and really well-written, I read this book over the summer during our New England heatwave, which means it’s great if you are looking to warm up this winter given Michael’s descriptions of the pastoral beauty that is Italy in all its warm and welcoming ways. While reading, be prepared to be hungry for all foods Italian. You’ll never crave prosciutto and pasta more after reading about all those Italian dinner parties. If you need a great recipe for authentic Italian tomato sauce, try this one.

Martha Stewart’s New Old House (1992)
Martha Stewart’s fourteenth book, New Old House, might have been published thirty years ago, but it’s still as fresh and captivating as the day it debuted back in 1992. It tells the story in words and photographs of how she renovated Turkey Hill, her most well-known home and where so much of her content, inspiration, homesteading and presentation skills were fine-tuned before she moved on to other places and other properties.

Built in Connecticut in 1805, Martha takes readers month-by-month through the process of not only historically and accurately restoring Turkey Hill but also making it a place where she could live, work and dream into the future. In true Martha fashion, she’s meticulous in her every effort and her recording of it, sharing her processes for each detail from window reglazing all the way to landscaping. It’s fun to see how the house transforms under her care. This book is also a great guide for anyone who is fixing up an old house of their own, as she offers lots of expert tips and guidance on how to tackle specific issues relating to antique properties.

How To Be a Victorian (2015)
I first picked up this book because I thought I might learn more about antique dishware, serving practices, table settings, and kitchen life in general. What unfolded instead was a complete history lesson in all the details of day-to-day Victorian life.
Beginning at daybreak and taking readers through an entire twenty-four-hour period of life in Victorian England between the years 1837-1901, this is a nitty gritty, detailed account of the routines of men, women, and children. Sparing no detail, historian Ruth Goodman covers all aspects of the day starting first thing in the morning with feet on the floor. Addressing each person one by one – men getting out of bed, women getting out of bed, servants getting out of bed, children getting out of bed and the processes they each go through to begin their day based on different socio-economic levels, this book is fascinating from page one. Full of insights, fun facts, and history, Ruth shares an honest, accurate, unflinching and oftentimes unromantic look at what Victorian life was really like, from how they washed their faces to how they served their soup. From fashion to finances, bathing to beauty routines, leisure activities to work, religion to education, medicine to mechanic marvels, all gets covered here.
At times funny, insightful, thought-provoking, sad, disturbing, and always engrossing, there are fun facts galore lining every page. Some of my favorites include the topic of corsets and how women were so accustomed to wearing them from girlhood through all of their adult years that their spine relied on them completely for proper posture. Take a corset off of a Victorian woman who had worn one for most of her life and you’d see that her spine would have been like jelly, flopping around like a limp rubberband unable to keep her upright on its own. As it turns out, all those muscles surrounding her spinal column never had to put forth any effort to hold her up with a corset in place, so they weren’t strong like our backs are today.
More fun facts await. Women were the ones who bathed the least, children the most, and then men. Women thought it was too revealing, too improper to be naked in a tub even inside the privacy of their own homes amongst their own family. Up until the late 1800s, children were thought of as little adults, with no societal understanding of their developing brains, emerging personalities, growing bodies or the importance of playtime. Everyone drank beer every day, kids included because water was viewed as unsanitary. The more money a Victorian household brought in, the bigger the breakfast, with most households on average consuming just beer and bread or tea and toast in the morning. Eggs, sausages, pancakes, toast with butter and jam, were luxuries that were mostly afforded to the middle and upper classes, but even then breakfast was a lighter affair. As a result of the industrial age, the air from factories that hung around bigger cities like London was so fallow with fog, smog, and pollution that sight was limited to just a few feet ahead.
The hardest parts of the book to read were about the kids, sometimes sent to work as young as three or four but mostly between the ages of seven and twelve, to work in factories or in domestic service to help feed their families and support their parents. Since they were viewed as little adults, no one was much concerned with kids making friends, developing their imaginations or getting educated. Disease ran rampant. Children were the most vulnerable to illness and death. Many of the factories offered meals to their employees so they could work longer hours (usually 10-12 hours a day) which was attractive for parents since it was less mouths to feed at home and a guaranteed meal for the financially challenged.
During this era, there was no thought to nutrition until the early 1900s, so most Victorians subsisted on a diet of bread, tea, and beer. Vegetables weren’t even considered for their nutrient values in any way until dietitians, nutritionists and sanitary kitchens came into the conversation in the early 1900s. Food was on everyone’s mind all the time. A large majority of Victorians were hungry throughout much of their lives. Cleanliness played a factor in the success of a long life. Really I could go on and on about all the interesting details packed in here, but then I’d spoil the book for you. As Ruth stated, most of us in our modern world have a very glossy, romanticized version of what the Victorian era was all about thanks to movies and novels that pull from the glamour of the era but not always the grit.

The Palace Papers (2022)
We discussed this book in our weekly email newsletter for the shop (join us here) a few weeks ago, but it was so interesting I wanted to be sure to include it here as well. Between the debut of The Crown in 2016, the death of Queen Elizabeth, this past September, the handful of royal recipes we’ve made for the blog here, and here and the new documentary series just released by Meghan and Harry, I’ve been really fascinated by the Windsor family and their long-lasting dynasty.
Since so many books have been written about the royals over plenty of decades it can be tricky to find ones that aren’t gossipy or loaded down with hearsay and conjecture or so full of faraway historical information that they become unrelatable. The Palace Papers changes all that. Written by award-winning journalist Tina Brown, The Palace Papers offers an insightful look into the lives of the modern royal family by connecting relationships, behaviors, situations and circumstances together to create a complete portrait of how and why royal members act, live, love, and work the way they do. Beginning with the parents of Elizabeth and Philip, Tina traces the family’s lineage forward to wind up with Harry and Meghan at the end, weaving together critical moments in history that directly affected the family’s relationships with each other and the world. Conducting over 100 interviews and taking her over 10 years to write, Tina captivatingly connects all the details that string together these immense lives. There is the long-standing love affair with Camilla and Charles, the relationship with the press that Diana strategically maneuvered, the behind-the-scenes moments of Queen Elizabeth following 9/11, the genial acceptance of the Middleton clan into the royal fold, the rise of Meghan’s career, and Philip’s creative get-away-from-ita-all space where he spent much of his senior years. All these details make the royal family (from page glance at least) seem both relatable and normal given the circumstances that they have all grown up in.
It can be difficult to understand the complicated life that each member of the family leads or has led, particularly Queen Elizabeth, but Tina does a great job of humanizing their actions while also giving readers a peek behind the closed doors of an institution few will ever get to see. With a journalist’s eye for detail and a novelist’s ability to craft nuance, Tina paints a picture of the royal family that is honest, raw, fallible and human above all else. It’s a big book (592 pages) about a big story set against a big backdrop, but by the end, you can see that each person is just trying to navigate life the best way they know how just like the rest of us.

Red House (2005)
Last but definitely not least, as this was my most favorite book of the year, Red House tells the story of the longest inhabited house in New England. Built in 1647 in Massachusetts, the Red House has always been known as home to generations of the Hatch family for three centuries. Until one day it was not. Sold in the 1960s to the Messer family, this is the story of a house in both modern and historical times as told by Sarah Messer, whose parents purchased it away from the Hatch hold and gave it a second life.

Weaving back and forth between modern day and the past genealogical lineage of facts and faces, history comes alive on each page. Poetic, lyrical and with a great talent for description, Sarah masterfully ties the past with the present to completely redefine the meaning of home, showing how that definition changes with each occupant century by century, generation by generation.
Through births, deaths, weddings, fires, famine, war, peace, prosperity and purpose, the Red House evolves, gathering stories, outliving owners, and making an everlasting impression on the landscape where it stands. Beautifully written and complete with photographs that help illustrate the stories, I want to tell you everything about this book and nothing about it so that you’ll be as equally surprised and delighted by the contents inside.
Having said that, Red House encompasses a lot of different interests for a lot of different types of readers. Themes run the gamut from history, romance, familial bonds, architecture, biography, preservation, women’s history, fish-out-of-water, and coming-of-age storylines. There are stories about antique handmade brides’ towels, about wills, documents and photographs, about letters detailing human joys and maladies. There are stories of the ten years the house was a flower farm, a disaster, a day camp. Stories of people who wanted the house, and stories of people who didn’t want it. There are stories of critters, of ghosts, of construction projects that have been a part of the house’s fabric since the 17th century. There are cocktails on the back lawn, faulty electrical lines, mosquito-riddled nights, papery walls and unnerving questions proposed by the historical society. There’s the history of Two Mile (the enclave where the house rests), the history of the white house next door, the history of Sarah and her siblings. There’s so much! But I’ll stop now so that I won’t give it all away other than to say it is definitely a must-read for any old house lover.
Anna Quindlen once wrote… “books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” I love that. How true, especially in this case. I hope you find some new and exciting material here in this list of home and history books. If you encountered any extra special books this year please share their titles in the comments section, and of course, if you read any of the recommended books above please share your thoughts.
May the rest of your 2022 be full of engaging stories. Cheers to great books and great writers!
Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas dear kitcheners!
Hope your holiday is filled with all sorts of delicious delights and that you are staying warm and cozy. We are spending the holiday cooking up a whole new batch of vintage recipes and stories that I can’t wait to share with you.
The Greenhouse Diaries are on break for the holiday, but we’ll be back next week to share lots of news of how our little growing station has fared on these chilly days and nights. In the meantime, the geraniums surprised us this week with enough new blooms in pink and red to make a bouquet for Christmas Day.


Sending lots of love and good wishes for a happy holiday.
The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #3: Snow and Bell Peppers
current outside temperature: 33 degrees, greenhouse temp: 61.2 degrees

Last week, we left off with two cliffhangers… an impending snowstorm and an outbreak of powdery mildew. Did the greenhouse stay warm during our first storm? Have the sage and the tarragon recovered? Let’s see…
The total accumulation last Sunday night was 2.5″ inches. The greenhouse didn’t blow away or collapse (a victory!) and nothing was frost covered inside. We didn’t get the haybales purchased and placed before the storm for two reasons… 1) we wanted to see how the greenhouse would do on its own and 2) perhaps there might be a better alternative.
In theory, haybales placed around the outside base of the greenhouse act as insulation. They cover any vulnerable seams or crevices from drafts as well as act like a barrier against cold winter winds. Our greenhouse was never meant to be air-tight in its design. There are tiny exposed airways around some connector pieces and screws, which is good for ventilation. I hesitated about the bale method of winterization because there are about a dozen plants in our greenhouse that draw light from the bottom sidewalls and the hay bales once placed around the base would block their access to light from that direction. Of course, that would probably only encourage the plants to grow taller, to reach for the light above the bales and towards the roof but the idea of covering up this beautifully airy space with something heavy and dense didn’t seem quite right. In honor of light, we chose to wait and see.

So the snow came and the greenhouse experienced it sans haybales and everything was fine, except for the temperature. The coldest the greenhouse has ever been, even with the heater going at level 3 (the maximum setting) was that night. 43 degrees. Not cold enough for frost to appear but more than twenty degrees away from ideal interior temperatures. This first snowfall was such a good test. We definitely needed to protect it more.
My husband came up with the great idea of a plastic sheet covering the door frame from the peak all the way down to the base. The plastic at the roof was held down with two leftover 2 x 6 pieces of lumber, one on each side of the peak with the board ends resting in the gutters to help hold it all in place. Three treated 4x4s weighted down the plastic at the base. Essentially, he made a makeshift curtain panel for the front door that looked like this…

By covering the greenhouse in this way, it eliminated the draft that comes in around the door while still allowing lots of light to come through. Once this new plastic panel was added, the interior temp went right back up to 65 degrees within an hour. Success!
Until the next night.
Wind got a hold of the plastic and carried the curtain across the yard at some point in the middle of the night. The internal greenhouse temp plummeted straight back down to the low 40s.
Not entirely deterred, my husband set out for a second attempt. This time he stapled the plastic to the treated wood at the base, nailed two shorter boards together to form a wooden peak for the top that mimicked the pitch of the roofline, and then stapled the top end of the plastic to the wooden frame…


And that turned out to make all the difference. For the rest of the week, the plastic has stayed in place and the greenhouse is warm and draft free. To gain entry, we just take the wooden peak down and set the treated wood off to the side and then put it all back in place once we’re done inside. So simple.
Temperatures fluctuations and winter weather aside, luckily the greenhouse plants didn’t seem to be affected by all these up-and-down changes. The sage and tarragon were still flocked with powdery mildew so they got a second spray of the organic fungicide. The tarragon responded to this extra care and attention by slowly unraveling its first flower…

The marigolds have been thinning themselves out one by one since they arrived in the greenhouse, so they got repotted to a smaller container. If I had to peg any of the summer flowers that I thought would do best in the greenhouse it was the marigolds. They were such hardy growers in the garden from spring to fall, so I was surprised to see them losing leaves, drying out and getting long and leggy in the greenhouse. Hopefully, this new home will encourage them to fill out more around the middle.


On the growth spurt front, the geranium leaves tripled in size…


the broccoli grew by another inch…

the spicy Santaka pepper seedlings put out a whole new layer of leaves…

and our lone bell pepper seems to grow bigger by the minute…

Between seeing the greenhouse outlined in snow early in the week and then hearing the tinkling of raindrops on the roof at the end of the week, I can understand now why Philip Johnson built and loved his Glass House so much.

While working on that and the neighboring Brick House, Philip mentioned being overtaken by waves of emotion for certain details during the design process. He was talking about archways and vantage points and shapes that felt like hugs, but I loved that he used the word overtaken to describe his attraction to the space and his ideas in it. That’s exactly what it feels like to stand in the greenhouse. To be overtaken by nature, by light, by warmth, by possibility, by protection. It’s no wonder plants thrive in such an environment.

As we work through renovations on the 1750 House during these fall and winter months, oftentimes the greenhouse is the warmest, quietest, calmest place to be. The polycarbonate walls muffle man-made sounds from the environment but oddly amplify the sounds of surrounding nature like birds singing in the trees or leaves whirling around on the ground. The bright light, even when the sky is cloudy and threatening with rain or snow, illuminates all the details on every leaf, on every petal. Possessed of an ever-evolving scent similar to warm tea the whole space changes aromatically day by day depending on what’s in bloom. And the heater – that warm little hug of a heater wraps everything up like a cozy sweater on the coldest of days. I used to think The Glass House was such a vulnerable piece of art, exposed, and unsettling in its lack of privacy. But now I see that what Philip created there was a love letter to the senses. This greenhouse is much the same. Plastic curtain panels and all.

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #2: Surprise and Circulation

The chronicling of the greenhouse is underway. If you are new to the blog this week, catch up with our new gardening series in Entry #1 here. For everyone else who is all caught up let’s carry on to week two of news from the growing greenhouse.
It’s only been seven days since our last post but already there is much to discuss on both the good and bad fronts. First off, we’ll start with the food portion since that was a big reason to build a greenhouse to begin with.
We harvested our first bowl of arugula last Sunday and ever since, it and the nasturtiums have been adorning our plates all week long. Here, they were a part of last Sunday’s brunch of eggs cooked in foccacia bread pockets…

The tomatoes ripened! In just one week they went from a zesty shade of green apple to sunny golden orange. We were curious to see if these indoor growers would taste the same as the ones we enjoyed in the garden all summer, and much to our delight I’m happy to say they tasted equivalent. Which means they tasted fantastic. Sweet, soft yet slightly firm, and just as juicy as their summer counterparts, these two beauties ended the week on a sweet note.

Grown from seed purchased from our favorite seed company (A true review! They are not a blog sponsor.) these tomatoes were determined to grow regardless. Producing fruit the size of large marbles, we grew eight plants of the Sun Gold Cherry varietal this summer. Some reached monster heights of over 10′ feet tall and they produced a couple of big handfuls every other day from August-October. The branch grown in the greenhouse was from a stem cutting. It was our first experiment to see if the cutting would root in water, which it did, and then immediately it went to flower. A little bit of hand-pollinating with a paintbrush, and two weeks later these two tomatoes started forming. They grew so quickly, we never even had a chance to plant the cutting in actual soil. These are just growing and flowering in a jar of water. Isn’t nature amazing?

Next in the ripening department is the Numex Lemon Jalapeno pepper. Because of the timing last spring of when we moved to 1750 House, we started our seeds and our garden beds pretty late in the season. The pepper plants didn’t have a full chance to grow, bloom and then produce mature peppers before the cold autumn weather settled in, so we pulled the three strongest from the ground and potted them for the greenhouse.
This summer, we had a big struggle with slugs in the garden beds so you can see the leaves are quite chewed through, but the plants continued to flower and persevere regardless. In the greenhouse, they look a little raggedy, but they are still growing so we are encouraged. Unintentionally, we may have stunted them a bit when we moved them to the greenhouse during their early post-flower days as they are now producing smaller fruit. But nevertheless, one pepper so far has turned yellow, which means in theory, it is ready for picking even though it’s just a little pip of a pepper. I’m going to leave it on the plant for a few more days to see if it grows any bigger – otherwise, we’ll pull it and see how it tastes.

Our last vegetable of the week that’s really taken off is the broccoli. It sits closest to the door, which is the coldest part of the greenhouse and since broccoli prefers cooler weather, this seems like an ideal location. From last week to this week, the floret has grown taller and wider by about an inch in both directions and has a new companion shoot growing up next to it. Like the peppers, the broccoli also suffered through slug season, but for every leaf that the slugs ate, a new leaf grew in its place. All summer I loved the broccoli’s optimism. In the face of slug defeats, it was the ever-present cheerleader that kept encouraging us to keep going.

On the flower front, the highlight of the week was Liz Lemon. For long-time readers of the blog, you’ll remember Liz from her indoor orchard stories. The last time we checked in with her on the blog was in November of 2020, when she was a Southerner living in the city and looked like this…

A little while after that photo was taken, she showered us in lemons (three!)…

But things took a bleak turn when we moved north. The indoor orchard, cultivated over six years of Southern city living, had many casualties. Avi the Avocado (age 6), Grace the Grapefruit (age 4). Jools the Date Palm (age 2). By the time, we loaded up the truck and moved a thousand miles away from the southern sun, we were down to two plants – Liz Lemon and Pappy the Papaya. Neither were thrilled at leaving the heat and humidity of the South. To put it lightly, Liz especially was NOT a fan of the new 20-degree weather, or the weekly snowfalls or the five months spent in a cottage on a lake in wintertime Pennsylvania. She lost every single leaf but three and was down to two twigs – just a skeleton of a body.
When we finally found the 1750 House in spring and became official New Englanders, I thought a summer spent in the warm air and sunny backyard garden would be Liz’s cureall. But nothing happened there either. All around her pots of daisies bloomed, the okra headed skyward, the tomatoes blushed rosy red and gold. Even Pappy flourished and became so content with New England life that he sported his first flower in August…

But Liz was not following suit. Out of ideas as to how to fix her, a repot and a move to the greenhouse seemed like the final attempt at revival. There, for more than two months, she just sat there on the shelf with nothing changing. And then this week, magic happened. At long last, Liz has come around. She sprouted five new leaves and two sets of flower buds. Just like that. Practically overnight.


Like an early Christmas gift, I was so excited, I took her inside for a portrait. Holiday magic comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes around here. And it is never what I think it might be. Two years ago, we had holiday magic in the form of a lost cookie recipe found thanks to Ken and Cindy. Last year, it was a bevy of snowstorms one right after the other. This year, our holiday magic comes with lemons.


The other happy campers these days are the geraniums, which are growing more and more leaves each day. Here’s the growth spurt from last week to this week…


But for all this growth and joy and magic of this second week in December, there has been a challenge to contend with in the greenhouse too. The sage came down with it first. And then the tarragon. Powdery mildew.


This can happen when there is not enough air circulation in the greenhouse. Along with winterizing the greenhouse, I also should be adding a small fan just to move the air around. When the daytime temperatures are warm enough (above 60 degrees) of which we, surprisingly, have had a few recently, the heater can be shut off and the greenhouse window vent opened, and that usually allows for adequate air circulation.
But now it’s too chilly to open the vent. Ideally, I’m trying to keep the daytime temps in the greenhouse between 70-75 degrees and the nightime temperature between 55-65. There are only three settings on the heater 1, 2 & 3 with 3 being the warmest. Depending on the daytime temperatures outside and the amount of sun on each particular day, there is usually a bit of fiddling around with the heat settings once or twice a day to keep things balanced. The warmer it gets in the greenhouse, the higher the humidity gets which then welcomes pesky problems like powdery mildew, scale bugs and funguses. Just like life in the outside world, life in the greenhouse is a continuous adjustment of care and considerations. I treated the sage and tarragon with an organic garden-friendly fungicide, so hopefully, that will clear things up. More on that next week.
Today there is a possibility of 2-4 inches of snow. Although we have had two nights of flurries already this month, the storm tonight will be our first accumulation of the season. Like sending a baby out into the world for the first time, I’m anxious and excited to see how the greenhouse will manage when enshrouded in a snow blanket. Will it remain warm and cozy and fragrant with the scent of honeyed perfume all season long or will it be too delicate of a creature to stand up to a strong New England winter?

I looked to the garden writer, Katharine White who inspired this series, for advice. She lived in Maine and was used to snow and winter and caring for flowers and plants in the off-season. “Outdoors, nature is apt to take over and save you from many a stupidity, but indoors you are strictly on your own,” wrote Katharine. It was not exactly the reassurance I was looking for.
When you move into a new (old) house in a new state with a new agriculture zone, there’s a lot of waiting and seeing and observing and guessing all buoyed by optimism. Next year at this time, we’ll know a lot more about the capabilities of the greenhouse in cold weather. But for now, here’s to hoping that the wild and willful nature present inside the greenhouse at the moment will suffice enough to save us from any serious stupidities of our own doing, at least in this first snowstorm. More on that, next week.

In the meantime, cheers to the Christmas magic of Liz Lemon, to the nasturtiums who look like little kids lined up at the window waiting on the first flurries, and to our first impending snowstorm. Hope your week brings some unexpected joys this week too.