The Magical Second Life of Samuel Gottscho and a Locally Inspired Recipe to Match

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When Samuel Gottscho began his professional photography career at the age of 50, it was a leap of faith and a vast change from the garment industry salesman job he had known all his adult life. By this point, as he entered into his fifth decade, he was a husband and a father with a young daughter to raise and a long-time reputation in the industry that provided a steady paycheck and reliable consistency. But after twenty-five years of a job that both he and his father did before him, Samuel’s heart was no longer wrapped up in the lace and the fabric and the embroidery that he peddled around the city. Instead, it was his camera – his weekend hobby since the age of 20, his faithful muse, his constant companion – that began nudging him to move in another direction away from the professional life he had always known.

The Rochester Optical Camera with Tripod – Samuel’s first camera circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the Missouri History Museum.

The year Samuel turned 50, it was 1925. New York was thriving. Museums were opening. New buildings and storefronts were being constructed. Model T’s were zipping around the city just like Babe Ruth was zipping around the bases.

Babe Ruth safe at third base in a game against the Senators on June 23, 1925.

In the 1920s. the average life expectancy for American men hovered between 53-60 years old. Realizing Samuel was just a few years away from possibly the end of his life, he questioned how he wanted to finish things up… by lugging around a fabric sample case or by adventuring out in the world with his camera? There was a lot to weigh between practicality and passion. Between case and camera. Between settling and jumping.

Ultimately, Samuel had the support of his encouraging wife, Rosalind, and an optimistic attitude. That, as it turns out, was all he needed.

Samuel Gottscho. The Financial District in the 1930s.

Starting in New York City among the skyscrapers and the night lights, it didn’t take long for people to notice that Samuel had talent. His photographs captured the epitome of 1930s architectural elegance and that beguiling sense of power and opportunity that New York City stood for. Every day a story unfolded in the dramas of the big city skyline. Samuel captured them one by one in the morning mist rolling in off the East River and in the twinkling lights that turned the city into a glowing lacework of lanterns…

Samuel Gottscho. New York City Views from the St. George Hotel. 1933.

Samuel Gottscho. 52nd Street & the East River, New York City. 1931

Samuel Gottscho. New York City. 1933

Samuel Gottscho. Rockefeller Center. December 1933. Library of Congress.

Samuel Gottscho. Chrysler Building and Midtown Manhattan, 1932.

Exterior photoshoots commissioned by local architects led to interior photoshoots commissioned by designers, builders, and business owners…

Samuel Gottscho. Roxy Theater at 49th Street circa 1932. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Samuel Gottscho. 33 Beekman Place, New York City. 1928.

Samuel Gottscho. Huntington, Long Island, NY. 1933

Those led to house and garden portraits for landscape designers and homeowners…

Samuel Gottscho. Ashland Farm. Warrenton Virginia. 1930

Samuel Gottscho. Wilmington, Delaware. 1932

and then to wildflower portraits pursued at first for his own interests…

Samuel Gottscho. Common Evening Primrose from The Pocket Guide to the Wildflowers. 1951

but then later for clients, book publishers, and magazine editors.

Samuel Gottscho. The Pocket Guide To The Wildflowers. 1951.

At first, Samuel’s introduction to the wildflowers were daily hikes around the upstate New York hotel where he and his wife and daughter summered every year in the Adirondacks. When the gas rations were in effect in the 1940s, it wasn’t feasible to explore the countryside with the car and driver Samuel previously employed in the city. Foot travel replaced the car, his young daughter, Doris replaced the driver and the two would tottle off together to explore the woods any chance they got.

Samuel’s daughter, Doris. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress via Familysearch.org

Noting the curious array of flowers that dotted the roadsides and the woodlands and how they all fit together into the broader landscape made Samuel appreciate the composition of each and every flower in a new, more visual, more vital way. As he learned, Queen Anne’s Lace or feathery petaled Bergamot or the large craggy, canopied trees found in these upstate New York hideaways were just as stately, just as visually spectacular, just as unique, as the Chrysler Building towering above Manhattan.

Enchanted with the light, the subject matter, the shape and the composition of the flower fields, Samuel found them to be little cities in their own way. Tall, short, fluffy, sparse. Each one added pops of color, variety, and form to the overall canvas that was the natural wilderness. Eventually, Samuel’s Adirondack wildflower summers were replaced with Sound-side summers spent on Long Island, New York’s North Fork.

The North Flork is located at the far right of the island in the green section. The Hamptons lies in the bottom right corner in the blue section. Queens and New York City are at the far left of the map.

Known as its own agricultural wonderland bordered on one side by the Long Island Sound and the other side by the Atlantic Ocean, this island surrounded by lighthouses and studded with sailboats was first inhabited by the Corchaug, Algonquin and Montauk tribes. Boasting its own never-ending supply of native wildflowers, it delighted the eye with all sorts of natural splendors highlighted by backdrops of the water, beaches, pine groves, pasturelands and marshes. Samuel photographed every bit of it.

Photo of Samuel Gottscho by Edward Dart courtesy of Newsday. April 1970

No stranger to wild things and naturally picturesque vistas, the North Fork was home to New York State’s first farms and first English and European families. Dating all the way back to the 17th century, Southold, the town where Samuel spent his Sound-side summers was settled in 1640 by farmers, tradespeople and clergymen from England and Europe by way of Connecticut.

Barnabus was a baker and the town overseer of Southold. Photo courtesy of the Art & Architecture Quarterly

A fishing and farming community long before the Island ever became a residential extension of New York City, this stretch of Long Island from the tip of Orient Point to the mid-section of the island never lost its agricultural roots. Full of sprawling vineyards, seaside homes, stretches of pebble-studded beaches, open meadows and working farms that produce every sort of market delight you could ever want, it’s a food lover’s paradise from flowers to honey to wine to grass-fed beef.

Croteaux Vineyards is the only winery in the US to focus solely on making rose wine.

Fresh farm stands are everywhere around the North Fork.

Open pasture lands with views of the Sound.

Wildflower settings just like this inspired Samuel throughout the 20th century.

Celebrating this area’s centuries-old agricultural history, in today’s post, we are featuring a recipe made using grass-fed beef from cows raised and pastured on Long Island’s Acabonac Farms. Just a short drive down the coast from where Samuel summered in Southold, Acabonac Farms works in tandem with the natural landscape just like Long Island’s first settlers did back in the 1600s.

See how Acabonac Farms’ watercolor illustration was made here.

By embracing the unique nutrient-dense soil that makes it one of the best terrains in the state, combined with the salty sea air, the continuously circulating breezes blowing in off the water, and the well-draining composition of the soil, it’s a trifecta of a location historically known for growing good grass which in turn grows good grass-fed cows.

Throughout his second career, Samuel’s photographs appeared in publications all over the country, but none may have been more proud of Samuel’s work than his hometown newspaper, The New York Times, where he was regularly featured. In keeping that joyful relationship intact, our featured recipe for this post comes from the 1961 New York Times Cookbook and combines Acabonac Farms grass-fed sirloin steak with an unusual 24-hour marinade to create picnic-toting steak sandwiches fit to fuel any wildflower photographer’s wanderings.

Named after the patron saint of hunting, this recipe called Steak St. Hubert, can be made with venison or beef using round or sirloin cuts depending on your preference. Originally, it was meant to be enjoyed as a single cut of meat – a steak dinner complete with a red current jelly reduction sauce – but I decided to turn the steak into sandwiches so we could pack it along with potato salad and refrigerator pickles for a summer picnic getaway to see the land that so inspired Samuel.

Consisting of a unique menagerie of ingredients, this marinade contains no cane sugar and no salt but does include carrots, wine, and apple cider vinegar, which I found to be a pretty intriguing mix. A bit like Annie’s Wine Baked Brisket and Santiago Pork Roast, this is a two-day, three-part recipe to prepare but well worth the time.

Although this is a local post featuring Long Island, Acabonac Farms beef is available to any home cook no matter where you live. If you haven’t had the experience of ordering meat via mail before, the process couldn’t be easier. You simply place your order online and it shows up at your door two days later in a box packed with dry ice and the individually frozen, vacuum-packed cuts you requested.

From the farm in Long Island to the front door of 1750 House.

Beef that arrives by mail can be thawed in the fridge overnight (in its original packaging) or stored in the freezer for use at a later date. For this recipe, the three packages of steaks we ordered went into the fridge for 12 hours before they were added (completely thawed) to the marinade and then returned to the fridge for another 24 hours.

The marinade is easy to put together. The original 1961 recipe called for a big bowl as the marinade vessel but I found that a two-gallon Ziploc bag worked just as great and made it easier to store in the fridge. Other than that note, the marinade recipe comes together just like this…

Steak St. Hubert Sandwiches (serves 10-12)

For the marinade:

3 16 oz .sirloin steaks cut 1/2-3/4″ inch thick

2 shallots, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

2 onions, sliced

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

1/3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 small pinch of ground cloves

2 cups dry white wine

3/4 cup apple cider vinegar + 1/4 cup water, mixed together

1/2 cup olive oil

For the pan:

Salt

Pepper

6 tablespoons butter

For the sandwiches:

Portuguese rolls (or any soft and pillowy sandwich roll that has a crusty exterior and an airy interior)

lettuce

red onion, sliced in thin rings

Condiments (cherry jam, horseradish, mayonnaise, dijon mustard or any others you might prefer)

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together minus the steaks. Add the steaks and toss the mixture again.

Remove the steaks to a large (2-gallon size) Ziploc bag. Pour the marinade mixture from the bowl into the bag, covering the steaks completely. Seal the bag and store it in the fridge for 24 hours.

After 24 hours have passed, remove the steaks from the marinade bag to a large plate or casserole dish and let them warm up to room temperature while you prepare your cooking pan (about 15-20 minutes.

Salt and pepper both sides of each steak. In a large cast iron or heavy-bottomed pan, working individually, melt two tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat, cooking each steak one at a time for 7-10 minutes per side to achieve a medium rare center. Repeat with the following two steaks.

Transfer each steak as it comes off the heat to a parchment-lined piece of foil. Wrap each steak in the foil and let them rest until completely cool (about 30-45 minutes).

If you are planning to take these sandwiches on the road, the whole steaks can be refrigerated before slicing for up to 12 hours once cooled. When you are ready to prepare your sandwiches, slice each steak into thin ribbons.

Tuck the thin slices of beef between two slices of bread and call it divine or you could adventure even further and stretch your palate to include a train of condiment flavor pairings. Mustard, horseradish, mayonnaise. Maple syrup, cherry jam or hot sauce. Top the beef with a layer of blue cheese or fresh pineapple or a ring of red onions and you have a custom sandwich built just for you. Originally, the recipe called for a red current reduction sauce (an element that might not travel well), so I toted along a jar of French cherry jam in addition to the other above-mentioned condiments. A dollop of jam on top of the steak and between the layers of onion and lettuce was a magical combination of the sweet, savory kind that I would highly recommend.

A complete delight of a recipe from start to finish, the sirloin was full of flavor but not in a way that you could easily detect by the marinade ingredients alone. Most steak marinades I’ve ever tried in the past make the meat taste like the ingredients it was marinated in. Teriyaki steak for example tastes like soy sauce. A honey mustard marinade makes everything taste like honey and mustard. But this marinade was different. There was not one ingredient that overpowered the other. Instead, it combined a symphony of subtleties that left room to taste the flavor of the grass-fed beef. It made such a tender, succulent sandwich, it can best be described as pure, at every step, and every bite. Perhaps that is the magic of the salt, sea and sun of Acabonac Farms’ location. A delicious alternative to burgers and a great travel food for tailgate parties, fall leaf-peeping adventures and family football games, St Hubert steak sandwiches offer the best of New York’s local food that also happens to be accessible to everyone around the country no matter where you live.

Samuel Gottscho in 1956. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

As for Samuel and his Long Island escapades among the wildflowers, he had no worry about that average life expectancy marker in the 1920s. Samuel may have been fifty years old when he left his salesman job and professionally embarked on his new career, but it kept him engaged and enthralled for the next forty-five years of his life. When Samuel passed away in January 1971, he was 95 years old. Up until a week before his death, he was out in the field capturing the wild winter landscape, fulfilling client commissions, and working on his own personal archive that exceeded 40,000 images. What was Samuel’s secret to such a fulfilling life?

“It’s never losing the inquiring and enthusiastic spirit of the amateur,” he once told a reporter.

By the time, Samuel passed away, he was the recipient of numerous distinguished awards and accolades in the fields of architecture, horticulture, and landscape design. He was published in architectural digests, home design magazines, photography manuals, and newspapers around the country. Occasionally he would give a lecture or a presentation to a garden club or a photography circle. He was an expert for sure but he never had the bravado of one. Those accomplishments were nice, but that’s not what drove Samuel. His heart fired up at the sight of light, of composition, of shape. His heart fired up at photography and anything leading to it.

Just like the accessibility to Acabonac Farm’s grass-fed beef, you don’t have to live in the vicinity of New York City or Long Island to view more of Samuel’s work. Upon his death, he donated his entire photographic collection to the Museum of the City of New York and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Over 2/3rds of his collection has also been digitally archived at the Library of Congress. More of Samuel’s work has been published in a gorgeous 2005 coffee-table book, The Mythic City, focusing on his New York architecture portraits spanning the 1920s-1940s. And last but not least, there are his wildflower photos published in the petite 1951 Pocket Guide to the Wildflowers, which is how I came to be introduced to Samuel’s life and work.

See more examples of Samuel’s wildflower work from this book in the shop here.

Just like the camera was Samuel’s gateway to an entirely new life, Samuel’s life became my gateway to an entirely new area of the world and an entirely new vintage recipe. I’m so happy to share his story with you here on the blog in hopes that it inspires something new in you too.

View from the Cross Sound Ferry at Orient Point, NY

Cheers to Samuel for not letting age be a factor in following his passion and for the incredible volume of work that he left for everyone to enjoy. Cheers to Acabonac Farms for sponsoring this post and for contributing the delicious grass-fed beef for this recipe. And finally cheers to the farmers of Long Island who work day in and day out to keep the agricultural history of the region alive and thriving.

A One-Pot Recipe for Your Pup: Homemade Dog Food Back by Reader Request

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen23 Comments
To view the full 30-Days graphic that includes all 30 bowls, click here.

This past January, we shared a post highlighting thirty days of homemade dog food that we made for our pup, Indie, during the month of December 2022.

As much a photo collage as a visual guide on the types of food that Indie has been eating throughout her life here with us, I wanted to dispel the myth that cooking for your pup is difficult, time-consuming and complicated. It was a piece that worked in tandem with a 2018 post about the history of dog food where we also introduced how to make your own balanced meals for your dog regardless of size, age or breed.

The history of dog food and how to make your own.

Both posts shared details about a large majority of the types of food Indie (and all dogs) can eat but neither contained a specific recipe. So in today’s post, as requested recently by our canine-loving readers, I’m sharing one of Indie’s most favorite meals complete with an ingredient list, step-by-step instructions and notes on scaling proportions depending on the size of your dog.

On the menu today it’s Steamed Chicken, Carrots & Sweet Potatoes – a one-pot stovetop meal that takes five minutes to prepare and one hour to cook. You can amend the recipe to make a large batch that will make up to eight meals or you can make a small batch that will provide a fresh homecooked meal for one to two days worth of dinners and breakfasts. Fridge-friendly, freezer-friendly and on-the-go-approved, if packed in an air-tight container and kept cold, this recipe can tag along on your all summer outings including picnicking, hiking, and overnight vacations. It can be reheated in the microwave or the oven if your dog likes warm food, or it can be enjoyed cold right from the fridge. You can toss in additional grains or vegetables if your pal has a big appetite, or serve it as is – a simple meat and two.

This is also a good starter recipe if you are new to the world of making homemade dog food or are introducing your pup to this new way of eating. It’s simple to make, requires just a handful of ingredients, and is easily digestible for all dogs. And just like all of Indie’s other meals, it’s 100% human friendly too. That’s the key to homemade dog food. There is not one ingredient in this recipe that you wouldn’t want to eat yourself. Let’s look…

Steamed Chicken with Carrots & Sweet Potatoes served here over a bed of green lentils.

Homemade Dog Food: Steamed Chicken with Carrots & Sweet Potatoes

This recipe makes 4-5 servings for a medium-sized dog weighing 45-50 lbs. Please see note regarding portion sizes following the recipe.

One 2-3lb package of chicken thighs, containing 4-6 thighs (Bone-in and skin-on preferred, but you can also use skinless/boneless thighs, chicken breasts or chicken tenders. We do not recommend bone-in-chicken breasts or wings though as these contain too many small bones. Please see note below.)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 lb baby carrots

3 large sweet potatoes, skin-on and roughly chopped into large 3″ inch cubes

1 healthy pinch of sea salt

Optional: a handful of roughly chopped fresh parsley

Rinse chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside. In a large stock pot, over medium-high heat, add the olive oil, making sure it coats the entire bottom of the pot. Let the oil warm up for about one minute. Add the carrots in a flat layer.

Next, add the chicken (skin side down if using bone-in thighs) …

Sprinkle the chicken with a generous pinch of sea salt. Then add the chopped sweet potatoes on top of the chicken and the fresh parsley on top of the potatoes.

Turn the heat down to medium. Cover the pot and cook for 60 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and let it rest for 15 minutes on a cooling rack. Dinner is done!

With stew-like consistency, this dog-friendly recipe is full of comfort food flavors all bathed in a natural broth that forms when the water in the carrots and sweet potatoes mixes with the olive oil and the chicken fat. The hour-long steam makes the chicken fall off the bone and makes the vegetables so tender you can slice them with a butter knife.

If you use skin-on chicken thighs with bones you’ll get a richer-looking broth.

After the chicken has rested, remove one thigh, one cup of sweet potatoes, 1/2 cup of carrots, and 1/3 cup of broth to your dog’s bowl. Pull the chicken from the bone with a fork and then discard the bone. Because they splinter easily and can cause internal damage to organs, you never want to feed your pup any chicken bones. This is why we don’t recommend using bone-in chicken breasts which usually come with the ribs attached. The same goes for chicken wings which are made up of many small bones that can be easily missed when cutting the chicken up after it cooks.

Once you have transferred the chicken and vegetables to your pup’s bowl, slice everything into bite-sized pieces, mix it all together and let it cool to room temperature before serving.

Hands down one of Indie’s most favorite meals, Steamed Chicken with Carrots & Sweet Potatoes is a year-round pup-pleaser of a recipe and contains all sorts of nutritious vitamins and minerals. Collagen (chicken skin), beta-carotene (sweet potatoes, carrots), magnesium (sea salt), healthy fat and vitamins E & K (olive oil), and lean protein (chicken) are just a few of the beneficial vitamins and minerals wrapped up in this recipe that will help keep your dog happy and healthy.

Over the 4th of July weekend, Indie celebrated her 10th birthday. Of course, we surprised her with her favorite chicken dinner. This time, in addition to the sweet potatoes and carrots we added in some chopped-up cucumbers, another summer love of hers.

For the love of homemade food and cucumbers.

That is just a little example of how carefree this chicken recipe can be. The carrots, olive oil, and the chicken itself are mainstays, but the sweet potatoes can be swapped out for butternut squash, red potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, pumpkin, celery, beets. Just avoid adding any onions, garlic, or citrus fruits – three types of food that also seem like they might be natural companions to this meal, but are actually toxic to dogs. If you are interested in more possibilities to add in or swap out be sure to check the lists of other approved dog-friendly foods in the previous two posts here and here.

Leftovers can be stored in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to four days. When the broth cools it transforms into a jelly-like consistency similar to aspic. Don’t be put off by its wiggly jiggly nature. It’s just the coagulation of the olive oil, broth, vegetable juices and chicken fat. Your dog will love it, so be sure to include a little bit of it with each additional serving. If you decide to make some rice or lentils to augment the chicken and vegetables that jelly will add extra flavor to the new additions.

Day Two – the wiggly jigglys!

And two final notes on year-round enjoyment of this recipe and portion sizes …

In the summer, Indie tends to eat a little less food if it’s particularly hot, so when it comes to this recipe, she’s happy most of the warm-weather months with just the chicken, sweet potato and carrot combo. But in fall, winter and spring when she is at her most active, we usually add in a few other foods too for both variety and an extra dose of go-power. Other accompaniments you might like to include are the following…

  • 3/4 cup of cooked rice, 1/2 cup of cooked lentils or 1/4 cup oatmeal
  • 1 cup of additional cooked and chopped green vegetables (broccoli, collard greens, kale, spinach, zucchini, celery, green beans or peas)

All the proportions discussed so far are based on Indie’s medium 55lb. frame. If you are making this recipe for a small breed dog like a chihuahua or a bichon, you can certainly swap out the thighs for smaller cuts like chicken tenders or thin-cut chicken breasts. If you decide to use either of those, simply adjust the cooking process by starting with the layer of carrots first after you add the olive oil, then add the chicken, salt and sweet potato layers. That way the chicken won’t get stuck to the bottom of the pot.

And on the opposite spectrum, if you have a large breed dog over 60 lbs. I’d recommend doubling the portion size of the recipe above. The nice thing about using a big stock pot is that you can fit quite a bit of food in it. I’ve made this recipe using all types of chicken cuts, and all types of quantities from 4 to 8 thighs with 2lbs of carrots and six sweet potatoes, and it still comes out great every time.

Recently I discovered the 1910 story of Bum, a stray dog in St. Joseph, Missouri who frequented the back door of several restaurants in town each day. He was such a polite and enthusiastic eater, the kitchen cooks and wait staff couldn’t help but spoil him with the finest menu selections of the day. After Bum enjoyed a delicious meal at his favorite luncheonettes, he’d trot down the street and wait patiently for his next favorite set of restaurants to open up for dinner service. Bum so charmed all the restaurant workers that he became the most beloved (and well-fed) fixture in the neighborhood.

This story reminds of Indie, who was also a stray who trotted into our backyard during our Fourth of July barbecue in 2014. Once she had her first bite of grilled chicken, she never left. And so began a now nine-year adventure of cooking for Indie, our most enthusiastic taste-tester here in the Vintage Kitchen. Julia Child was famous for saying ” People who love to eat are always the best people.” Around here, we could say the same about dogs too.

Bum in 1910. Indie in 2023. Photo of Bum courtesy of the St. Joseph News-Press (Dec. 16, 1910).

I hope this post is helpful to the readers who requested it. We are always here to answer any questions you might have so feel free to ask away should you run into any troubles. In the meantime, happy eating to your pups. I hope they love this recipe as much as Indie does!

Cheers to all the dogs out there who inspire a wealth of joy and creativity in the kitchen. And to Indie, our delight of a dinner eater from day one.

The Handmade Tablecloth: A 1916 Immigration Story

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen5 Comments

Every family has some tales when it comes to history and the lineage that connects us to ancestors who lived a long time ago. If we are lucky, they are long-winded stories full of color and detail and a relatable sentimentality that can carry our imaginations far across cities and centuries connecting us to relatives we never met.

Other times, there are family histories that are just one-liners. Snippets of stories punctuated with the sparest amount of context and detail. Enough to give you some ideas about who this or that ancestor might have been, or where they came from, or how they experienced life, but beyond that no other information is known. I’m always most intrigued by these slim snippets of genealogical detail. The ones that aren’t flushed out yet enough to form a complete story with a defined beginning, middle, and end. The ones that could have been recited so many times they are now legend tumbled and tossed through generations yet never gaining new insight or understanding. We have quite a few in my family – a great aunt who was a Rockette, a lost family fortune buried somewhere on the island of 18th century Manhattan, a doughnut shop in the Pacific Northwest still waiting to be found. Those quick glimpses into all types of family biography are ripe for more storytelling and a deeper understanding of the experiences that makes up the unique histories of American lives.

In today’s post, we are sharing a 100 year-old-family story brought to the Vintage Kitchen in the form of an heirloom. It did not come with one of the long-winded stories like we mentioned above, the ones full of color and life and detail. Instead, it falls into the latter category. The opposite one. This heirloom came with just a few facts. Vague yet weighty snippets of a story that lightly scratched the surface of a much larger experience.

It starts with an antique tablecloth. Folded up it weighs just over a pound and a half. It’s delicate but also strong, with a heft to its weight like rope. Featuring a hand-crocheted pattern of circular medallions and spider-like stars, it’s executed in thread that is the color of bones. In appearance, it’s not unlike a lot of similar tablecloths that were popular during the 20th century, but this one tells a very specific American story that is very fitting for the 4th of July holiday.

Sent by a woman named Linda, who is a vintage collector in New Mexico, this tablecloth was a family heirloom belonging to Ann, her ex-mother-in-law. When passing down items from her life, Ann requested that this particular linen be handled with respect and appreciation. Although Linda admired the beauty of this tablecloth and the story it represented, she contacted the Vintage Kitchen to see if we might be able to give it a new home.

Arriving in the mail shortly after, the cloth came with a note detailing a few facts surrounding its history.

  • It belonged to Linda’s ex-husband’s mother, Ann who had recently passed at the age of 87
  • It was passed down through Ann’s family with the understanding that it came to America by way of an Italian ancestor named Catherine who had traveled by boat from Sicily to Ellis Island in the early 1900s and then went on to Chicago to settle.
  • According to family lore, the tablecloth was handmade while on the boat waiting to dock in the US

Even though I had a dozen more questions for Linda upon receipt of the cloth, and had requested a photo of it’s maker, unfortunately, Linda and I lost touch shortly after the package arrived. So here it was, this pretty antique tablecloth wrapped up in a handful of intriguing little story snippets just waiting for something more to be told about it.

After a bit of genealogy work and a hunt through Ellis Island immigration records, Linda’s ex-grandmother-in-law’s story burst into colorful life just like a 4th of July firework. It begins here on Ellis Island in March 1916…

Ferry boats carrying immigrants from transatlantic steamer ships that initially docked in lower Manhattan arrive here at Ellis Island’s Immigration Station where their paperwork was completed. Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Even though it was the very first day of Spring, it was a chilly 34-degree March day when the Caserta arrived in New York Harbor. Carrying immigrants from Naples, Italy, the steamer ship coasted into the harbor on choppy waters passing the welcoming sight of the Statue of Liberty. Her torch was not yet electrified, it would be another nine months before that happened, but to the arriving immigrants, she signaled a bright future ahead regardless. Aboard the ship was 20-year-old rosy-cheeked, chestnut-haired Caterina from the seaside town of Bagheria, Sicily.

Caterina’s ship manifest.

Most Italian immigrants during the 1910s were fleeing to America to escape economic depravity in their home country. Depending on weather, war, quarantine, detainments, and ship reroutings, the voyage from Naples to New York could last anywhere from twenty-one days to three months. When Caterina came over it was the middle of WWI, and Italy was involved in the battle of Austria-Hungary. Traveling with her older sister Maddalena, we don’t know specifically why these two girls left Italy, but we do know that Caterina paid her own passage and carried $25.00 extra in her pocket along with a crochet needle and a bundle of thread.

Of medium height and good health, Caterina would have no trouble passing through the medical checkpoint before she was allowed access to her new country. Her $25 dollars in savings would not be an issue either as she brought an amount deemed substantial enough by the US government to successfully start afresh in the New World. With intentions to stay with her cousin, Filippo, in the Midwest, Caterina’s final destination was the bustling city of Chicago.

A 1916 map of Chicago IL courtesy of the Library of Congress

According to Linda’s family story, while waiting to dock in New York Harbor, Caterina took her crochet needle from her pocket and put her hands to work. She soothed her anxious nerves by crocheting this 82″ x 52″ inch delicately threaded tablecloth featuring a series of interlocking circles and stars.

I loved this part of Linda’s story for two reasons… 1) I didn’t realize that immigrants had to wait for any extended period of time to gain entry into the US. I assumed that most were docked and processed in the same day. So it was interesting to think that Caterina’s boat could have been detained for a significant amount of time – one in which an entire tablecloth could have been made by hand. 2) The other reason I loved Linda’s story was for the amount of comfort that this tablecloth must have brought. The calming effect of repetitive motion and the focus and attention to detail required to make a circle then a star, a circle then a star intertwining each until there was a cloth over 4′ feet long and 3″ feet wide.

I loved this artistic glimpse into one woman’s life and that I could hold in my hands a tangible item that combined thread with all the emotions of a new adventure – excitement, uncertainty, nervousness, fear, and awe experienced over 100 years ago. I wondered about Caterina, there on the boat, stuffed full with people from her home country all experiencing a cacophony of feelings while she sat calmly making this piece. Was she dreaming of the future table in which she would display her needlework? Did she think about it becoming not only a practical household item for her new home but also a tangible reminder of the journey that she chose to take? Did she know then, that it would eventually become an artifact proving that she, Caterina of Bagheria, Sicily and now of the United States had lived?

The closing of other U.S. ports, the rerouting of ships during WWI, and the threat of communicable diseases could have been some of several reasons why Caterina got hung up in New York Harbor long enough to hand-stitch a linen for her new life. After much research, I couldn’t find anything that would attribute to the delay around that date, but I did learn that four days later, the ship she arrived on, the Caserta, was on its way back to Italy loaded with war-time ammunition for the Italian government.

That led me to wonder if the details of Linda’s family story had gotten a little muddled over the past 100 years. Maybe, Caterina made the tablecloth on the voyage over and finished the last pieces of it while she was waiting to dock. Or maybe in fact, she was on a quarantined boat, arriving in New York days or weeks before the immigration officer officially stamped her papers with the date March 20, 1916. Or maybe she just happened to be a master, faster crocheter that indeed had plenty of ample hours in an ample amount of days to complete such a creative undertaking.

I can imagine that this waiting period at Ellis Island whether brief or lengthy, spent while you are between your old life and your new life, would be a pretty intense time. There is something incredibly marvelous and moving about Caterina documenting her stay in these New York waters under the reassuring gaze of Lady Liberty with her crochet needle and some Italian thread. A simple household item made during a magnificent moment with skill enough to make it last a lifetime. And then some.

Linda’s initial recount of the situation began and ended at Ellis Island, but a bit more research uncovered Caterina’s complete life story. She did make it to Chicago. There she became known as Catherine, the Anglicized version of Caterina, and a little over a year later she met and married Alberto, a fellow Sicilian who had immigrated to America just a few years before her.

Alberto was in the grocery business, successful enough to own three delis in the Chicago area during the early to mid-1900s. Catherine and Alberto had two boys – Anthony and Joseph. Joseph served in the US Air Force during WWII and Anthony in the US Navy. The deli trade was never far from Anthony’s heart and upon return from the war, Anthony followed in his dad’s footsteps and worked in the grocery industry for the rest of his life – first in Chicago and then in California where he opened a deli shop specializing strictly in Italian fare. After Anthony married Ann, a former customer of his dad’s shop back in Chicago, they also had two children – Albert and Diane. Albert a young groom in the 1960s, married Linda, the vintage collector who sent us the tablecloth.

Clockwise from top left: Linda, Albert, Anthony, and Ann. Photo courtesy of Pleasant Family Shopping blog

As for Caterina, she passed away in Los Angeles in 1987, at the age of 92. Living a majority of her life in the US made her geographically much more American than Italian, but she never ventured far from her Italian roots nor the chance to pass on her cultural pride to her boys who then passed it on to their families. A part of all that was this tablecloth. The heirloom made en route from old Italy to new America. The cloth that wove together two parts of one woman’s life. A woman who chose to settle in the United States, to become a citizen, to raise a family of boys who then fought for the US during WWII and then saw her children’s children grow the branches of their family trees in America all the while contributing to the vibrancy of our country’s dynamic landscape. Caterina’s story is a small leaf on the big tree of immigration, but I felt so honored to be able to tell her story and attach it to the tablecloth, her tablecloth, that still lives bright and beautiful in the world today.

I couldn’t ever find a photo of Caterina, so I wrapped her tablecloth around a mannequin and photographed the two together. It’s the closest I could get to visually communicating that the cloth was made by an actual person. Hopefully one day, I’ll come across a photograph of Caterina so that we can know her face. Until then, this portrait will have to do.

Cheers to celebrating all the immigration stories that make our country culturally vibrant this Independence Day. To slim snippets, that form big stories. And most importantly, cheers to Linda and to Ann and to Caterina for sharing their family’s American experience. Important stories lie in everyday objects.

However you choose to commemorate the 4th of July, we hope it’s a memorable one!

Special note: While researching this post, I came across two pieces of media that were especially insightful when it came to understanding the very human and very humbling experience of immigrating to America.

An oral history interview with Italian immigrant Filomena Latta…

https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/oral-history-library

A tour of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum with National Park Ranger Peter Urban…

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #8: The End of the Beginning

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

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 summer seed and plant orders are in. From Washington north to the Canadian border and east to Maine, the tender seedlings and plants raised in hotbeds, cold frames or greenhouses now must wait for their final snowstorm before being put into the ground. The gardener has finished his midwinter reading of Christmas gift books and laid his plans for new enterprises for the coming summer. It is time for him and for me to get out of our armchairs and take stock.”

Katharine Sergeant Angell White (1892-1977)

With our unusually cool spring and our last dip of mid-30-degree weather occurring just last week, Katharine’s 1970s Maine March was very much our 2023 Connecticut May. But as Katharine was eager to point out then, the time had finally come to spring forward into action. And now our time has finally come too. The job of filling the garden beds with our wintertime inspirations has arrived. Even though there are 53 years and two months between then and now, between Katharine’s Maine and my Connecticut, this is exactly the sentiment and excitement that propelled the gardens at 1750 House these past two weeks. The last of our seedlings (the basil and the okra) said goodbye to the protective shelter of the greenhouse and are now tucked in between clusters of 3-foot-tall brandywine tomatoes and fast-growing, shiny-skinned lemon jalapenos. For the first time in seven months, our growing station is empty. The 2022-2023 greenhouse diary entries are complete. Year one is officially in the ground.

We pretty much sailed through our first year of greenhouse gardening on the coattails of Mother Nature and a learn-as-you-go approach. In doing so, we found our way to specific techniques and procedures that helped us understand the greenhouse way of gardening over the course of our first New England winter. Much of the information we shared in previous posts is relevant specifically to our area, our climate, our specific type of greenhouse, but we also learned about a few universal tips and tools that would help any gardener no matter where you live or what you grow. In this post today, we are sharing information about six of those universal helpers. We couldn’t have gotten through two seasons without them, so if you are new to greenhouse gardening I hope they will help you too. Please note, none of these recommendations are sponsor supported. We have no connection to these companies and are not representing them for any financial incentive. We purchased all of these products at full retail price and wholeheartedly recommend them for the helpful time-tested benefit they provided.

Let’s look…

Moisture Meter

The number one cause of any failed garden generally tends to be overwatering. It can lead to pests, disease, root rot, slow growth, fungus, lethargy and soggy soil. I know for certain because I experienced much of this first-hand last year. After fifteen years of Southern gardening in a region where the ground usually remains hot and dry throughout much of the summer and almost daily watering is required, I was used to that rhythm of attention. When we moved north I completely underestimated the naturally moist conditions of New England soil. Although we did have a beautiful and vibrant garden in 2022, some areas lacked a lush, reassuring strength and a robust demeanor. I came to learn, that was in part due to bland soil and in part due to too much coddling. As it turned out, I overwatered by bucketfuls practically every day last summer.

A new form of education began with the moisture meter in the Fall in the greenhouse. It really helped teach me the true amount of water that each plant actually needed as opposed to visually guessing the amount I thought it needed. This inexpensive water wizard (about $8 on Amazon) is hands-down one of the most important garden tools you could have, right up there with a shovel and a rake. By simply inserting the copper stem into any garden pot, it instantly tells you how much moisture is in the soil.

This information is especially great when it comes to caring for a variety of plants that have a variety of different watering needs, like the kind we were raising in the greenhouse. For example, succulents like dry soil with occasional watering. Parsley on the other hand likes moist soil with regular watering and black-eyed susan vines never, ever want to be on the dry side of the moisture meter. If the meter flops all the way over to the right – overwatering is most likely an issue. So helpful! Every day, throughout the fall and winter, I inserted the moisture meter into each pot in the greenhouse to make sure everything stayed appropriately hydrated. Now that we are on our way to summer, the moisture meter can be used to test the garden bed soil as well as indoor houseplants, so there’ll be no overwatering this year. I’m officially trained.

Magnifying Eyeglasses

This recommendation may seem a little kooky, but if you want to keep pests away from your greenhouse over winter you have to get close to the plants and inspect them regularly to make sure they are not harboring minute critters. These magnifying glasses are actually made for watch repairers, but they are really great for garden work too. I’m legally blind in my left eye, so getting any help up close for my good eye is always appreciated and these glasses offer lots of opportunities to look at things from all directions. Both of the lenses move up and down and side to side independently, allowing you to get inside the middle of a plant where many pests tend to hide. Each lens has its own LED light that operates independently too so you can really see what you are looking at no matter the time of day or night. Different magnifying lenses with different strengths adjust the field of vision and are easily interchangeable.

As you may recall from previous posts, in the winter we had a pretty significant outbreak of spider mites and aphids in the greenhouse, both of which are difficult to see with the naked eye. I would never have never been aware of these critters before irreparable damage set in, without the assistance of the glasses. Despite their very technical appearance, there’s a magical upside to these guys too. When you put them on you become an explorer of a micro-universe. Plants look so cool up close. Bugs too for that matter.

Bon-Neem

In lieu of the spider mite and aphids outbreak, this Bon-Neem spray, although on the more expensive side ($17 a bottle) is effective in quickly broadcasting a lethal dose of all-natural organic neem oil. Since spider mites adore hot dry air, they breed like crazy. The adults won’t survive Neem spray but the eggs are unaffected by it so it took six applications (three bottles total) over the course of a month to make a significant dent in our mite and aphid population. It didn’t eradicate them completely – our next recommendation piggybacked on this spray to get the job done – but the oil acts like a protective coating against future pest invasions, so it’s definitely worth it.

Please note, if you decide to use this spray, it has a strong odor. I found it best to get all greenhouse tasks done for the day first before spraying it on the affected plants. Once everything was drenched, the greenhouse was closed up, and left, undisturbed, for 24 hours, so the Neem oil could do its work. After that amount of time, the odor dissipates completely and the greenhouse is on its way to becoming pest-free.

Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol

Isopropyl alcohol is a much less expensive ($4.50 for 32oz) but yet very effective method when it comes to getting rid of spider mites and aphids. It’s more tedious than Neem spray since you have to wipe down the entire leaf of each plant (front and back) but it’s instantly effective and definitely worth the time if you want to make 100% sure that the treatment is reaching the problem areas. Like the Neem spray, this won’t kill spider mite eggs, so you need to reapply it again 3-4 days later, but that second dose is a good opportunity to investigate each plant to make sure the first application worked.

I found that a soaked cotton ball was ideal to use on the larger leafed plants like the peppers and basil, while cotton swabs, with the plastic connector (as opposed to the cardboard ones) were better for smaller more densely foliaged plants. The swabs easily bend in half and get around thick stems, delicate flower petals and hard-to-reach spots. Also, if you choose to go this route in your pest management plan, make sure you stick within the 70-90% percent isopropyl range. Anything above 90% will harm the plant.

Creamer

Although I have tried watering cans, hoses and sprayers of all shapes and sizes, nothing beats a creamer when it comes to working in small spaces with fragile seedlings. This vintage 1960s restaurant ware creamer had a cracked handle that had been carefully repaired at some point in its long life. Aesthetically, it might not be destined anymore for the coffee table but it is wonderfully useful in the greenhouse. Holding about a half cup of water, its narrow spout provides a perfectly slow, steady and gentle steam of water, ideal for fragile, newly emerged seedlings. You can drip-drop water on plantings or dump the whole container at once, but the beauty of using a creamer over a traditional garden hose or a bulkier watering can is the finite control you have over the amount of water you are pouring. Plus the slim size makes a handy temporary vase for bud clippings as you prune flowering plants.

Worm Bucket

At the beginning of autumn, I filled a 10-gallon steel bucket with a bag of organic potting soil and added a few worms from the garden. I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not for the worms, but I wanted to have extra garden soil on hand, for repotting and replenishing throughout the cold months, and I thought the worms might help in their ability to enrich the soil through their castings. As it turns out, warmed by the heater and given a weekly light watering, the worms settled into life in the bucket and made a happy home there. As I scooped trowelfuls worth of soil into potted plants periodically throughout the season, worm eggs wound up randomly and unknowingly in several pots and seed-starting trays. Come early spring, I spotted some baby worms wriggling around with the snapdragon and foxglove seedlings. Did the worms help fertilize the soil in a significant way? I’m not sure, but in the least, they probably helped aerate it. Now fully planted along the edge of the woods, the foxgloves are growing with unrestrained zeal these days. Perhaps the worms helped give them a nutritious head start.

Foxglove

Gardening can be a tricky balancing act between what mother nature offers and what you desire. In the greenhouse, you not only create a biodome of possibility but also a unique environment controlled by instinct, device and determination. These recommendations combined with our winterization wrap and our little workhorse of a heater were methods that worked well for us and in turn, I hope they work well for you too. They really jumpstarted our summer garden the moment the seasons changed this year. Three weeks into May, we already have flowers on our tomatoes, beans on our climbing great northerns, baby fruit on the cucamelons, and two handfuls of spicy and sweet peppers.

Brandywine Tomato
Great Northern Beans
Cucamelon
Orange Sun Sweet Pepper

The lettuces are now the size of full heads with tightly packed leaves and crisp texture. The herbs are flourishing. The collard greens are sporting leaves as big as turkey platters. Yesterday morning we harvested our first batch of rapini, just as the zucchini seeds poked their heads out of the ground. None of this spring vigor would have been possible without the help of the greenhouse and the joy all this seed-starting and plant-tending brought over the winter months. Thanks to the greenhouse I think we are well on our way to one delicious summer.

Collard Greens
Rapini

The only things that struggled in their transition between greenhouse and garden were three Mexican sunflower plants and one okra plant. They didn’t like that surprise dip into 30-degree temperatures. Interesting to note, those are both Southern heat-loving plants and perhaps the most vulnerable things we are growing in our cooler New England climate. As we learned in the history of American gardens post, nostalgia has played a big factor in how we have laid out our U.S. gardens and with what since the days of the pilgrims. Last year, I was excited to grow two of my most favorite Southern plants here in New England based solely on great memories, but maybe this area is not the most appropriate place for them. Next year I might grow them, only in the greenhouse, where they can be bathed in heat and light from seed to bloom. Little lessons and ideas sprout each day around here.

Once so full of plants, it was pretty odd to see the greenhouse return to its empty shell state. It’s been over nine months since it has been this devoid of greenery and although it still is just 4’x6′ in size, it now feels as big and as cavernous as a palace sans plants. To add a little cheer over the summer, I brought the succulents back to the shelves, and am considering adding some shade-loving plants that would enjoy the dappled light and summer leaf coverage overhead. Over the course of these warm months, while the greenhouse rests, we’ll give it a bath inside and out, build additional shelving to maximize space, and add a fresh layer of pea gravel to the floor so that it will be all ready to greet Autumn and a new set of gardening goals.

Katharine and E.B’s home in Brooklin, Maine

In November 1975 at their farmhouse in Maine, Katharine’s husband, E.B. White, gave her a small greenhouse and a potting shed to commemorate their 46th wedding anniversary. Knowing the magical distraction a greenhouse could offer his wife as she bravely battled ill health, he was certain it was the most pleasurable gift he could ever give her. A year and a half later, Katharine passed away at the age of 84. She didn’t get a chance to enjoy her greenhouse for very long, but a gardener’s joy comes daily, in the moment-to-moment observations of tiny details and subtle nuances. A lift of a leaf. A burst of bloom. The sight of sun as it shoots a seedling sky-high. Katharine’s greenhouse may have offered her just eighteen months of comfort, but oh what bliss those day-to-day noticings must have provided. Should we all be so lucky. To know nature so intimately that it becomes an offering, a salve, a focus. To know it as something so reliable it becomes a resting place, an arresting place, despite all of our earthly distresses.

Katharine & E.B. White. Photo courtesy of bangormetro.com

This series was so fun and the greenhouse so encouraging over the winter months that we have plans to add a second, larger, more permanent greenhouse to our landscape which hopefully will be completed by next winter. Until then, I hope all you gardeners stay with us all summer long as we cook up a bevy of vintage recipes, highlight forgotten kitchen stories from history, and share updates from the 1750 House renovation project. For all you collectors out there, if you haven’t already, sign up for our weekly newsletter to see what new old heirlooms make their way to the shop this summer. And finally, if you are new to the blog, the first entry in this Greenhouse Diaries series began in December 2022. Begin at the beginning with that first entry here.

Cheers to our fellow greenhouse comrades who shared stories with us along the way of this six-month journey… to Katharine Sergeant Angell White, who inspired this series in the first place… and to our little joy of a greenhouse. We can’t wait to watch all these plants grow up over the summer and to see what the greenhouse might inspire next.

Rapini florets

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #7: Celebrating Year One!

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

Fifty-six heirloom seed packets, five rock wall garden beds, thirty-three experimental plants, four seasons and one greenhouse. The end of April 2023 marks a significant milestone here in the land of 1750 House. It’s the celebration of our first full year of living in this beautiful state, in this lovely old house. It also marks the first birthday of our greenhouse and the first full year of gardening in New England.

Building the greenhouse with the help of Indie, master-gardener-in-training. April 2022
April 2023 – The greenhouse today. Now that we know we like this location we can commit to landscaping all around it. I can’t wait to hang string lights and add a border of pavers.

Are we experts now? Far from it! But at least we have a much better understanding of the potential and possibilities that await year two and year three and year four. I’m sure we’ll have plans for year nineteen too.

Like the house renovations, our big gardening projects are laid out in phases over the course of a few years. Our home inspector recommended that course of action a year ago. 1) To keep our sanity and 2) to get used to the space before making major decisions. It was really good advice. Even though taking that route doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of immediate satisfaction upfront as far as getting things done, we found that when you get a chance to take some time to truly experience how you live, move and interact in a space the more refined and appropriate your decisions become. That was the case here at 1750 House both when it came to the inside and the outside.

The first week we moved in – April 2022

At the start of this historic house adventure, we knew very little about greenhouse gardening and even less about New England gardening but heading into year two we are starting to get the hang of things. Last April, as far as the garden goes, it was all about establishing beds, building rock walls, and learning by experimentation when it came to growing flowers and vegetables. Not knowing what each season was going to look like, we worked in small steps. We decided not to make any major changes until we went through a full year’s growing cycle to see what we were working with. In that vein, we did a lot of maintenance work and watching work. Especially in the front of the house. We dethatched, reseeded and conditioned the grass in the front yard, fertilized, manicured and shaped the bushes, built the rock wall garden beds to the left of the front door and to the left of the driveway. We built the potting shed addition onto the back left corner of the garage, added the greenhouse to the left of the potting shed and trimmed many of the trees.

1750 House today – May 2023

Now that we are past the getting-to-know-you phase, we have some big plans for the front this year. They include a low wall or fence near the street, fencing at different angles added midway to both the left and right side of the house. Climbing roses added to the right side of the garage. A fig tree added to the side yard. Bushes added in front of the potting shed and a new more layered landscape design incorporating a collection of native plants directly in front of the house.

Next year, we make the big BIG decision on what color to paint the house. We can keep it red and white, which is very 18th-century traditional or we could choose another color palette altogether. We waffle back and forth every day on this subject. Two-tone yellow. Bright white. Dark Slate. So many choices. At the end of the day we want to honor the historic nature of both the house and the gardens, so history will ultimately be our decision-maker.

March 2nd, 2023

When we last left off on Greenhouse Diary #6, it was early March, there was snow on the ground and the greenhouse was sporting her plastic winter coat. There were seeds just about to be started (cucumbers, marigolds, squash, tomatoes, okra, sunflowers, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, and zinnia). There were collard greens that were practically bursting out of their containers and a troupe of traveling spider mites determined to put on a show for each and every plant.

Greenhouse-grown collard greens – March 2023

Now that we are rounding the corner to May, the greenhouse has flung off her winterwear, those seeds that were waiting to be planted are now big sprouts and the spider mites have (hopefully) just completed their tour.

The geraniums were the first to jump ship from indoors to out at the end of March. Even though they were taking over the greenhouse in a vast and magnificent way, it was pretty amazing to see how big they had actually gotten once they started the hardening-off process outside. If you’ve been following along since the first diary entry, you’ll recall that these three pots of geraniums were all severely frostbitten last Fall. It’s so encouraging to see that they’ve fully recovered in just four months time.

The collard greens made their way out of the greenhouse next. They headed out to their new garden bed in early April, where they took to their new warm weather residence with aplomb. Their companion plants – dill and brussels sprouts – moved in right next door just this past week…

Next came the lettuces… rouge d’hiver, farmers market, and salad bowl blend along with two different varieties of broccoli – Di Cicco and Rapini. They joined the snapdragons and garlic as companion plantings. Dotted with falling apple blossoms, these beds all look like they’ve been sprinkled with confetti. Mother Nature is ready to party!

Rouge D’Hiver lettuce
Broccoli Di Cicco

It’s so fun to see that last year’s garlic bulbs are now this year’s stalks…

Planting day last October!
Garlic stalks today!

While it’s still been hovering in the low-to mid-40s at night, we’ve had to be patient about planting. Not everything that’s been grown in the greenhouse can tolerate this early spring chill. The start of the herb garden was our last little dalliance with transplanting from the greenhouse stash for at least the next 10 days. Once we hit a steady 50-55 degrees at night everything can head out safely to their designated outdoor spots.

The start of the herb garden… sage, rosemary, chives, mint, marigolds and parsley.

Meanwhile, inside the greenhouse, every plant seems ready to leave. As hard as it is to resist the urge to transplant them, especially when the daytime temps reach 60 or higher, it’s still too chilly at night yet for all of these tender heat-lovers to successfully make the transition. While the winter plastic has been removed from the exterior of the greenhouse, we’ve still been keeping the heater on at night to maintain a 60-70 degree range indoors. While everybody waits in the warmth for the big move, the flowers keep on blooming and the climbers keep on climbing…

Zinnia!

Jalapenos!
Cucamelon!
Mexican sunflowers!
Okra!
A glimpse of just a few of the many pepper and tomato plants.

The spider mite situation was quite a contender in the nuisance department this past month. As sap-sucking insects that reproduce quickly, they can easily take over a plant’s health in a matter of days and devastate a collection of seedlings before they’ve even had a chance to really get growing. I suspect our spider mite infestation began with the pepper plants (they seemed to have a lot of affinity for ours, anyway) and then spread practically everywhere – sunflowers, basil, peas, black-eyed-susan vines, mint. It took an entire month of daily diligent attention to eradicate them, but I think we are at the end of the outbreak now. On the next Greenhouse Diay update, I’ll feature the product I used to get rid of the mites along with some other gardening tools and devices that helped us navigate this first year as greenhouse gardeners.

The first lilac bloom of the season! March 26th, 2023

Also, I wanted to say a big thank you and bear with us to everyone who is checking in on the kitchen renovation updates. We’ll be featuring more on that interior story once it is finished. As I’m learning, it takes a long time to not only renovate but also authentically decorate a house to the point where you can confidently say… here it is! In the meantime, the garden is a more humble muse. Cheers to year one!

On This Day in 1861: Brooklyn Want Ads, Hot Grog and A Sailor’s Time-Honored Tradition

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen1 Comment
An unidentified sailor in Union Uniform circa 1861-1865. Photo: Library of Congress.

April 10th, 1861. On this day in history, if you were a sailor perusing the newspapers of Brooklyn, New York you’d find your next maritime adventure tucked in between advertisements for Shakespearean readings, housekeepers for hire, and rubber teeth dentistry services. There, in a want ad posted in the Brooklyn Evening Sun would be your future for the next several months or possibly years to come. The US Navy was looking for seamen. It would ensure a paycheck, food, medical attention, and a chance to see the world, or at least part of it, via ship. There would also be grog.

Brooklyn Evening Star – April 10th, 1861

Life aboard a 19th-century sailing vessel was not a gourmet affair. Unless you were the captain, sailors could expect to consume a diet heavy in hardtack (a tough, shelf-stable biscuit made of water, salt and flour) along with rations of salted meat, pork and fish, and possibly a vegetable or two like cabbage or turnips. Beverages available were typically three – water, beer and rum, consumed in that order as the length of time on the ship grew. Each stored in wooden barrels, water was a luxury that spoiled quickly and therefore was the first to go rancid due to inadequate refrigeration. Beer was next, oftentimes turning sludgy and sour, weeks into the journey. The only truly shelf-stable beverage was rum.

The USS Bienville, built in Brooklyn, NY served as a Union sail steamer from 1861-1867.

In today’s post, we are drinking like sailors and embracing a long-standing tradition that is still upheld by seamen around the world. The recipe is Hot Grog, a rum and water toddy of sorts that includes tea, fresh lemon juice and sugar. Back in the Navy during the 1800s, this drink in its simplest form of rum and water was commonplace – an expected part of everyday life aboard ship. Today it’s an ideal restorative for Spring. When temperatures can be cool at night and warm during the day it’s a comforting evening drink, a medicinal miracle worker for allergy season, and a celebratory cocktail served hot or cold depending on your weather and your whereabouts.

Rum and sailors have been companions for centuries. This recipe is definitely no new kid on the block. History states that the average sailor in the Navy during the 1700s -1800s consumed one-half to one pint of straight rum per day which could equal up to 27 gallons per year. A ration available to all men aboard, regardless of the type of sailing vessel, rum was both a highlight and a soothing salve for the spirit to get them through the hard work, the inclement weather, and the lonely atmosphere that surrounded life at sea. Food history also accounts for the fact that rancid water and spoiled beer left but one alternative for hydration. In that regard, rum was both a treat and a life-sustaining source of calories. But most importantly, it was a tradition.

Read more about this cookbook in the shop here.

Although there are a few different ways to make grog, today’s recipe featured here comes from The Mystic Seaport Cookbook. Published in 1970, this cookbook celebrates over 300 years of traditional New England fare offering a unique glimpse into maritime life. With a surprisingly extensive beverage section that includes several eggnog recipes, syllabubs, flavored brandy, punches and possets, Hot Grog is one the oldest of them all.

Portrait of Edward Vernon by Thomas Gainsborough

Dating to the 1730s, grog is attributed to British Navy Admiral, Edward Vernon (1684-1757). Nicknamed Old Grog, Edward celebrated a maritime victory over Spain with a round of rum for all the sailors on his ship. Although acknowledging that rum drinking was par for the course in the life of a sailor, Edward thought that more than two cups of rum a day was too much for any man, so he offered his seamen a drink of half water/half rum to toast their victory. This mixture became known as Grog, and as the decades and centuries progressed, the tradition of a daily drink of grog became a highlight of a sailor’s day aboard ship, marking an important place not only in maritime history but food history as well.

Our 1860s sailor up top at the beginning of the post, thumbing through the Brooklyn Evening Star, would have noted that the want ad included the mention of grog specifically. As that meant that this ship upheld tradition and would be more likely to follow through on its promises. In the 1700s and 1800s, many jobs for sailors aboard trading ships and cargo vessels were fraught with injustices that led to unfair working conditions. Partly because of unscrupulous captains, cramped quarters, disease, the danger of the work, and the uncertainty of long weeks or months spent out at sea, the life of a sailor was not an easy one. But certain dependable regularities could make the voyage more bearable – rum being one.

A delight in all ways that tea and rum can be on their own, this seafaring beverage is both visually enticing and physically appealing. Essentially like drinking a good, hot cup of tea, it’s a well-complemented combination of flavors, with no one ingredient overpowering the other. It’s preferable to select a strong type of black tea, but I suspect (although I haven’t tried it yet) that this drink might be equally interesting with an herbal tea like peppermint or ginger as well. I don’t think the sailors would mind if you experimented, just as long as you don’t forget the rum!

Hot Grog – Serves 6

3 large lemons

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup heavy rum

6 cups strong hot tea (lapsang souchong)

While water is boiling for tea, cut six long curls from the lemons using a vegetable peeler. Cut each lemon in half and juice them to make 1/2 cup.

Combine the sugar, lemon juice and rum in a mason jar or small bowl and stir. Divide the mixture among six warmed mugs. Prepare the tea and add it to each mug. Garnish each cup with a lemon rind swirl and serve immediately.

I’ve made this recipe a few times over the past couple of months. The first was at Christmastime when the polar vortex weather encouraged us to try all the ways to keep warm inside and out. I’ve also made it on a grey and rainy end-of-winter night when the air was so damp and heavy, it felt like Spring might never come. And then again just the other day, when the 60-degree day sun was setting and the temperatures started creeping back down into the low 50s. Each time, hot grog warmed the belly and refreshed the spirit.

A comfort in other ways too, grog made its way into sea shanty songs. Sung by sailors for hundreds of years, as they went about their life on the water, songs like Leave Her Johnny Leave Her , Drunken Sailor and the The Wellerman all touch on the challenges faced at sea and the important part that rum played. The Wellerman, in particular, features all three ingredients of hot grog – sugar and tea and rum. It was a popular song among the crews of New Zealand whaling boats in the early 1800s, and then again became a popular song on social media during the pandemic in 2020-2021. If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s the song in full… (with a little warning… it’s a bit of an earworm – you might be singing it for days!)…

It’s incredible to think what a far reach this magical combination of ingredients has had in the minds and hearts of sailors (and singers!) for centuries. From the New York waterfront all the way around the globe to the South Island of New Zealand and back again, for whatever occasion, at whatever temperature, and in whichever climate you chose to make a cup of grog, I hope you enjoy it just as much as we did here in the Vintage Kitchen.

Below are a few more want ads for sailors that add dimension and depth and color to this corner of nautical history. Cheers to all the sailors who’ve kept tradition alive via recipe and rum!

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier – November 5th, 1863

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier – November 11th, 1856

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier- Set. 8, 1864

The Greenhouse Diaries Entry #6: How to Keep a Greenhouse Warm in Winter, Spring Seedlings and a Whole Lot of February

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

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.

The front side of the greenhouse with a roll-up curtain panel to gain entry.

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.

The backside of the greenhouse.

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 Mexican sunflowers!

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.

Pureed garlic steeped in water for 24 hours before straining and applying.

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…

The last of the nasturtium flowers in a bouquet of geraniums and parsley.

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.

Collard greens!

Santakla 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.

Jalapenos!

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

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

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

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen3 Comments

{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.”

Somewhere in this early 1900s street scene in Nome, Alaska are jars of sourdough starter waiting to be consumed!

Men weren’t the only ones who had gold rush fever. Single women headed up to Alaska to mine gold and fill job demands brought about by the influx of speculators.

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

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

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…

Nasturtiums
Geraniums

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…

Greenhouse-grown arugula and parsley

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.

Santaka pepper

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)…

Liz Lemon’s baby lemon!

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…

Wednesday

Orange Sun! Each day it gets brighter and brighter…

Thursday

Yesterday morning

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!

Mexican sunflower seedlings

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)…

From the garden in 2012

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.

Mexican sunflower seedling

{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}