history – In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat

Jamaican Rice and Beans and a 1940s Trip to the Caribbean

Published on March 28, 2025 by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

Welcome back to the International Vintage Recipe Tour. When we last left off on our around-the-world culinary adventures, we were in Italy cooking up Chicken Canzanese and spotlighting the artistic and culinary career of Edward Giobbi and his talented family.

This time, our international itinerary takes us to Jamaica, where we are cooking a traditional heritage food, Jamaican Rice and Beans, making milk from a fresh coconut, and exploring the island 1940s-style via a 1948 Pan Am travel film and a selection of first-hand observations experienced by visitors to the island post-World War II.

A vintage recipe for Jamaican Rice & Beans

It’s easy enough nowadays to see what a modern-day Jamaican holiday could look like thanks to the internet, but can you imagine what it looked like 80 years ago? This throwback travel post draws attention to the excitement of a tropical holiday experience in the 1930s and 1940s during the golden age of travel, back when Jamaica was a newcomer to the tourism industry.

Jamaican Tourism Guide circa 1937. Image courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

Back when hats, heels, suits, and dresses were staples of vacation wardrobes…

and when airplane travel looked like this…

Pan American Airways Caribbean Clipper postcard circa 1931

Back when flight attendants provided an array of services akin to that of a luxury hotel concierge…

The role of a flight attendant in the 1940s

and when a trip to an exotic Caribbean island was considered a dreamy, decadent, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Vintage 1930s Jamaica travel guide to Montego Bay. Image courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

It’s an escapist getaway for certain, to a time and a place so steeped in hospitality that its national tourism slogan is “Jamaica: The Heartbeat of the World.” Heartbeat indeed. This post is a swoonworthy one for all of our vintage travel aficionados complete with a delicious heritage recipe to match. Welcome to country number 26 on the International Vintage Recipe Tour. Welcome to Jamaica.

Prior to the 1930s, Jamaica’s tourism population was a small, subdued bunch made up mostly of elderly retirees, the medically infirm, and the ultra-wealthy. Travel to the island during the first part of the 20th century was difficult, expensive, and lacked a suitable infrastructure that could readily accommodate a large influx of guests. But by the mid-1930s, Jamaica was tourist-ready.

The hospitality industry as it started to bloom and blossom in the 1920s and 1930s in Jamaica

The hotels were built, the staffing was in place, and a slew of leisure activities awaited guests. Vacationers were ready too. They were more mobile, there were more flights to New York and Miami (the gateway cities to the Caribbean) and airlines were expanding service to the islands offering faster transportation than ship-to-shore travel.

Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived. World War II put a pause on all travel to Jamaica. But following the end of the war, an exuberant sense of adventure and wanderlust, especially from the American market, caused Jamaica’s tourism numbers to rise from less than 5,000 per year in the 1920s to close to 100,000 visitors per year by the late 1940s. Today, Jamaica welcomes over 1.4 million visitors annually.

One of the most well-known hotels on the island was The Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston which operated from 1870-1964. It’s featured here in a 1940s brochure courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

Credited with being the first country to actively promote tourism in the Caribbean, the post-WWII introduction of Jamaica was exciting on all fronts. Media campaigns began rolling out in creative ways that highlighted the island’s beautiful beaches, turquoise-colored water, engaging cities, tropical climate, jungle-rich flora and fauna, and friendly faces. Aside from those show-stoppers, the other attractive and important component to Jamaica’s successful promotion was its convenient location in the Caribbean Sea. Just a short 90 minute flight Miami, it offered almost instant gratification. Paradise was close.

I thought discussing Jamaica’s early rise in tourism would be a fun cultural touchpoint to pair with this international vintage recipe because it’s emergence as a true destination vacation occurred over 90 years ago and travel on all fronts today is so different than what it was then. Today, we slog through airports and plane travel to get our destinations as quickly as possible in the most comfortable clothes possible. We consult the internet for practically every detail of our vacation from lodging to sightseeing to restaurants. We read reviews online, we look at ratings. We take into account a stranger’s bad experience as well as their good ones. We juggle safety concerns, security threats, disease outbreaks and world events. And for most travelers today, it’s a comfort to be able to see and know exactly what we are getting into when we take a trip abroad.

In the 1940s, travel was different. It was more carefree, less planned. Travelers knew where they were going, but they didn’t necessarily always know what they were going to see. Curiosity and discovery led the adventure. To get a sense of what traveling to Jamaica was like in the 1940s, I’ve included this fun and insightful 24-minute travel short that was produced by Pan American Airlines in 1948. It whisks viewers along on the adventures of Ms. Dale, an American traveler who is exploring the Caribbean on a two-week vacation aboard Pan Am’s propellered clipper ship, courtesy of a custom itinerary prepared for her by a whimsical, animated character named Clip, the Spirit of Travel.

Presented as an enticing tourism piece to highlight Pan Am’s newly expanded routes to the West Indies, Central and South America, and Mexico, this travel film made its rounds, often accompanied by a representative from Pan Am, at libraries, museums, civic organizations, schools, and travel agencies around the United States beginning in January 1948. Showcasing the warm and sunny climate Jamaica offered during a time of year when almost all of America was wrapped up in a cold blanket of winter weather was alluring marketing at its best. The film received rave reviews around the country for its beauty, interest, and excitement in depicting the history and culture of this exotic string of islands floating in the Caribbean Sea.

To give you an example of the type of reception the film received… on October 11th, 1948 at the Lincoln School Auditorium in Kalamazoo, MI, nine hundred tickets were available for a nighttime showing of Wings to Cuba and the Caribbean. 900 tickets! This illustrates not only the level of interest in the subject matter but also the attraction of movies in the 1940s.

In the film, Ms. Dale island hops around the Caribbean beginning in Cuba. She arrives in Jamaica at the 13-minute mark. If you wanted to skip ahead, you’ll find her en route to the island at 13:27.

I found this travel short to be captivating in so many ways. Not only was it fun to see vintage film footage of the tropics but I loved how it combined flight, fashion, fun facts, music and history into a compact story that gave you an immediate sense not only of what life was like in the Caribbean but also what life was like in the 1940s too.

Watching Wings to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1948 provided many viewers with a first-time glimpse of the islands from a cinematic perspective. At the same time, equally enticing tourism promotion for the Caribbean began appearing more and more frequently in newspapers, and magazines too. I pulled some snippets from vintage archives and combined them with vintage postcards of the era to showcase exactly how, in mid-century America, you would have been introduced to this exotic island.

A vintage travel postcard circa 1930-1945, *Greetings from Jamaica, B.W.I. A beautiful Jamaican peasant girl*. Jamaica, B. W. I.: Photo by Cleary & Elliott

Vintage travel postcard of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica circa 1930-1945

Vintage Jamaica travel postcard… The Banana Tree and Fruit circa 1930-1945

Vintage Jamaican travel postcard, Market Scene at Constant Spring circa 1930-1945

Since its emergence on the tourism scene in the 1930s and 40s, Jamaica has become a treasured and popular resort destination, winter getaway, and honeymoon haven for travelers around the world. Even if you have never visited yourself, you are still familiar with it. You’ve seen photos, watched a video, read a book, heard stories from someone else who has been there. We are all familiar with the beautiful, bright smiling faces of local residents. We know the palm studded beaches, the gorgeous blue water, the relaxed vibes, the music, the pretty hotels. But in the 1940s it must have been magical to experience the island for the first time as a brand-new destination. To experience the talcum-powder soft beaches, the two mule carts, the afternoon tea hour, the mountain of cotton trees, the gay and leisurely atmosphere. It must have been awe inspiring to see it in its pristine form overflowing with a proud, fresh-faced enthusiasm. Jubilant with a happy-you-are-here hospitality. It must have been magical to see the island barely touched by the trappings of tourism. Unaffected yet by repetitive foot traffic caused by the millions of travelers that would eventually come to it, mold it, define it, shape it into something influenced a little bit here and there by something else from somewhere else. In the 1940s, Jamaica felt new to the world to a new set of travelers unlike any other place in the world.

We are all spoiled these days with an overconsumption of information and an in-the depth understanding of the world on just about every topic under the sun. Sometimes, when everything is at our finger tips that leaves little room to ever discover something truly new. But imagine, for a moment that it’s the 1940s. You don’t own a television, but you do read the newspaper. There’s a movie theater in your town, a globe on your desk, and a stack of travel magazines on your bookshelf. You long for far-flung adventures and travel to exotic places but you’ve yet to ever leave your home city. A showing of Wings To Cuba and the Caribbean comes to your town. You fall in love with the islands. You begin to read more and more stories about Jamaica in the newspaper. You see tourism ads start to appear in the travel section. Your favorite magazine features it in a multi-page spread. You take Ms. Dale’s lead and you book a trip through a local travel agent. Finally, the day arrives and you board the propellered plane with the the Pam Am logo. It’s your first international adventure. Your first tropical vacation. Your first real-life glimpse of the world beyond anything you have ever known.

While it’s impossible to return to the excitement of Jamaica’s early tourism days of the 1930s and 1940s, we can at least return again and again to a vintage recipe from this beautiful country via the kitchen any time we want. It may not physically plunk you down on a sandy beach, but it will carry you away to a Caribbean state of mind. Nothing transports you to the tropics quite like a coconut.

This vintage recipe for Jamaican Rice and Beans calls for coconut milk made from a whole, fresh coconut. You could possibly substitute it for canned coconut milk as a shortcut, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Especially if you are longing for an escape of mind these days. I wholeheartedly recommend making this recipe as is, fresh coconut and all. It’s not only a fun meal to prepare but you’ll have a little bit of extra coconut water left over to make a rum cocktail while you cook, further embracing a vacation vibe.

If you have never cracked open a coconut before, rest assured, it is easier than you think. Look for a whole coconut in your local grocery store or market that is heavy in weight, pre-scoured, and sloshes with the sound of liquid inside when you shake it. This ensures that the coconut is fresh and easy to crack.

The West Indian Atlas circa 1775. Image courtesy of *The New York Public Library Digital Collections*.

The history of this rice and beans recipe is rooted in the slave trade which began in Jamaica in the 1500s by way of Africa and Spain. Over the course of the island’s history, the dish’s unique blend of grains and legumes morphed into different variations using different spices and came to be known by different names. The most traditional and widely accepted name is Jamaican Rice and Peas. But not peas of the round, green sort that we often think of as vegetables. It was originally made with small round red peas, also known as pigeon peas, also known as gungo peas.

Cajanus cajan aka pigeon peas aka gungo peas.

At some point, gungo peas became more expensive and harder to find in Jamaican markets and kidney beans were substituted in their place, which is how this dish also became known as Jamaican Rice and Beans. Technically a pea is a bean as they are both members of the legume family so both names are correct, but we all know green peas are not kidney beans, and kidney beans are not red peas. Each has its own unique flavor profile, color, consistency, and shape. Nonetheless, today in Jamaica when it comes to this recipe, gungo peas and kidney beans are both accepted ingredients and it’s left up to personal preference as to which is the better bean/pea.

Aside from the extra bit of attention given to the coconut preparation, this recipe is easy to make and very economical. It serves 10-12 as a side dish and costs less than $15.00 to make. Equally enjoyable as a full meal on its own, this dish also freezes well, reheats beautifully, and acts as both a comfort food and a vegan meal. Since it contains both carbs and protein, it’s especially lovely for this time of year as we start spending more hours and energy outdoors. But most importantly, this is a dish that will transport you to another era, a mental mini-break from the malaise and the momentous events of the modern world.

Jamaican Rice and Beans

(from the New York Times International Cook Book circa 1971)

Serves 10-12 as a side dish

1 cup dried red kidney beans

1 rib celery, cut in half

1 small wedge of green pepper (about 1/4 of a whole bell pepper)

1 large coconut

6 cups water

Salt to taste (I used 3 teaspoons)

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

2 1/2 cups uncooked rice

Place the beans in a large kettle and add water to cover to a depth of one inch. Add the celery and green pepper, cover and bring to a boil.

As the beans cook, prepare the coconut. There are three eyes on the coconut. One of them is soft enough to pierce. I like to use a corkscrew for this job but you can also use a shape paring knife or a Phillips-head screwdriver. Pierce that one eye and drain the coconut water from the interior into a large glass or mason jar. Once drained, with a heavy mallet, hammer, or the back of a butcher knife crack the coconut shell in several places, and using a paring knife, remove the meat from the shell in large pieces.

Once broken into pieces, do not bother to cut away the thin brown skin from the coconut flesh. Grate each piece of coconut using a fine grater.

Line a mixing bowl with cheesecloth and add the grated coconut. Add two cups of cold water and squeeze to extract the white liquid. This is coconut milk. Add two more cups of water and squeeze, then add the last two cups of water and squeeze again. This should yield roughly six cups of coconut milk.

Add all six cups of coconut milk to the simmering beans. Cover and cook until the beans are tender, about 1 and 1/2 hours in all. Stir frequently to prevent the beans from burning.

Add salt to taste, thyme, and the rice. Stir once and cover. Continue to cook until the liquid is absorbed by the rice, about 20 – 30 minutes.

When done the rice should be tender and all the liquid absorbed. Remove the cooked celery and green pepper. Fluff the rice. Serve as a side dish or as a vegetarian meal.

I garnished the beans and rice with finely chopped fresh green pepper just before serving. The contrast between the crisp green pepper and the soft rice and beans was lovely, almost like serving a chopped salad on top. I thought the coconut flavor might be more pronounced than it was but to my surprise no one ingredient overpowered the other. Instead, they all blended together to create a warm, comforting combination of flavors that is easily compatible and very complimentary with so many other types of food.

If you were serving this as a side dish, other traditional Jamaican accompaniments would include Jerk Chicken, Salted Fish or Curried Goat. I wouldn’t hesitate putting it in a taco or topping it with grilled shrimp or steak either. Or simply enjoy this one as is – a simple meal of rice and beans with a hint of tropical flavor to warm your spirit on these chilly days of early Spring. I hope by the time you sit down to the table to enjoy this meal, you’ll feel like you’ve had a little adventure.

Cheers to Jamaica for extending so much hospitality out into the world in the form of a beautiful place and a beautiful recipe. Join us next time on the International Vintage Recipe Tour as we head to Japan, our 27th country via the kitchen. See you there!

To catch up on previous International Vintage Recipe Tour posts visit here.

Reading While Eating in 2024: Five Recommended Books About Food, Friendship and Appreciation

Published on December 17, 2024December 18, 2024 by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

When December comes around every year, I always love compiling the book list. This month marks the end of 2024, and also the start of the wintertime reading season with the release of the annual Vintage Kitchen recommended book list. Blog stories were a bit sparse this year due to many unanticipated factors, but I’m happy to say that they haven’t hindered this annual tradition of posting a collection of favorite books discovered throughout the year.

If you are a long-time reader of the blog, you already know that these lists are made up of books that were serendipitously found over the course of the year while doing research for Vintage Kitchen blog posts, shop stories and recipes. Every year, they cover a range of subject matters and time periods, and span a range of publication dates from new releases to books written decades or even centuries ago. As an avid reader, averaging about 30 books a year, I save the most beloved ones for this list. The ones that left an indelible mark, or sparked some new inspiration, or offered a different perspective on a subject matter already familiar. These are the books I couldn’t put down. The ones that I still continue to think about long after the last page is read.

This year’s selection is varied in content but they do have an underlying connective theme of gratitude and appreciation. There’s a book about nature, a book about a summer vacation house, and a book about American life lived three hundred years ago. Three of the books this year are memoirs, one book contains recipes, and unlike last year’s list, all five of these books are non-fiction. They tell bittersweet stories of friendship, of being present in time and place, of establishing traditions, and of searching for meaning in everyday life. These five take us around the world from coastal Massachusetts to New Orleans to New York City to Paris, Stockholm, South America, and to our own backyards. One book even helped solve a mystery about the floorboards of 1750 House. Interesting adventures await on all fronts.

Let’s look…

To The New Owners – Madeleine Blais (2017)

A love story to summer. To family. To a seasonal beach house on the shore of Martha’s Vineyard. To the New Owners is one long anticipated string of summer sequels highlighting vacation life spent in coastal Massachusetts. Written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais, who married into the enigmatic and literary Katezenbach family, this memoir starts off with news that the beloved beach house, the family vacation compound for five decades, is going up for sale.

You might suspect with a topic like this that what could follow is a sappy cliche. A backward look at a family home where frivolity, relaxation, and low expectations were the driving force behind each summer. A book chock-full of events and experiences only interesting to the people who actually experienced it. That’s not the case here.

While there is certainly sentimentality and a true loyalty to the land and its residents, both seasonal and year-round, this memoir reads like an engaging conversation shared over a lengthy dinner party. It is full of quirky characters, funny stories, interesting history, and an undying love of the written word.

From record-keeping log books to island newspaper articles to Madeleine’s own accounts of house repairs, family dinners, environmental changes, historical events, and all the people and pups that marked their time on the island, this is a memoir of Martha’s Vineyard not from the glitzy, multi-million dollar mansion perspective, although there is mention of that too, but from a rowdy, vivacious, thrifty, unpretentious contemporary family viewpoint. The type of living that represents the true spirit of the island and its origins. And in the case of the Katezenbach family, a lifestyle that respected the power of words over the power of the pocketbook.

Gay Head Cliffs – Moshup Public Beach – Martha’s Vineyard – Boston – USA.

When she first shows up to the Vineyard, Madeleine doesn’t exactly know what to expect. She knows nothing of the island, or the people she’s going to stay with, or the type of lifestyle that requires a summer residence and a winter residence. But she does have an imagination. And what she pictures in her mind on the way to her first visit to the summer house is not the almost dilapidated shack that she encounters. Rustic is what her husband called it, a far cry from the multi-million dollar estates that dot much of the M.V. coastline. Intrigued by the island’s humble roots and the glamour it was later associated with, Madeleine explores the history of the island, her new family, and the literary-loving community that it reflected all through the lens of the summer house.

Funny, wise, poetic, and relatable whether you’ve ever had the experience of summer beach house living or not, Madeleine’s memoir is about love, loyalty, nature, pride of place, and acceptance of what is, as it is. A look at an island that boasts extremes from all directions including wealth, prestige, celebrity, notoriety, and eccentricity, but also sandy kitchen floors, wet dogs, leaky roofs, fishless-fishing trips, thwarted dinner invitations, spectacular sunsets, faulty wiring, stunning beaches and the whole mess with the nearby pond that affected everybody.

At the heart of the story are the log books – the fortuitously started notebooks that hold random journal entries of all the small, everyday details that make up life at the beach house for fifty summers. Sporadic and eclectic, with contributions by family members and visiting guests, the log books were available to anyone staying at the house who wanted to note something, anything. The first log book started what would become a tradition and then ultimately a treasure trove of notes and musings on recipes, house improvements, weather, linguistic games, family health, poems, housecleaning tips, recommended book lists, pet antics, children’s drawings, island events, and conversational interactions with town locals. No one particularly thought that the first log book was going to turn into something special, but when it was full and there were no pages left to record anything else, another book was ordered and filled again, and over and over it went for five decades.

Having that kind of family detail available helped Madeleine paint such an intimate look at life on Martha’s Vineyard that by book’s end you’ll feel like a local yourself. What’s particularly lovely is how everyone truly appreciated the house, the parcel of land it sat on, and the exposure to nature that it provided them. Across all the fifty years, any one guest, family member or otherwise, who couldn’t appreciate this slice of paradise or didn’t see the charm of it all wasn’t invited back the following year. So the summer house became a club-like haven of love and joy and appreciation and fulfillment even on the leaky roof and the fishless fishing trip days. It chronicled the years of a couple’s marriage and embraced the outpouring of their offspring. It sheltered three generations, countless friends, family pets, and invited guests. And then the inevitable happened. Life changed. And with it, the bittersweet goodbye to fifty years of what once was.

Grief Is For People – Sloane Crosley (2024)

Just as there are many stages of grief there are many things in the world to grieve. In this book, Sloane Crosley grieves two real-life events simultaneously… the suicide of her best friend and the theft of family jewelry from her NYC apartment. Both incidences occurred within 30 days of each other. Both were a shock to the system. And both left Sloane at a loss confronting major thoughts and feelings about each situation.

You might suspect that the death of her dear friend would take precedence over the theft of jewelry she inherited from a grandmother that no one really liked, but Sloane is an incredible storyteller and manages to give equal emotional weight to both scenarios while also offering an interesting behind the scenes look at the publishing industry that she and her friend were very much a part of for over two decades.

Grief Is For People is, yes, a book about grieving but it’s also a memoir of a specific time period in Sloane’s publishing career, a portrait of a friendship, a writer’s coming-of-age in the big city of New York, and the emotional value of inherited objects. It’s humorous and insightful, smart and sincere. It’s full of grit and determination to right the wrong of burglary while also bravely sorting through what it means to love, rely on, appreciate, and remember someone who was here one minute and gone the next.

Sloane shares this story in a captivating timeline of events. So as not to spoil the pacing, I won’t say anymore other than that if you are new to Sloane Crosley and her work, I’d also highly recommend her 2008 book of essays I Was Told There’d Be Cake.

The Comfort of Crows – Margaret Renkl (2023)

Stop and look. Those are the first three words of Margaret Renkl’s ruminations on nature and her year-long accounting of it in The Comfort of Crows. Written from the vantage point of her backyard in Nashville, TN and a friend’s nearby vacation cabin in the mountains, Margaret writes about the sights and sounds of nature witnessed firsthand over the course of a calendar year. In brief vignettes accompanied by her brother’s beautiful illustrations, Margaret draws attention to common occurrences happening with the birds and the squirrels, the trees and the bees, the plants and the pollinators, week by week, while also reflecting on her own life and the parallels these natural encounters draw.

Part nature study, part memoir, part call to action, I would recommend The Comfort of Crows to anyone who wants to unplug from the outside world for a weekend, a week, a month, a year. If you need a break from social media, the news, the what-ifs, and the how-to’s, this book is easy to fall into. Calming, thought-provoking, and comforting, it offers a gentle reminder that in nature there’s a plan, a purpose, and a resourcefulness that is indefatigable, adaptable, and inspiring.

Stop and look. Stop and listen. Stop. Look. Listen. See. Hear. These are simple words that yield powerful insight into the dramas, destinies, and determinations going on in everyday life around us. Whether it’s the backyard, the city park, the country meadow, the forest, the beach, or the planting strip in the parking lot of your local grocery store, there’s insight to be gained from the creatures that inhabit these parcels of place.

Starting on Week One, the first of January, Margaret shares in her lovely, poetic voice how nothing is actually dead even in the dead of winter. “Everything that waits is also preparing itself to move,” she notes. “The brown bud is waiting for its true self to unfold: a beginning that in sleep has already begun.”

I can’t really describe this book as anything other than an experience. It’s heartwarming and serene, playful and curious, sentimental and sad. It is fun facts and first-hand observations. It’s a love letter to what is and a longing to change what might become. It’s a book. It’s short stories. It’s prose and it’s poetry.

Conscious of global warming and human impact on the natural world, Margaret is hopeful that we can right the ship and learn how to cohabitate with plants and trees, insects, and animals in order to encourage a beneficial landscape for all instead of just some. In acknowledging that we have collective work to do in that regard, this book carries its own bittersweet narrative – an appreciation of what is here now but a realization that it might it not be here in the same way tomorrow. That viewpoint automatically sets the tone for awareness which is the overall theme of Margaret’s year. To be aware of one’s natural surroundings. To be aware of what is in one’s natural surroundings. To be aware of the wild in the world. It’s that recognition that Margaret hopes will propel you out into the greenspaces of your life. To look and to see. To hear and to help. All, so that we can continue to hope.

Trail of Crumbs – Kim Sunee (2008)

Abandoned in a Korean marketplace when she was three years old, Trail of Crumbs follows the real-life of Kim Sunee from toddlerhood through her late twenties via place, people, and passion. Adopted into a well-meaning American family and taken to live in New Orleans, Kim’s presence in the world from the beginning never quite clicks. Seesawing between feelings of gratitude and abandonment, she grows up out of place as an Asian American in the Deep South. Carrying the emotional baggage of a person who has been left behind, Kim is too young to put words to her lost person emotions.

As a child, the only place she finds real comfort is in her grandfather’s kitchen, watching him and helping him cook an array of Southern specialties. This early introduction to the internal power of food becomes Kim’s barometer, her measurement of what feels right and wrong in her life, of what is fitting and falling apart around her. Cooking becomes the bridge that connects her with a cast of characters that come in and out of her life, leading her around the globe over twenty years in search of the definition of home, both internal and external.

With every new person she meets, every new relationship she begins, her life pivots. She makes friends with artists and writers. She teaches English classes to foreign children. She writes poetry. She translates business brochures. She runs a bookshop. All the while searching for her true self.

In all these people, all these places, all these jobs, Kim tries to move on from being left behind. She tries to make peace with her past and the mother who left her on a bench in a market with just a fistful of crackers. She goes to Paris. To Sweden. To South America. She eats, drinks, and cooks in new kitchens of new friends, new lovers, new neighbors. In France, she meets and falls in love with a high-profile businessman who is determined to give her everything she ever wanted. For a time, this romance is ideal. A fairy tale in the making with affable rom-com pacing. She’s finally met someone who is ready to unclasp her fingers from the tight grip that carries her emotional suitcases. He wants to give her everything she never had. A fresh start. A new life. Her own making.

But as much as they love each other, and as passionate as their relationship is, it’s also fraught with complications. Kim questions this knight-in-shining-armor and her worthiness of him. She wears the invisible letter L for leaveable like a badge that defines her. And in believing that she’s leaveable she can’t ever truly stay anywhere. That creates a restlessness that no amount of kindness, no amount of money, no amount of love, or attention, or security can cure until she learns to love herself for herself.

Along with this search for peace and family, Kim’s memoir is dotted with recipes throughout, each one representing a different aspect of her physical and emotional journey from childhood to adulthood. There are recipes that reflect her Korean heritage, her Southern upbringing, and her love of French food. There are recipes for snacks, comfort foods, fancy dinner parties and elegant desserts. Each one, a place marker of her growth and development. They represent comfort in times of unease and joy in times of safety and security. There are so many truly lovely-sounding recipes in Kim’s book that I practically tagged each and every one. In the next blog post, we’ll be delving into one of her recipes from Trail of Crumbs – Chicken Thighs with Cinnamon and Dates – which appears about halfway through her story when she’s in the middle of her French love affair. Stay tuned for that post coming shortly.

The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Colonial America from 1607-1783 – Dale Taylor (1997)

This is pretty niche reading, and I realize not everyone may be as curious about colonial life as we are here at 1750 House, but this book provides so much interesting, little-known information on domesticity in the 17th and 18th centuries, it will appeal to history lovers of all sorts on all levels. Covering architecture, clothing, occupations, gender roles, homekeeping, agriculture, professions, education, religion, and government, I came to this book initially interested in reading the chapter on architecture in hopes of learning some new information about 1750 House, but the whole book turned out to be captivating and I flew right through it.

Brimming with all sorts of very fun fun facts, historical interpreter Dale Taylor wrote this book specifically for writers so that they would have an accurate understanding of the all details that made up real life in the colonial era. With that audience in mind, Dale includes an array of anecdotes that help bring history alive in a relatable way. It’s also a great resource when solving floorboard mysteries.

Upstairs in 1750 House, the original wide plank wood floorboards which are made of solid 3″ inch thick chestnut, measure between 9.5″-15″ inches in width per board. But downstairs, the wood floors are much narrower in width, about 3.5″ inches on average.

This has always led to curious conversations about why the floorboards aren’t the same on each floor. We suspected that the downstairs floors were replaced at some point later in time, possibly in the mid-1800s when the kitchen room was added. But come to find out, according to Dale, in colonial days, wide plank boards were less expensive to mill, so they were often used for flooring in the more private rooms of the house, which tended to be on the second floor or at the back of the house on the first floor. The narrow-width floorboards were laid in the front of the house on the first floor in the parlor rooms. These narrow boards acted as a status symbol letting visitors know that the family who lived there could afford such luxury. In the case of 1750 House in particular, this newly learned information makes a lot of sense.

Not long after we moved in, we learned about the architectural significance of the front door, which is also original to the house. In the photo below, you’ll notice four small windows that are built in at the top of the door. During the colonial era, that was another bit of luxury – to be able to afford glass in your front door. The panes not only allowed extra light to illuminate the interior but there was also religious symbolism attached to them too. Religious colonists believed that by installing windows at the top of the door, it allowed God a peek down from the heavens to make sure there was nothing improper going on indoors. Just like the original H-Hinges found throughout, it’s another little bit of unique symbolism that lives here. And thanks to Dale’s book, it now gives us a better understanding of the economic status of the original owners of the house.

Windows on the original front door c. 1750

Architecture notes aside, other types of fun facts that can be found in Dale’s book include these little marvels…

Pets during the colonial era included dogs and cats, but not birds. Birds would not be kept animals until the Victorian era. However, squirrels and deer were also common pets in colonial days and the deer were allowed free reign both inside and outside the house.
Bearskin rugs were the first indoor fire alarms. In the 17th and 18th centuries, they were laid out in front of the fireplace in case an errant ember flew or a log rolled out into the room. At night, after the household had gone to bed, if an ember sparked or a log rolled out, the rug was the first point of contact. It would begin to smolder, emitting the smell of burnt hair. That smell would awaken people in the house and signal that there was a fire near the fireplace which could be easily and quickly be put out because of the rug.
25% of women’s deaths in colonial days were due to life-threatening burns caused by cooking in an open fireplace. That led women to start hoisting up their skirts and tucking them into the waistband of their dresses in order to avoid catching the hems on fire. From that point forward, the kitchen was viewed as an indecent place to spend time and the staff that worked in them were viewed as having low repute.
Since cloth was one of the costliest items in colonial America dresses were made to last for 15 years which means that some women owned only about 2-3 dresses in their lifetime.
Wigs were commonplace for men and women in colonial times, but the super tall and lofty wigs were only worn by women in big cities like Philadelphia. These wigs were so elaborate in design, style, and augmentation that they were often worn even at night while sleeping. This full-time, overnight headress necessitated arrangement in such a way to accommodate mouse traps since they were made of natural nesting materials.
In 1752, the celebration of the new year was moved from March 25th to January 1st, which of course, has stayed the same ever since.

Reading is so subjective when it comes to personal preference. Everyone has their own favorite styles, writers, and genres, but I hope by sharing my list of favorites, you’ll discover some new favorite ones too. Stay tuned for a recipe I just made from Kim Sunee’s memoir coming up next on the blog. It’s an aromatic, cozy, wintertime dinner that is absolutely lovely for the holidays. Here’s a sneak peek…

Chicken Thighs with Cinnamon and Dates from A Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee

Until then, happy reading! And a big cheers to Madeleine, Sloane, Kim, Margaret, and Dale for making 2024 such an interesting one.

Explore The Shop: Our 40% Off Sale is Today!

Published on November 2, 2024November 2, 2024 by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

It only happens once a year and today it’s here! Our annual 40% off sale runs now through midnight (EST). Some highlights from the shop this year include these faces and features…

Feminist, cookbook author, and magazine editor, Sarah Field Splint (1883-1959) published The Art of Cooking and Serving in 1931.

The oldest bowl in the shop is this one that dates to the 1830s.

Over one hundred years ago, this is how you dried your wet laundry linens and clothing.

The design of this 1940s vase was inspired by museum relics from the Chinese Imperial dynasty.

These first-generation Greek immigrant women turned a collection of recipes for a humble church fundraiser into a bestselling cookbook in the 1950s.

This is a very rare set of midcentury restaurant ware dessert plates.

Henri Toulose-Lautrec was not only a talented French artist but a talented cook and a true gourmand in the kitchen too. This is a collection of his recipes and the colorful art that adorned his hand-drawn menus, which were given to all guests who came to dine at his table.

A trip to North Carolina in the 1930s introduced Katharine Beecher to her first homemade butter mint. She fell so in love with them that she started making them herself. Less than a decade later she was the proud owner of a multi-million dollar candy company.

This is a very rare 1920s children’s coloring and painting book by American artist Florence Notter (1884-1960). She was quiet and unassuming in personality but her art was bright, full of character and color and immensely beloved by children around the country.

These are just a few examples of the unique stories behind some of our heirlooms in the shop. Find many more as you explore our vintage and antique cookbooks, dishes, linens, decorative pieces and kitchenware.

Hope this year’s sale sparks something new and inspirational for you. Cheers, and happy shopping!

A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts: Chapter 5 – The Lost Item is Revealed

Published on March 25, 2024March 29, 2024 by In The Vintage Kitchen14 Comments

{Spoiler Alert: This is the final installment in a series of blog posts detailing the real-life story of a 100-year-old item that was lost in 2008 and how it found its way home in 2024. Follow along from the beginning of this story at Chapter 1: It Arrives.}

There’s a quote by an unknown writer that states… “What’s meant for you will never miss you, and that which misses you was never meant for you.” This quote sits on the shop’s recently sold page, acting as a sort of hopeful reassurance to any shopper who winds up there only to discover that an item that had originally caught their eye has sold to someone else. It can be so disappointing to be confronted with the fact that some newly discovered treasure that immediately captured your heart is now in another’s hands. But I love the idea of fate and what it suggests in this quote. Should an item be destined to be in your life it will present itself again, some other day, some other time.

Over the past few years, I’ve thought a lot about this quote. The idea that something will return to you if it was meant to be is such a comfort. When I think about it in the context of the lost item, I see how truthful the quote really is and how incredible the spontaneity of the universe and fate’s voice in it really are. As discussed in Chapter 4 of A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts, this journey of the lost item is all about timing, and I can’t help but think that although it took sixteen years for a lost item to get back to the people it belonged to, it came home at the most appropriate time. Like it was waiting all those years for just the right moment to reconnect with family, and in turn to reconnect with history.

Everyone has waited long enough to hear what this mystery item is, so I won’t prolong it anymore, only to say that upon the reveal of the item, all the dots that were laid out in the first four chapters of this story will be connected here in this post. So keep reading if you want to learn how it all unfurled from start to finish.

Just to recap quickly from Chapter 4, where the lost item was journeying to its final destination, these are the things that we know so far about the lost item…

The lost item is over 100 years old.
The item was left behind at an office supply store in a suburb of Atlanta GA in 2008.
A random stranger named Angela discovered the item and tried to track down it’s original owner. For thirteen years her search was unsuccessful.
In 2021, with the help of a Facebook group, Angela was able to connect the lost item to the Vintage Kitchen via a blog post that was written in 2018.
In July 2021, after confirming that the Vintage Kitchen was indeed connected to the lost item, it was mailed via UPS to ITVK in a cardboard envelope.
Although the Vintage Kitchen is connected to the lost item, it does not belong here in the Vintage Kitchen.
In January 2024, the lost item made its way home to its final destination via a journey that involved a plane, three cars, and one boat.
The journey of the lost item took 16 years and 6,500 miles to complete.
Time played a major role in the story of the lost item.

Without further ado, the mystery item that arrived in the Vintage Kitchen in July 2021 was packaged in this cardboard envelope of medium thickness….

This is the cardboard envelope of medium thickness containing the mystery item when it first arrived in the Vintage Kitchen in July 2021. For privacy purposes, pink marks cover the addresses of the sender and recipient.

Still in its same envelope in January 2024, it is time to reveal the mystery item…

The mystery item envelope as photoed in January 2024

Tucked inside the cardboard envelope is a plastic, turquoise-colored binder. The binder itself is not the lost item, but what’s inside the binder is. A turn of the cover reveals history from 100 years ago…

The binder holds fifteen pages of 1920s-era black-and-white photographs containing various scenes of rural family life in a country setting. Consisting of forty-seven individual images in total, the photographs were taped, or in some cases pasted, onto standard white copy paper and then slipped into plastic sleeves and secured in a three-ring binder.

The turquoise binder was clearly a modern addition, but the photographs themselves are originals. It’s easy to see that the photos had been removed at one point in time from a more traditional photo album. Black pieces of paper are attached to some edges, old tape clings to corners and remnants of prior placement in a black-paged photo album are evident.

Handwritten notes are included next to most of the photographs identifying first names, town names, a date, or a general situation, like the one above that says Bud, Florence & Ken out camping. But none of the notes include references to a specific state, country, legible last name or any major scenic sites. Flipping through the pages reveal more photos of babies, dogs, cars, cats. There are houses and train tracks, rolling hills and weathered wood. There are women on horseback, men in overalls, girls in summer dresses, boys hunting in the snow.

There are blurry candid shots and more formal, posed group shots. Several faces reappear in different settings. A building evolves in various stages of construction. There are men in fedora hats and women in fur coats. There’s a foal and a waterfall. A travel trailer. A canoe. A swing hanging from a laundry line. There’s a baby in a bath bucket and a woman sitting on the hood of a car.

All the photographs were taken outdoors and feature different seasons. Many photos feature one specific man in particular. A man in overalls. That’s him in the center of the photo below.

Page after page, faces unfold.

People are named Al… Bill… Bessie… Bud… Merwyn… Lou…Florence. Towns are labeled Garrison and Philipsburg. One photo refers to the “Minnesota Relatives.” A dog is named Laddie Boy.

The lost item is a one-hundred-year-old photo collection of a mystery family in a mystery location. Who are these people and how are they are connected to the Vintage Kitchen? Keep reading for the whole story from start to finish.

Back in 2008, when Angela discovered this photo album that had been left behind at the Staples where she was working in suburban Atlanta, there was no way to track down who it belonged to. It had been left at the self-serve copy area and contained no other information as to where it came from or who brought it in. There was no in-store job ticket attached to it. No Staples order form. No receipt dangling from an interior page. There was just the binder – plastic, turquoise, holding onto fifteen pages of 100-year-old photographs.

Angela at Staples in 2008. Learn more about her in Chapter 2.

Knowing how sentimental old photographs can be, Angela kept the binder in the back room of Staples for safekeeping in hopes that someone would realize that they’d forgotten it and come right back for it. Days, weeks, months went by. The binder sat unclaimed on the shelf in the back room. Periodically during that first year, Angela would thumb through the photos and try to connect one of the handwritten first names to a customer list in the Staples database.

Bill, Florence, Bud, Al are pretty common names throughout the country, but particularly in the South. Searching by first name alone turned out to be a fruitless task. With no legible last names to search, no specific city and state location to pinpoint on a map, and no understanding of the context of the collection as a whole, Angela had no clear-cut way to track down the owner of the left-behind photographs using just the minimal information offered in the handwritten notes. Her only hope was that owner would return to the store to claim the binder. A year went by. A clean-up and reorganization of the back room was issued by Staples management. Angela, concerned that the binder might be misplaced or tossed into the trash during the reorganization took it home so that she could continue to search for its owner.

One year stretched into five years and then into ten and still Angela was no closer to finding out who might have left the photographs behind. Although the story of the turquoise binder didn’t change much in that decade, Angela’s life changed quite a bit. She got married and had a baby. And then she had another baby and another one after that. In that decade, she went from being a single girl working at Staples to a mom with a family of five to care for. By her side through all those life changes was the lost item. In close reach always, in case an important clue or a new lead might reveal itself, the binder became a part of Angela’s life, a puzzling research project that she returned to again and again.

Meanwhile, in another southern state, while Angela was busy raising her family and trying to solve the mystery of the binder filled with photographs, I was busy writing about history, antiques, and vintage recipes. In March 2018, I wrote a blog post, sharing a recipe that had long been a part of springtime/Eastertime menus for generations of my family. The recipe was for Rhubarb Custard Pie – a seasonal dessert that combines Betty Crocker’s 1950s rhubarb custard filling recipe with my Great-Grandpa Bacon’s homemade pie crust recipe.

Rhubarb Custard Pie – a family tradition every spring.

In the post, in addition to the recipe, I shared the story of Great-Grandpa Bacon and his wife, Dolly, who lived in rural Montana during the early to late 20th century. Married in their early 20s, Bacon worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad, a job that took him and his new bride to two rural areas in Montana – Goldcreek and Philipsburg. It was a brave and adventurous new life for them, started at a time when Montana, still young and precarious itself, saw its most difficult years in history.

Montana Homestead Poster circa 1914. Read more about the challenges of Montana homesteading here.

Challenges stemming from WWI, the over-grazing of prairies during the homestead boom, and the subsequent agricultural decline coupled with the wild, unmanaged landscape, towns located few and far between, and the tricky navigation of the unfamiliar ins and outs of remote living, made Bacon and Dolly’s decision to build a life in rural Montana all the more courageous. Dolly was born and raised in Seattle, and Bacon was from St. Paul, MN, both sizeable cities with over hundreds of thousands of residents in the early 19th century. Their new Montana life would take them to communities with populations of less than 2000 people where they had to rely on their own wit and willpower to survive.

Along with the recipe, in the blog post, I detailed Dolly and Bacon’s unusual life in Big Sky Country. I didn’t have any photos of them depicting their early years in Montana, so to help visually tell their story I added a lot of research about what was happening in the state in the 1920s when Dolly and Bacon moved there. I also shared the family story about how Dolly and Bacon’s first house, after they were married, was two railcars gifted to them by Northern Pacific Railroad. A gesture offered by the company so that Dolly and Bacon could immediately set up homekeeping in their new surroundings.

A 1930s era Northern Pacific Railroad poster in Chapter 3 was a big clue about the location of the story.

Definitely an unusual start to their marriage, Bacon and Dolly thrived in Montana and embraced everything about their rural railroad life. Bacon worked as a train depot clerk in Goldcreek and then as a conductor on a transportation line for livestock and mining equipment in Philipsburg.

Now an abandoned track these are recent photos of the train line running through Philipsburg with views that Dolly and Bacon would have seen on a daily basis. Photos courtesy of D & D Travel.

Dolly set up house in the railcars, learned to bake bread, and wrote poetry. They had three babies, two girls and a boy. They built a house and a garden near the tracks where Bacon worked. They hiked in the hills, fished in the streams, and ate fresh-caught trout for breakfast, Dolly’s bread for lunch and Bacon’s homemade pies for dessert. They fell deeply in love with each other, with Montana, and with the life that they made. For fifty-five years, Dolly and Bacon called Montana home, never imagining living somewhere else than the paradise that surrounded them. In 1975, Bacon passed away from a heart attack at the age of 78. Dolly followed five years later in 1980 at the age of 82. They are buried next to each other in the local cemetery in Philipsburg. Even in death their hearts never left the place that they loved.

The rhubarb custard pie recipe received some interest from readers, but not nearly as much as the story of Bacon and Dolly. In 2018, their photo above became one of the most favorited of the year on our Vintage Kitchen social media accounts.

In 2021, Angela still searching for some helpful snippet of information that might lead her to the original owner of the binder, decided to contact a Facebook group that specialized in old-fashioned handwriting. She thought that they might be able to help decode some of the hard-to-read words that accompanied a few of the photos.

The Facebook group was more than happy to help. Within a quick amount of time, they connected words from the handwritten notes in the photo album to words and phrases found online in my blog post about rhubarb custard pie. Bac, Philipsburg, train depot, lived in boxcars, and finally the clincher… Dolly Day… lept out at the group. All threads strong enough to cause Angela to reach out to the Vintage Kitchen via the blog, she sent an email to see if the photos might be connected to the recipe and to the story of Bacon and Dolly. Along with her inquiry, she sent some photos from the binder, this one included…

When I opened Angela’s email, I was greeted by a photo of Bacon himself. In his younger years. In his beloved overalls. In his rural Montana. With Dolly by his side. And just like that, after 13 years of Angela’s diligence, time, and attention to finding the owner of the lost item, her inquiry was confirmed. Yes, indeed the photos were a part of the Vintage Kitchen – firmly rooted to the rhubarb custard pie recipe and to the Montana life of Bacon and Dolly Day.

A windfall for a genealogy lover like me, it was incredible to see personal photographs of someone I had heard about but never met, wrote about couldn’t completely visualize, and whose recipe was in constant use in my kitchen. When the turquoise binder arrived in the mail, Dolly, Bacon and their Montana life lept off the pages.

Suddenly the photo album made all sorts of sense. The woman on the horse? That was Dolly. The two men holding babies? That was Bacon and his twin brother Willis, who in turn, were holding their babies, Dolores and Willis Jr., both born in the same year (1922). The house with the long angle? That was the train depot in Philipsburg where Bacon worked.

The waterfall is part of Skalkaho Pass, a point of interest In southwestern Montana that was mentioned in the photo album but misspelled. The building with everyone hanging out the window? That was the first house that Dolly and Bacon built from scratch with their own hands. The car with the motor home attached? That’s how Bacon and Dolly went camping. And the “Minnesota Relatives?” Those were Bacon’s brothers and sisters and their families visiting from Bacon’s home state.

Bacon and Dolly’s life unfolded in the photos page by page. Every family story known about them as a couple, their kids and their unique life in Montana was now here in visual format offering new insight into them and their experiences. In 2018 when I wrote the rhubarb pie post, I had only the one photograph of Dolly and Bacon in their senior years to share. Now, there are forty-seven more.

As I stated from the beginning of this story, the Vintage Kitchen is connected to the lost photos, but they don’t belong here. I wasn’t the one who pulled them from the pages of an old black photo album. I didn’t compile them in the turquoise binder. Nor was I the one to leave them in the suburban Atlanta Staples in 2008. Technically, Great-Grandpa Bacon and Great-Grandma Dolly aren’t even related to me.

Bacon and Dolly are the grandparents of my mom’s first husband. My brother, sister and I have the same mom but different dads. Bacon and Dolly are part of my brother and sister’s paternal ancestry line which is made up of Midwest and Pacific Northwest roots.

Both my brother and sister have memories of Dolly and Bacon and they both share a special affinity for Montana. Knowing that they would be so excited to learn about these never-before-seen photographs of their beloved great-grandparents, I couldn’t wait to share the story with them. I also couldn’t wait to share this whole story here on the blog too. Especially since I had already written about Bacon’s pie crust recipe. Had the family rhubarb pie recipe never been published, the Facebook group would never have found the Vintage Kitchen and Angela would never have contacted me, so it was very exciting to be able to continue telling the story of Bacon and Dolly here as well.

In the summer of 2021, when the photos arrived from Angela, the pandemic was still wreaking havoc on socialization plans. Although the idea of flying out to Seattle to meet my brother and sister was definitely the way I wanted to deliver the photos to them, I didn’t want to tie up this lovely gift from history wrapped in a case of Covid. So while waiting for the virus to calm down a bit, I decided to start telling the story on the blog. Since both my brother and sister read the blog, and since I didn’t want to spoil the ultimate surprise, I never mentioned anything to them about the photos or Angela or Montana. Hints in Chapters 1-4 of A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts were all filtered through a veil of mystery so that my brother and sister wouldn’t be able to guess that the lost item had anything to do with them.

Fast forward through 2021, 2022, and 2023. The timing never lined up quite right to fly out and finish the story. A six-month house hunt, the South to North move, and 1750 House renovations wound up delaying the surprise far longer than I ever anticipated. But if we’ve learned anything so far in all these chapters about the lost item, it’s that timing is everything to this story and in its weird and wonky way has linked all these people in all these places together at the most appropriate moments.

In January 2024, the right time presented itself. My niece was getting married in Seattle. A family wedding was the perfect occasion to share the story of the lost item and to finally deliver the 100-year-old photographs bound together in their plastic, turquoise bnder.

Before I left for Seattle, I had five copies made of one of the photos from the binder, so that I could frame them and give them to each of my nieces and my brother and sister. I chose a photograph of Bacon, newly married, age 24, where’s he looking straight at the camera. There are rolling hills in the background, part of a rustic building at his shoulder, a patch of corn growing next to a building behind him. He’s wearing his signature overalls. There’s a look of contentment on his face. A welcoming smile just about to bloom.

I had the photos reproduced at my local Staples, an homage to Angela and also to the lost item. While waiting in line to be helped, I glanced over at the self-serve copy area, at the bare tables next to each station, at the hard surfaces, sharp corners, and the utilitarian grey, beige, and black colors that covered that part of the store. I thought about the turquoise binder sitting by itself in such an environment. I thought about Dolly and Bacon tucked inside and how the environment of a modern-day Staples was so far removed from their wild Montana countryside, yet also had become such an integral part of this story.

In 2018, going back and forth with Angela via text after the photos arrived in the Vintage Kitchen, I asked her what it felt like to put the binder in the mail after a 13-year journey with it. She admitted to tearing up a little. “I felt appreciated and blessed. To be able to provide so many people connected to this item with a sense of joy and happiness makes this such a special thing to be a part of.”

When it was my turn to be helped at the counter, the Staples employee was a bit flustered and explained that it had been a busy day and they were running behind with custom print jobs, so I’d have to leave my photo with them overnight and pick up the copies the next day. I hesitated. Bacon had come such a long way. His photograph was in my hand about to be given over. What if… I thought. What if something happens overnight at Staples. What if I never get the photo back. What if…

Clearly tired from her day, and sensing my hesitation, the Staples employee took the photo, popped it into an envelope, and attached it to a work order all in one quick motion while asking if she could help me with anything else. I wanted to tell her the story. The whole story. Starting all the way back at the beginning in 2008 with Angela in the Staples in Georgia. But the line behind me was long, and I got the sense I wasn’t speaking to someone like Angela who would care so wholeheartedly about old photos and lost items.

A detail had escaped my attention until the day before the wedding. It came in the form of my niece’s wedding ring. She designed it herself so that she could include a family heirloom in the setting that had been passed down on her side of the family for generations. The heirloom was a blue Montana sapphire. It had been mined from a local quarry near Philipsburg, Montana. The sapphire had been a gift from Bacon to his daughter, Florence on her 16th birthday in 1940..

Photos clockwise from left to right: Florence in Montana, about 10 years old circa 1934. A professional photograph of my niece’s Montana sapphire wedding ring. And a photo of her ring and wedding band taken at home after the wedding.

The day after the wedding, over trays of homemade enchilada casserole at my brother’s house, I shared the story of the lost item with my sister, brother, and nieces. I presented the turquoise binder and gave everyone their framed photographs. It was one of the loveliest family dinners I’ve ever had. We all marveled at the tenacity of Angela, the scenes of Montana spread around the table, and the good fortune that these photographs were not just thrown out in a dumpster sixteen years ago. My brother told me about a railroad key of Bacon’s that he had in storage and my sister told me about a booklet that she has of poems and musings about Montana written by Dolly. New story snippets and memories popped up in conversation as the photos floated around the table. My brother immediately called an aunt from that side of the family who lived in Atlanta to see if she was the one who left the binder at Staples. She was as surprised to hear about the story as we were and said she had no idea who the binder might have belonged to and how it would have wound up at Staples.

If you think about how fragile a paper photograph is, it’s easy to get quickly overwhelmed with scenarios that could have gone wrong in this story. They could have been destroyed a million different times in Montana alone over the course of a century. Not to mention the fact that they somehow made it to Atlanta. Then got lost. And then potentially could have been thrown out in the trash had kind-hearted Angela not cared enough to rescue them.

Something could have happened to them or to Angela in her thirteen years of time spent with them. Or something could have happened to them in the airplane when they were mailed to the Vintage Kitchen from Georgia or to the UPS truck that delivered them. Once, I received them, they became part of a big move, a typical life experience that often sees items get misplaced, lost or forgotten. And then for three years after that, they sat on a shelf of a 274-year-old house undergoing construction, room by room.

The view from the boat on the way to my brother’s house.

After that, they crossed the country again via plane, traveled in three different cars, and then on a boat to reach their final destination. Anything could have happened to the photographs in that timeframe by any sort of man-made or natural event experienced by any one of us involved. But it didn’t. Fate was on their side. All along, time took care of them, nurtured them. So that eventually, their story about time long ago was able to tell another story about time today. One generation growing from another.

Bacon with mare and foal. Montana circa 1920s.

On the airplane, coming back from the wedding I had to time to think about the whole story of the lost item from start to finish. Now knowing more about Bacon and Dolly, seeing their young lives evolve through photographs, I could see glimmers of their spirit in my brother and sister. The rugged, wild island where my brother lives, and that he absolutely loves, is his modern-day version of paradise just like Bacon’s wild, rugged Montana. My sister, our family’s star baker, is an incredible talent in the kitchen just like Dolly was with her bread and Bacon with his pies.

There is a lot to love about this story… the kindness of strangers, a lost item found, a family reconnected to its past, an heirloom saved from the brink of obscurity, an intimate look at a unique aspect of history, a mystery solved. But I think the thing that I love most is that ultimately, it was a simple, humble vintage recipe that connected all these threads and all these people.

I return again to the quote… “What’s meant for you will never miss you, and that which misses you was never meant for you.” It’s impossible to try to rationalize or explain the sheer amount of good fortune that these one hundred-year-old family photographs were graced with over the past sixteen years and beyond. I can’t logically detail why or how certain people came into the story when they did or why timing stretched out this love story long enough to finally be added to a new generation’s love story on their wedding weekend. All I can do is say thank you, to the universe, to fate, to Angela for clearly demonstrating that these photos were indeed meant to never miss us.

Cheers to Angela, a modern-day angel, for not only saving these photographs, but also for taking such tender care of them, and persistently working for over a decade to find their home. Cheers to Bacon and Dolly for continuing to be a source of interest and inspiration in our family and in our kitchens. And cheers to all you patient Vintage Kitchen blog readers who stuck with me through the lengthy and sporadic telling of this very long story.

There are only two questions left that still linger. How did the 100-year-old photographs taken in Montana that belong to a family in the Pacific Northwest wind up in a suburb of Atlanta, GA? And who wrote the notes next to each photograph?

Maybe there is still more to this story yet to come…

Welcome To A Fragrant Year: The Greenhouse Diaries Return for New Growing Adventures

Published on January 27, 2024January 30, 2025 by In The Vintage Kitchen10 Comments

The Greenhouse Diaries are back with new inspirations and a whole new year of growing adventures to explore and discover. Like last year, these new diary entries center around what can be grown in a petite 4×6 greenhouse in our four-season New England climate, but starting this month there is a brand new theme, different from last year, that is guiding our gardening goals in 2024.

Last year, our first year as greenhouse owners and New England residents, we focused on winter gardening from December through May and all the possibilities that a warm greenhouse could offer in a cold landscape. We drew inspiration from Katharine Sergeant Angell White, a lifelong lover of the natural world who also happened to be a marvelous writer, a founding editor of the New Yorker magazine, and the beloved wife of E.B White.

Katharine Sergeant Angell White (1892-1977)

Her 1977 book Onward & Upward in the Garden, featured a collection of horticultural essays that highlighted her ability to embrace challenges by finding joy and solace in the certain uncertainties. Something that all gardeners must face when it comes to designing a pleasing landscape, in Katharine’s case, it was the long Maine winters that were a struggle for her spirit which yearned to be out in the garden digging and clipping, pruning, and propagating. She also had much to say about the confusing advice of garden experts and her own thoughtful attempts of trying to create the garden of her dreams. Her writing was full of spirit, humor and opinion when it came to detailing plans, recommending books and seed catalogs, and offering advice on growing plants and flowers both indoors and out. She was inspiration enough for us to start experimenting with our first winter growing season. Cold weather aside, we had Katharine on our side, lending a unique empathy and encouragement that fueled our desire to get out and grow things regardless of the weather, our experience level or the unseasonability of what we most wanted to achieve.

Our plan last year was to get a head start on establishing garden beds for 1750 House, so we focused mainly on forcing seeds and plants to sprout, bud and bloom early. Using 33 different plants, flowers and herbs as trial-run guinea pigs, we accomplished our goals with a fair amount of success and a few setbacks as we tested the physical capabilities of the greenhouse and grew our garden knowledge.

A greenhouse success – the joy of growing collard greens in 2023

This time, a year wiser, we are reducing the number of overall plants in the greenhouse to just focus on the proven winners that grew well both in the greenhouse and in the garden beds last spring, summer and fall. And to keep things interesting, we are launching a new experiment. This year, we are leaving extra room in the greenhouse to try our hand at growing a new type of perennial garden for year-round enjoyment… a landscape full of plants, flowers and trees that carry a scent.

Marvelously scented magnolia blossoms dotted our landscape down South.

When we lived in the South, we were surrounded by a wide variety of aromatic flowers that made our time there all the more memorable because of the beautiful perfume that continuously lingered in the air. The scent of night-blooming gardenias and fragrant magnolias swirled around our dinner parties. The heat of summer brought heavy humidity but also the delicate, sweet aromas of climbing Carolina jessamine. Roses in every scent and shade toppled and tumbled over hedgerows and brick walls. It was a lovely layer of landscape design that I had never really thought about until we had experienced it firsthand. Of course, we won’t be able to recreate an exact aromatic Southern garden here in New England since it’s a very different climate from there to here, but there are plenty of other options in the Northeast to explore for similar effect thanks to our new inspiration.

Here to guide the 2024 Greenhouse Diaries in our aromatic endeavors is the 1967 book, The Fragrant Year by Helen Van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell. Month by month, in words and drawings this book details how to grow specific types of plants and flowers that will continuously unfold new scents in the garden season by season, even in the winter months.

Praised for being the first of its modern kind, The Fragrant Year was lauded both for its scope and its practical application, as well as its healthful benefits. In the opening chapter Helen writes… “if our gardens today were more often planned as fragrant retreats and our rooms were frequently perfumed with bowls of spicy pinks, bunches of aromatic herbs, vases of fragrant roses, and jars of potpourri, perhaps we would not have to depend so much on tranquilizers to hold us together in this frantic, fast-paced world.”

Helen wrote that in 1967 but it is still so applicable today. The world is still frantic and fast-paced. People still look to medicine to calm their nerves. But we think Helen’s theory is pretty wise – there is something much more natural, more gentle, more joyful in tackling frantic nerves and fast paces with this sort of approach instead. It is lovely to think that by selecting a few handfuls of scented botanicals and thoughtfully adding them to the landscape we might not only help create a more calm environment for ourselves but also for the community around us. Who knows what sort of impact that small gesture could have on a greater world.

A prolific writer of gardening books throughout the 20th century, Helen was no stranger to the power of plants. Along with penning a newspaper column titled Our Gardens Within and Without during the 1920s and 1930s, she also wrote for all the well-known women’s magazines including House & Garden, Cosmopolitan, Better Homes & Gardens, and House Beautiful. In between all that she wrote/edited over fifty books on various gardening topics throughout her long and lengthy career.

Born in New Jersey, Helen spent the majority of her life in Philadelphia, PA and Westport, CT where she experimented with gardening projects of all sorts both indoors and out. Her most well-known book was one on caring for African violets published in the 1940s but she was a beloved and trusted authority on a variety of horticultural topics throughout her life. Working with Leonie on several different projects, it was in the 1950s that they learned they shared a mutual love of aromatic botanicals. Upon discovering this, the idea for The Fragrant Year was quick to spark but it took Helen and Leonie ten years of dedicated research and trial-and-error gardening experiments before their book was finally published.

Leonie Bell in the garden. Photograph courtesy of monticello.org by way of Rev. Douglas T. Seidel

Like Helen, Leonie Bell (1924-1996) lived and gardened in suburban Philadelphia. In addition to being a well-respected botanical illustrator, she was also known as a rose expert. Contributing her expertise to several rose garden books published during the 20th century, Leonie was often referred to as a rose genealogist since she had a knack for discovering/uncovering heirloom roses from the past that had been misnamed or believed to be no longer in existence. At one point, her own personal garden contained over 200 different types of roses, most of them old-fashioned heirloom varieties.

If you are ever in Virginia, you can see the impact Leonie made at the Leonie Bell Rose Garden at Thomas Jeffferson’s Tufton Farm, which features a tribute to both Leonie’s legacy and the history of North American rose breeding.

Much sought after in the world of botanical illustration, what’s interesting about Leonie’s art is that she was self-taught. Her intrinsic knowledge of the anatomy of plants combined with her studies at the School of Horticulture in Ambler, PA led her to closely look at botanical subjects from all angles. That well-rounded vantage point carried through to her drawings which shine with scientific detail but also personality.

Excited to share a year full of fragrance here on the blog, each month we’ll feature a new scented flower or plant recommended by Helen and Leonie and detail our gardening experiences as we incorporate twelve new aromatic additions into the landscape at 1750 House. Hopefully, you’ll find this information equally inspiring and insightful too. It would be lovely if we could all experience the calming nature of a scented garden together.

Our next Greenhouse Diaries post will introduce our first fragrant botanical, but in the meantime, here’s a quick update on improvements we made to the greenhouse over the summer and a current list of what’s growing in the greenhouse now…

Current Occupants

As of mid-January, the greenhouse is halfway full with overwintering geraniums, vinca vine, and dracaena spikes from the summer garden. Six different types of succulents, a coffee plant, a pineapple sage cutting from our summer plantings, and Liz Lemon (our six-year-old lemon tree) fill out the rest of the space alongside a batch of newly started seeds… collards, broccoli, beets and four different types of salad greens.

Winter Plastic Wrap

This isn’t a new improvement, but we are on Year No. 2 of dressing the greenhouse in a winter coat – aka wrapping it entirely in a layer of thick plastic – to keep the heat in and protect the plants from drafts during rain, sleet, and snowstorms. The plastic, a temporary solution for the coldest months gets removed in early spring, folded up, and stored in the basement. Once the temperatures drop below 45 in the fall, we put the plastic back on for the season. Aesthetically, it’s not the prettiest site but it gets the job done and keeps our overwintering plants and new seedlings happy and warm. We weren’t sure how the plastic was going to hold up from year to year, but so far it’s nice to see that it is still working just as well. To learn more about this winterization system, see last year’s post here.

Thanks to the plastic wrap, everything stayed warm and dry inside during our most recent January 2024 snowstorm.

New Electrical

Over the summer we added an electrical outlet inside the greenhouse and buried the wiring underground. This was a big (and much safer) improvement from running an extension cord across the yard between the greenhouse and the workshop, which is how we handled things last winter. This new addition is an outdoor-rated 110V 15 amp circuit box which is just what we need to power the heater and lights.

A New Heater

A new mini space heater replaced the tall radiator-style heater used last winter. This smaller size opens up more room to move around the greenhouse and fits nicely on a bottom shelf tucked out of the way when not in use. It has a safety feature that turns the heater off automatically if it tipples over or if any excess moisture drips inside. When the greenhouse reaches a certain temperature, it also automatically turns off to save energy and to keep the plants from overheating.

Normally the heater sits on the pea gravel floor of the greenhouse so that it efficiently heats all areas from bottom to top, but to photo it for this post I put it on one of the higher shelves for a better view. Please note: your greenhouse heater should never be this close to any plants as the proximity to the heat will cause the leaves to shrivel and could become a fire hazard. Any greenhouse heater should have a wide radius that is completely free and clear of other objects.

By using this smaller unit, we don’t have to run out and adjust the heat as the temperature changes over the course of the day, like we had to do last year. Also, we readjusted our required heat temperature in the greenhouse. Instead of keeping it in the mid-70s like last year, we lowered it to 55 degrees, in hopes that the cooler temp will keep spider mites at bay. We learned first-hand last winter how much they just adore a hot greenhouse. The new heater also blows warm air around the space instead of radiating it, so we have continual air movement swirling around inside this year, which I also hope will help with any pests. The final great benefit of this small little worker is that it has an additional fan option too, so in summer we’ll be able to grow our herbs inside the greenhouse without the temperature getting too hot or the air too stagnant.

New Lights

My most favorite new enhancement to the greenhouse came this fall when we added bulb lights to the interior roofline. The lights make it so much easier to work at night, especially in the winter when it can get dark as early as 3:30pm if we have an especially cloudy or rainy weather day.

These bulb lights are a tad too big for the space, so they’ll be swapped out for something a bit more petite this spring, but we had these already on hand and wanted to make sure we liked the light idea before we committed to several sets. At night it looks especially festive. Once all the landscaping is in place around the greenhouse, it will provide a nice light source for outdoor dining during the warm weather days. By then we’ll be at least five months into the fragrant year and the garden will hopefully be on its way to becoming a perfumed paradise. Just dreaming about it now, I can see and smell the summer already.

If you’d like to catch up on the trials and tribulations of our first year of greenhouse gardening start at entry #1 here. Otherwise, it’s on to 2024 and all the delightful aromas that await each new season.

Cheers to ever-evolving garden adventures, to a scent-sational year ahead and to Helen and Leonie for inspiring this new set of diary entries centered around the life and times of one mighty but mini New England greenhouse.

A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts: Chapter 4 – One Last Journey

Published on January 23, 2024April 17, 2025 by In The Vintage Kitchen7 Comments

{Spoiler Alert: This is a series of blog posts detailing the real-life story of a 100-year-old item that was lost over a decade ago and how it found its way home in 2024. Follow along from the beginning of this story at Chapter 1: It Arrives.}

This part of the lost item story is about numbers. Not numbers relating to complex math or phones or registry digits, but numbers that have to do with time and distance. So far, with the unfolding of each chapter of this Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts, we have learned bits and pieces about the lost item and how it came to wind up in the hands of the Vintage Kitchen. We learned how it arrived, who sent it and what part of history it involves. But we haven’t yet discussed the numbers, and they are quite important to the overall timeline of this intriguing item. So let’s look…

104 – that’s the age, in years, of the lost item
6,544 is the number of miles the item has traveled
7 is the number of states that the item has spent time in
3 is the number of major life-altering world events that could have completely destroyed the item and any link to its history over the past 100 years (those being the Great Depression, World War II and the Covid pandemic)
25 – that’s the number of people that are all connected to the item
29 is the number of months it took for the Vintage Kitchen to arrange to get the item to the place where it belongs

Transportation to its final destination was another set of numbers. That involved 3 cars, 1 plane, 1 bus and 1 boat. In its original cardboard mailer of medium thickness tucked inside a cloth shoulder bag, the item traveled in seat 21A on the plane and Lane 1 on the boat. This last round of Vintage Kitchen transporting from here to there required 5 different types of travel tickets, 1 Airbnb, 3 highway tolls, 2 parking garages, 1 security checkpoint and 1 wild landscape. But the most important set of numbers in this whole post are 2008 when it was lost and 2024 when it finally made its way home.

On 01-02-24, after 29 months spent in the hands of the Vintage Kitchen and 13 years spent in the care of kind-hearted Angela, the item embarked on its final journey via car, plane, bus and boat. Four days later it found the place where it belonged. It finally found its home.

Which city was the item headed to? For all you armchair detectives out there, our final destination is included in the Departure board.

Time is a weird and wonky master. It controls, records, rewards everything in our lives. Whether it’s minute with the tick, tick, ticking of seconds slowly passing by or an expansive stretch of milestones that cast long shadows over the course of a lifetime, time is always there to mark the moment. In this case of the lost item, timing, like the cliche suggests, is everything. It’s numbers on a clock, numbers on a calendar and numbers in a family. Without time, this story wouldn’t have been as meaningful. Without a significant sets of numbers all related to time and to fate, this situation from history wouldn’t have been remarkable. It’s the numbers, the time, the distance traveled that make this story of the item lost and finally found, notable.

This is your last chance to guess what the mystery item might be. Feel free to speculate in the comments section below or send us a private message with your ideas. Join us next time for Chapter 5, where we reveal the mystery item and connect all the dots that complete this story from start to finish. We cannot wait to share the ending with you. Stay tuned.

Update!

Chapter 5 is now available. Continue reading here.

First glimpse of the final destination leading towards home.

A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts: Our 2021 Blog Series Is Finally Back with New Chapters

Published on January 13, 2024April 17, 2025 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

It’s been two years and five months since this story began unfolding on the blog. Back then, the blog series with the impossibly long title – A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts detailed, in installments, the story of a mysterious package that was sent by a random stranger to the Vintage Kitchen in the summer of 2021.

Inside the package was a valuable 100-year-old item that had been found in a Southern city suburb by the random stranger in 2008. The item was connected to the Vintage Kitchen but did not belong to the Vintage Kitchen.

In 2021, the story had been rolling out at a nice clip. There was one blog post a month – one chapter a month – dropping hints and clues as to what the package’s contents could be and how it came to be connected to the Vintage Kitchen. In addition to the hints, Chapter One, Chapter Two, and Chapter Three also included historical information surrounding the lost item’s importance.

Chapter 4 was next on the horizon with details of how the lost item would be transported to its final destination. Then the lingering pandemic stalled the publication of that post. Our move to New England prolonged it even further. But now the timing has lined back up again and we are back on track to finish this story and reveal the contents of the package in Chapters 4 & 5 coming to the blog this month. These last two chapters will officially wrap up the whole remarkable story of how a lost 100-year-old item finally found its way home after traveling through 13 years, four states and one century.

I realize that if you are a new reader to the blog this information is absolutely confusing. And perhaps, if you are a regular reader you might need a recap to remember what exactly this story was all about in the first place. Two and half years is a long time to keep a good mystery going so I’m including links to the first three blog posts below so that everyone can catch up before we continue on to Chapter 4, which I promise is coming in a few days (not years).

So here we are… links to each. Click on the photos or the highlighted chapter title links below and they will take you to the original posts laid out chapter by chapter.

Chapter One, titled It Arrives highlights the arrival of the mystery package and introduces some key information about the contents of the package.

Chapter Two, Meet Angela introduces the random stranger who sent the package to the Vintage Kitchen. It also highlights her research journey of how she wound up connecting the item to the Vintage Kitchen.

Chapter Three, The Time Period, highlights the era that surrounds the package’s contents – the 1920s and features several hidden clues as to what the mystery item might be.

Coming up next, it’s Chapter Four – One Last Journey – where transportation of the mystery item will be discussed as the item embarks on its final adventure to the place where it belongs.

While the story continues to unfold, there is still time to take a guess as to what the mystery item might be. Feel free to post your speculations in the comments section below. I can’t wait to share the rest of the story with you, so stay tuned for Chapter Four coming soon!

Reading While Eating: Seven Favorite Books Discovered in 2023

Published on December 31, 2023December 15, 2024 by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

Just in time, before we say goodbye to 2023, I didn’t want the year to leave without posting the annual recommended book list that has become a favorite here on the blog. This year’s selections center around nature, literary figures, artists, the art of collecting, and the curation of home in all the ways that make it personal and unique.

As is the way every year, these books were randomly discovered while doing research for other projects. They popped up while uncovering origin stories for shop heirlooms, researching story snippets for the blog, or understanding context surrounding a vintage recipe.

Serendipitous in their arrival on the bookshelf, yet ironically all connected via some common themes, these books were new to me this year but not newly published this year. The oldest one in this batch hails from 1979 and the newest one debuted just last year in 2022. All deal with historical subjects in one way or the other, but each one brings a very unique and fresh perspective to its subject matter. They take us on adventures from the wild beaches of coastal Massachusetts to an out-of-the-way antique shop in Mexico. We are introduced to a famous performer’s real-life home in California and a fictional version of a real-life literary figure’s farm in Georgia. They feature one Ernest, two Barbaras and three oranges. There’s eccentricity and domesticity, color and craft. But above all, there is captivating storytelling right from the first page. Let’s look…

Six Walks by Ben Shattuck (2022)

What is it like to walk in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau? Do you see the same trees, smell the same air, touch the same ground, feel the same breeze? Henry lived and wrote and walked around the woods in Massachusetts over one hundred years ago and the impact it made on his life made his life. During the pandemic, trying to process a breakup and a general malaise that hovered over his thoughts like unsettled storm clouds, Ben Shattuck rediscovered Henry’s journals. Henry’s words so inspired Ben that he set out to see the world through “someone else’s eyes for a change,” hoping that he might gain some new perspective to help him past his grey days.

Following six of the same walks that Thoreau once took in the early to mid-1800s, Ben was searching for a new perspective, and a new understanding on life, love, and his place in it. For Henry, the walks were about looking at nature, about describing his surroundings, and about drawing comparisons between the natural world, human evolution and the emotional and spiritual impact on both. For Ben, walking was a form of therapy to help him move past some darker days, all the while submerging himself in the comfort of a favorite writer’s words and viewpoint. What results is this incredibly gorgeous book about nature writing, about escapism, about processing emotional trauma, and about seeing the real beauty that surrounds us every day.

On the walks, Ben meets an interesting array of characters. He goes in search of his ancestral homeplace, canoes down rivers that feel wild and untamed, and walks down long stretches of the beach until his feet are bloody and blistered. Funny, tender, thought-provoking and beautifully written, Ben’s perspective and lovely turns of phrase are just as illuminating as Henry’s. Part travel memoir, part therapy session, part sketchbook, Six Walks is one of the most beautifully written books about journeying that I’ve read in a really long time.

Finding Frida Kahlo – Barbara Levine (2009)

Written in both English and Spanish, this book is a fascinating portrait on the act of collecting and the art of curating. Finding Frida Kahlo is the true story of discovering a set of trunks belonging to Frida Kahlo in a Mexican antique shop. The woman who discovered these historical heirlooms was Barbara Levine, a former exhibitions director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art who had recently moved to Mexico and was trying to assimilate into the culture. A trip with a few friends to an out-of-the-way antique shop led to the discovery of several trunks belonging to Frida Kahlo each filled with all sorts of her treasures – clothing, paintings, recipes, letters and personal heirlooms.

Image of the trunks from Finding Frida Kaho by Barbera Levine.

This discovery started a storytelling chain that is movie-like in scope and plot, unfolding all the unusual circumstances that led to the ultimate understanding of how trunks from one of the world’s most revered, most studied, and most collected artists could possibly have wound up quietly sitting on the floor of an antique shop practically unnoticed. Throughout the story, there is Barbara’s commentary on the processing of the collection, interviews with the antique shop owners, the detailed history of communication with the collector who held the suitcases originally, and consultations with the Fridos (the last remaining group of artists and writers who personally knew Frida Kahlo). I won’t share any more of those details here so as not to spoil the pacing of the story, but only to say you’ll be engaged right from Barbara’s first sentence… “I have long been a collector.”

Non-spoilers aside, Barbara tackles her discovery with a museum curator’s mindset, methodically documenting and photographing each item in each trunk with an unbiased approach. Frida’s objects come to life on the page. And in turn, Frida herself comes to life. You can see her handwriting, her diary entries, her sketches. You can see her clothing, her scrapbooks, her trinkets. You can see the weathered wood of the trunks in exquisite detail. There’s fabric and masks and stuffed taxidermy. There are recipes for Chicken Fried with Garlic in Peanut Sauce and another one for Spicy Salsa (more to come on that front in 2024). There are graphic, grotesque medical drawings of bloody amputations and beautiful brightly-colored paintings of birds and flowers. All along, these heirlooms are accompanied by Frida’s handwriting and you come to understand how all these objects formed her heart and her art.

The Mansions of Long Island’s Gold Coast – Monica Randall (1979)

Built by wealthy business tycoons as getaway “cottages,” trophy houses, entertainment venues, weekend retreats and flamboyant examples of architectural artistry, the opulent mansions that dotted the Gold Coast of Long Island reveal fascinating insights into American culture, wealth and folly.

Beautiful and haunting, The Mansions of Long Island’s Gold Coast spotlight incredible stories about the architects, owners, domestic staff, and modern mid-century families who all spent time in these grand estates. A book of architectural history could easily become boring if you stick with just the well-known, well-documented facts but Monica’s meticulously researched biographies, interviews with local residents, and first-hand experiences growing up in the area have brought forth only the most interesting details of each property.

Told in brief snippets, there are romantic love stories, untimely deaths, bizarre occurrences, ghostly apparitions, lavish design details and tragic degradation. House after house exposes the highs and lows of the ultra-wealthy during the 19th and 20th centuries and all that they celebrated but also all that they destroyed. Some of these estates still stand today, carefully maintained as examples of grand domesticity but many featured in this book were torn down, broken down, burned down, or fell down due to neglect and the lack of capital to maintain them. Monica captures each one in the state that she finds it in the 1970s, focusing on what they once were and what they now have become.

A Good Hard Look – Ann Napolitano (2011)

A fiction novel based in the real town of Milledgeville, Georgia, A Good Hard Look centers around an imagined recounting of the real-life writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). It opens with a wedding in town of a doted daughter of the community, Cookie, and her fiance, Melvin – a wealthy New Yorker who is not used to Southern culture or the tight-knit atmosphere of small-town life. Like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, we see this town, these characters, and Flannery herself through Melvin’s eyes who fully wants to commit to his new wife and his new life, but finds the peculiarities and the general mood of the town unsettling.

Flannery O’Connor’s farm, Andalusia, where she wrote her best-known books. Photo courtesy of exploregeorgia.org

The plot twists and turns, so I won’t say more so as not to spoil the story, but one of the things I loved most was all the detail about Flannery’s peacocks. As central characters in the book, you learn so much about these big, beautiful, boisterous, unruly birds who played not only a big part in the story but a big part in Flannery’s life too.

Flannery O’Connor at home with her beloved peacocks. Photo courtesy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Joe McTyre

This book reminded me a little bit of Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil mixed with the storytelling styles of William Faulkner, John Updike, and Anne Tyler. Once finished, it also prompted its own further research into Flannery’s life. Especially regarding the peacocks. Beautiful, territorial, protective and also very loud, the peacocks act as both a soundtrack and a symbol. Ann shares details on their personalities, their temperaments, and their physical presence on the farm offering such interesting descriptions of them it will leave you considering whether you should invite a peacock as a pet into your own life.

My Passion for Design – Barbra Streisand (2010)

All the buzz around Barbra Streisand this holiday season concerns her newly released memoir, My Name Is Barbra, but I’d like to shine a light on another book of hers published in 2010, My Passion for Design about building her dream house in California. It’s a memoir in and of itself, but it’s also a design book showing you (not telling you) how to build and fill a space with things you love. Barbra’s not following trends here. She’s following her heart and what results is a home packed with intimate stories of how it came to be. Included at each step are a bevy of sketches and before and after photos, many of which Barbra took and drew herself.

Barbra’s front entrance to the main house.

A lifelong antique collector, a lover of old houses, and a creative outside-of-the-box thinker, Barbra’s step-by-step building project is a captivating look at her creative journey towards fashioning the ideal homeplace. Even though she references films and performances along the way, you forget that Barbra is a world-famous singer, actor and director. Here in this book, she’s simply a woman on a mission to create a space she loves. Her vision for what she wants is mostly clear, but she does stumble and change directions sometimes too, and occasionally she has to compromise when the ideas in her head can’t feasibly match a comparable reality. It’s all very relatable.

Located right on the cliffs above the ocean, with views of the water from the backyard, Barbra’s compound is a conglomeration of buildings that includes two barns, a mill house, a 1950s ranch house, and a big main house. She thoughtfully designed and decorated each space from the ground up, but she’ll be the first to say that she’s the “idea” person only not the actual contractor, and never had any inclination to swing a hammer or erect a wall herself. Instead, she left all that up to her team of contractors and specialists – the talented individuals who had the tenacity to deal with her perfectionism, a trait she fully recognizes can be a bit difficult to work with.

What I really loved about this book was how Barbra talked about the idea of home and the creative touches that give a space meaning. She’s really thoughtful about every detail and wasn’t willing to compromise on something if she felt it wasn’t right. Intuitive and observant, she discusses her design inspirations (a certain painting, a detail from a movie set, the color of the sky at sunset) to the extent that you get the sense that she’s always on the lookout for objects, colors, textures, and patterns that stir a personal emotion. Even though her design style is not exactly my design style, it is refreshing to read an interior design book about someone who wholeheartedly embraces what she loves unapologetically. Instead of following trends or typically accepted interior design layouts, she follows her heart and her interests. What results is a home that is entirely her own.

Decorated endpapers feature a few of Barbra’s notes and sketches.

Even the exterior gets her thoughtful attention as she color coordinates all the flowers and landscaping to each building so that complimentary shades float freely in and out of doors. To accommodate changing moods and seasons, to find surprise and joy year by year, to delight the senses, to calm and also energize the spirit all while maintaining a sense of unique charm and character – those were what Barbra was reaching for in building her perfect place. By books end you can see that she accomplished all that, and maybe even a little bit more.

Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From A Life Edited by Michael Katakis (2018)

I haven’t completely finished this book yet, but I knew it was going to be on the Best Of list just for the introduction by Michael Katakis alone. His perspective on memories and how they can be shaped or reshaped, defined or redefined, based on the truths and the fictions you want or are led to believe is compelling. He shares an incredible story that links the death of his mother to the assassination of John F Kennedy to the discovery that Ernest Hemingway lived in the same neighborhood as his relatives – all events that occurred within a few days of each other. Of course, all these big events affected him deeply, but it was Ernest’s writing that brought emotional comfort and mental escapism during that difficult time. A lifelong interest in the author and his work bloomed and would eventually make him the manager of the Ernest Hemingway Estate, and the editor of this book.

There’s so much that has already been written and recycled about Ernest Hemingway, that it’s difficult to separate the man from the myth. And you might suspect it would be difficult to present any sort of new factual information about him. But in Artifacts From A Life, there is an assortment of little-known or at least lesser-known details that paint Ernest in a new light.

Famous for writing short, succinct sentences – his hallmark style – I always thought that was something Ernest developed over time, but actually it was a writing tip received during his first newspaper job. He was advised to stick with short sentences and to leave out the adjectives. Ernest adapted that way of writing and stuck with it for the rest of his career. Had the newspaper dictated that he write long, flowery sentences we might of had a completely different Ernest Hemingway experience altogether.

Packed with never-before-seen photographs, paper ephemera, letters and objects from his personal estate, there’s much to learn about Ernest and his strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. One of things of particular interest is Michael’s commentary as he manages Hemingway’s estate and discovers the wealth of information that it contains. He brings a unique perspective to the task and a wistful reverence for how things used to be that is so fresh and compelling.

“There are over eleven thousand photographs, bullfighting tickets and scraps of paper with lists of what books a struggling writer should read,” Michael writes. “There are airline, train and steamship tickets that are so lovely they seem a page from an illuminated manuscript and demonstrate how much beauty there once was in the artifacts of daily commercial exchanges. As I went through his things I realized how much tactile aesthetic has been sacrificed and replaced with a severe digital practicality.”

Opposite Michaels’ words on that topic are images of a beautiful 1930s receipt from a Paris bookstore with its stylish logo and sales clerk handwriting itemizing the books that Ernest had purchased that day. It’s that kind of thoughtful attention to history and to Ernest’s life that make this book a page-turner, and a truth, from the very beginning.

Picnic, Lightning – Billy Collins (1998)

Speaking of truth, I’ve never read Billy Collins’ work before, even though he’s considered to be America’s favorite poet and was the actual Poet Laureate of the United States in the early 2000s. But just this past fall, I discovered his 1998 book of poems Picnic, Lightening and fell absolutely in love with the one on page 49. It’s titled This Much I Do Remember…

It was after dinner.
You were talking to me across the table
about something or other,
a greyhound you had seen that day
or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you
over your bare shoulder
at the three oranges lying
on the kitchen counter
next to the small electric bean grinder,
which was also orange,
and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

All of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the way stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.

Then all the moments of the past
began to line up behind that moment
and all the moments to come
assembled in front of it in a long row,
giving me reason to believe
that this was a moment I had rescued
from the millions that rush out of sight
into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,
my middle name,
and the meaning of money,
I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day.

“This Much I Do Remember” by Billy Collins. Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998).

Oranges have been a real theme in the kitchen in these past three months. We made a vintage Parisian orange cocktail for the blog this month, shared a vintage recipe for orange sugarplum cookies in last week’s email newsletter and now there is this vintage poem about oranges sitting on a kitchen counter. It’s funny how things come together like that.

The whole sensory experience that Billy sets up in this snippet of life with the camber of shoulders, the tone of voice lifting and falling in flight, the hasp of color, the painting within is just gorgeous. I love the way he likens the oranges fixed on the counter to the way the stars are said to be fixed in the universe. So beautiful.

Billy Collins (b. 1941) served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003. Photo by Marcelo Noah.

So far Billy has published 18 books of poetry, starting with Pokerface in 1977 and just recently Musical Tables which came out in 2022. Picnic, Lightning was book number six debuting in the late 1990s. If you are new to Billy’s work, there is lots to choose from but I recommend starting with page 49 of Picnic, Lightening and working your way around his words from there.

Reading This Much I Do Remember was such a nice way to wrap up this past year – another one that was so full of tumultuous world events, political upheavals, and powerful weather occurrences. I love how in the poem, a natural peace was found in the kitchen. I love that time stopped. That the moment was recognized and appreciated before being committed to memory. I love that this poem is about a confluence of small, unassuming details that turn out to make a big lasting impression. Cheers to more of that in 2024.

And cheers to Ben, Henry, Frida, Ann, Flannery, Ernest, Billy, Michael, Monica, Barbra S. and Barbara L. for sharing such wonderful insight into the passions that move the world forward through art and storytelling. Hope your new year overflows with equal joy. And I hope you find a book or two to fall in love with from this list. Thank you so much for being a part of our wonderful community. We can’t wait to share more favorites in 2024. Happy New Year!

Holiday Classics: A Vintage Cranberry Relish Recipe from Historic Connecticut

Published on November 14, 2023November 16, 2023 by In The Vintage Kitchen6 Comments

Undoubtedly the most well-known food to come out of Mystic, Connecticut is pizza, thanks to the 1988 movie Mystic Pizza starring Julia Roberts…

The real-life pizza shop that inspired the film is still serving up hot pies every day in this beautiful, bustling, historic port city, but there’s a long-standing tradition of other delicious New England fare that has made Mystic, CT a go-to source for memorable cuisine too. The recipe featured here today might not be the star of a feature film but it definitely will be a star on your holiday table. Today’s post comes from The Mystic Seaport Cookbook, a collection of historic New England recipes first published in 1970 by Lilian Langseth-Christensen…

You might remember this cookbook from last Spring when we featured a hot rum toddy and a story about sailors and life on the high seas.

This guy was the star of our hot toddy post.

The recipe we are featuring here today isn’t quite as dramatic as that one, but it is equally delicious. Simply called Cranberry Relish, it’s an ideal alternative to canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and travels the rest of the holiday season with tantalizing appeal. Post-Turkey Day, this simple New England cranberry relish becomes a crimson-colored companion to all sorts of festive Christmas party hors d’oeuvres, holiday-themed sandwiches, and cozy winter snacks.

A 19th-century cranberry farm located in Mansfield CT. Image courtesy of the Mansfield Historical Museum and Library.

Back in the 19th century, Connecticut was home to a number of cranberry farms, but it isn’t known for its commercial cranberry bogs anymore. In New England, that’s left up to the neighboring state of Massachusetts now, where they harvest over two million pounds of cranberries per year. Some farms in the Bay State have been run by generations of families that stretch back over 150 years. Thanks to modern machinery, cranberry farming is an easier endeavor but back then it was considered one of the hardest crops to farm and was done entirely by hand with wooden scoops combed through the cranberry bushes. No one was spared the arduous task of collecting cranberries, not even kids.

Cranberry harvesters on Cape Cod circa 1909.

Cranberry Farm – Pemberton, NJ circa 1910. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

A wooden cranberry scoop, also sometimes referred to as a cranberry rake. Image courtesy of a 1940s-era American Cranberry Exchange recipe booklet.

In Connecticut, there is just one remaining cranberry farm in the state left, but cranberry relish has been a part of the New England diet and therefore, the Connecticut diet, since colonial days when indigenous tribes taught early settlers how to pound them into pastes and sauces.

Harvested during the autumn months of September and October, by the time they make an appearance on the Thanksgiving table in the form of relishes, jellies, jams, compotes, sauces, and innumerable baked goods, cranberries add bright color, dimension, and acidic flavor to a holiday meal mostly recognized by its earthy brown and beige shades.

A cranberry recipe cooking booklet courtesy of the American Cranberry Exchange, headquartered at 90 West Broadway, New York, NY. The A.C.E. was a cranberry cooperative that operated between 1907 and 1957 among several US states including Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, and New Jersey.

Pick up any New England cookbook, and the author will have their own preferred method of making this holiday side dish, but there will always be some ingredients that everyone agrees on. Technically, what differentiates cranberry sauce from cranberry relish is the cooking process. Cranberry sauce generally tends to be cooked on the stovetop – boiled down with sugar to a sweetened consistency that is thin and syrupy or thick and gelatinous depending on the amount of cooking time. Relish, on the other hand, more often than not, is mixed together in a blender and served chunky and raw with the addition of just a bit of sugar and some other aromatics including spices and citrus. The recipe featured here today is a cross between both. It’s cooked on the stove and includes citrus, raisins, and nuts for a more chutney-like consistency. The chunky texture and quick cooking method, make this Mystic recipe easy and versatile – ideal for all sorts of applications long after the Thanksgiving meal has been enjoyed.

First, we will look at the cooking method and then we’ll dive into the number of different ways to serve this version of cranberry relish. You’ll notice at the end, that this recipe offers a canning suggestion for storage but we just made one big batch and stored it in the fridge where it lasted for over a week and a half.

Cranberry Relish

From the Mystic Seaport Cookbook circa 1970

Makes 6 pints

6 cups fresh cranberries

1 cup cold water

1 cup boiling water

1 1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

2 large oranges

4 cups sugar

Grated rind of 1 lemon

Wash the cranberries and pick out any remaining debris (stems, leaves, etc). Boil them in a cup of cold water until the skins pop and the berries become soft.

Blend them into a puree using a hand-held immersion blender…

and then add the boiling water, raisins, walnuts, and sugar. Peel the oranges and dice the pulp. Scrap any white pith off the orange rinds, discard the pith, and dice the orange rinds. Add the rind to the mixture.

Next, stir in the grated lemon rind, and cool the relish.

Transfer relish to a bowl and serve or store in an airtight container in the fridge or pour into jars. If storing in jars, seal the jars with melted paraffin wax and shelve for a later date.

A lovely addition to the holiday table, this cranberry recipe contains the best of both worlds when it comes to sauce and relish. It’s syrupy but also chunky. It’s sweet but also tangy. The walnuts give it a satisfying dose of substance and protein. The citrus adds a burst of flavor that keeps the palate notes fresh and bright.

One of our favorite ways to serve Cranberry Relish is poured over a wedge of Brie cheese.

Naturally, it pairs well with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy but we also love it when it is heated up and spread piping hot over Brie cheese and served alongside an assortment of crackers. Post-Thanksgiving, we like to spread this relish on bread just like mayonnaise for turkey sandwiches. Add it to the filling of turkey pot pie and the dish becomes more savory in an instant. Spread it on leftover Thanksgiving dinner rolls and serve it alongside eggs for breakfast or add it as a topper to oatmeal or yogurt. It’s also great on grilled burgers – beef, chicken, turkey or vegetarian. Basically, any place where you might like a little dollop of a sweet condiment, this one works wonders.

There’s no end to the zillion ways you can incorporate Thanksgiving leftovers into new and creative foods. That’s really the beauty of the holiday after all, isn’t it? All that cooking done days ahead of time allows a rest post-holiday with minimal meal-making effort required, except for quick reheats of the feast that keeps on giving. That leaves plenty of time to relax, read a book, enjoy your friends and family, play games, go for a walk, watch a movie. Perhaps after reading this post, Mystic Pizza will be on the viewing schedule. And maybe, depending on how adventurous you are in the kitchen, this cranberry relish might just inspire a new type of pizza topping too – Mystic style.

If you are looking for more vintage recipes to augment your Thanksgiving menu, we also recommend colonial-style Corn Pudding from the Williamsburg Cookbook and Homemade Citrus Cider from the 1989 Southern cookbook, Wild About Texas.

Hope you find this recipe just as delicious as we did. If you have any favorite cranberry sauce recipes, please feel free to include yours in the comments section. Cheers to the cranberries and all the cooking creativity they inspire.

A 1930s advertisement for Eatmor Cranberries from the American Cranberry Exchange.

It’s Finally Here! Our Annual Shop Sale is Today

Published on November 2, 2023 by In The Vintage KitchenLeave a comment

Happy All Souls Day! Just wanted to pop in with a quick reminder for all our intrepid culinary adventurers and history-fueled home decorators… our annual one-day-only 40% off shop sale is today!

There are a bevy of new (old) heirlooms that have arrived in the shop recently, so if it’s been a bit of time since you last visited hop on over to the shop to see our latest collections. Some of our favorites include these charmers…

A collection of Poland’s authentic heritage recipes compiled by the Polanie Club of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Rare antique J.W. Pankhurst English ironstone dinner plates circa 1850.

A porcelain enamelware floral bowl set by Kobe circa 1980s

A 1930s-era packet of French postcards featuring the beautiful city of Marseilles

An antique crocheted tablecloth handmade at Ellis Island circa 1916. You might remember this one from our in-depth blog post about one woman’s Italian immigration story here.

A vintage Dutch cookie tin featuring maritime art.

A 1930s edition of a classic kitchen cookbook courtesy of Fannie Farmer, the woman responsible for creating our modern cooking measurement system.

A vintage botanical art book featuring gorgeous illustrations of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

An antique handmade gathering basket from the early 1900s

A vintage pair of cheerful yellow dinner napkins with embroidered dots fit for every season.

Interested in meeting some of the makers and collectors behind our shop’s beautiful heirlooms? Poke around each section and you’ll encounter these faces and the stories they tell about history and their place in it.

Hope you find a treasure that calls to your heart and adds an extra bit of joy to your home.

As always, the sale runs through midnight tonight and discounts are automatically applied at checkout. Thank you so much for traveling with us down these adventurous pathways of culinary history. Cheers to new inspiration and a day of happy shopping!