Month: February 2024

Puff Tuna Sandwich, Marian Barclift

For Marian Barclift, gratitude was a part of everyday life. She believed that finding and sharing joy would attract positivity into her life. The numerous friends, family, and coworkers who mourned her passing are evidence that it worked for her. She passed away on November 27th, 2009, the day after that year’s Thanksgiving.

Her Baltimore Sun obituary describes the success she had as a teacher at Pimlico Junior High School, where former principal Samuel R. Billups observed that “Marian had an awareness of students and their concerns, and she knew how to reach out to them and get them to put their best foot forward.”

The obituary described Barclift’s impactful career. From 1975 until her retirement in 1990, she worked as a guidance counselor at Western High School, where the National Honor Society was renamed the Marian H. Barclift National Honor Society chapter.

Barclift was also active in the Sharp Street United Methodist Church. She served as president of the Naylor Hughes Fellowship, a service group within the church that produced “Our Book of Favorite Recipes” in 1994. Marian contributed several healthful and low-calorie dishes to the cookbook.

Barclift’s Baltimore Sun obituary was a good source of information about her work life and her involvement at the church. But I have more to go on. Thanks to the Enoch Pratt Free Library African American Funeral Programs Collection, I know that Marian was “the baby” of five girls, the youngest daughter of a postal worker and a teacher, and that her father recited Paul Laurence Dunbar poetry to the little girl: “Little brown baby with sparkling eyes, come to your pappy and sit on his knee…” Fittingly sweet words spoken to a person who later “radiated warmth in her lifetime relationships with her family and friends.”

Enoch Pratt Free Library
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Kinklings, Eva Reeder

“The kinkling and the doughnut die,
The pancake and the waffle cease,
But now doth come the rhubarb pie,
Oh, may I have another piece?”

— Baltimore Sun 1910

The Germans who colonized Western Maryland in the 1700s brought with them devout Christianity — primarily Lutheranism and Calvinism. But where one scratches the surface of devout Christianity, one often finds a little bit of Paganism hiding out, and Carnival season might be one of the times when the old ways are less hidden (despite the masks.)

Fat Tuesday aka Fastnacht happens to coincide with a time when a feast may have taken place among Germanic tribes, a celebration to drive away winter and usher in Spring fertility and sunlight.

This became the festivities referenced by Shakespeare in his 1601 play The Merchant of Venice:
“Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces.”

Although the area along the Monocacy River that Germans settled was a fertile region, it could also be a harsh and isolated one. There weren’t a lot of public streets to thrust one’s head into, and many of the social aspects of Carnival were left to the old world.

But not the sweet treats.

Fastnacht doughnuts famously took on the name “Kinklings” in Western Maryland and became a beloved tradition beyond the German communities where they originated.

An 1889 advertisement in the Frederick News touted “Golden Tinge” flour. “Next week will be fastnacht,” reminded the ad, “so all ye good housekeepers fill up your barrels.”

The same newspaper warned elsewhere that “old wiseacres say if you don’t make kinklins today you will have bed bugs all the year.” Who could risk that?

Eventually, churches and bakers helped people avoid the bedbugs with less hassle by selling fresh kinklings. One baker advertised that he would “have them delivered hot.”

Mrs. Eva Reeder shared her recipe in a cookbook produced in the 1970s by St. Mark Lutheran Church in Adamstown.

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Horse’s Collar, John A. Weaver

“Tom Smith liked clothes.”

The Afro-American covered every detail of Thomas R. Smith’s 1938 funeral. Five women wept. “Two were relatives.” United States Senator George Radcliffe spoke at the service, which was held on the lawn of Smith’s home at 6621 Reisterstown Road. Inside the house, Tom’s body was dressed in striped trousers; a satin, striped black ascot; and a black coat with a gardenia in the buttonhole. In his closet, he left sixteen pairs of white shoes, silk shirts and boxers, and “innumerable suits of all kinds, colors and materials.”

On the lawn of Smith’s home, across from where Reisterstown Plaza now sits, mourners interacted with his herd of goats, who demanded to have their heads scratched. One goat chewed on a political poster announcing a candidate for governor.

This post is not about Tom Smith; not really. But I can’t write about John Weaver, who tended bar at Smith’s Hotel for twenty-six years and called his boss “Chief,” without writing about Smith himself.

How could I not include the fact that Smith, according to the Afro-American “maintained his dominion by aid of an elaborate set-up which prevented any illegal business being conducted without his knowledge or consent,” or that he influenced Baltimore’s Black citizens to vote Democrat in a time when that was unheard of?

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Chop-Chae, Ladies of the Bethel

Note: The following is an essay from “Festive Maryland Recipes,” posted here with the original recipe from the community cookbook. “Festive Maryland Recipes” contains an adapted version of this recipe.

After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed discriminatory barriers to moving to the United States, Maryland gained a new population of Korean-born citizens. Naturally, these newly-minted Marylanders brought their celebrations with them. In the 60s and 70s, newspapers began to report on the festivities. A 1970 Lunar New Year event held at the Korean embassy in Washington, D.C. attracted Korean-born Marylanders from around the state. Helen Giblo, a reporter from the Annapolis Capital, described for readers the galbi and “kimchie, a dish that is a way of life in the Land of Morning Calm.” Also served was “dduk guk,” Rice Cake Soup – a Korean New Year essential.

Ladies of the Bethel, 1986

The Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church of Baltimore was founded in June of 1979, with a parish made up of seven families. “Everyone was on the same boat, sometimes literally,” Pastor Billy Park told the Baltimore Sun in 2002. By then, more than 1,700 people were attending Sunday services at the church.

The “Ladies of the Bethel” did not include a recipe for Rice Cake Soup in their 1986 eponymous cookbook. Perhaps the authors felt that the rice cakes were too difficult to acquire or to make. The recipes in the book often reflect the constraints of limited access to ingredients, and provide a contrast to today’s vicinity around the church (which moved to Ellicott City in 1987), an area now strewn with multiple international grocers such as H-Mart. 

The book does contain many other traditional recipes, with the intention, as Susan Y. Park, the cookbook chairperson wrote, “to introduce as many Korean recipes as possible to those who are accustomed to Western food.”

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Bernice Watson’s Coconut Cake

Mrs. Edward Z. Watson “disclaim[ed] any fame as a cook,” said a profile in the Afro-American in 1958. The article described the vivacious teacher, seamstress, and mother of two as a “party girl,” who “not only adore[d] going to parties but [was] not adverse to giving them either!”

They shared her cake recipe using “many of the newest methods,” including a MixMaster mixer. The title of the feature was “Mrs. Edward Watson makes the highest cake you’ve ever seen.”

Afro-American, 1958

The light and fluffy cake could be served a variety of ways. “For the chocolate frosting I use the recipe right on the Hershey can,” Watson declared. She also confessed to using ready-mix caramel icing. But Bernice Watson’s cake is no lazy feat. With egg whites beaten separately and folded into the batter, plus a seven-minute icing made over a double boiler, the cake requires plenty of attention and generates a fair amount of dirty dishes.

I just had to make it – particularly the coconut variation, which Watson would flavor with “lemon or almond” flavoring. (I used the latter.) I couldn’t find the canned style of coconut that she preferred, and I’m not skilled at cooked icings, but the recipe did indeed turn out a tall, light delightful cake.

“Sometimes I scarcely think it’s worthwhile. A big beautiful cake now. A few hours, no cake at all,” Watson sighed in 1958.

She was born Bernice Calverta Francis in Philadelphia in 1922, the granddaughter of a Sharp Street Methodist reverend, McHenry Jeremiah Naylor. After attending high school in Baltimore, and Coppin State Teacher’s College, she went into teaching at Baltimore City schools.

Along the way, she married fellow teacher Edward Z. Watson, who would serve a full career at BCPS as a teacher and later as an administrator.

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