Gray Poole got tired of cooking and eating chicken during World War II. “Chicken, chicken, chicken!” she recalled to the Baltimore Sun later, in 1967. “It was always chicken.” With other meats rationed, Poole found herself getting inventive with chicken. Her husband had been stationed in California and then sent to the Pacific, where he…
Benjamin Chew Howard wrote genuinely loving letters to his wife, the former Jane Grant Gilmor. In one he quoted a poem, telling Mrs. Howard “time has not ‘dimmed your eye.’” It was 1835 and Jane Howard was 34, hardly an old matron. Still, the sentiment was sweet. The letters between Mr. and Mrs. B. C….
The Heinz company once manufactured more than sixty products, from the pickles that started it all, to the famous ketchup, plus baked beans and soups. The product offerings far outstripped the mythical “57 Varieties.” Legend has it that H.J. Heinz simply liked the number 57, and coined the brand slogan after being inspired by a…
“Maryland Cooking,” a 1948 book produced by the Maryland Home Economics Association, is certainly a classic documentation of our region. I’ve reached for this book again and again for inspiring recipes, and have uncovered some of the lives of the teachers and home economists behind each handwritten recipe I’ve made. The book has some interesting…
Sources for this regional delicacy are getting fewer and fewer as the years go by.