This spring, I decided to swallow my doubts and get a community garden plot. Hopefully, in future seasons, this will enable me to try out some forgotten historic vegetable cultivars. For now, I’m starting simple with a patch of hot peppers. Seeing how I can’t expect a harvest until late summer, imagine my surprise when…
What is it about white potato pie? Something about this odd-sounding idea really captivates people. It certainly got my attention many years ago when I was cooking my way through the Southern Heritage Pie & Pastry book. That pie started an obsession with lost ‘Maryland’ dishes. I’ve tried hundreds of Maryland recipes from the mundane…
Somewhere in the history of nearly every church, there was a cookbook. The authors usually intended to raise money for their church or auxiliary group, but from my vantage point, their efforts would amount to more than just the funds they generated. Church cookbooks are documents of social networks and culinary trends. Sometimes they even…
My recipe explorations have exposed me to a fair amount of lifestyles of the wealthy, but this week’s family really takes the cake. Charlotte and Clifford Truesdell were known for dressing formally for dinner – Clifford in “lace collars and cuffs” and Charlotte in evening gowns, according to the Baltimore Sun Magazine in 1978. Clifford…
Maryland cooking (like that of many places that were/are dining destinations), has two sides to it. Front and center we have the legacy represented by the hotels and caterers – the terrapin, the deviled crab, the fine wines from around the world straight from the Port of Baltimore. On the back end are the legions…