There are those for whom a recipe contest is a footnote. Many contestants walk off the experience with a fun story and perhaps a triumph, and their names enshrined into a token cookbook. For others, however, the competition is a way of life. These food mavens work the circuit of county fairs, recipe contests and…
The National Chicken Cooking Contest may have been “National,” but the celebrated ingredient at its center was “Delmarva Chicken,” and the press on the peninsula didn’t forget it. As usual, the Salisbury Maryland Daily Times reported heavily on the contest in 1957. Entrants came from 12 states to compete in the crown jewel event at…
An advertisement ran in the San Francisco Examiner in 1932, posing as a heavily illustrated article. The top left illustration is alarming: it shows a tearful wife looking on as her angered husband hurls a biscuit. The biscuit penetrates the wall, heading for the edge of the newspaper itself. A caption explains that such violent…
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….