This belated Christmas Cookie recipe from the Lovely Lane Methodist Church in Old Goucher is inadvertently my third post in a row related to places I’ve lived. Lovely Lane has produced at least two cookbooks that I’m aware of – one from the 1990s and one from 1936. Both are called “Lovely Lane Cook Book.” The older book is a neat curiosity, full of advertisements from a time when the neighborhood where I live actually had more amenities. Sure, it was a streetcar ride to downtown, but groceries, bicycles, draperies, flowers and more were all available in the lower Charles Village area.
Lovely Lane Cookbook from 1936, Enoch Pratt Free Library
Laurie Boucher told me that she always knew she wanted to study law. The vocation brought her from Pennsylvania to Baltimore, where she now resides. When Boucher needed more time to take care of family, she scaled back on lawyering, enrolled in culinary school, and began to master the art of pasta-making. As she shared her pasta creations on instagram, along with detailed information and instructions, she began to acquire a few thousand enthusiastic followers. At some point I became one of them!
Laurie’s instagram is a well of inspiration to try new things and to have fun. It’s even resulted in her offering some pasta classes. I knew that meeting Laurie would be a great way to get back into doing some interviews for Old Line Plate and I knew I could not turn down an opportunity to learn the technique of laminating herbs into fresh pasta. Problem is, I was a little intimidated. How could I keep up with a lawyer whose idea of relaxation was to spend so many dedicated hours mastering intricate techniques?
When I stepped into Boucher’s kitchen, stocked with tools for pasta and more, I was instantly put at ease. Yes, I met a highly driven and self-disciplined person. What I found beyond that was someone a lot like me – a person whose self-driven need to follow a passion on one’s own terms has allowed them to share information freely; a fellow introvert who has found that food can be a way to reach out and connect with others – even online.
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 contain illustrations, i.e. folk art. They offer a deeper connection to a place in time.
The 1942 “Favorite Recipes of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service” of Saint Mark’s Methodist Church in Forest Park is a fine specimen. It appears to be printed on a ditto machine. The recipes are mostly for desserts, doughnuts and gelatin-based fruit salads, but there are some dinner options, including local favorite Sour Beef, and three chili recipes (at a time when they were not so common in Maryland cookbooks). Best of all, the book includes the full names of many recipe contributors, enabling me to do a little research on the people behind the recipes.
The 1958 “Historical Cookbook of the American Negro” proves that a cookbook can be an object of delight without being full of glossy photos of food. The recipes in the book, interspersed with history and reproduced ephemera, take on new significance, offered as tributes to historical figures or events.
The cookbook’s editor, civil rights activist Sue Bailey Thurman, knew exactly what she was doing. As the founder and editor of the Aframerican Women’s Journal, she spearheaded publications efforts for the National Council of Negro Women, including this innovative cookbook. Recipes were solicited from different regional sections of the NCNW, and arranged in a chronological format around important dates. Thurman was a historian and she wove biographies throughout the book – including Maryland natives Harriet Tubman and Benjamin Banneker- as well as (of course) NCNW founder Mary McLeod Bethune and many other contemporary and historical figures.
In the preface, Thurman called the book a “palatable approach to history” – it was a way to celebrate food and cooking, while also presenting a summary of neglected aspects of black history.
Sadly, some of that history remains neglected today. While my grade schooling did include a fair amount of Langston Hughes (and this unforgettable, heartbreaking poem about Baltimore by Countee Cullen), I don’t recall reading the poetry of Frances Harper or even learning about her activism.
Although I don’t have a very favorable opinion of Mayor James H. Preston, I recently became aware of one bright spot in his legacy. It seems that Preston was an ardent advocate of what was then known as “municipal music,” that is, city investment in music for the enrichment and enjoyment of Baltimore’s citizens. In modern times, our city vies for prestige by attempting to woo corporations, but the early 1900s were a more plentiful era where Preston declared: “the people of Baltimore are entitled to municipal symphony orchestras, municipal opera, municipal organizations which provide for individual aesthetic development, just as they are entitled to municipal service in educations, sanitation, and public safety.”
Baltimore came to be known as the “Cradle of Municipal Music,” and newspapers as far away as the Oakland Tribune in California wrote in 1918 of the city’s “open air and community singing” at outdoor events with up to 50,000 people in attendance.
