The papers of caterer William Johnson, in the collections at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, offer a rare look at the finer details of the business of catering in the early 1900s. The documents aren’t extensive, but they include the purchase price of supplies like dishes and bottled water, the cost per person…
I was shocked to realize that Mrs. Florence McKenney’s Chicken Tetrazzini Casserole is the first recipe I’ve made for Old Line Plate from the 1980 “Magician in the Kitchen” cookbook. Produced by the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, the book was one of the early community cookbooks in my now-sizable collection. It has charming illustrations…
The Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC has an oddly long Wikipedia page. It’s almost as long as the page about the Watergate Complex. It mentions trysts of Presidents Kennedy and Clinton. Presidential inaugural balls. A Nazi plot to sabotage the US that ended in betrayal. J. Edgar Hoover eating the same lunch every day: “chicken…
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…
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…