Tag: eastern shore

Eastern Sho’ Bar-B-Q Chicken a.k.a. Delmarva Barbecued Chicken

There is only one thing that excites me more than finding an old cookbook that I didn’t know about, and that’s finding a local dish that I didn’t know was local.

When Matthew Korfhage wrote to me last summer to ask about Delmarva Barbecued Chicken I was confused. We have a barbecue tradition in Maryland other than pit beef? Don’t organizations everywhere raise funds by selling chicken by the side of the road?

Maybe they do, but on the Eastern Shore, the chicken in question is a little bit different.

Baltimore Sun, 1984

With a sauce made from vinegar, oil, poultry seasoning, and the strange addition of an egg, this “barbecue sauce” is nothing like the dozens of ketchup-based personal barbecue sauce recipes found in my database.

Korfhage’s email inspired me to take a closer look at those recipes. It wasn’t long until I found exactly what I was looking for.

In none other than Maryland First Lady Helen Avalynne Tawes’ 1964 cookbook, “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” is a recipe for “Eastern Sho’ Bar-B-Q Chicken.” Later local cookbooks like “What Is Cooking On Party Line” and cookbooks from local fire departments had similar recipes. The style of chicken is particularly associated with volunteer fire departments, for which the roadside sales are a big money-maker.

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7-Up Cake, Georgia L. Cannon & Bernice Baine

Georgia L. Cannon of Delmar seems like she would have been a good one to have on your side. In 1983, when Delmar councilman Ed Feeney was asked to resign, Cannon penned a passionate letter to the Salisbury Daily Times. “Thank the Lord for someone who will stand firm in his beliefs,” she wrote. “I have heard Ed Feeney pray many times in our church for his fellow councilmen. I wonder if any one of them has ever said a prayer for him?”

From newspaper articles, I have a hard time grasping the finer points of Feeney’s scandal. I only know that Cannon had his back.

In April of that year, she wrote to the paper to honor a neighbor who had died. “Josh [Gibbs] was a familiar figure around town mowing lawns and raking leaves for people,” she said.

And in October, she wrote another letter bringing attention to Lynn Bogardus, Delmar’s Miss Fire Prevention who went on to win Miss Delaware, and Lisa and Eva Jackson who won awards in a baton twirling competition.

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Interview: Bernard L. Herman, “A South You Never Ate”

Note: This interview is from April. I had the pleasure of seeing Bernard Herman speak not long before we all began isolating. I really enjoyed reading his book but had a hard time writing anything expository to go with this interview. The book makes a beautiful gift so I did my best to get this together for the holiday season. Please support independent booksellers.

  • Photographs care of The University of North Carolina Press

Summer is behind us, but thinking of the Eastern Shore puts me in a “late-July” mindset. Like many people who live on the “other side” of the bay, my experience of much of the Delmarva peninsula is a relatively narrow one. I was fortunate enough to grow up spending much of my summers in Chincoteague, where my grandfather was accepted among the fishermen.

In his little trailer, my extended family enjoyed lots of fish, tomatoes, corn, and so much more of what the region had to offer. My appreciation of these tastes and the associated memories left a lasting impression. The sound of tree-frogs at night still lulls me into a peaceful and safe state of mind.

More recently I began venturing out on long drives down through Virginia’s Eastern Shore. I found it to be a mesmerizing place. Route 13 runs along old railroad tracks. Rows of magenta crape myrtles sometimes line the road. Monoculture seems omnipresent – soy and sorghum dominate the land. Beyond the fields are roads leading to a diversity of landscapes. Some overgrown byways reveal faint traces of a different past – farmhouses and churches being digested by the marshy earth. The occasional grand manor still stands.

In one direction the ocean roars, in the other the bay can sometimes have an almost eerie calmness. And yet life is buzzing all around – the smells and sounds plants and animals living and dying.

To a wannabe writer like me, it feels like “a place you write about.”

To a scholar and a folklorist like Bernard Herman, it is a place full of history and stories that deserve to be heard and preserved. I eagerly anticipated his book, entitled “A South You Never Ate: Savoring the Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia.”

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Peach Pie Supreme, Alice Heckman Millett

I’ve been a fan of the cheddar-apple pie combination for many years now and I often make my apple pies with a cheddar cheese crust. Somehow, I’d never considered doing the same for peach pies.

I made this simple pie for a Labor Day crab feast and my family raved about it – despite the fact that I kinda burned the crust. All this is to say, this is a surprisingly forgiving recipe.

The recipe was contributed by Mrs. Kenneth B. Millett to “A Cook’s Tour of the Eastern Shore,” a 1948 community cookbook benefiting the Memorial Hospital of Easton Md. The book contains over 400 handwritten recipes, and includes Eastern Shore wisdom on seafood and game.

  • “Dolphin,” a boat built by Kenneth B. Millett, on the Chesapeake Bay
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Corn Pone from “The Chesapeake Collection”

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 of home cooks who worked with limited resources but far more flexibility to put white potato pies, stuffed ham, and scrapple on the tables of their family and friends – plus a given assortment of heritage foods.

The blurred lines and exchanges between the two are too complex to get into, but one thing is certain: we are blessed with pretty good documentation of the recipes and preferences of the home cooks.

Interestingly, it is the historically limited roles of women that we have to thank for this. Since the end of the 19th century, when women wanted to raise money for a cause, the most popular course of action was to produce a community cookbook. As times changed, so did the cookbooks – incorporating more business and design resources, and recipes from all kinds of cooks.

I don’t have a point of comparison, but either way, Marylanders (mostly women) have produced an astounding number of impressive cookbooks. To stand out among them is a bit of a feat.

Denton Schoolhouse, Maryland Historical Trust
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