“And so we are really going to have a tea room after all; it is to be a perfect love of a place, all little blue and white China teacups, and walls papered in cunning blue figures, and the name of this delicate place of amusement is going to be the ‘Dutch Tea Room.’ If…
“In Cornwall, saffron bread is made on special occasions throughout the year, but in Western Maryland it became distinctly associated with Christmas.”
With parts of Scandinavia so far north that the dark days of winter are endless, its no wonder that the region has rich December holiday traditions. While some of the old Norse Yule symbology made its way into Christmas around the world, other customs remain specific and regional. St. Lucia Day is a particularly iconic…
According to Wikipedia, the word for punch comes from the sanskrit word for “five.” The drink was once made up of five components: water, citrus, alcohol, sugar, and “spice”. According to punch historian David Wondrich, the spice in question could be anything from “nutmeg or tea to ambergris.” (Hey that rhymes!) The flavors of this…
Elizabeth Staats (1852-1933, Kent County) collected recipes – hundreds of them. The collection started with a scrapbook Staats inherited from her mother Mary Griffith (1829-1892), whose original book contains handwritten recipes for food as well as things like soap and a “cure for cholera.” Staats finished that book before compiling the second book of over…