Maryland having a bit of an upswing of interest in reflection on our local cuisine. If my cookbook collection is any indication, this tends to come in waves. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a general sentiment that Maryland food was high quality, and cookbooks banked on this reputation. Then came the…
Marylanders love our watermen. They bring us crabs, after all. But for the most part our images of these people have crystallized into an idealized amalgam created from 50-year old photographs, crab-shack signs and stereotypes. The photography of Jay Fleming has been a welcome vehicle to update those images and to ponder the life and…
I fully admit to being most titillated by weird tales of spite houses and diarrhea from green corn, but in between those cheap thrills I do attempt to do some actual learning. Recently at the Eddie and Sylvia Brown African American Collection at the Pratt Library I came across a book called “Eating in the…
The artwork in this interview really speaks for itself but for the sake of having an introduction I’ll mention that I came across these Erick Sahler Serigraphs Co. prints at one of the newer bookshops in Chincoteague this past August. In a few short moments I’d stocked up on postcards and a perceptive saleswoman sold…
By the time “The Chesapeake Bay Cookbook: Rediscovering the Pleasures of a Great Regional Cuisine” was published in the early 1990s, Maryland Chesapeake cuisine’s star had nearly faded into obscurity (as the title suggests). Mid-century cookbooks such as Mrs. J. Millard Tawes’ “Favorite Maryland Recipes” and the edited and updated edition of Mrs. B.C. Howard’s…