I recently had the privilege of giving a talk at the Homewood Museum on Johns Hopkins University’s campus. I focused on Baltimore’s culinary history, but or course there was plenty about Maryland in general. After the talk, someone asked a question about the influence of immigrants on Maryland cuisine. “Honestly,” I said, “if I had…
Next time you drop a few ice cubes into a cold beverage think of this: many early-20th-century consumers would be wary of your “artificial” ice. Unless of course, your ice happens to be harvested from a lake or a mountain somewhere. The technology to create ice from water was first developed in the mid-1800s, but…
It’s interesting to ponder the ways in which different political impulses and movements have had an effect on recipes. For instance, did the “Women’s Club Movement” and the Progressive Era result in cookbooks that would otherwise have not been produced, and recipes that may not have otherwise been documented? Or would community cookbooks have been…
For 36 years, columnist and photographer Brice Stump wrote about life on the Eastern Shore. In his columns, he explored its history – including the Civil War, and pondered the petty tribulations of modern life.
On one topic in particular, Stump was passionate: White Hayman Sweet Potatoes. Having been raised on a farm, Stump admitted they aren’t easy to grow. But of their flavor, he sang the praises.
“Unlike the familiar orange-fleshed sweet potatoes that required marshmallows, brown sugar and lots of butter to enhance their nutty flavor, the Hayman tickles the palate with a natural, delicately sweet taste and heavenly texture,” Stump wrote in the Salisbury Daily Times in 1999. In that article, he interviewed Rev. Sally Bowen, a descendent of Daniel Hayman, the ship captain purported to have brought the potatoes from North Carolina to Maryland in the 1850s.
Although stories trace White Haymans to North Carolina, nary a trace of them can be found there now. White Haymans are a specialty of the Eastern Shore, “raised only for Shore consumers,” wrote Stump.
Eight years later he bemoaned the proliferation of O’Henrys appearing on the market, ironically “coming out of the Carolinas, apparently.” These pretenders were giving Haymans a bad name. An authenticity test was recommended: “If you put pressure down on your thumb and draw it over the face of a Hayman, it will ‘skin’ easily, whereas the O’Henry wont.”
If the difference is so stark, that casts a lot of doubt on my last attempt at a white sweet potato pie. This time around, my mom acquired some Haymans from Whiteraven’s Nest in Chincoteague, Virginia – along with several other varieties of sweet potato. So I used a blend. She was warned to cure them several weeks, in a warm and dry place, or else risk defeating the point of even tasting them.
I decided to do one last pawpaw recipe before the season is over. After last week’s pawpaw cream pie, I wondered what it would be like to cross it with strawberry pretzel salad.
When I approached the Two Boots Farm stand I felt a little bad. Colorful edible flowers sat alluringly displayed in plastic clamshells. Cartons of shisito peppers were laid out. Behind the pawpaw table, another table of offerings. When I reached out later, Elisa from Two Boots farm told me ” Yes, sometimes I think people oversee our flowers when they are hunting for the pawpaws (two very different customers really). But we do have a lot of social media followers that I suspect found us because of pawpaws but they started asking us for wedding flower quotes or joining our flower share. In September people flock to us for the pawpaws but if I look at the sales numbers cut flowers are still our best selling item this time of the year.”
I ended up working with pectin to make a vegetarian recipe that could easily be made vegan. It could also be made with milk gelatin (minus cinnamon) for those who don’t want to deal with the pectin.