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…
“In a very real sense, ‘Maryland’s Way’ is Alice Brown’s Way.” – Tom Coakley, The Capital, Annapolis, 1975 Last month, I finished reading Michael Twitty’s book “The Cooking Gene,” and I was planning to write a whole post about it. I found myself basically at a loss to convey any meaningful context other than simply…
“If any department store in Baltimore gave Hutzler’s a run for its money, it was Hochschild’s.“ – Michael J. Lisicky, Baltimore’s Bygone Department Stores: Many Happy Returns According to Jacques Kelly, “Hochschild’s sold what you needed, not what you aspired to get.” In 1997, the Baltimore Sun columnist reminisced about the bargain basement at Hochschild Kohn’s,…