“Because fall and winter diets are often deficient in vitamins, A, B, and C, and important minerals, kale should be served at least two or three times a week.” – 8/7/1953 Hagerstown Morning Herald I recently acquired this little community cookbook, “Kitchen Kapers,” put out by Bethel 31 of The International Order of Jobs Daughters…
Home Economics as a professional pursuit codified “women’s work” and amended school curricula, but it also opened doors for women professionally. The name Virginia Roeder may ring a bell to longtime Baltimore recipe collectors. For 23 years she wrote for the “women’s pages” of the Baltimore Evening Sun, offering guidance on cooking and housekeeping. She…
I thought we’d take things back into the 20th century this week. Among the “treasures” acquired in 1960 by the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (”Maryland Room Acquires ‘Treasures’”, Baltimore Sun, November 1960) is a copy of a cookbook put out in 1948 by the Maryland Home Economics Association. Much like the…
I recently found this 1954 cookbook at the Pratt Library, “Secrets of Southern Maryland Cooking,” with the somewhat creepy subtitle “(How to Keep Daddy Home).” It’s 132 pages are filled with interesting illustrations and handwritten recipes – including stuffed ham, a gravy-less Maryland Fried Chicken, and some more unusual items such as advocaat. The handwriting…
The books that got me curious about Maryland food were not Maryland cookbooks, strictly speaking. This cookbook set had been a constant in my household growing up, and I never thought of them as regional at all, despite the “Southern” in the name. On my mother’s kitchen bookshelf they served as a source of inspiration and…