Spiced, stewed pears

Thank you for all your wonderful comments on our news! It can be scary to put big announcements out into this void of the internet, so it meant a lot to read your good wishes.

We're knee-deep in fall over here in New England. Leaves turning color, crisp and clear afternoons, days growing shorter. Sometimes I think that New England is my favorite place to be come fall. Though the leaves turn brilliant orange and red in Ohio, the days are never as consistently clear and blue, thanks to our moody Lake Erie. Plus, as a history teacher, fall and colonial history seem to go hand-in-hand for me, and there's so much history to be mined here in Rhode Island. Walking by a low stone wall puts me in mind of a colonial homestead, the stones demarcating property lines from faraway neighbors. And teaching colonial history come fall, as I'm doing this year, just feels right. (Maybe it's the Thanksgiving/Pilgrim connection, which is basically ingrained by this point.)

At any rate, I'm going to pursue some colonial studies of my own on this little blog for a while. We've looked at 18th-century Williamsburg before, thanks to the Williamsburg Art of Cookery, but now we're going to get serious. We're hauling out the real, original recipes. Even if the results are less than savory.

Luckily, one of the first recipes I tried turned out beautifully.

Pears are delicious on their own, and oh-so-fall and wintry. Since I was little, some relatives have been sending us a big box of pears and grapefruit for Christmas every year, which my dad would store in the cold cellar of our house. When he felt like topping off a meal with fresh, crisp fruit, he'd trek down to the basement and return with a perfectly-chilled pear, and he'd slice it up for all of us to sample. It's still one of my favorite holiday (and post-holiday) traditions.

But Mrs. Hannah Glasse, writer of one of colonial America's most popular cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, takes those pears and raises me one. You peel and quarter the pears, then bathe them in a delicious mixture of red wine, cloves, sugar, and lemon peel. Bake until the pears are soft and blushing, and they taste like November straight out of the oven. There's nothing better.


Spiced, Stewed Pears
(adapted from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy)

3 pears, peeled and quartered
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup red wine
1 tbsp lemon peel
4-6 cloves (varies depending on how much spice you want)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

In a small bowl, mix the sugar and wine together until sugar dissolves.

Place the pears in a ceramic or glass baking dish and pour the wine mixture over them. Scatter the lemon peel and cloves (more if you like intense spice, less for a milder flavor) over the mixture. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring the pears once halfway through.

The "First" Thanksgiving (III)

Last week we looked at some of the myths surrounding the original Thanksgiving. We've explored how the Pilgrims were not, in fact, Pilgrims, and how the First Thanksgiving wasn't the homey, pastoral scene we're taught in school. Today we'll look at the final piece of the puzzle: the idea that the Native Americans and the English colonists got along splendidly.


The Myth of Anglo-Native Cooperation

In 1621, the English colonists wanted to give thanks for surviving a terrible First Winter in the New World. Governor William Bradford ordered his men to hunt some wildfowl to cook at the feast. Massasoit, one of the sachems (leaders) of the local Wampanoag tribe, heard about the feast and brought a tribute of five deer to present to the governor. This was a sign that the Wampanoag respected the governor, and, by extension, the colonists he governed. Then Massasoit and many of his tribe members joined the English in their feasting, which lasted for 3 days.

Sounds perfectly cordial and lovely, right? Unfortunately, this feast was probably more like a wary meeting than a jolly mixer between ethnic groups. It was probably difficult for the colonists and Natives to communicate with each other, and the colonists were famously nervous about Native American dress, behavior, and habits. Even their methods of cooking food were different.

Similarly, the Wampanoag were probably suspicious of the colonists. In their first few months in the New World, the English hadn't treated the Wampanoag very well: members of their colony had "borrowed" corn and stolen personal items from the Natives. So this meeting between Massasoit and Governor Bradford may have been an attempt towards cordial relations between the two groups.

That's not to say that all interactions between the Natives and the colonists were negative. Earlier that spring, the Wampanoag had helped the English plant corn. This is where Squanto, the one Native we do learn about in elementary school, comes in. He taught the English how to deal with American soil and how to fertilize the corn, as well as what plants would grow well with it. After a long, harsh winter, the English were most likely relieved to have a friendly guide to this new land.

In the end, this 1621 Thanksgiving did not create peaceful relations between the colonists and the Wampanoag. It did not lead to annual feasts between the two groups--we've already seen that the colonists didn't approve of annual holidays. What's more, things steadily deteriorated between Natives and colonists until 1675, when King Philip's War broke out. After a bloody, vicious war, the English soundly defeated the Wampanoag forces and enslaved many of their women and children. The colonists then became the undisputed rulers of the Massachusetts Bay region.

The early conflicts between Natives and colonists were some of my favorite topics when I taught US History. They're a sobering example of how two groups were absolutely unable to understand each other, and therefore declared war on each other. It's heartbreaking to study the true history of the early colonies, because there are so many other stories like this one.

And though the Natives and the colonists were ultimately unable to cooperate with each other, their foodways still influenced each other. Colonial cooking bears the marks of Squanto's early efforts. Whenever colonial recipes call for cornmeal, they call it "indian meal," probably because they associated corn with the Natives who taught them how to grow it. So this pudding is a mixture of Old World and New, of English pudding and Native ingredients.

our full historical Thanksgiving feast (pudding in the foreground)

Indian Pudding
(slightly adapted from Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie)

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 cups milk
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 300 F. Grease a medium ovenproof dish.

Whisk together the cornmeal and water in a small bowl until smooth. Scald 1 1/2 cups of the milk in a medium saucepan (heat until bubbles form on the surface) and whisk in the cornmeal mixture. Boil for 15 minutes until the mixture is thick. Remove from heat.

Beat the egg in a small bowl, and add several spoonfuls of the cornmeal mixture to the egg until it's smooth. Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan. Add the sugar, molasses, butter, salt, and spices. Pour into the prepared dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the dish from the oven and pour the remaining 1/2 cup of milk over the top. Don't stir it; just let it cover the top of the pudding. Bake for 2 more hours, until the pudding is set. Serve warm.

The "First" Thanksgiving (II)

This week and next, I'm exploring some of the myths about the First Thanksgiving. We've discussed how the Pilgrims were not, in fact, Pilgrims (they had much fancier terms for themselves back in 1621). We've looked at a bizarre recipe for sour stewed pumpkin. Today let's talk about the biggest myth of all: the story of Thanksgiving itself.

We like to think of the original Thanksgiving as a homey, elaborate feast out on the grounds of the new Plymouth colony. There are colonists and Native Americans dining together at long wooden tables, and little English children playing games with the Native children in the woods. The tables are groaning with pies, mashed potatoes, and roast turkeys. And at some point during the feast, the colonists thank God for their good fortune and count their blessings.

But that's not how it really went.


The Myth of Thanksgiving

Having survived a dreadful first winter, the English focused on building their village and planting crops. By the fall of 1621, they had a decent harvest of corn and other crops. It was an English tradition to celebrate the harvest with a big feast, so the English colonists probably decided to hold a similar, secular feast. Governor William Bradford decided to mark the successful harvest with three days of feasting somewhere between September and November of 1621. He sent some men out to hunt "wildfowl," or geese and ducks. Massasoit, a sachem (leader) of the Wampanoag, brought 90 of his men and other members of his tribe to join in the feasting at Plymouth, which lasted for three days.

However, this didn't become an annual event for the colonists. Remember, the Separatists didn't believe in traditional holidays. They did believe in the concept of "thanksgiving," a day where they thanked God for sparing them from some specific, dreadful fate, like a flood or a drought. They celebrated by reciting psalms, praying, and listening to sermons. There was probably food involved, but no special emphasis on feasting. So there were probably few Christian undertones to the harvest feast that took place in 1621.

The first religious "thanksgiving" to mark God's favor didn't occur until 1623, when the Separatists thanked God for ending a drought. But there was no feast mentioned in this account.

The original 1621 feast had a stronger spiritual undertone to the Wampanoag, who believed in thanking the Creator for food and good fortune throughout the year. The time between September 21 and November 9 was known as Keepunumuk, or the Wampanoag harvest time. So interestingly, "Thanksgiving" as we think of it today may have had its annual roots in Wampanoag tradition.

But it took some time for Thanksgiving to actually become a formal holiday for Anglo-Americans. It wasn't until the late 18th century that it had become an annual holiday, celebrated regionally. And not until 1863 did Thanksgiving become a national holiday, thanks to the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale. Though well-intentioned, poor Mrs. Hale based her campaign on the erroneous assumption that the 1621 harvest feast was the "First Thanksgiving."

So at the heart of one of America's favorite holidays is a giant misconception.

Similarly, no one's certain that the colonists ate roast turkey at the 1621 feast. Yes, they ate "wildfowl," but that meant geese and ducks in the lingo of the day. There were turkeys in the Wampanoag lands at the time, so most historians think it's okay to include turkey in a recreated 1621 meal.

But I'm stubborn, so I cooked the fowl more likely to be at the feast: duck. I'd made duck only once before, and it had come out dry and tough, so I was hesitant. But this recipe, which involves boiling the duck in water before finishing it off in the oven, makes for a tender, juicy meat, mildly flavored with pepper and onion. The red wine sauce adds a sweet note to the rich taste of the duck. If you've never cooked duck before, this is so the recipe to start with.

Roast Duck with Cranberries and Wine
(slightly adapted from Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie)

For the duck:
1 4- or 5-pound duck
2 1/2 tsp salt
10 black peppercorns
1 onion, quartered
1/2 cup parsley leaves and stems, roughly chopped
2 onions, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

For the sauce:
2 cups red wine
1/3 cup parsley leaves, chopped
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup raisins, chopped
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/4 cup cranberries, chopped
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter, divided

Rinse the duck and remove any giblets and/or the neck from the inner cavity. Place the duck in a large pot (6-8 quarts) along with 2 tsp of the salt, peppercorns, quartered onion, and parsley. Pour in enough cold water to cover and bring to a simmer over high heat. Cover and simmer the duck for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Place the sliced onions in a roasting pan and remove the duck from the pot. Reserve the broth.* Sprinkle remaining 1/2 tsp of salt and the ground pepper over the duck and place it on top of the onions in the roasting pan. Roast at 400 F for 25 - 30 minutes, until clear juices run out from the duck when pricked with a knife.

Place 1 cup of the broth in a saucepan, along with the wine, parsley, ginger, raisins, mace, and sugar. Boil over medium-high heat until reduced to a syrupy mixture, about 20 minutes. When sauce is ready, stir in the cranberries. Add the butter one tbsp at a time. Serve the duck with the sauce at the table.


*Department of Not Wasting Food: You can reduce the remaining broth and freeze it as a stock to use later.

Canning: Apple butter

We're safe and sound here in Providence. The hurricane swept through yesterday and we stayed snug in the apartment, catching up on schoolwork and relaxing. There were several hours of Diablo III (Josh) and of baking cheesy pull-apart bread (me). There was an evening of catching up on our favorite shows and watching The Adventures of Tin-Tin. And today the weather's clear and sunny, but we're still off from school while Rhode Island pulls itself back together.

Just like last year when Irene stopped by, we were extremely lucky not to lose power or face flooding. These two days off from school have been more like surprise snow days (minus the snow) than anything scary, and I'm thankful for that.

If you're still battening down the hatches to weather out the rest of the storm, or if you're just hankering for a comforting, homey taste of fall, might I suggest some apple butter? Freshly made over the weekend, this apple butter spiced up my morning oatmeal and kept me warm long into the day while the wind screamed outside. It's just what I needed to get ready for the colder months ahead.

I adapted this recipe from Liana Krissoff's excellent Canning for a New Generation, so it's not technically a historical recipe. Krissoff helps you bypass the labor-intensive parts of making apple butter the traditional way, allowing you to slow-cook the butter in the oven instead of stirring it constantly on the stove. Still, the hours spent in the oven imbue this apple butter with a spicy, old-fashioned goodness. Once the apple butter was thick and dark, Nina came over to help pack it up in half-pint jars. (This canning thing is becoming a habit of ours.) We also put up some applesauce she'd made the day before, and we ended up with a pretty decent haul. If we don't hoard our cans all winter long (trust me, it's tempting), we're thinking they'll make excellent gifts come the holidays.

Stay safe, friends, and help yourself to some apple butter.

Do you have any tips for making it through storms and snow days? I'd love to hear.

Apple Butter

(adapted from Canning for a New Generation by Liana Krissoff)

makes between 6 and 10 half-pint jars

6 lbs apples, peeled and cored and chopped into small pieces (I used a combination of Macintosh and Granny Smith)

2 cups apple cider

roughly 1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

Put the apples in a large saucepan, together with the cider and 4 cups of water. Boil over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the apples are mostly mushy and broken down, about 40 minutes. Puree the mixture in batches in a blender until smooth, and measure before pouring it into a medium Dutch oven. Preheat the oven to 300 F.

Into the apple mixture, stir in 2 tbsp brown sugar per cup of puree (this is why you measured it earlier). Stir in the spices. When the oven is hot, bake the apple mixture for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until it's thick and dark and the kitchen smells of spice.

If you'd like to can the apple butter (this recipe makes a lot), set a canning pot full of water to boil on the stove. Wash the jars and lids you'll be using, and set the jars in the canning pot to keep them hot. Put the lids in a heatproof bowl and ladle some of the hot water from the canning pot into the bowl to cover the lids.

Remove the apple butter from the oven and set on the stove over medium heat until it's boiling. Once the canning pot is boiling, remove the jars from the pot with a jar lifter and place them upright on a towel. Remove the jar lids from the bowl and set on a plate.

Working quickly, pour the apple butter into the jars, leaving about 1/2 inch headspace in each jar. Place a lid on top of each jar and lightly screw on the ring, so it holds but is still loose. Use the jar lifter to return the jars to the canning pot, making sure they're upright and covered by at least 1 inch of water. Bring the canning pot to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove the jars and place on a towel. Check the lids to make sure they've sealed after 1 hour (when you press the center of the lid, it shouldn't push down or pop back up). If any haven't sealed, refrigerate immediately. Don't move the sealed jars for 12 hours. When they've finally cooled, label and store.

Pumpkin pie

This time of year, Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" always seems to be stuck in my head. Yes, I did play it in class because it connected to our Lord of the Rings discussion, but it's also just so seasonally appropriate. "Leaves are falling all around....time I was on my way." It's the perfect thing to sing while crunching through the gold and red leaves on the sidewalk.

Erin of Reading My Tea Leaves made the funny, and true, observation that bloggers are totally obsessed with the seasons. These days, blogs are all about spiced apples and warm cider and crisp fall days. I'm guilty of this, too. But it seems appropriate that blogs about food and simple living--the ones I read--are focused on the seasons and their changing, because in many ways we're still closely tied to the land and the weather. Maybe we aren't farmers, but many of us purchase food from farmers' markets, and our meals therefore depend on what's in season. Our outdoor activities, the shapes of our days, our clothing--all determined by the seasons. It's a lot easier to run down the block for a morning coffee when the weather's still crisp and cool, not yet biting. And I always find myself heading outside more often in every season but winter. For some reason, bundling up in scarves and puffy coats makes venturing outside for a walk just a bit more difficult.

With that in mind, I've been trying to enjoy these last days of beautiful autumn. We've been lucky in Providence, with golden days and warm temperatures and just a few cold snaps in between. It's perfect weather for picking apples and going for long walks and sitting on the porch with hot mulled cider (see? I can't get away from it!).

Last weekend, filled with the spirit of fall, Josh and I headed out to Seekonk to pick pumpkins. The pumpkin picking itself was majorly disappointing; picture a field dotted with pumpkins already plucked from the vine, so little kids didn't have to work too hard. But we had fun walking around the farm, getting lost in the corn maze, and talking to goats. (Josh hates goats, by the way--the shape of their pupils makes them look evil or something.) Then we loaded up on carving pumpkins, decorative gourds, and a sugar pumpkin for baking.

Back at home, we carved some impressive jack-o-lanterns, which proceeded to mold within one week (damn this warm weather!). The sugar pumpkin I cut into pieces and baked in the oven, until it felt soft under the touch of a fork. (I made sure not to follow my dad's example, where he stuck an entire, whole pumpkin in the oven to roast. He realized that something was wrong when he heard a bang and found the entire kitchen covered in pumpkin guts.)

Baked pumpkin looks a little yellower than the canned stuff, but it tastes just as good. Fresher, even, though that may be my imagination. Pureed, it goes nicely in an old-fashioned pie. I returned to Little House on the Prairie for this one, because there's just something about fall and harvest time that makes me long for the Ingalls family. And Ma Ingalls did not disappoint. This is a simpler pie than pumpkin pies we make today--fewer eggs, less milk. Prairie housewives wouldn't have much spice on hand, so I used just a dash of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

The best thing about it? Instead of covering up the squashy taste with sugar and intense spice, the flavorings only enhance the pumpkin, so the pie tastes like...well, a pumpkin pie. But not the sweet custard kind. The kind where the pumpkin is the starring ingredient.

Tell me, what are your favorite things about fall? What foods do you find yourself making this season?


Pumpkin Pie
(adapted from The Little House Cookbook)

for the pie shell:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the work surface
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, cubed
3 tbsp ice water

for the filling:
2 cups pumpkin puree (homemade or canned)
2 eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cup rich milk or half-and-half
pinch of salt
1 tsp maple syrup
pinch of spices (I used cinnamon, cloves, and ginger)

Make the pie shell:
Sift the flour and salt together, and with the tips of your fingers, work the butter into the flour until it feels like coarse meal. Add the ice water 1 tbsp at a time until the dough comes together when you work it with your hand. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll into a flat circle. Transfer to a 9-inch pie pan and even out the sides. Let sit while you make the filling.

Make the filling:
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Beat the eggs in a large bowl, then add the brown sugar, maple syrup, milk, salt, and pumpkin until well blended. Pour into the pie shell.

Bake the pie in the center of the oven at 425 F for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 F and bake until a toothpick inserted into the filling comes out clean. NOTE: the baking time will vary depending on the fat content of the milk you use. I used 1%, which took about an hour and a half to bake total. With half-and-half, the baking time should be about 40 minutes.

Cool pie before serving.

This meal brought to you by Christopher Columbus

Ah, Columbus Day. I'm not sure there's any other secular holiday more filled with angst and mixed feelings than this one.

When I was little, we learned the basics of Columbus Day. We sang that catchy song, the one that goes, "In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..." and read picture books about the brave Spanish navigator who discovered the Americas. To me, Columbus Day always brought to mind the classic image of a stuffy European man, dressed circa the Renaissance, talking pleasantly with smiling natives who are wearing almost nothing. That's how it was taught in elementary school, at any rate.

Turns out the story went a little differently. It wasn't until middle school that I heard the first rumblings of discontent. We read Joy Hakim's entertaining histories, A History of Us, and she hinted that Christopher Columbus was not the hero he was made out to be. And in high school, I learned the full truth. Columbus treated his crew harshly, lied about who saw land first and what they found there, and kidnapped natives to lead him to gold. Later European explorers carried on his legacy by enslaving the native populations of the Americas, killing those who didn't cooperate, and laying the groundwork for future colonization.

Yet other changes were not as obvious. In the spirit of cultural exchange, European explorers took examples of American food, animals, goods, and people back to their kings and queens. In return, they brought European crops, animals, and goods to their new colonies, hoping to replicate European life on foreign soil. There's a fascinating book about how British colonists in Virginia and New England permanently changed the American landscape, simply by using European farming techniques and importing cows and pigs who dug up the soil. Old World crops and animals mixed with New World in both hemispheres. But perhaps the most devastating change was completely invisible: the syphilis, smallpox, and other Old World diseases that spread silently through the Americas. Without built-in immunity to these diseases, the native populations were decimated. Europeans could conquer the land simply by setting foot on it.

This massive exchange of culture, crops, animals, people, and disease was termed the Columbian Exchange by historian Alfred W. Crosby in the 1970s. Not only did it permanently change the newly-"discovered" lands of the Americas, it changed the Old World, too. Today we grow food and raise animals in lands where they didn't originate. It's been such a long time, and they've adapted so well, that most of the time we don't even notice.

So, because I can't leave well enough alone, I decided to cook a Columbian Exchange dinner. What kind of meal could I make using ingredients found mostly at my farmers' market? What would that tell me about the extent of the Exchange?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

After collecting our goods at the farmers' market and rounding out the ingredients at our local grocery, Josh and I made:

• Roasted squash and shallot salad
• Pork chops with roasted apples and onions
• German chocolate hazelnut cake

Granted, a little fancier than our normal weekend dinners, but none of the ingredients were particularly exotic. But let's look at how those three dishes break down. Where did their ingredients originate?

While our dishes were certainly heavy on the Old World influence, it's telling that some of the main ingredients originated in the New World. There's thought that chickens might have originated in both the New World and the Old World (or, really, developed before the Americas were cut off from Eurasia).

The other interesting thing about this is how many of the above ingredients I was able to get at our farmers' market. Providence is big about buying local, and from the Pat's Pastured pork chops to shallots and onions, from apples to sage, a lot of the "Old World" ingredients are now grown "locally" in Rhode Island. I say "locally" because, yes, they are grown in Rhode Island. At this point, for example, apples are practically a native species. But before the Columbian Exchange, you never would have found them here. And that's a sobering reminder of all the other horrific and massive changes that occurred because of it.

Tell me, is there anything on this list that surprises you? And what do you think of Christopher Columbus?

Works cited: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond. 1493: Uncovering the World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby, via National Center for History in the Schools instructional resource Three Worlds Meet: The Columbian Encounter and its Legacy.

Harvest

Suddenly it's fall.

Vendors' stands overflow with corn and pumpkins and squash and apples at the farmers' market. Mornings are chilly enough to put on a warm sweater. Starbucks has switched over to Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Salted Caramel Mochas. Saver's now advertises Halloween costumes. Corporate America is ready to remind you that yes, it's really September, just in case you can't tell.

This afternoon I stopped by a craft store to get some dried flowers and other materials to make a fall wreath, which involved walking by garlands of garish orange leaves and flowers with colors you'd never find in nature. It's funny that big box stores tell us to mark fall, traditionally a time of harvesting natural foods, with fake decorative plants. While I tried to find the least obnoxious materials for my wreath, I think it's still going to feature at least a few plastic grains.

Ah, well.

Recently I've found myself thinking a lot about harvest time and how to stay close to the land and the seasons. My parents visited briefly this weekend, and we walked around the new neighborhood and commented on the abundant gardens people grow here. My parents love to garden, though they seldom can devote as much time as they'd like to their plants. When I was little, they had a big plot in the backyard where they grew corn, squash, tomatoes, and giant pumpkins. There's a picture of me, aged 6 months, sitting on top of a pumpkin that's bigger than I am. Looking at old photos like that, I get the sense that our lives revolved around the garden and the seasons in a way that we've tried to recapture ever since. My dad still tends to a few tomato and cantaloupe plants, and you all know the saga of my own kitchen garden. But there's something about the demanding nature of a big garden that ties you down to the land until you've harvested every last crop.

(I tend to get rather poetical and starry-eyed about the idea of farming. I suspect that if I ever did start my own farm, those romantic notions would never survive.)

So, mind full of dreams and desires to root myself to the earth, I've been looking at some photos from the old garden. The year my sister was born, my parents planted wheat and harvested it at the end of the summer. In a few exhausting days, my grandmother helped my parents reap, thresh, and grind the wheat into flour, that my dad then used to make bread.

It's a great story, one that speaks to my family's strange desire to mimic old-fashioned farming methods.

I love looking at these photos from long ago. There's my sister, just a babe in arms.

There I am, a little two-year-old helping out with the threshing and the bread-making. There are my parents, younger versions of themselves when they had more time to work in the garden. And my grandmother, with whom I wish I could share my growing love of all things crafty and historical.

And this last photo, where my dad is teaching me how to knead bread, which explains everything about this blog.

Happy fall, friends.

A tale of two peanut butters

This weekend the weather turned. It's been hot and muggy all week, the air dense with rain. And now the heat has burned off and it actually feels like fall. Supposedly it won't last, but after Saturday, we'll take it.

Even though summer is my favorite season, there are loads of things I like about fall. The crisp leaves, the way the air feels fresh and brisk, cooking with apples and pumpkins, going to harvest festivals. I love getting ready for school (which is probably why I became a teacher), picking out new notebooks and pens and binders. That back-to-school trip to Office Max or Staples, where the shelves are full of notebooks and the air is crisp with possibility...sigh.

I'm a huge nerd.

This year things are quite different for me as a teacher, since I'm working part-time as a humanities teacher at a Montessori school. As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot to get used to about this new set-up. Aside from a few bumps, it's been going smoothly, but I'm still trying to figure out the most important thing: lunch.

When do I eat it? Do I eat it in the classroom with the children? Do I wait until I go home? If I don't get out of the building until 12:30, and I don't get home until 1:15, will I be dying of hunger? What should I make? What's portable and easy to heat up when there's a line of children waiting to use the microwave?

As you can see, it's a topic fraught with anxiety.

At my previous school, teachers ate separately from students and had time to heat up their food and chat with each other. At this school, teachers eat in the classroom with their students and manage to down a few bites in between kids asking where the forks and knives are, if they can go outside and play because they finished their lunches in five minutes, etc. A very different experience. So far I've been sticking to salads, but I'm itching to try something new. Exotic sandwiches? Maybe soup?

Lo and behold, The "Settlement" Cook Book had just what I needed: a whole chapter on sandwiches for luncheon. You'd typically make these recipes for an afternoon picnic or an informal luncheon with your closest lady friends. I flipped through the chapter, looking for something that sounded promising. And then I found it: "Peanut paste for sandwiches."

The 1903 equivalent of peanut butter! A classic school lunch! Even the recipe was easy: after crushing half a cup of peanuts (with your modern food processor), you mix in a cup of boiling water, some cornstarch, and let the whole mixture thicken for 8 minutes, after which you season it with poultry spices. Aside from the poultry spices, it seemed pretty straightforward.

Little did I know. I'm not sure what kind of peanuts Mrs. Kander used when she wrote the recipe, but those crushed peanuts did not thicken into a paste until I'd added a tablespoon of cornstarch and boiled the heck out of it for half an hour. So by the time I sat down to lunch, my expectations weren't too high. I decided to compare the peanut paste with Jif Natural peanut butter from our pantry, rounding out the whole meal with some lingonberry jam (thank you, Ikea) and carrots. Like I said, a classic school lunch. With a twist.

And the twist is this: peanut paste tastes pretty much like you crushed up some peanuts and mixed them with water. It's less appetizing than whole shelled peanuts, and the poultry spices make it more savory than sweet. I found myself nibbling on my Jif peanut butter and jelly sandwich in between every bite of the peanut paste one. While this recipe isn't one of my major failures, it's a disappointment.

I'll stick with Jif.