Historical Food Fortnightly, Challenge 10: Let Them Eat Cake (plus bonus grub!)

This semester is kicking my butt, so I've had to let fun stuff slide--fun stuff like eating home-cooked food.  I did actually make three historic dishes for my book club last month, to go with Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.  I can't really figure out where they would fit into the challenges, so here they are all at once.

SHREWSBURY CAKE

Year/Region: 1855; Hartford, CT

How Did You Make It: I had noticed this recipe in The Improved Housewife: Or, Book of Receipts; with Engravings for Marketing and Carving by Mrs. A.L. Webster, a married lady, when I was looking for "foreign" names. The recipe jumped out at me because it's the name of a nearby road.



I followed the recipe faithfully, although if you notice, the recipe doesn't say at what temperature or for how long to cook the cake (which is actually more like a cookie). In fact, it doesn't mention cooking at all. I ended up baking at 350 for about 12-15 minutes. I sprinkled the cakes with powdered sugar both before and after baking.

Time to Complete: Because I had 3 dishes to make, I spent a big chunk of the morning cooking and worked on multiple dishes simultaneously. This one probably took about an hour from start to finish.

Total Cost: I had all the ingredients on hand.

How Successful Was It?: The large number of eggs make for a cake-like, slightly dense crumb. I loved the delicate flavor of the rose-water, but didn't love the texture as much. I have a feeling my book club members were slightly less than enthusiastic about any of these dishes, but they really weren't designed for a modern palate. There were plenty of leftovers, which surprisingly never seemed to go stale. I feel they're kind of a generic cookie/cake.

How Accurate Is It? I used an electric mixer and a convection oven. I also used silpats instead of buttering the cookie sheet. Otherwise, it's an authentic recipe. The eggs were from our birds.


CHICKEN SALAD

Year/Region: 1855; Hartford, CT

How Did You Make It: I wanted a protein for my book club spread, but didn't want anything too heavy, hot, or messy. I've had this chicken salad before and quite like it. Again, it's from The Improved Housewife.



I decided to double the recipe since I was cooking for a crowd. I boiled some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. It's nearly impossible these days to buy a chicken of that size; roasting chickens today are just massive.  I used cider vinegar and prepared yellow mustard. Instead of essence of celery, I used celery seed, which was suggested as a substitute in another recipe in the same book. I also opted to serve it on a bed of lettuce and tomato for color and put a basket of dinner rolls nearby for anyone who preferred a sandwich.

Essence of celery seems like a fascinating foodstuff we've completely lost:



Time to Complete: Maybe an hour, the bulk of which was waiting for the water to come to a boil.

Total Cost: It's been a few weeks, but I do recall that I winced at the price of chicken. I had everything else on hand.

How Successful Was It?: I've always liked boiling chicken. It's so fast and easy and not messy in the way that frying is. Today, we expect to have mayonnaise-based chicken salad, but this was lovely, if a bit dry. As my DH and I worked away at the leftovers, I tended to mix in a bit of mayo.

How Accurate Is It? Fairly accurate. I used chicken breasts only instead of a whole bird. The eggs were from our chickens. The one substitute I made was a period one.

PERSIMMON PUDDING

Year/Region: 1870; Oxford, NC

How Did You Make It:  I wanted a third dish and recalled I had a lot of persimmons on hand that I could put to good use. I cast about and came up with this recipe from Mrs. Elliott's Housewife: Containing Practical Receipts in Cookery by Sarah A. Elliott.




I had harvested local persimmons last fall and was able to raid the freezer. The day we harvested, a friend and I gathered all we could and tried several labor-intensive methods before finally settling on a chinois, those cone-shaped strainers you sometimes see in junk stores. We each ended up with three gallons of pulp and I've been gradually trying different recipes. I opted for the cornmeal option and baked in a pyrex 9x13 baking pan.

Time to Complete: Well, if you count the persimmon bit, for-freaking-evah! Otherwise, I ended up looking up a more modern pudding recipe and baking for about 40 minutes.

Total Cost: I had everything on hand. At this point, if you've done the math, you'll notice that I have used 17 eggs in just these three dishes!

How Successful Was It?: Moderately. I found that I don't really love persimmon and have a feeling the book club members didn't either. It has a distinct taste that lingers. The texture of this is also something modern eaters aren't used to--dense and quite moist. That said, I generally love puddings. It transported and held up well. I took to serving very small pieces at breakfast time. The chickens eventually enjoyed the last of the leftovers.

How Accurate Is It? As far as I can tell, very. I hand-harvested and hand-processed the persimmons, and they were a local variety from a nature reserve nearby. I followed the recipe faithfully.

There you go. Lord knows when I'll get a chance to cook again.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things I Love about Winter

1. The way the animals want to snuggle. The pup will sleep under the covers, and I sometimes end up with three pets curled up with me in the armchair.
2. I can indulge my hermit tendencies without guilt. Other than feeding the chickens, I can stay indoors for days at a time.
3. Our ventless gas fireplace. It heats most of the first floor for pennies a day and is lovely to look at.
4. God, I love mohair. I pretty much live in it all winter long.
5. Frost on the windows, which is probably a sign of some sort of expensive house problem, but I prefer to imagine fairies skating over the glass.
6. I keep a twin-sized down comforter on my arm chair. The dog curls up under it, and I have my own little furnace. Every hour, he'll pop out, gasping for air, go guzzle some water, and then climb right back in.
7. Switching over to flannel sheets is one of my favorite moments of the year.
8. Our dual-controlled heated mattress pad. Much nicer than an electric blanket. I'll crank it up an hour before bed.
9. A few years ago, my metabolism changed, so now my internal thermostat doesn't seem to be bothered by the cold very much.
10. Bare branches against the sky.

I don't really mention knitting because the joints in my hands are bothered by the cold, but I do find myself wearing an awful lot of it.

Chickens in the Bathtub

Last year at this time, my bathtub was full of baby chicks. This year, although I really really really wanted chicks again, I opted to use the bathtub for seedlings instead.

The chickens will lay for three more years, whereas last year I never managed to get in a garden at all. This year, LB used the shower curtain rod to rig up a grow light, and yesterday our first seedlings spouted, cabbage.

I've been using Sprout Robot to help me schedule my planting, which seems just low key enough for my needs. I find seed catalogues overwhelming and confusing. I have well-founded fears of investing a lot of cash in seeds that I never end up planting. So far, I've invested less than $3 by making my own seed cups from egg shells (cute, eh?) and only buying seeds as I need them. Tomorrow, I will stop by the hardware store and pick up some chive seeds.

Knitting has been happening, but I've largely just been noodling around. For some reason, I've had dishcloth urges.

I don't question these urges. I just knit.

We've also recommitted to our resolution to entertain once a month. It took until yesterday, but we did fit in our first guests of 2013 for a vegan/wheat-free brunch with the following menu.

• parfaits layered with almond-milk yogurt (which didn't suck as badly as I feared), assorted berries, granola, and sorghum
• tofu scrambled with onion and bell pepper
• hash-browned potatoes
• roasted asparagus
• optional poached eggs (which our guests were willing to eat because our chickens are so happy)
• and mimosas, of course!

I didn't subject our guests to an obnoxious photo shoot, but perhaps with the next batch.

Chickie Pies

Things have largely settled down on the chicken front, but it was a challenging spring.

Out of our first batch of chicks, one ended up being a rooster (now residing in a neighbor's freezer), and I sold three pullets to someone in my neighborhood.

About six weeks after getting our first batch of baby chicks, I spotted some Polish chicks in the feed store. I'd really wanted Polish to begin with, but they weren't available the week we got our first batch of chicks.

See? Aren't they adorable?

Alas, they both ended up being males and two months later I had to sell them on Craigslist. My first call was from a chatty sort who knew absolutely zip about chickens. I explained that she couldn't have two roosters, but she wanted both and wanted to talk about it for a long time. She wanted to know if the rooster would fertilize the egg before or after it was laid. She talked about putting the rooster with a hen "for a few hours" until he did the deed. She finally flaked out. Shocking, I know.

I sold the first boy the next day, but the second one took about two more weeks. He finally went to a guy with scary teeth who wanted to know if I would deliver, probably because he was legally enjoined from crossing state lines. I hope the little guy is doing okay.

For the brief time I had them, I loved the Polish and will probably try again with them next year by buying a whole batch. Chicks are generally sold in batches of twenty-five, so initially we went in with some other neighbors to split the order. As a result, we didn't really get what we wanted. Now, having sold six chickens from right in the middle of the city, I'm feeling pretty cocky confident about my ability to move chicks.

Another challenge of the Polish was that they were six weeks younger than the first batch; they couldn't all be housed together. So, the rocks moved to the spare bathtub on the first floor and the Polish went in a washtub in the same tiny room. When they finally all moved outside, I needed two separate runs as well.

Other challenges?

The tiny little dog--the tiny, little, cute, fluffy, dog--it turns out, is absolutely a stone cold wolf at heart. He literally tried to snatch a day-old chick out of my hands. For the longest time, I couldn't even get him to pay attention to me if they were anywhere around. He was banished from the bathroom, obviously, but his predatory tendencies meant that once the chicks went outside, he was banished from the yard as well.

Our mornings went something like this:

• Wake in a blinding panic around 3:45 a.m. when the rooster started crowing. Roosters are illegal in the city, and I lived in terror that someone would report us. The rooster was still too small to bother butchering, but I could ill afford any kind of city inspection.
• Go downstairs and let the tiny dog outside in the backyard where he spent his time NOT peeing and NOT pooping, but snuffling about, eating feathers, and trying to dig his way into the temporary chicken run.
• Meanwhile, I'd wrangle the six older chicks into a cat carrier, which got progressively heavier as the weeks went on, and then hide them in the stairwell from the dog.
• I'd feed the cats at some point while the dog was out, since in addition to eating chicks, he also likes to eat cat food.
• Then, I'd let the dog in, cordon him off in the living room and feed him breakfast.
• I'd retrieve the chickens from the stairwell and take them out to their run.

• Next, I'd hand carry the Polish outside to a large wire crate.

• Then I might go back to bed for a few hours since it was just now dawn.

Our afternoons involved me taking the dog for a long walk, since he couldn't go out in the yard while the chicks were outside. Evenings reversed the morning routine. It was a major hassle.

With time, fewer chickens, some training, and the installation of the chicken run on the far side of the back fence, things have largely settled down.

After a few fits pitched on my part, LB largely finished the chicken run. The roosters are gone. The chickens, now numbering within the legal limit, are permanently outside. We've got our bathroom back. The tiny dog still eats feathers, but no longer charges the coop and can be trusted outside again.

Now we're just waiting for eggs.

Pet Parade

Grades are due in three days, so of course I am quilting.

I entered one of the more tractable chickens in our local pet parade a few weeks ago and aside from winning the prize for "Most Unusual Pet," we also got a gift bag with treats and coupons and pens and such, including a t-shirt.

I hardly ever wear printed t-shirts, so for some bizarre reason (like grades being due in three days), I decided to make it into a tiny quilt for Steu's dog crate.

Yep. Grades are due in three days.

Homesteading

Since my former LYS boss let me go, I have more time on my hands and a lot less disposable income. So this year, we're going to be doing more gardening. LB built me some raised beds two years ago, and I gardened quite a bit the first year, then did nothing last year because my schedule was so full.

No excuses this year. We can't afford not to garden.

I am looking forward to spring lettuces and radishes and want to get a cold frame going as well.

The really big homesteading news is this:


I raised chickens for many years when I was a kid, sold the eggs even. We'd been talking for a few years about getting chickens, but weren't sure we'd have the time and didn't want to commit to an order of 25, which is most hatcheries' minimum. The city sets a limit of 4 animals per lot, which means we could only have 5 chicks (1 dog + 2 cats + 5 chicks = 2 lots).

Then a neighbor suggested going in together and three of us were able to pick what we wanted. I, of course, wanted antebellum breeds and really got my heart set on Polish Crested. There weren't any Polish when the neighbor went to pick up the chicks, alas, so we settled for Barred Rocks. I swapped out a few for a Sussex (another antebellum breed) and a Wyandotte (a post-war breed, but soooo pretty).

Yma Sumac doesn't even seem to realize they're here; Sherman was very interested at first, and Steuben has been completely obnoxious about wanting to get to them.

Wish us luck! Are the eggs here yet?