I have been curious about my way-back-family's lifestyles since I first started searching for them.
Lately I've discovered the world of food historians and their research work into the world's repositories. They have been looking for recipes made by early American's, Native and Colonizers, people from other lands and cooking as recent as the 1970's!
For some of the early Colonists on the east coast of America, learning how to plant and prepare maize [corn] from the instructions of Native Peoples, was the only thing that kept them from starving. And did you know that Native folks in the 17th Century used controlled forest fires to prepare farm land the way we do today?
This was done "to clear their fields, drive game, and reduce insects" (Zanger, 2003). A side effect of this was to produce habitat favorable to berries. And they made something called "Strawberry Bread" with corn meal and sliced strawberries.
Use fine ground white corn meal, hull and dice strawberries into small pieces [don't puree]. Add one coup of cornmeal to one cup of small diced strawberries. Make a soft dough. Add more cornmeal to get a slightly firmer dough. Make into patties and place on wooden plank or soapstone griddle greased with bear fat [we can use a greased baking sheet in a 350 degree oven]. Cook 30 minutes, turning once around 15 minutes.
From the book, "The American History Cookbook" by Mark H. Zanger
This book is great! It covers our food traditions here in America from the First Nations folks in the 1200's all to way to the 1970's.
The Smithsonian has had an interesting foodways book out for a while now. The "Smithsonian Folklife Cookbook" Katherine S. and Thomas M. Kirlin 1991.
This tome follow American foodways from the early Native foods to New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, Upper Great Lakes, Great Plains, the West and Southwest and all the way out to The Islands.
The book explains the food history of a region and how it was affected by the influx of new immigrants over the centuries. So you can cook from recipes made by your Upper Great Lakes Cornish, Finn, German, African, Arab or Cambodian ancestors.
How about Muskrat with Corn or Spatzle or Qtayf or even Squeaky Cheeze! In here I found Swedish recipes I remember making when I was a kid. Maybe things your grandparents cooked are in here too!
The fun cookbook to look through was "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" by Joanne Lamb Hayes. In this book are recipes that I remember watching my mother prepare and that I eventually started cooking for myself. May of these WWII standards are still made in the home today. Mac and Cheese, Baked Bean with Salt Pork and Molasses, and of course Fried Chicken. Chicken and game meat were easier to obtain during the rationing years. So was oleo because butter was being shipped overseas. So the home cook had to come up with new recipes to "make do" when something was rationed or there was a shortage. They came up with many ingenious ways to cope with a lack of sugar, good cuts of meat or other foods we consider essential today.
Do you still make tuna casserole? Canned fish was easier to get than cuts of beef back then. How about all those jello deserts? I still cringe when I think of that orange jello with the green beans in it. I think everyone put everything in jello, didn't they. Ever had Corned Beef Hash? That was a leftover from the war years. Sunday night folks prepared nice big meals if they had enough ration coupons. Then Monday the family knew they could expect a meal made from meat leftovers that had been "hashed" or chopped up fine and mixed with diced potatoes. We had to use everything because food was just hard to come by. With today's food prices, I bet people are going to have to start thinking of clever ways to use up leftovers from meals.
What kinds of foods did your ancestors eat? Do you have any family recipes that can be passed down to descendants? How about cooking stories to leave behind with your family history?
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