Stories of Food

By: Sue deBruijn, Visitor Services and Retail Manager

As we continue our focus on foods of New York State to coincide with the Good Eats! New York’s Fabulous Foods exhibit, The Farmers’ Museum Store has become a fabulous resource for cookbooks.

There are so many to choose from, but book buyer Donna Williams has been very selective, procuring several relating to the exhibit; such as Hog Island – Oysters Lovers Cookbook, Ice Cream, the delicious History, Jell-O Classic Recipes.

Most notably is one that we stumbled upon recently, and we’re proud to say that we are one of only 25 stores within New York State that is carrying it so far!  The title is Taste and Tales of New York, by Ann Pieroway.  At first sight we knew it was a perfect fit for the Store.  It is unique in several ways.  Not only does it have 200+ incredible recipes, many of which come from New York State landmarks such as Tavern On The Green and The Otesaga Resort, but it’s also full of delightful facts about New York State.

One of the first things that struck me as I leafed through the cookbook was the thoughtful dedication; “To the brave men, women and children who lost their lives on September 11, 2011, and to the first responders who sacrificed their lives to save others.  Always Remember!”  Also, a portion of the profits from the cookbook are dedicated to selected projects throughout New York State.

From there you turn the page to find interesting short stories and illustrations regarding historical facts and places of New York State.  The Appetizers and Beverage section begins with an illustration of Henry Hudson’s ship, “Half Moon.”  Soups and Salad is adorned by none other than Lady Liberty, Entrees has the Erie Canal in 1825, and so on.

The stories keep you turning pages.  From a half page story about Henry Hudson, to the Search for Mia, an escaped Egyptian Cobra from the Bronx Zoo in 2011, they cover all spectrums.  And be sure not to miss those which relate to The Farmers’ Museum and the Fenimore Art Museum as well!

Many of the foods highlighted in the Good Eats! exhibit have their history described in the pages of this delightful cookbook as well as related recipes, such as Egg Cream for One, Thousand Island Dressing, and Buffalo Chicken Wings.

So far my favorite recipe is Tapenade Dip on page 18, although I leave out the anchovies!

This is truly the quintessential New York State cookbook, and we are delighted to offer autographed copies in The Farmers' Museum Store. It's coming son to our web store as well.

Cutting Firewood: Preparing for Winter, Part 2

By: Garet Livermore, Vice-President for Education

Winter is a good time to cut and get up a year’s stock of firewood. Farmers at this season have less work to perform and wood is easier loaded and drawn when there is good sleighing, than in summer.  But remember one thing: Don’t attempt to warm all creation, by working hard to chop and haul fire-wood, and at the same time leave your dwelling so open that the cold wind will rush in on all sides. By all means make your house comfortable.  Bank it up and have all of its walls tight with good non-conductors of heat. While taking good care of those in-doors that can can talk, and tell their wants, never forget the dumb brutes in your barn-yard and stables. “The merciful man is merciful to his beast.” -- Editor, Genesee Farmer

In today’s world, heating bills are foremost on many people’s minds as we move into the coldest months of winter. People in early America were also concerned with heating, and they needed to work through the year to provide enough wood to heat their homes and make hot water for cooking, cleaning and bathing. Most firewood was cut in the winter when it could be easily cut and transported into barnyards for processing, but a good part of the other seasons were also taken up with splitting, stacking and moving wood around to keep fires in burning constantly through the long northern winter. Early Americans used prodigious amounts of wood to stoke the flames in their fireplaces. In Colonial times, before the improved efficiencies of the Rumford fireplace and later wood stoves, farmers had to cut, split and manage upwards of 40 cords of wood to keep their homes warm and their farms in operation.

To put those 40 cords of wood in perspective we can compare them to today’s heating bills.  According to the U.S. government, each full cord of wood contains about 15.3 million BTU units of heat, so 40 cords of wood equals 612 million BTU units to heat, light and do chores on the average 18th century farm.  If we had to purchase that heat in the form of home heating oil it would require over 5,000 gallons of #2 fuel oil.  With today’s average cost per gallon of home heating oil in New York State hovering around $3.27 per gallon, the average farm would have an annual heating bill of well over $17,000.

Today heating oil is neatly delivered to our tanks and all we need to do is turn up our thermostats when the house grows cold or call the oil company to top off our tank when it is running low. Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries spent a great deal of their time managing their firewood supply and making sure that they had enough wood to get through the winter. Farms in rural areas generally included 15 to 20 acre woodlots as part of the property. In managing their wood supply, farmers generally cut an acre each year with the assumption that it would grow back to be of usable size by the time they came back to that spot in fifteen years. Farmers also bartered for wood and, if they lived near enough to cities to make transportation worthwhile, sold firewood as a cash crop for as much as $6 per cord in the mid-19th century.

The technology of cutting firewood was vastly different in the 19th century.  In the present, people who heat with wood have a wide variety of power equipment available to make the job easier, including chain saws, hydraulic wood splitters and even motorized wheel barrows.  Until about 1870, the most commonly used tool for processing wood was the American Pattern axe.  Axes were very efficient for felling and limbing trees, but were not as good at splitting the trees into usable chunks of firewood.  For this purpose most wood cutters relied on splitting wedges and heavy wooden “beetles” or sledge hammers to split their wood.  Cross-cut saws were not often used for felling trees until the last quarter of the 19th century because they were initially not as efficient as axes and were much more expensive to purchase.


In early America settlers often performed a dual function when they gathered firewood, creating a bank of fuel for the year as they cleared land for cultivation. This was a very labor intensive activity that required help. Neighbors often worked as a group to cut and clear the woods, pull stumps and do the initial plowing to open the land for the next season’s crops. This also allowed settlers to share necessary tools and equipment like oxen with sledges, horses and plows as well as hand tools like mauls and wedges. This made full use of a community’s resources to meet everyone’s needs.

The first energy crisis in America occurred in the 1740s when a growing population and inefficient energy practices caused a great shortage in firewood in New England and other heavily populated areas. Open hearth fireplaces were tremendously wasteful. Fully ninety percent of their heat energy went up the chimney, and the fire tended to pull more cold outside air in through poorly insulated walls and windows. Benjamin Franklin developed his famous stove, then called the “Pennsylvania Fire-Place,” as a tremendous advance in wood burning technology. On being asked about the stove he had the following reply, which is as relevant today as it was then: "By the help of this saving invention our wood may grow as fast as we consume it, and our posterity may warm themselves at a moderate rate, without being obliged to fetch their fuel over the Atlantic." The net effect on the lives of average Americans of this stove - and others invented in the 19th century - was dramatic. By the 1850s the average northern farm required 60% less firewood, which meant that it required 15 cords worth of trees rather than the 40 of colonial times.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for HOMEMADE ice cream!!

By: Erin O'Brien, Agricultural Programs Intern

Today’s entry came straight from the activity tent at the Junior Livestock Show. The activity tent was filled with fun things for kids to do while they were visiting the show – they could ‘milk’ the fiberglass cow, create their own flowers from a coffee filter and pipe cleaners, color and cut out a 3D barn with barn animal puppets, make butter, discover the history of the Junior Livestock Show (this year was the 63rd show!) and... make homemade ice cream!

History Lesson Time!

Ice cream was favored by the Caliphs of Baghdad. Arabs were the first to use milk as a major ingredient in its production, sweetening the ice cream with sugar rather than fruit juice as early as the 10th century. Today, New Zealanders consume the most ice cream per capita at 27.5 quarts per person, per year! They are followed by Americans, who consume 23 quarts per person, per year. (2007)

It’s actually quite simple to make your own ice cream, if you follow the steps below. The Farmers’ Museum’s lovely and talented Mary Margaret Kuhn will show you how.

Step 1: Gather your ingredients (and your eager assistants!)

To make vanilla ice cream as we did, just follow this recipe:

HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM
(Did you know that vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream? 28% of all ice cream purchased in supermarkets is vanilla!)

1 Cup heavy whipping cream

1 and 1/2 Cups Half and Half

3/4 Cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

Ice cubes

1-2 Cups Kosher salt

2 Plastic ice cream “globes”, (you can also use a 1b coffee can to pour all the ingredients into and duct tape it shut, and put it into a 3 lb coffee can, and pack the ice cubes and Kosher salt around it to achieve the same results)

Step 2: Pour heavy cream, half and half, sugar, vanilla, and pinch of salt into the smaller part of plastic globe (or 1 lb. coffee can)

Step 3: Pack in the ice cubes and kosher salt tightly all around the smaller part of the plastic globe (or in the 3 lb. coffee can)

Step 4:  Roll it! If you have many eager assistants as we did, have them sit in a circle with plenty of space between each other. Roll the globes back and forth. (Or 3 lb. coffee can, also sealed with duct tape) Pretend it’s a hot potato and pass it by rolling it as fast as you can! Sing songs with ‘rolling’ as the theme. (Like ‘Proud Mary’) Roll the globes for 15 minutes or longer. (With coffee cans, it’s advised that after 15 minutes, you open the larger can and dump out the ice and water. Open the smaller can and stir the ingredients. Then reseal and repack the cans. Roll for 10 more minutes.)

Step 5: Open the globes, (or smaller coffee can) serve and enjoy! Don’t forget to thank a cow!

For other ice cream flavors, go to this website.

Smokehouses Today

By: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts Smokehouses still exist today in the back, or more often side, yards of many older homes. The ones that still stand tend to have been constructed of common field stone. Some are still in good shape and living on to serve other purposes, while others are falling in. A couple of years back Anneke Nordmark, a student in the Cooperstown Graduate Program, came to me to ask about smokehouses because she had to write a paper on them for a vernacular architecture class. We looked at the Lippitt Farmstead smokehouse, but she wanted to look at others. Because I was also interested in tracking down a few others, I suggested a road trip. Growing up driving around the area surrounding Cooperstown, I knew where several of these smokehouses existed. Early one morning, Anneke and I got into my car and proceeded to track down many of the smokehouses that I had seen. I had two questions burning in my mind that I wanted to get answers to. First, what was the location of the smokehouse and its average distance away from the house? Second, what was the average size of a smokehouse, and what materials were used to make it? After driving around that morning, we came to several conclusions. Most smokehouses were located within 100 feet of the house on the rear side. Almost all were made of stone, some having very creative masonry. On average, the houses were about 8’ square and about 5’ high. Door openings tended to be framed from ground level, spanned almost as tall as the house itself and had about a 30” opening. Perhaps most interestingly, some still had residual ash in their fire pits and creosote residue on rafters and interior walls. Do you have an old smokehouse on your property? We want to know about it. Leave us a comment so we can add it to our list.

In the Smokehouse (Smoked! Part 2)

By: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts

After hanging the meat to dry for 24 hours we began smoking. On Saturday morning, Marieanne Coursen, one of our farmers on the farmstead “fired” the smokehouse. The fuels we use to smoke are corn cobs, or “cobs” as they were called in the 19th c. and apple wood. The cobs and apple wood give a sweet smoke. Resinous woods such as pine should never be used as they give an acrid taste to the meat. The fire will burn low and smoky for several weeks. Each morning the smokehouse will be fired and allowed to smoke during the day. Temperatures in the smokehouse range from 100 degrees to 120 degrees—just warm enough to cure and dry the meat out. Check back to see how the smoking goes.

Smoked!

by: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts On Friday, April 24, we began preparing our meat for the upcoming season. The first step in the smoking process is drying the meat. We hung the hams, bacon and mutton in the brick smokehouse at the Lippitt Farmstead for 24 hours to dry.

As with many cooking techniques, there have been a variety of different ways of completing them that have developed over the years. According to Lydia Maria Child, the author of The American Frugal Housewife, the “old-fashioned way” was to rub the meats with molasses and a mixture of salt petre and salt every day for six weeks and then hang them in the smokehouse. Ms. Child was not overly fond of this method, writing, “some epicures and cooks, think the old-fashioned way of preparing hams and bacons troublesome and useless.” I have to agree with those “epicures and cooks” of the nineteenth century. Here at the museum, we prepare the hams, bacon and mutton the “modern” way. Back in November right after butchering, the meat was placed in a “pickle” or brine—a solution of salt, salt petre, molasses and water—and was left there until ready for drying and smoking. We have been using this process for preparing meats at the museum for nearly 20 years and find it very effective. In the nineteenth century, hams and bacons were commonly smoked, and occasionally mutton was too. Smoking improves the flavor of mutton. We generally smoke all of our meats, including mutton. Saturday we begin the smoking process.

Cooking with Maple: Wrap-up

By: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts During March we exprimented with maple syrup as a sweetner. Here are some things we learned:

It is less sweet than granulated sugar, so if you like your recipes sweeter use a larger amount of syrup, if not, use a lesser amount.

It contains (obviously) more moisture than granulated sugar.

It does have a slight acidity which needs to be neutralized for the batter to rise and form. Add ¼ to ½ tsp. baking soda if the recipe does not call for buttermilk, sour milk or sour cream. We did not add soda to the cookies and they worked just fine.

It will tend to caramelize and burn on the top and edges before a batter using a solid sweetener.

Enjoy! Try giving maple syrup a try as a sweetener.

Cooking with Maple

By: Gwen Miner, Supervisor of Domestic Arts This past Sunday, March 1 was the first of five “Sugaring off Sundays” that we offer at the museum during the month of March. While the sap has not yet started to run here at the museum, the farmers made Jack Wax out on the green, the schoolhouse was open, and Blacksmith Steve Kellogg made several new “S” hooks to fit the crane in the More House. My co-worker Pat and I cooked with maple in the More House kitchen. It was a cold day and even with the radiant heat and the fire going it was tough getting things warmed up enough to mix and cook. We did not get to bake the Maple Cake recipe that I wrote about in my last blog, but did try two other recipes. We made Maple Tea Cake and Sugar Cookies using the recipes from The Art of Maple Cookery that was printed years ago here in the print shop. These recipes let us try out two different kinds of maple to cook with: maple sugar and maple syrup. Making sugar cookies also let us show a number of other processes in the kitchen: rolling, cutting and baking in the brick oven.

I made the Maple Tea Cake using two different shortenings. I used lard in one and butter in the other and got two different results. Both results were good; the cake with lard was lighter and dryer and had a hint of the “lard” while the butter cake was sweeter and chewier. I conducted an informal taste test on Monday with co-workers who decided that the butter cake was better. Following is the recipe as written in the book and in parentheses are the two shortenings and suggested sugar conversions.

MAPLE TEA CAKES 1 cup maple sugar shavings (1 cup maple syrup with shortening and ¾ with butter) 1/3 cup of fat (substitute butter or shortening, i.e. Crisco or lard) 1egg 3 tsp. of baking powder ¼ tsp. salt ½ cup sugar ¼ cup milk 2 cups flour ½ cup finely chopped walnuts (optional-did not add) Cream the sugar and fat and add the well-beaten egg. Sift the dry ingredients together and add alternately with the milk. Bake in small muffin tins. (I baked the cake in a tube type pan). (Bake at 350˚ until firm or a toothpick comes clean) The sugar cookies were great, so good that there were only four left by Monday morning.

SUGAR COOKIES 2 cups of maple syrup 1 cup sweet milk (regular milk) 4 eggs 1 cup of butter 2 tsp baking powder Enough flour to roll—about 5 cups Beat the sugar and butter to a cream, add the eggs well beaten. Add the milk, next the flour in which the baking powder has been well mixed. Roll and cut in any form to suit the taste. Bake in a moderate oven. (350˚ to 375˚)

Maple Sugar: Beyond Candy, Part 2

By: Gwen Miner, Domestic Arts Supervisor Every Sunday in the month we will be hosting our traditional Sugaring Off Sundays, at The Farmers' Museum. In the More House kitchen we will be cooking with maple sugar and syrup. We have used maple sugar in the historic foodways program here at the museum for many years, but this will be the first year that we will feature it, and maple syrup, in a specific cooking demonstration on Sugaring Off Sundays.

We will be using both traditional mid-19th century receipts that would have used maple sugar as well as a few from a cookbook that was printed here in our print shop back in the 1950s. Pat, my lead Domestic Arts Interpreter, tested some of these recipes and on Sundays we will cook them in the More House. In the meantime here’s a recipe for you to try. This one uses maple syrup, as maple sugar is hard to come by in quantity these days. Notice the directions read a bit differently than we are accustomed to today. I haven’t even tried these yet. If you try them out yourself, make sure to leave a comment for us so we know how it turned out, or come to one of our Sunday demonstrations to talk about it, or ask questions. Maple Cake ½ cup of shortening ½ cup of sugar 1 egg, yolks of 2 more 1 ½ cups of sifted cake flour ½ t. baking soda 2 t. baking powder ½ t. ginger ½ cup of hot water ½ t. salt Cream, shortening and sugar; add eggs beaten without separating. Sift and measure flour, then sift again with ginger, soda, baking powder and salt. Add to the first mixture, alternating with the syrup then the water. Bake in a tube pan at 375˚ about 50 minutes. Cover with maple icing. Nice to decorate with nutmeats. Icing ¼ cup of water ½ cup maple syrup 1/8 t. salt ½ cup brown sugar 1 egg white Boil sugar, maple syrup and water until it will spin in a thread. Pour stirring continually over the beaten egg to which salt has been added. Beat until cool enough to spread.

Thanksgiving at the Museum

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator Over the River and Through the Woods…recognize these words? They come from a poem, “A New-England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day,” published in 1845 by Lydia Maria Childs. Thanksgiving was the biggest holiday celebration for families in the 1840s (even bigger than Christmas!). The actual date of the holiday moved around from year to year until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be the national Thanksgiving celebration. Nineteenth-century New Yorkers celebrated Thanksgiving with feasting, religious services, and a break from their usual routines. This Thanksgiving weekend, I also had a break from my usual routine: I helped prepare dinner in the More House. I’d never done much other than watch museum staff cooking on the open hearth and baking in the fire-heated oven. Luckily, I was working under the guidance of Pat, an experienced and patient staff member. Our day was consumed with all the preparation, cooking, and cleanup. We roasted turkey, cooked vegetables, and baked holiday treats. I made dough for jam tarts, which we filled with jam made from the grapes that grow next to Bump Tavern. Cleaning out the ashes from the oven was the hottest part of my day. I had a wonderful time helping with the meal and talking to the visitors watching us cook. The best part of the day, though, came after all the food was ready and we could enjoy a sampling of our work!