food museum blog

Books: Ezra Meeker, Veggie Purveyor to the Klondike

If you delight in letters--remember them?-- as well as food, American history, and familial fondness, read this book.  It's called Slick as a Mitten, by Dennis M. Larsen,  it's published by Washington State University Press , and it's about a character named Ezra Meeker.

The book, rich with old photos,  is based on Meeker's letters, mostly to his wife, Eliza Jane. She and Ezra came west on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and settled in Puyallup, Washington.  Meeker, along with his father, became a wealthy hop grower and broker, but at the close of the 19th century, he went bust.  The hops were infested with bugs, controlled only through exceedingly expensive methods. Ezra was also on the board of a bank, though not involved until it began to decline, all the other officers having abandoned it. He personally covered the bank's losses, all its customers, by spending most of his own money.

Unimaginable in this era of Bank of America et al?  The mid to late 1890's were a time of bank closings and financial downturn in the US.

Once gold was discovered in the Klondike area in 1897, the race was on. But, unsurprisingly, so many masses of people arriving in an inhospitable area did not find enough to eat. People suggested that there was more money to be made in supplying miners than in engaging in mining itself. "There are no fresh vegetables of any kind here," said one. 

Meeker took note of this and decided to supply both fresh and dried veg, as well as reconstitutable eggs to the populations springing up in Yukon tent cities. He specialized in granulated and sliced potatoes, dried cabbage, squash, sweet potatoes, turnips, pop corn, and fresh oysters from the east, hauling everything first by steamer, then along icy trails with "teamsters," and floating produce down the Yukon River.

Even lemons.

He was 67 when he started. In three years he had made possible the movement of almost 100 tons of food. And throughout those years, he wrote regularly to Wife, back home in Washington, signing himself Husband. It was Eliza Jane who supervised the dehydration of the eggs, and the preparation and packing of the veggies.

As for the phrase slick as a mitten,  Ezra lost his assets that way, he said, swiftly. I picture a thick leather mitten, coated with ice.

ps  Meeker planned the town of Puyallup, and named it. The name honored the native people there, known as the "generous people," but whether their generosity extended to the deeding of their lands to white settlers for hop growing I do not know. ..

Ancient Relation Wooed by Food!

15 years after her discovery in Ethiopia, and scads of research and papers later,
"Ardi," of the Ardipithecus ramidus gang,  is making her debut. She's one million years older than the fabled Lucy, and may represent a major step in the evolution of mating---dominant males with a chance of hooking up with Ardi apparently were those who dropped tasty tubers, ripe fruit, and seasoned ( entrails, bugs, caviar and champagne) at her feet. Or out on her limb. Apparently Ardi still spent most of her time in trees.

I , for one, am grateful that we bipedalists moved on from large canine-flaunting males as sexual partners to males knowing their way around seared Ahi tuna sandwiches with wasabi mayo.

Great piece on Ardi via the Natl Geographic here.    And here at the WaPo.  The journal, Science, in which the work is officially announced is here. ( Or should be, but Typepad is experiencing a glitch.)

( Thanks to ABC News et al,  "Artist's conception of what Ardipithecus ramidus would have looked like 4.4 million years ago."  J.H. Matternes/Science/ABC News Photo Illustration)

Nero's Rotating Dining Room? Trump That!

Archaeologists in Rome--both women, one French---have discovered a rotating dining room in Emperor Nero's Golden Palace. Written up in reports 60 years after Nero dispatched himself, and long sought, apparently the room actually exists. According to this report from the Telegraph,

"The leader of the four month dig, Françoise Villedieu, said her team discovered part of a circular room which was supported by a pillar with a diameter of more than 13 feet...The hall is said to have had a revolving wooden floor which allowed guests to survey a ceiling painted with stars and equipped with panels from which flower petals and perfume would shower onto the tables below." 

No word as to the food, alas.

Further details here.

Oldest Pubs in (Northern) Ireland?

Sean's in Athlone apparently has daub walls that go back to 900 AD, while Grace Niell's in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, got its first license back in 1611. 

I can imagine that there were folks quaffing hootch in 900 AD, but I doubt there was any licensing involved whatsoever. Still, both are handsome spots, and one imagines a Guinness would go down well in either.

Dying Among the Pomegranates

A young U.S. Marine died recently in Afghanistan. You may have read about him, in this AP story. His name was "Bernie" Bernard, and he was from Maine.

You might have missed that he died in a pomegranate grove. The Taliban, so we are told, were deeply hidden there, among trees whose fruit is symbolic of fertility to Hindus, but, more aptly, a prized specialty of the Gardens of Paradise in the Islamic tradition. The prophet Muhammad was said to be a fan.

A native of Asia--some say India, some Iran--the pomegranate is a key ingredient in the Persian dish, fesenjan, a rich sauce also containing walnuts and oranges, that is often served with chicken.

We well recall the destruction of numerous ancient date palm groves in Iraq, during the current and previous war. A recent film, The Lemon Tree, tells the tale of how a citrus grove literally comes between a Palestinian and an Israeli woman.

I have been nurturing a foot high pomegranate plant, started by a friend of mine. It's doing well, in the semi-tropics of Florida, though it is a plant that thrives in arid conditions.

Alas, the 21 year-old  from Maine, with little experience of the wider world, is not thriving as his parents expected he would. He was blown apart among trees whose flowers delight and whose fruits sustain health and bring pleasure.

( Thanks to http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/organic_pomegra.php for photo above.)

The Prez and the Tequila Mash

Last month during his trip to Mexico, President Obama toured the Cabanas Cultural Institute in Guadalajara. It's a former orphanage, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and contains murals by Mexican artist Jose Clemente Orozco.

And, apparently, exhibits on traditional foodways. In this photo Obama gently touches what appears to be the mash created from crushed hearts of agave, one step on the road to fermentation and distillation of the fabled tequila alcohol.

The alambiques necessary for distillation, incidentally, came from Spain, a contribution from the Arabs who introduced the process there in the late 700's.

Mastering the Concord Grape

A North American native, the blue/purple Concord grape was developed by a transcendental fellow named Ephraim Wales Bull in Concord, Massachusetts.  Working with seeds from native wild grapes, Bull experimented, and after planting 20,000 cuttings, he finally claimed success in 1853 by winning a grape competition at the Boston Horticultural Society.

According to the history posted at The Concord Grape Association, Mr. Bull never harvested much financial success for his efforts. " He sowed--others reaped," is apparently carved on his tombstone.

That said, I bought some delicious C. grapes this morning at the growers market and recalled my mother explaining to me back in the day--I was 5?--how to eat them. Pop the grape in your mouth, squeeze it open with your teeth, swallow the juice and the gooey center containing the seeds, and spit out the skin.  Today I decided to research that notion--just checking, Mom!--and found that some people do that, some chew the gooey middle and spit out the seeds, some like the combo of juice and tangy skin, etc etc.  Methods to suit all tastes.

Chewing or not chewing the center is akin to the oyster dilemma. It was my Dad who taught  me about sliding the oyster off the shell and into the mouth, there to be chewed lightly if you were him, or swallowed whole in all its sea watery-chilled goodness, if you were me, and 11.

Now that I have come of age, I ,too, chew my oysters, lightly, and also chew my Concords, maybe every other time.

( Bull's first Concord grapevine, courtesy USDA.

Homage to Teddy, and Mocha Chip

Ted Kennedy was enjoying mocha chip ice cream, my personal fave, in his last days, according to this piece in today's WaPo.

While the Howard Johnson's Mocha Chip of my ( and Kennedy's) youth is long gone, the flavor has resurfaced in offerings from Starbuck's--Java Chip Frappuccino comes close. The Internets tell me that Honey Hut, in Cleveland, Ohio, sells a nifty mocha chip.

M. chip was one of the original 28 flavors of ice cream from Howard Johnson's menu--he started his business in Quincy, Massachusetts, with homemade ice cream, doubling the butter fat content, and attracting a slew of customers.  His first roadside restaurant in 1929 led to a chain of 400 by 1954. Cleverly, Johnson had forseen the need for family eateries along the nation's toll roads.

Alas, by the late 1970's, the Hojo roadside joint was fading, as the company zoomed into the lodging business. Thereafter the brand was bought and sold many times over.

Today there are 3 actual HoJo restaurants in operation, in Bangor, Maine, Lake George, NY, and Lake Placid, NY. I visited the Lake Placid place a few years back, and gorged on fresh onion rings, fried clam roll and, mocha chip ice cream. Heavenly.

FYI  Keep up with the HoJo saga here--apparently we may see a return of Hojo's!

Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod--Food Heritage

Named by British voyager Bartholomew Gosnold after his mother, Martha, in 1602 the island of Martha's Vineyard apparently was rich in luxuriant grapevines. As rich in grape, as the Cape nearby was rich in cod. Gosnold named Cape Cod, as well. Such an observer of food,  our little-remembered Gosnold, and food available in such abundance in the not-yet-even colony of Massachusetts.

Gosnold, an attorney with a bent for sea exploration, returned to England intent on recruiting stout souls to help found the Virginia Colony. Five years after his New England sojourn he died in or near Jamestown in 1607, a swampy site he thought rightly to be unsuitable for habitation. Most of the original Jamestown settlers died of famine, and its accompanying scurvy and dysentery.

The tale of why settlers in a land filled with vegetation, game and fish died of hunger even in the summertime is fodder for many books, including Jamestown, the Buried Truth, in which we learn that dogs and cats were eaten by the afflicted Jamestonians.

The Obamas ( and Bo) need not fear hunger during their stay on the Vineyard, however. 35 year-old West Tisbury Farmers Market is right down the lane from their lodgings.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump--Food Heritage

A far-flung food history finder friend has alerted me to this ancient food heritage site, already recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It's in Alberta, Canada, in the foothills of the Rockies, and is apparently the largest, oldest--dating back 5500 years--and best preserved of the buffalo killing sites in North America.  Its name derives from a hapless young brave who hung out under the cliff to watch the carnage and got caught in a pile of diving buffalo.

Our reporter writes:

They were hunter/gatherers, living on inhospitable land, frozen much of the year, unreceptive to growing edible crops.  The only domesticated animal they had was the dog, and they did not know about the wheel.  But they somehow managed to psyche out the buffalo, analyze the terrain, and spend weeks gently coaxing the herd towards its ultimate doom.  

Once they had their crop of buffalo, they would use every bit of the beasts—eating the fresh meat and drying the rest in strips for future consumption.  The pelts they used for clothes, the skins for tents, the sinews for thread, etc. Without  this meat, these people would have not survived.