Read my entries on Cotton Candy, Nutella, and Oreos in The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, edited by Darra Goldstein.
Heavenly Work: The Fleeting Legacy of the Shakers →
Ten years have passed since my first visit to Canterbury Shaker Village, but walking again past the apple trees and old wooden buildings, I’m struck by the same feeling. In this small settlement nestled among New Hampshire’s green, rolling hills, a serenity seeps into my bones and muscles, compelling me to walk slowly, deliberately, with reverence. The Shakers believed they were creating and living in a heaven on earth, and that belief feels tangible here, a surviving legacy. But the sentiment also implies a tension—between permanence and transience, between mortal and eternal existence—that is itself ephemeral, difficult to grasp.
Read on in Ecotone
Something Good from Helvetia →
Helvetia, West Virginia, is not a town you can just happen upon. About 30 miles south of Buckhannon and 40 miles southwest of Elkins (you know where those are, right?), the journey to Helvetia is a long and winding mountainous route up County Route 46. Even when you get there, it would be easy to blow right through town, were it not for the Swiss Alpine–style buildings peppered along the roadside.
The village was settled in 1869 by Swiss immigrants, many of them craftsmen, who had immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, during the Civil War. In Brooklyn, they formed a society of Swiss and German speakers called the Gruetli Verein, and together sought a place where they could live freely and practice their respective art forms. One of their members had done some surveying in West Virginia and spoke of the large tracts of land, beautiful mountains, and plentiful forests of game. The group eventually found cheap land for sale in the area and decided to establish a village, calling it Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland.
Read on in Gravy
Fat Tuesday: The Many Different Doughnuts Of Mardi Gras →
The history of doughnuts is intrinsically linked to the celebration of Mardi Gras. "Fat Tuesday" — the Christian day of revelry and indulgence before the austere season of Lent — features dough deep-fried in fat as its main staple.
Among the first foods to be deep-fried were Roman scriblita, a precursor to today's doughnuts and fritters. Originating in the medieval era, most Christian European traditions have developed a version of fried dough for Shrove Tuesday (another name for the day before Lent starts). The rich treats presented a way to use up all of the butter, sugar and fat in the house prior to the self-denying diets of Lent. Traditionally it was an opportunity for indulgence, a day when, once a year, communities would go through the labor-intensive and expensive process of deep-frying in order to partake in a luxurious treat.
Read on via NPR
Gas Station Delights →
Goin’ on a road trip across out East? Pick up a few cheap regional snacks on your way. If you’re headed west though, you better pack your own—it’s wild out there.
Moon Pie
Region: Across the South
Price: $0.89
A Tennessee icon, Moon Pies—the classic s’more sandwich of marshmallow & graham cracker cookies, coated in chocolate-- can be found in gas stations, bars, and juke joints across the South. Best enjoyed with an RC Cola, additional flavors include vanilla and banana. Do Moon Pies only come as “Double Deckers” these days? OPEN QUESTION.
Read on in The Runcible Spoon
Get Freshly Minted This Holiday Season →
When I was growing up, my uncle Richard farmed mint. In the late summer, he and his crew would mow the mint fields like hay and collect the leaves in enclosed wagons, then drive them down to the still, where they would seal them and pump them full of steam. The steam caused the oil in the leaves to turn to vapor, which re-liquefied when pushed through a condenser.
I have memories of driving out to the farm when Richard was distilling that season's crop into oil, catching whiffs of the mint on the air miles before we arrived. Then we'd pile in the farm truck and head down the dirt roads to the still, the mint essence becoming stronger and stronger until we were finally lifted over the boiling vat for the most intense sensory experience. One inhalation of the mint oil completely cleared out our sinuses and must have prevented us from catching the cold through the winter — a special Indiana farm remedy.
Read on via NPR
Photo courtesy of St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church
Cheese Pies and Kebabs Keep Armenian Heritage Alive →
For 65 years, the St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church has been holding The Armenian Fall Food Festival in the basement of their church in the Friendship Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There in the serving line, women parish members dish out steaming lamb kebab, fresh tepsi boreg—phyllo dough stuffed with feta and mozzarella, and heaping ladles of hummus and eech—a vegetarian bulgur salad. In the next room, where patrons of all ages and backgrounds eat together at round tables, sits a long “bake table” filled with Armenian pasties including baklava, kataifi—shredded phyllo dough with sweet cheese or walnuts and simple syrup and haskanoush—a walnut roll topped with simple syrup.
Read on via American Food Roots
Fresh Out of the Coven: Pentagram Pie →
Pentagrams are an ancient symbol, but lately they’ve been popping up everywhere from forearms to TV shows to um…bikinis. I too seem to have been caught under the pentagram’s spell; I've recently developed an affinity for the encircled, five-pointed star.
The pentagram carries different spiritual meanings depending on the cultures in which it appears (from Mesopotamia to Freemasonry, Christianity to the occult), but in the Tarot, the "pentacles" correspond astrologically with Taurus, along with the other Earth signs Virgo and Capricorn. In general, the symbol is associated with Mother Earth, craft, the accumulation of knowledge, physicality, and tradition. It also represents stability, grounding forces, and feminine power—ever noticed the 5-pointed star on Wonder Woman’s projectile crown? And if those weren’t enough reasons to start brandishing a pentagram medallion, there's also the British folk-rock band Pentangle, one of my favorites, whose name comes from the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Night, and whose album covers sport some of the best pentagram designs I’ve seen.
Read on via The Hairpin
Cobbled Together: American Fruit Desserts
Cobbler. I didn't understand the dessert until I understood the word.
A professional "cobbler" is often thought of as a shoemaker and repairman, but a truecobbler is only a mender of shoes. A cordwainer is the more masterful footwear maker.
A cordwainer would not want to be called a cobbler. And a delicately latticed pie would not want to be mistaken for the less artful dessert that's thrown or "cobbled" together with disparate bits of fruit and pastry, whether it's called a cobbler, crisp, crumble, pandowdy or buckle. Though a cobbler or crisp may not be as pretty as a fresh pie or a new shoe, the result is just as functional, enjoyable and more economical, at least in terms of time and effort.
Read on via NPR
The Long Lost Recipes of Fergus "Flask" Shaw
It was in the year of 1831 when the Jolly Gnosher, the great whaling ship of considerable note, went down. It had been on campaign through the Pacific seas, rounding the northern tip of the Isla Isabela in the Galapagos, when it met its match in the very beast it was hunting—an old bull whale of ponderous size and unfathomable strength. If these traits had not already been enough to instill fear into every sailors’ heart, the monster also boasted skin of an uncanny hue that shone like a silver coin, momentarily blinding any soul who cast his eyes upon him.
Retaliating against his attackers’ harpoons, the great whale bucked and with all his force, launched head-on into the vessel, an action which in one motion, launched the crew into the frigid waters, holed the ship, and when it promptly filled with water, sunk it to the ocean floor. There were no human survivors. It is believed, though that the awful silver beast still swims those waters to this day.
Read on in The Runcible Spoon