Great Grandmother's Kitchen

Image from DruidNetwork.org

In Northern Europe, the summer months were often difficult.  While stores from the previous year were dwindling away, fresh food was still growing.  The beginning of August marked the start of harvest from gardens and fields, the fertility of a successful crop and hope for a bounteous year.  Because of this, our ancestors from the UK, France, Germany, and Scandinavia all celebrated this time of year in various ways. 

In the UK, Lammas(Loaf Mass) was one of the important feasts of the middle ages, where the first loaves made from the new harvest were brought to the church to be blessed.  In Ireland and Scotland(and most likely also in Gaul up until the First Century), it was Lughnasadh to the Celts; a time devoted to the hero-god Lugh.  There are many local folk traditions still remaining in various place, often strongly tied to fertility.  The "Harvest Mare" in Wales, or corn dollies are another theme, where the last grain gathered is fashioned into a braid or figure, which is then kept until the following spring. 

Many modern Heathens have Freyfaxi on this day, the name a reference to evidence of the ancient sacrifice of horses to the god Freyr, the Norse god of crops and fertility. Others tie this time of year to his mother, Nerthus, or link it to the interplay between Thor, the god of lighting and summer rain, and his bride Sif's magical golden hair.



In Slavic nations, there is some evidence that the worship of Perun, a god of thunder and lightening similar to Thor, was for the most part passed on to "Elijah the Thunderer"  after Christianity became common, and August second is still his Saint's Day in some areas. 

Whatever the belief system, it seems to me as though for many of the traditions that exist, an ongoing theme is the interplay of two concepts:  Bounty and Sacrifice. 

My friend Thalassa over at Musings of a Kitchen Witch took a modern approach to both in her recent Lammas post.  She points out the extremes of the current relationship with food, particularly that, while many go hungry in the world, Americans in particular have developed serious problems with an overabundance of empty calories, with our strange malnourished obesity rapidly becoming a cultural epidemic.Her advice?  To take this season and become involved.  I would like to add to her recommendations the idea that many food pantries in America run low in the summer, since most people donate during the winter holiday season. 

Happy Lammas, and wishing you all a rich and plentiful coming year!

 It's the end of the month, and I don't have much in the house, but I'm using what I do have:

Bones from pork loin chops and pork rib chops.
Carrot peels, celery ends, garlic hulls
Corn cobs
Zucchini ends
Pea Pods
A bit of leftover squash.
Cabbage ends.

Since I have some green things in there, I'm going to keep this on a really low and gentle bubble, and add them in half-way through to avoid smelly chemical reactions when the chlorophyll is released. 

“No not at all. If you would have told 12 year old me that I would someday be a baker, I would have laughed…I always wanted to be an artist. I was always making things. Crafting I suppose you could call it.

When I got to be a junior in High School, I was told that if I wanted to be an artist, I had to be a graphic designer. Because that is what an artist is in the real world. So that's what I did. I went to college for graphic design, got my degree, got a job, did it for a few years and pretty much hated it.  I started baking and decorating cakes on the side as an outlet for my creative side”

“I officially quite my job and started baking full time January of 2008, a few months after I got married. I don't think my new hubby really saw that one coming!”

“It has gone incredibly well. The good thing about my graphic design background is that it has helped a lot with working with clients, designing my own website and promotional materials and even designing the cakes themselves.

I just moved on to edible art instead of graphic design, but it really started my love of baking and cooking.”

“That cake was made for a contest on cake central. A great website for lovers of cake and decorators.  They used to have monthly decorating contests that people would enter and they would give away prizes.

They announced a steampunk cake contest and it was SUCH an upset amongst the community because I would say 90% of decorators had NO CLUE what steampunk was and when they saw it, it was like blasphemy to them!...I had to enter.  I won first place!"

"I think it was something that was always there. I used to play this video game called Final Fantasy when I was a kid. There are a lot of airships and old Victorian type look characters, and I always was drawn to that look.  It wasn't until recent years that I even knew it was an actual genre

The more I learned about it, the more I loved it. I just love the idea of everything being made by hand. No plastic. No fake stuff. All wood, metal and steam. This is what made me fall in love with the artisan ideals.

            Not just making something, but making it beautiful and doing it right"

"Well savor cakes aren't that easy to make. There are a lot of steps to making each dough, each filling and choosing really good ingredients from local sources.

I do everything by hand, I don't buy anything pre-made and I only use natural ingredients…it's like high-fructose corn syrup or shortening was never invented in my world."

"Everything I can find really. I buy my flours from Bob’s Red Mill. My meats from a nearby butcher and all my veggies from the farmers market or my own garden. Especially herbs."

"Yes! When I was growing up, we had 4 gardens and every summer was spent canning and freezing. It wasn't until I was in High School that I really learned that not everyone lived that way.

I did the fast food thing for a while when I was younger but I just got more and more unhealthy. I didn't like where I was heading. When I first started baking, I knew right away that I wanted to use natural ingredients where possible so that I could feel good about what I was giving people."

"Each one takes about 20 minutes to bake. Depending on the savor cake. Some doughs are baked ahead of time and filled as they are ordered with a fresh filling. Others are par-baked in the early morning and then re-warmed and finished off in an infra-red oven before serving. This allows them to not get over baked and still taste perfect fresh out of the oven

 It has taken a lot of experimenting and taste testing to get it right but it's a fun job!"

"I have a lot of flavors in mind but I plan on only serving 2-3 kinds a day and have the themes change with the seasons and what is available

 We will always have a breakfast savor cake, a lunch and a special diet (gluten free, vegan, vegetarian)...I think there is huge need for more convenient breakfast items in Portland and not very many carts do breakfast."

"You know that is a good question. I'm not sure what type of food you would call a savor cake. Because the fillings are folded into the dough, they are different then a pie. I think they are in that genre though. The savory foods we all feel nostalgic about and make us feel like we've been whisked away to times gone by but definitely a new take on it. Maybe a cross between a cupcake and a savory pie."

" I found a great trailer to renovate (conveniently in my neighbors field) and once I bought it, I felt like it was time to really get this cart going. There was nothing really holding me back but me (and finances).  Being self employed, I can't really afford a huge loan so I didn't really think the cart could ever be a reality until a friend told me about a website called kickstarter.com...I started up my own project for the savor cakes cart so that we could finish getting the cart renovated and buy the appliances."

"As of today we have raised $2,530 and we need to raise $12,000. Only 21 more days to go before our deadline! If we don't get enough pledges before the deadline, then we don't get anything. This is an incentive for people to pledge now and not later. Every dollar really does add up!"

"Really cool stuff! I wanted to be able to offer some rewards that people would actually want and things that I could ship to out-of-stater's who just want to support a steampunk food cart!

Donating $5 gets you a cool steampunk pin deeming you part of the "savor cakes crew". We also have Certificates for free savor cakes, recycled bags with original artwork (perfect for the farmers market), signed and numbered copies of the "Local produce airship" that I illustrated for this project, reusable savor cake carriers, and even private catered parties! There is something great for every donation because every donation is truly appreciated no matter how big or small!"

"It was another idea that sort of came to life on paper. I wanted to do an illustration of an airship as a giveaway. Originally I designed one in pen and ink that looked very much like the cart. It was watercolor, sepia toned and had that old victorian look to it.

 I showed it to hubby and he ever so nicely told me it was "ok" haha!

            Ok will just not do in my book!

            I wanted something really great!

I started thinking less literally about the airship and more about what it's about. It's about food! Local food! I don't generally think of so many colors when I think of steampunk but I think it still works.

And even people who don't know what steampunk is can appreciate a flying ship made of veggies."

            " All of the above. I am a firm believer in the power of social networking

I'll be twittering, facebooking and even tumblring new flavors, locations, specials deals of the day by saying the "secret password"

I want to encourage people to follow us and get something out of that you couldn't otherwise. Like a fun secret society of savor cakes!"

" Yes definitely!

I have been speaking to someone at GEAR Con in hopes of being more involved in events as soon as possible and Steamcon is a must! I am even going to come up with some fun steampunk themed savor cakes. The ideas are nearly endless."

 

" Oh gosh! presssuuuure! Haha!

 I think that one of the great things about savor cakes is that there is something for everyone. We have gluten free, vegan, vegetarian and full on nothing but meat and cheese. So you don't have to settle. My personal favorite is something called the 3 little pigs in a blanket.

  It's a peppery buttery bread dough, filled with a creamy cheesy white sauce and three different kinds of sausages and some bacon just for good measure. It's the one I always reach for at lunch time. I never get tired of it! I think Obama would dig it."

Since I was busy writing about cookies yesterday, here you go!

Chicken Bones (including some that were buffalo wings in the previous life)
The Usual:  onion and garlic peels, carrot ends and peels, celery ends

Eggplant skins
Zucchini ends (going to be seeing a lot of those for the next little bit)
The peels and seeds from the catsup I made. 
Pepper tops and seeds


The whole house smelled like Caponata!

From Paulette in San Francisco

I'll be honest right up front...this is one of those pure, unadulterated, food porn posts.

The cupcake trend that I gushed over last fall got moving back in 2005.  Now, it's everywhere:  Food Network shows, catering companies, entire blogs devoted to cupcakes.

What is next on the horizon?

I tried my hand at ketchup making for the first time this past week and the results were interesting.  Two recipes:  The first was one of the first recorded recipes for tomato catsup (yes, there are other kinds...more on that in a moment) from Mrs. Mary Randolf's The Virginia Housewife: Or, Methodical Cook.

Updated my sidebar today.  Removed or fixed some broken links, added some fun new ones, etc, etc.  Take a look!

Any additional food, historical or steampunk additions  anyone would like to suggest?

From Better Living Through Breakfast

I do not remember a single day my grandmother did not have a package of graham crackers in her kitchen.  If you were hungry between meals, the choices were that or a banana.  I remember asking her once why she always had graham crackers, and her response was that "they were good for children".

Click here to read about how they're made.

Once I had children of my own, I honestly wondered why.  No graham crackers on the market, other then the Nabisco Honey Maid brand still contain graham flour, and even those are less then exemplary, the primary sweetener being high fructose corn syrup (rather then the following bit of namesake honey), and hydrogenated cotton seed and soybean oil, the cheapest source of food-grade fat.  On par with a packaged cookie.



So what was the purpose of graham crackers?  Why were they "good for children", and what in the world is graham flour?

Three months ago, I decided it was time to try a new sort of personal challenge.  Like I mentioned back in May, I think one of the problems with a lot of "back to nature" diets that include meat is the insistence on just eating the prime cuts of animal muscle that are popular in the regular American diet.  What about everything else that we don't normally eat?  All the "gross" bits that most Americans have never eaten in their lives (so how do they know it's disgusting)?  This is where varied nutrition lies, not in steaks and pork chops.   I'm not exactly prepared to go Andrew Zimmerman and start eating everything from blood to bugs, although who says I couldn't in the future?  Insects, just like any farm animal, can be kept in conditions that are either clean or dirty, but unlike large mammals, they can easily be raised in a small home(meaning you are taking charge of your protein source, even if you lack space), and are packed with nutrition--the only caveat being our cultural "cooties" about munching on grasshoppers or mealworms.  

First, though, I needed to start simple.  That meant the organs that are readily available in my local grocery store: liver, kidneys, heart, tripe, tongue.