WWII Era Sauerkraut Viennese Recipe

When I was younger, my grandmother made cabbage weekly. Cabbage fried in soy sauce and topped with ketchup or cabbage stuffed with ground beef, cabbage soups, and coleslaw. Always with that particular smell that accompanied a hot, steamy kitchen.

Everytime I see I recipe that calls for cabbage, I remember how much I like it and wonder why I don't cook it. In fact, I couldn't even remember the last time I had cabbage short of coleslaw. It was something that fell off my food radar as an adult. My diet has gotten bland, relying heavily on foods flavored with sugar and salt.  Many fermented foods were dropped so I'm now making a more conscious attempt to add them back in again because they're delicious and provide good health benefits.

Fermented foods can improve digestion, boost immune systems and have inflammatory properties among other benefits. For this recipe, I replaced the sour cream with plain yogurt to really up the probiotic count (okay, so I just happened to have a ton in the fridge I needed to use up.). Any kind of sausage would go good in this but kielbasa is amazing, I used Field Roast Italian with good results. This recipe is from 500 Delicious Dishes from Leftovers, 1940.

WW2 Sauerkraut Viennese 

Ingredients:

- 3 Cups Sauerkraut
- 1 Pound Link Sausage
- 1 Cup Sour Cream
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 Cloves
- 1 Bay Leaf

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place sausage in a casserole dish and make until browned.

While the sausage is baking, add sauerkraut, bay leaf, and cloves to a large saucepan on medium-high heat. Stir periodically to avoid burning. Remove from heat when the water from the sauerkraut has cooked off.

Remove the bay leaf and the cloves and stir in the sour cream. Serve on a platter, topped with the sausage.

WARNING Photo Heavy Post! 18th Century Trades at Newlin Grist Mill

I don't even know where to start with the Fall Harvest Festival at Newlin Grist Mill in Glenn Mills, PA. So much was going on my head is still spinning! There were so many interesting an unique displays, and I didn't even get to see them all.    

If you've never been to Newlin, the site has a many historical buildings: houses, a mill with working water wheel, blacksmith shop, and log cabin. I stayed mostly in the mill today. We were lucky the rain held off until the event finished and there was quite a decent turn out. 

Carpentry. Rich Schuman of For Woodness Sake using a spring pole lathe to make wooden spoons and bowls.

Silhouettes by Brian S. Miller of Historic Odessa Foundation. Parents and kids took turns posing and drawing silhouettes.

Beer Brewing. I unfortunately/fortunately was stationed right above the beer brewing and it took me a while to realize what the odd steam coming through the floor was. Now I'm beer flavored.

Paper marbling with Danielle of Colonial Bookbindery.

Green sand pewter casting. Sorry for the multiple images here but I found this to be really fascinating.

Brickmaking. This was a fun display that demonstrated a trade that most people would think is boring if they didn't know all of what went into it.

18th century Horticulturist display.

Scherenschnitte. I only had a chance to pop my head in here but the papercuttings were very finely detailed and beautiful.

Flintknapping. A fascinating display on flintknapping and the making of stone and bone tools. In the barn was a concert of 18th century performers.

Blacksmithing. This is the shop that I learned to blacksmith in during college. I was never very good at it. :)

Lye and potash boiling for soap making and quick rise baking. I am currently very interested in this as I've been meaning to make soap.

Archaeology. Normally at Newlin, I am with the archaeology program. Today they found something interesting at the 18th century level. A floor or a wall that no one knew was there, next to the covered millrace (the arch shaped stonework). You can see it under the wood board in the second photo.

Hope you enjoyed the images! It was a fun event, I'm sorry I didn't get to walk around more. 

Civil War Stationary and Envelope Templates

"Good bye my sweet little wife -- write to me often"

-Jedediah Hotchkiss to Sara A. Hotchkiss, August 4, 1861

Some of the most prolific cries in Civil War soldier's letters is "Why don't you write me more?" and "Tell everyone to write me!" Mail delivery was highly anticipated by soldiers who felt left out of the events on the home front. Letters were a huge source of information and the main source of communication back home to the common soldier. It was reported that some regiments were sending out around 600 letters per day.   

I've been meaning to get some reproduction Civil War stationary and envelope templates on here forever and my friend Austin Landis was nice enough to lend me these letters for this post. The letters are from a collection of letters written by a Pennsylvania family writing to each other during the war.

Stationary and envelopes during the Civil War period were beautiful. They typically featured patriotic messages, imagery and political cartoons. It was not uncommon for envelopes to be as decorative as the stationary. Soldiers had the option to write "Soldier's Letter" on the front of their envelope to have the recipient pay for the postage due to the trouble of tracking down stamps and keeping stamps usable in the field. In 1861, the cost of mailing a typical letter was 3 cents if it was travelling under 3,000 miles. In the Confederacy in June 1861, it was 5 cents to mail a letter that was traveling under 500 miles.     

From the private collection of Austin D. Landis

From the private collection of Austin D. Landis

From the private collection of Austin D. Landis

From the Library of Congress

Civil War Letter Templates to Print:

A common size of stationary during the Civil War was 8. 5 x 11 inches folded in half width way. 

Back of the stationery page.

3 x 5.5 inches was a common envelope size. Print this out on heavy paper and use it as a template for tracing out envelopes. Fold along the dotted line. Each envelope fits on an 8.5 x 11 page.

If you right click on the images and "open in a new tab" If you print the images at 100%, they should be the correct size to use.

Click here to see more Civil War Envelopes!

The End of Reenacting is Near!!!

This post is in response to an article that has been making the rounds on Facebook.  This article entitled "Join or Die," or ones like it surface every few years and bemoan the end of reenacting. The article is well written, enjoyable and a great insight into the hobby but it has people crying yet again that the sky is falling. The End is Near!!!

There are always lots of reasons given for the decline. Some say it's video games and computers and young kids just aren't into reenacting anymore so there are no reenactors taking the place of the reenactors retiring. Others claim it's the Mainsteam vs. Hardcore authenticity debate: The crotchety stitch Nazis can't have fun while there are Yahoos in theater costumes playing coyboys ruining their experience and vice versa. Still more claim that group and event politics have people running to the door and a new hobby.  The recession, people work on weekends now, the new authentic items are too costly, flags and guns are too controversial and the list of causes goes on and on.    

But here's the thing. There hasn't been a decline. Reenacting is as hot as ever. Computer games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and movies and shows from Fury to Downtown Abbey have people donning the clothes of the past like never before.

So what is causing this supposed decline?

The luxury of choice and skewed data. From the beginning all the way to the early 2000s reenactors were limited. There were a few big events each year and anyone who was anyone attended. It's these big events where people are drawing reenactor numbers from. Back then, reenacting primarily meant Civil War Reenacting or Revolutionary War reenacting.

But in the 2000s, the internet really took hold. People started hearing about smaller, alternative events that were only known to locals before the internet. The internet also fostered communities of reenactors interested in reenacting new and different things. There are now reenacting groups reenacting any conceivable conflict, including WWI, the French Revolution, Viking Wars, Korea and even Vietnam, sorry Dad.

There are so many event options and so many time periods to reenact now that the numbers are not less they are just spread out. The new reenactor typically reenacts more than one time period and the new complaint is of conflicting events. They want to be at all of them but there aren't enough weekends in a year.

For instance, the weekend of the Civil War Neshaminy event this year, a reenactor in the PA region can also attend Kerr Park's WWII event, Fort Frederick's 18th Century Market Faire, the Civil War living history at Gettysburg, and more. You can attend a reenactment somewhere on the eastern seaboard every weekend of the year and many of those weekends you will find conflicting events.

   

Where's the proof it's booming?

Commercial enterprises are manufacturing for reenactors and history minded. You can now buy an array of commercial sewing patterns designed by reenactors for reenactors. Stores like Joann Fabrics have also started stocking historical items like corset coutil and false whalebone. The number of historical video and computer games are soaring as are historical films. In case you were wondering in 2015 alone there were at least these war films released:

A War
9.April
Little Boy
An Act of War
The Last Rescue
Eye in the Sky
Land of Mine
Karbala
Hyena Road
The Midwife
13 Minutes
Brothers of War
1944
Beasts of No Nation
Battalion
Battle for Sevastopol

Historical clothing and facial hair has made it into mainstream fashion which has prompted the reenactor game "Reenactor or Hipster." Reenactments are featured on popular TV shows and it's near impossible to meet someone who doesn't know at least one reenactor. The internet is full of resources for reenactors by reenactors and articles about reenacting. There are so many new and good sutlers and vendors. There are tons of online social groups based around reenacting. As I'm typing this Facebook has alerted me that 82,523 people talking about "Reenactments." But the most compelling evidence is just looking at event calendars. It's truly a good time to be a reenactor!

Reenacting is Changing

That being said, just because the hobby is thriving doesn't mean we aren't losing reenactors or that reenacting isn't changing.  A lot of Civil War reenactors claim that new people just don't want to join anymore but the fact of the matter is most young people are opting for the more popular WWII. Obviously reenactor numbers fluctuate around war anniversaries and popular culture and the Civil War time period has seen a drop lately.

Reenacting does have its problems and a lot of these problems do cause numbers to drop at certain events or from certain organizations. These problems would take another blog post. Yes, reenactors do leave the hobby. Yes, we should be concerned that people do. There are all sorts of problems in  the hobby but too many of the issues come down to people being ugly to other people. The hobby isn't going anywhere but good people are. Instead of worrying about reenacting dying, we should worry about making reenactments a place people want to be.      

  

Curious Colonial Remedies and Cosmetics

During colonial times disease was the leading cause of death. Many people survived diseases but were severely physically scarred so it is not surprising that there was a lot of experimentation with remedies and cosmetics.  I am actually not sure if some of these are better or worse than the chemicals many of us put on our skin everyday.

Birch sap is used fir making birch beer and strawberry water sounds like it would work just as lemon does for the skin but orpiment (a toxic mineral that contains arsenic) and (::gulp::) frog-spawn water just sound crazy to me.

This receipt is not referring to real worms, but  clogged pores. Before the common access to microscopes, many people believed that the oil blockage of a pore was a worm. This believe was still present as late as the American Civil War when magazines were quick to point out that "ignorant persons" still believed it.

Even today some people swear by the whites of eggs to remove blackheads and using the plant Soloman's Seal (Polygonatum) to cure acne.

The vermin most likely meant in this recipes are fleas, lice and mosquitoes which were responsible for spreading many diseases and were also very annoying.  Ships often carried lice and every sailor and passenger on a ship with an outburst would eventually become infected. Stavesacre (line-bane) is very toxic and I don't think that honey would help keep the mosquitoes away.

In some places, especially at the beginning of the 1700s, it was common for people to share bowls and cups at the table. Dishes were not washed with soap, even in taverns where many people could have used the same cup all day.


*Note: The baby in the picture at the top is wearing a "pudding cap" which protected the heads of children while they were learning to walk.

Colonial Games: How to Play Blindman's Buff

I think I will be starting a new Colonial Games post on Fridays detailing how to play different Colonial games. I know it's not Friday, but I would like to get a head start.

Blindman's Buff (or Blindman's Bluff) is a very old game that has been recorded in ancient Greece and has been popular all throughout the late 15th century through the 19th century.

The game is normally played outside or in a spacious area such as a barn or large room. One person's eyes are blindfolded. The other players will, make noise, tap and push the "blindman" slightly while the "blindman" attempts to catch one of the other players.

 



Once the "blindman" catches a player, he or she must then try to guess who they have caught. If the "blindman" guesses wrong the other players will clap to let the "blindman" know to let the prisoner loose. The game continues until the "blindman" catches and identifies another player. The caught player will then be the blindman next.




The other players must take care during the game to make sure that the "blindman" does not get hurt. They should signal to them if they are too close to a wall, piece of furniture, hole ect.