Neshaminy Reenactment 2013

First event of the season has officially ended. It was cold but still generally enjoyable. The event is small, relaxed and located along the water.

The event typically has a long tactical in the woods before the battle for the spectators begin The boys like it because it is unscripted and over brush and leaves and is between the trees. Typically they have so much fun in the woods that the spectator battle ends up being pretty short. I decided against bringing my camera on Saturday but got it for Sunday's battle.

Our events are coming up fast this year as there are a lot of big 150th anniversary events and no one wants to miss any of them. I'll keep everyone posted and hope to post more as school dies down. I miss everyone in the blogosphere and hope we'll all get to reconnect soon.


Some of Sunday's Battle:

Of course, I witnessed most of the battle like this:

There were a lot of neat specialty displays at the event, such as this medical display:

Overall it was a fun event. Hope all the events this year go well!

Colonial Quakers and Silhouettes

In colonial times it was fashionable for wealthy Americans to have paintings or small miniatures made of loved ones. For many this was prohibitively expensive but middle class families, especially those in the country, could have silhouettes made of their family members relatively inexpensively.

A silhouette, known then as "profiles" or "shades", were line portraits with no internal detail. Many of these were cut from paper and glued to contrasting paper but some were painted. They typically were 3 to 5 inches in length. Varying methods were used to produce the profile, some used light to trace the shadow of a portrait sitter, others were drawn quickly by artists.

One popular method of creating silhouettes involved folding the paper into four so that the cutter could make four copies of the same silhouette at once. These could then be given away or exchanged. Silhouettes could also be easily traced and copied if more were needed.     

Along with country folk and the middling class, silhouettes appealed to Quakers, even wealthy ones, due to the simplistic nature of the art and the cost. Quakers felt that silhouettes did not emphasize class or vanity as many paintings did.

Silhouettes were also of interest at the time as theories of physiognomy at the time claimed that a person's character could be read through the face.  Silhouettes were popular until the invention and spread of the Daguerreotype in the 1840s.

In modern times, silhouettes are made easily using photography and computers. There are many tutorials showing how to do it. But if you wanted to do it the old fashioned way, profiles tend to be relatively easy for people to draw.  

Resources:

Clark, Joanna. "Quaker Silhouettes." The Friend: The Quaker Magazine. http://www.thefriend.org/article/quaker-silhouettes (accessed April 11, 2013).

Verplank, Anne. "The Silhouette and Quaker Identity in Early National Philadelphia." Winterthur Portfolio 43, No. 1 (2009): 41-79.

New History Based Reality Show?

Today's laugh comes to us by way of Michael Lynch at Past in the Present via the American Historical Association.


















There is an open casting call for a history based reality show in Washington DC. The call reads as below:

Are you a curious person, and obsessed with history? Can you recite facts inside and out, and name-drop (and even date-drop) with the best of them? Do your friends at trivia night, dare we say it, label you as the history buff? Maybe you're not a full-blown "buff" but if you like history and get psyched at the idea of even visiting a museum, or actually read those placards on your tour, then we want to meet you...virtually for now though.

Maybe the thing I should worry about is that everyone I know is at least 50x more intense than what they are looking for. "Actually read those placards"? My friends read, write and correct those placards.  

Lets hope this doesn't go in the way of "Sabers & Roses," the weird reenacting reality show whose odd premise was whoever stays in character longest wins money or something like that.

In case you didn't get enough of Sabers & Roses, there's another clip here.  :D

Why I am Sharing the Secret Family Recipe: Italian Easter Pie (Pizza Gain) with Lots of Photos

“You don’t do it by pictures,” my grandma said as I snapped a few photos “you do it by feel.”

“Well I can’t exactly tell my readers on the internet to feel it, grandma.”

“Wait. You’re putting our secret family recipe on the internet?”  asked my mom up to the elbows in the dough. 

“Why not? Mum are you planning to let the recipe die with you?”

“Yes.”

This was the conversation that we had a few days ago while making traditional Italian Easter pies. My grandma doesn’t remember when the family started making them but she said that she started making them in the 70s. This is one of those dishes, that everyone’s family used to make and they would trade them because everyone else’s tasted better and it was an honor for people to like yours best.  Our family still makes them every year. We still sample pies from other parts of the family but it’s not the big deal that it used to be. 

This time, my mom brought her recipe to my grandma’s, my grandma had the recipe she always used and we recently acquired my great-grandma’s recipe through my mom’s cousin. This year, my mom used that recipe instead of the one she normally used. The “original” family recipe was highly coveted due to a change in the recipe a great many years ago that allowed the baker to use Crisco instead of the old-fashioned, traditional lard. 

We were about half way through making the filling before my mom said:

“Wait. This one says 6 hardboiled eggs and 4 raw eggs and my recipe says 4 hardboiled eggs and 6 raw ones.”  This was the first of many discrepancies that included differences in cooking times, glazes and oven temperature. So my mother took her recipe, which she received from my grandma when she got married and compared it to my grandmother’s thinking hers had some error. They weren’t the same.

“But this is what you gave me when I got married!” my mother said.

My grandmother took her copy and showed my mother all of the changes to the recipe that occurred in all of the years she cooked them.  By some brilliant notion, my grandmother dated all of the changes she made to the recipe and had comments. 

So my mother’s was more like the recipe my grandmother made in the 70s and my great-grandmother’s recipe was close enough but still different.  What is strange enough is that they all taste similarly enough that no one would be able to tell the difference.  

So I’m sharing the secret family recipe. Why? 

Because it’s not a recipe at all. It’s a bunch of different ones or it’s so secret, even we don’t know it. 

Either way, I’m a fan of sharing recipes and I’d like to bring this one back as our family makes them differently than a lot of other families. Many other families make them with meat slices and make them in a pie pan with two crusts. 

Finished Pies

Secret Family Recipe:

Dough:

- 7 Pounds Flour

-1/2  Cup Lard

-3/4 cup Sugar

6 Tbsp. Baking Powder

-7 Eggs

- 5-6 Cups lukewarm water (add 4 cups first then add what is needed to make a dough)

Cut up Lard into small pieces.  Add large to Flour, Sugar, and Baking Powder in a large pan or bowl.  Create a “well” in the center of the mixture. Add eggs into the well and mix together with hands. Add water as needed.

Remove dough from bowl and kneed on a floured surface. Put back in pan and cover with plastic wrap. Let it “rest” for 1-2 hours, it will become smooth.

Filling:

- 5 lbs. Ham, cubed

- ½ lb. Salami, cubed

- 1 ½ lbs Ricotta Cheese

- 3 “handfuls” grated Parmesan Cheese

- 6 Hardboiled Eggs, chopped

- 4 Raw Eggs

- Heavy Pepper to taste

Roll out large circle of dough, roughly 1 pound, on a floured surface.  Fill half of the dough with filling. Fold the dough over. Trim excess dough edges so that the pie is symmetrical. Make ¾ inch slices around the unsealed edge. Alternating turning each dough “tab” over or under and press down with a fork to seal. Poke a few holes in the top for steam to come out.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Bake on a lightly floured baking sheet for 25 minutes on the bottom rack and 10 minutes on the middle rack. While still hot, you can coat the tops with raw egg, or milk if you plan to freeze the pies. Let cool on a wire rack. 

Have a good weekend everyone! If you get adventurous and want to try these, they were traditionally a hearty treat after abstaining during lent.

When General Lee Instructed his Men to Find Their Own Food

In 1863, the men and women of the Confederacy had already sustained two years living on reduced provisions. Early on, the war had disrupted a well-established food trade between the north and south. The north supplied grains, meat, fruits and cheese to the south in exchange for tobacco, rice, sugar and cotton.

The Union blockade of 1861 decreased imports significantly but the people of the south did not immediately feel the effects of the blockade. Delicacies like coffee, wine and spices disappeared quickly. By 1862, even staples dissipated aided by foraging armies, drought and the destruction of farmlands.

1863 was the year that the south really felt the effects of the war. Wheat, butter and milk prices were more than three times what they were prior to the war. The shortage of provisions and hoarding of provisions by those who were afraid to sell and those who intended to sell at a significant profit led to extremely inflated prices. Many poor could not afford to buy food, even if it was available. Rioters took to the streets in the south, breaking into bakeries and stealing food.

Library of Congress

With the dismal food situation in the south, the leaders were constantly worried about procuring enough food for the armies. It was on this day 150 years ago that General Robert E. Lee instructed his men, who were subsiding on reduced rations of 18 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of bacon daily, to send out foraging details to procure "sassafras buds, wild onions, garlic, lamb's quarter, and poke sprouts" to supplement the meager rations and help prevent scurvy.

 His orders are below:

Headquarters Army Of Northern Virginia,

March 27, 1863.

Hon. James A. Seddon, Secretary of War: 

Sir: About the last of January I directed General W. E. Jones to send an escort of. cavalry with Maj. W. J. Johnson, commissary of the cavalry division, into Hardy County, for the purpose of collecting beefcattle, &c. General Jones was also directed to send parties into the counties west for the same purpose. Major Johnson has returned from his expedition, and reports that he obtained in Hardy County 500 beefcattle, 200 sheep, and 4,200 pounds of bacon. He also obtained from Loudoun and Culpeper 200 head of cattle, and from Rockingham 3,000 pounds of bacon. I have not yet learned what amount of subsistence the parties sent by General Jones obtained. I have endeavored during the past campaign to draw subsistence from the country occupied by the troops, wherever it was possible, and I believe by that means much relief has been afforded to the Commissary Department. At this time but few supplies can be procured from the country we now occupy.

General Longstreet has been directed to employ the troops south of James River, when not required for military operations, to collect supplies in that quarter, and penetrate, if practicable, the district held by the enemy. The troops of this portion of the army have for some time been confined to reduced rations, consisting of 18 ounces of flour, 4 ounces of bacon of indifferent quality, with occasionally supplies of rice, sugar, or molasses. The men are cheerful, and I receive but few complaints; still, I do not think it is enough to continue them in health and vigor, and I fear they will be unable to endure the hardships of the approaching campaign. Symptoms of scurvy are appearing among them, and to supply the place of vegetables each regiment is directed to send a daily detail to gather sassafras buds, wild onions, garlic, lamb's quarter, and poke sprouts, but for so large an army the supply obtained is very small. I have understood, I do not know with what truth, that the Army of the West and that in the Department of South Carolina and Georgia are more bountifully supplied with provisions. I have also heard that the troops in North Carolina receive one-half pound of bacon per day. I think this army deserves as much consideration as either of those named, and, if it can be supplied, respectfully ask that it be similarly provided.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant,

R. E. LEE,

General.

A soldier in the 4th North Carolina State Troops mentioned gathering plants in April of 1864, "My Dear Sister...The boys when not on duty amused themselves at various sports, some fishing, some digging ground hogs out of their holes (an animal that I never saw until I came to Virginia), while nearly the whole regiment amused themselves gathering wild onions...Gen. Ransom had a kettle for each company brought down the line, for the purpose of cooking them." He later mentions that his company has plenty of food, but that they lacked meat.

Anyone up for a groundhog fricassee seasoned with wild onions over rice?