Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / America Was Built on Beer, Bread, and Stolen Coffee: Food of the American Revolution (Part #2)

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America Was Built on Beer, Bread, and Stolen Coffee: Food of the American Revolution (Part #2) · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:02
  Nancy A. May: Hello everybody.
• 0:03
  It's Nancy May and Sylvia France once again with another episode
• 0:07
  of Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 0:09
  This is part two of our four-part series this month of
• 0:13
  July celebrating the American Revolutionary birthday of 250 years.
• 0:19
  And if you will do us all a birthday favor, go to
• 0:22
  podcast.familytreefoodstories, like, share, subscribe and follow us so that
• 0:28
  you get an update on every week's release.
• 0:30
  And as we like to say, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.
• 0:35
  So Sylvia, what do you say we get on with the show?
• 0:38
  Sylvia France: go
• 0:39
  Nancy A. May: So as everybody knows, the Boston Tea Party, December , 1773,
• 0:44
  was all about a crowd of guys dressing up as a bunch of Indians and dumping
• 0:49
  boatloads, literally boatloads, of British tea into the harbor
• 0:53
  Sylvia France: So do you know how much tea they actually dumped in?
• 0:55
  Nancy A. May: No, I don't know
• 0:56
  Sylvia France: But I do.
• 0:58
  It was actually 343 some chests.
• 1:00
  That was nearly 46 tons of it.
• 1:03
  In today's num- yeah, in today's number, that's between two and a half and $3
• 1:08
  million just floating out in the tide
• 1:11
  Nancy A. May: That's amazing.
• 1:12
  Who would have known?
• 1:14
  I might have wanted to stuff tea in my mattress as opposed to dollar bills.
• 1:18
  and there's also a question that people rarely ask
• 1:21
  Sylvia France: Which is
• 1:23
  Nancy A. May: Well, that question is what did they drink the morning after?
• 1:26
  Oh, not that morning after,
• 1:30
  Sylvia France: I don't know.
• 1:31
  Nancy A. May: but people woke up still wanting something hot, their tea, and
• 1:35
  instead they had to pour something else.
• 1:38
  So what did they pour?
• 1:39
  Sylvia France: That one little question opens up this whole episode because what
• 1:43
  you poured and what you ate beside it came down almost to entirely where you lived
• 1:49
  Nancy A. May: Oh, that's hard to believe, but it's true.
• 1:51
  , A family up in Connecticut and a family down in the Carolinas were barely eating
• 1:56
  the same food, yet we were all part of the same country or trying to be
• 2:01
  Sylvia France: Yep, . there was no such thing as a colonial meal.
• 2:04
  What you had access to was actually on your table
• 2:07
  Nancy A. May: You know, that's pretty funny because here we both sit, two
• 2:11
  Floridians and are about to have a lively conversation about a New England loaf
• 2:15
  of bread which take me back to my roots
• 2:19
  Sylvia France: Well,
• 2:20
  . You're the Connecticut Yankee who moved south.
• 2:22
  I'm the Florida girl whose people has been here since before it was a state,
• 2:26
  and one of my Revolutionary War patriots served in North Carolina, Edmund
• 2:31
  Spivey Sr. Between us, we've g- got the whole map of the colonies covered
• 2:36
  Nancy A. May: Yeah, we do.
• 2:37
  although Edmund Spivey Sr. sounds quite fancy and la-di-da.
• 2:40
  Oh.
• 2:41
  And here's the joke, I think.
• 2:42
  A Connecticut Yankee and a fourth-generation Floridan
• 2:45
  walk into a podcast, although I don't know the punchline.
• 2:49
  Sylvia France: But somehow it works, and here's the thing
• 2:52
  people get wrong about this area.
• 2:53
  They picture it gray, bland, brown, and joyless
• 2:57
  Nancy A. May: Yeah.
• 2:57
  I think dirty buckled shoes and sad porridge.
• 3:00
  Sylvia France: Those were the Pilgrims, so not true here.
• 3:04
  This food was rich with spice, buttery, and sometimes downright fancy food.
• 3:08
  It was hard to keep food from spoiling, but it was not a sad time to eat
• 3:13
  After the tea party and the boycotts, drinking British tea got dangerous.
• 3:18
  Not the tea itself, but being seen with it
• 3:21
  Nancy A. May: Because it's British.
• 3:22
  It's the exact thing that our neighbors just threw into the
• 3:25
  harbor, which made it very dangerous
• 3:28
  Sylvia France: People started calling a cup of tea a badge of slavery.
• 3:32
  That's really harsh words for a hot drink
• 3:35
  Nancy A. May: I can't imagine so when you didn't have your cup
• 3:39
  of tea what did the women do?
• 3:41
  They did something clever they went out into their gardens and rebuilt
• 3:45
  their whole tea shelf from scratch
• 3:48
  Sylvia France: ingenuity wins again.
• 3:50
  It was raspberry leaf, mint, goldenrod, sassafras, even a native
• 3:54
  shrub they called New Jersey tea.
• 3:57
  One patriot swore raspberry leaf was as good as any tea and much more wholesome.
• 4:04
  Nancy A. May: Wholesome.
• 4:05
  love that word.
• 4:06
  Okay.
• 4:06
  But to be honest with you, it doesn't sound like it actually tasted like
• 4:11
  tea, 'cause herbal tea doesn't taste much like black tea today
• 4:14
  Sylvia France: But actually some of it was close enough but
• 4:17
  here's our Forklore today.
• 4:18
  This is my favorite part of the show.
• 4:20
  was liberty tea actually tea?
• 4:22
  Nope, not one cup of it
• 4:25
  Nancy A. May: So wait a sec. They still called it tea, and yet it wasn't tea?
• 4:30
  Sylvia France: That is absolutely correct.
• 4:32
  Real tea comes from one single plant, Camellia sinensis.
• 4:36
  Sip anything else, and it's technically a tannin, not tea.
• 4:41
  The whole resistance was running on fancy hot leaf water.
• 4:45
  Nancy A. May: I love that.
• 4:46
  All that patriotism and the tea wasn't even tea
• 4:49
  Sylvia France: That is correct.
• 4:51
  In Tallahassee, there was, a lake, and we called it Tea Lake.
• 4:54
  Because when you go in your bathing suit, you would come
• 4:56
  out and it would be all black.
• 4:58
  Nancy A. May: Oh, okay.
• 5:00
  Sylvia France: and it was the tannins, just like we drink in tea.
• 5:02
  So, down south , there was a twist.
• 5:04
  There's a native plant with real caffeine in it.
• 5:07
  It's called yaupon holly.
• 5:09
  We see it all the time, and people don't realize it's caffeinated
• 5:13
  Nancy A. May: Go look for one of those in my backyard, but
• 5:14
  I don't think I've got it.
• 5:15
  But caffeine growing wild?
• 5:17
  I'll have to check into that one
• 5:19
  Sylvia France: Yep, the only caffeinated plant that is native to North America.
• 5:22
  The British felt so threatened that a royal botanist gave it a scientific name
• 5:27
  that basically means the vomit plant.
• 5:30
  Ugh.
• 5:31
  Nancy A. May: That is one sneaky marketing scare tactic as far as I'm concerned
• 5:36
  just to kill off the competition
• 5:38
  Sylvia France: It was actually a hit job in Latin.
• 5:40
  It doesn't make you sick at all, and honestly, I've tried Yapon Chai
• 5:44
  myself, and it's actually really good
• 5:46
  Nancy A. May: So this was a sneaky little trick of King George, who
• 5:49
  smeared the perfectly nice cup of tea just to make sure nobody drank it
• 5:54
  Sylvia France: 250 years of bad PR over something I'd happily order again
• 6:00
  Nancy A. May: Hmm.
• 6:00
  Meanwhile, back up north, our neighbors were watching you like a hawk to make sure
• 6:06
  that you were not drinking the British tea
• 6:08
  Sylvia France: Oh, please tell me how they were watching
• 6:11
  Nancy A. May: Okay.
• 6:12
  There were these communities kind of like, oh, I would call it the HOA
• 6:16
  spy network down here in Florida,
• 6:18
  Sylvia France: I know them well
• 6:19
  Nancy A. May: right?
• 6:20
  And they'd peek in your window and even go through your trash to find if you had
• 6:25
  the real tea leaves or the herbal ones.
• 6:28
  did you ever watch Bewitched as a kid?
• 6:30
  Sylvia France: Oh, absolutely
• 6:31
  Nancy A. May: Remember Alice Kravitz who peered through the window?
• 6:34
  Well, this was the Alice Kravitz of the day, and if they found that you
• 6:39
  were drinking the real tea, guess what?
• 6:42
  Sylvia France: What?
• 6:43
  Nancy A. May: They would put your name in the paper, kind of like
• 6:46
  page six of the New York Post.
• 6:48
  Not a good place to show up
• 6:50
  Sylvia France: So you'd be canceled in 1775 over a cup of tea?
• 6:55
  Nancy A. May: Yep, all over a cup of tea, and that's how we
• 6:57
  became a coffee-drinking country.
• 7:00
  We stayed off tea so long that we just never went back
• 7:03
  Sylvia France: And the loyalists, plenty of them kept drinking the real
• 7:06
  British stuff quietly with the curtains closed so they wouldn't be caught.
• 7:11
  Nancy A. May: I don't wanna know what else happened behind those curtains.
• 7:14
  But your cup told the whole street which side of the battle you were on
• 7:17
  Sylvia France: So here's the first thing to take home today.
• 7:19
  . The cup you poured wasn't only breakfast, it was a vote for the rebellion or not.
• 7:25
  And you can still pour it.
• 7:26
  Mint on your windowsill, hot water.
• 7:28
  That's real liberty tea
• 7:31
  Nancy A. May: Okay, here's one quick caring note, because this is important
• 7:35
  and something you might wanna check with your doctor just in case.
• 7:38
  Raspberry leaf and rose hips, if they show up in the old recipes and
• 7:42
  even the new recipes, you better not drink it if you are pregnant or
• 7:47
  you have some other malady where the medication might interact with the tea.
• 7:51
  Just check with your doctor first
• 7:53
  Sylvia France: That's very good advice, Nancy.
• 7:55
  Okay, let's set the table going forward So if there was no single colonial meal,
• 8:01
  let's actually set three tables, Nancy.
• 8:04
  You're New England.
• 8:05
  Go
• 8:06
  Nancy A. May: So yeah, we've got a couple of different tables to deal with here.
• 8:09
  Because New England has rocky soil, so wheat barely grows at all.
• 8:13
  Everyday bread was a thing called rye and Indian bread.
• 8:18
  Rye flour and cornmeal was mashed together to make bread
• 8:22
  Sylvia France: So I wanna make sure I understand.
• 8:23
  Does Indian mean corn-based?
• 8:26
  Nancy A. May: Well, yes it does.
• 8:27
  And listen to this.
• 8:28
  Because one loaf could weigh up to eight pounds and feed
• 8:31
  an entire family for a week
• 8:34
  Sylvia France: That eight pounds of bread, that's not a loaf.
• 8:37
  That's a dumbbell or a doorstop.
• 8:39
  Nancy A. May: Right.
• 8:40
  Or a lead belly, as they could say, right?
• 8:43
  And salt cod off the Atlantic, well, that's a New England tradition.
• 8:47
  And baked beans sweetened with maple syrup, that's your week
• 8:52
  Sylvia France: Salt cod again and again.
• 8:54
  We talked about the problem with monotony last episode
• 8:57
  Nancy A. May: I know, right?
• 8:59
  Shoot me.
• 9:00
  You'd soak it overnight just to pull the salt out, and then you
• 9:03
  would bake it into everything.
• 9:06
  And you learn to love it.
• 9:07
  Either that or sorry, you went hungry
• 9:10
  Sylvia France: I guess it's like the one bite, no thank you rule, that
• 9:13
  if you didn't eat it
• 9:14
  Nancy A. May: Right?
• 9:15
  Sylvia France: So I'm just curious, what did they wash it down with?
• 9:19
  Nancy A. May: Well, it is New England, so mostly cider.
• 9:22
  They pressed their own by the barrel.
• 9:24
  I've even pressed cider myself.
• 9:26
  and a small beer was even given to the kids because the
• 9:28
  water wasn't safe at the time
• 9:30
  Sylvia France: Are you telling me children drink beer?
• 9:33
  Nancy A. May: Yeah, they did drink beer, but a much weaker
• 9:35
  variety of it, and here's why.
• 9:38
  because the town wells, were too close to the outhouses and many of the
• 9:42
  animal pens, so the water could make you sick, and sometimes deadly sick
• 9:47
  Sylvia France: So you're telling me that beer wasn't an indulgence?
• 9:50
  It, the water was actually the gamble
• 9:52
  Nancy A. May: Well, beer was a necessity actually.
• 9:55
  Brewing and fermentation killed off what was in the water so that
• 9:58
  the mug and a small beer were safe choices even for the kids
• 10:02
  Sylvia France: So did they have white bread?
• 10:04
  Nancy A. May: Well, not exactly Wonder Bread, that was a luxury.
• 10:09
  There was some of it, but most families almost never saw it.
• 10:12
  And there's a New England story that I love the most because this one
• 10:17
  revolves around election, and they had something called election cake
• 10:22
  Sylvia France: Cake for an election?
• 10:23
  That sounds like a story to me, but it could sound sweet, too
• 10:27
  Nancy A. May: I guess it depends on what side of the election you're on.
• 10:30
  So if you were in Connecticut, men could vote for their own
• 10:34
  governor as far back as the 1660s.
• 10:36
  There was no polling places in town, so you had to travel either half a day
• 10:40
  or even more on horseback or on foot just to reach the capital in Hartford
• 10:45
  Sylvia France: That's a really long trip.
• 10:47
  That's not like popping to your local neighborhood polling
• 10:50
  place as a school or a church
• 10:52
  Nancy A. May: Nope, not today.
• 10:54
  In fact, if you were in Greenwich going on foot, well, that would take days.
• 10:58
  But they also had taverns where speeches and military drills and all sorts of
• 11:03
  fireworks along the way just to make it a little bit more of an adventure.
• 11:07
  And a hungry crowd gathered at every local spot, and you had to feed those guys
• 11:13
  Sylvia France: It sounds like a, an excuse for a party to me and and
• 11:18
  let me guess, which I already know the answer, who did the feeding?
• 11:22
  Nancy A. May: The feeding, well, or the baking, it was us, the women
• 11:25
  Sylvia France: Of course they did
• 11:27
  Nancy A. May: unfortunately we couldn't cast a vote.
• 11:29
  until 1919.
• 11:31
  But they did run the kitchen, or we ran the kitchen, baking enormous cakes
• 11:36
  for every man who made that trip.
• 11:39
  , and the vote was his, but the feast was ours
• 11:42
  . Sylvia France: A hearty cake built for democracy and empty stomachs too
• 11:47
  Nancy A. May: Absolutely.
• 11:48
  So let's slide on down the map to the middle colonies.
• 11:51
  We're talking mid-Atlantic, New York, Southern New York,
• 11:54
  Pennsylvania, and New Jersey
• 11:57
  Sylvia France: Well, I understand there's better soil down there, so actual wheat
• 12:00
  plus cabbage, squash, apples, and a big German influence in the kitchen
• 12:06
  Nancy A. May: And you know, they actually called New Jersey the Garden
• 12:09
  State, but that meant that what was on your plate was a little different
• 12:13
  Sylvia France: I know these will sound familiar to you.
• 12:15
  Pancakes, waffles, donuts, pot pies.
• 12:19
  Honestly, it sounds like brunch to me
• 12:21
  Nancy A. May: brunch.
• 12:22
  They were ahead of all of us.
• 12:23
  I can't imagine.
• 12:24
  Let me bring my champagne along the
• 12:26
  Sylvia France: Where's my mimosa?
• 12:27
  Nancy A. May: Right?
• 12:28
  Do they have anything sweet, too?
• 12:30
  Sylvia France: Oh, absolutely.
• 12:32
  A cookie called a jumble that was flavored with rose water because the
• 12:35
  Dutch ran this wide open trade culture and they brought the world to America
• 12:41
  Nancy A. May: and there's one thing that breaks my heart just
• 12:44
  a little bit on this whole story it's called passenger pigeon pie
• 12:49
  Sylvia France: What?
• 12:49
  Pigeon pie?
• 12:51
  I've sung the song of Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked
• 12:55
  in a Pie since I was a kid
• 12:57
  . Nancy A. May: Yes, passenger pigeon pie.
• 12:59
  Wild passenger pigeons in flocks were so huge that they darkened the sky for hours.
• 13:04
  People figured the supply was endless, so they baked them
• 13:07
  into pies by the thousands.
• 13:10
  I'd hate to be underneath that flock of birds
• 13:13
  Sylvia France: I hope you had an umbrella if you did.
• 13:15
  And I understand it wasn't endless
• 13:18
  Nancy A. May: They hunted them clean to extinction and the one last
• 13:22
  passenger pigeon died in the zoo.
• 13:25
  pies will never taste the same
• 13:27
  Sylvia France: That is such a sad story.
• 13:30
  But, yeah, but it did show up in the first cookbook ever printed in the colonies.
• 13:34
  That was in 1742.
• 13:36
  Somebody loved it enough to write it down
• 13:38
  Nancy A. May: okay, so it's your turn, Sylvia.
• 13:40
  what's happening further down south?
• 13:42
  Sylvia France: All right, my table.
• 13:44
  Corn is king, hominy grits, hoe cakes, and a warm cornmeal mush they called pudding.
• 13:50
  Basically, the granddaddy of grits
• 13:53
  Nancy A. May: So pudding actually sounds like a comfort food
• 13:56
  Sylvia France: It smelled like smoke and warm milk by the hearth.
• 13:59
  Poor families ate it plain.
• 14:01
  If you had a little more, you stirred in butter, cream, and
• 14:04
  drizzled molasses or honey
• 14:06
  Nancy A. May: That's opposite of that gray and joyless food
• 14:08
  that we talked about earlier.
• 14:10
  Sylvia France: Those were the pilgrims.
• 14:12
  We had things like succotash, corn beans together, which came
• 14:16
  straight from native communities long before any settler showed up
• 14:20
  , Nancy A. May: So a lot of the American table is really indigenous food
• 14:24
  Sylvia France: Yes, both in the North and the South.
• 14:27
  That's the second thing to take home, honestly.
• 14:29
  Corn was the great equalizer, and most of what we call American
• 14:33
  food started with native crops.
• 14:35
  And then there's the stew every family still makes and commonly serves in
• 14:40
  restaurants around the Atlanta metro area.
• 14:42
  It's Brunswick stew.
• 14:44
  There's actually a city in the south part of Georgia called Brunswick.
• 14:49
  Except the 1776 version was a bit wilder
• 14:54
  Nancy A. May: So Wilder, I'm afraid to ask what that means
• 14:58
  Sylvia France: Well, that's the South.
• 14:59
  Just think roadkill.
• 15:01
  So whatever was running through the woods that week, squirrel,
• 15:04
  rabbit, raccoon, possum, simmered down with corn and lima beans
• 15:09
  Nancy A. May: That reminds me of a story that my dad used to tell me
• 15:11
  about when they were kids in Brooklyn, that they used to eat squirrel pie.
• 15:16
  My dad said that his dad used to go out and shoot squirrels in
• 15:20
  the backyard, and his mom would skin them and make them into pie.
• 15:24
  Now, this is Brooklyn, New York, and they still had dirt roads back then.
• 15:28
  Sylvia France: It sounds like it's Brooklyn, Georgia to me.
• 15:30
  Nancy A. May: Right?
• 15:32
  Sylvia France: See, this stuff is closer than people think.
• 15:35
  And oh, the towns.
• 15:36
  Turtle soup was a fancy treat.
• 15:39
  I do admit liking snapper turtle soup from Bookbinders in
• 15:43
  Philadelphia when I went there once.
• 15:45
  But down here we had our own version.
• 15:47
  I like the name cooter soup.
• 15:51
  It's fun to
• 15:52
  Nancy A. May: soup?
• 15:53
  I am not going there.
• 15:54
  I'm not touching that one with a 10-foot pole, Sylvia.
• 15:58
  Sylvia France: I know, but it's fun to say.
• 15:59
  Cooter, it's a freshwater turtle, I promise.
• 16:03
  But when you say cooter soup to a room, watch every single face turn
• 16:07
  in your direction and start laughing.
• 16:09
  What the heck came out of your mouth?
• 16:12
  Nancy A. May: Yeah.
• 16:13
  You're supposed to be a good Southern girl.
• 16:16
  I have too many questions, and I am not going any further with those
• 16:20
  Sylvia France: Well, that's another episode.
• 16:21
  And there's my story.
• 16:23
  It's called Hoppin' John.
• 16:24
  It's black-eyed peas, onions, and rice.
• 16:27
  I've eaten it every single New Year's Day as long as I can remember
• 16:31
  Nancy A. May: So every single New Year's?
• 16:33
  What's the story there?
• 16:35
  . Sylvia France: Every year, we don't skip it because it's guaranteed good luck.
• 16:40
  It's a New Year's Eve tradition.
• 16:42
  Black-eyed peas represent coins, collard or sauerkraut represent money, they're
• 16:47
  green, and cornbread represents gold
• 16:50
  Nancy A. May: Hmm.
• 16:51
  And I honestly have never had it, not once in my life, but I
• 16:54
  might dip into some of that gold.
• 16:58
  Sylvia France: We all will.
• 16:59
  So I've decided I'm finally feeding you Hoppin' John next time I visit and . You
• 17:05
  turned your nose when I said collards when I told you about it, but you've
• 17:09
  not had mine with a ham hock and onions.
• 17:11
  same country, but we had three completely different suppers
• 17:16
  Nancy A. May: Hemlocks, onions, and collards.
• 17:18
  it doesn't sound great to me, but I will give it a try.
• 17:21
  And that's the big one on the whole thing that we're talking about.
• 17:24
  Because the colonial meal, we're talking about the average citizens now, not the
• 17:28
  soldiers, not the gentry, just us average folks, you and me, out there having
• 17:34
  a different meal in the same country
• 17:36
  Sylvia France: And I have a question for you to chew on.
• 17:39
  Was it rye, wheat, or corn?
• 17:41
  Which is your family's table?
• 17:43
  Nancy A. May: So we'd love to get your input on that one.
• 17:46
  We'll put a question in the Facebook group.
• 17:48
  It's Family Tree Food Stories in Facebook, and we'll put a,
• 17:52
  link in the show notes as well.
• 17:53
  It's the kinda question that turns into a whole new episode if we want it to
• 17:58
  Sylvia France: It seems like every time we say something, it's a whole new
• 18:00
  episode, so we'll be busy for a while
• 18:03
  Nancy A. May: Okay, here's something I generally wanna know.
• 18:05
  - I know we're generally talking about food here, but you gotta
• 18:09
  have food on a plate or something.
• 18:11
  What were these folks eating off of?
• 18:13
  Sylvia France: Well, it was actually mostly wood.
• 18:15
  They call it a trencher.
• 18:16
  It's a carved wooden plate or bowl, and you can actually
• 18:20
  find that in medieval times.
• 18:22
  And it was interesting, s- sometimes two people shared just one.
• 18:27
  Less dishes.
• 18:28
  Nancy A. May: Yeah, less dishes, but a shared place.
• 18:31
  I'm not sure if that's romantic or, well, depending upon your marriage,
• 18:34
  whether it's a, a time for divorce
• 18:37
  Sylvia France: Depends on how they eat and if they ate yours.
• 18:40
  If you had a little money, you stepped up to pewter and forks
• 18:45
  Nancy A. May: Let me guess, we talked about forks before.
• 18:47
  These were the fancy kind of forks
• 18:49
  Sylvia France: Oh, of course, a a fork was a snobby luxury even to the commoners.
• 18:54
  Regular folks ate with spoon, knife, and the hands that God gave them
• 18:58
  Nancy A. May: You in the South, God gave you hands.
• 19:01
  So the fork was also a show-off at the table the entire time.
• 19:05
  I get it and there was one shared cup, as I understand, which
• 19:10
  also sounds rather disgusting
• 19:12
  Sylvia France: Well, just think communion.
• 19:14
  . You had one tankard of cider or beer passed around the whole table.
• 19:18
  You wiped the rim on your sleeve and handed it on
• 19:22
  Nancy A. May: that's a new definition of sharing for me.
• 19:24
  But
• 19:25
  Sylvia France: Sharing is caring.
• 19:26
  Nancy A. May: right, sharing is caring food itself looked different
• 19:29
  because nothing stayed fresh, and there was no refrigeration
• 19:33
  Sylvia France: None.
• 19:33
  So they had to get very clever.
• 19:35
  So you had salting, drying, smoking, pickling, and my favorite something
• 19:40
  called potting, and it wasn't flowers
• 19:43
  Nancy A. May: I'll have to ask what that one is because I have never heard of that
• 19:47
  Sylvia France: So they took the meat and they packed it in a tight jar, then
• 19:51
  they sealed the top with a layer of fat.
• 19:53
  It keeps for months.
• 19:54
  You just , took a slice of what you needed
• 19:56
  . Nancy A. May: So that doesn't sound too appealing.
• 19:58
  But they served it also, what I understand, with the head and feet smushed
• 20:02
  into that jar and can with the fat, which is also pretty disgusting in my book
• 20:08
  Sylvia France: Often, yes.
• 20:09
  But it was actually proof of what you're eating and nothing
• 20:13
  went to waste, not a single scrap
• 20:16
  Nancy A. May: Oh, that I understand, not going to waste.
• 20:19
  however how well you ate actually also came right down
• 20:22
  to your wallet not unlike today
• 20:24
  Sylvia France: Yes.
• 20:25
  The poorest families lived on potatoes, bread, and cheese working folks got
• 20:29
  meat maybe twice a week and the middle class ate three solid meals a day
• 20:34
  Nancy A. May: And nobody's eating a fresh garden salad unless you happen
• 20:38
  to be a French soldier in the woods
• 20:40
  Sylvia France: Those weed and frogs again.
• 20:42
  raw fruit and vegetables were thought of unappetizing, even unhealthy so they
• 20:48
  boiled the vegetables soft and poured sugar on the fruit to make it nice
• 20:53
  Nancy A. May: And well, they'd actually faint at our crudité board here today.
• 20:57
  but there's also food as a medicine angle, I think somewhere in this, isn't there?
• 21:02
  Sylvia France: Of course there is.
• 21:03
  They baked a pepper cake, and a black pepper actually helps
• 21:07
  to keep food a little longer.
• 21:09
  The kitchen knew the trick before anyone had heard the word antibacterial
• 21:14
  Nancy A. May: So that's pretty interesting.
• 21:16
  And here's the city flip that always gets people.
• 21:19
  In 1776, oysters and eels were poor people's food
• 21:24
  Sylvia France: Are you talking the cheap stuff?
• 21:25
  Nancy A. May: Yeah, back then maybe.
• 21:26
  … But New York Harbor was so packed with them back then, you used to be able to
• 21:29
  take a bucket and scoop them up into the bucket, and trash food of 1776 is now
• 21:36
  worth $40 for an appetizer on your plate.
• 21:39
  Oh, and I gotta tell you about Bob's eel story, because that has
• 21:43
  to do with New York Harbor, too.
• 21:45
  - When he was a kid, he told me that he and his dad would go down to the harbor
• 21:49
  under the bridge and fish for eels.
• 21:51
  Well, his dad would fish for eels, and his kids probably did something else.
• 21:55
  his dad take the bucket home, and his mom would peel the eels and
• 22:00
  make some sort of dish out of it.
• 22:02
  It wasn't till we were on a date one day and he said, "Hmm, this sushi eel somehow
• 22:08
  tastes like the tuna fish that my mom said she was giving us on Wednesday nights."
• 22:13
  So I guess New York eel is also your local neighborhood tuna fish, or could be
• 22:18
  Sylvia France: I love Bob's stories.
• 22:20
  Keep 'em coming.
• 22:22
  So times changed.
• 22:24
  What about the day itself?
• 22:25
  What time did they actually eat?
• 22:28
  Nancy A. May: Well, the big meal was midday.
• 22:29
  That was dinner, the main event.
• 22:32
  Supper was at night, or at least that's what they called it, which
• 22:35
  we call our dinner, and it was usually leftovers or something sparse
• 22:39
  Sylvia France: My family actually calls it supper.
• 22:41
  And this is the wild one, plenty of folks in town started the
• 22:45
  morning off with a cup of beer.
• 22:47
  Yes, again, because the water would make you sick
• 22:51
  Nancy A. May: Beer for breakfast.
• 22:52
  I think that's a little too much for me unless you've got a mimosa
• 22:55
  on the side, but not every night.
• 22:57
  And the 1776 Homefront was just vibes
• 23:01
  Sylvia France: And for the real celebration, syllabub.
• 23:04
  That was whipped cream with wine or cider.
• 23:07
  A boozy holiday milkshake, basically.
• 23:09
  Sounds good to me.
• 23:10
  Nancy A. May: Does sound good for me.
• 23:12
  I'll take that order.
• 23:13
  We might have to try that on our recreations.
• 23:15
  Sylvia France: I'm up for the experiment.
• 23:17
  . Nancy A. May: And here's the thing.
• 23:19
  They preserved everything and wasted almost nothing.
• 23:22
  . Now, one more thing the home front did that nobody teaches you.
• 23:25
  They rioted over food
• 23:28
  Sylvia France: They don't put that in the history books.
• 23:30
  Nancy A. May: No, right?
• 23:31
  Sylvia France: Game how often?
• 23:33
  Nancy A. May: Well, it was more than 30 times in a few years,
• 23:36
  and women led most of them.
• 23:37
  We are troublemakers at times, even back then.
• 23:40
  and the best one actually happened in Boston in 1777
• 23:45
  Sylvia France: Tell me more about it
• 23:46
  Nancy A. May: So here's what happened.
• 23:47
  A merchant, a coffee merchant of course, a troublemaking guy, was sitting on a stash
• 23:52
  of coffee waiting for the price to go up.
• 23:55
  looking at price gouging, and hundreds of women showed up to
• 23:59
  demand the keys to his stash.
• 24:00
  And he said, "No way."
• 24:02
  Sylvia France: That sounds like really big trouble to tell a woman no.
• 24:07
  Nancy A. May: So one of them grabs him by the neck and drops him into
• 24:10
  this cart that they happen to have and they open the warehouse, haul the
• 24:14
  coffee out themselves, and drove off.
• 24:17
  Well, not in a car but they drove off in their wagons
• 24:21
  Sylvia France: So to really believe this, please tell me that somebody wrote it down
• 24:25
  Nancy A. May: I know.
• 24:25
  It wasn't folklore and no, it wasn't just passed down by telephone Abigail
• 24:31
  Adams actually did write this down in a letter and she watched her neighbors
• 24:35
  doing it from outside her window
• 24:37
  Sylvia France: And here's the part I want people to sit with.
• 24:39
  It wasn't Emergent having a tantrum, it was math
• 24:42
  Nancy A. May: So what do you mean by math?
• 24:44
  I'm lost there
• 24:45
  Sylvia France: Well, in Roman time, soldiers were actually paid in salt.
• 24:49
  That's why you get the word salary that we have today.
• 24:53
  Most of the salt, especially up north, was imported, and the blockade choked it off.
• 24:58
  No salt means the meat was, could not be put up for the winter, and it would rot.
• 25:04
  So no salt meant a hungry February.
• 25:07
  At least here in Florida we had the Gulf, so they could evaporate their salt
• 25:11
  Nancy A. May: Oh, it sounds like a cold February too so she's not raging.
• 25:15
  She's actually doing arithmetic for survival and then stealing the coffee.
• 25:20
  Sylvia France: While both armies are walking off with her
• 25:22
  livestock, she was just correct
• 25:25
  Nancy A. May: And she wasn't alone because from Boston to the Carolinas, women were
• 25:29
  the ones holding the lines at the market
• 25:31
  Sylvia France: The home front had a face, and most of it was
• 25:34
  hers and beautiful like ours.
• 25:36
  Nancy A. May: Yes, for sure.
• 25:39
  Sylvia France: Okay.
• 25:39
  . In 1796, in Hartford, Connecticut, a small book called American Cookery went on sale.
• 25:46
  It was just 47 pages.
• 25:48
  The first cookbook written by an American for American kitchens
• 25:53
  Nancy A. May: That sounds pretty interesting.
• 25:55
  and it was the first to put recipes for Johnny cake, Indian pudding, and what
• 25:58
  we now call pumpkin pie down on paper.
• 26:01
  In addition, it was the first time that cranberry and turkey were paired
• 26:06
  together, not just the Pilgrims.
• 26:09
  it didn't happen back in Plymouth.
• 26:11
  … it was also the first time that the word cookery was printed into a book
• 26:15
  Sylvia France: And we know how much you love vintage cookbooks.
• 26:19
  Nancy A. May: I do
• 26:20
  Sylvia France: You have a stash.
• 26:21
  I love to hear your stories about where you find them in unusual places.
• 26:26
  So it pulled the three tables into one book, New England's corn, Mid-Atlantic's
• 26:31
  wheat, and the Southern hearth, the very beginning of a single American cuisine
• 26:36
  Nancy A. May: And the author, we almost know nothing about her.
• 26:39
  She signed it only Amelia Simmons, an American orphan.
• 26:44
  Oh, so sad.
• 26:45
  I have to find that book.
• 26:47
  and it hinted that she could barely read and had worked in other people's
• 26:51
  kitchens and houses just to survive
• 26:54
  Sylvia France: So it was- A woman with no family, no schooling, and
• 26:57
  no last word on her life, and she wrote the book that taught a brand
• 27:01
  new country how to feed itself
• 27:03
  . Nancy A. May: But she survives here on this podcast.
• 27:06
  She gets her name read out loud, Amelia Simmons, and that's the last
• 27:10
  thing to carry home in this show.
• 27:12
  So before we let you go, there are five things that we want you
• 27:16
  to carry out here, and something you can actually do with each one
• 27:20
  Sylvia France: One, there's no colonial meal.
• 27:22
  Your region was your menu, so find your family's table and cook the
• 27:26
  dish your own line descends from
• 27:28
  Nancy A. May: Yeah, we've got a book on that one.
• 27:30
  Two, that homegrown cup of tea after the tea party was actually a political act.
• 27:35
  a dry little mint on a windowsill that you brewed yourself was called liberty tea.
• 27:40
  You can do that today, too
• 27:42
  Sylvia France: I think they sell that at Publix.
• 27:43
  And three, corn was a great equalizer.
• 27:46
  A lot of American food is really indigenous food.
• 27:49
  Cook one of those dishes this week and say where it actually came from
• 27:54
  . Nancy A. May: Four, they preserved everything and wasted almost nothing.
• 27:57
  So you can keep a scrap bag in the freezer, run one pot all week, - and
• 28:03
  stop tossing that stale bread.
• 28:04
  You can turn it into croutons
• 28:06
  Sylvia France: Or actually thicken your stew.
• 28:08
  And five, the cooks and the orphan who wrote them all down
• 28:11
  got left out of the story, so when you make it, say their names.
• 28:15
  We just put them back in.
• 28:17
  Amelia Simmons
• 28:18
  Nancy A. May: The Declaration of Independence 250 years
• 28:21
  ago named the dream.
• 28:23
  , Kitchens like yours, three different tables, one stubborn
• 28:26
  country that fed it all into being
• 28:29
  Sylvia France: So we want to thank you for being here today
• 28:31
  and pulling up your chair with us.
• 28:33
  We are so grateful you're listening
• 28:36
  Nancy A. May: Yep.
• 28:36
  so next time we're heading up the road to the big house, as we call it down
• 28:40
  here in the South, the gentry table.
• 28:43
  , That's where Martha Washington was serving up her meals
• 28:46
  Sylvia France: So it was the fine wine, the imported delicacies, the food many
• 28:50
  commoners never dreamed of that's a whole different world, and that's next
• 28:55
  Nancy A. May: So please remember, go to podcast.familytreefoodstories,
• 28:58
  share, like, . And drop us a note with your food stories and ideas.
• 29:03
  We'd love to hear every one of them.
• 29:04
  Because we'd love to have you back at our table too.
• 29:07
  And remember, every meal has a story and every story is a feast
• 29:11
  Sylvia France: Happy cooking and happy experimenting
• 29:14
  Nancy A. May: Bye-bye.