Guest Post by J. L. Oakley

It might come as a surprise, but in the depth of the Great Depression people did enjoy parties and food and no less than at the hundreds of forestry camps around the country and in Alaska and Hawaii run by the Civilian Conservation Corps. A popular program in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal it put hundreds of thousands of young men to work planting trees, building bridges and park facilities, reclaiming land and fighting fires.

Food for Hungry Young Men

The CCC camps were run by the Army (unless it was a smaller side or spike camp which was run by the Forest Serivice for remote projects). Typically, it held up to 200 enrollees ages 18-25 years and laid out like a military camp. Wooden buildings or large tents housed the young men, but the mess hall generally was a permanent structure. As you can see, it came in all styles.

The kitchens varied in size, but many kept impressive pantries of can goods. Often local farmers provided fresh food for the tables, another aim of helping the local economy in this difficult econonic time.

Feeding such an army of hungry young men was an important function of the CCC camp and from my interviews with former CCC boys, one of the highlights of their time in the program. Meals were three times a day, the mid-day meal often a sack lunch or in some cases, a hot meal provided by a bull cook – all out in the field. The kitchen was run by both staff made up of a paid head and enrollees. Kitchen Patrol (KP), a legend in the WW II Army, was part of the CCC life, though boys could get certificates in sanitation and cooking work for their futures.

The Bull Cook

In my novel, Tree Soldier, protag Park Hardesty is recovering from a broken collarbone and is given the assignment of bull cook before he can get back to the hard work of planting trees and road work. He fishes for fresh trout and then prepares it in a skillet over a wood fire, something an interviewee told me he did when he was bull cook for a time. Trucks carrying hot soup and other foods also went out to the work sites. Generally projects were no more than 3 1/2 miles from the camp or spike camp for that reason.

Holiday Fun

The 3 Cs, as the program was sometimes called, was a home away from home for many of boys. As many of the projects were in the West and the most number of enrollees to work them from the back East and Chicago, celebrating holidays was a favorite passtime. Menus and decorations were made up, bringing a homey feeling to the season.

Recipe for logger coffee:

Fill a coffee pot with water and add a freshly cut chip of alder to it.
Bring to boil. Add coffee and return to fire.
Let boil for one minute.
Add cold water to settle the grounds and serve.

This coffee is delicious. I made it regularly while working the woods with a loal school district. Recipe came from an old time Forest Service veteran who knew the CCCs well.

Enjoy!

To read the original in newsletter form, click here.

Io Saturnalia!

The other day, I wrapped pine garland around the bannisters and put candles in the windows. As I type this, there are cookies baking in the oven. I’m planning a big feast for my friends and family and buying gifts for my loved ones. All these traditions would be familiar to the ancient Romans who celebrated this time of year in much the same way we do. Since my Saturnalia Celebration at Constellation Books for the launch of Song of the Nile was snowed out, I’ve decided to do a virtual version. So, read on and we’ll share in the solstice together.

First, The Feasting…

This month I’ve had the pleasure of hosting an archeological food extravaganza on my blog in which we’ve reproduced historical menus and recipes for the modern palate. I can’t tell you how hungry it has made me to format these delicious posts and now I get to share some of my favorites with you:

• A Winter Solstice Feast with a Recipe for a Juniper Reduction Sauce
• Dining With A Castillian Knight: Recipes from 15th Century Spain
• Food & Feasts in Ancient Rome: Mincemeat Recipe
• Beverages of Ancient Romanized North Africa: Recipes for Mint Tisane & Hibiscus Tea

Then the Boasting…

As it happens, I have something to boast about. I recently sold the rights to Lily and Song of the Nile to Spain. Yes, Spain, where Juba II probably earned his kingship fighting the Cantabri. Moreover, while Song of the Nile seems to be the most controversial book I’ve ever written, it’s also been garnering quite a bit of flattering praise!

And the Tomfoolery…

In April, I will be giving my Bad Girls of the Ancient World talk at Smith College’s annual ConBust–in fact, I will be there all weekend as a guest and panelist on March 30-April 1st and would love to see friendly faces. Trust me, there’s nothing that an author likes more than discussing her books and chatting with friends. I always love to hear reader feedback–even when it’s terrible–so please don’t be shy about letting me know what you think!

Guest Post by Gillian Bagwell

Christmas lasted a long time in centuries past.  The twelve days of Christmas began on December 25 and the season ended with Twelfth Night – the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.  In sixteenth and seventeenth century England there were many traditional rituals, games, and foods associated with the season.

One of the oldest traditions for Twelfth Night was wassailing, which has connections to Anglo-Saxon rituals.  Wassail was a hot punch of ale mulled with sugar and nutmeg.  The addition of little roasted crab apples, which split to reveal a fluffy white interior, turned wassail into “Lamb’s wool.” The word wassail is a contraction of the Middle English wæs hæl, meaning “good health” or “be you healthy.”

There were two different traditions of wassailing. One was caroling door to door, bearing a wassail bowl.  The households the revelers serenaded were obliged to welcome them in, drink from the bowl, and reward the carolers with little gifts of money.  Another tradition was singing to trees in apple orchards in cider-producing regions of England to promote a good harvest for the coming year.

Wassail Recipe

from Alton Brown from the Food Network:

Ingredients

• 6 small Fuji apples, cored
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup water
• 72 ounces ale
• 750 ml Madeira
• 10 whole cloves
• 10 whole allspice berries
• 1 cinnamon stick, 2-inches long
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 6 large eggs, separated

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put the apples into an 8 by 8-inch glass baking dish. Spoon the brown sugar into the center of each apple, dividing the sugar evenly among them. Pour the water into the bottom of the dish and bake until tender, about 45 minutes.

Pour the ale and Madeira into a large slow cooker. Put the cloves, allspice, and cinnamon into a small muslin bag or cheesecloth, tied with kitchen twine, and add to the slow cooker along with the ginger and nutmeg. Set the slow cooker to medium heat and bring the mixture to at least 120 degrees F. Do not boil.

Add the egg whites to a medium bowl and using a hand mixer, beat until stiff peaks form. Put the egg yolks into a separate bowl and beat until lightened in color and frothy, approximately 2 minutes. Add the egg whites to the yolks and using the hand mixer, beat, just until combined. Slowly add 4 to 6 ounces of the alcohol mixture from the slow cooker to the egg mixture, beating with the hand mixer on low speed. Return this mixture to the slow cooker and whisk to combine.

Add the apples and the liquid from the baking dish to the wassail and stir to combine. Ladle into cups and serve.

Another Twelfth Night tradition was the serving of a cake with a dried bean baked into it.  Whoever got the piece with the bean became the Lord of Misrule, who presided over the evening’s feast and attendant silliness, his rule ending at midnight.  Sometimes a pea was also baked into the cake, and whatever woman found it became the Mistress of Misrule.

Here’s an adaptation of a sixteenth century recipe for a “bean cake” from Christmas in Shakespeare’s England:

Bean Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. (4 cups) plain flour
• 1 lb. (2 cups) butter
• 1 lb. (1 cup) black treacle or molasses
• 5 eggs
• 1 oz. (about 4 tablespoons) powdered cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

This British recipe also calls for 1 teaspoon pearl ash melted in a little lukewarm milk, noting that “it adds little to the flavor” and may be omitted, but that “it can generally be purchased in small quanities from most dispensing chemists.”  I haven’t ventured out to look for it!

Mix the flour and spices.  Melt the butter and molasses together and add them to the flour mixture.  Beat the eggs and add them to the rest of the ingredients.  Pour into a greased and floured cake pan.  (This is a large cake and would probably take a springform cake pan or two 8” or 9” round cake pans.) Bake at 160C/320F for about two hours, until a toothpick comes out clean and the cake is firm.

And then there’s gingerbread! In America, we associate gingerbread with Christmas, in the form of decorated gingerbread houses and gingerbread men.  But gingerbread has a long history, and wasn’t always connected to Christmas.  The word gingerbread comes from the Old French word gingebras, which in turn comes from the Latin word zingiber, which meant preserved ginger. Eventually gingerbread came to mean either cake or biscuits made with ginger and other spices.

The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the sixteenth century, where they were sold in monasteries, pharmacies and town square farmers’ markets.  In Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labor’s Lost, the country fool Costard tells little Moth, “And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread.”  Some early recipes had a bit more of a kick than we’re used to, calling for mustard or pepper.  In Henry IV, Part One, Hotspur mentions “pepper gingerbread.”

The other kind of gingerbread traditional in England is a dense, moist cake, usually baked in a loaf or square shape, which is traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, the annual commemoration on the Fifth of November of the foiling of the plot by Guy Fawkes and his accomplices to explode the Houses of Parliament in 1605.

Here is a recipe for gingerbread biscuits adapted from Sir Hugh Platt’s Delights for Ladies, published in 1608, is for gingerbread biscuits and printed in A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain.

1608 GINGERBREAD

• 8 oz. (225 g.) fresh white breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) ground ginger
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) cinnamon
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) aniseed
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) ground liquorice (if available)
• 1 oz. (2.5 g. sugar)
• ¼ pint (150 ml.) claret

Dry the breadcrumbs under the grill or in the oven (but without browning), and add to the remaining ingredients in a saucepan.  Work the mixture over a gentle heat with a wooden spoon, until it forms a stiff dough.  Turn the dough out onto a wooden board dusted with ground ginger and cinnamon and roll it out to about ¼ inch (5 mm.) in thickness. It may then be impressed with a small stamp, a 1 inch (2.5 cm.) diameter butter press being ideal for this purpose, and cut into small circles, using a pastry cutter.  If antique gingerbread molds are available, then they should be dusted with the ground spices before the slab of dough is firmly impressed into their designs.  Then, after the surplus has been trimmed off with the knife, the gingerbread can be removed by inverting the molds, and gently knocking their edges down onto the table.  Like most early gingerbreads, this version released its flavors gradually, the gentle aniseed being slowly overwhelmed by the fiery ginger.

Neither version of the recipe mentions baking, but I think that might be a mistake.  Based on modern recipes, I would bake the gingerbread at 375° for about 8-10 minutes.

For more on seasonal festivities, see my article on the history of gingerbread on Crazy for Books (http://crazy-for-books.com/2010/12/holiday-author-guest-post-book-giveaway-debut-novelist-gillian-bagwell.html) and that on Twelfth Night traditions on Simply Stacie (http://www.simplystacie.net/2011/01/guest-post-twelfth-night).

Gillian Bagwell is the author of The Darling Strumpet, The September Queen, and the forthcoming My Lady Bess.  For information about her books, other articles, and links to the blogs of her research adventures, please visit her website, gillianbagwell.com.

Sources and further reading

A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain, Brears et al., published by English Heritage in association with British Museum Press, 1993

Christmas in Shakespeare’s England, compiled by Maria Hubert, Sutton Publishing, 1998

Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, Alexander Schmidt, 1902, reprinted by Dover

Publications, Inc., 1971

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassailing