Resolve to Put More History in Your New Year

Love History? Feel like you are missing out. Want to introduce your family and friends to things you love? Try these suggestions below to put more history in your year.

·         Visit a historic site, state park, or a National Park. Many of these locals have low or no admission cost and feature programs for the entire family. Ask about a Junior Ranger program for kids to participate in. Look here to find a National Park: http://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm



Grand Teton National Park

·         Visit a museum. Any museum. Museums are great places to immerse yourself in history. Further many museums host events and programs throughout the year to engage people of all ages. If you are a Bank of America or Merrill Lynch

      debit or credit card holder, check here http://museums.bankofamerica.com/ to learn what museums you can visit for free the first weekend of each month.

 

Sutter's Fort State Historic Park

·         Read a good book. Consult the reviews on our site or use What Should I Read Next? http://whatshouldireadnext.com/index.php  to find a book based on ones you have enjoyed in the past.

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·         Volunteer. Find out how you can support local history.  Look here for http://www.volunteermatch.org/ opportunities to enjoy history and share it with others.




Ft. King George State Park

·         Attend a reenactment. See history live. Check here http://www.brucewetterau.com/find-a-reenactment-near-you.html to find a reenactment near you.
 

·         Play a Game. Check out our history game of the week recommendations.

 

 

New Year’s Food Traditions

By Jeff Burns

Just as with Christmas,  New Year’s  Day is celebrated with traditional foods brought by the immigrants who settled America.   While there are many varied traditions, they all center around eating foods designed to bring good fortune in the coming year, and there are three commonly recurring themes:  some kind of greens (symbolizing both wealth and longevity), some food to represent gold or coins (money), and pork.

Why these foods?  Of course, a major reason is the time of year.  Green leafy vegetables like collards, turnips, and cabbage are in season.  Beans and peas, dried after summer harvest, are readily available.  Farm families regularly marked the beginning of winter as “hog-killing” season.  Also, pigs are associated with plumpness and getting plenty to eat.  Some traditions hold that pigs symbolize good fortune because they are constantly rooting forward, in new directions, in contrast to fowl’s habit of scratching backwards.

Across the South, people celebrate with collard greens, turnips, mustard, or cabbage.   These days, maybe even a little kale will sneak in.  To symbolize money, southerners eat some kind of pea, usually black-eyed or field peas.  Hopping John, a dish combining peas and rice and cooked with hog jowls or salt pork, has been around at least since the early 19^th century.  Its origins are unclear, but it was probably brought from Africa or the Caribbean; the name may be a corruption of “pois a pigeon”, French for pigeon peas, common in the Caribbean.  Hopping John was a staple among plantation slaves, especially in coastal South  Carolina.  Cornbread’s golden color also represents fortune.

German settlers brought their love of pork to Pennsylvania and the Appalachians.  They also brought sauerkraut, which is the traditional New Year’s green in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England.

Fish is the protein of choice for some.  In the Pacific Northwest, salmon may be on the menu.  Some northern Europeans prefer herring or carp.  Chinese families often celebrated with a whole fish, symbolizing abundance in the coming year and long noodles, representing long life.

Whatever your tradition, enjoy!

Here are a couple of links:
http://www.womansday.com/food-recipes/10-good-luck-foods-for-the-new-year-114348
http://www.foodtimeline.org/newyear.html
http://americanfood.about.com/od/resourcesadditionalinfo/a/New-Years-Day-Tradition-Black-Eyed-Peas.htm

Southern Christmas Dessert Traditions

By Jeff Burns

I’m a bit of a foodie, but aren’t we all these days?  One thing I’ve noticed lately is that southern cooking is in these days, on the cooking shows, in cookbooks, and in restaurants.  For me, it’s just always been home cooking.  My mother learned from her mother, grandmother, and aunts, and she was never happier than when she was cooking for a houseful of people.  I grew up with and absorbed some of that sense of tradition.

In the South, there are certain food traditions associated with the holidays that are still strong today.  However, there are still regional differences within the South.  I thought I’d explore some of the origins of a few things in my holiday memory.

Desserts are big in the South during the holidays, maybe the decadence was ok for the holidays.  As a child in the 1930s and 1940s, my mother was happy to get exotic fruits and nuts like oranges and brazil nuts in her stocking, so I’m sure treats like fruitcake, divinity, and red velvet cake were over the top.

Fruitcakes  Don’t just jump on the “I hate fruitcake” bandwagon until you actually try it.  What can be bad about a cake made with fruits and nuts and often soaked in spirits?  I make a great one.  Fruitcakes date back to ancient Rome and then spread throughout Europe.  The English made it into an art form, and English colonists brought it to America.  The dense cake made use of preserved fruits and nuts, filling, delicious, and has long shelf life.  Many cultures around the world have their own version.  Some are soaked in brandy, whiskey, rum or other spirits for added flavor.

Divinity   Divinity is a meringue or nougat like confectionary that consists mostly of egg whites, corn syrup, and sugar.  It originated sometime between 1900 and 1915.  At that time, corn syrup was just hitting the market, and it’s thought that some corn syrup manufacturers may have introduced the recipe.  The origin of the name is a little fuzzy, except that someone once proclaimed it to be divine.  For years, it was called “southern candy”, possibly because of the addition of pecans.

Red Velvet Cake  Red Velvet Cake is widely considered to be a southern dessert, but some stories trace its origin to New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  It probably dates back to the 1920s or 1930s during the Great Depression when the Adams Extract Company of Texas started marketing its red food coloring across the country, using advertising innovations like perforated recipe cards.  The distinctive red color is actually the result of the interaction of vinegar, buttermilk, and cocoa.  Apparently the red color was more pronounced before more alkaline “Dutch processed” cocoa was widely available.  Recipes began calling for red food coloring to compensate.  During the days of World War II shortages and rationing, beet juice was often used.

 

There are lots of recipes out there; find one you like and enjoy.  Enjoy your own holiday food traditions and maybe add a few more to your repertoire.