This post is hear to let you know I’m on a Summer Sabbatical until July 16th. That’s a long time to be gone, I know, but it’s for a good reason:

I”m getting married!!!!

Following the wedding, my fiancee Brian and I going on a honeymoon to Mexico City, followed by a trip to the Gulf Coast.  We’ll be staying in northern Verracruz, near Papantla, the native region of Vanilla. I’ll be taking a tour of a vanilla plantation, as well as generally devouring everything in Mexico. Follow me on Twitter for updates while I’m gone, but there will be lots of photos and a blog about the trip when I return.

If you’d like to give us a little something for our big day, we’re registered with the Human Rights Campaign.  We’re getting married in Ohio, a state that bans same-sex marriage in the state constitution; HRC is workings towards change. Please go here if you’d like to make a donation in our name.

I want to leave you with a wedding cake recipe from 1830, first published in The Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Child.  It’s very close to my heart because it inspired the name of this blog.

One more little gem from around the web: I wrote this post for WNYC (New York Public Radio) about Frances Foley Gannon, a LaGuardia era public figure who held sway over the city’s public markets and the five-borough’s dinner tables.

“Good morning, Housewives!”

Every morning at 8:25 AM, long after mothers had ushered their children off to school and begun the laborious task of housework, “Mrs. Gannon” chirped her greeting over the radio. Cheerful but firm, the Deputy Commissioner of Markets gave menu-planning advice to “the biggest collection of hungry people ever gathered in one small spot —New York City.”

You can read the full article, as well as get her recipe for Tamale pie, here.

Tamale pie: a crowd pleaser.

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from?  There it is, cheap as dirt, on our grocery store shelf–but how is it produced?  And where? Was it as easy to nab in Colonial America?  I’ve been pondering over these questions recently, so I decided to find out; as well as make my own salt from a local New York waters near Coney Island.

And then—I kid you not—I had salt. Big, beautiful crystals along the bottom and sides of the pan. Although I knew it was science, it seemed like magic. A half-liter of liquid yielded approximately two tablespoons of salt. Will I be using it to top my salted caramel sundae or to encrust my grass-fed steak? Absolutely not—do you have any idea what they dump in the waters around New York City?

Read the full article here, on Hudson Made, a new online retailer focused on products produced in the Hudson River Valley.

In my latest Kitchen History, I was inspired by the beautiful ice that has been appearing in historically-inspired craft cocktail bars across the country to purchase my own ice pick, freeze a block of ice and attempt to shape it into jewel-like cubes. I have questionable success.

You know when you think something is going to be really easy, and then you realize you’re in way over your head? I first got that feeling after watching Japanese ice ball carving videos online; it dawned on me that I was destined to puncture my hand.

Read the entire adventure here.

In the late 1920s, George Orwell compiled his first full-length book. Although Down And Out In Paris And London wasn’t an epic novel about a dystopian future, the origins of his later works could be found in this semi-documentarian, semi-autobiographical look at the criminalization of the poor.

In the first half of Down and Out…, Orwell gives a grueling account of the French food industry; he worked in Paris as one of the lowliest kitchen staff buried in the basement scullery of a hotel. But even more fascinating was when Orwell’s main character returns to his hometown of London, and through a series of misfortunes ends up living life as a penniless “tramp” for a period of several months. Orwell, too, lived amongst the homeless while he was a young journalist: he wandered in and out of shelters with the permanently poor, and became critical of the housing and diet of these men, the latter being “tea-and-two-slices.”

Ironically, just off the boat from France, Orwell”s main character orders tea-and-two-slices with a sort of welcome nostalgia.  Standard 1920s British diner fair, it’s a mug of tea with milk and sugar, and two slices of toast spread with margarine. But as he gets caught up in the system of cheap lodging houses, work houses, and prison-like shelters called “spikes,” it is the only food offered to the homeless.  ”Food..had come to mean simply bread and margarine, which will cheat hunger for an hour or two,” Orwell writes.

“It follows that the ‘Serves them damned well right’ attitude that is normally taken towards tramps is no fairer that it would be towards cripples or invalids. When one has realized that, one begins to put oneself in a tramp’s place and understand what his life is like. It is an extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life…hunger, which is almost the general fate of tramps.  The casual ward [a sort of shelter] gives them a ration which is probably not even meant to be sufficient, and anything beyond that must be got by begging–that is, by breaking the law. The result is that nearly every tramp is rotted by malnutrition; for proof of which we need only look at the men lining up outside any casual ward.”

Orwell’s book goes so deeply, and personally, into societal views of poverty that I can’t even scratch the surface in this post. Go on and read it, it will fascinate you.  But in an odd sort of tribute, I’m going to reenact the part that fascinated me the most: the ongoing march of tea-and-two-slices, this very British meal that was the insufficient fuel for an army of homeless men. Four meals today: 8am, 12pm, 4pm, and 8pm–tea, bread and margarine only.  I’ll update this post with thoughts throughout the day.

Update 12pm: A few words on margarine: I hate it.  I hate the mouth-feel and greasy taste. My future husband & my temporary roommate LOVE it. That’s part of the reason I’m doing this experiment now, because there’s an economy sized tub of it in the fridge.  I haven’t been able to figure out why margarine was so incredibly popular in England – maybe someone out there can clue me in – but this line from Down and Out is particularly telling:

“An ordinary London coffee shop, like a thousand others…’Can I have some tea and bread and butter?’ I said to the girl.

She stared. ‘No butter, only marg,” she said, surprised. And she repeated the order in the phrase that is to London what the eternal coup de rouge is to Paris: ‘Large tea and two slices!’

Daily Mail UK online has some things to say about margarine.

Black tea with milk and sugar is one of my favorite things in the world, however. And sipped slowly over many hours, it does stave off hunger, as many an Irish domestic knew.

Update 4pm: I get really hungry about two hours after eating.  The tea always helps–I’m very happy when I’m filled with sugar and caffeine.  Tea is a drug, that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, helped the poor get through their day and functioned as a substitute for food when there was none.  The “lower classes” were also constantly criticized for spending what little money they had on frivolities like tea and sugar; or so it was perceived, in England and on this side of the ocean. Perhaps today’s replacement is coffee or Mountain Dew.

Update 8pm: I had my last tea-and-two-slices an hour early.  What I ate at 4pm didn’t satisfy me at all.  I was having trouble thinking and remembering by 5pm, and by 6 I had to go have a lay down. I feel weak, sick and confused.  When I ate my final meal at 7, I felt full, but gross. I really thought today would be a cakewalk–who doesn’t love tea and toast? But I cannot imagine eating this, and only this, day after day.  It would destroy you.

I think I might have a banana and some peanut butter before I go to bed.  Don’t judge.

My latest Etsy article is essential a rant about the historic gender bias in grilling–with recipes!  Read it here.

Yes, it’s a pet peeve of mine — it’s gotten to the point where I threaten anyone who approaches the grill. But it’s not just personal paranoia. Do a search for “vintage barbecue” on Etsy and you will find men — cookbooks adorned with images of men grilling; photos, aprons, and even grilling utensils emblazoned with images of men. So what’s the deal? Why, historically, is cooking in the kitchen the realm of women, but grilling outdoors the realm of men?

The Dixie Dog is a hot dog stuffed with peanut butter and wrapped in bacon.

Banning pasta in Italy, pre-WW2 molecular gastronomy and high-concept dinner parties: Welcome to The Futurist Cookbook!

Published in 1932 by F.T. Marinetti, it aimed to transform everyday meals from stodgy, sleep-inducing traditions into multi-sensory, scientific experiences appropriate for the modern world.

The evening will include an interactive tasting of Futurist cuisine! Join us as we abandon silverware, caress sandpaper, and craft meat skyscrapers, all in the name of recreating the cuisine of futures past.

This month, we’re in the back room at Public Assembly. Doors at 7, talks a bit after, and bring an ID. MSG is always FREE, but PLEASE RSVP here so we bring enough samples!

Edible Alphabet and Cubist Vegetable Patch – Image courtesy italianfuturism.org

Bill Bryson, author of the awesome domestic history compendium At Home: A Short History of Private Life, doesn’t have a high opinion of Isabella Beeton.  Mrs. Beeton published Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management in the mid-19th century; it included thousands of recipes, instructions for house servants, cleaning tips, medical advice and more.  It is probably the most influential English cookbook of all time.  Bryson calls it “…done in carelessness and haste” “plagiarized” and “…An instruction manual that could be followed religiously and that was exactly what people wanted.”

Ok. Maybe her book is a little over the top.  Perhaps one of the best examples of the tediousness of her recipes can be found in her “precise steps how to make hot buttered toast.”

TO MAKE HOT BUTTERED TOAST.

A loaf of household bread about two days old answers for making toast better than cottage bread, the latter not being a good shape, and too crusty for the purpose. Cut as many nice even slices as may be required, rather more than 1 inch in thickness, and toast them before a very bright fire, without allowing tho bread to blacken, which spoils the appearance and flavour of all toast. When of a nice colour on both sides, put it on a hot plate; divide some good butter into small pieces, place them on the toast, set this before the fire, and when the butter is just beginning to melt, spread it lightly over the toast. Trim off the crust and ragged edges, divide each round into 4 pieces, and send the toast quickly to table. Some persons cut the slices of toast across from corner to corner, so making the pieces of a three-cornered shape. Soyer recommends that each slice should be cut into pieces as soon as it is buttered, and when all are ready, that they should be piled lightly on the dish they are intended to be served on. He says that by cutting through 4 or 5 slices at a time, all the butter is squeezed out of the upper ones, while the bottom one is swimming in fat liquid. It is highly essential to use good butter for making this dish.

But I tried her recipe, and I have to admit: it was a great system of toast making. I didn’t use the best butter–just Land o’ Lakes from the fridge.  And no open fire: I have a combo pop-up toaster and toaster oven, and used both features to execute this recipe: first to toast the bread, then to melt the butter. But with the double-toasting method she suggests, the butter was evenly distributed and saturated into the surface. The salty fat squeezed out with each bite and oozed over the tongue.  The soft squares of toast looked ridiculously small on the plate, but the mouth-feel was  almost decadent without the tough and scratchy crusts.

Maybe I just have a soft spot for Isabella. She was writing in a time when women weren’t. She was trying to write more specific  better organized recipes when recipes were about clear as mud. And she loved her publisher husband fiercely–who also seemed to love her back, but also gave her syphilis (probably).

At least she had a handle on toast.

I went to art school, where I learned many things that are still very useful to me on a daily basis.  One of the most important lessons I learned was that if I don’t put my work out there, no one will see it. Everything that has happened in my career has happened because of this blog.

I started Four Pounds Flour 4 1/2 years ago, simply because my friends seemed to enjoy my historic food adventures.  I thought that if they liked it, maybe there were other people who would like it, too.  I had also spent some time working in foodie culture in New York City, and I realized that there was an unfilled niche: no one out there had my same perspective on food.

I started writing with no expectations and I promised myself that if the blog stopped being fun, I would stop writing it. I began to meet a community of people through my writing, including new friends in New York. Soon, they starting asking me if I would do an event at such-and-such historic site.  When that event went well, I would be asked to do another. And another.  I’ve always loved teaching and performing, so it was a good fit for me.

When writing a blog, after a certain point you produce enough content (and hopefully enough reliable content) that your posts start coming up in Google searches.  That’s how I ended up on Appetite City and in the Wall Street Journal–someone was searching around for “the history of restaurants” or “recreating historic food” and they found me. Over time, my blog had built a respectable following. (Correction: Appetite City found me through Liza de Guia, creator of food. curated. who produced this video about my work three years ago.)

About two years ago, a literary agent contacted me.  I had done a private event for a local chapter of the DAR and one of the members (his wife) recommended he take a look at my writing.  We had a few meetings and I made my first attempt at a book proposal.  Nothing came of it, but I learned a lot and had something to show for it.

In February 2012 I was contacted by an editor at Simon & Schuster.  He had seen this post and invited me out for coffee. He told me I should write a book and we brainstormed some ideas.  We had a lot in common and had a sense we’d enjoy working with each other. He also recommended me to an agent.

It took a LONG TIME to write the proposal.  I conceptualized it for six months and I’ve been writing it on and off since August 2012.  There was a lot to learn in the process. There were a lot of rewrites.  In the end, I actually didn’t think Simon & Schuster would buy it.

But they did.  And I still can’t believe this is happening to me.  Getting a “big break” isn’t something I thought happened to real people.

Here’s my best advice: if you’re thinking of starting a blog, just do it.  The beauty of it is there is no one to answer to and no expectations of your work. There is no risk. Just make things. Write things.  Whatever your art form is–just get the work out there, in a public forum, where people can see it. If you work hard, and make good work, good things will come of it. I really do believe that.

If you have other questions for me, please feel free to post in the comments.  I’m probably going to be in the market for an intern this fall, so if you live in the New York area, and are interested in learning what I do first hand, keep it in mind!

How to rehab cast iron in my latest on Etsy.  Read it here!

In fact, cast iron gets better with age and use: years of oil and scraping with utensils create a super-smooth, non-stick cooking surface. Vintage skillets by Lodge can sell for $100 — more costly than new pieces from the 117-year-old cookware maker. If you’re not interested in dropping a Benjamin on a pan, take my advice: go for the rusty pieces. You’ll find them priced at half — or even a tenth — of the cost of clean skillets of the same age and size. All it takes is a little TLC to get these pans back in working order