Tag Archives: Virginia

In My September Kitchen

Inspired by Celia at figandlimecordial I am giving all of you a look inside my kitchen near Boston, Massachusetts. For the first scenes, I cheat a little by starting outside in a sunny spot in our back yard.

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A Taste of Germany in Richmond: Family Kuchen Recipe

It’s hard for a Southerner to pronounce the word kuchen, which means cake in German. It ends up sounding like kook or cuckoo – not exactly the impression you want to make when baking a dessert for others. But I … Continue reading

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‘Top Knot’ Cookies for a Birthday Girl

My grandmother, Hanna, launched a generation of young Richmonders by baking birthday cookies for them at the nursery school she directed. She topped each birthday boy or girl’s cookie with a Hershey’s chocolate kiss, making a special treat for a … Continue reading

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Rum Punch and Rice Pudding to Honor the Nation’s First Memorial Day

Memorial Day honors all who sacrificed their lives while serving in the U.S. military, but it started as a Civil War remembrance. In the spring of 1866, a year after the war ended, people in towns in the North and in … Continue reading

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Lemon Chess Cake: My Mother’s Special Request

In between the time that people traded recipes over the back fence and the internet, newspapers often published recipe exchange columns for readers. For my mother, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran “Trading Secrets,” which let readers answer requests for everything from Greek Green Beans … Continue reading

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Curry: Bombay Meets Dixie and Becomes a Roosevelt Favorite

My grandmother, Hanna, collected quite a few chicken curry recipes, a surprisingly exotic departure from her preference for plain food. I don’t remember meeting anyone from India while I was growing up in Richmond, but Indian food was nonetheless popular … Continue reading

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Hot Chocolate, Cold Meat, Gingerbread: What Washington Really Ate

For George Washington’s birthday, my mother used to buy a supermarket cake overloaded with pink frosting that stuck to the knife. Never mind that the cherries tasted more of chemicals than fruit. Every bite felt patriotic. At my elementary school … Continue reading

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Take This Cornmeal and Bake It

My father, pictured here in the 1930s with his parents, ate almost anything, including leftovers “as long as they were good the first time.” One family favorite, spoon bread, drew on his mother’s Southern roots. This baked combination of cornmeal, … Continue reading

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Plain Old Baked Butterscotch Apples

For someone who spent little time in the kitchen, my grandmother, Hanna (she’s in slacks; her sister is on her left), wrote down and saved a lot of recipes. Neither she nor my grandfather liked what they termed “fancy food.” … Continue reading

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‘One of the Housekeeper’s Necessaries’

I am named after my great-grandmother, Clara, whose parents emigrated from a small village in southern Germany to Cleveland, Ohio in the 1870s. She looks genteel in this photo but her family supported itself with the rough-and-tumble Black Cat Whiskey … Continue reading

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