Category Archives: Food history

Save That Potato: The Makah Ozette

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Linda Ziedrich

The one little potato tuber I planted in my city garden this year turned out to be a good choice: My single Makah Ozette plant yielded nearly 13 pounds of tubers. Until recently grown only by the Makah tribe of … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Vegetables | Tagged Ark of Taste, indeterminate potato, Makah tribe, Ozette potato, Slow Food | 22 Comments

Adventures with Almonds, Part I: The Marvelously Fragrant Hall’s Hardy Almond

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Linda Ziedrich

This is the first part of a two-part series. I’ll publish the second, on making marzipan, shortly. In the meantime, you might check out two articles I recently published with Mother Earth News, “Finally, a Good Thermometer for Home Preserving” and … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Nuts | Tagged almond extract, amygdalin, benzaldehyde, bitterness, Hall's Hardy almond, hardy almonds, Marcona almonds, One Green World, prussic acid, xenia | 15 Comments

Now Aboard the Ark: Scio Kolace

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Linda Ziedrich

New to Slow Food’s Ark of Taste are kolace (pronounced “ko-LA-chee”) from Scio, Oregon, my home for 21 years. I’m proud to have nominated these filled sweet yeast buns whose history is so tightly bound with that of the little … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Sweet preserves | Tagged Ark of Taste, bread, Czechs, kolace, kolache, Oregon, poppy seed filling, recipe, Scio, Slow Food, ZCBJ | 1 Comment

Shrub, Part I: The Story of a Drink

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Linda Ziedrich

Is there any living man who now calls for shrub? You may still see it on the shelf of an old-fashioned inn; you may even see the announcement that it is for sale painted on door-posts, but no man regardeth … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Fruits | Tagged Andy Ricker, Benjamin Franklin, beverage, Buckeye Cookery, drinking vinegar, Elia Smith, fruit-flavored vinegar, Jerry Thomas, Missouri Hortlicultural Society, quince shrub, raspberry shrub, Som, Walter Besant | 4 Comments

Taking the Wind Out of Jerusalem Artichokes

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Linda Ziedrich

Does your spouse refuse to eat Jerusalem artichokes because they’re too—err—windy? Have you yourself abandoned your Jerusalem artichoke patch to the weeds or the pigs, because no human of your acquaintance would eat the damn things again? If so, you … Continue reading →

Posted in Fermented foods, Food history, Pickles, Preserving science, Vegetables | Tagged fermentation, inulin, pickles, recipe, sunchokes, sunroots, topinambour | 94 Comments

Purple Mustard from Homemade Must

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Linda Ziedrich

The moment I spotted a little article about moutarde violette in a recent issue of Saveur, I got excited. Surely no one would think to flavor mustard with violets. So, could this be a kind of mustard prepared not with … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Fruits | Tagged arrope, mostarda, mostillo, moutarde violette, Purple Condiment, saba | 5 Comments

Dietary Propaganda, Hoover Style

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Linda Ziedrich

I don’t know where my friend Raphaël stumbled upon this poster, but when he showed it to me I first thought it something new. It seemed, after all, to spell out the latest dietary consensus, a set of rules that … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history | Tagged food conservation, Herbert Hoover, home gardening, school gardens, U.S. Food Administration, war posters, World War I | 4 Comments

Limed Yum-Yum Pickles

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Linda Ziedrich

Summer seemed to vanish suddenly a few days ago, when a mid-afternoon thunderstorm dumped two and a half inches of rain here in less than two hours, and a total of nearly five and a half inches by sunrise the … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Pickles, Sweet preserves, Vegetables | Tagged bread-and-butter pickles, Crisp and Co., Mrs. Fanning, Mrs. Wages, pickling lime, recipe, Tom Peter | 4 Comments

Pickling Watermelons Whole

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Linda Ziedrich

In my blog post about Moldova I shared my daughter’s photo of watermelons that had been brined intact, and I promised to write about how to pickle watermelons in this way. Before watermelon season passes again, I want to share … Continue reading →

Posted in Fermented foods, Food history, Fruits, Pickles | Tagged brined watermelon, fermented watermelon, Germans from Russia, Golden Midget, Guss' Pickles, recipe, sour watermelon, Volga River | 17 Comments

A Mixed Pickle of Mixed Parentage

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Linda Ziedrich

When Jennifer Burns Levin wrote about her encounter with atjar tjampoer in Amsterdam, I realized that this Indonesian-Dutch cousin of chow-chow was missing from my collection of recipes for the mixed pickles that originated in the East Indies and traveled … Continue reading →

Posted in Food history, Pickles, Vegetables | Tagged acar campur, chow-chow, Dutch pickle, Indonesian pickle, mixed pickle, recipe, turmeric | 7 Comments