In The Vintage Kitchen

Here we are on the eve of the Fourth of July and America’s big birthday. The outdoor temps have risen to the occasion. 97 degrees with a feels-like temp of 100 can be an intimidating atmosphere for any cook in any decade, let alone any century, but a short-term heat spell doesn’t mean that you have to shy away from cooking something festive for the hot holiday weekend ahead. Today’s post…

When I pulled up a bone with teeth, the Pit project shut down for a few days. Between the last post about finds in the Pit and this post, I’ve learned a lot more about trash pits vs. privy pits and the meaning of each in the local landscape as it relates to 1750 House. One surprising fact was that municipal city trash pick-up did not begin in my town until 1972, which means burying household…

Truman packed his Dacron. Millie packed her day dresses. Together, they hauled over 60 pounds of luggage to the Portland International Airport, got on a plane, and flew to Hawaii. Destination number one of their 35-city tour around the world. The year was 1954. The month – February. Truman documented the entire trip in real-time, as it unfolded city by city, in a spiral-bound notebook clad in…

As we settle into cozy mid-winter weather with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season behind us, I’m excited to share the annual tradition of the recommended book list. Usually this lists gets published at the end of December during the last week between Christmas and New Year’s, but I’m a little late this year. Two books that I definitely wanted to include on the list I finished just as…

When it comes to dessert at Christmastime, an infinite loop of baking options never fails to greet us at every source. From chocolate to candy canes, cookies to confections, the holiday peppers its sugar plums and santas with all the sweet-natured hallmarks of the baking season. Every year, we are spritzed and sprinkled, fluffed and frosted, whipped and whirled into a cacophony of holiday…

Adelma did not let us down. In her 1964 book, Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, she assured readers that certain types of herbs would grow in sun-dappled shade gardens. And she was not wrong. Herbs did grow. Flowers did form. And I did clip and cook my way through the summer. Just not quite in the way that I had anticipated. If you are joining us for the first time, this post is part of a series…

Autumn 2025 comes to 1750 House in a blanket of color. It’s hard to believe that our annual once-a-year shop sale is just two weeks away, especially since our last blog post left off with baking bread in the middle of a summer heatwave. And yet, now here are, firmly swaddled in a blanket of autumn leaves with the woodpeckers performing their yearly tap tap tapping on the shingles of 1750 House…

When it comes to describing great bread recipes, they tend to take on a variety of accolades based on specific attributes. Best flavor. Best texture. Best no-knead. Best whole wheat. Best no wheat. Best gluten-free. Easiest to make. Fastest to bake. Biggest loaf. Smallest effort. Best. Fastest. Easiest. Again and again, over and around, brilliant bakers everywhere boast. No one that I’ve…

Lily If I walk out of the back door very quietly on these early, almost-summer mornings, I can usually spot Lily eating grass at the edge of a way too overgrown decades-old daylily bed. Lily, as we came to call her due to her preference for this area of the yard, is a baby rabbit about the size of a teacup. She was born to Lefty, a wild cottontail that lives in our woods. Lefty Lefty came by…

There it is. In all the swoops and swirls, the dips, the flourishes, the misspellings, the slanted letters, the shaky hand. There’s the story and the memory. There’s the cook. There’s guy, the gal, the friend, the aunt, the spouse, the sister, the dad, the mom. There’s the he, the her, the who, the what, the when. There’s the life. Handwritten recipe cards and cooking scrapbooks are the…

In the words of New England herbalist Adelma Grenier Simmons (1903-1997), “the most difficult garden to maintain is an unplanned one.” If you are joining us on this year’s Greenhouse Diaries adventures, you’ll recall that Adelma is our horticultural teacher, creative muse, and gardening inspiration for 2025 as we embrace her expertise in building and establishing an herb garden here at 1750…

Welcome back to the International Vintage Recipe Tour. When we last left off on our around-the-world culinary adventures, we were in Italy cooking up Chicken Canzanese and spotlighting the artistic and culinary career of Edward Giobbi and his talented family. Chicken Canzanese A painting by Edward Giobbi This time, our international itinerary takes us to Jamaica, where we are cooking a…

Snow is on the ground, freezing rain is in the forecast, and our first seedlings have just sprouted. It is officially time. The Greenhouse Diaries are back for a whole new year of growing adventures, experimental gardening, and wit and wisdom from some of the most interesting gardeners of the past three centuries. If you are new to the blog, this series started in December 2022 as a way to…

On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech in Washington D.C. Four decades earlier in 1921, a southern domestic cook named Malindy Walker, locally known as Aunt Malindy, delivered her own inspiring words in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Unlike MLK Jr., Malindy’s words weren’t spoken on a national stage, nor did they reach thousands of admirers. Malindy’s platform was…

Thousands of lives spend time in our kitchens. Every day, every week, every year. Even if your living situation is made up of just one or two people, dozens more move about your cooking space, unseen, whispering stories of history and heritage, of comfort and cooking secrets, of design and innovation, of hopes and dreams. I’m not talking about ghosts here, although maybe if you are an old home…