Historic Cooking: Thanksgiving Pudding from 1925.

Image from http.clipart.edigg.com

Hello again; here we are near the end of a year that has been absolutely abnormal!  Things have changed even more for me; I was laid off from my job at the school in mid-August, due to increased costs related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have been unemployed since then.  As I have found whenever I need to look for a job, I am overqualified for all of the minimum-wage or entry-level jobs that people are hiring for (and there are fewer of those jobs available because of all the businesses that have closed), and under-qualified for everything else!  I may need to use this time to go to grad school and get either a Master's or a teaching credential, or both, but I have no idea how I will pay for it while unemployed! I have no illusions of anything improving under the new presidency, since my situation remained the same under all the previous ones. 

One good thing that has come out of this excess of spare time, is that I have immersed myself in historical research, as well as attending as many history-related webinars and online lectures as I can, and it has resulted in some new things (none of which will earn me any kind of income, but oh well).  I have continued with the YouTube channel that I started in July and August, and it has been really interesting, although I still hate editing the videos!  I have made some interesting connections with other historians in the U.S., and it has inspired me to keep going with my own research and costume and cooking projects.  I have a whole list of historic recipes that I would like to make into videos for the YouTube channel, and I am currently translating my beginning hand-sewing class -- which I taught to elementary school students a few years ago -- into a series of videos, too.  But the weather has grown cool, and all I want to do right now is bake, and drink tea!

Clothing the Californio: The Lecture -- part of CoCoVid and Virtual FrockCon 2020, and other news

Elizabeth Urbach in
Californio costume. 

Hello again!  I have a few pieces of news to share! 

First thing: The Cup That Cheers is now also a YouTube channel!  I've gotten some messages over the years, telling me that some readers wish they could see me make the historic recipes and some of the historic costumes, that I've written up and posted here on the blog, and this spring and summer's time spent in lockdown gave me more time to think about creating educational videos.  Since I work at an elementary school which will be starting the school year online, some of the videos will be aimed at elementary and middle school-aged children and the time periods that they study in Social Studies, but others will be aimed at an older audience, and will include making historic recipes and costumes, as well as costume history.  I also taught beginning hand-sewing at my school, and I will be translating that class into a series of videos for the channel. 

Clothing the Californio title card for
YouTube videos. 
Creator: Elizabeth Urbach

Historic Cooking: Artichokes, Italian Style from 1898.

This is another entry for the Historical Food Fortnightly project, which is now being continued on Facebook.

Artichokes, Italian Style. 
From _El Cocinero Espanol_, 1898.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

The Challenge: April 22-May 5: Flower Power. A dish that is floral, flowery, or flour-y, as you desire.

A month late in posting, but better late than never!  It took me a while to decide what to do for this challenge; I have orange-blossom honey, rose petal honey, dried rose petals, and both orange-flower and rose water in my pantry.  What to do?  I finally decided on artichokes – which are a flower! -- when I saw them in the grocery store, but then it took me another while to choose the historic recipe to use to cook them.  My first couple of artichokes had to be cooked and eaten in a not-particularly-historical-way when they were on the point of going bad, and I hadn’t yet chosen a recipe!  A week or so ago I bought some more artichokes and again, took more than a week to choose, not because there weren’t many recipes, but because there were so many choices! 

I selected a recipe from Encarnación Pinedo’s _El Cocinero Español_, which I have been slowly translating from the original 19^th century Californian Spanish, because I’ve been wanting to try some of the recipes.  This recipe book is the earliest published cookbook from the colonial Spanish/Mexican California culture; I’m sure there are other recipe collections in existence, but as far as I know, they are still in manuscript form, hidden in attics and storage areas, and the California history scholars and museums that I contacted didn’t know about them. 

Page from _El Cocinero Espanol_,
by Encarnacion Pinedo, 1898.

_El Cocinero Español_ was published in San Jose in 1898, written by a lady from an influential Spanish ranch-owning family, who recorded the traditional Californio recipes that she learned at home, and at the Catholic convent school that she attended in the 1850s and 1860s (staffed by South American nuns).  At the time the book was written, the author, Doña Encarnación, was unmarried and lived with her sister, her Yankee brother-in-law, and their children, one of whom was already grown up and married to a Yankee.  The author and her sister were raised during a very difficult time in California history when the established community of Californios was being abused on all sides by American and English (and other foreign) immigrants and settlers, due to the misunderstanding, encouraged by the newspapers, that all land and property titles that existed before 1850 (California entered the United States), were legally null and void, and that all existing residents were reduced to the status of conquered enemies.  In reality, California was purchased (as part of the treaty that ended the war, because the residents had already started fighting for independence from Mexico), not conquered (it was the central government of Mexico that was conquered);  all property titles were upheld (but actually ended up being required to be confirmed in court), and all existing residents were automatically made citizens of the United States, but that is not how most people understood the situation!

In her introduction to the cookbook, which was initially written as a private family record of their history and food culture, Doña Encarnación records the animosity and distrust that her mother (her nieces’ grandmother) held for the foreigners, especially the Yankees, and attempted to pass on to herself and her sisters (including her nieces’ mother), and details some of the abuses that their family, in particular, suffered at the hands of the Yankees. The book was written in order to secure, to her nieces, their Californio family identity and history, in the form of the stories and recipes, which Doña Encarnación saw was not being taught alongside their American identity, and feared would be lost forever, as the girls would all, likely, marry American or other non-Californio men.  It is likely that the book was published because it fulfilled the same purpose for other mixed Californio/non-Hispanic families.

Blogging during the Quarantine

image from FreeDigitalPhotos.com

Oh my goodness!  So much has changed since the last post!  I think that everyone in the world (or almost everyone, at least), is going through this unprecedented experience: just about the whole world is shut down (or just opening back up), and most of us are sheltering in place by not leaving our homes except to get groceries and attend to other emergencies, wearing masks and gloves, and staying at least 6 feet away from people outside our own households.  There is a lot of controversy (and name-calling and character-assassination on both sides of the issue) about whether or not such strict lockdown is necessary or even legal.

The school where I work has been closed since mid-March (although we did a very quick switch to 100% online/remote learning, with varying degrees of success), and all of the living history and costume-related events, as well as all other public events for the next several months, have been canceled or rescheduled.  Costume College, which was scheduled for the end of July, has been canceled, and the theme that was set for 2020 has been pushed forward to 2021.