SITTING AT BIRCH HOLLOW - PAYING ATTENTION TO CULINARY HERITAGE

When Christmas rolled around, here at Birch Hollow, I made a vow of patience. I stuck with it for the two toughest months of the winter season. The vow was to enjoy life and times at home. As a writer, historian and antique dealer, I have spent a lot of time on the road. Travel and discovery is very much a part of my life but admittedly it can be a drain on body and soul.

As I spent my early years, occupying the kitchen of Anne Nagy, the wonderful woman who looked after me (while my mother worked) in her Burlington apartment.....back in the late 1950's early 60's. She was a dear soul who allowed me to watch culinary arts up close and personal. My mother wasn’t a bad cook although my father was better, but they couldn’t duplicate the incredible proficiency by which Anne worked a kitchen. She was, in retrospect, a sort of culinary alchemist. Her dexterity making a pie crust was like watching a cultural dance, as she brought the old country, old traditions, into the brightness of my modern day. From her background in Hungary, she created many delicious ethnic dishes that were beyond description......that only a wiped-clean plate, stood as my confessional. It was the kind of food that, despite one being full, had one asking, “so how long until dinner?”

This winter season, we have decided to take a break from the hustling about required of antique dealers the world over. We needed a break. A chance to reacquaint with our home. Suzanne is a teacher and a weekend antique hunter. For years we’ve neglected home life and we feel bad about it now. So for the past two months we’ve had a most enjoyable time re-visiting the joys and enchantments of home sciences. Our son Robert is a budding chef, and with Suzanne as tutor, our kitchen has been a literal bee-hive of activity...... and it has been glorious for the admirer, me, to sit within easy view......just as I adored with Anne Nagy.....hoping eventually, the biscuits or muffins would be cool enough to sample. It is so heart warming to hear, see and smell a kitchen in full regalia......full preparation. As guilty as I might feel, looking back and forth to the kitchen, and then onto the snowy woodlands here at Birch Hollow, my participation is to write about life at our modern day homestead. To reminisce about how endearing it has been for all these years, to have been connected to family and friends, who have felt the same about food preparation, and all the good taste associated.

This has been a most prolific winter, as a writer, in part because I’m usually at the keyboard during some act of culinary exercise......and it would be wrong not to credit the activity in the kitchen, for my present inspiration. As I wasn’t much of a writer, during my days spent in Anne Nagy’s kitchen, it’s all budding a half century later. For many years I had no idea just how much comfort I garnered from active culinary creativity......coming from chefs here at Birch Hollow, who happened to be fiddling with some project or other, in our modest country kitchen. I soon realized that I could go from angry to calm, only minutes after hearing a wooden spoon, hitting the side of a pottery mixing bowl. From agitated to passive, all it took was the smell of hot bran muffins or fresh bread to send the lion fleeing. I would melt into conformity, and sit with eyes fixed on the kitchen doorway.....hoping for a plate of buttered muffins to come on the proverbial silver platter.

As a kid I was sick a lot. Nobody ever explained why, but I had a lot of colds.....and missed a fair amount of school. Maybe in retrospect, I played sick just to stay with Nagy, and help make pies, muffins, bread, special desert loaves, cakes, pickles, jams and so much more. I was so much better, no matter what ailed me, being in that small apartment kitchen that had so much good with-in. A real treat, as I’ve mentioned before in this series, was being awarded the spirals of apple skin during pie preparation. I made a pig of myself and frequently paid for the over-indulgence with a stomach ache. At lunch she used to feed her husband Alex and I, a huge bowl of thick, chunky soup that you could stand your fork upright in, and chunks of fresh bread so delicious, it brought tears to our eyes. Alex once corrected my delicate approach to eating both soup (more of a stew), and bread, with a demonstration of what was demanded of hardy food. He took his big chunk of butter-dripping bread, dipped it deep into the soup, and raised it to his mouth with a vigorous, welcoming union of lips to hand. He’d make a large piece disappear. The soup would be dripping down his chin, onto his white undershirt, and Anne would reprimand his manners. I’d laugh and do the same. Anne would just chortle, “you men are all the same,” and enjoy the delightful meal to its fullest. Alex celebrated good food. While a little aggressive, a tad over-zealous, but there was no way of denying this man looked, as I did, to be invited into this special room of the residence......where magic happened.

I still celebrate the joy of culinary arts.....from this portal, at hearthside here at Birch Hollow, where I sit and daydream, as I did back at Anne Nagy’s home, so many years ago.......and enjoy all the ambience that comes from the homestead kitchen......tended by those folks who are passionate about the food they prepare......and are always pleased by the look of sheer joy, on the voyeur’s face, when it’s time to sample Birch Hollow’s culinary fare.

I’ve set my writing desk even closer to the kitchen. Easter season feasts, of which Suzanne and Robert have been planning for weeks, promises to be a chapter on its own. I’ll let you know how memorable it was, in an upcoming series of blogs.

Enjoy cooking. Celebrate kitchen heritage. Make fond memories. What a life-long impression Anne Nagy made.

THE SEEK AND DISCOVER MISSIONS NEVER CEASE -

SOME OLD COOKBOOKS BUT A VOID OF HANDWRITTEN GEMS

In the antique and collectible trade, you live by the saying, “never say never!” There are windfalls and droughts in the collecting enterprise. Since beginning this site about a year ago, it has been one of those hiatus periods dealers and collectors dread but anticipate. Without warning you will frequently run into dry-spells that can last a week or several years between big finds. As an art collector.....who sells numerous art pieces annually, I can usually find ten or more good quality paintings every month, out on the normal day to day hustings. Nothing requiring several hundred miles of motoring or extreme exertion on our part, to make quality finds. Just passive, enjoyable travel between source businesses and yard sales. Not going to an art auction or even art gallery exhibit. I can’t afford their prices but I can usually find some high quality pieces in second hand shops, flea markets, yard sales and a few moderately priced antique shops. It’s the same now as cookbooks and handwritten recipes. I expect to find some each month. At the very least, a couple of old cookbooks done by church groups as fundraisers. Here’s what happens.

Take for example, Martha Stewart books. As they relate to home entertaining and an interesting array of seasonal recipes my wife likes to collect, I started a mission to acquire all of her books, and I didn’t mind duplicates. The holy grail would be a signed first edition of “Entertaining,” from the early 1980's, which can sell for around $200 and up. I’ve sold a couple of unsigned first editions before I got this idea to collect all her work. When I began this Martha campaign, I could find her books all over the place. I was finding one or two a week. I was even turning down those in less than pristine condition, because I assumed with the abundant supply, I could afford to be picky about things like condition.

I wrote a column about my interest in Martha Stewart first editions, for a feature publication, “Curious; The Tourist Guide,” which is available in Central and Southern Ontario, via many gift and antique related businesses. I got many kind comments and praise for this tribute to Martha Stewart, and her contribution to home entertaining, food preparation, decorating and the antique business particularly. Her creativity expressed in these books, has certainly helped businesses like ours, selling vintage decorator pieces, antiques and collectibles.....from kitchen ware to vintage glass and pottery. And what happens when the writer / antique hunter gets too liberal with enthusiasm for a subject, usually ends the same. I didn’t know my readership was that high. Shortly after the article ran, last spring (I believe), the shortage of Martha Stewart books became quite noticeable on the shelves of the same places I acquire most of my vintage wares. Being excited about what you collect, and publishing this, often leads to copy-cat purchasing. I’m delighted to promote her work but disappointed I’ve created a new interest in her earlier first editions. Such that there are now many more hands reaching for those few remaining editions. Vendors are putting up the prices and even old book shops are keeping Martha’s books in stock because of growing demand for her earlier works. Even the unauthorized biographies, while annoying to her, have done quite the reverse for cookbook collectors. Those who find her a fascinating study and amazing personality, despite the “tell-alls,” her own books get even more attention. With more interest the more you expect price increases, especially for first editions in pristine condition.

“Entertaining,” is a sweetheart of a book, because it was landmark in the creation of new interest in an old theme......the dinner party, with a new and exciting emphasis. It wasn’t just for the wealthy. It was for any one with a devotion to good food, elegant presentation and a genuine interest in sharing with others. It has gone into reprint many times, but this milestone book, as a first edition, becomes more valuable over time. Obviously there are many folks turned-on by her myriad of books that have been on the market since “Entertaining” was first released. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed up at the check-out counter, at some regional second hand shop, with a Martha Stewart cookbook in tow, and been asked by someone else line; ‘Where did you find that book......I’ve been looking everywhere for that one......you’re lucky. Say, you don’t want to sell it, do you?” I might agree, at this point, to sell one from our home collection if it’s the lesser of the two in terms of condition. My mission is to have a pristine copy of each of her books, and a signed “Entertaining,” which I’m presently in hot pursuit of one on the market. The others I will sell off eventually through our on-line old book enterprise.

My point is this. As I have made a sweeping editorial move to promote handwritten recipes as paper heritage / heirlooms, suddenly there is an extreme shortage of material out on the hustings. While I’m not so vain as to believe it was my writing prowess and popularity that did this, I do believe that many shopkeeps, of businesses I check frequently, have probably re-considered how they sell-off these usual bundles of recipes pulled from old cookbooks and auction job-lots of vintage paper. I’ve educated more than a few of these folks, in other collectible areas, and it should have been obvious to me, when I wrote the blog-site and published the short series of articles in “Curious: The Tourist Guide,” that I would suffer some after-shock. Particularly the increase in prices for such random bundles that used to cost well under ten dollars for several hundred, to twenty and thirty dollars for about fifty beaten-up pieces of paper now. Some are even framing them as I suggested. While I’m always chagrined by these turns of capitalism, I’m delighted by the fact more and more people are conserving this historic paper that might have been discarded. The fact I’ve interested some folks to take better care of these handwritten gems, does make me feel better, even though I’ve had this hiatus thrown my way......that I should have expected but didn’t.

In the winter, when highway travel is often precarious, here in the snowbelt, Suzanne and I huddle about the kitchen, where something, these cold days, is always in some state of creation, and it is all very intoxicating to a man supposedly on a life-preserving diet. Suzanne has none the less, been whipping up some wonderful, low calorie meals and desserts, and I really haven’t suffered much at all, over the past two months of caloric reduction. And she very much relies on her grandmother’s handwritten recipe collection to get us from here to there.....and a lesser belt-size. Good old hardy food didn’t have to be crazy with calories. Suzanne has stuck with Canada’s Food Guide nutrition information for years. The only reason I have gained weight, is our weekly treat of going out to dinner. Treating myself got me to the point of being fifty pounds over my ideal weight. Suzanne’s kitchen moxie has brought me down twenty of those excess pounds in less than two months. I’ve been re-introduced to spinach which I gave up when my mother stopped lecturing me about “Popeye.” “If it’s good enough to help Popeye fight the bad guys, it’s good enough for you!”

I just wanted you to know I haven’t stopped collecting handwritten recipes, or vintage cookbooks when they pop up somewhere on the old-book-hunt. But as I have written about before, there are times when you just can’t get past the issue of supply and demand......and the fact there are only a few auctions a year, and only a small portion, actual estate sales, that would traditionally reveal kitchen heirlooms like family recipe books. Yet just as the drought commenced, it will end again one day soon, and for months on end, I will be able to make-up for the shortfall now. Keep watching this blog for more regular updates. During this calm on the recipe collecting front, I’ve been busy on my other blog-sites (you can check them out) and many feature writing gigs here in Ontario. Although collecting hasn’t been doing too good recently, writing has been at its peak. It’s been a snowy old winter, and my chair at hearthside has been a perfect writer’s nook since Christmas. My wife has a list of about a thousand improvements, to be made this year to her gardens, here at Birch Hollow, so I’m resting up where and when I can.

Watch for more additions to this site in the near future.