Let’s Eat! 8 comments
From Old World family recipes to church potluck dinners to suppers around a campfire, food has always been an important part of living and having fun in the Adirondack Park. Generations of visitors and residents have contributed new traditions and new ingredients to Adirondack cooking.
The Adirondack Museum plans to open a new exhibit in 2010 called “Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions,” and we’d like your opinion.
Is there such a thing as “Adirondack cuisine”? What do you think of as “Adirondack” food?
Planked Bear Meat
Soak a cedar plank in bourbon laced with bay leaves and tarragon. Build a hot bed of coals. Put a bear steak on the plank, put plank on hot coals and cover with wet leaves. Let it roast on the coals until the leaves start to smoke. Pull the planked steak off the coals; remove steak to plate. Then eat the plank.
Does anyone have a good recipe for Saranac pork?
When I was little, “sugar on snow” was a great treat. Some called it “jack wax”.
Does anyone remember the church “box socials” where the boxed meal was auctioned off? –a fun family event as I recall.
My grandfather was a hunter and made venision stew a lot. He also canned venison to help get us through the winter. We would fish and fry up the fish in a cornmeal batter and also smoke both venison and fish.
It’s not about the food in the Adirondacks. It’s about the company. Year-rounders find ways to make do if they don’t have the exact ingredients. Summer vacationers, second home owners enjoy eating whenever they feel like - The important part for all of them is the company. From heated discussions to a walk down memory lane. Food brings people together. That’s what is special about Adirondack Cuisine.
Dessert was what was in season: apple sauce, apple betty, apple firtters, blackberry grunt, strawberry shortcake, maple sugar boiled frosting,
Sugar on snow. Maple syrup heated to a high temp and poured on pristine snow.
My mother (Ellen Boyer Baird) told us stories of how her mother (Mimi Boyer) cooked in the lumber camps and for the wealthy families at their estates. I never met my mother’s mother (she had died before I was born), so I can only imagine the influence her mother’s cooking had on her. My mother cooked alot of one pot meals, such as paprika biscuits with a hamburger mixture and green peas underneath the biscuits. This was one of my favorites. We have lost the receipe for her paprika biscuits. She also did a lot of fabolous roasts and pies. There were nine children in my family, so I am sure her mother’s abilities to cook for large groups were passed on to my mom. My mother was a fantastic cook; the food was very savory more of a country french cooking. Soups, stews, and roasts and great apple pies. So I imagine Adirondack food to be very hearty, flavorful, and resourceful in using the ingredients on hand. Joanne Lynch