lessons learned

  • What Workshop Taught Me about Writing

    My husband Josh and I are both middle school teachers, and this means that we spend a lot of time talking about teaching. (Sometimes this drives my sister crazy.) We teach different subjects (him: English; me: history) at different schools with… Continue reading

    What Workshop Taught Me about Writing

  • Both Past and Present

    What would it be like to live in two eras at once? Last week I read a beautiful and thought-provoking piece about working at a living history museum, by the blogger and historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman. “Living My Best 1848 Life,” posted… Continue reading

    Both Past and Present

  • Apple pie

    Sometimes you get old recipes right the first time: you decipher the flowery language, you make the right substitutions, you determine the correct proportions. And sometimes, well, you don’t. This is a story of when I got it wrong. We… Continue reading

  • Hand wash only (II)

    A few days ago, I started thinking about the difficulties of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Let’s face it: life without electricity, equal voting rights, or antibiotics would be way harder. To explore this point further, let’s look… Continue reading

  • Hand wash only (I)

    It’s easy to wax nostalgic about the “good old days,” that halcyon golden age when kids didn’t do drugs or drink underage, and life was simpler, without cell phones and social media complicating things. (Yes, I’m guilty of this!) There… Continue reading

  • Himmel torte

    We just returned from a week in Maine with Josh’s family. A gorgeous lake house near the town of Casco served as our home base, and we spent the week swimming, kayaking, reading, and playing games. The men-folk cooked almost… Continue reading

  • How to render suet for cooking

    Back when I first started this blog, I learned a few things right away about historical cooking. First, some old recipes are very similar to their modern counterparts (like pie). Second, animal fat is wonderful. From salt pork to lard,… Continue reading

  • Why I love historical recipes

    I’ve been chronicling my adventures in historical cooking for almost two years now (!), but it wasn’t until recently that I began to wonder why. I love history, isn’t that enough? Well, yeah, but what’s the bigger picture? Why does… Continue reading

  • Helpful advice for new mothers

    Over the past few years I’ve pointed out historical hints for illness, cleaning house, and other realities of daily life. These tips are often funny and strange, and while I enjoy reading them, it’s tough to actually follow their advice.… Continue reading

  • Staying warm

    I flew back home to Ohio on Saturday night, and after staying up far too late talking with my parents, we discovered that the house had its own welcome-home present to offer: a broken furnace. Plus, Northeast Ohio was going… Continue reading