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Ah, Eggs a la Goldenrod. Mom served this to us every Sunday at lunch. Well, maybe not every Sunday. But it sure felt like it. I hated Eggs a la Goldenrod.

Then. Now, I crave it. Go figure.

Turns out, this dish has been around for a long, long time.

I knew it had been around since the early 1950’s. A while back, I discovered an old index file full of recipes my mom (or one of her sisters) had collected for a home economics class in high school.

But it’s even older than mid-century.

Fannie Farmer, famed cookbook writer and principal of the famed Boston Cooking School, included it in her first cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, published in 1896.

I bought the cookbook to help me understand what people fixed for dinner at the turn of the century. Specifically, what my characters might eat.

It’s super interesting and very humorous.

I was thrilled to find my old hated, newly loved Eggs a la Goldenrod recipe in this classic.

Try it and let me know if you hate it or love it!

Ever heard of a crazy quilt?

Crazy quilts were all the rage for young women in the late 1800’s. But they were quite controversial.

Because—gasp—they were not at all practical.

In fact, crazy quilts featured sumptuous materials like silk, satin and velvet. Not exactly affordable stuff, much less easy to care for.

That’s enough, right there, to send any practical farm woman scampering for the latest log cabin quilt pattern and some good, practical calico.

While I think crazy quilts are a thing of beauty and a showing of great skill, the people–especially men–of the early 1900’s abhorred them, and jokes abounded at the idiocy of such an undertaking.

Newspaper articles abound on the lunacy of the crazy quilt.

And that’s why I chose to feature this art form in my historical novel.

More to come!