Exploring Maryland Foodways with Old Line Plate’s Kara Mae Harris

This week I have Kara Mae Harris of the blog Old LIne Plate, where she's been exploring Maryland foodways since 2010. Last year, Kara released a book titled Old Line Plate, the same as her blog. It was a collection of some of her favorite posts throughout the years. But it’s more as a historical document, than a straightforward cookbook.

This October Kara's back with a new cookbook called Festive Maryland Recipes. For this book, Kara worked with a recipe developer to make sure the recipes were ones people could execute at home.
 
Topics Discussed
Maryland cookbooks
Stuffed Ham
Crab cakes
Maryland Fried chicken
White potato pie
Cookbook writing
Reading and adapting old recipes
Secret recipes

KARA MAE HARRIS
Old Line Plate
Kara's Instagram
Kara's books Festive Maryland Recipes and Old Line Plate

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Transcript

Chris Spear: 0:00

What do you know about stuffed ham? Have you ever eaten Maryland fried chicken? Do you have an opinion about crab cakes, how to cook them? What kind of breading to use, if any at all? Those are all very hot topics. On today's show, I have Cara Mae Harris, who has been exploring the culinary history of Maryland on her blog old line plates since 2010. If you're into culinary history, especially that of the Mid Atlantic this shows for you. This is Chris spear, and you're listening to Chefs Without Restaurants. The show where I speak with culinary entrepreneurs and people working in the food and beverage industry outside of a traditional restaurant setting. I have 31 years working in kitchens but not restaurants and currently operate a personal chef business throwing dinner parties in the Washington DC area. Last year, Kara released a book titled old line plate, the same as her blog. It was a collection of some of her favorite posts throughout the years. But it's more of a historical document than a straightforward cookbook. Well, this October Kara is back with a new cookbook called festive Maryland recipes. I'm sure many of you have seen those older cookbooks that can sometimes be hard to decipher. In our discussion, Kara talks about a recipe that calls for five cents worth of chocolate. Would that get you today, like half an ounce if that I don't think you could get any. But anyway, for this book care, I worked with a recipe developer to make sure the recipes were ones that people today could actually replicate at home. I'm not from Maryland, but having lived here. 16 years now I've really wanted to learn about the cuisine, especially since this is where I cook now. When I first started looking into Maryland foodways a decade ago, Karis website was the first one I found that really had most of the information I was looking for all in one place. I've been in contact with her over the years, so I was really glad I could have her on the show today. We talked about those classic Maryland dishes like stuffed ham, oysters, Maryland fried chicken, and we really get into it about crabcakes what should you be using for them jumbo lump back then? I'm not gonna give it away here. But I will say that carries take on that tends to be really controversial. And I'm not sure I agree. But also, do you put fresh bread in Panko? saltines? Do you pan fry them boil them. I wanted to see what her opinions were and also what she's seen in her experience through cookbooks and talking to people. I've seen Kara's new book and I think it's great. If you're interested, I'm going to link it up in the show notes. As always, so you can get your own copy of festive Maryland recipes. I think that anyone who loves food history, even if you're not from this area will really enjoy the episode. So I'm gonna get out of the way and let you get to it. But before I go, if you finish this episode, and you're thinking, wow, I'd love to learn more about Chefs Without Restaurants. What's next? Besides working your way through the other 204 episodes, I'd like to direct you to the chefs without restaurants.org website. From there, you'll be able to find my Instagram, which is at Chefs Without Restaurants, and sign up for the Chefs Without Restaurants newsletter where I share cooking content and recipes. You'll also be able to join our private Facebook group for culinary entrepreneurs as well as find links to some of my favorite products. And this show is made possible with the help of our sponsors. So the episode will be coming right up after those sponsor messages.

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Chris Spear: 4:05

Hey, Kara, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on today.

Kara Mae Harris: 4:08

Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Spear: 4:10

I'm so excited to talk to you about Maryland foodways. I really you're the person I need to be speaking to about this, I think

Kara Mae Harris: 4:17

yeah, likewise, I was really excited. I know I'm a little different than some a lot of the guests that you have on your show. But I think that I'm also kind of a outsider to the culinary establishment and doing my own thing. So

Chris Spear: 4:30

I'm not from here. I'm from the Boston area originally but I've been down in Maryland now. I guess it's 16 years I think this summer. You know so I really wanted to learn about Maryland food and cooking because growing up there and then I lived in Pennsylvania so Pennsylvania is getting a little closer. You know we have like the scrapple belt and things like that. But I didn't really know a lot about Maryland food and cooking and for me I felt it was important both as a chef cooking for people but also on a personal level because it's so interesting and you know when I started digging in a few years ago, I found your website I think anyone looking for information on Maryland food and cooking is probably going to stumble on your site. So you have a blog, old line plate, love the play on words there. I think that's really funny. But you've been collecting Maryland recipes and putting together a database and search for for a while. How long have you been doing this now,

Unknown: 5:21

I first started the blog in 2011. But kind of like many blogs abandoned it. And then I worked on the database in between and have been pretty consistently logging since 2014. Now,

Chris Spear: 5:34

now, why is that what brought you into Maryland food.

Unknown: 5:40

Um, I always have to have an obsession kind of. And I had these, I have these cookbooks that would have Maryland recipes in them that I had absolutely never heard of Maryland, bakes liver, Maryland, white potato pie actually made the bakes liver one year for Thanksgiving. And the oldest person there, enjoyed it and nobody else but I just wanted to try these different recipes. And I think it's my generation, my kind of cohort is just, you know, take it to a blog, if you're going to start doing something that was just the impulse. And it's always been a way to share things and connect with people. So it was kind of a natural, even though I didn't really know what I was doing. I was kind of learning as I went, I started that blog up and have a you know, that since brought me so much more information than I would have if I were just quietly doing it by myself. So

Chris Spear: 6:32

were you always interested in food and cooking? Like, did you grow up with an interest in love of cooking?

Unknown: 6:37

Not really, I mean, I have some stories. I mean, my grandmother used to go gather blackberries and make pie. So I have those little folksy stories, we did pickling and things like that. But I definitely wasn't one of those people who really starts to learn the, I don't think I really started to learn the basics of good cooking until I started doing this project. And using old recipes, you absolutely have to learn how to cook like a chef, basically, because they're not real instructions. So that's kind of when I really started to get a little bit more of a, you know, become more of a all around food person, I think,

Chris Spear: 7:14

yeah, we're definitely going to talk about that. Learning to read old recipes and a little bit because I have that too, whether it's taking your grandmother's recipes, or something you find in a book, it's not always easy to follow. But you know, I think cooking, I don't wanna say cooking has fallen out of fashion. But I run into people all the time now who don't know how to cook, you know, especially my grandmother's generation, someone in the family knew how to cook. But now I work as a personal chef and going in people's homes. People are astounded by what I think are some pretty basic things that I do. And I'm just surprised at how little cooking now on the other side, we also have the extreme now where people are like, he's an accountant, but he is also making pasta at home. And it's like better than some of the chefs and restaurants. So I see it on both sides. But just it seems to be a you know, for a number of years, people really weren't interested in cooking that much. Yeah, it's not, at least not at home. Maybe

Unknown: 8:09

we also have an interesting thing now. And I guess for the last, you know, few decades where recipes have become such a science that people can cook at home and make a lot of great food but never really learned how to cook. Because you're just following that recipe, which was how I you know, first got into this thinking I would follow everything line by line. And that, you know, went downhill pretty fast. And I had to learn learn the basics for myself. But yeah, I think, you know, just throwing stuff together on a nightly basis from what you have is not as common as it used to be.

Chris Spear: 8:47

Well, you know, you're kind of touching out there like that intuitive cooking. Right? And also using up what you have on hand. I think previous generations there was very much a no waste kind of thing, right? So it's like this soup is whatever vegetables you have in the fridge meat scraps you have I'm sure you've seen a lot of that type of cooking in your encounters with some of these older recipes. Am I right there?

Unknown: 9:11

Yeah. But what's interesting is when it makes it in a recipe form, I think people really want to put the best version of it on paper, so it might call for specific things. But as I started to think about it, I remember I made a chowder recipe one time from Mrs. Kitching, Smith Island cookbook and I happen to have a real awkward mount of corn leftover and I put it in, you know, and I'm like, am I ruining this? Or am I actually being more authentic by just putting it in there because I have it. But I don't think that maybe they would write it in the recipe if it wasn't something that they thought would be the best version that they want people to have. But that's not necessarily the version you're eating every night. You know, I make beans and greens a lot and it could be any bean in any green and I'm sure there's a supreme combination. You know those white beans some kale or something, but at home, it's just whatever I have whatever sausage goes in there. So I love

Chris Spear: 10:06

it. I have one of those recipes. I was doing cooking classes here in Frederick and we had a recipe and that is based I think it was like cherry so kale and black IPAs, I actually think it was like a serious eats Kenji recipe or something. But I told people like, do not stick to this. Like if you have cannelini beans, if you have chickpeas, if it's summer, and you've got swiss chard or something else use that if you don't like spice and like Cerrito, Italian sausage, if you're vegetarian, just leave out the meat, you know, and, and just like it's a good base, right? That trio of sausage greens and beans is something that I always have at least those base ingredients in my pantry and just kind of like when I teach people how to cook. I teach them to be pretty flexible with those recipes.

Unknown: 10:47

Yeah, exactly. So then when you go to write it down, especially if you were writing in an old timey cookbook, where you maybe have less space. And it's a little bit less of a dialogue than recipes are now you're just going to say, you know, to pound two pounds of kale or cohort, which is collards or, you know, this kind of beans, you're just going to try to reduce it into something a little bit simpler.

Chris Spear: 11:10

What was that word for collards

Kara Mae Harris: 11:12

kohlwort

Chris Spear: 11:13

I've never seen that.

Kara Mae Harris: 11:14

Yeah, that's like an older, older term they used to use for collards.

Chris Spear: 11:18

I'm not sure that that would stick around these days. Do you think people would be willing to eat it with that name? It's kind of weird.

Kara Mae Harris: 11:24

Yeah, I'm not I'm not so sure. Do you have

Chris Spear: 11:26

issues reading old cookbooks? Like have you encountered words like that, that you didn't know what they meant, and really had to like dig in and figure it out?

Unknown: 11:34

We're so lucky to live in the Google age. And it's not as good as it used to be. But when I first started out, there was Google Books. And they had a bunch of index books. So I could look up a word and I would find the research of someone like Karen has, or you know, some real legend and find everything that they had to say about a dish is a little bit harder now. But there's also a lot of other loggers and other resources out there to find that kind of information. So I think the hardest that comes immediately to mind was I had a recipe that called for like, one square of chocolate or no cold for sometimes things will say, by price, like five cents of chocolate, you know, so I had to do all this backwards engineering to try to figure out how much chocolate they

Chris Spear: 12:19

were like gets you nothing these days. Five cents a chocolate. Yeah, but

Unknown: 12:23

it's funny to me when they use the prices like they thought that would just be etched in stone is kind of a strange logic. But yes, square chocolate, you know, and I had to figure out how much square of chocolate even meant,

Chris Spear: 12:35

I'm gonna start pricing that I'm gonna say you get $3 of crabcake. And

Unknown: 12:40

oh, yeah, yeah, your recipe will be downhill in a in a week.

Chris Spear: 12:46

What was the first recipe you shared on your website?

Unknown: 12:51

Um, I actually don't probably one of the early ones is that white potato pie. And I make it and I talk about it a lot, because it was one of the first recipes that jumped out at me from Southern Heritage cookbook. And I actually baked every pie in the Southern Heritage pie and pastry cookbook and like 2007 How many pies was that? So I'm not sure it's not the biggest book. But you know, it's 100 some pies, and I have

Chris Spear: 13:15

a lot because I think I probably made like three pies last year. So yeah, it was

Unknown: 13:19

a big year I just made you know, I'd make a couple pies a week.

Chris Spear: 13:22

What did you do with them? Were you sharing them with people?

Unknown: 13:25

Yeah, anytime anyone had a dinner party, I would show up with multiple pies. I think I sold a few gave a lot of way. I used to go to the thrift store and just buy pie tins. So that I could just leave them at parties and not worry about losing the pie tin but but yeah, that white potato pie. Later research didn't learn that it came from pudding, similar to pumpkin pie or sweet potato pie. And I've done I've done a lot more research on it since then.

Chris Spear: 13:56

I've never tried it. I've seen it on your site. I'm gonna have to make it. Is it worth I mean, I do like it is it a good pie, like if I were going to make a pie and I like those like sweet potato kind of pies. So are you a fan, I'm guessing of the white potato pie.

Unknown: 14:11

It's a blank slate. And I really like to just blast it in a food processor so that all the potato SCART starch gets kind of like whipped up and it gets almost cheese cake consistency. I put a ton of lemon zest and lemon in it. So it really is it really depends on how you flavor it. I think if you just gently grate some nutmeg into it and call it a day, it's probably going to be a pretty big disappointment. But if you just fill it full of sugar, condensed milk and lemon, you know anything that's flavored strongly lemons just going to taste like lemons. So

Chris Spear: 14:44

it's like the chess pie. You know when I discovered chess pie, you know from the south or it's just like oh, you're basically making like little little cornmeal is binder and then it's just sugar and egg in there. Right and butter. I think they really were kind of thrifty with some of those pies back in Uh,

Unknown: 15:00

yeah, absolutely. They're just a blank slate. And it's actually it's wild how little ingredients you can have as a filling in a pie, you know, just a little cornstarch and a ton of juice and you'll have a stable pie. You know, you can make like vinegar pie and stuff like that. Yeah, crazy.

Chris Spear: 15:19

A couple of years ago, I found a Grape Nuts pie. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's Grape Nuts, cereal. And it's, it's pretty much just like pecan pie. But instead of really expensive pecans, it's Grape Nuts. So it's like a brown corn syrup, melted butter. And then you put Grape Nuts cereal in there, but it's still in a traditional pie. And then they kind of like some of them settle to the bottom, but then some kind of rise up and you get them on the top like you would with a pecan pie. And I thought that was really interesting. So my wife made it for me for my birthday. People were really interested to come to a birthday party and have a Grape Nuts pie and not a cake, but I was happy with it.

Unknown: 15:53

I did a version of that with oats and it was called poor man's pecan pie. And yeah, if you can't afford the nuts, you know, that might have been a depression or a recipe. I'm not sure when Grape Nuts date back to but I think

Chris Spear: 16:06

they are the first cereal actually have a picture of a vintage can from a culinary Museum. They were like the first like back, I think in the military, because it was nutritious. And it was like something that you could pack. And I think they gave them to everyone like in their kits. But if I'm correct, it was like the first commercial dry cereal, I think.

Unknown: 16:23

So yeah, it makes sense that it would make its way into a pie because it could be something you're just used to. You're buying the cereal, but you're just used to buying flour, oats or whatever from the bin and throwing it in there. So it just makes sense to turn whatever plus a whole bunch of sugar brown sugar into a pie.

Chris Spear: 16:42

How many physical cookbooks Do you own?

Unknown: 16:45

Um, I think I'm in the three hundreds 320 or something like that?

Chris Spear: 16:52

What are some of your favorites? Do you have a couple favorite books?

Unknown: 16:55

Frederick Phillips, Steve's cookbook is really cool. Just because it has he covers the whole state, he has a lot of Western Maryland. And this was a time when Baltimore and the Eastern Shore were really where you would think you would get Maryland cooking. A lot of my newer books, I like books that represent different groups of people who have been here. And I feel I'm really lucky to have those books, I have one from a Korean church. And it's newer, it's from the 80s. But I'm so glad that they put together this cookbook and it has multiple types of kimchi in it and other recipes, where they're using some substitutions that really shows what people did to kind of get by like taking anchovies and grinding them up and using them in ways that you would use maybe fish sauce. So I like some of those books that come from churches that you don't think of is, you know, not necessarily the elite of Maryland.

Chris Spear: 17:50

What makes you decide to buy a book, like I go in the bookstore, and there's all these, you know, community, church, community cookbooks, church cookbooks, it's overwhelming. There's like 400 of them. So if you're like, flipping through them, What makes you say, oh, I want to get this book,

Unknown: 18:06

I have to be really picky now. And the cost of these books has gotten out of control. I'm very lucky that people donate books to me, people give me their collections or collections from family members. But when I'm looking at a book and trying to decide whether it's worth the cost I'm looking for a unique recipes are examples of things that I know exist, but I don't have in a lot of books. For instance, there's this deal Island devil cream cake, I wasn't familiar with it until I read about it in Baltimore magazine. But I would love to have that cake in a cookbook. So if I found it, I might consider paying a little bit more for it. Or again, if it's like a group that I feel is underrepresented in some way, or region, you know, Western Maryland, I don't have as many from there. So I'm just looking for things that really represent a diversity of people in our state. And also, of course, age, anything that's pre about 1910 I just get weak in the knees for and that's when I really have to, I'll go to the live, I'll go to WorldCat the, you know, central kind of every library catalog and see if I can find it there before I buy it because I if it's in a library, I don't need to add it to my collection necessarily.

Chris Spear: 19:27

I'm in Frederick and we have Wonderbook here I don't know if you've ever been out

Unknown: 19:30

Oh, I No wonder very well, and I'm sure they know me all too well as well. I buy from them frequently.

Chris Spear: 19:36

That's one of those places where I go in and just get lost in that cookbook aisle. But it's I mean, there's some crazy books in there. You find some gems, you find some weird ones, not not the community ones as much as the ones put out by like, you know, Dr. Pepper or Frito Lay or something like that in the 60s where it's like they're trying to get you to use all their stuff. That was some of those recipes are pretty cool. But I do love digging through the community cookbooks actually My favorite cookbook that I have is one called America cooks. That was my mom got it from her mom, but it was the women's Clubs of America. And I think it originally came out in the 60s and I think everything we ate in my house growing up came from that book. And they have funny names like I've talked about before on the show, my favorite thing was called Greco and it was like, You cooked up ground beef with peppers and onions. And then it had like baby shell macaroni, canned tomato sauce, use canned mushrooms, and cream corn. And then you just like baked in a casserole dish with cheddar cheese on top. But that was like our go to casserole dinner, it could feed like 12 people, I have no idea why it's called Greco. But that book, it's like 600 pages or something. And every once in a while, I'm like going through there for inspiration to find something that seems like a lost gem.

Unknown: 20:46

Yeah, it's so good to have the go to cookbook like that. I think a lot of us don't have that anymore. People who buy cookbooks often have a whole collection. But I love having the just the one, the one source for us, we have the Southern Heritage cookbook library, which was 13 books, I think. But all in all, they're not that huge. And anything you wanted or any thing you want to use, you could find it in there.

Chris Spear: 21:10

Well, and I love niche cookbooks. And now all these beautiful, you know, photos, like some chef puts out a book. But the problem with that is you have to be in the mood for that. It's a barbecue book, it's a taco book, the photos take up so many pages, whereas like this book I was talking about is all text. It's all small. So there's probably 1000 recipes in there. And it's everything from appetizers through soups and entrees into dessert. So it's kind of the all purpose cookbook. And I do think those are nice to have.

Unknown: 21:35

Yeah, and there's such a nice time capsule, you really have to think about all the people who contributed those recipes and what they what their thought process was and choose in choosing that casserole, you know that what wasn't there, they know it's useful, or they know it's really good. And they want to share that with people. Sometimes people you know, like in the 90s cookbooks, you start to see a lot of people putting cheesecake in cookbooks, people want to show off their contemporary thing, their fusion II stuff. It's really interesting what people were intending when they contributed all these recipes to these books.

Chris Spear: 22:11

When you're digging into this, did you encounter anything around the topic of like, I don't know, like recipes being secret, because, you know, obviously, if it's in a cookbook, they're wanting to share it. But I've also seen this thing where a lot of especially older generations didn't want to share recipes. Like my family had a secret recipe for like, our New England baked beans that was like supposed to stay in the family and not be shared with anyone. Have you kind of just read anything about that, like Were there people who tended to be you know, like, maybe would release their recipes, but there was one that they held close to them and wouldn't put in a box. Can you speak on that at all?

Unknown: 22:46

Yeah, actually. Bertha Hunt who lives in St. Mary's County. She's a woman who I met by the phone because I was trying to I looked up her mother's phone number who was involved in compiling the St. Mary's County cookbook and we ended up meeting when I did CBS and we've kept in touch. But her mother contributed a large percentage of the recipes in a book called 300 years of black cooking and St. Mary's County, and her St. Mary's County stuffed ham is conspicuously absent from this book. She put together the cookbook to help raise money for her community. She put a lot of things in there, she worked with people to kind of standardize her measurements and techniques because she was an intuitive cook, but she was not going to part with that stuffed ham recipe that is something that's really special to their family that Bertha still makes and that she also will not share the recipe. She does stuffed ham workshops, but she's not going to turn over the exact ingredients that her mother and her mother before her and six generations at least at this family had been making.

Chris Spear: 23:57

I wanted to talk about stuffed ham because it's one of those things that comes up as when I was new to the area. You know, I kind of Googled like, classic Maryland dishes and that's one of the things that come has come up obviously, I've never seen it I've never seen it in a restaurant. I've never been to someone's house who's had it I've never encountered it. Is it worth trying both like Is it delicious? And I should try to eat it if I can find it and also is it worth trying to make?

Unknown: 24:24

Absolutely I don't know if it's worth trying to make. It is a labor of love. I mean personally, my new book, festive Maryland recipes is all about gatherings and having people come together so if you have a group of friends or family and you just really want an excuse to get together or it's maybe you don't usually celebrate Easter but fed day is free. It's a good time to just get the corn ham you probably where you are have to travel all the way to Baltimore or to Prince George's County to find this corn ham, you can also do one yourself. That's even more time consuming. But give it a try. And you know, make sure to make a lot of sides in case of failure and have a bunch of people over and try this stuffed ham. I personally love it. I tried, I again write about it in the Southern Heritage cookbooks and took a lot of trips to St. Mary's County to try all the different grocery stores and delis that sell it. But when I had first those ham that she made her homemade version, it just knocked all of those out of the park. But my favorite is from Chapter KCO, that you can get public leads from chat to co market, I believe it's called. And if you're passing through St. Mary's County, for whatever reason, or maybe want a weird day trip, there's some stuff some historical sites and things down there, you can go go find the ham, they also sell ham stuffed ham sandwiches at the St. Mary's County oyster Festival, which is in October. So if you're an oyster person, you can have your ham and your oysters and kill two birds with one stone at that event.

Chris Spear: 26:03

Is it okay to admit I'm not an oyster person?

Unknown: 26:05

I am not either. And it's my secret shame. I will eat them. And obviously I've had to work with oysters a fair deal for my recipes, but my love of them does not keep pace with their importance to the history of Maryland and Maryland food. I should be the world's number one oyster fan. If it were anything proportional to how important they are. I mean they out pace crabs by far up until fairly recently, as far as Maryland cuisine.

Chris Spear: 26:36

It's really hard for me, I did tour and oyster farm one time and that was amazing. You know, there were literally pulling them out right there. And I got to try some and we had some raw and he threw some on the grill. And those were good. Last year, I decided I was going to try fried oysters again, I had a fried oyster po boy and it was pretty good. I would still go for like a fried shrimp poboy instead of oyster one. It's just it's not my thing. I grew up near, you know, the Cape Cod area, we could get some oysters up in Massachusetts. My family loved them. I was not a fan. It's just like low on my list. But everyone always thinks like you're a chef. It's one of those things chefs love to eat. I'm not an oyster fan.

Unknown: 27:17

Yeah, it's a, I guess an acquired taste. But also you have to have a lot of opportunities to acquire that taste in this day and age. So some texture

Chris Spear: 27:26

to the texture, both cooked and raw. It's kind of a deal breaker for me. But with that ham, I think I'm gonna have to make a trip out to St. Mary's County, I travel for food. So you know, just get in the car on a day and drive out that way. And I might have to you know, go searching for some of that Maryland stuffed ham.

Unknown: 27:43

Yeah, it's really interesting. Nice and salty with the greens and mustard. I like to tap Tico as I mentioned, because they have a lot of pepper, red pepper in it. So it's really highly seasoned. And it's basically if you put it on a well Manny's sandwich it it's its own ham salad, kind of it forms a unique type of just instant sandwich. You know,

Chris Spear: 28:05

I might have to get off this podcast and like drive today. I don't know, you know? No, it sounds it sounds good. I've been wanting to try it. So you've definitely sold me I'm gonna find that I love ham salad too, even though ham salad is also one of those acquired things. That's kind of weird if you didn't grow up eating it, but I'm a fan of that as well. Yeah,

Unknown: 28:23

it really depends. Ham salad has a lot of variations. There's the ones where it's practically they put the ham through a meat grinder and turn it into deviled ham and then there's ham salad where it's chopped in bits and is big.

Chris Spear: 28:34

I've taken to use in country ham lately too. I like that and just kind of watch what I put in for condiments, so it's not too salty. And that's really dependent on the kind of country him but that's kind of been my version lately. It's not as wet. Yeah. One of the other things I want to find out about is what's the deal with Maryland fried chicken. You know, I've heard a lot about it. I don't know if you know who Dave Arnold is, but I had on one of my podcasts and he loves to nerd out about food. And he was all excited. He's like, Well, you're in Maryland. Like, what about Maryland fried chicken? I'm like, Dave, I am not the guy to talk about this. I don't know anything about it. So can you talk a little bit about Maryland fried chicken?

Unknown: 29:10

Yeah, I've done a lot of research on that as well. And when people came down to Maryland, I say usually down because Maryland really played up. It's kind of a gateway to the south type thing and a very problematic, like you're coming down here and getting a certain type of cooking way, you're going to be served by black waiters, and cook a meal that they make sure to let you know is made by a black chef. And of course, you know, these are very complicated because there's these very talented chefs who built up this industry, but they're put in this weird situation, you know, where it's really fetishized. and Maryland fried chicken was really associated with that culture served in the fancy hotels, sold by caterers, that quintillions and things like that. And the best thing about Maryland Fried Chicken is that nobody can agree what it is. I think the most general version would be it's fried chicken with cream gravy. But there's some recipes where you fry the chicken and then put a lid on the pan to kind of steam it some more.

Chris Spear: 30:17

Why would you do that? I want the crispy skin unless I'm gonna put gravy on it, but

Unknown: 30:21

it's highly controversial. And then when I went back further into the 1800s, I found some indication that Maryland was kind of synonymous with fried chicken period and by Maryland fried chicken. They just meant like, you know, fried chicken in Maryland, because it's best or something. But that's controversy also because Virginia would have a word. It was a kind of a rivalry. But

Chris Spear: 30:46

we really just somewhere I don't remember if it was Tennessee, it wouldn't have been Kentucky. We've done a lot of road trips this summer, but there was a place and it said like Maryland fried chicken. I almost think like it's a is their chain like Maryland fried chicken. Yeah, but it wasn't in Maryland that I saw it. So it was really peculiar that we had driven somewhere. And we're in like, Tennessee, or some of them like Oh, Maryland fried chicken. Why would I come down to Tennessee and have Maryland fried chicken?

Unknown: 31:11

I thought that they had stopped existing but I've heard tell of a few locations of Maryland fried chicken still existing and I don't believe they serve it with cream gravy. It's just a name. It's like going to

Chris Spear: 31:24

KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right?

Unknown: 31:26

Yeah, it's I think they're based in Florida or we're, it's been a while I used to read the weekend. And I always wanted to, you know, try it just to say I had but I haven't had the Maryland fried chicken. Well, now I

Chris Spear: 31:40

need to find out where that was that I was driving and maybe go back there. Will you put out a book was it last year? That was a collection of what your blog posts? Is that what your first book was? How did that go? I mean, it seemed like the reception was good. I know you were selling out of printings of that. Did you enjoy the process of putting that book together and then promoting it?

Unknown: 32:03

Yeah, very much. So I didn't promote it very much. I primarily promoted it to my existing readers. And I put that together in a pretty short span of time, it was just like an obsessive project that I spent every minute on laying it out. And the options for print on demand digital printing are just incredible. Now, what you the quality that a person like me can just put together on our own. And that has sold pretty well. But I had a it caused me to pick up a project that I had abandoned, which was originally going to be a zine of Christmas recipes or holiday recipes and turn that into a book because the whole time people are buying this book. People kept calling it a cookbook. And as we talked about vague recipes, I would tell people well, I don't know if you want to call this a cookbook.

Chris Spear: 32:55

I think on your website, it said they may be unsuitable for everyday use or something like yeah, I

Unknown: 33:00

tried to put a warning because I don't want people coming back to me, because the fudge recipe that has no times temperatures or quantities doesn't turn out. It's a historical document. Exactly. So I did print some of those recipes in there. But I wouldn't call it a cookbook per se. So that inspired me to finish up this holiday recipe project I've been working on. And that's what I have coming out this fall. And I worked with a recipe developer to actually make usable recipes in this book. And I'm actually getting it more professionally printed. So yeah, it was a very rewarding process that made me just want to keep making books for some reason.

Chris Spear: 33:40

That's great. So it's called festive Maryland recipes. And it's out October, correct.

Unknown: 33:44

Yes, our launch date is October 14, I will possibly be shipping some copies to pre orders before then but will hopefully be everywhere. In the fall. I'm I've had a really good reception from press and stuff. So I have some interviews coming up. And I'm just trying to get the word out about this book to maybe people who don't care about reading a blog. And you know, it's a great book to just skim through and maybe read an essay or maybe just try a recipe has lots of great images. We did a lot of research finding historic Maryland imagery to go in it. So I'm hoping it's a little bit more something that will reach outside of my existing blog readership.

Chris Spear: 34:26

So did you put your own spins on any of these? Or are they just really solidly tested? classic traditional recipes?

Unknown: 34:35

Actually, she did. And I kind of led everyone from the illustrator to the designer, to Rachel, the recipe developer, I told everyone to just have fun and do whatever they wanted. But she did come back to me especially with the plum pudding. That was we have a lot of back and forth about that. I'm like I don't know just, you know, make something you would want to eat. And we have the historic recipe in there. So if you want to make 15 pounds of plum pudding with Sue it and currents and raisins and boil it and give it to your friends you can. But she made a self saucing pudding cake out of the plum pudding concept. So I think that's the one that kind of most diverges. But it was just something if you really want to try to revive this tradition in a way that your family isn't gonna be mad that you're not pulling your weight at the potluck you can show up with and not be an outcast.

Chris Spear: 35:30

Yeah, 15 pounds. That's a big commitment.

Unknown: 35:32

Oh, some of these recipes were I don't even understand what vessel they would boil them in. The quantities were so huge for plum pudding, because you would just give one to absolutely everyone you encountered I guess.

Chris Spear: 35:45

Do you have a favorite holiday food not and it doesn't have to be in the book. But like when you think about like holiday get togethers and and the meals around them? Do you have a favorite either holiday in general or a holiday food that you like?

Unknown: 35:59

I like when newer things become watching things become a tradition. So maybe a decade or so ago, my aunt started making gravlax every Christmas and she brings it with like the the capers and some mustard sauce she makes. And it's kind of unexpected presents now at Christmas. So it's become one of my favorite things just to see that become something that we expect to have. I like making FOSS knocks or punch ski on Fat Tuesday or usually the weekend before. Let's be realistic. I'm not frying things on a Tuesday. Come on now. Yeah, but I really like that. Just I like some of these things that aren't necessarily compulsory holiday that everybody has to do, but you do it because you choose to for fun to share with friends or as kind of more of an excuse to gather.

Chris Spear: 36:58

My wife's cousin by marriage is from Denmark. And on I think it's Easter she does something that's almost like a stuffed ham kind of it's called Rola posa. And I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's a pork belly that stuffed with tons of herbs. So it's like green, but there's a press like it goes in this like square box folded over. And then it has like cranks and you like crank it progressively over days to like tighten it. So it like for him. So it's kind of like a porchetta kind of like a stuffed ham type thing. But She cures her own pork belly. So I love going there because they have tons like when we go there house, we do potluck, but that's one of my favorite things. I think that's Easter that she makes that so I love those like big family holiday gatherings where there's maybe something a little interesting I've never had or just you know, something that you look forward to all year.

Unknown: 37:50

Yeah, I love that I love either bringing something over or even digging something out from your past or your heritage and trying to kind of bring it back. I have not heard of that. But that sounds really interesting. So I'll have to add it to my my list of things to try to find out more about.

Chris Spear: 38:10

So looking at deciphering these. A pinch of this are some vague measurements and procedures. How much tinkering do you have to do when you see these like, well, you make a recipe a couple of times trying different measurements to see if you can kind of ratchet down with that measurement is.

Unknown: 38:25

So this is why I enlisted Rachel to be the recipe developer for the book because I have my brain is to melted by these old recipes. I almost like I would never call myself a chef. But I think that everybody knows and it's an open secret that chefs don't really write good recipes. And I'm kind of in that same boat. So I just I follow my instincts when I make the recipes and it's hard for me to even follow a modern recipe and like my eyes glaze over of any variation from what I'm expecting to do. So I find myself just doing what I already know or you know, think I should be doing. So I don't do much tinkering sometimes I will try a recipe on my site and I'll put a note in hindsight like a cake I recently made and I wrote that you should add a little bit of oil to this cake because it came out kind of dry. Or I try my best to write down what I did or cross reference other people's recipes online for how they how they would make a specific thing there's so many other cross reference resources luckily,

Chris Spear: 39:37

well it's so hard because one food is expensive like raw ingredients and then the time involved like nobody wants to spend a couple hours or or a day making this thing and spend all this money and habit not come out. Now some things it's not as important you know if you're just talking about like, going back to my family's bake bean recipe, I think it says like a third to Half a pound of salt pork, like, either way, it's going to come out fine. But I did want to ask my mom, like, how much do you use? Like I like when you make it and she's like, Oh, very much. So it's like a third of a pound. So like, that's my No, but my grandmother would be like, I have a bunch of salt pork in the freezer. And I know it looks like a third of a pound and chuck it in because that's how she cooked. So I wanted to make sure I got it either way, it would come out fine. But I still wanted to know like how we were really doing it in my house.

Unknown: 40:25

Yeah, that's always going to be something that nags at you and it nags at me when I make old recipes, especially if they were written by somebody who was a renowned cook. You know, whether the version that you're making from a recipe I just made these chicken croquettes, a recipe purporting to be from a famous caterer in Philadelphia. And there's so many variables that, you know, you wonder if you can do this person's cooking justice. I mean, they fried up hundreds of these per day if not 1000s of these famous croquettes. So all the variables in the frying the oil they didn't really lists many quantities. So a lot of people think that you can just taste tasted that moment, but let's be real, you know, his real recipe died with him.

Chris Spear: 41:19

Yeah, I mean, frying alone. Are you frying and lard? Is it vegetable oil, corn, or like, you know, it's, it's crazy, you're probably never gonna get it to be the way that it was. But thankfully, there's probably not anyone around who's going to be able to tell you different anyway, even though you'd you'd probably really like to try that version, right?

Unknown: 41:38

Yeah, I would just like to, you just read them. And you read about these times and the legacy of these different cooks, whether they're home cooks or chefs and you just kind of want a taste of that I think people are people have always been that way. That's why these recipes circulated because people who couldn't make it to Philadelphia couldn't afford to go to his restaurant wanted to taste this food. So a recipe, either legitimate or some pale imitation made its way into a cookbook so that somebody could say, oh, I've had Augustine's croquettes.

Chris Spear: 42:10

bragging point. Yeah, you're clearly younger. But is this something that is dying out a little bit? You know, this traditional cooking the Maryland cooking? You know, are people of our generations doing this? Or is it something that still you know, grandmother's your mom? Like? Are we in danger of losing these recipes? And this way of cooking? Because I think today, you know, everyone's interested in global cuisine. And we're doing you know, at my house, we cook Mexican and we cook Thai. It's like, I'm not doing this kind of cooking as much. Like, do you have a feeling on what that looks like?

Unknown: 42:46

I guess it's just always happening. There's always going to be the churn. I mentioned, plum pudding is something that's in the book, and let's be real, it probably, for all intents and purposes died out long before I found this recipe and put it in my book. I've heard of few people whose families made white potato pie, but it's certainly not the norm. So I think we always are at risk of having these kind of flame keepers passing away and not passing the recipe to someone or people who are too busy to stuff a ham at Thanksgiving season because they have work and other obligations and can't drive to get the ham, let alone stand around and stuff it full of hand chopped greens. So there's always going to be conflicting priorities. But I think that food just evolves to meet our needs. So new things are also being born every day.

Chris Spear: 43:41

But it's also cyclical because I think if you look at like take spike Geraghty, Woodberry Kitchen like clearly people love that food and that cooking and you have guys like Michael Twitty who are still talking about old foodways. You know, chefs, especially love that stuff. People like Sean Brock, who really like dig into local and kind of some of those heritage recipes. So you do see those coming back, even in restaurants, which I think then creates a little interest for people cooking at home.

Unknown: 44:08

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's an interest in authenticity. You know, I hesitate to ever use that word because what does it even mean? But there is an interest in these foods with these backstories I hope that in some ways that some of my writing will encourage people to take those things somewhat out of the restaurant kitchens and bring them home. I once read an interesting thing about like, I forget what type of sandwich some British sandwich how everybody had their own version of the sandwich and then once it started to become mass produced all these variations died out, you know, there's just the one you'd get at the corner store, which is

Chris Spear: 44:51

the same for like produce, right? Because you see that a lot of like, there used to be all these varieties of watermelon is one of those ones, right? And then they're like, Oh, this is Like, we're going to ship one watermelon, right? It's going to be this. We've bred it for flavor and size and whatever. And then you just don't have these varieties anymore.

Unknown: 45:07

That's a great example, though, because we still have people who are striving to keep all those heirloom things alive. So I think as long as there's people, whether they're chefs who are kind of bringing awareness of dishes by putting them on menus, or people like me who are writing about it, or doing research, as long as there's someone to kind of keep the idea, going or keep the seed of literally or figuratively, alive, hopefully, at least we have the recipes and techniques can be passed down to

Chris Spear: 45:39

like the fish pepper, right. That was something that I know there was, Do you know the fish pepper? Oh, yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah, of course. But like I'm growing them in my yard. Now. I've been growing them every year now. But I had, you know, I was like 40, and I had never even heard of it. And it wasn't anything we had. And then all of a sudden, you know, some people are talking about it, and then you start to see it more now I can go to like literally my Dutch plant farm here in Frederick has them every year. And you can I don't even have to start from seed anymore, I can just buy it, it's become so popular again, that you can go buy fish, pepper plants, and plant them in your yard. And it's one of my favorite ones to grow. But a handful of years ago, nobody even knew what it was. I mean, you know, kind of in the mainstream, they didn't.

Unknown: 46:16

Yeah, it's so great that they made a comeback. And it's such a good I feel like it made a lot of people myself included, I've grown them I'm not this year, but they gave so many people a way to keep this thing going all you have to do is put it in a pot and grow it. So it's a really good way to just keep this heirloom alive. It's created an industry for it and awareness of it. I think a lot of people who grow them know the story behind it and know a little bit about the history and they know that it's regional. Although I was at a Home Depot, I think last summer and I saw a fish pepper and it was called a candy cane pepper. And i i about had a had a fit, but you know, they were trying to repackage it for a national audience. But people who grew up regionally know what it really is. And hopefully as long as there's enough people growing it and calling it a fish pepper and giving them to friends or making that one batch pot sauce. That's gonna keep those peppers, keep that whole story and that pepper alive.

Chris Spear: 47:22

I just cook with some yesterday I did some pickled ones, I did a dish and I was doing a photo shoot. And I was like, you know, I wanted to have some pickled peppers on there and I couldn't think of a better pepper to use.

Unknown: 47:31

So I'm sold them a whole,

Chris Spear: 47:33

I cut them in half, cut the the top off and then cut them in half with the seeds and then pickle them like doing a hot pickle like I'm not doing

Unknown: 47:42

stripes though, that's a really great way. So you can still grinding them as you can still see that there's something

Chris Spear: 47:48

really and there's not a huge pepper. So you can even serve like a good chunk of it, you know, and just like so that you can see that they're on the plate. So I wanted like a big chunk of it on there. And they're not overly spicy. Some people can't take any spices, although every once in a while. It's like you have some you're like, oh, this this one in particular is really hot.

Unknown: 48:07

Yeah, that's so funny about peppers. I don't know what the science is behind it. But yeah, most of the fish peppers are fairly mild. And they by doing that you have this visual impact and this unique story just in this one ingredient on the plate. So that's so, so interesting to be able to do.

Chris Spear: 48:25

I want to dig into some potentially controversial things here. Can we talk about crab cakes for a few minutes because there's so many variables here so I want your opinions religious talking about like, how do you cook them? Are they cooked in a pan? Are they broiled? Are they fried? Is that a combo? Like I'm sure you've seen it all what do you what are your thoughts on actually cooking the crab cake and then we'll talk maybe about some ingredients.

Unknown: 48:46

I personally like to pan fry them but I actually only have one really hard and fast opinion about crab cakes and that that they need to be made from an entire picked crab. Oh, I don't mess around with the jumbo I know that breaks my like that's so much work it is it makes it really not practical once a year so someone will give me some extra crabs from a crab feast and I'll have some friends over for crab cakes. But I don't go for the jumbo lump. They're, they're good when I have you know, when I do come across one I wouldn't say no to a free crab cake but nothing beats that combination of all the parts of the crab and I actually recently read maybe we're not supposed to be eating the tamale. It might have heavy metals or some something in it I forget. And that just broke my heart because I think that having a little of the tamale in there is one of the crucial elements of making a really tasty crabcake.

Chris Spear: 49:46

So if you were using already picked crab you would say that it's acceptable if not better to do a mix like because some people want to say jumbo lump but I've always been a fan of whether it's putting some back fin in or some cloth Some of that's because of cost, but like, what are your thoughts on mixing that? Like, if you're not going to pick the whole thing, would you go with different parts of the crabs since they're already usually separated out that way when they're picked?

Unknown: 50:12

This is ironic since I was just advocating for picking a whole crab, but that sounds like too much work. And I would just go from the back fin. I love the back then and then would be it. Okay. Hadleys I get the back fin crabcake. It's a better deal. It's a better crab. Yeah.

Chris Spear: 50:26

Because, you know, I worked in a place where we were making a lot if I'm at home, like one pound, maybe two pounds is enough. But I worked at places where we were, you know, using hundreds of pounds of crab meat. So we had like our ratio of what we put in and some people would be like, Oh, you're cheap. It's not all, you know, jumbo lump crab. It's like, well, I like flavor wise, I like I don't think you always have to see these gigantic chunks of crab. It still tastes like crab. But that's one of those hotly debated topics.

Unknown: 50:53

Yeah, it's really gilding the lily to me to just be all jumbo lump. And, you know, the Columbian has a whole different taste and texture. So it definitely adds something. But it's too dry to us, just claw me. But also, if you're picking crabs, your hands get so dirty, and you get old bay and seasonings all over the meat while you're picking it in that flavors because I don't season crab cakes with a whole bunch of old bay or anything, just kind of what gets in there. Maybe a little bit of extra. So that gets in there just from the act of picking it and when you get crab meat, the storage is clean. So it's really just about the dirtiness of it and it's kind of like the chicken croquettes I just made. You know, if you make it people advertise all white meat, chicken, but when you're cutting it up and

Chris Spear: 51:41

lumping it together, meat chicken, chicken.

Unknown: 51:45

Yeah, you want that dark meat or at least a mix. So it's just about getting something in there that's like a little bit more. I for lack of a better word dirty or you know,

Chris Spear: 51:54

you do it all in a frying pan. Because I'm an oven broil like mine, like go on a sheet tray in the oven. They don't go in a pan at all. So you do yours like on the stove and a frying pan.

Unknown: 52:05

Yeah, brutal. They're really good, though. I have nothing against that either. I just put them in a skillet because I'm I'm not sure I don't even have a uniform way that I make them because sometimes I follow. It's not like I get that much crab meat in my life. Yeah, it's expensive luxury at this point, right. So I often make recipes. I think the last time I made crab cakes, I followed a recipe from a cookbook from a woman on the eastern shore. And I just knew that as long as I had my hard and fast rule of my whole crab that her recipe would turn out just fine. So I think she may be fried in oil, found them in butter. If the recipe said to boil it, I would do that too. But some of them soak bread and milk and use that to buy it.

Chris Spear: 52:51

What's What are your thoughts on binders? You know, fresh bread bread crumbs is Panko. Okay? Some people use saltines or crackers. That's another one of those things. Do you have a preference? I'm sure you've seen it all?

Unknown: 53:05

Yeah, I don't really have a strong preference on that. I think whatever. Whatever you have on hand is the most authentic thing. Right. So

Chris Spear: 53:12

yeah, I think when I first started making them, I was using the recipe on the Old Bay can and they had like a call for white bread. So you're like cutting the crap, like you cut the cross off of white bread. And then you cut it into small pieces. That just I don't know, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth for me. And I soon moved on to like, actually like panko I just these days just use panko because it's what I have at home all the time ready to roll

Unknown: 53:37

bread is a real minefield, because it means so many things, and so much commercially available, like white bread is really sweet. So if you get anything in there that's got the taste of sweetness, like a potato roll or something to me that just ruins the crab cake. You know, and then you on the other end of the spectrum, you have stuff that's to wheat bread, or sourdough and that also would ruin a crab cake. So it's probably better to go with grid bread crumbs than to deal with the whole minefield that is commercially available bread options. And I

Chris Spear: 54:09

find it funny when people say like no filler, I don't want like that the idea of having a little bread in there is like filler, because that's one of those things that I'm always like, well, like if you make it without any of that it's a little too runny. I mean, maybe I could adjust and put less, you know, the liquid, the egg and stuff in there. But I don't I don't think it's terrible to have a little bread in there just to hold that together. Like I am not a fan of putting, say like red peppers in there or something. But that's another one of the selling points where people like, Oh, what do you put in it? Oh, I don't want any of that bread crumb in there. I'm like, there's not really that much bread crumb.

Unknown: 54:42

I tried to do research into when people became so suspicious of their crabcakes this way and I couldn't really pinpoint it. But the whole thing about filler. At some point people just decided that they you know, in this one instance we would accept nothing less than the best jumbo lump No filler. And as a result, you know, you can only a crab cake once a year. So to me, I'll take a couple, I'll give it a little leeway so that I can eat more crab cakes.

Chris Spear: 55:11

Yeah, me too. Yeah, it's one of the things that I have on my menu for my customers these days for a while, it was definitely the number one seller, I'm so glad that I don't have to make as many crab cakes and I wouldn't be able to. I'm sorry, I just can't pick them. Crab cakes. I'll try it from my house, though. We're big fans. Again, I didn't grow up here. But my wife's from Virginia and her dad is from DC and my wife grew up in Prince George's County. So they're big crab picking fans. So that's something we do every year, at least once in the backyard is just have family over and spend a couple hours picking the crabs. Well, if you

Unknown: 55:46

finish before, this is unlikely, but save or have had enough crab and everybody else is still sitting around or like me, you don't drink as much and you need something to do then you can just sit there and pick the crab and put it in a bowl and still socialize and make crab cakes tomorrow. But I like to lay out most definitely done that. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to lay out some paper and just watch TV or listen to a podcast or something. And I do them assembly line style. I pull off all the legs of all of them and do each part kind of in a row to each crab. And it seems to go a little bit faster that way,

Chris Spear: 56:20

going to a crab picking house when I went to on that tour of the oyster farm. We actually also went out to a crab house and watching the people who professionally pick the crabs is insane. They're all in there with their hoodies with their headphones on just head down and they're just picking crab it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Unknown: 56:37

Yeah, I saw a video of that it's Smith Island, and I thought I'd be able to I needed. I needed the slow motion version. I wanted to figure out some secret to what I'm doing wrong that I can't pick a crab that quickly. And it was too fast. You just took this knife and like you know, pulled out these three big lumps in a matter of seconds. And it was just crazy to see.

Chris Spear: 57:01

So do you ever just like eat pizza at home? Or is it always traditional Maryland cooking,

Unknown: 57:07

I mostly eat pizza while we we eat a lot of pizza. I don't do that much. I do maybe one recipe for the blog a week or so. Or sometimes I go through phases where I don't but I'm mostly at home. This is really funny for somebody who has 300 some cookbooks but I'm not really a recipe person. I just made a pot of beans this morning for this weekend. I just take we have a CSA. So I just make whatever we have and cook it with a few different variations. We eat a lot of salads, like a gigantic salad for dinner with, you know, maybe some salmon or something in it.

Chris Spear: 57:50

I mean, now's the time for that, isn't it? You know, just everything available. My fridge is just loaded with stuff that are ready to go into a salad.

Unknown: 57:59

Yeah, I love a good salad. But yeah, so I don't do the historic cooking. That much it feels like a pretty occasional thing is a lot of work to. And I'm not even that professional of a food blogger or anything but just laying the stuff out and trying to take a few process photos. It's a lot of work.

Chris Spear: 58:17

Well I appreciate it again, like I found you years ago, I think probably from the start. I don't know if I found your website but definitely on Twitter, you know, but as I wanted to dive into what Maryland cooking was, I don't know many people out there who have as thorough a collection of recipes and information to share. So I'm appreciative of it and I know other people are as well.

Unknown: 58:40

Well you've been in Fred in the Frederick area for such an interesting time for this to I think there's been a resurgence not only in the population of that area, it's a lot of people who commute to DC but also local pride I think for people who have always lived there and local pride ties in a little bit with the food culture of the area and the dairies and the other things that come from that region. So I think that Frederick is really has a really strong underlying it's not prominent, it's not in your face when you go down there but it's definitely a part of the culture there that's made a resurgence.

Chris Spear: 59:19

Yeah, you know, and when we came to check it out to see if we want to live here we came down 15 So we came in through kind of like farm country stuff. And then it said, you know, your exits in two miles, I said to my wife is this place in the country, like I'm not really a country person. And I'm like, like, this is the second biggest city in Maryland, like are we moving to the country and then all of a sudden it like opens up and you're like, Oh wow, you know, so we have such a split here between it being as modern as it is and you know, if you're on the seventh year to 70 Corridors you feel like you're in a huge, you know, suburb almost metropolitan area but we have so much of a connection still to like all these great farms and great products and a lot of people who are you know sixth generation Frederick, people who don't always love that people have moved here from especially out of state, but I think they've gotten used to it at this point. But I hear a lot of like, I don't want Frederick to become montgomery county.

Unknown: 1:00:12

Yeah. Well, that's a whole other thing, but it was definitely so much there. You can go pick, pick Paul. Paul is just within, you know,

Chris Spear: 1:00:22

my spa, I have a very secret sort of secret pop hot spot. So I'm looking forward to going and doing that.

Unknown: 1:00:29

Nice. I don't Well, actually, if I did have a spot, I would say it's somewhere out of that way. I don't have a regional to Baltimore spot. But I really liked the PharmD. Paul, Paul's. I, I have a strong I guess I'm strong, bitter receptor. And when you get this wild Paul Paul, sometimes they have that bitter taste, and it just kills it. For me. It just was

Chris Spear: 1:00:48

also like, the challenge that were the ones I get are the trees are huge, like they'd been there forever. And they fall from such a height that when they fall, most of them break open. And because you're not going to find like I have no idea how long they've been on the ground, like finding a good one that doesn't have holes in it and have insects in it. So you're like picking them up and blowing the ants out of them. And you don't know what kinda I do know someone locally who has a tree in their yard and actually does not love them. So sometimes I get an invite, like, hey, there's pop pods all over the ground, and it's drawing bees, do you want to come pick them up, and I'll come with a couple of boxes and take home like five pounds a pop? Ah, so I actually prefer those as well, because they bought them from a nursery or whatever. I've tried them in my yard and I can't get them to take I don't really have the good, you know, I guess they they need like kind of like they grow under tall trees pretty well. And I'm not near water at all. So it hasn't worked on my property. So are you doing, like local promotion with the new book? Are you going to be doing talks and stuff locally?

Unknown: 1:01:47

Yeah, I have a few lined up I don't think I can't remember if I lined up anything for your area yet. Maybe brunch, the Brunswick Heritage Museum, but we're doing a launch at the Pratt library on October 14. I will be at the St. Mary's County oyster festival the weekend after. So hopefully they didn't hear me say that I don't love oysters. I don't hate them either. But I'm gonna do a talk in Ocean City. It's the buzzword bookstore. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of these bookstores around the state too. There's so many cool places now. So I have a few nothing for November, December. But hopefully maybe I'll do a few more because I really almost want to do a little tour of Maryland's you know, and kind of visit a couple of the places that are represented in the book because we've got stuff from far western Maryland and then different parts of the state.

Chris Spear: 1:02:44

Well, I will try to get this episode out right before that happens. So if you're listening to this episode, the book should either be out or out very shortly.

Unknown: 1:02:53

Thank you so much. This has been really fun. Well, thank you. I'm

Chris Spear: 1:02:57

so glad I finally had you on the show.

Unknown: 1:02:59

Yeah, well, yeah. We've talked about this for a little while now. Yeah, I mean, yeah, timing finally worked out. And hopefully I get to meet you in person at some point. Also, I'll try to come up to one of these events. That would be awesome. Well, to all of our listeners. Thanks so much. This has been Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast, have a great week. You're still here, the podcast is over. If you are indeed still here. Thanks for taking the time to listen to the show. I'd love to direct you to one place and that's chefs without restaurants.org. From there, you'll be able to join our email newsletter. Get connected in our free Facebook group, and join our personal chef catering and food truck database so I can help get you more job leads. And you'll also find a link to our sponsor page where you'll find products and services I love. You pay nothing additional to use these links, but I may get a small commission which helps keep the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast and organization running. You might even get a discount for using some of these links. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram at Chefs Without Restaurants or send me an email at chefs without restaurants@gmail.com Thanks so much.