My Christmas dinners as a child almost always occurred at my grandmother's table in Haddonfield, New Jersey, an historical town quite close to Philadelphia. We usually had standing rib roast, overdone according to my mother's taste, but that was the way my dad's family liked it. The salad served was like cole slaw but it was called "pepper hash" and my father liked to tell of how his job was to chop the peppers for the hash, evidently quite the chore given they didn't have food processors in those days. After my grandmother died, Dad lamented that he didn't have her recipe for the pepper hash and so it no longer appeared on our Christmas table. Yesterday, I realized that we now have the internet where everyone shares old recipes and so I typed in "pepper hash". Suddenly I was met with chat about Philadlephia pepper hash; that had to be my grandmother's recipe and I was delighted to see that others were longing for it along with me. The website which proved to be full of all sorts of handy info for foodies is www.seriouseats.com.
Too bad Dad didn't have a chance to enjoy his pepper hash before the internet came along to save his Christmas dinner.
What a great story, Debbie. It reminds me that the internet can be a cook's best friend. I still love my embarrassingly large library of cookbooks, but I confess that, most of the time I look first to the internet to get food prep ideas.
ReplyDeleteSandy: Yes,the internet is proving to be my great salvation, which makes my large library of cooking magazines and cookbooks almost redundant. As you probably know, I do teach cooking classes at OLLI and the winter class is "comfort" foods. While I have in mind what those might be, I'm letting my class people decide what they want to make after the first class when it will be potato leek soup, probably gingerbread and whipped cream and homemade apple sauce. I haven't made gingerbread in years and would like to avoid the packaged variety, so we can do some basic baking skill-teaching. Should be fun on a cold day in January and February.
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