Focus On Cooking
Blog Posts
- The Journals of Abby and Mattie Sanderson of Whately Glen
In the winter and early spring months of 1874 and 1876, Martha “Mattie” Ann Sanderson (1854-1933) and her mother, Abby H. Rice Sanderson (1829-1902), kept a journal of their work schedules, domestic cookery, farm production and inventories, sewing projects, daily weather reports, church and prayer meeting attendance and numerous other tasks… - It’s Fall! It’s Time for Cooking with Pumpkin
This is not a blog about pumpkin spice. While today we decorate our yards and front steps with pumpkins and gourds and drink coffee flavored with pumpkin pie spices, long ago the pumpkin and its relatives — winter squashes — were a staple and necessary food item that were stored and eaten over the long and cold New England winters.
- What’s for Dinner?: Examining the Tools of Hearth Cooking
Generations of cooks have known the daily chore of putting food on the table for anxious mouths. Today, we have little trouble readying and preparing food—even if the result might not be perfect. Few modern American spend time butchering hogs, plucking feathers off chickens, grinding corn, or milking cows to make a meal.
- Baby It’s Cold Outside: A Sweet History of Chocolate in New England
Although cacao trees don’t grow in our climate, chocolate has a long history in New England, given our close economic connections to the West Indies. New England merchants supplied barrel staves, lumber, onions, salt fish, salt beef, and horses to the Caribbean in exchange for sugar, molasses, rum, and cacao.
- Pass it Round: Festive Drinks for Holiday Cheer
In this installment of Maker Mondays we want to treat you to some recipes for holiday drinks that were popular in early New England.
Cooking Events
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Spice it Up! Cooking with Flavors of the Past
Today we take for granted the availability of any herb, spice, salt, or vinegar we desire to flavor our favorite dishes. Our hearth cooks this month will be taking a deeper look at the ingredients used to flavor some period recipes from Amelia Simmons 1796 cookbook, American Cookery.
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Spice it Up! Cooking with Flavors of the Past
Today we take for granted the availability of any herb, spice, salt, or vinegar we desire to flavor our favorite dishes. Our hearth cooks this month will be taking a deeper look at the ingredients used to flavor some period recipes from Amelia Simmons 1796 cookbook, American Cookery.
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Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife: Recalling the Revolution in New England
Learn about the broad range of ways the people of New England have looked back on the nation’s founding —and what they forgot, or chose to forget, in the process. We will explore how the peoples of the region have commemorated, memorialized, documented, invoked, fictionalized, and even forgotten the American Revolution through the Bicentennial period.
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Hybrid Summer Lecture Series: Indigenous Histories and Material Culture
The 2025 Summer Lecture Series will take place both in person at the Deerfield Community Center and via Zoom from 7–8 p.m. (ET) on the following Thursdays: June 26, July 10, and July 17.
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Father’s Day Fun: Make a Colorful Clay Tile Workshop with Rick Hamelin
Family-friendly hands-on workshop! Join us in exploring creativity and pottery techniques with this exciting tile project. Master Potter, Rick of Pied Potter Hamelin, will guide you through the process of creating a colorful masterpiece inspired by some tiles here at Historic Deerfield!
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Juneteenth Celebration Concert with Jake Blount
Jake Blount is an award-winning interpreter of Black folk music based in Providence, RI. Initially recognized for his skill as a string band musician, Blount has charted an unprecedented Afrofuturist course on his pilgrimage through sound archives and song collections. In his hands, the banjo, fiddle, electric guitar, and synthesizer become ceremonial objects used to…
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Envisioning America: Deerfield Academy’s Collection of Paintings and Drawings
Deerfield Academy, a private boarding school located in Old Deerfield, possesses a rich collection of American art, ranging from colonial American portraiture to early 20th-century modernism. This exhibition highlights significant works of art from the Academy’s collection, many of which have not been on public view for decades.
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Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real
This exhibition will explore the enduring interest in clothing our bodies to achieve fashionable shapes. It will feature twenty-five ensembles from the 18th to 21st centuries drawn predominantly from Historic Deerfield’s renowned clothing collection. Displayed along with the historical garments will be the understructures – stays, corsets, hoops skirts, and bustles – that helped shape,…
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Historic Trade Demonstration: Pots and Chairs
Join us for stoneware pottery with Mark Shapiro and chair making with Charles Thompson.
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Family Program: Fake It While You Make It
Open Saturday and Sundays through June at the History Workshop.