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Recently in school, Nathan had to write the story of his ancestry. It was part of what his class was learning about the United States as a nation of immigrants. Since Paul and my families’ backgrounds are complex - we have ancestors from England, Wales, Scotland, France, Denmark, Germany and Greece who immigrated as long ago as the 1600s and as recently as 1960 - the paper ended up being two pages. Needless to say this was a fairly intense assignment for a second grader. (It’s part of the Core Knowledge curriculum - see What Your Second Grader Needs to Know.)

Nathan had a hard time understanding that my father, who was born in England, was both English and Jewish. It was even more confusing that my dad became a citizen when he was a kid and was more American than English having grown up in Brooklyn in the ’20s and ’30s and serving as an American soldier in World War II.

Exploring through TV and video

Just around this time, PBS was showing their wonderful documentary, The Jewish Americans. If Nathan was older, I would have had him watch watch it with me to understand more about Jewish immigrants and how they contributed to American society. I only caught the first marvelous episode, so I was happy to receive a review copy from Click-Comm.com of the newly released DVD so I could watch the episodes I missed. The description:

The Jewish Americans is a three-night (6 hour) documentary that explores 350 years of Jewish American history. Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, The Jewish Americans is a journey through time, from the first settlement in 1654 to the present. It is about the struggle of a tiny minority who make their way into the American mainstream while, at the same time, maintaining a sense of their own identity as Jews. Focusing on the tension between identity and assimilation, The Jewish Americans is quintessentially an American story, which other minority groups will find surprisingly familiar. Louis D. Brandeis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Henry Morgenthau, Hank Greenberg, Betty Friedan, Molly Goldberg, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, and Tony Kushner are all interviewed for the documentary.

PBS’s The Jewish Americans website also has video outtakes, links to the history of being Jewish in America, and a place to share your own story.

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We tend to think that Thanksgiving is all about pumpkin pie, turkey, mashed potatoes, yams and cranberries. In reality, the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 celebrated by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians didn’t feature any of those items. Historians know for certain that they ate venison and wild fowl. They probably didn’t have much in the way of vegetables that time of year, and they didn’t have ovens in which to make cakes and pies. In fact, there were probably too stuffed on meat to care about eating something sweet. (For more information about the First Thanksgiving, go to History.com and EnjoyMA)

So what could have been on the menu? This comes from Kathleen Curtin, Food Historian at Plimoth Plantation via History.com.

Foods that may have been on the menu

Seafood: cod, eel, clams, lobster (now this is my idea of a great feast!)
Wild Fowl: wild turkey, goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge, eagles
Meat: venison (deer or elk), seal
Grain: wheat flour, Indian corn
Vegetables: pumpkin, peas, beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, carrots
Fruit: plums, grapes

Foods not on the menu

Ham: There is no evidence that the colonists had butchered their pigs though they had brought such animals with them from England.
Sweet Potatoes/Potatoes: These were not common.
Corn on the Cob: Corn was kept dried out at this time of year.
Cranberry Sauce: The colonists had cranberries but no sugar.
Pumpkin Pie: Hard to make without sugar, plus the recipe didn’t exist at this time. However, the pilgrims had recipes for stewed pumpkin.
Chicken/Eggs: We know that the colonists brought hens with them from England, but it’s unknown how many they had left at this point or whether the hens were still laying.
Milk: No cows had been aboard the Mayflower, though it’s possible that the colonists used goat milk to make cheese.

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Did you catch the first episode of Ken Burns’ film The War about World War II on PBS this weekend? Like much of Burns’ work, I was touched, horrified and spellbound - all at the same time. The story is told through the personal accounts of women and men from four American towns, a terrific way of making the experience of war more personal and heartbreaking.

Click Communications sent me a preview copy of the six DVD set. The first episode was so good that I’m tempted to watch the whole thing right now while Lucie’s at preschool this week. (Plus the premier of Heroes is on tonight, so I’ll miss part of the second episode anyway.)

Released on PBS Home Video, The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick will be available for purchase October 10, just after the series finishes up on TV. Good thing too, because you should watch The War after the kids go to bed. Within the first 30 seconds, you’re shown footage of dead soldiers, soon followed by footage of dead civilians (including children) and a horrifying shot of a Jewish infant who starved to death in the Polish ghettos.

If you’re kids are high schoolers, plan to watch The War with them. PBS’s website has a section just for educators that parents can use, too. There are 14 lesson plans with classroom activities appropriate for students in grades 9-12. You may want to go through them to find topics for you and your teenager to discuss.

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My post about dog biscuits got me thinking about all the wonderful things you can do with cookie cutters. You can take a cookie cutter - lets say a heart - and cut out the middle of a sandwich. Then take the leftover sandwich and cut it into four pieces. Then you have a puzzle sandwich that you can reassemble and eat. I got this idea from FamilyFun Cookbook from the folks at FamilyFun magazine.

FamilyFun Cookbook calls the sandwich a "Peanut Puzzler" since they use peanut butter, but you can use banana slices, honey and cream cheese, apple butter, ham and cheese - just use your imagination and have fun.

Another fun way to learn your ABCs is to make letter cookies. Nigella Lawson is coming out with a very attractively packaged letter/number metal cookie cutters set next month. Or you can go to a local crafts store and get Wilton’s plastic letter/number set.

FamilyFun.com has a recipe for gingerbread ABC cookies. In Colonial days, when children learned the alphabet, their families celebrated by making gingerbread letters.

Gingerbread ABC Cookies

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2. 3/4 cup brown sugar
3. 2 eggs
4. 1/2 cup molasses
5. 1 tsp. vanilla extract
6. 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
7. 1 tbsp. cinnamon
8. 1 tsp. ginger
9. 1 tsp. baking soda
10. 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix in the molasses and the vanilla extract.
2. In another bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Then add the flour mixture to the butter mixture a little at a time, stirring well each time. Cover the dough and chill for at least 2 hours.
3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. On a floured surface, roll the dough flat to a 1/4-inch thickness. Now your kids can cut out large letters with a butter knife.
4. With a spatula, set the letters on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies are set. Yield varies depending on the size of the letters.

Pictures from the Flickr account of chalk sbair.

It’s been very challenging to find recipes to celebrate Women’s History Month. Instead, I found a culinary history book called, Dinners with Famous Women: From Cleopatra to Indira Gandhi. In it, Eugenia Van Vliet writes about women from different centuries and recount the meals of their time. You can enjoy dinner with Cleopatra, Annie Oakley, and Mata Hari. Or learn about a meal Anne Boleyn relished at Hampton Court with Henry VIII, eat a meal with Emily Dickinson, and celebrate Passover with Emma Goldman. Sounds fascinating!

But did you know that chocolate chip cookies were invented by a woman - Ruth Wakefield? Before 1930 chocolate chip cookies didn’t exist. From the Lemelson-MIT Inventor of the Week website:

One of Ruth’s favorite recipes was for Butter Drop Do cookies. As she prepared the batter one day she discovered she had run out of baker’s chocolate. She found a semi-sweet chocolate bar that had been given to her by Andrew Nestle, and so she cut it into tiny bits and added them to the dough, expecting them to melt as the cookies baked in the oven. However, the chocolate did not melt. Instead, it held its shape and softened to a delicately creamy texture. Needless to say, the cookies Ruth had created became very popular with guests at the inn, and soon her recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, as well as other papers in the New England area.

Meanwhile, Nestle saw sales of its Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar jump dramatically, and Ruth and Nestle came together to reach an agreement that would allow Nestle to print the “Toll House Cookie” recipe on its packaging. Part of this agreement included supplying Ruth with all of the chocolate she could use for the rest of her life.

Nestle, meanwhile, began scoring the Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar, and packaged it with a special chopper for easily cutting it into small morsels. Then, in 1939, Nestle had a better idea, and began offering Nestlé Toll House Real Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels. The rest is “chocolate-chip” history.

Some one call the Pope and make this woman a saint. What would we all do without the comfort of a good chocolate chip cookie? Here’s the world-famous recipe. Thanks Ruth and Mr. Nestle.

Original Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
Estimated Times: Preparation - 15 min | Cooking - 9 min | Cooling Time - 15 min
Yields - 60

This famous classic American cookie is a treat no matter what the age or occasion. Enjoy it with a glass of cold milk.

Ingredients:

1. 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2. 1 teaspoon baking soda
3. 1 teaspoon salt
4. 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
5. 3/4 cup granulated sugar
6. 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
7. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8. 2 large eggs
9. 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
10. 1 cup chopped nuts

Directions:

1. PREHEAT oven to 375° F.
2. COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

PAN COOKIE VARIATION: Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan. Prepare dough as above. Spread into prepared pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack. Makes 4 dozen bars.

SLICE AND BAKE COOKIE VARIATION: PREPARE dough as above. Divide in half; wrap in waxed paper. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm. Shape each half into 15-inch log; wrap in waxed paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.* Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices; place on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

* May be stored in refrigerator for up to 1 week or in freezer for up to 8 weeks.

FOR HIGH ALTITUDE BAKING (5,200 feet): Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups. Add 2 teaspoons water with flour and reduce both granulated sugar and brown sugar to 2/3 cup each. Bake drop cookies for 8 to 10 minutes and pan cookie for 17 to 19 minutes.

Cookies photograph courtesy of of Publications International, LTD.