I spent some time tonight writing out 4 menu options for an upcoming dinner this Friday. And it got me wondering…. If you had these 4 choices what would you choose? And a bit of mixing and matching is allowed. I hope that I will be able to get out to the woods early that day and dig up a few ramps, wild leeks. I hope to incorporate that fresh, foraged spring food into the menu. And what a great excuse for a walk in the woods! If this sounds so good you just have to have some…. You can always schedule a dinner here at Hillside. I just need a little advance notice to get your group reserved for a date and the price is $50 per person plus tax and gratuity.

What a typical dinner looks like at Hillside homestead

Menu Option 1
• Pork chops, raised right here at hillside, oven roasted with sage and served….
• On a bed of my own homemade sauerkraut and seasoned with caraway seed
• Mashed potatoes, whipped up light and served with homemade butter
• A fresh pot of apple sauce made with apples from the neighborhood

Menu Option 2
• Slow roasted venison tenderloin, from the neighborhood and not ‘gamey’ served with currant jelly sauce
• Potatoes in jackets, much like modern twice baked potatoes
• Old style baked beans, slow cooked with all sorts of seasonsings and bit of salt pork
• Baked parsnips, sweet and very flavorful

Menu option 3
• Black bean soup with home cured ham as a first course
• Local Whitefish very lightly breaded and served with butter sauce
• Fried potatoes and ramps. (wild leeks if they are big enough to dig up in the woods)
• Deviled Eggs, the chickens are producing some wonderful eggs this time of year

Menu Option 4
• White bean soup with ham as a first course
• Miss Parloa’s creamy chicken. A very delicately stewed chicken and flavorful cream sauce made with my own homemade chicken stock…
• Served on mashed potatoes beaten to a nicety
• Baked Rhode Island Greening apples, a small variety that has kept well all winter

Bread – choose 1
• Yeast risen dinner rolls with homemade butter, apricot jam and apple butter
• Corn bread, with homemade butter, local honey and apple butter

Dinner rolls enough for a big dinner! and pie to boot!

Maggie’s perfect cornbread. She made this the day the Martha Steward Mag People were at my house.

Dinner will also include rummage pickle as a relish.

Dessert – Choose 1
• Cream pie- a current favorite with my customers, good local cream, my hen’s eggs, sugar, nutmeg…
• Apple butter filled bread pudding, classic bread pudding spread with a not too thick layer of my homemade apple butter
• Pound cake with Lemon sauce
• Custard pie
• Spice cake with Lemon sauce. A recipe I worked on this winter a local historic recipe made with cardamom, very nice.
• Pumpkin pie – the last one I can make this season

Collected 8 eggs today! I’ve been keeping count of eggs since February 1 of this year. February yielded 47 eggs total and March had increased all the way to 160 eggs. As the days grow longer and the grip of winter lightens hens will begin to lay more eggs. And as the days begin to shorten in the fall production will drop. This is avoided in modern poultry settings by keeping lights on the bird to mimic the long days of summer. But I let these hens go the old way. This is based on 15 or 14 hens. Sadly I lost a hen about a week ago to a hawk.

Our resident rooster, Clark and a few of his hens.

The fruits of their labor, eggs for eating and baking!

Chickens doing their best to make it through the snow at Hillside Homestead

I found a great diary entry about this sort of thing in Sarah Palmer’s Diary from April 13, 1891. Mrs. Sarah Palmer was a resident and farm wife in Suttons Bay Township, where I also live, and she kept a diary for most of her adult life from about 1873 to 1915. It is a treasure trove of information!

Melville & Perry drove over to town after feeding this morning & Nellie Lyle & Rosa all went to School & they rode over too.  I put on a kettle of potatoes for the pigs  I have to attend to the lamb when Nellie is at School.  Nellie sent a letter to Ethel Justus.  Mother gave Cora bleached cotton for a chemise for her birthday present. Melville & Perry went over to the P of I meeting tonight, & then Perry & Cora will go to the Calico Ball. They made fence to day.  We got 15 eggs to day, the most we have got any day.

I collected 15 eggs on March 18! I love it when I can find a connection to Sarah. I’ve been serving lots of fried eggs, deviled eggs and making cakes rich in eggs. I plan to preserve some of my eggs for the winter months too. Production goes way down in December and January.  Back in my Greenfield Village days we experimented with coating eggs and storing them in oats. The wax seals up the slightly porous eggs and helps keep air out. The oats are just a storage medium. I plan to do the same thing but with some lard as instructed in “The New Buckeye Cook Book” published in 1904. I don’t have any good beeswax at hand, but I do have plenty of lard.

Susan Odom, Proprietress, feeds the chickens at Hillside Homestead, summer 2011

Details on that project to come! So Happy Easter and enjoy the eggs.