Aug 26, 2017 — GREENWOOD, BC (BG)

In early Greenwood there was a fascinating range of foodstuffs available to local residents. At one extreme were the very fancy meals served in hotel dining rooms and eateries. At the other end of the spectrum were the dinners being cooked in a single pot over a miner's campfire. And everything in-between.

In our historic papers there are numerous mentions of the opulent menus being offered in Greenwood hotels and at various social functions. As early as 1898, Greenwood was dining on cuisine like the following, served at the Foresters' Banquet_[1], where diners were entertained by orchestra as waiters at the Imperial Hotel offered them this selection:

In September of 1899, a Saturday night Board of Trade banquet_[2] sat down to this spread:

And here's what was offered for "Sunday Dinner" at the Windsor Hotel in February, 1899:_[3]

This 'Sunday Dinner' menu sounds far more lavish than anything we can imagine 1800s Greenwood sitting down to on a regular basis. In contrast, we find this article in the Boundary Creek Times,_[4] heralding the approach of a brand new holiday — Mothers' Day. In its honour, the writer conjures memories of a beloved childhood homestead, and Mother, whose kitchen fare resembles something a little more 'down home' than Greenwood's elegant restaurant fare:

"…best of all, was the mother's face smiling from the kitchen doorway as the tired small persons came home from school or play. What a fine old kitchen it was, with its wide flags and savory smells! There were all manner of good things, spiced and preserved, and stored away, and from the old stove came the appetizing whiff which told of baked apples or hot biscuits for tea."

We find a number of interesting recipes in the old newspapers. What mother from times past would not have been inspired to try feeding this recipe_[5] to her children on a cold Canadian winter morning:

Quaker Oats Griddle Cakes
Try them today!

"The family that hasn't eaten Quaker Oats griddle cakes has a delightful surprise coming to it. Besides the delicious flavor, there is the pleasure of knowing you can eat all you want, and the more you eat the better for you. The best of all foods for anyone wanting more strength and vigor.

Hundreds of thousands of packages of Quaker Oats are consumed in Germany annually and almost all of it is eaten in the form of Quaker Oats griddle cakes. In the cereal restaurant of the Quaker Oats Company, located in one of the large cities, these griddle cakes are very popular.

Here's the best recipe for making them:

2 cups Quaker Oats uncooked; 1½ cups flour; 1 teaspoonful salt; 1 teaspoonful soda — dissolve in 2 tablespoonfuls hot water; 1 teaspoonful baking powder (mix in flour); 2½ cups sour milk or buttermilk; 2 eggs beaten lightly; 1 tablespoonful sugar; 1 or 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter (according to richness of milk).

Process: Soak Quaker Oats overnight in milk. In the morning mix and sift flour, soda, sugar and salt — add this to Quaker Oats mixture and quantity of melted butter; add eggs beaten lightly — heat thoroughly and cook as griddle cakes — they make your mouth water for more."

One of the regular themes found among early Greenwood discussions of food and cooking are references to the importance of dry goods for baking. In particular, the quality of flour and baking powder was clearly a matter of great importance.

There were a few prominent flour mills offering top brand goods. One of them was the Okanagan Flour Mill, who began advertising their flagship product in Greenwood around 1898.

Grains have always been among the most important of agricultural products, and flour is fundamental to our diet. A recent journal feature, "Seed Husbandry in Greenwood", talked about the Canadian government's efforts to distribute the finest varieties of wheat seed stock to farmers.

The flour produced by the Okanagan Flour Mill received the highest praise in the following editorial, from a December 1898 edition of the Boundary Creek Times,_[6] which emphasized the importance of good quality flour. Clearly, disturbances of the stomach were associated with flour quality even at the turn of the century.

PURE FLOUR

"Sermons need not be preached when it comes to warning the public against inferior grades of flour. The thoughtful and truly conscientious caterer who selects food products for the family on the one inviolable principle that purity alone can possibly win her favor, will indignantly reject the spurious brands which the hygienic press collectively condemns and which are the most deadly agents of disease.

The community has no more insidious foe than impure or low grade flour. For on account of the very truth that we cannot sit down at the family board without ingesting flour in a greater or lesser quantity, the corresponding influence upon our health cannot be overestimated. It will be either an influence for evil or an influence for good. Nothing which enters the system, in no matter how small a quantity, but has its power of affecting the general result; but when the principal constituents of our daily food lack the quality they should possess, the magnitude of the consequence goes without saying. We infallibly suffer.

To obviate all such disastrous consequences and the sufferings they thus entail, the American Journal of Health watches without intermission the successive introductions of the market brands of flour. And it also urges upon the consumer the use of those whose established excellence is sufficient safeguard against the unverified claims of other brands.

There is also another consideration which obtains its due weight with us: the reliability of the manufacturers. We have found each condition fulfilled to our satisfaction in "O.K." flour, offered by the Okanagan Flour Mills Co., of Armstrong, B.C., Canada. This is a truly pure product, marketed by a firm which enjoys the most enviable reputation for the production of only first-class goods. The resources of our analysis were brought into requisition for the thorough testing of this flour, and an exhibition was thereby made which conclusively established the great nutritive worth which is claimed for it because of its richness in gluten; its suitability for persons of weak digestive organs, owing to its possessing no excess of starch, its consistent uniformity of quality and its eminent virtues as a bread maker. It would be impossible, we do not hesitate to say, that the Okanagan Flour Mill Company's "O.K." flour could not disappoint when used for baking purposes, for it does not sour; it is uncommonly light in bread, and also preserves a beautifully white color.

That day will be hailed with satisfaction and relief by the physician and hygienist when the prevalence of stomach troubles arising from fermentation caused by bad flour, and cases of dyspepsia arising from the same source, will be reduced. The coming of that time will be perceptibly hastened by the exclusive use of pure flour, for which the hygienic press can give an endorsement equal to that here bestowed upon "O.K." of the Okanagan Flour Mills company."

Another product was Royal Standard Flour,_[7] whose manufacturers also preached about the importance of quality:

"Royal Standard Flour is pre-eminently a product of quality. You may buy a cheaper flour, but flour is the staff of life and the one product which you need always — a food which should, above all others, receive the utmost care in its manufacture."

Baking Powder Wars

The market for baking powder products was fiercely competitive, and Greenwood's early papers carried many ads for these products. The earliest contender was Dr. Price, who from 1895_[8] was enticing British Columbians to rely on his baking powder. He offered as a premium a free cookbook, Table and Kitchen. This sixty-one page recipe book includes directions for storing and using baking powder, with chapters on "Bread, Biscuits and Rolls", "Meats and Poultry", "Cake" and "Sustenance for the Sick".

Also included were articles from chemists and scientists such as "Alum Baking Powders Declared Injurious". This was a reference to the highly contentious battle going on between baking powder manufacturers at that time. Dr. Price, who began his baking powder empire in Chicago in the 1880s, was peddling a baking powder product that incorporated baking soda, cornstarch and cream of tartar.

Price thwarted many of his potential competitors by locking them into non-compete agreements. But one slipped through the net, and created a new product that replaced cream of tartar with a new ingredient: sodium aluminum sulfate. This baking powder will be recognized by most bakers to this very day: it was called Calumet.

Calumet contained an added ingredient — powdered egg whites, which frothed and foamed when liquid was added. This excited the housewives who saw the product demonstrated, and they bought it — much to Dr. Price's chagrin. He in turn began to demonize the alum component of Calumet, and the war went on for many years. Even in Greenwood, manufacturers were arranging for product demonstrations in the stores. As advertised in an April 1906 Boundary Creek Times:

"Miss Emma B. Nicol will demonstrate Crescent Mapleine and Baking Powder
Thursday, Friday and Saturday, August 23, 24 and 25 at Anderson Bros.
Everybody invited."

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach…"

Naturally, food in historic Greenwood must be considered through the eyes and appetite of the typical mining man. Hungriest of them all, these men were no doubt happy to hit downtown Greenwood and enjoy fine dining in a grand hotel. But from day to day, it was beans and bread they were most concerned with. That, and whatever feathered or furred thing could be delivered to their dinner plate.

In a February 1905 issue of the Times_[9] we find this poetic depiction of the Greenwood prospector:

"Here he comes, with his overalls or corduroys well marked with grouge or grease, usually both. His whiskers are ragged and he has a hungry physiognomy… Blessed be the prospector, and may he, when his days are numbered, depart to a realm where every rift in the clouds discloses to his fascinated eye a pay streak of gold, and may he at least depart to a place where there are plenty of canned Boston baked beans, and a sufficiency of baking powder, sow bosom [bacon] and flour…"

Another article in the Times_[10] admonished these seekers of fortune to remember their stomachs:

"We would advise the prospector, who would experiment with such humbug instruments for locating minerals, such as gold, silver, copper and hidden treasures, to trust rather to his luck, a pick and shovel and a frying pan."

Of course, leaving the cooking up to the men can have its challenges. One column in the Times_[11] offered a report about a man who "tried to make good pancakes with "Rough on Rats" as a substitute for baking powder. The result was a dead failure."

We find an excellent tale of cooking woes in a September 1907 issue of the Times._[12] This humorous story from the mining camps at Phoenix gives us another peek into the world of prospector cuisine:

VERY, VERY SAD, WHO GOT THE CHICKENS?

"The story comes from Phoenix, and presumably a true one, that one of those incidents which "touch" the hearts of men of such tender sensibilities as those held by Messrs. Birnie and Smith was recorded on the big hill with the big mines, sometime during the quiet hours that elapsed between bedtime last Saturday and breakfast time last Sunday. It would seem that two gentlemen up there with taste and appetite commensurate with the City's altitude conceived the idea that they would give a number of their friends a Sunday morning breakfast, that would make a meal at Delmonica's look like a bite from a ten cent lunch counter.

They had learned that nothing so gratified an epicurean taste as beans and chicken baked slowly and thoroughly in a bean pit, and so procuring the finest of small white beans and the choicest of yellow-legged chickens they filled the pit and covered with glowing coals, there to remain until the roll of friend's was called for Sunday morning breakfast.

A keg of beer as an accompaniment and the finest water melon available were placed on ice over night to be ready for the breakfast of which doubtless they talked till late and dreamed even until morning. But when the guests were duly assembled and everybody was elated with the prospect of chicken and beans with beer on the side and iced melon as a starter, the white-clad waiters arrived with the distressing news that melon and beer had vanished over night and that where chicken and beans had reposed another "cave-in" had occurred and that absolutely nothing was in sight for the guests whose appetites had whetted by long waiting for the toothsome things.

The guests departed in search of plainer and more plentiful foods, and the hosts were sad-eyed and silent save for a few words that could not be said in church. And now the wonder is if the man who raised the chickens knows anything about the affair. If so it would have been much better if he had left the trifling matter pass without this means of wreaking his revenge, No more chickens will be cooked in miniature "glory holes" in Phoenix for a time, unless under the eye of Westminister prison guards."

Perhaps the chicken thieves should have simply stuck to the beer, which is nearly all the food a man needs, according to this 1907 Times advertisement:_[13]

"Dr. Liebig, the famous German Chemist, says that beer is "liquid bread." By this he means that beer is a food — full of life-giving, health-sustaining qualities.

The value of beer as a food is becoming well known, and it is now used by many who have hitherto looked upon it as a beverage only.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is the most nourishing of all beers — because it contains every particle of the healthful, wholesome nutriment of the malt and all the tonic properties of the hops from which it is made.

The Pabst Eight-Day Malting Process follows nature by slowly transforming the substance of the barley into pure, nutritious food. The quality of the materials used and the Pabst method of brewing make Pabst Blue Ribbon not only a pure beer, but a healthful, tissue-building, muscle-building, life-giving, "liquid bread." Drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, and you put health and strength into your system.

But for the prudent Greenwood man who knows that beer alone does not a balanced diet make, we close with a 'Bachelor's recipe' from the Times, August 1909:_[14]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Boundary Creek Times — Jan 08, 1898, p. 11
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0170353

[2] Boundary Creek Times — Sep 02, 1899, p. 7
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0170718

[3] Boundary Creek Times — Feb 11, 1899, p.4
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0170257

[4] Boundary Creek Times — May 13, 1910 p. 1
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0171202

[5] Boundary Creek Times — Jul 16, 1909, p. 4
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0172163#p3z-2r0f:

[6] Boundary Creek Times — Dec 03, 1898 p. 14
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0170327

[7] Boundary Creek Times — Jul 23, 1909, p. 2
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0171308#p1z-4r0f:

[8] Boundary Creek Times — Sep 18, 1897, p. 9
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0170683

[9] Boundary Creek Times — Feb 24, 1905, p. 3
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0171885

[10] Boundary Creek Times — Apr 15, 1910
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0172306

[11] Boundary Creek Times — May 31, 1907
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0172706

[12] Boundary Creek Times — Sep 06, 1907, p. 1
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0172376

[13] Boundary Creek Times — Jun 14 1907, p. 3
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0171791

[14] Boundary Creek Times — Aug 06, 1909, p. 4
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers/xboundarycr/items/1.0171503

RELATED READING:

Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825-1949 by Elizabeth Driver