Found this on YouTube–a fun cover band in LA named “Fred Harvey,” with the motto “civilizing the west–one gig at a time.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think they found on the internet the original cover of the book (below), which had the subhed “Civilizing the West–One Meal at a Time.” Check it out, music isn’t bad.
And if you didn’t know, there’s also a good indie band called The Harvey Girls that has been around since 2003.
As a holiday gift to readers and Fredfans, I’m dipping into my exclusive stash of archival Harvey recipes to show you how Fred’s chefs did their foodie celebrating. Here are just a few of the best Fred Harvey Thanksgiving-theme recipes, presented in their original form, as they appear in Harvey chefs’ cookbooks from 1930:
SWEET POTATOES FLORIDA
Peel cooked sweet potatoes, slice one-quarter inch thick and brown in hot lard. Alternate in buttered deep dish with slices of pineapple. Cover with maple syrup and bake in oven for a few minutes. Dust with powdered sugar before serving. (Can also substitute sliced banana for pineapple, or use both for Sweet Potatoes Sovereign; can also add walnuts or chestnuts.)
SWEET POTATO PIE
1 lb. cooked sweet potato, 3 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 pt milk, 2 ozs. melted butter, lemon juice and grated nutmeg. Mix sweet potato pulp with melted butter, beaten egg., sugar and milk. Flavor lightly with nutmeg and lemon juice. Line pie plates with pie dough, fill with prepared mixture, and bake in oven for about 40 min.
BROWNED SWEET POTATO CAKES
Rub peeled fresh cooked sweet potatoe through fine sieve. Season with salt and pepper, combine with egg yolk, form into small round cakes, and fry nice and brown in melted butter.
BABY TURKEY A L’ALBUFERA
Singe and clean a baby turkey, stuff with risotto, containing diced
truffles. Place in casserole, season with salt and pepper, cover with
water or chicken stock. Add a few sliced vegetables and a bouquet garni. Slowly poach until tender. Remove, dish up on platter and mask with Albufera sauce. Garnish with crustades filled with mushrooms, diced truffles, cock’s comb, and kidneys, combine with sauce.
ALBUFERA SAUCE
Prepare a supreme sauce using the broth from the turkey and reduce. Add meat extract and finish sauce with sweet butter.
Fred Harvey chefs
Congratulations to our favorite young Fredhead, Ruaidhrí “Roary” Crofton at United World College (Montezuma Castle) in Las Vegas, NM, who at the age of 13 is likely to be the youngest presenter ever at the annual New Mexico History Conference sponsored by the Historical Society of New Mexico, being held this year May 5-7 at the Ruidoso Convention Center in Ruidoso.
He’ll be speaking about Fred Harvey and the Montezuma–a subject on which I presented some new research last spring, and I’m looking forward to learning even more. There are, I think, still many tales to tell about the historic relationship between Fred Harvey and Las Vegas, NM (and the future of the other Harvey property in town, the Castaneda, is just one of them.)
Roary, by the way, now runs the UWC’s growing Fred Harvey memorabilia collection, and gives the wonderful tours of Montezuma Castle–which are a little easier to schedule now that he is doing them!
Again, mazel tov to Roary for, as Fred would say, “maintaining the standard”!
A very charming blog post on Foolish Questions describes writer Michael Waring’s road-trip inspired dinner, cooking from the appendix to Appetite for America (he made the goulash) and watching The Harvey Girls. Precisely the way the book, and Fred’s story, were meant to be devoured!
The great thing about history is that everybody can see it from their own vantage point. Here’s a very thought-provoking review of Appetite for America written by an alum of Williams College, who has a special interest in the two Williams grads who married Fred’s daughters, Minnie and May.
Minnie’s husband, John Huckel, went on to join the family business and ran all the retail. But as the author points out, May’s husband Herbert Hall settled in New York, often traveled to the Berkshires, and were probably the ones who brought “La Fonda Pudding” to the “the attention of chefs at Williams, where it remained an occasional menu item in the 1990s.”
And, in case you’re now hungry for the pudding, here’s the recipe, as it appears in the appendix to the book:
LA FONDA PUDDING
Beat three egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored; gradually add one cup sugar, beating constantly. Fold in one cup finely crushed graham crackers, one-half cup chopped nuts, one teaspoon baking powder, one-eighth teaspoon salt, and one-half teaspoon vanilla. Fold in three egg whites, stiffly beaten. Bake in a buttered eight-by-eight-by-two-inch pan in moderate oven (three-hundred fifty degrees) for forty-five minutes. Cool in pan for ten minutes. Remove from pan. Cut in squares and serve topped with whipped cream and extra chopped walnuts if desired.
Thanks to the good folks at the Radnor Memorial Public Library in suburban Philadelphia, we have a new podcast of my ever-changing talk about Fred Harvey and Appetite for America.
While it doesn’t quite have all the production values of the C-Span BookTV broadcast of one of my very first Fred lectures in Kansas City, in many ways I prefer this version. It’s a more intimate setting, it’s an Eastern audience so I had to do a better job explaining the Fred phenom to the uninitiated, and after giving several dozen lectures on this subject, I am hopefully a little better at it. But, you decide.
Thanks to Pam Sedor at Radnor Library for hosting and posting such a fun event.
Appetite for America from Radnor Historical Society on Vimeo.
Very nice review in the oldest paper in Texas, the Galveston Daily News.
“Fried has written a deliciously appealing history in ‘Appetite for America,’ one that is both fascinating and fun to read,” says critic Mark Lardas.
Here’s a shot of the old Galveston Santa Fe station where the Harvey restaurant there was located.
I’m thrilled to announce that Appetite for America has been chosen by the editors at Amazon.com as one of the top ten business books of the year, and one of the top ten business e-books!
They also just lowered the price of the book again, in time for the holiday season.
May Fred be with you.
A good piece on how to visit the Grand Canyon by train appears in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, written by Janet Groene, who Bart and I met on a recent press trip to the canyon. My favorite piece of advice she gives, of course, concerns reading material before or during the trip:
“Parents and older teens should check out “Appetite for America,” a book about the history of Fred Harvey and railroad hospitality.”
So, clearly, Fred is with her. Thanks Janet.
Unfortunately, Black Bart and I won’t be in Fred Harvey country again until Spring (check here for appearances in Arizona in March, New Mexico in April and Texas and May). But for those of you who can, just wanted to provide some seasonal links for our favorite Harvey heritage hotels and restaurants with their holiday specials.
John Sharpe just posted his scrumptious holiday menus for The Turquoise Room at La Posada, all of which sound heavenly. For reservations at the hotel, click here.
Here’s the yummy fall/winter menu at La Plazuela at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. For reservations at the hotel, click here.
For the Grand Canyon Railway, this is Polar Express time, when the trains are packed with families doing the holiday trip, Harvey Style. Click here for reservations on the always-full Polar Express trains. (see below)
As for the canyon itself, I’ve never been there in winter but I hear it’s amazing–and takes you back to late 1904, when Ford Harvey was staying there in old Bright Angel waiting for El Tovar to be finished. Here’s a terrific story that the NY Times ran last year on the canyon in winter. For Grand Canyon South Rim reservations, click here. Stay at El Tovar if you can but, if it’s full, stay anywhere on the rim–or in nearby Maswick Lodge.
If you’re in Santa Fe for the holiday and hanker for more Harvey, drive or take the light rail train to Belen to visit the Belen Harvey House Museum or head in the other direction to Las Vegas, NM, to visit the shell of the Castaneda and, if you contact them in advance, you might be able to get the tour of the Montezuma. (Tours are given by the country’s newest and most enthused Fredhead, Ruaidhrí “Rory” Crofton, a teenage National Park Service Volunteer
& Montezuma Castle Tour Guide. Email him at ruaidhri97 at hotmail.com)
And, if you’re really ambitious, add the Waynoka Oklahoma Harvey House Museum to your itinerary. It’s about seven hours from Las Vegas, NM, but worth the drive (before you leave, have breakfast in Las Vegas at Charlie’s.)
Happy Harvey Holidays!
Many of you have been curious about the writing of Black Bart—the Fredhead alias of my wife, author Diane Ayres. Just wanted to let you know that she has a wonderfully dark and funny new story in a collection being published in November, Philadelphia Noir, which also features stories by a number of our friends and colleagues in the Philly writing community, and is part of the highly-praised Noir series being done around the world.
Here’s a link to buy Philadelphia Noir. And if you haven’t read it, here’s a link to Diane’s amazing first published novel, Other Girls.
If you’re in the Philly area and want to come to one of the bookstore events at which Diane will appear, here’s the current schedule:
Sun., Nov. 7, 2:30pm Robin’s Bookstore & Moonstone Arts Center 110A South 13th St
Wed., Nov. 10, 6pm Penn Bookstore 3601 Walnut St.
Fri., Nov. 12, 7:00pm Barnes & Noble 102 Park Ave. WILLOW GROVE
Fri., Nov. 19, 7:00pm Farley’s Bookshop 44 South Main St. NEW HOPE
Fri., Dec. 10, 6:00pm Doylestown Bookshop 16 S. Main St. DOYLESTOWN
And click here for more information.
Just wanted to spread the news that I’ve been invited by the James Beard House in New York to give a Beard on Books talk about Fred Harvey and Appetite for America on February 9, 2011 from noon to 1:00 pm.
The James Beard House is at 167 W. 12th Street. For more information and reservations, contact the James Beard Foundation at its website.
Photo by Ken Steinhoff, ©Ken Steinhoff and courtesy of the James Beard Foundation.
One thing I forgot to mention about Waynoka’s Harvey House museum. They recreated a table setting from their Harvey restaurant in such amazing detail that you can actually have your picture taken sitting on an authentic Harvey chair, at a table with authentic place settings (someone gave them a hundred settings of one of the Harvey china patterns), and behind you is a full-wall photo reproduction of one of the original walls of their Harvey house, so you can see all the stenciling.
It’s quite an ingenious little bit of museumery, and allows one to be photographed sitting down to a Harvey table. I expect this to become a photo that every Fredhead will want taken for their collection.
Here’s my Harvey tourist photo, with historical society director Sandie Olson. If my hair looks a little windblown, it’s because I had just come back from my dune-buggy ride through Little Sahara State Park. (Hope I didn’t get any sand on the table–don’t want the ghost of Fred to come back and yank the tablecloth.)
For most of the years I worked on my Fred Harvey biography, I wondered when I would get the chance to visit Waynoka, OK. I felt like I had been there, since I had so many emails with the indefatigable Sandie Olson–who runs the Waynoka Historical Society there and has almost single-handedly put this hamlet on the Harvey/Santa Fe map.
From our correspondence, I realized that her organization has amassed the single best collection of Harvey Girl pictures in the country (including the one we used on the back cover, many inside the book, and some I add for my lecture). But it wasn’t until I actually came and visited Waynoka that I realized what an amazing museum they had created on the second floor of the perfectly preserved Santa Fe station there.
It is, I think, the best Fred Harvey museum in the country.
They may not have quite as much stuff as the delightfully crammed Fred history room at Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Lodge. But the displays are much more ambitious, professional and thoughtful–the humanities-friendly state of Oklahoma gave them a nice grant to do this all right–than any others I’ve seen so far. So I’m ready to pronounce that anyone interested in Fred Harvey tourism now needs to include Waynoka on their itinerary–even though it’s hours away from the next Harvey heritage site in any direction, and its website is still a little hard to decipher.
I had a wonderful time in Waynoka. I spoke at the museum to a warm and receptive crowd, and also had some great food. I can still taste the fresh cinnamon roll I had at 6:30 am at Miller’s Cafe–the town’s quintessential breakfast spot–and also had good Mexican food at El Charro (which is in the old Harvey restaurant space in the station) and pizza at Little Sahara Pizza & Wings.
But the non-Fred highlight of the trip did leave a sandy taste in my mouth–literally. Waynoka is the home of Little Sahara State Park, whose dunes are one of the nation’s sand sports meccas. And I got a dune buggy ride from the family that runs the premiere dune buggy and ATV shop in town, the Stewarts.
While I was visiting the area, Sandie also helped arrange for me to give a talk in nearby Alva at Northwestern Oklahoma State University library, where Dr. Kay Decker was my host, and I met a lot of friendly, engaged faculty members. The talk was great fun and, the next morning, they sent me to the area’s best breakfast place, which is located in the local bowling alley. There I bumped into a gentleman who had been at my talk in Waynoka. He bought me breakfast, he and his pals told me great stories of the area, and then they gave me much better directions than my GPS did for getting back to Oklahoma City. (“Just drive straight down this road, 70 miles–there’s only two stop signs.”)
All in all it was a great visit to Oklahoma (which, it turns out, is nothing like the place I heard about in my high school production of the musical–didn’t see one surrey, fringed or otherwise) and I can’t wait to go back with Black Bart. Thanks again Sandie (pictured below).
