Smithsonian Libraries

A Winter Resort from the Past

Each month this winter, we have featured a winter vacation related item.  Previous posts featured brochures about The Court Inn and Hampton Terrace.  Continuing with this theme, we are featuring a third brochure about a winter resort, a Laurel House of Lakewood Brochure.

 

Laurel House of Lakewood, Lakewood, NJ.  Brochure, ca. 1900, Laurel House of Lakewood.

 

Laurel House was located in Lakewood, New Jersey and was open from October until June making it a fall, winter, and spring resort.  Along with Laurel-in-the-Pines at Lakewood and the Waumbek and Cottages at Jefferson in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Laurel House at Lakewood was part of the Lakewood and Jefferson Resort System.

Situated in an area with a mild winter climate, the resort offered its guests outdoor recreational activities throughout the winter.  This included golfing, cycling, boating, and cross-country hunts.  Lakewood had several private clubs for outdoor sports and the clubs allowed resort guests to use the facilities during their stay.

Nearby were two lakes, Lake Carasaljo and Lake Manetta, available for boating and depending on the weather, skating and ice-boating.  A walk around Lake Carasaljo was described in the brochure as "one of the most charming walks in the vicinity."  There were gravel walkways with bridges as well as places to stop and rest along the way.

Located in an area with many pine trees, there were roads for driving, riding, or cycling through the pine forest as well as walks for those who preferred to enjoy the scenery on foot.

This Laurel House of Lakewood Brochure is located in the Trade Literature Collection at the National Museum of American History Library.  Take a look at the Galaxy of Images to see more pages from this brochure.

-Alexia MacClain

Smithsonian Libraries Seeking 2013 Penick Fellow

The Margaret Henry Dabney Penick Resident Scholar Program supports scholarly research into the legacy of Patrick Henry and his political circle, the early political history of Virginia, the history of the American Revolution, founding era ideas and policy-making, as well as science, technology, and culture in colonial America and the Early National Period.

The stipend for this long-term fellowship is $45,000 for nine consecutive months. Senior scholars are particularly encouraged to apply, however, applicants in their post-doctoral phase or, with outstanding achievements in their pre-doctoral phase may be also considered for the fellowship. Fellows are expected to give at least one public lecture during the tenure of the fellowship as well as to show progress toward a publishable manuscript by the end of the fellowship period. Fellows are also asked to cooperate with the Library administration in planning scholarly programs. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries offers its fellows the rich holdings of its research collections, especially at the National Museum American History Library, the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, the Smithsonian American Art / Portrait Gallery Library, and the American Civilization Collection at the National Museum of the American Indian. The Libraries also provides guidance and contact information to relevant historical collections in the Washington DC area, especially regarding the holdings of Patrick Henry materials and resources of the American Revolutionary and colonial eras.

For further information about the Resident Scholar Program, including application forms and procedures, please visit the SI Libraries’ website: www.sil.si.edu/Galaxy.cfm?id=3.3. Additional inquiries may be addressed to SILResidentScholars@si.edu or Smithsonian Institution Libraries / Resident Scholar Programs / P.O. Box 37012 / NMAH 1041 MRC 672 / Washington, DC 20013 7012. Resident Scholars are required to be in residence during the award period, which must be taken during the 2013 calendar year. All application materials must be submitted by March 15, 2012.

 

New and Notables: January 2012

Wondering what's new in the SIL stacks this month? Here's a sampling! Above the book listings, you'll see a slideshow with links to the WorldCat records for each book. If you are not a user of our physical collection, WorldCat will help you find a copy of the book in a library near you.

Here are some of the newest additions to the National Air and Space Museum Library collection:

	Astronomy at the Frontiers of Scienceby Jean-Pierre Lasota, editor.   Springer, New York/Dordrecht, 2011.    QB47. A88 2011
	Cataclysm: General Hap Arnold and the Defeat of Japan by Herman S. Wolk.  University of North Texas Press,Denton, Texas,  2010.  UG626.2 A76 W65 2010
	DC-3, A Legend in Her Time.  A 75th Anniversary Photographic Tribute by Bruce McAllister.  Roundup Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2010.  TL686. D65 M33 2010
	Skies to Conquer: A Year Inside the Air Force Academy by Diana Jean Schemo.   John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2010.  UG638.5 P1 S34 2010
	Wings of Ice: The Mystery of the Polar Air Race by Jeff Maynard.  Vintage Books, New South Wales, North Sydney, Australia.  G608. M39 2010

—Leah Smith

 

New books in the National Museum of American History Library:

	Benching Jim Crow : the rise and fall of the color line in southern college sports, 1890-1980 / / Charles H. Martin. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2010. GV706.32 .M37 2010
	Founding rivals : Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights and the election that saved a nation / / by Chris DeRose.Washington, D.C. : Regnery Pub., 2011. E302.1 .D47 2011
	Are we not new wave? : modern pop at the turn of the 1980s by Theo Cateforis.Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2011. ML3534 .C37 2011
	Japanese American resettlement through the lens : Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA's Photographic Section, 1943-1945 by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi ; with Kenichiro Shimada ; photographs by Hikaru Carl Iwasaki ; foreword by Norman Y. Mineta. Boulder, Colo. : University Press of Colorado, c2009. D769.8.A6 H578 2009
	Lincoln on war edited and with an introduction by Harold Holzer. Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, c2011. E457.92 2011

— Trina Brown

Cooking from the Collections: National Soup Month

Did you know that January is National Soup Month? We didn't either but it gave us a great topic for this month's Cooking from the Collections feature! We whipped up two creamy, comforting vegetable soups that are sure to warm you up. We're happy to say that although they are the simplest recipes we've tried, they were also the most lauded by our SIL tasters (well, those without lactose issues, that is). Turns out you can't go wrong with butter and milk, flavored with a smidgen of vegetables. A cooking textbook from 1915 demonstrates that Paula Deen wasn't the first to hit upon that successful formula!

 

 

Green Pea Soup

This recipe comes from the fascinating A text-book of cooking by Carlotta C. Greer, published in 1915. As the title indicates, it was designed as a textbook to accompany cooking classes and hidden in the "Body-Building Vegetables" chapter was this gem. Despite the healthy-sounding name, this soup was so very rich and creamy that one taster commented "That soup should be a sauce". In fact, the basis of the dish is a simple white sauce, flavored with a bit of mushed peas. I take partial blame for the meager amount of vegetables, though. The recipes instructed me to cook the peas until "very soft". It occurred to me later that my modern idea of peas that are soft are probably still undercooked by 1915 standards. In addition, I found that mashing something through a strainer takes some serious upper body work! My weak biceps, combined with peas that may have been a bit too hard, produced little pea puree. Next time I will cook the peas to my desired level of doneness and then blend them with the cooking water using an immersion blender. You can read more of Greer's recipes via the digitized copy on Google Books here!

 

Ingredients:

• 1 pint or can peas
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 2 cups water (or liquid from canned peas)
• Pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk

Directions:

1. Add peas, water and sugar to a saucepan and cook until peas are soft.
2. Drain the peas and press through a strainer (as I mentioned this didn't work out so well for  me, perhaps a food mill would be better?). Set aside.
3. Heat butter in saucepan until bubbling and then add flour, salt and pepper. Stir constantly until flour is golden brown. Slowly wisk in the milk and simmer until sauce has thickened. 
4. Stir in pea puree and serve.

-Erin Rushing

 

 

Cream of Tomato Soup

Our tasters also enjoyed this cream-based vegetable soup, from Cooking with Sour Cream and Buttermilk, published by the Culinary Arts Institute in 1956.  The sour cream added a bit of tang but the real surprise ingredient here is Accent, a brand of seasoning containing monosodium glutamate (MSG). We don't necessarily endorse the use of MSG, but our fore-warned tasters reported not ill side effects from their limited exposure. Is it the Cream of tomato Soup of my childhood? No, that soup always will come from a can.

 

 

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup of No. 2 tomato juice (unsure of what "No.2" indicated, we used regular Campbell's)
• 1 stalk of celery with leaves, cut crosswise into quarters
• ½ small onion, sliced
• 2 springs of parsley
• ½ bay leaf
• 6 whole cloves
• 1 ½ teaspoons of sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• A few grains of white pepper ( I used  black pepper, did not see purchasing white pepper  for the use of a few grains)
• 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, blend in 2 tablespoons of flour
• ¼ teaspoon of salt
• ¼ teaspoon of monosodium glutamate or Accent      
• Few grains of pepper
• ¾ cup of milk
• ¾ cup thick sour cream

Directions:

1. Combine in a saucepan tomato juice, vegetables, spices, sugar, salt and pepper. Bring to boiling, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 min.
2. Meanwhile, prepare in a large saucepan the Sour Cream White Sauce.  Heat butter, salt, pepper and Accent over low heat until mixture bubbles. Gradually stir in milk.  Cook rapidly, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens. Remove from heat. Stirring vigorously, add in very small amounts thick sour cream.  Cook 2 or 3 min longer, stirring constantly until sauce is just heated.
3. Strain tomato juice mixture. Add it very slowly to the hot white sauce, stirring constantly and vigorously with a wooden spoon: DO NOT BOIL.
4. Serve immediately.

-Ninette Dean