Brooks are running out of song. Birds turn more sober and flock as winter friends to pick the seeds of withered weeds. Trees grow bare except the oaks; appetites grow heartier except with anemic pale-livered souls.
Warmth ebbs away. The house draws close around the family at the dinner hour. We think of country kitchen foods, of fresh spareribs baked to a crisp, rich brown, stuffed with breadcrumb dressing, blessed with sage. Bring on the pots of long-baked beans, molasses sweetened, salt pork richened, mustard zested.
What's in the soup tureen? Vegetable soup, the hearty whole meal kind. Steaming hot. Dark rye bread with this, and pale sweet butter curls. Pass the crisp and radiant radish, the slender green-tipped scallion.
The nut harvest rolls in. A record crop of more than 23,100 tons of California almonds is expected. The walnut crop, though not so large as last year is 14 per cent larger than average. Filbert harvest runs 17 per cent below last year's crop but 59 per cent above the usual yield. Southern pecans are breaking all records, 74,000 tons is the estimate. Nut imports are coming to market again; Brazil nuts from South America; cashews from India, possibly almonds and filberts from Spain and Italy; maybe a few filberts from Turkey. Chestnuts will be here again out of Portugal.
Holiday feasting ahead. Little jars of good things are being put by for the great day occasions. Hungry for ham? Chunks from ham hocks packed for the armed forces are now available at the Dover Delicatessen, 683 Lexington Avenue, the one-pound twelve-ounce tin selling for ＄1.44 and 18 red points. This meat is best ground for use in a loaf. Mixed with pickle or relish, touched gently with mustard, a sandwich filling superb.
Snake hips are returning for hors d'oeuvre service. This time the canner is Ross Allen who bought the rattlesnake business of the late George K. End, a victim of snake bite. Mr. Allen, an expert on snakes and Florida wildlife, has built a modern canning plant to turn out 250 five-ounce cans of rattlesnake meat daily. Sweet and delicate the meat of the snake.
Straight from the gates of paradise wing the little pink angels into a dozen cities south, north, and west as far as St. Louis. “Angel Shrimps,” that's what they are, taken from a salt water inland river, thirty miles south of Charleston. Just shrimp when netted—little, sweet, tender—but just shrimp! It's Mrs. Eloise Lynch Palmer, Charleston born and bred, who gives the wee shrimp their wings by christening them angels. Shrimp by the bushel enter her Rockland plantation kitchen to be cooked, peeled, and packed in a special sauce of vinegar with oil and a big dash of wizardry. Then off to the delicacy stores around Richmond, Virginia, off by mail to a wealthy clientele of the North, who discovered her kitchen when South for the hunting.
Garden-minded Northerners who visit Charleston in March to look at the gardens hear rumors of shrimp angels and travel to the Rockland plantation to dine on the shrimp which have undergone the famous Palmer treatment.
A banker back from a shooting season gave a jar of these shrimp to Dick O'Brien, head of the men's bar at the Ritz. Dick, in turn, showed them to Peter Greig, food and wine procurer for the gourmets of the town. Mr. Greig on a food pilgrimage South, stopped to call at the Palmer's and now shrimp cherubs go traveling to a dozen cities. These shrimp come in two sizes, the large 70 to 90 to the pint measure, tinies called “chicken” run 175 to 200 to the jar. B. Altman's, Fifth Avenue at 34th, have sixteen-ounce jars of the small angels ＄1.38; Dussourd and Filser, 960 Madison Avenue, also have both sizes.
Other stores handling the delicacy are Wagshal's, Washington, D. C.; Henri's, New Haven, Connecticut; Guenther and Handel, Springfield, Massachusetts; R. L. Christian Company, Richmond Virginia; William B. Chase Company, Providence, Rhode Island; H. & S. Pogue Company, Cincinnati, Ohio; Protective Union, Worcester, Massachusetts; A. Moll Grocer Company, St. Louis, Missouri; William Hengerer Company, Buffalo, New York; Louis Wolf, Rochester, New York.
Numerous the ways to put angels to service. We like them just as they are, right from the jar, dipped into a mayonnaise, its flavor sharpened with Best Foods horseradish-mustard or with a dab of Durkee's masterful dressing. Let the guests help themselves. Have toothpicks for lifters. Dip the shrimp into dressing, then to the mouth—two at a pick-load, one isn't a bite.
Shrimp for breakfast in the Palmer kitchen gets batter-dipped, then to fry in bacon fat with hominy grits, the real kind, which means grits cooked for one hour in the Charleston manner. Mrs. Palmer likes shrimp for a luncheon, sprinkled with lemon juice, rolled in lean bacon, baked in a hot oven—Off to the table planked on hot buttered toast.
There is a lobster-meat pack coming from Canada outstanding in quality. It is sweet tasting, tender, not in the least coarse or shreded, styled for use in salads or sandwiches or a creamed dish. Treat yourself—reheat the lobster in butter and serve accompanied with finely cut onion, buttered peas, oven-heated potato chips, and crusty French bread.
The six-ounce tin holds half a small lobster, that is, the meat of one claw packed in whole pieces, a long strip of the back and the smaller loose bits. It is just as if you yourself had pulled it free from the shell—the price 73 cents at Gimbel Brothers grocery. The meat of a whole lobster is stuffed into the twelve-ounce tin, priced ＄1.45.
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