After the earthquake the Elsworths did business locally like other Long Island oyster growers and prospered without benefit of novel ideas until young J. William had his mail-order brain wave. His idea is that oysters needn't be a luxury food, and that by direct buying everyone can afford the finest of the crop and eat of them often.
The price of a box is ＄3.50 plus the express charges. This provides forty-eight oysters in shell and one quart opened, or have two quarts opened if you prefer, or a third choice is ninety-six in the shell. An oyster-opening knife is included for ＄1 extra. The oysters are ice-packed in a heavy wooden box. If the shipment travels more than 200 miles the express company re-ices en-route. Since the mail order box was first offered “Fireside” oysters have gone into every state in the Union. One shipment was sent all the way to Australia and arrived in perfect condition. Address orders to J. & J. W. Elsworth Company, Greenport, Long Island, New York.
It's a ham—the king of hams! It comes from a smoke-house in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, it comes traveling by mail and is a ham as different from the average commercial ham as a chestnut to a buckeye.
These are hams from especially selected young hogs, corn-fed, and you know it by the meat's fine texture. These are hams dry-cured, then, just before the smoking, sprayed with imported Madeira. Then they go into the hot smoke of slow burning hickory, mingled with herbs. It's the herbs and the wine that give that upward push to the flavor. The smoking is done under temperature control which insures the meat cooked exactly right, ready for eating, every ham done alike. An air-conditioning system distributes the smoke to all points of the room in equal amounts. No ham can be under- or over-smoked. Finished, these hams are as alike in perfection as peas in a pod.
These compactly meat haunches, 12 to 15 pounds apiece, are brown as rubbed walnut and just as gleaming. These are hams ready to slice and eat cold or reheat and dress in a brown sugar coat, or bake with molasses, or glaze with tart jelly. How easily the knife slips through the crunching crust, through the rosy meat, pink slice falling on pink slice. A thin layer of the creamy fat shows along the edge of the pieces, this brown tinged from the heat and the sugary glazing. Juicy this ham, and tender, a noble dish to set before an appreciative guest. The price is 95 cents a pound, express prepaid to any part of the country. It is packed in a box gaily decorated in Pennsylvania Dutch design done by a local artist of the Dutch country.
Bacon sides from the same fine corn-fed hogs sell at 75 cents a pound and average 10 pounds, these too dry-cured, hickory-smoked. It's bacon firm, rather dry, not the least flabby. It has clear white fat, the lean is of good pink color, the fat and lean well intermixed. It is fine-grained bacon with firm velvety texture, free of coarse fibers. Take a sniff. Notice the odor is mild, sweet, meaty.
The hams and bacon are from Hickory Valley Farm, Little Kunkletown, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the home of those smoked turkeys we told you about just a year ago this November after a day's trip to the farm. There off the beaten lanes of travel, deep in the soft rolling country of Pennsylvania Dutchland, we found 3,000 white Holland turkeys, and the bronze, too, living in sated luxury like the fatted geese of Strasbourg. The turkey houses, the processing plant, everything there is modern as money and scientific engineering can make it.
A beautiful bird they turn out, smoked golden, dressed in a talented manner. Plump, light meat beneath the golden exterior, the dark meat pinkish, the breast meat creamy white with here and there a thread of rose. The smoked turkeys are ＄1.50 a pound, shipped prepaid and selling now in all 48 states. These, too, travel in the colorful Dutch designed box.
Three turkey products are offered for the first time this winter, sliced turkey and buffet cuts, the eight-ounce tins ＄1.50. The smoked turkey meat and giblet pâté ＄1 for 8 ounces. These prices include the shipping costs. Address your orders to Hickory Valley Farm, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Overtired! Overfed! Overdrawn! After the Christmas jubilee is no moment to consider the New Year's bounty board. So here goes, for hospitality still hangs high. Take an aspirin, take a brandy, and wait to balance the budget the day after the big night.
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