Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers with a visual prompt. Here we have a boy from New South Wales cooking while at his youth camp.
I usually take this as an opportunity to explore digital archives. Here’s what I found this week. If you’re curious to see what other bloggers share, check out Sepia Saturday’s site. I always find some fascinating interpretations of the theme.
Primitive Cooking. South Dakota Rosebud Indian Reservation, ca. 1911. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/90710585/.
Engraved frontispiece showing 5 cooking scenes and title page of Hannah Wolley, The Queen-like Closet. , 1672. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003674992/.
Native Americans collecting sap and cooking maple syrup in pots, tilling soil into raised humps, and sowing seeds, North America. , 1724. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/90705836/.
Old woman scouring a cooking pot in front of large kitchen fire. Lady handing menu? to cook. , ca. 1780. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002705911/.
smkelly8
No Fixed Plans 
Excellent diversity of photos depicting Native cooking techniques along with British and colonial practices. Amazing how they were all able to produce sustaining meals with the fireplaces and utensils available to them. How cooking has evolved since those times!
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Some of the meals cooked back in those days sound tasty enough. However, the use of heavy gravies, animal fats, salt, and sugars didn’t help their health. Of course they didn’t know what we know now. Can you imagine if they’d had to list the amount of fats, sodium, and sugars in the foods they served? Oof.
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Love the lady with the pizza oven ha ha.
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That last picture is so funny, with all the animals in the kitchen!
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The way food used to be cooked makes my microwave dinner tonight seem like science fiction. It only takes knowledge to read the instructions for a modern appliance, but it required real skill to consistenly cook good food over an open fire.
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With an open flame there’s so much more to cooking. It is more exciting though too.
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Really interesting photos. We watched Stanly Tucci’s new show on CNN where he explores food in different regions of Italy. I think it was in Naples (?) that they said frying food was healthy in the old days because it killed germs and bacteria – and so helped protect them from cholera. Who knew?
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