Monday was President’s Day, the day we celebrate the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both born in the month of February. Laws were changed to move the official holiday to the third Monday in February to create an additional three day weekend. Some people still refer to this holiday as Washington’s Birthday.
In honor of George Washington, I decided to cook his favorite foods. The plan did not work out as well as expected. Research told me that Washington had a particular fondness for hoe cakes, pancakes made with corn meal and served with butter and honey. Hoe cakes were said to have been cooked by farm workers over an open fire on shovels and hoes, hence the name, hoe cakes. I searched for and found a recipe for hoe cakes and made a batch. Granddaughter Emily did not want to try them until I had eaten one. I could not eat one. I don’t know if my cornmeal was stale or the distinctly tortilla flavor turned me off, but I did not like the hoe cakes. We decided to finish cooking the hoe cakes and feed them to the animals as treats later in the day. We finished cooking the hoecakes then headed to Starbucks for coffee and coffee cake.
The rest of the plan was to make fish for dinner, another favorite of George Washington. I researched methods of cooking fish that would have been used in colonial times. Just reading about it make me sick, so we opted to go more modern, fish tacos. Fish tacos were probably never prepared in colonial times. The grand finale was to be a home baked cherry pie in honor of George Washington’s purported love of cherries. That plan went awry when we spotted a fresh cherry pie in the case at the local bakery. The cherry vanilla ice cream we served on top did not have an authentic ring to it either.
We did our part to salute the president’s in our own non-traditional way. The animals loved the hoecakes. See for yourself.