Dream Kitchen!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 13, 2020

Ms. Florence’s Stove

Soon, we all will be able to have a more in-depth look at the Higginbotham House, owned by the Museum of African American History (MAAH) in Boston. This house is part of the complex on York Street that includes the African Meetinghouse. The MAAH has been working hard to conserve and restore Ms. Florence’s house, as well as the outbuildings associated with the property. On Nantucket today, we have lost most of these outbuildings that were once (and still can be) important components of the running of a household – and sometimes a home-run business or two.


The house may look a bit later nineteenth/early twentieth century but it actually was built sometime not long after 1774 when Seneca Boston purchased it. Seneca had been a slave and purchased this lot long before slavery was abolished in the Commonwealth. He and his wife, Thankful Micah, who was Wampanoag, would raise six children here including the famed Absalom Boston. Absalom would captain the all-black crewed whaleship the Industry and play a leading role in the integration of the island’s schools – and in building the Meetinghouse next door to his birthplace.

Ms. Florence purchased the property in the early twentieth century and would also purchase the Meetinghouse which would help to preserve it. The image you see here is post-restoration work. One room is believed to be largely in its eighteenth century condition but the rest of the house saw a renovation by Ms. Florence as she did take in boarders and wanted to accommodate such an arrangement. MAAH worked to keep the house mainly at Ms. Florence’s inhabitance. And from a preservation standpoint it is important to show the evolution of a house – not to always bring it back to what you “think” it looked like – even if based on testing. (The Mitchell House has a myriad of things that are late nineteenth century and very early twentieth century – before it became a museum and during Maria’s uncle’s family’s inhabitance of the House.)

Front sitting room likely in 18th century condition. Ms. Florence removed the chimney mass to make a full front staircase.


The room I show here is her kitchen – with her original re-built stove (it was in pieces in an outbuilding but she saved it!). My immediate reaction when I saw it – and the entire house –I’m moving in! This is my dream kitchen though my stove is a bit later – think the stove in the Connecticut house in “Christmas in Connecticut” or some of the stoves seen in several early Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy films. The cabinets are wonderful, the sink and counters gorgeous. Now, if they’d let me cook in it and stay awhile.



Congratulations MAAH!


JNLF

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Soups On!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 9, 2026
You know the cold has arrived when I make the first soup of the season. I did just that this weekend – perhaps a little later than normal because all of a sudden it got cold at night and we have had three frosts in a row – the first of the season on Friday night (October 23, 2026). My first: Portuguese Kale Soup from a recipe found long ago in Yankee Magazine . This is my husband’s favorite and I “Italian-ize” it (I am half Italian) by having grated parmesan to sprinkle on top which also helps add salt if it’s lacking. I know – horrors! But don’t we all bring some of our backgrounds to the table – so to speak – when it comes to augmenting recipes? Then, what’s even better is you can freeze most of the soups – and then you have a ready meal for another time. It makes you realize, yet again, how difficult things were 100 or more years – certainly more – ago. Imagine cooking for twelve people, as Maria Mitchell’s mother did, and not being able to preserve or set aside much of what you made as there were not storage techniques or technology that would allow for such a thing. Just the cooking alone – never mind putting things by like preserves or salt cod or something – for twelve people! Poor Lydia! I can barely cook for three! Good thing my husband cooks a lot. Though he HATES baking so that’s where I still have a place at the counter!  I am looking forward to more soups – not sure what is next. Perhaps Curried Lentil – another good one that freezes well. My Mother just dug one out of her freezer from last winter and it was still good! JNLF

Applesauce!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 2, 2026
Early October is a time to make something I love – applesauce. It’s one of my favorite things. Ironically, when I was a baby, I did not like it. But because I ate very little – and my Mother was worried because I was such a skinny baby (not anymore!) – my Other Nana (great grandmother) made a lot of applesauce because my Mother said I ate it. I did not – but my Mother could not tell her Nana (grandmother) that and disappoint her. So, I think my parents ate a lot of applesauce back in the early 1970s. I sort of dread making it though – which is silly because it’s very easy and I always forget that until I am making it. You only have to core and slice the apples – you leave on the peels. That is what gives the applesauce – which uses McIntosh apples (my fave!) – its pink color. And with some lemon and then some sugar – you’ve got the best tasting applesauce. And it smells so good while it’s cooking! It is also freezable so once cool – it goes into winter hibernation to be brought out for specific sorts of meals. Putting food by – as Lydia Coleman Mitchell once did for her family of 12! I was a bit late this year, but over the weekend of October 24, apples were cooking on my stove resulting in the first applesauce accompanied meal of the fall and winter season. JNLF

Bang, Clang, Hiss!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 26, 2026
I grew up, quite literally, with hot water radiators in a Colonial Revival from the 1920s.  There was a huge boiler in the basement that chugged and blew hot belching air. It took up one whole area of the basement and I avoided it. I could hang over on the stairs and stare at its flames at the bottom. It scared me. It not only kept the basement very warm but also very dry. While the house had been built in an area that began to slope at our property, between the furnace and the clever drainage system installed by the builders of the house in the 1920s, our basement was always dry. My mother, the queen of rebates (this is the 1970s and 1980s), had her “rebate and coupon table” right in front of this furnace. I remember it always glowed – and I would not doubt that it still had some asbestos around some of its pipes. Maybe another reason I stayed away – perhaps I was warned away at an early age not just because I could burn myself! One of my fondest memories of this house was the clang and hiss of the heaters in the winter. It made me feel instantly cozy, as if I was wrapped in a nice warm quilt. If I was in bed at night and it was snowing, all the more warmth and cozy feeling. It was comforting and a sound and feel I still associate with snow and winter. The street light and the snow falling, spiraling down in that pinkish gold of the light – and the hoped for snow day to come! Forced air systems just don’t do the same thing. And, they suck all the moisture out of the house to boot! They do keep a house quite warm though – but still not the same – and I miss that humidity as do my plants. I reflect back on the hot water radiators – those old cast iron loopy radiators with the valve and perhaps a radiator box to cover them – as it if they kept me super warm. They didn’t. We kept our house at 63F – a lesson I still follow – and it was a big old Colonial-style house so it could be drafty. One reason we had a Franklin stove in our family room and quilts for nighttime television watching! So many times over the course of a winter, I think of that house where I spent about twenty years of my life, and remember the, “Bang, Clang, Hiss!” of the radiators and the coziness they projected. And while, it wasn’t always warm, it was a lot warmer that the Mitchell House would have been in February! JNLF
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