Seasonal Desserts Take the Stage at Waterford Historical Society's Rhubarb Festival

Rhubarb used to be called "pie plant" in New England -- and today's cooks combine it with strawberries, or lemon juice, or butter and brown sugar, turning it into seasonal desserts that tickle the tastebuds.

Get your rhubarb treats the easy way by pre-ordering them from the Waterford Historical Society! They will be wrapped and ready for pick-up, safely and simply, on Saturday June 19 from 11 to 2, at White Birch Farm (aka the Begin Place), next to the junction of Routes 18 and 93.

Orders should be received by June 7 for the bakers to get busy; here's an order form for this delicious funraiser!

May Is Historic Houses; June Is Our Rhubarb Festival!

The "tontine" structures in Lower Waterford.

What do you know about your home's history? How could you find out more about your house and the people who built it, then perhaps lived there? What would you to remember later about how you've invested part of yourself in your house?

All these, and much more, will be part of the Waterford Historical Society's May 26 meeting with a specialist in house history -- and this will be a Zoom'd event, perhaps the last one we'll need to do that way (hurrah!). Watch for more details soon.

June Is for Rhubarb Desserts and More

Mark your calendar for June 19, when the Waterford Historical Society and the Conte family host a drive-through Rhubarb Festival (our annual fundraising event) at White Birch Farm (aka the Begin place; on Route 18, near exit 1 from I-93). Bakers, get your recipes out -- we're eager for your special rhubarb dessert treats, from crumbles to pies to maple rhubarb muffins (yummy!). To inspire you, here are a couple of recipes from Yankee Magazine with new variations on old treats

Raspberry Rhubarb Pie (Yankee)

 

unbaked pastry for double-crust, 9-inch pie

3 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

1-1/4 cups sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries

1 tablespoon butter, cut into several pieces

 

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry for the bottom crust.

In a bowl, combine rhubarb with 1 cup of sugar, flour, and salt. Allow to stand for about 10 minutes. In a separate bowl, combine raspberries with remaining ¼ of cup of sugar.

Pour rhubarb mixture into pie plate. Drain raspberries and layer on top of rhubarb, then dot with butter. Cover with the top crust and seal edges.

Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325°F and bake for 30 more minutes, or until pie is golden brown.

 

Cherry-Rhubarb Crunch (Yankee)

 

Crust

1 cup quick cooking oats

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup flour

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

pinch of salt

 

Mix together all of the ingredients and press half of the mixture on the bottom of a 9x13-inch pan.

 

Filling

 

4 cups diced fresh rhubarb

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon almond flavoring extract

1 can cherry pie filling mix

1/2 cup chopped nuts

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread the diced rhubarb on top of the crust. Boil the sugar, water, and cornstarch until thick. Add the almond flavoring, then the pie filling, and spoon the mixture over the rhubarb. Sprinkle the remaining crust mixture over it, then the nuts. Bake for 45 minutes.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Discovering Waterford 2021: Our Rhubarb Festivals

Rhubarb festival prizes.

2015's event.

Most farm properties, and many home gardens, in Waterford are host to the traditional "pie plant," rhubarb. We chose this classic New England treasure for the annual fundraiser gatherings of the Waterford Historical Society. Yes, there WILL be a rhubarb festival event this June, too! We are planning one that can be "pandemic safe" -- watch for details.

Meanwhile, here are reminders of some of our rhubarb events, and a link to the recipes is here, too!

June, Rhubarb, and Local History

Just because we're standing six feet apart and wearing masks (hello, historic pandemic months) doesn't mean we stop treasuring local history! June is the month when the Waterford Historical Society hosts an annual Rhubarb Festival, which includes many culinary delights made with the humble and sturdy New England "pie plant." We can still celebrate rhubarb online, and hope to share pie with you later.

An aspect of rhubarb that delights family history buffs is the way a clump of it may persist from one generation to the next. Find some next to a stone foundation, and you may savor the same plant where someone harvested the pink and green stems a century ago, or longer. Check out a recipe, and it may be one your grandmother or grandfather used.

Roberta Smith supports the WHS as board member and treasurer. Among her pleasures are rug hooking and baking. Here she shares a recipe for rhubarb muffins that are sturdy and not too sweet, good for breakfast or afternoon teatime. Thanks, Roberta!

RHUBARB OATMEAL MUFFINS 

Preheat oven to 325’

In a small bowl, whisk together:

 

1 cup milk 
1 tsp vinegar 
1 tsp vanilla 
1/2 cup oil 
1 egg 

In a large bowl, combine:

2 1/2 cups flour 
1 1/4 cups brown sugar 
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda 
1 tsp salt

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients and mix until evenly combined.

Fold in 2 cups chopped rhubarb.

 

Bake muffins for 25 minutes.

A note from Beth's kitchen: 350 degrees worked well for me. But then again, I am always changing recipes a bit, to fit my own Vermont lifestyle! Here are some more rhubarb recipes that we've enjoyed at the Rhubarb Festival in past years.

Waterford's Historical Society and Church Collaborate: Yummy Benefit Event June 16

Here are the details from author Helen Pike, who's also a member of the Lower Waterford Congregational Church and president of the Waterford Historical Society:

Rhubarbecue, History Trivia: Perfect Together

WATERFORD - The Waterford Historical Society and the Congregational Church are finalizing plans for their annual joint benefit in June that celebrates rhubarb with a twist.

The centerpiece is an all-you-can-eat rhubarbecue buffet dinner with a culinary theme that extends through a choice of rhubarb-flavored desserts and includes rhubarb switchel as one of the drink options.

Helming the main course of pork and chicken choices is award-winning chef Brill Williams, who moved to this Connecticut River community after an illustrious 42-year career as the chef and co-owner with his parents of the Inn at Sawmill Farm in West Dover. Now enjoying a life of mostly leisure, Williams is the breakfast chef for the Rabbit Hill Inn across from the church.

“Cooking is part of my family heritage,” said William,s who still bakes with his mother, who is in her 90s. He is also contributing a salad of European cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and feta cheese to the buffet dinner.

Sides by Waterford’s amateur, but avid cooks include farm-made baked beans, freshly sliced cole slaw, a simple green salad, and homemade rolls.

This annual event follows a long-time tradition in Waterford, said Norrine Abbott Williams, who serves the church as both a trustee and a deacon, but is no relation to the chef. Starting in the 1950s, the Ladies Social Circle hosted hugely successful lobster salad suppers followed by homemade strawberry shortcake with fruit grown in their gardens. Now, as then, the monies go to maintaining the historic building built in 1859.

“We’re five years into establishing a new tradition that highlights old-growth rhubarb found on the remaining farms here in town,” she added. “We couldn’t be happier to share this bounty with everyone.”

In 2014 the two community groups produced their first food-centric fund raiser that drew on recipes found in a 1955 church cookbook, including the late Irene Nutter’s rhubarb custard pie.

“We’ve updated those recipes and added to our collection of what you can make with rhubarb,” said WHS treasurer Roberta Smith who has been coordinating recipes and bakers since 2014. Besides pies in which different fruits will be combined to sweeten the tart rhubarb taste, other rhubarb-based dessert dishes are cookies, one-person tarts, and at least one cake.

Open to the public on both sides of the Connecticut, the evening’s second feature is what planners are hoping will be a spirited round of the Vermont Historical Society’s trivia game which is in the final stages of development.

“As a member organization in the VHS, we’re excited Waterford is a beta site for this work-in-progress,” said WHS president Helen Pike. “We’re working on a bonus round of 10 questions just about Waterford history that’s surprising even us!”

In addition to VHS rewards, planners are rounding up locally sourced prizes for top point winners. So far they include a jar of Williams’s signature homemade chocolate butternut sauce, a pint of syrup from Tom’s Maple, a signed copy of The Countryman Press edition of “Spiked Boots: Sketches of the North Country” by late Waterford author Robert E. Pike, and a signed copy of “The Darkness Under the Water” by today’s Waterford author Beth Kanell.

The WHS plans to use its portion of the proceeds to continue its oral history project and buy supplies for its ever-expanding paper and photographic archive.

The dinner is scheduled for Saturday, June 16, in the Community Room located on the lower level of the Lower Waterford church. The Maple Street door opens at 5:30 p.m. and serving starts at 6 p.m.

Tickets are $25. Only 80 will be sold. RSVPs due by Monday, June 11, for food planning purposes. To reserve group seating, call Pike at 802-748-0180.

Waterford's Older Residents Tell Their Stories -- See the Show, June 17

Waterford resident Carol Bonnett shows the photo in her album of herself at age 14, with Lower Waterford's Mrs. Davies, a prominent village resident at the time.

Camera! Lights! Oral Histories! Rhubarb!

 

WATERFORD - Curious about "the who" of the Davies Memorial Library?

Want to know what it was like growing up in the now-gone village of Upper Waterford on the Connecticut River?

Interested in how dairy farming used to be done in a milk house attached to an iconic red barn?

Come find out in the first public reveal of Waterford's videotaped oral histories from such long-time residents as George Bullock, Geneva Powers Wright, her brother, Willard Powers, sister-in-law Patricia Wallace Powers, and Doris Carol Fuller Bonnett. Their stories are, by turns, funny and insightful, and capture an era that started to disappear with the construction of Moore Dam in the early 1950s.

Designed for anyone with a connection to or curiosity about the post-Revolutionary War town chartered in 1780, this benefit event includes a wide variety of delicious rhubarb desserts and refreshments.

Part of the on-going Welcome Home to Waterford series, this is the 3rd annual joint fund raiser between Vermont's youngest historical society and the Congregational Church's Ladies Social Circle.

It is scheduled for Saturday, June 17, in the Fellowship Hall at the corner of Lower Waterford Road and Maple Street. Doors open at 6 p.m.; program begins at 6:30 p.m. The Maple Street door is handicap accessible.

Proceeds help the Waterford Historical Society's associated costs for its on-going videotaping of oral histories and the Ladies' steadfast goal to raise much-needed restoration funds for the historic building that opened for worship in January of 1860.

Seating is limited to 90. Tickets are $10 adults; $5 for children under 12. To reserve a place (or a table for 10), please call WHS treasurer/secretary Roberta Smith: 748-0923 or Ladies' member Carroll Campbell: 748-3455.

Can't attend, but interested in making a tax-deductible financial gift to either worthy organization? You can send a donation to the:

WHS at P.O. Box 56, Lower Waterford, VT 05848 or Congregational Church, P.O. Box 111, Lower Waterford, VT 05848.

Butternuts, for Old Time's Sake -- and Next, Rhubarb

Butternuts

Singing makes any task more fun, right?

Last November we were able to purchase four pounds of butternuts from Native Nuts in North Troy; two pounds headed to New Hampshire to catch up with Geneva Powers Wright, and the other two pounds, in a basket, came to visit at a Waterford Historical Society meeting in February, when a few brave folks took a couple of them home to try cracking.

Most of this two-pound batch ended up at my house, and I was glad to catch my son Alexis and his NYC friend Jem as labor for cracking them in March. Based on a description from an East St Johnsbury resident of having cracked them using her dad's workshop vice, we tackled the task with a pair of large screw-type carpenter clamps. (We did test an ordinary nutcracker, and it was totally useless for this job!) Sorting the nuts from the shell fragments turned out to be quite a challenge.

It took the three of us TWO HOURS of steady work to crack all the nuts and set aside the nutmeats -- which added up to slightly less than one cup full. For the April meeting of the Waterford Historical Society, I baked cookies with the little flecks of nuts -- which were delicious, but in every cookie there was at least one tooth-jarring bit of nutshell, and in some there were half a dozen. And we thought we had these well sorted!

I'm glad we tried this, for the sake of knowing how to handle butternuts, which used to be a traditional food in this region, before the trees were stricken by a mostly fatal disease. All things considered, though, I don't think we'll repeat this!

Next on my old-time cooking schedule will be rhubarb recipes, figuring out the best ones for the Waterford Historic House and Garden Tour and Rhubarb Café, being held June 20!