New York City Tours by Urban Oyster

Most people like to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with a few too many margaritas at their local Chili’s, followed by some drunken rendition of the Mexican Hat Dance. This year, we decided to mark the holiday in a slightly different way – by making tacos with local ingredients, and going to see where some of those ingredients were made.

We took a trip to the “Tortilla Triangle,” an area of Brooklyn straddling the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg that gets its name from the many tortilla factories there (read more about the area in Edible Brooklyn). One such place is Tres Hermanos Tortilleria (if you click through, be prepared for some Mexican music), located on Starr Street, that deserves special mention because it also has its own taqueria where they serve up fresh-made Mexican delicacies. Thanks largely to the marketing departments at Corona and Jose Cuervo, Cinco de Mayo has become a favorite excuse for non-Mexicans to get drunk, but on this day, most of the Mexicans we met didn’t have time to celebrate – they were too busy working. After placing our order at Tres Hermanos, we stepped through the door in the back, and there we saw the manufacturing line buzzing away at 10 p.m., with fresh tortillas rolling out, soon to be filled with savory meats, fresh vegetables, and sour cream and served to hungry customers just a few feet away.

Cinco de Mayo is thought to be a major Mexican holiday, but it is more widely celebrated in the United States than in Mexico. The date marks the 1862 Battle of Puebla, when Mexican forces defeated a French army that was trying to install a puppet government. The French were ultimately successful, placing Archduke Maximilian on the Mexican throne in 1864, but he was eventually deposed and executed, and the French were driven out in 1867. This holiday has special significance for New York’s Mexican community, as the vast majority come from Puebla state, which is the only place in Mexico where Cinco de Mayo is regularly celebrated. Here in Brooklyn, the Moore Street Market in East Williamsburg will be marking the holiday on Saturday, May 7th with live music and special vendors; Urban Oyster will also be holding its inaugural tour of the market and the surrounding neighborhood, which we’ll be running regularly starting in June (tickets go on sale next week, so click here to learn more, or sign up for our newsletter to receive updates).

But back to the tortilleria. Having a restaurant in the front of your factory is a great way to create more jobs and generate more revenue, but it also invites people to see and learn about the manufacturing process. Manufacturing remains an important part of New York’s economy, but it is usually done in small-scale operations hidden away in quieter, more remote parts of the city. New York actually ranks second in the nation in the number of industrial jobs, and one of the largest industries is food processing; companies that make products to serve immigrant communities, like tortilla factories, make up a large part of this sector.

Advocates of “slow food” and “locavores” tout the idea of shrinking the distance from the farm to the dinner table. Eating local, seasonal foods, they argue, will reduce our impact on the planet, make us healthier, and make us feel so much better about ourselves. That is all well and good, but I think there’s something to be said for shrinking the distance from factory to table. Last year, Good magazine published a fascinating article titled, “Your Taco, Deconstructed,”  about a project conceived by a group of graphic designers and researchers that sought to trace the pathways of every ingredient in a taco eaten in the Bay Area, from the corn in the tortillas to the aluminum in the foil wrapper. The end result was an infographic that showed a vast and sprawling network stretching to nearly every corner of the globe. Of course, this is not something unique to tacos; almost every food item we eat is linked to global networks or production and trade. Even mundane items travel thousands of miles and pass through the hands of thousands of workers.

When I first encountered this project, I was actually eating a taco that I made at home, and it gave me pause. But not because I thought about the global impacts of the taco in my hands; rather, I thought about how it was so closely linked to the local economy. Nearly all of the basic ingredients were either grown, processed or manufactured in New York City. So, being a cartographer, I decided to map it out in a similar manner as the Tacoshed project had. Here’s what I came up with:

As you can see, most of the items didn’t even have to leave the borough. I like to think the tacos I make at home approximate something you might get at a decent taqueria or food cart, and I accomplish this by using authentic ingredients. Foul-mouthed celebrity chef (though I guess that modifier does not really distinguish him from other celebrity chefs) Anthony Bourdain visited Tres Hermanos on his show No Reservations (video clip), where he decried the tasteless, adulterated, quasi-Mexican food most Americans eat at chain restaurants and from pre-packaged taco dinners. Like with all food, good Mexican food starts with good ingredients, and those can be easily found in New York, if you know where to look.

The tortillas I used actually didn't come from Tres Hermanos, but Tortilleria Buena Vista in East Williamsburg, and the mole was made at the nearby Moore Street Market. The sour cream was made at Casa Blanca’s in Rockaway, Queens, and the cheese came from Quesos Mexico just a block from my house in Windsor Terrace. The beef came from a butcher in nearby Kensington, though I later learned that it was slaughtered and processed in Jamaica, Queens. Other than the Green Mountain Gringo salsa, which was made in North Carolina, and the onions from a farm on Long Island, nothing traveled more than a dozen miles to my local grocery store. Of course, for most of these items, only the penultimate step to my belly (the last being my cooking) was made in New York. The ground beef probably came from a cow raised in the Great Plains; the mole was likely made from cocoa grown in Mexico; the list goes on.

Perhaps someday I will be able to do a full commodity chain analysis of the food the food that I eat (and the full report of the Tacoshed project will eventually be published as a book). But until then, at least I know that I can eat a delicious, authentic, homemade taco that supports local producers and manufacturing jobs. And that made for an enjoyable Cinco de Mayo.

If you would like to learn more about the city's efforts to preserve and expand manufacturing jobs, or to find a list of manufacturers, visit Made In NYC. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. To see more of his graphic design work, visit his website.

This week we received the news that a new tour is coming to Midtown Manhattan – a tour of street food. Unfortunately, it is not our Midtown Food Cart Tour, which has been running for nearly a year, but a tour offered by a food blogger we have encountered in the past. We welcome competition – we got into the tour business because we love it, and we hope others do as well – and the hard-working street food vendors of New York deserve all the attention and business they can get. But there are a few things that trouble us about this new tour, and we would like to share the story of how our tours started so that customers can judge for themselves when deciding how to experience New York’s wonderful food carts and trucks.

Urban Oyster’s odyssey through the world of street food started back in September 2009 during New York Craft Beer Week, when we had the pleasure to go on a tour of Midtown’s food carts with Mark Foggin. Mark had been a longtime patron of the carts during his workdays in Manhattan’s office towers, and he periodically offered an informal tour of some of the best food in the neighborhood. We fell in love with the concept, and we embarked on a partnership with him to make the tour a regular fixture of Urban Oyster’s offerings.

What followed was many months of research, relationship building, and trial and error. We used our expertise in historical research to delve into the history of street vendors in New York City. We reached out to organizations like the Street Vendor Project to learn about the ins and outs of running these small businesses and the challenges vendors face on a daily basis. We interviewed the vendors and learned the stories of how they got into the industry. We recruited Brian Hoffman, a tour guide extremely knowledgeable about the New York food scene, from fine dining to street vending (and an accomplished food blogger – check out his writing at Eat This NY), to give the tours. We created and printed custom-made maps of the carts and trucks in the area to give to our visitors. And we painstakingly crafted our tour route, content and other logistics by running several test tours before we offered a single ticket to the public. All of this was a great investment of time, money, and effort, but it was all worth it.

We began offering our tour in June 2010, and it has been a rousing success. So much so that we are now offering a second food cart tour, of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, the launch of which was also preceded by many months of hard work and dedication. What we have today is something of which we are extremely proud. We love offering these tours as often as we can to the public, and we think the experience that we deliver does a great service to the identity we are trying to build at Urban Oyster as a company that is committed to supporting the small businesses, civic organizations and cultural amenities that make New York City’s neighborhoods dynamic and vibrant.

When we heard that someone else will be offering a tour of street food in Midtown, we wanted to welcome New York Street Food to the tour business. However, a few facts deserve mention here. Last year, we invited Perry Resnick, who runs New York Street Food, to come on our tour free of charge – a common practice with members of the media who want to write about a tour – hoping that his blog would help us get the word out about our tour.  He did join us for the tour, but unfortunately, he did not mention us on his blog; he did, however, write a post about vendors featured on our tour, using information learned on the tour, without any attribution or even reference to Urban Oyster.

He must have loved our tour so much that he decided to launch his own, and judging from the marketing materials he has posted on his blog, it appears as if it will be suspiciously similar to ours. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. Most of the photos are of carts and trucks featured on our tour, and his Frequently Asked Questions section bears striking resemblance to our own. Like every aspect of our tours, even our FAQs were carefully crafted based on input from visitors; it seems unlikely that, as he has yet to actually conduct a tour, that he would know to include questions about the suitability of pets or whether one may shop while on a tour. Most of these questions and answers are taken verbatim – with slight, superficial changes in wording – from our website (see screenshots above).

In addition to providing unique tour experiences, Urban Oyster’s mission is to highlight and support the independent businesses and entrepreneurs of New York City, such as the owners of the carts and trucks that we visit on our tours. If this new tour brings them more business and exposure, then we are all for it, and we are not afraid of competition. We always hope that our visitors are better informed and more conscientious after going on one of our tours; with that educational focus in mind, we offer this to our readers simply so that they can be better informed consumers. We work very hard at what we do, and we appreciate the hard work of others. In every aspect of our business, we respect intellectual property rights, and we try to never misrepresent ourselves. We just wish that others in this business would do the same. Judge for yourself – join us for a tour, and we are confident that you, like so many of our visitors, will come back to Urban Oyster again and again.

Join us for a Food Cart Tour! We offer several tours a week, so check our tour calendar for availability.

If you have questions or comments about this blog post, please post a comment or contact us at info@urbanoyster.com. If you would like more information, please subscribe to the Urban Oyster email newsletter. 

This post is part two of a three-part series written by Don Diefenbach, a genealogist and amateur historian who began researching his family history four years ago. Don's research has taken him to sites such as the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary Church, and even to Germany to scour the archives. Part one of this series looked at the arrival of Don's great-grandparents, Caspar Diefenbach and Catharine Herrmann, in Brooklyn in the 1880's. In part two, Don tells the story of their growing family and illuminates the sights, sounds, and smells of a bustling immigrant neighborhood in Williamsburg as the 19th century drew to a close.

America's Gilded Age, which lasted roughly from the late 1860's through the 1890's, was an era of unprecedented immigration, economic growth, political corruption, business greed and social injustice. The period was marked by extraordinary imbalances in the distribution of wealth and terrible working conditions in factories, which routinely exploited child labor. Meanwhile vast personal fortunes were accumulated by dynastic industrial families like the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Vanderbilts.

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, one could see the contradictions of this age of stunning growth and great hardship in the daily lives of the neighborhood's inhabitants. Technological innovations like the telephone, electric light and phonograph signaled the dawn of new modern age, and engineering wonders like the Brooklyn Bridge, the city's first elevated railway, and a towering new parish church building, were popping up all around them. New immigrants poured into Brooklyn, and by 1880 it was America's third-largest city, boasting 567,000 residents. It would grow by an additional 42% during the 1880s with population soaring to 806,000 by 1890. The Diefenbach immigrants, Caspar and Catharine, contributed to both the economic and population growth of the city. Caspar would establish a family bakery business within a few years of landing on American soil, and the couple would eventually have 12 children.

Many Mouths to Feed

The American diet had been steadily improving over the course of the 19th century.  Living in a German-American community, the Diefenbachs’ diet would have included foods and drinks that were also popular in Germany at the time, such as hamburg steak (minced salted beef, seasoned with onions and bread crumb filler),  frikadelle (ground beef, pork or veal, with added bread crumbs, onion, egg, milk and spices), sausage, pork, cabbage, sauerkraut, potatoes, dumplings, noodles, onions, potato pancakes and beer. Such high protein diets grew out of peasant farming traditions, where pigs were often raised on large and small farms for personal consumption. New food innovations, like margarine and ketchup, brought more flavor to the table, and in the 1880's canned fruits and meats in tins and jars became commercially available.  The Diefenbachs’ diet would also have been filled with breads and pastries, usually leftovers from the bakery.  The image of the hearty, simplistic, American diet of “meat and potatoes” can be partially attributed to German influences, as “German butchers, bakers and brewers dominated American cities by 1880, shaping the national taste for heavy meals.”

Though diets were improving, infant mortality was still incredibly high, as can be seen in the Diefenbach family tree. Caspar and Catherine would have 12 children, only six of whom would survive to adulthood. Their first child, John, was born in 1882, named after Caspar’s grandfather, uncle and brother, and would survive the many trials of infancy to live a full life. He was followed by William, born on July 4, 1883, but he died the following year, at the age of only seven months, struck down by an unknown ailment.  Later that year, Mary Christina (Mamie) was born, and she was lucky enough to survive to adulthood. She was followed by a daughter Barbara in 1886, but she barely made it to her second birthday, dying just two days later. In 1888, Catharina was born, but she lived only three weeks. Next, Herman Andrew arrived in 1889 – he was a handsome young man who grew to adulthood. The seventh child, Catharina (Kate) was born in 1891, less than two months after the couple celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary, and she was the second child to be named after her mother. In 1893, little Peter Joe was born on his mom's birthday, February 23rd (Catherine was 33), but he survived only nine months. Felix Caspar would follow in 1894, again on the Fourth of July, and he was followed in 1896 by Joseph. The two boys would both die within eight days of each other in December 1898, aged only four and two, respectively.  Their next child came in 1899, lovingly named Felix after his brother who had died the previous year, to be followed by another Joseph, who was born in 1901. Even though illness and death were common in childhood in that time, it must have made lasting impressions upon the children who survived. Imagine hearing the news, attending funerals again and again. By the time he was 16, John, the eldest Diefenbach child, had buried six of his siblings.

Tenement Life

Tenement neighborhoods were crowded, noisy places that posed many threats to the health and safety of the residents. During the day, streets were packed with people traveling to work, peddlers selling merchandise and food from pushcarts, and families loading carts with their belongings to move from one apartment to another in search of lower rents. In a short period, the Diefenbachs would move three times within two blocks. Here we will discuss the challenges they faced building a life in Williamsburg. Some of what we know about tenement life is taken not from their experience, but from that of residents in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Even though population and building densities were greater in Lower Manhattan than in Brooklyn in the 1880's, the essence of tenement life in Brooklyn back then can be closely approximated by a visit to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Street, which is located just across the East River from the Diefenbachs' neighborhood.

Sanitation and access to clean water for drinking, cooking and cleaning were serious concerns for tenement dwellers during this period, and these factors contributed greatly to the high infant mortality rate. Diphtheria, a childhood respiratory illness, was the cause of death of several of the Diefenbach children.  The disease typically killed 10% of victims who contracted it, but this number would jump to 25% in the crowded, unsanitary tenement conditions of the era.  Death could come quickly as the disease spread through the throat, tonsils and respiratory system, causing patients' necks to swell – a condition referred to as "bull neck" – ultimately suffocating them. The disease could also attack the muscles and heart. Epidemics usually occurred during winter months, and children were particularly vulnerable.  Overcrowding and pollution only added to their lethality. Williamsburg's air was choked with smoke from factories and thousands of coal- and wood-burning stoves in tenement apartments, and animal waste and garbage were strewn about the streets and alleys.

The Diefenbachs' neighborhood was packed with breweries, which seemed to bring as many troubles as benefits. The breweries brought horse and wagon traffic as teamsters delivered beer to saloons across the city. Waste in the streets and horse stalls attracted rats and flies, which were an important disease vector. A typical 1,000-pound horse would produce on average 40 pounds of manure and 1.5 gallons of urine per day, and dozens of these animals would pass by the Diefenbachs' front door each day. The family coexisted with the pollution and smells of breweries throughout the decade, but particularly from 1888 through 1891 when they lived at three different addresses on Meserole Street.  At 186 Meserole Street, the view out of the front window was of Schneider’s Brewery, located across the street; when they moved across the street to 159, the brewery was practically in their backyard, and at 132 Meserole, the Fallert Brewery was within sight. All breweries had beer halls, which were liberally patronized by residents and visitors from other neighborhoods.  Saturday nights were particularly noisy in beer hall neighborhoods, with drunkards sometimes in the streets well into the night.  In daylight hours, the pounding and clanking of horse-drawn wagons hauling loads to and from the breweries were as predictable and common as sunrise and sunset.

But living close to a brewery usually meant access to good, clean water, which brewers needed to make good-tasting beer. It is likely that the Diefenbachs benefited from Brooklyn’s comparatively sophisticated and plentiful fresh water supply system, and at the onset of the 1880's, this area of Brooklyn already had an intact underground combined sewage/storm water drainage system.  Depending upon one’s location within the city, there could be a wide range of water and sanitary services, ranging from excellent to poor water quality, and from indoor flush toilets to outdoor privies.  As more buildings were brought on line for indoor plumbing, one recurring problem was clogged sewer pipes.  Some tenants continued to dispose of chicken bones and other trash through flush toilets, as they had done in outdoor privies, resulting in blockages of sewer lines. If a building did not have indoor plumbing, residents hand-pumped water in the back yard from a community pump and carried it in buckets upstairs to the apartments. Laundry was also done in the backyard on clear days; when it was cold or raining, the women hand pumped the water, then carried it up flights of stairs in buckets and did laundry in the little apartments, hanging it to dry in the kitchen.

By the turn of the century, neighborhood bath houses where being constructed to improve hygiene and public health.  In Lower Manhattan, residents could take a shower for 3 cents.  But more commonly in the 1880's, bathing by tenement dwellers was done periodically in portable tubs in the kitchen.  In many households it was the practice that baths were taken once a week.  Saturday was was usually bath day, as Sunday was church day, except for Jewish tenement dwellers of this era – they bathed on Friday, before the beginning of the sabbath.  During the week, periodic washing out of a small wash basin had to do.      

Garbage disposal was another of life’s challenges.  Household trash was only a fraction of what we produce today, but with no place to dispose of it, it quickly became a problem.  Brooklyn provided municipal trash collection service during the 1880's, but it was erratic and inadequate.  Many residents burned their trash and threw organic waste in gutters.  Some gave it to neighbors who had goats.  Some carried it to vacant lots or threw it into streams and rivers during their commute to work. Some garbage was dumped in landfills or the harbor.  The country’s first incineration plant was constructed on an island in the New York harbor in 1866, but that could handle only a small fraction of the growing metropolitan area's trash load.  Already, garbage was washing up along the city's beaches and shorelines. The following excerpts from an article that appeared in the January 20, 1887 issue of the  Brooklyn Daily Eagle indicate that garbage collection contractors were severely understaffed:

Tenement Dwellers

Residents faced many hardships, but daily life in this realm was not universally miserable, though it might seem so by today's standards. In late 19th century America, tenement homes and neighborhoods were often vibrant and hopeful. For most, despite the longing for relatives and friends left behind, there was the sure knowledge of an even harder life back in Europe.  America was hope.  America was a dream.  Once when Caspar and Catharine were visiting relatives in Germany during this period, they were treated to a rich lifestyle as they were hosted by Caspar’s brother, Dr. John Diefenbach, a surgeon.  John, who had married into money, had a big house, servants and a carriage. He treated Caspar and Catharine to good food and travels and a royal time on this visit to Germany. Catharine, comparing John’s rich lifestyle to their life in Brooklyn, commented, “Put me in a cellar in Brooklyn, and I be happy [sic].”

Diefenbach descendants who grew up on Montrose Avenue in Williamsburg in the early 20th century describe their four-room childhood homes as “Railroad Flats.”  Typically, rooms of these apartments (most often three or four) were strung in a line on a single floor. In smaller buildings, they would stretch from the front to the back of the house, and they were a common floor plan. Because many rooms had no access to exterior walls, and therefore had no natural light, some were fitted with windows facing onto adjacent rooms, and they could be draped for privacy.

Most tenements also had a housekeeper who received free or reduced rent in exchange for maintaining and cleaning the halls, stairs and the sidewalk in front of the building.  As a result, common areas of many crowded tenements of the time were relatively clean. At best, they were dreary-to-modest overcrowded homes for millions of poor American families, often living paycheck to paycheck, striving to improve both their homes and their lives.  While most tenement buildings were glum, some were attractive, with elaborate exterior facades and decorative tin moldings and ceilings in interior hallways and living quarters.      .     

Before marrying Caspar Diefenbach in 1881, Catharine lived at 137 Montrose Avenue with her parents, five siblings, and an adopted niece. Information from the 1880 census returns for this and the two adjacent buildings reveals a great deal about the people who populated this bustling neighborhood. Catharine’s father, John Herrmann, was identified as a tailor, and her mother, Maria, was identified as a housekeeper.  Six families, including 40 individuals, lived in this building.  Assuming two families per floor, the six families probably occupied the top three floors of the four-story tenement. John Herrmann's brother, Anton and his family, also lived in this building, as did a Mehl family; one of the Herrmann girls would later marry a Mehl boy.  Of the six families, the occupations of the heads of household were as follows: a keeper of a hotel, a cigar maker, a laborer, and three tailors. Even Catharine’s 15-year old brother is also identified as a tailor.  A portion of the ground floor of this building was used for community meetings.  Nineteenth century articles in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reference various meetings of the German Taxpayer Association, the German Democratic Citizens, and the German Property Owners being held at 137 Montrose Avenue, which is referred to as "Columbia Hall" (in 1885) and "Bittner's Hall" (in 1891).  Next door at number 135 (to the left in the photo above), there were 29 residents living in nine apartments in 1880. The heads of household listing followed a similar theme – three tailors, two laborers, a cigar maker, a carpenter, and two listed as "at home" and "keeping house." One of these families even had an 18-year-old son away at college, which would have been a great accomplishment for a working class family in 1880.

From 1880 Census reports for this section of Montrose Avenue, it appears that children in this neighborhood attended school through age 12, when most left school altogether – of a total of 54 teenagers recorded in this section of Montrose Avenue, only four were in school or college. Only two of the ten 13 year-olds and none of the 14 year-olds were in school.  Teenagers did, however, have occupations listed; at 13 and 14, they were apprentices in cigar making, dyeing, tailoring and instrument making. By 15 and 16, they had started their careers as tailors, musicians, machine operators and factory workers.

Often tenement dwellers ran small home industries, such as sewing or factory piecework, and both men and women worked at them. Catharine Diefenbach was a midwife and earned some money assisting her neighbors in giving birth.  A directory from 1891 identifies “Cath Diefenbach, midwife” residing at 159 Meserole Street in Williamsburg, and many descendants have confirmed that she was a midwife. A Diefenbach family notebook that was handed down through generations describes Catharine's work:  “My mother Mary [Mamie] was the oldest girl and wound up having to care for those younger than she because my grandmother [Catharine] was a midwife and got the great sum of $5.00 for each confinement case she went out on.”  In the same 1891 directory, Caspar Diefenbach is listed as a "buttonholemaker” living at the same address; it is not known whether this was a sideline home occupation to supplement his bakery work, or perhaps he was in and out of the bakery business and trying his luck at other occupations.

This year’s NFL championship game is being touted as a “blue collar” Super Bowl – it’s a battle of storied franchises that hail from rust belt cities with industrial laborers for mascots. Steel and meatpacking harken back to an era in American history when heavy industry and manufacturing ruled the economy, and the country’s workforce was made up of blue collar union men. Despite the nostalgia that the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers evoke, both for the smashmouth football of the NFL’s Golden Age (which is commemorated in the hagiography of NFL Films) and for bygone American industries, let’s not forget that these cities are represented by multi-millionaire athletes hired to play for teams worth close to a billion dollars.

In contrast, New York City’s sports teams rarely (if ever) earn the moniker “blue collar” from America’s sportswriters. The city is associated with the glamor and excess of more white collar sectors: finance, real estate, media. Yet New York City ranks second in the country in the number of industrial jobs (behind Houston), well ahead of Pittsburgh (41st) and Milwaukee (16th – tiny Green Bay doesn’t even register on national rankings). For all of America’s history, New York City has been one of the nation’s leading manufacturers, and metalworking and food processing are among the largest industrial employers today. During the city’s industrial heyday a century ago, both steel (technically, ironworking) and meatpacking employed thousands of residents, and some of the largest enterprises in both industries could be found in one neighborhood: Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Today the Williamsburg waterfront is known more for glass-fronted high-rise apartment buildings scattered amongst abandoned industrial relics, but the area was once teeming with industrial activity. Williamsburg was home to many major industries during the late 19th century, including pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, food processing and iron works. Looking at one such industry, the Hecla Iron Works was one of more than 40 foundries operating across New York during the city’s cast iron building boom in the 1870’s. Founded in 1876 by a pair of Scandinavian immigrants, Niels Poulson and Charles M. Eger, Hecla employed more than 1,000 workers at its height and manufactured structural and ornamental components for some of New York’s most famous buildings, including Grand Central Terminal and the New York Life Insurance Company building. The foundry stretched along both sides of North 11th Street between Berry and Wythe streets, close to Williamsburg’s East River piers where raw materials and finished products could be transported easily.

The company grew swiftly in its early years, but the improvements in steel-making technology and the phase out of cast iron construction led to a short boom. The company also suffered two devastating fires, in 1889 and 1891, but they rebuilt and continued operating until Poulson’s death in 1911 and Eger’s retirement in 1913, when the company was sold to Chicago-based competitor Winslow Brothers. In 1928 one of the buildings was purchased by the Carl M. Schultz Mineral Water Company to manufacture and bottle seltzer (another major Brooklyn industry), but the vast complex was unused for much of the 20th century.

We have become well acquainted with the Hecla Iron Works because today it houses a different historic Brooklyn industry: beer brewing. Unlike the vast majority of Brooklyn’s industrial buildings, which have been either demolished, abandoned, or repurposed for commercial or residential uses, Hecla is the home of the Brooklyn Brewery. The brewery has been located on the block since 1996, and they recently completed a major expansion into an adjoining building on the north side of North 11th, which will allow them to produce 50,000 barrels of beer a year at the facility. Today the brewery occupies almost the entire foundry complex, including a building on the south side of the street; one of the Hecla buildings, 100 North 11th, is not occupied by Brooklyn Brewery, but it is landmarked by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. Thanks to this and the success of the Brooklyn Brewery, these historic structures will remain to tell the story of Brooklyn’s industrial past and continue its manufacturing traditions.

While Williamsburg’s waterfront was teeming with factories 100 years ago, if you traveled a bit farther east you would likely come across cows, pigs and chickens in the streets. East Williamsburg was once home to a large number of slaughterhouses (then know by the far more delicate term “abbatoirs”); livestock were brought to these facilities by boat, to the East River docks, or by rail, as the eastern side of the neighborhood was served by a terminus of the Long Island Railroad, where most of the slaughterhouses were clustered. Unlike major meatpacking cities such as Chicago, Denver, or Green Bay, Brooklyn lacked the space for vast stockyards and feedlots. It was a densely populated neighborhood, and animals were unloaded off of railcars and barges and driven through the narrow streets to be slaughtered and processed.

This arrangement was less than ideal for the residents, and several stories in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle recount incidents of cattle running wild in the streets, turning Williamsburg into a veritable Pamplona. One such incident, in August 1887, resulted in several people being gored by steer, including a 70-year-old woman, who received injuries “about the body and head” and was told by her physician that “she could not recover.” Here is a description of the mayhem:

The herd was turned into the latter thoroughfare [Manhattan Avenue] and went along peacefully enough until the corner of Guernsey street was reached. There a number of boys began hooting at them and pelting them with stones. The animals at once became frightened and dashed away in various directions. One of them, a great big red steer, started up Meserole avenue at full speed, its eyes glaring wildly in all directions. It turned into Leonard street, along which it dashed, followed by a great crowd of boys and men, until it reached Cayler street. There it encountered Daniel Murphy, 40 years of age, of 221 Bedford avenue. He tried to get out of the animal’s way, but was unable to. He was knocked down and tossed in the air. The steer then turned down Calyer street to Lorimer, along which it proceeded to Noble and thence to Franklin street. At the latter corner it gored Abraham Russell, 16 years of age, of 233 Manhattan avenue.

As the cows continued to rampage, the police were called out, and they began shooting the animals to prevent children from being trampled; one officer had to cut a cow’s throat with a butcher’s knife in the street. Brooklyn even had it’s own cowboys, who were paid $15 for every wayward cow they lassoed and returned to the owner. Despite the carnage wrought by marauding cows, the practice of driving them continued – in another story, this one from May 1900, local business owners petitioned the Department of Health to stop slaughterhouses from marching cattle through the streets.

Of course, Williamsburg’s slaughterhouse row was relatively small compared to Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, which boasted more than 250 facilities in 1900. The historic center of Brooklyn’s meatpacking industry was actually downtown, near the junction of Atlantic Avenue and 5th Avenue, where Armour and Swift had large plants. These closed in the 1980’s, and today the site is largely taken up by the Atlantic Center mall.

Despite this change, food manufacturing remains a staple of Brooklyn’s economy. Meatpacking is done on a much smaller scale, and there are no longer cows running through the streets, but different food industries abound. While a former foundry has been turned into a brewery, a former brewery, the Otto Huber, has been turned into a food factory, as the home of TMI Food Group, a manufacturer and distributor of Asian food products. The area along the border of East Williamsburg and Bushwick is today known as the Tortilla Triangle due to the large number of tortilla factories in the area. And there are many, many more.

New York City may not have the same reputation for hard work and industry as the cities meeting on the gridiron on Sunday, but the past and present story of manufacturing in Brooklyn shows that its “blue collar” credentials match up with any city in America.

If you would like to learn more about the city's efforts to preserve and expand manufacturing jobs, visit Made In NYC. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment.

For the second year in a row, we made the journey to the Staten Island Zoo to hear the prognostications of Chuck, New York City's only forecasting groundhog. Waking up to a city covered in a sheet of ice – and this coming after the snowiest January on record – we could all use a bit of good news when it comes to the weather. As hoped, Chuck predicted spring's rapid approach. It should be noted that his report was related to the public by way of a medium, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said before the groundhog had even been rousted from this lair that he expected a call of early spring. Like the rest of us, the mayor may have been projecting his hopes onto Chuck, and it undoubtedly influenced his translation of the Groundhogese.

In addition to the mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and other local dignitaries, Buddy Valastro and the crew of Cake Boss made the trek from Hoboken through the ice and slush to present a special cake for the occasion. We didn't get a slice, but who wants cake at 7:30 in the morning? (Answer: the many, many small children in attendance). Unlike last year, Chuck and his more famous counterpart, Punxsutawney Phil, were in agreement, as neither saw their shadows; Connecticut Chuckles, who resides in Manchester, also called for early spring. We will never know, however, what Malverne Mel saw when he emerged from his burrow this morning, because his prediction ceremony was canceled due to the weather.

So, another year, another Groundhog Day, another call for winter's end – we shall see what the next six weeks have in store.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. All photos are by Andrew Gustafson.

With another winter storm approaching, tour guide Adam Davidson offers some suggestions for things to do when the city is newly blanketed in snow.

New York is a great city year-round, but in the winter we all tend to go into a little bit of hibernation. However, even when the weather seems to get the best of us, there are actually new opportunities to enjoy the city. Given the recent weather, I wanted to compile a list of some of my favorite New York opportunities that a Snow Day brings, especially when a snow day for you means a little bit of extra time off.

Go to the Park - The snow seems to stay a little more pristine, the people a little happier, the kids a little more wild in the city's parks. Heck, on an impromptu day off it’s a great place to act like a kid again. Bring your sled, or (clean!) garbage can lid, out to Prospect Park, Central Park, or any open space with a snowy slope for an extra dose of age regression.

Drink Mulled Wine and Hot Cider – Nothing like a snow day to make you want a hot drink, and let’s face it, hot alcohol is even better. Mulled Wine, Hot Toddies, and Hot Cider make their appearance all over menus in the winter and these are some of the best days to enjoy them. Even better – get the ingredients to make them yourself at ...

Go to Trader Joe's  - It’s no secret that a trip to Trader Joe's, especially the one at Union Square, involves some foresight and a game plan. Yes, the Greek Yogurt, Joes O’s, and Spinach Lasagna at half the price of anywhere else are worth it, but actually having the time to go is another thing. Since people like to stay home on snow days, you can just breeze right through as if this was a normal grocery store, and their subway-adjacent locations are usually a breeze to get to in bad weather.

Avoid the Crowds – Speaking of Trader Joe's, one of my biggest love/hate relationships with New York is the crowds. Snow days are great days to avoid them, so long as your destination is open.

Cook – What’s the good of leisurely stocking up at Trader Joe's if you’re not going to cook something? Use that kitchen-y thing you use to store take-out menus to cook something. It’s a satisfying and creative way to use your extra time at home (you can even try some of the wintertime recipes we've featured on this blog).

Build Intersection Snowmen – Those piles of snow can stay for a while if they are off the foot path. Build a snowman right there on the sidewalk. Heck, build an army of them guarding the intersection. You might be surprised how long they last and defend delight.


Ski – I’m not much of a skier, but there is honestly something pretty wonderful about seeing someone ski down Broadway, or the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, on fresh snow before the plows do their deed. If you love skiing, or you would like to try it, check out the Winter Jam NYC in Prospect Park Saturday, February 5, where you can watch skiers and riders, take a lesson, or just tool around in the snow.

Take Some Pictures – New York has always been a photogenic city. This is doubly true on a snow day as it seems like someone hit the pause button on street life and covered it with fluffy whiteness. Capturing this can be an adventure in itself, and goes well with any other activity.

If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for updates via email in the box above on the right (this is separate from the Urban Oyster email newsletter). For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Adam Davidson. Photos courtesy Adam Davidson, Andrew Gustafson and Cindy VandenBosch.

I know that Christmas is long over, and I'm sure that after being walloped by snowstorm after snowstorm, most New Yorkers are wishing that winter was over and done with as well. But I promised you more holiday recipes, and this is one that you can enjoy all year round, and hopefully, it will conjure images of warmer climates free of snow shovels, idle plow trucks, and frozen mountains of uncollected trash.

Many people lament the cultural and commercial juggernaut that is Christmas. Before you have even had time to take off your costume and pull down your decorations for Halloween, store shelves are stocked with candy canes and Christmas lights. The Twelve Days of Christmas is now a two-month marathon of shopping and television specials. But if you think America's Christmas season is long, one country may have us beat – Trinidad and Tobago.

Lots of countries celebrate the holiday with great enthusiasm, and they have their own unique customs. But in many ways, Trinidad and Tobago sets itself apart. I will not pretend to be an expert on Trinidadian food and culture – there are many, many better sources of information on the Internet and around New York City. So many that in fact, according to the 2000 US Census, there were 88,794 people born in Trinidad and Tobago living in the city, making New York technically the largest Trinibagonian city in the world.

As a Trinidadian explained to me recently, they don't celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving, meaning there are no other holidays obstructing the celebration of Christmas, so why not start partying in September? Well, that's not entirely true; due to the country's substantial population of people of South Asian descent, the Muslim holiday of Eid and Hindu Diwali are also widely celebrated in the fall. But the key word is party – unlike our rather sedate family-oriented traditions (office Christmas parties and Santa Con excepted), Trinidadians like to kick back on Christmas. Nothing expresses this attitude better than the country's unique brand of Christmas music. There are actually two kinds – parang, which is related to the folk music of nearby Venezuela, and soca parang, a fusion of parang and calypso that is sung in English. While familiar imagery like Santa and his sleigh abounds, song titles like "Drink Ah Rum" and lyrics like this suggest a slightly livelier celebration than we are used to in the US:

Santa leave the North Pole and come down to Trinidad
He say it too cold in the North Pole
So he couldn't stay, he come down right away
To have some fun in this land of sea and sun.

Soca Santa, don't leave your bag of toys
Don't forget you have to share it with every girl and boy
Soca Santa don't want to ride no sleigh
In a big time Toyota gallivanting all day.

Inspired by the Trinidadian love of Christmas, I decided to make a batch of ginger beer, a traditional drink during the holidays. It's easy to make – though it will need to sit for several days – and it packs a lot of flavor without any alcohol. I got the recipe from Trinigourmet.com, a great resource on West Indian cooking. To make this beverage you will need the following ingredients and cooking implements:

1 lb fresh ginger
1.5 lb sugar
1 gallon water
20 whole cloves
Cheese grater
Wire sieve
Funnel
One-gallon glass jug or container

Once you have assembled these ingredients, follow this recipe. Steps 1 and 5 are the most labor intensive – peeling a full pound of ginger took me about a half an hour. After it had steeped for two days, I don't know how long I "pounded out the ging," but I was definitely sweating by the end. It doesn't say how to pound in this recipe, but what I did was place the grated ginger in a wire sieve over a mixing bowl and used the bottom of a Coke bottle and my fists to pound out the juice (as pictured right). This produced a cloudy, greyish-yellow liquid without too much pulp in it. Rather than pour the ginger juice, sugar, water and cloves into several small bottles, as this recipe suggests, I poured it all into a single one-gallon jug (pictured above) and closed it with a cork. With this recipe, the ginger flavor will really knock your socks off, perfect if you're battling a cold. But if you would prefer not to instantly clear your sinuses, I suggest cutting it with seltzer – one-third ginger beer and two-thirds seltzer makes a delicious, refreshing soda. I don't know how long this beverage is supposed to last, but I'm still sipping on it four weeks after Christmas, and it still tastes pretty good.

Normally you would drink this ginger beer with a meal of ham or turkey, pastelles, and for dessert, Trinidadian black cake. My family usually has a pretty traditional Christmas celebration; we gather for a big Christmas dinner (this year we had a ham), but the addition of ginger beer and a little parang for background music made the holiday a bit livelier and more memorable. So I hope you enjoy your homemade ginger beer, and even though Christmas is almost a year away, there are plenty of other Trinidadian holidays coming up where you can partake, most notably Carnival – Trinidadians love to boast about their Mardi Gras celebrations, which they claim put Rio and New Orleans to shame – and Brooklyn's West Indian Parade, which takes place on Labor Day weekend.

If you want to learn more about Trinidadian food and culture, join us for our Food Cart Tour of Midtown. One of the featured carts on Wednesdays and Fridays, Trini-Paki Boys, is run by Trinidadian native Fatima and her son Mohammed. As the name suggests, the dishes they serve are part of the island's tradition of fusing African, Caribbean, and South Asian cuisine, which is what makes Trinidadian food so unique and delicious. Visit their cart (located on north side 43rd Street near the corner with Sixth Avenue) for favorites like doubles, roti, curry goat, steamed fish with dumplings and their delectible cow foot soup. I bought the ingredients for my beer at East Williamsburg's Moore Street Market, which was featured in an earlier blog post, and where we will be offering a Latin American food and culture tour in the coming months. Finally, if you can't get enough parang, Trinigourmet.com has an extensive article on it, and WNYC did a piece last year about it and other Christmas music from around the world.

So enjoy some ginger beer, turn up the parang, and think about the warmer weather ahead.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions for other traditional holiday cuisine, please leave a comment or contact Andrew Gustafson (andrewg@urbanoyster.com). Special thanks go to Brian Hoffman and Allison Radecki, the tour guides for our Food Cart Tour, for their help with this post. The bottom photo in this post is courtesy Jennifer Strader Photography; all other photos are by Andrew Gustafson unless otherwise noted.

This post was written by Brian Hoffman, an Urban Oyster tour guide who regularly leads our Food Cart and Brewed in Brooklyn tours. Brian also has a food blog, Eat This NY, about his search for the best foods in the city, and he produces a web video series about this quest.

I'm still relatively new to this whole blogging thing. I started my food blog just over a year ago and up until now, it's just been me and my Wordpress (with a quick meaningless fling with Blogspot). But now that my blog is getting more attention (and I'm a tour guide with Urban Oyster), it might be time for me to see what else is out there. And I love my blog so much (I'd never leave it), but there's no harm in looking and testing the waters, right?

So that's why I decided to write a guest blog post for Urban Oyster's blog. Andrew had asked me a while ago to contribute something, but I was so busy with my own posts and my own blog that I deflected his advances. But it got me thinking about the whole blogging culture.

When I was younger I tried keeping a diary, but I was never any good at it. At first, I would write to the diary as if it were a person and even referred to how much fun it (the diary) would have had if it had been present at one of my plays or T-ball games. And then as I got older, I kept a journal but always put off writing entries. Ultimately, I'd be filling in what I did weeks later. I had the same problem with a planner when I discovered I was sort of just documenting past appointments rather than entering in things to be done in the future.

So I never was attracted to the idea of starting a blog. I didn't know who would want to read my entries and as I had learned from previous documentation experiences, it ended up being more of a hassle than a pleasure. But a few years ago I had this scheme (I always have some hare-brained scheme) to start an ice cream business. I loved making the creamy stuff and I dreamed big about having my own ice cream shop somewhere in Brooklyn. And I thought the more ice cream I sampled, the better and more savvy I'd be at starting a business. The easiest way to keep track of all the ice cream I tasted was by writing entries and I soon turned this into a no-frills ice cream blog.

I didn't tell anybody about this blog and when I read it back now, the writing isn't very good. I'm contemplating whether I should even tell you the name of it. I think I'll decline (although you could find a link somewhere on my current blog if you really want to know).

Brian searches for New York's best ice cream:

Then in late 2009, I approached a producer friend of mine with another of my schemes: an idea for my own TV food show. He agreed it was a great idea, but who would produce a show starring me? I was nobody. Just a guy who liked to eat. And how many of those are out there?

So he suggested I start small with a web series and a blog to build up credibility and a fan base. There it was again. The blog! I guess I would have to take the plunge and make this thing happen. So eatthisny.com was born. Some people blog for fun, others blog to document their meals or concerts, and some people blog for their business goals. And I'm amazed to discover that Eat This has become all three of those for me.

And much like a relationship (or a job), this blog seems to eat up all of my free time. We have moments together where we gaze into each other's eyes, the words and pictures flowing to create a beautiful post. Other times, we  have yelling matches where everything I type is wrong. But mostly, I stare at the screen and it stares back at me - comfortable in what we're doing together and how this journey to world food domination is coming along.

I was never "a blog person", but when I took the leap of faith and made a commitment, I've found the rewards to be rather rich and fulfilling. Just don't tell my blog I've been writing for this one. Just when things are starting to get good, I don't want it to get too jealous and run away with all my content.

Brian tries a variety of salted, cured meats:

Brian is currently counting down his top 100 dishes of 2010 (mentioned earlier here), and he recently included five of his favorite food items from some of the vendors featured on our Food Cart Tour (click here for tickets and information). 

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Brian Hoffman or post a comment. If you would like to follow the Urban Oyster blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for updates via email in the box above on the right (this is separate from the Urban Oyster email newsletter). Photos courtesy Jennifer Strader Photography.

At East Williamsburg's Moore Street Market, you'll find tubers of all shapes and sizes, tropical fruits like breadfruit, mango, bananas, and plantains, freshly made mole, ceviche-ready sea bass, and all the pasteles - frozen and prepared - that your heart desires. On most days, merengue melodies from Manuel Rivera's music stall fill the market with a warm and welcoming soundtrack, while shoppers and vendors chat with one another in Spanish and English.

As one of New York City's oldest indoor public markets, the Moore Street Market has always been more than just a place to shop. Since its opening in July of 1941, the market has been a gathering place for the newest immigrants to the Bushwick and Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn. In those early years, most of the vendors were Jewish and Italian, but as the demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods shifted in the 1950s and 60s, more Puerto Ricans and then Dominicans settled in the area, and the market went from selling herring and knishes to pork and pasteles. Today, as in the 1960s, the market is known by local residents as simply "La Marqueta." An important anchor for the Spanish-speaking communities of East Williamsburg, the market's current vendors hail from Mexico, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.

This spring, Urban Oyster will be launching a tour about the Latino community in the neighborhood with the stories from the vendors in the Moore Street Market as a centerpiece. Tour researcher and native Brooklynite Francisco Najera spent this past summer meeting with and interviewing 12 vendors at the market before leaving the city for graduate school.  Building on his research, Pedro Garcia and I are in the process of doing interviews with other area residents and business owners, some of which are recorded and will be put in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society.  I hope you'll join us for a tour when we launch in the coming months, but in the meantime, drop by La Marqueta and explore on your own if you've never been.  Pick up an unfamiliar piece of fruit or some veggies from Abby's Fresh Food and Meat Market; shrimp from the market's new vendor, Junior's Fish Market; or stop by the juice bar for a cup of avena, an oatmeal-based drink common in countries ranging from Colombia to the Dominican Republic. 

Holiday Vendors This Weekend
This weekend will be a great time to visit the Moore Street Market, as it will be one of the liveliest of the year. Tienda Las Gemelas, translated as "The Twins' Store" (run by a woman from Puebla, Mexico and her two twin daughters), will be selling baby dolls and baskets which they stock specifically for this time of year. At Christmastime, it's traditional in Mexico and other Latin American countries for children to bring baby Jesus dolls in decorated baskets to mass to receive blessings.  The Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, which manages  and operates the market, recently announced that several vendors will be making special appearances this holiday weekend.  Owner of Long Island City's Lucina's

 Gourmet Food, Desmond Morais, will be selling rum cakes, pound cakes, red beans and ripe plaintain turnovers, and more on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Saturday, Lucina's will be joined by Laura Siner, owner of Sweet Muse, who will be selling rich, fudge brownies in twelve different flavors wrapped up in decorative packaging for gift giving, and Pi Gluten Free, a socially conscious company that makes sweet and savory gluten-free pies.  On Sunday, Noemie Grenier, owner of Don Quichete, will be at the market with her self-described, "crusty yet creamy, satisfying yet light quiches."  Mmm...

Holly Trolley Ride along Graham Avenue
After visiting the market, walk one block east to Graham Avenue and a couple of blocks south to Cook Street and ride the historic trolley that will be making its way through the neighborhood between 11:00AM and 3:00PM on Saturday and Sunday, with the last trolley departing from Cook Street at 2:30PM.  Santa will be making an appearance on Saturday's trolley route and carolers will be out on both Saturday and Sunday. Hosted by the Graham Avenue Business Improvement District, this third annual Holly Trolley Event is free of charge and will be a fun way to complement a holiday afternoon in East Williamsburg. Visit the Graham Avenue BID's website for more details.

Holiday Church Tour
Last but not least, if you'd like to join us for our second annual Holiday Tour of Most Holy Trinity - St. Mary's Church, please be sure to reserve your tickets as soon as possible.  The tour will take place this coming Sunday, December 19th from 3:00PM to 5:00PM and again on Three Kings Day, Thursday, January 6th from 6:30PM to 8:30PM.  Tickets cost $20/person and must be purchased in advance because space is limited.  Click here to purchase tickets.  All profits from this tour will be donated to the Trinity Human Service Center which provides support to economically disadvantaged people of the city, especially to the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bushwick. 
Happy Holidays from Urban Oyster!

If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for updates via email in the box above on the right (this is separate from the Urban Oyster email newsletter). For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Cindy VandenBosch or post a comment.

The holidays are all about food. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is by far the most gluttonous in America, and while most of us bookend the season with a pair of large, greasy fowl, others partake of different foods and traditions, all of them imbued with historical and cultural significance. As we at Urban Oyster are gearing up for our own holiday celebration – this Sunday will be the first of our two special Christmas tours of Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary’s Church (get your tickets here) – I thought that we would write a few blog entries about different holiday foods and celebrations. From Scandinavia to the Caribbean to the American Midwest, we will share recipes and traditions that may be unfamiliar, but hopefully they will be tasty and will enliven your own holiday celebrations.

On Monday, December 13, I received an email from my sister. Contained within was a photo of my nieces, Catherine and Annika (pictured above), decked out in white robes and crowns made of plastic evergreens; Catherine, the eldest, had five electric candles atop her head. I had forgotten that it was St. Lucia Day.

For those of you who don’t regularly venerate saints on their feast days, or are unfamiliar with the folk traditions of Sweden, Monday was probably not a very significant day. But being vaguely Swedish (one-quarter to be exact), the holiday has been intermittently celebrated in my family since I was a kid. Like the feast of St. Nicholas and the winter solstice, St. Lucia Day is a December holiday that has many traditions and rituals wrapped up with Christmas (and vice versa). It has been widely celebrated in Sweden since the 1700‘s – the centerpiece of the holiday is when revelers process through the streets carrying candles, led by a girl in a white robe and a crown of candles, usually the eldest daughter of the family. My sister has embraced it mostly heartily in my family, I think in part because she has kids who fit the part. Though Catherine and Annika have their Swedish blood even more diluted by their Anglo-Irish father, their impossibly blonde locks would shoot them to the front of any St. Lucia Day procession in Stockholm.

The saint and the feast day are closely associated with Sweden, but Lucia is neither Swedish nor the country’s patron. Though the holiday is enjoyed by children, like most saints, the biography of St. Lucia is much too ghastly for young ears. A Christian living in the city of Syracuse in Sicily in the early fourth century AD, Lucia (or Lucy) was betrothed to a rich pagan man, but she rejected him and had her dowry disbursed to the poor. Upon hearing this, he denounced her as a Christian (which was then a crime), and she was tortured and executed, but not before a series of miracles prolonged her martyrdom, like when she continued to speak after he throat was slashed, and when the flame that was meant to burn her alive kept going out. Eventually her executioners became so exasperated that they just stabbed her to death. Lucy is often depicted holding a plate or cup containing her eyes, which were gouged out before her death.

Thankfully, none of these gory details are part of the holiday’s celebration. I wanted to mark the day myself, but since there are no St. Lucia Day processions to be found in Brooklyn, and Cindy had no interest in donning a crown of plastic candles (or real ones for that matter – hair catching on fire was a common problem in Sweden before the advent of electric light bulbs), I decided to celebrate by baking the traditional food of the holiday, Lussekatter, a sweet bun made with saffron.

I went online and found a recipe, and I was lucky to discover that I had all of the ingredients in my kitchen already. I borrowed the recipe from this article on About.com, so I’ll just direct you there. The buns turned out pretty well, as you can see – they’re not very sweet, but I would warn you about the saffron. I didn’t think it was possible to put too much saffron in something. I mean, it’s the world’s most expensive spice, it makes all foods delicious, and even the tiniest amount turns everything a deep, rich yellow color. But if you’re not used to that flavor in your desserts, go easy, using just enough to turn your batter mixture yellow, not deep orange, as I did.

Once the dough is kneaded and ready, you can form the buns into shapes. We stuck with the traditional “S”, which, though not unique to Sweden, does have special significance there. Scandinavia was the home of Vikings and Norse gods and all manner of nasty pagan things that Christianity has tried to stamp out, but they have now become integral to modern Christmas celebrations. Lussekatter are no exception – the traditional “S” shape was likely handed down from earlier pastries baked to celebrate Yule, the pagan solstice holiday. The cakes were also common treats on St. Nicholas Day, but Lutheran reformers stamped out the holiday in the 16th century (they considered the veneration of saints polytheistic heresy). The buns came back two centuries later when the reformist zeal died down and the veneration of different saint – St. Lucia – became popular.

Saints and desserts seem to go hand in hand. The Lussekatter has had a rather circuitous path to its place today as the official dish of the feast day, but another Sicilian martyr has a much more evocative namesake dessert. Earlier in life, Lucia had prayed to St. Agatha to heal her mother’s illness (it worked); Agatha had been killed 50 years earlier, also for her faith and her rejection of a powerful suitor. One of the many tortures she endured was having her breasts cut off, and like Lucia, Agatha is also portrayed carrying her dismembered organs on a plate. While we don’t remember Lucia’s sacrifice with eyeball soup (though the raisins in the Lussekatter could resemble eyes) or some other ocular-themed dish, in honor of Agatha, Sicilians eat a dessert called Cassatella di Sant’Agata, also known as Minni di Vergini (literally “virgin breasts"). It is a small cake with a cherry in the middle that looks remarkably like a breast.

So, you don’t have to be Swedish to celebrate St. Lucia Day, and you certainly don’t have to be Christian to enjoy some Lussekatter. If you do decide to share this tradition with your family, you might want to leave out the story of the eye-gouging and the burning at the stake and just stick to the pastries.