Day Family Cookbook

Preface to the original Day Family Cookbook, December 1985

So here is the first installment of our cookbook. The recipes have been gathered over the years from various sources: the Day and Bailey side of the family as well as the Stinchfield and Maxim side, friends, neighbors, and favorite cookbooks....

-- Florence S. Day
-- Katherine B. Day
-- Margaret H. Day
-- Martha L. Day

Cracker Valley begins at the watershed between the Big and Little Ossipee Rivers in York County, Maine. The valley now occupied by the 1985 Days, successors of the 1774 Days, starts at the old cave by schoolhouse #10 on the Long Pond Road going through the Kennard neighborhood, leading towards Long Pond. In the valley are four farmhouses and barns and these are listed in "More About Early Cornish" compiled by Ellis and Millard (pages 99-109).

The term "Cracker Valley", as I remember it from hearing my grandmother talk, comes from back in the days when they were so poor that they used to raise a pig and come fall they would slaughter it. Half would be pickled, salted, and smoked and otherwise used by themselves, while the other half they would trade to the store at East Parsonsfield in return for a barrel of crackers. Supposedly this barrel of crackers would give them their crackers and milk for the winter. Every farm had its own cow so there was always a surplus of milk, cottage cheese, and some butter to sell and trade to the store for kerosene, molasses, and other staples. So thus we have always called our little valley "Cracker Valley" as a tribute to those tough days when life was at the barter stage for survival with crackers and milk as the mainstay of the family diet.

-- Russ Day

Addendum to the 2nd edition of the Day Family Cookbook (year?):

Cracker Valley, as you read on the first page of this cookbook, got its name because the original folks were so poor trying to live off land they wrested from the forests of South Cornish, Maine, they needed to swap half of their fall-slaughtered pig for a barrel of crackers. They, having a "grass converter," a cow giving milk ate a lot of crackers, milk, and cottage cheese over the winter.

We humans can't efficiently assimilate grass and vegetation into calories, vitamins and amino acids, but grass-eaters, cattle, goats, sheep, horses, deer, moose, rabbits, etc. are superb vegetation--into-human-food converters. This has been the history of mankind---cultivate, develop and harvest grass-eaters to our use, and as the meal benediction says, "Oh, Lord, bless this food to our use and thus to thy service."

An example of the use of crackers by previous generations in Cracker Valley is the following recipe for Cracker Pudding, which we have in the original handwriting of Freda Johnson Pendexter who lived in the original home of Edmund Kennard (1807-1881--see page 103 of "More about Early Cornish"---A Walk Up Hessian Hill and Down Into Cracker Valley - Ellis & Millard Jan. 1975). The farm now belongs to the Roger Day family.

Freda (1873-1963) and Will Pendexter, who had no children, lived off 45 acres at the head of Cracker Valley from the site of Cornish school house #10 to our Grandmother's and Uncle Bert's. Their main source of income was the cream from 3 or 4 cows which they sold in East Parsonsfield. That plus veal calves and working on the road to pay town taxes, selling a bit of firewood and working out as a hired man gave them the cash income to trade for salt, flour, nutmeg, sugar, kerosene, salted cod fish and patent medicines. Food came from their garden, several apple trees, wild berries, a pig fattened on skim milk and a few chickens. maybe a trout or bass caught in the summer. There were very few deer in Cracker Valley until l920s.

There always was a "very close" neighborly connection between Freda, Grandmother Alice and Uncle Bert. Uncle Bert was "mainstay" for Freda after Will died and for the Kennard women, Little Bert, Big Bert and Ruby Kennard. Aunt Hattie used to joke about Bert taking care of his women farmer neighbors!

So dear friends of the late 1980s, here are two old recipes for your cookbook which we have in Freda's handwriting.

-- Russ Day