Maryland Public Television for Earth Day: Eatin’ The Chesapeake: The Five Feasts

Cream of Blue Crab soup, butter-broiled Bluefish, St. Leonard’s Stuffed Ham with collards, Wicomico Barbequed Chicken, baked n’ buttered yeast rolls, Crab Loaf, scalloped corn pudding, summer stewed tomatoes, fried clam fritters, sherry-dressed Crab Imperial, Smith Island Cake, Dog Days Succotash, Highlandtown Sauerbrauten and spatzle, Mock Turtle Soup, Duck in Aspic, Raised Pie, Fried Oysters, Baked Crab-Stuffed Rockfish, Sauteed Softshell Crab, icebox Crab Salad with Cantaloupe, farm-Beaten Biscuits and Lady Baltimore Cake. It reads like a banquet menu, but it’s really a Chesapeake feast. From the quiet brackish shallows at Elk Neck, Maryland to the rolling hills and beauty of southern Maryland farms, and on to the lively talk and song of Eastern Shore church halls, 400 years of seafood, seashore and traditional cooking is coming home to Marylanders and their neighbors. There are favorite Chesapeake-born dishes from colonial cookbooks, crab shacks, German home-kitchen cooks, southern Maryland farms, Eastern Shore chicken-fry kitchens and Smith Island fresh-off- the-boat Chesapeake supper tables.