New and Old #268
Aged ham, smoked lunch meat, the big TV screens of yore, and local soda-brand trivia
The Art of Aging Well, The Piedmont Virginian, April 10, 2018, Pam Kamphuis
This is an article I wish I had written, and which I roughly had the idea to write, but it was already done, and the business owner it’s about has retired, so his store and product are not around anymore.
It’s about Tom Calhoun, who owned Calhoun’s Ham House in Culpeper, Virginia for many decades. He made Virginia country ham, a much saltier and longer aged kind of ham than what you probably think of as “ham.” They’re a little like prosciutto, but are soaked and boiled, not eaten cured-but-raw.
Country ham is kind of an old-fashioned product, and there are not many producers of it left. But it’s a bit of a Southern specialty and is appreciated by a lot of people:
Today, Tom estimates that he goes through about 5,000 hams a year. While that’s a miniscule number compared to larger operations, Tom is quick to point out that he doesn’t wholesale. “Nobody gets a special price,” he declares. “Everybody pays the same.” And, for Tom, “everybody” includes quite the A-list of clients. He regularly provides his hams to numerous local restaurants, including The Inn at Little Washington, which has been a customer of his since beginning their operations, and to Red Truck Bakery in Marshall and Warrenton. His hams have also made regular appearances at the White House. Bill Clinton was his first presidential customer—Clinton’s chef requested a ham during the administration’s first year. “They’re from Arkansas,” Tom says. “Arkansas does country ham.”
This is how he made them, roughly. I had wanted, for my imaginary story like this, to visit and photograph his aging room and compare it to the prosciutto hanging room I saw in Italy:
Today, Tom uses his own proprietary cure that he rubs over a ham until it’s about a quarter of an inch thick. He likens the process to applying a dry rub before grilling. Afterward, the ham sits on a shelf in a refrigerated room for two weeks. Then, Tom rinses off the cure. Many would stop there, but Tom doesn’t. He re-applies the cure, viewing it as a point of pride that all his hams are cured twice. After another four weeks, he explains, the salt will have worked its way down to the bone. Some people smoke their hams at this point, but not Tom. “They look smoked,” he says, but for him the final step in the process is to take the re-rinsed hams and hang them from a rafter for between six months and a year, during which the hams sweat out their remaining moisture. “Then you’ve got yourself a Calhoun country ham,” Tom proclaims.
It seems Calhoun imagined that his business would outlive his retirement:
And where, one might ask, does Calhoun Country go from here? To start, Tom has no plans for expansion. His daughter has already informed him that when he finally does retire, she has no interest in running some huge conglomerate—she just wants to run a small business, as he always has. Not that he’s planning on quitting anytime soon. “I don’t know why they worry about me,” he says, chuckling. “I’m only 85. I’ve got another 15 or 20 years here yet.” And, to be sure, he remains hands-on with the business every day. “I don’t do very good with that thing,” he admits, motioning at the computer on his desk. “But I’ve got two granddaughters I’m training on it.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But read this piece, and it’s great that somebody wrote it.
The Legend of Lebanon Bologna, Taste Cooking, Brad Thomas Parsons, May 14, 2019
We’re doing two aged/smoked meats today, yes.
Seltzer’s in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, about five minutes from Hershey Park, is the leading producer of Lebanon bologna and has been making it since 1902. The process starts when 85 to 95 percent lean beef from forequarter cuts is coarsely ground and laced with salt, sugar, and a proprietary blend of spices. The only one listed on the Seltzer’s label is paprika, but I suspect cinnamon, clove, ginger, white pepper, and allspice are involved in the mix….
“The old-fashioned part of our process is definitely the smokehouse,” says Seltzer’s sales manager Perry Smith, referring to the 10 narrow, three-story buildings where the bologna is cold-smoked in a haze of hardwood smoke for up to three days. Seltzer’s is the only federally inspected meat plant in the country still using natural smoke; most producers have adopted automated stainless-steel smokehouses, which speed up the process to hours instead of days by relying on a smoke generator to provide clean, consistent, continuous smoke.
Lebanon bologna is available in little prepackaged packs in supermarkets here in Northern Virginia, but I don’t think it’s carried at deli counters and I bet most people who don’t already know what it is have never tried it. I really like it. I bought some different brand at a butcher/deli shop during our recent trip out to Amish Country, and I think the Seltzer’s is better, but I like it. It’s one of maybe relatively few truly local foods that are still both a big thing where they’re from and not commercialized or blandified by everyone else.
Joe Beddia, owner of Pizzeria Beddia in Philadelphia, grew up in Lancaster, and while he hasn’t had Lebanon bologna in years, he has fond memories of the local lunchmeat. “I remember being a little kid, and my mom would have the kind of dinner parties where she’d carve a basket out of a watermelon, and she would take the Lebanon bologna and put cream cheese in it and roll it up and slice pinwheels out of it and serve it speared with a toothpick,” says Beddia. “My mom was very precise in her design. That was a fancy hors d’oeuvre in Lancaster in the early ’80s. It was such a treat. It was so comforting, you know?”
Such a nice read, even more so if you like the stuff.
Party In The Rear, Tedium, Ernie Smith, September 22, 2024
First of all, I had no idea rear-projection televisions went way back, almost to the beginning of television technology:
The first example I can find of a rear-projection set, per former Philips employee and electronics historian Pieter Hooijmans, was the TEL6, which was developed around 1936 and 1937, and was used as the test model for the “Philips Television Caravan,” a trailer that transported the television experience across Europe so consumers who didn’t own a TV could get an up-close experience with the set. It was also displayed at Radiolympia, a CES-style event for the radio and television industry that took place in the United Kingdom in the 1930s. At the 1937 event, the Evening Standard described a television set with “quite a small cathode ray tube capable of producing a picture brilliant enough for projection on a flat screen measuring 20ins by 16ins.”
In fact, that was precisely because standard, direct-view pictures tubes weren’t that good yet, but as they became better they outpaced the rear-projection technology:
Given all the work that these big manufacturers put into rear-projection TVs, why wasn’t this the model that ultimately took over? Simply put, cathode ray tubes got a lot better. Manufacturers figured out ways to make the tubes wider and shallower, and to fit in more settings. (See the Watchman example we cited above.) And that meant all this complicated smoke and mirrors to get a reasonably-sized TV screen wasn’t necessary.
After a comeback and some refinements of the technology, including DLP televisions which didn’t use small hidden pictures tubes at all, rear-projection TVs dominated the big-screen market for a period, and lasted longer than traditional CRTs:
92”: The size of the Mitsubishi 840 3D DLP Home Cinema TV, one of the last rear-projection TV sets ever produced. Made in 2011, the 1080p TV reflected Mitsubishi’s attempt to focus on the absolute high end of the market after LCD screens became popular. It clearly had reached its limits, because the company stopped selling rear-projection CRTs in 2012.
I love this kind of little compact history on something ordinary, commonplace, yet kind of invisible and increasingly forgotten.
Saw this at a convenient store near the job, ever heard of this brand?, Reddit
This is about Rock Creek, an old D.C.-area soda brand that was bought out by Canada Dry and is only available in the D.C. area.
Here’s one commenter’s interesting bit of trivia about it:
Rock Creek Lime has been on my list of sodas to try for years! Closest thing to Canada Dry Island Lime, they were bottled at the same bottler I Believe, or at least it was at some point before Canada Dry of Pennsauken, NJ became the only ones still making the non-ginger ale Canada Dry flavors.
Curious if it’s bottled at the Glen Burnie Canada Dry Plant, they used to bottle the non ginger ale Canada Dry’s as well but I don’t think they have for at least ~5 years at this point.
There are so many quirky business and brand stories like this. I find them interesting, and especially those in places where I’ve lived. I have never seen Rock Creek soda myself, though I’ve never really paid much attention to the various brands outside of the familiar national names, either.
Related Reading:
Another excellent local soda was Northern Neck Ginger Ale, from the Northern Neck region of Virginia. Had more of a ginger-y bite than a typical ginger ale -- really good! I think it was purchased by Coca-Cola at some point and then discontinued during the pandemic.
Now I am hungry. That is impressive, given that I am taking a glp-1 which has helped me lose 6 lbs in 6 weeks. The country ham sounds so perfect. For a long time I have wished for something like prosciutto but a touch less extreme.