It has been a while since I posted. First I was busy procrastinating my medical school secondary applications and then my parents came to town so I was busy eating out every night. I don't even have a new recipe to post, so I thought I'd post my pictures of Monticello while I find the time to cook something good enough to post.
Last weekend, on a day trip from DC to Virginia, I visited Monticello with my parents, my aunt and my boyfriend. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but if I could, I would have I would have posted a picture of Thomas Jefferson's dining room which was painted this electric, ocher, yellow called "Chrome Yellow." The effect of the white and green china reflecting the color of the walls made the room glow. There was also a dumb waiter leading up from the wine cellar to the dining room so wine could be easily transported from below the house.
The room I of course have to post a picture of is the kitchen. Because the kitchen was outside, pictures were allowed. Jefferson had a state of the art kitchen for the time with an eight burner stove with adjustable heat. It doesn't sound like much now, but you have to remember that most people cooked over the fire in their hearth and that was it. Jefferson was a French food aficionado whose cook trained in France while Jefferson was minister to France from 1785 to 1789.
On a sort of political note, during the tour, all of Jefferson's slaves were either referred to as "servants" or "enslaved persons." I thought that the former obscured reality, but that the latter was a decent alternative to slave but still a bit too politically correct. Thomas Jefferson only freed six slaves during his lifetime; all of them were Hemmings. After Jefferson died all his slaves and belongings were sold to cover his debt. The picture below is of the Cook's room, which is a misleading name because the cook and his family lived in that room.
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