Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice, A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends in Veronica Rossi's revolutionary novel Rebel Spy.

Life hands out unexpected chances for an unknown, uneducated girl.

What can she do with this chance?

Even if you are uneducated, could you convince people that you are worthy of a huge inheritance?

Laura Horst and I are about to attempt such a feat.

Or at least we will talk about it.

All right.

Welcome, Laura.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

So we have a very unusual story.

Not too many books written about spies, women, spies of the revolutionary period.

And, you know, Laura, there is there is a key to what's going to happen in this book.

It's right inside the cover.

And I do want to read it here with me very carefully here.

I was made entirely of fabrications, my gown, my petticoats, my name, even the very blood in my veins.

But here was my chance.

Whatever anxieties I had, I would leave in the past.

Everything would be perfect now.

I sank into a deep curtsy.

Then I arose a lady who Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

Yes.

It was a good book.

This really good book.

Well, this Franny, She's Franny.

And she's also Emmeline isn't right.

Tell us who Franny is.

Well, Franny was a young woman who was a wrecker.

She drove.

She drove to seven fathoms.

So you've heard.

Heard about this?

Maybe where they're diving the wrecks to find the treasure.

Things like that?

Yes.

She was forced to do it by her mother's.

Right.

Horrible step.

Well, first step to stop step father.

Right.

And he'd sit and wait for her to come up with wherever she found.

And she was forced to do this.

Right.

Her name is Franny.

Franny.

And then she becomes Emmeline.

Tell us what happens with Franny becomes Emily.

Well, Franny, she found an opportunity.

She wanted to escape from her stepfather, who was just horrible to her.

And her mother had died, so she was a little panicked when he said he wanted her.

He wanted to marry her so she knew she had to get away.

And then she did.

But it was really unusual circumstances.

She was diving in a storm.

Yes.

And she ended up pushing the pushing the stepfather out of the boat.

But then when she had washed ashore, what happened?

Did you did she find she found out that she was named Emmeline and what, Emmeline Cotes.

And she found out this airline coats had drowned and she was set to inherit lots of money from her father.

Right.

And people mistake Franny, Is that Franny?

Yes, Franny.

For Emmeline.

And they think she is the one who is now going to inherit all of this money from her wealthy family.

Right.

The family's all dead.

And even given the young girl, Emmeline is dead.

But not Frankie.

Franny, Randi.

And they so Franny decided to take Emma Lyons clothes and become her?

Yeah.

To survive and escape school.

Her stepfather, he's off and running, keeps popping up in this book.

And I think, Oh, get rid of him.

But she is a smart person, but she realizes she's going to be staying with a man who's been appointed to be her guardian.

And he's very educated and his friends are very educated.

And she's going to be placed in the protection of another man who's very educated.

They're all very wealthy.

And she thinks, by gosh, I am just a wrecker.

I don't know how to do anything.

She didn't know how to curtsy.

She didn't know how to be.

She didn't know how to engage in small talk.

I mean, she was a real original, wasn't she?

Yeah.

So this was in the time of the revolution?

Yes.

Right.

American Revolution.

Shall we talk about our food?

Oh, let's do.

Let's do.

We've got to get to the food.

Right.

What are you making?

Well, I'm going to do some mulled cider.

And that time of.

Well, in that time, you would have had alcoholic cider.

But we're just going to do some mulled cider.

Sort of nice for the fall and winter.

And I'll be starting with some cider and then adding a few spices, and then we'll just let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

And then I'm also going to make some molasses cookies.

What are you making, Gail?

Well, I'll tell you.

I am making a corn potato bacon soup, which was very prevalent in those days and very simple and the more you read about this, I think I should put this in my repertoire.

It is healthy, It's got some starch in it.

But I have started with the bacon.

It's a matter of fact where I started it because I didn't want to keep my eye on it and it looks good.

And we add a little butter here to keep it shiny and, you know, not burnt so that actually this bacon is cooked.

We're going to add some chopped garlic right from the garden and chopped onions.

It's it's one small onion and this will cook.

Well, I'm going to add a little more bacon, then we'll add potatoes and would let it cook for about 20 minutes.

And then we will add What's my liquid?

Oh, my goodness.

Cream.

Now, they could have gone out and got it right from the cow.

That's right.

At my house growing up, we didn't have cream and so we would have milk.

And you can do this however you want.

You can make it with skim milk.

You can make it with lactose free milk.

Sure, you can make it with whatever you want if you want cream.

But I have cream and I'm going to put it in so it will be very rich and then I'll add I'll add some time and some Baileys and we'll let this cook and a little flour just to thicken it up and this is something they would have on a farm.

You'd have your bacon, you'd have your onions.

I mean, wonderful.

Have you garden, kitchen garden, bathroom, pluck some garlic and some time I have here, we're going to put that in.

Right.

So I'll be watching this as we talk about this.

When we're in here, we have Granny Slash to tell you, I added just a few pieces of orange peel, a little handful of cloves and some cinnamon sticks and those we're just going to let them simmer.

I think you could also add Ginger if you wanted to add Ginger, you could add some nutmeg, kind of what you have on hand.

And I'm sure if they were making in those times, it kind of depended on what they what they could get and what they had.

This right here is that this is a nutmeg, you know, that is like gold.

Yeah, that's nice.

Okay, James, you're a man.

They had to go to the to Indonesia to get some of these things.

Well, and there was a part in the book where they were talking about how the supply ships were being stopped and they were in New York and they just had almost nothing to eat.

They had no firewood.

Was it was harrowing.

Very harrowing.

I'm going to put the molasses in.

I already have some butter and eggs together and I'm going to put in about a quarter cup of molasses.

And I don't know if you like molasses, but it has a really interesting taste.

And if you don't like molasses, you probably could use sugar or I mean, I guess you could use honey or maybe you could use a carrot sirup.

They obviously wouldn't have had that then.

But honey, they would have honey appears in many recipes of that era.

Yeah.

And it's wonderful.

It's very healthy.

We did a cake for a Shakespeare book and it was topped and mixed with honey, and it was so good.

Try instead of sugar, which is not good for you.

And then what I'm adding in is a flour mixture.

That's flour and some of these spices.

So also cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, things like that.

And all the stir this dough up.

It was very easy to do.

And the recipe actually even has a where you can mix up the dry ingredients, put them in a jar, which is what I did.

And then you add your butter and sugar and molasses later and you can you can have about three batches worth actually.

So that's kind of neat cause you you probably could have put the the flour and save that in a in a jar.

And today you could put you can make the dough and put it in the freezer if you don't.

That's right.

That's right.

We have three things that are so helpful now.

So and I'm going to add a little flour in here because eventually we're going to thicken this and I've got a little butter in here, so we're going to cook this a little bit.

I'm going to add more potatoes.

I want this to cook at least 20 minutes.

So that's why I'm hurrying to get all these ingredients in here.

But this would be a very typical, but I think also a very special meal, don't you?

I mean.

Oh, yeah, I think for the time is even starting to smell good already.

I need to put in.

Oh, here they are.

Two bay leaves and toward the end I will add some fresh or you can use dried time.

And we have some vegetable broth.

We need that.

Of course I've got a box of it.

I probably would have it somewhere in the cupboard.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Otherwise we are getting things ready here.

You're all set with your cookie?

Yeah.

The cookie dough is going to be ready pretty soon.

And I will make those and I'll show you how you can get those mate.

Ready.

She said this thing about swimming with the sharks?

Yeah.

Do you have that?

I have that, yeah.

I'd swum with deadly sharks and stolen from deadly your man.

I'd survive hurricanes, war and even love.

But I didn't know if I'd survive this.

What is this in this story?

Well, wasn't it relationships with men or.

Yeah, married and being a very upperclass one, which she had learned from scratch.

She did.

She did have people that she liked help her.

It was amazing.

But they never knew her background.

No, they she would watch people.

She would watch them and she'd mimic how they ate, how they walked.

Right.

And if she trusted someone, she would ask them, What do you think about the way I look?

Right.

So and we're going to think about how our food looks at me in a minute.

We're going to take a break.

We want to show you some pictures of the revolution, every word.

Be nice to find one with the woman spy in the picture, but good luck with that.

And then we'll be right back.

And we're we're cooking our meal here for the 1700s.

I'm adding some corn right from my garden, you know, And we're going to add that you can add cream corn, you can add hunks of corn on the cob any way you like to do it.

But it's good.

And this is a hearty meal.

And I'm going to pick up on this one because I'm going to redesign what I'm making for dinner at home.

It's going to become more simplified.

It looks really lovely.

Really great.

Yeah.

So we know now that she is surrounded by very wealthy people, she's keeping her eyes open.

She does miss her old life in some ways, doesn't she?

Yeah, She sort of talked about losing her, her old self, her who she really was as Frannie, because now she has taken on the whole persona, thinking everything of Emily.

Right.

And upper class woman.

And this woman, she found out I was a I if this young Duncan asked me to marry him, I'm going to be a decoration, a jewel to be worn.

What does she actually mean about proper women?

And they're going to be something to look at.

Right, Right, right.

They they don't they're trapped sort of.

They can't be themselves.

And they're totally directed by their husband or their father or their guardian or who and they even tell them what they say and can't say.

And she's used to being you know, she's kind of a she's got this mouth that can swear and be lady and she misses that, doesn't she.

Well, I think she is.

Yeah I think she does.

And she's caught between to try to figure out who she is and what she wants to be and do.

I'm going to work on these cookies a little bit.

I'm just taking some of the batter and the dough that we made.

And I'm I have a little scoop, but you can just use a spoon, too.

And I'm putting it about a tablespoon or so maybe.

I guess it's.

Yeah, about a tablespoon.

And then we're rolling them in this raw sugar, so which just makes them really yummy.

Divine.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

I mean, Frannie probably didn't.

Wouldn't know how to make those nice cookies.

Well, in his mind, she.

Or maybe she wouldn't anyway.

Somebody else would be me.

You know, I was struck by she had all these support people for her.

So she didn't really have support people when she was Frannie.

Oh, but as Emmeline, she would have somebody to help her get dressed.

She would have somebody to make her food, take her places.

She couldn't go buy herself.

And actually, that's sort of how she got into spying, right?

She went to the bookseller and met up and found out he was finding out information about troop movement, British troop movement.

And she decided, oh, this is interesting.

And then she meets Duncan, this young man that the whole family thinks he might eventually marry.

She starts listening to him and what he says with his friends and she slowly becomes a reporter.

She reports it to someone else in the town.

Right.

And she rather likes this.

It's a little bit more like her old life.

And I had no idea there were women spies.

I mean, I guess you just have to think about it.

But, oh, obviously he had to have ways to get intelligence from one place to another.

And, you know, they didn't have the Internet.

They couldn't send an email.

So they would just cozy up to somebody is having a discussion and then they would.

Oh, oh, troop movement.

Right.

Oh, who's going to be where she reported it back?

And, you know, this really pulled her in and got her interested and she said, maybe I look like a jewel ready to be, you know, something designer.

But she now thinks life is worth living.

I mean, in the sense of I believe in this.

And I she didn't come right out and say, I'm going to be a spy or Yeah, or I can make a difference for her that that made a difference to her as well.

And and I also she got the idea of sort of the Patriots versus the loyalists from one of the first people she met on the ship once she was impersonating Emmeline Coats.

Yes, the lady da lady.

And that was Asia.

And a very good looking, very smart.

And he helped her.

He did help her.

He would she kind of confided in him.

He said if you're going to be a grande dame, he didn't use those words.

You have to walk with purpose.

You can't jerk around and and just look like you don't know what you're doing, right.

You have to be purposeful.

You have to walk elegantly.

And he even had her try it for him in one of the ship holes.

And, you know, they were he was helping her.

He was telling her, you know, how to behave and don't be so exuberant.

The best thing for a lady of means is to look like I could care less.

Right, right, right.

I have everything I want.

But, you know, she's this woman that was a diver, you know, What do you want?

Wrecker a wrecker because they do wrecks.

So.

Yeah, I hadn't heard of that term before, so.

But it is interesting.

You will hear more about it now that you've heard about it here, because you're aware of how these people that didn't have any means would save themselves.

That's why they would dive.

Women would dive and they'd bring it back and through someone else it would be sold.

And that's Franny's life, right?

And the other half that, had it been very difficult for not getting Frankie mixed up with Emmeline and the men she likes Duncan He is a gentleman.

She likes Assa Eisa, and he he is so clever, he's smart, and she confides in him and he does help her.

And they meet up and then they get separated.

He gets beaten up.

When the British come in on board their ship.

That's right.

They board the American eagle and ask the Americans and they weed out the men they want to take for themselves.

Right.

For their own army.

And Asia is one.

And he gets pummeled by the British.

So we have that going on.

We have it is interesting, the second time I know we had to turn the book in.

I just told them at the library, this is going to be about two months late.

I hope you don't mind.

And they said, Keep it because I said it's for dinner and a book and gold.

Keep it, they said.

And the second time around it made more sense to me.

And I kind of found it appealing and fascinating and made me think how many people in the United States came from this kind of background?

Many men.

But how many women?

Well, maybe changed their identity.

Yes.

When they came to the New World, came to the new World, left all of who they were before behind You could take on the name or some kind of name, like some mistress you had back in Scotland.

And you took the air she took and you could actually get away with it.

Right.

And, you know, I find that would be fascinating to me to read your book on that.

But so you're going to put these these up in the oven at 375 for about 7 minutes or so.

All right.

You're going to spread out a little ECI.

Really.

I you know, spread them out on the pan because they do sort of fall and spread out a little bit.

But they become a really nice, crisp cookie.

And I think you'll like it.

Oh, I know.

I'd like it.

And talk a little bit about your little vegetable.

Oh, yeah.

No one over there on this.

Oh, this looks really great.

Smells wonderful.

It does look cloves swimming around in there at half a fan.

And you were talking about this.

There are some pickled beets and some pickled dill beans is what I would call those.

And they would have used on.

Well, when I did a little bit of research, they would have pickled or preserved whatever kind of food they could.

And so maybe they had some beets.

I don't know, maybe they had beans.

But that's those are really pickled vegetables and you have to have a way to preserve them, to eat them later.

Yes.

And so here are your preserved your jars of preserved beets and green beans and even a little seed there for decoration.

Oh, I'm envious.

And this looks really lovely.

Know?

And you smell it.

I had a little error.

I should have made the potatoes in smaller bites, but, you know, I think it will be good today.

Nobody cares.

You can't make a big.

You can have them small, minuscule.

In any case, we're going to continue with our preparation and set the table right here.

We're inviting you to come in to what our kitchen is a revolution.

Revolution Kitchen?

Yes.

Whether it's Franny or Emeline.

And we're going to talk about what happens here toward the end of this story.

We'll be right back.

And our book is Rebel Spy by Veronica Rossi.

Here is this wonderful meal from the 1700s, right?

Right.

From your garden?

Yes.

And yours?

Yeah.

Well, you know, you do an excellent job of preparing your own food.

It's just terrific.

You grow it and prepare it.

We have finished our our soup here, this wonderful corn chowder, And I have some old cider.

We have some ready for us.

Take a taste and some molasses cookies.

Just ready, fresh out of the oven.

And then we even have some pickled vegetables that I made.

But that would be typical maybe of that time.

Typical.

Typical.

Did you ever go into the basement of someone who maybe now is in their nineties, they would have jars of these things in the live on it all winter long.

And I just wanted to say I enjoyed the book.

I really did.

I thought it was good.

So did I.

It's fiction, but it's based on a true story.

Based on the story of three, five, five, five, three, five, five men.

Lady, A woman that was of means.

That was a spy.

Yes, she was.

She was that she spied for George Washington and the end of the book, we're going to let you read the book for the ending.

But we do get into spy ships, though, not spy ships, prisoners, ships where they have thousands of men, American men imprisoned who look like they weigh 80 pounds.

They're horrendous.

They're horrible, horrible.

I mean, this soup looks like it's for the king compared to the soup they gave them on the spy ship, right?

Oh, terrible.

By wearing red, I tell you what the protein was.

But did you like the book?

I did.

I did.

I like the book.

And if you like historical fiction, you're going to really like this.

It draws right in.

It's a quick read.

It is a Quaker.

Yeah.

And she plays the part very well of two women from two different worlds.

And I wish her the very best.

Absolutely.

We're not going to tell you what happens.

Oh, no, no.

So thank you for joining us today, Laura.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm so glad to be here, Gail.

I'm so glad you are here.

Absolutely.

And thank you for watching.

Remember, good food, good friends, good books make for a very interesting and good life.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.