News
New exhibits open at the local Tech Center
Scott Wagar
01/29/2013
Presently at the Bottineau Tech Center, there are two new local exhibits on display in association with the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit, Key Ingredients: America by Food, which shows two important entities when it comes to food in our nation.
Bottineau’s Key Ingredients committee has set-up a kitchen utensil exhibit, along with a lunch box display, which grant exhibit-goers the opportunity to see what it was like for local people in Bottineau County to prepare food or carry it with them on the go.
“When we as a committee spoke about these two exhibits we wanted to show people what utensil people used in the county to prepare food,” said Tim Davis, a member of Bottineau’s Key Ingredients committee. “We also choose lunch boxes because they were an important part of the county’s rural schools’ history, and also part of the people’s food experience in the county who had to carry food with them.
“Utensils and lunch boxes were key ingredients for those who prepared the food and those eating the food, especially for kids and adults who had to carry their meals with them either to country schools or the work place,” Davis added.
The display for the kitchen utensils, which were borrowed to the Key Ingredients committee by Karen Larson, shows a number of items that were utilized to bake. Some of the items include sifters, rolling pins, a spice and nut grinder, kitchen scale, ice crusher and a butter pat maker.
Larson also lent her prize possession to the exhibit, a Hamilton Beach mixer which dates back to the 1930s.
“It’s the oldest working Hamilton Beach mixer in the state,” Larson said. “I had it in a contest competing to see if I had the oldest mixer, which I did. However, I dropped out after I was told I would be named the winner, because I was told I would have to give them the mixer to keep if I won. The winner won $100 dollars, but I wanted the mixer more, so I dropped out.”
Individuals who take in the utensil exhibit will see a number of rolling pins and sifters.
“All my sifters have wooden knobs on them, I don’t collect them unless they have the wooden knob on them,” she said. “In my collection, I also have a left handed sifter, which was important to have if you were left handed because you couldn’t sift with a right handed sifter if you were left handed.
“My most favorite sifter is a triple sifter which is on display over at the Tech Center. What makes it so interesting is that it has three levels of screens, where the flour is screened from the top to the bottom, giving a baker the finest flour to bake with,” Larson stated. “This type of sifter is often called a cake sifter because cake makers needed the finest flour to bake cakes.”
The lunch box display comes to the Smithsonian exhibit from the Bottineau County Museum, and it holds a variety of lunch boxes. From syrup cans, Crisco containers, to modern day plastic lunch boxes with carton characters on them. The exhibit gives a detailed, historical image of what it was like for kids to carry their lunch boxes to school.
One unique lunch box in the exhibit belongs to Angus Campbell, who attended rural school at Oak Valley District School, No. 18, School No. 1, in Oak Valley Township, which was located between Bottineau and Gardena.
While attending the one-room schoolhouse from 1931 to 1939, Campbell carried his lunch in the lunch box for four years.
“I went to a country school for eight years and I carried that lunch box for half of the years I went there,” Campbell said. “I started out with a syrup pail, but was given the lunch box as a birthday gift I believe.”
During those four years, Campbell carried sandwiches made from homemade bread with peanut butter, jelly, or on the rare occasion, canned meat on the bread. Besides a sandwich, he also carried an apple or orange in the lunch box.
Although Campbell cannot remember where the lunch box came from, he believes it was purchased from one of the three hardware stores which were part of Bottineau’s downtown business district at that time.
The more modern lunch boxes have something the older ones do not, thermoses, which are also on display in the exhibit.
The Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit, Key Ingredients: America by Food, is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The exhibits are open to the general public and admission is free.