Columnist

    One of the most surprising things about households in the 19th century is that most of them had hired help, even when the family was not all that rich. The reason is that there was just so much physical labor involved in keeping a clean house that extra hands were needed.
    Today we look at household hints published in the newspaper that give us a window into what those housekeepers had to go through.
    Let's start with a column from the June 13, 1865 Joliet Signal.

    New York City was the epicenter of cocktail culture both pre and post prohibition, so it is only fitting that the Big Apple is also the birthplace of the modern cocktail era.
    Manhattan's lower east side is home to Milk and Honey, the first establishment opened by the late Sasha Petraske in 1999. Petraske has been credited with inventing modern cocktail culture and would eventually open 10 bars before his death in 2015.  

    Perhaps the most intimidating aisle in any liquor store is the brandy/Cognac aisle. The prices on the bottles range from $7 to $700 or more, and you will find all kinds of VS and VSOP alphabet soup on the labels.
    This week we will decode the mysterious Cognac label and whip up one of the most iconic cognac-based cocktails, The Sidecar.

    Economic depressions have been with us forever. Hard times in our area especially are nothing new. Today we are taking the way-back machine to 1886 to see how Wilmington survived one of those times.
    Wilmington had done better than most area towns. The coal towns of Braidwood and Coal City had started feeling the pinch in early 1885, but it wasn't until January of 1886 that the first rumors of hard times in Wilmington started to surface.