The church records, kept in immaculate German script, suddenly end in 1791. For more than half a century, the congregation vanished, only to appear once more in 1847

In the years after the Revolutionary War, fear gripped tightly around the small Salzbarrick (Salisbury) area nestled on the slope of Lehigh Mountain.

I remember well my mother and grandmother descending below the roadway to pick from the dense thicket of watercress. It was an annual tradition in the spring to get the plant at its most tender.

This recipe comes from Gram’s family who lived down near Center Valley in Lehigh County. According to my great aunt (born in 1901), it was an old one handed down from home.