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DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 47 of Indian Corn”. We turned the book to the page hol­ding a recipe on buckwheat, one of the many crops grown by George Washington. Buckwheat was a seed favoured for its nutritional value, and its dried leaves were used for tea. Buckwheat was also ground into flour to make griddles and pancakes using a large bowl like the one Lucy worked with. Fig. 5: Banner and display case inside the library. Photo taken by the author, 2016. woman cooking while hunched over a hearth, while a child sits on her lap. The banner colour is in hues of red to highlight the heat and fire of the hearth and the situation. The display case for this banner contained three assets from the eighteenth century Washing­ton collection—a mixing bowl, rolling pin, and knitting needle. This juxtaposition of objects was to emphasise that the work of the enslaved was never done. Plan­tation cooks like Lucy used the large bowl to make bi­scuits or bread. They would leave the dough to rise for hours, and then thump it, sometimes using the side of a rolling pen, for another hour until it was smooth and elastic. While she waited for the dough to rise, she was expected to knit stockings and tend to the other food that was simmering over the hearth. And she might do these tasks while watching small children and/or supervising other kitchen workers. Other assets in the display case included a recipe book from the NLM collection— An Enumeration of the Principal Vegetables, and Vegetable Producti­ons ,“by the Author of Some Information on the Use Fig. 6: Installing the large mixing bowl. The display case would also include the knitting needle and the rolling pin. Photo taken by the author, 2016. An adjacent display case held a similar, smaller bowl included from the Mount Vernon collection. This bowl was suggestive of the kind used by“Old Doll”, an aged slave who was sometimes still summoned to the kitchen to make mint water and any other food. George or Martha Washington would often sum­mon their enslaved, regardless of the hour, to create a menthol drink to help relieve a sore throat, upset stomach, or indigestion. A recipe book entitled, The Compleat City and Country Cook: or, Accomplish’d Housewife., by Charles Carter(1732), with an entry for“A cordial mint water”, was used as well as faux springs of mint and an imaging plate depicting the mint herb from the NLM. The fifth banner, titled“Labored Meals”, highlighted ways in which slavery put in place social and culina-