Powder Puff

Has cleansing and powdering my face every morning made any improvements in my appearance? It's hard to tell. What I can tell you is that I'm getting to know my face in a whole new way. I had no idea that I had so many blemishes! My nose and the center of my forehead have large pores and there's a furrow starting between my brows. Yikes! When did that appear? So this is what comes of spending all this time looking at myself in the mirror!!! Well, I guess I would have discovered these blemishes sooner or later. Better to find them now and get cracking on repairs. :)

I started my new mission yesterday morning with a container of Maybelline New York Shine Free Loose Powder. (Maybelline was around in the '40s, but only as a brand of eye cosmetics. They didn't expand to the face until the '70s.) I don't think I've ever purchased loose powder. I usually have a compact of pressed powder on hand, but am continually frustrated when the powder starts to harden and I can't get any more on the puff. When I was growing up, my older sister - whom I idolized - had a little vanity in her bedroom. She was still too young for most cosmetics, but she did have a container of loose powder and I can remember sitting at her vanity when she wasn't home and dusting myself with that wonderful, fluffy powder puff. Loose powder still holds the same fascination for me. It seems so luxurious. Just like a great makeup brush.

My new powder is in a shade called "light" and I immediately noticed that it was a little too light for my southwestern complexion. I've always been very fair - not ivory - but fair. I've spent so much time lately walking outdoors, though, that I've got quite a bit of color. I'm hoping the color will fade as I become more careful with a hat and sunblock, but for now the face powder is just a smidge lighter than my skin tone. 1940s beauty experts cautioned against buying face powder in too late a shade. Women were advised to change their face powder with the seasons. A summer tan called for a darker tint of powder than did a pale winter complexion.

Remember, powder shades lighter than the skin tones will be very unbecoming to you. The lighter the shade of powder the more it highlights the lines and wrinkles. Always choose face powder that is one shade deeper than your own skin tone. ("Plan for Your Beauty," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 18, 1940)

Apparently, there's also a technique for using face powder. Max Factor, Jr. outlined the process in his syndicated newspaper column, "Hollywood Beauty Parade," during the summer of 1947.

The powdering should be started at the lower part of the cheeks. From there it should be gently patted toward the center of the face. The nose should be powdered last of all. Then with the powder puff the powder should be pressed lightly into all the little lines which almost invariably exist around the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin… Finally, all surplus powder should be brushed away with a powder brush. Face powder is the only one of all the make-up materials which must and should be applied with a non-sparing hand… Never use a soiled puff. And never scrub your powder on. Always pat it on. (St. Petersburg Times, August 3, 1947)

Who knew? I'm glad I have some tips to help me face down my blemishes in the mirror tomorrow morning.

My dear readers convinced me two days ago to listen to my stinging skin and substitute some cleansing cream for the soap, so I picked up some Pond's Cold Cream at the drugstore and tried it out this morning. The sting is gone --- and I was very happy with the list of ingredients on the container. But I was dismayed to read online that Pond's is made by a company that still tests its products on animals. Not cool at all. Especially when cosmetics company after cosmetics company has proven that this is unnecessary. Well, I've already purchased this container, so I'll use it up - but I'm also going to use this time to find some alternative cleansing creams. Any product suggestions?

Come to think of it, I think the mystery to all these ingredients in cosmetics and cleansers is part of the reason I stopped spending time in the mirror. Learning how to figure out which of the ingredients with umpteen syllables is an animal by-product and which is not was really tough. When you're a vegetarian, you spend a lot of time reading labels and extending that to your cosmetics is a pain. So I gave up - and for years used very few beauty products. Well, it's still a pain, but there are lots of resources online now to help you understand what's what on a label. And once I pinpoint some good products, it won't be so hard. I'll just have to be extra vigilant for awhile.

I spent so much time (for me!) shopping for cosmetics this week, and one of the things that struck me is how smooth the plastics are that are being used for containers for these products. It's like night and day compared to the plastics in which household cleansers or food are packaged. Face creams and ointments in particular are packaged in these incredibly silky smooth plastic containers. I guess that's part of the marketing. "Pick me up and I'll make your skin just as smooth as my packaging!"

One of the nicest surprises this week was at the breakfast table on Tuesday morning. Rice Krispies! I'd forgotten just how fun they sound - like a party in your bowl! - and how good they taste. One of the things I've loved about The Experiment is getting reacquainted with some of these cereals I loved as a child. Modern cereals are so --- complicated. There's a little bit of everything in cereal these days. I even saw some cereal the other day with crunchy clusters flavored with pomegranate and dark chocolate. Oy. Who needs dessert at the breakfast table?

Week Twenty-four: The Mission

Consult your mirror. Decide what you want to be, then set out to be that very person.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 18, 1940)

While I continue fine-tuning the kitchen routine, I'm going to take advantage of the momentum of the last few weeks and make this another vintage beauty mission. I hope you'll all excuse the interlude from housework! I haven't stopped the housework by any means, I'm just trying to balance all of the many things that would have been important to my '40s counterpart in caring for her home and for herself. I've got all kinds of ideas for future missions - everything from cleaning the bathroom to vintage culture - but I also want to take the time to make sure I've got this kitchen thing down pat before I add another roomful of chores to my weekly list. In the meantime, there's plenty in the world of vintage beauty to keep me busy...

Fitness
Walk 30 minutes a day, three times during the week.
Walk 40 minutes a day, both days during the weekend.

Reducing
I'm cinching the noose a little tighter... No snacking after 7:30 p.m.

Grooming
Here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. First thing in the morning - as soon as you get out of bed, go into the bathroom, drink a glass of water, brush your teeth, and wash your face - you're to powder your nose. Or rather your face.

Pat on a bit of powder to take away that soap-and-water shine.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is in the vintage manuals and magazine articles that I enjoy so much. It's not just the content or the illustrations or even the window into the past. That's the icing on the cake. What draws me to these things is pure attitude. There's a spirited optimism in all these how-to type books and articles. Optimism that with the right instruction, the playing field is leveled. You can do anything and create anything you set your mind to! It seems ironic at first considering how dark the era was in terms of world events, but it's right in keeping with the faith Americans were coming to have in scientific progress. Machinery, chemicals, synthetic fabrics, plastic --- there's a science to housework and beauty that makes anything feel possible. And such faith in the team of professionals standing ready to assist women in looking their best. Oculists, dentists, beauticians, hairdressers, a good corsetier.

That optimism and faith in possibilities is like a drug to me now. What a change in tone from all the self-defeating angst of our own times!

Skin Care

Soap and water may have been okay for the teenage crowd, but 1940s beauty experts did have a few tricks up their sleeves for women looking for a little more in cleansing the face.

If you use a granular wash, such as beauty grains, you will find the skin tone clarified, and the texture improved. (The New American Etiquette, 1941)

An effective routine for the care of the war worker’s skin is frequent, thorough cleansing with warm water and a medicated soap. ("No Ration on Soap," St. Petersburg Times, 27 August 1943)

After cold water is used, an astringent should be applied with cotton, allowed to dry on. Cosmetic counters are full of them. ("To Improve Defects in Facial Skin," St. Petersburg Times, 28 February 1941)

I don't know yet if I'll take them up on any of this advice, but it's nice to know there are plenty of vintage options... The soap and water thing is probably not going to work in the long term for me - at least not just soap and water. I love the clean, but it leaves my face feeling a bit stingy even a couple hours later.

Could it be that I'm getting used to cooking dinner from scratch? For the first time since I started making the vintage dinners, I actually sat down at the table last night without feeling completely exhausted. Here's the menu:

Boiled Potatoes
Buttered Carrots
French Fruit Salad
Gingerbread Square

The Boiled Potatoes and Buttered Carrots are pretty self-explanatory. The Gingerbread was a wartime recipe - made without any sugar or eggs. It was easy to make and yummy fresh from the oven. (No nudges necessary to eat those leftovers!) The superstar of this menu was definitely the French Fruit Salad. The original menu calls for a Jellied Fruit Salad made with the leftover orange, pineapple, and banana from the previous menu (see last weekend). I don't eat gelatin as it's an animal by-product, so I paged through the chapter on salads looking for something I could make using the same fruits. Here's the recipe that caught my attention:

*****

FRENCH FRUIT SALAD

1 orange
1 banana
1/2 pound Malaga grapes
1 dozen walnuts
Lettuce
French dressing

Peel the orange and cut the sections from the membrane with a sharp knife or a pair of shears. If the fruit is allowed to stand in cold water after peeling, the bitter white membrance will come off easily.

Peel the banana and cut in quarter-inch slices. Remove the skins and seeds from the grapes. Break walnuts into small pieces, but do not chop. Mix these ingredients thoroughly and place on ice. Serve on lettuce leaves with a French dressing.

*****

The trick is making the French dressing variation that's suggested for fruit salads. No garlic, no pepper, light on the mustard, paprika, and sugar, citrus juice substituted for half the vinegar. The orange, banana, grapes, and walnuts were a lovely combination. Alas, I couldn't find any Malaga grapes at the supermarket. (Malaga grapes are both red and white grapes originally cultivated in a region of southern Spain. By the '40s, they were a profitable California crop.) My grapes were Chilean. And, no, I didn't peel 'em. What's with the '40s phobia about fruit skins? They're peeling their tomatoes, peeling their grapes. It's perfectly good fiber! And I love the snap of a super fresh grape - skin intact.

Transitions

One more pound bites the dust! I weighed in yesterday morning at 192, so that's two pounds gone (for keeps) in two weeks...

And though I wasn't aware of it, I must have been snacking every night after 8:00 - because that mission has kept me every.single.night from nibbling one thing or another. One night last week I was tossing and turning at 2:00 in the morning. I finally got out of bed and found something to do with my insomnia and, sure enough, no sooner was I out of bed then the cravings hit. All I could think about was the leftover pizza in the fridge. I went so far even as to open the fridge and hold the pizza --- and then I caught myself and put it back! I'm very proud that I haven't broken that 8:00 rule even once this week.

We're experiencing full-blown summer here in the Southwest, so I'm making the transition to the summer version of my vintage breakfast menus. The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) contains little footnotes just below each menu with seasonal options. I should start seeing some fresh fruits filling in for the dried fruits and cold cereals occasionally taking the place of the hot cereals. So instead of Stewed Apricots and Oatmeal this morning, it was Fresh Berries (whatever kind might be in season - strawberries, here) and Corn flakes. This should be a nice change of pace!

50s gal mentioned a series of photos on Flickr that I've been poring through during the last couple of weeks - and what a treat! It's a series called Mom's World and the pictures were taken by a Michigan woman, almost all of them during her first marriage (late 1940s and early '50s). She had a full-time job in a doctor's office and continued working even after the birth of their first child several years into the marriage. (It's the child, all grown up, whose been posting the photos. His mom narrates the introductions and actively responds to comments left by viewers.)

As you can probably guess, what intrigued me most was her description of housework. Every other Saturday afternoon (she worked on Saturday mornings), she'd give her kitchen a thorough cleaning. Anything done in between was just regular maintenance. This kept her kitchen quite clean and left her plenty of time to spend rambling through the woods, boating, visiting amusement parks, etc. Genius, I thought! Especially as I realized the other day that I could see my reflection in the inside wall of my refrigerator. Does my fridge really need to be quite that clean? And it would be awfully nice to have some time left over on the weekend for something other than housework. Ever since I added the kitchen to my routine, that's become a real problem.

I've been giving this some serious thought and what I'd like to do is try and break my kitchen routine up a bit. The chores described in the manual as daily chores must be done every week:

Every Saturday...
1. Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.

2. Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

3. Check and reorganize foods; put away.

4. Collect all refuse and put in garbage can.

5. Wipe off top of refrigerator and all work surfaces in need of cleaning.

6. Wash dishes. Dry and put away, if not room to rinse with hot water and leave to dry.

7. Wipe off surface of range. Clean spilled food from drip pan or oven.

8. Dry damp work surfaces.

9. Dust radiator or register.

10. Take out garbage; put clean lining in garbage can.

11. Clean sink. Rinse dishcloth or mop; hang outdoors if possible.

12. Collect soiled towels; wash. Hang fresh towels.

The heavier jobs, the ones described by the manual as weekly chores, are going to be done on alternate weeks:

Week A...
1. Put away all foods except those belonging in refrigerator. Remove all foods from refrigerator. Wash interior of refrigerator. Return food to refrigerator.

2. Wash exterior of refrigerator.

3. Clean range thoroughly.

4. Clean, scald and sun vegetable bins, bread and cake boxes.

Week B...
1. Clean out and wash 1 cupboard or several drawers in rotation weekly.

2. Dust lighting fixtures. Dust window shades or Venetian blinds. Wash wall behind sink, stove and work surfaces, if washable. Wash work surfaces. Wash exterior of cabinet work and shelving to remove fingermarks.

3. Clean garbage container thoroughly.

4. Clean metal fixtures, soap dish, sink strainer, and dish drainer. Wash, rinse and scald dishcloth or mop or send to laundry; hang outdoors if possible.

The kitchen routine is definitely a work in progress, but I must find a way to keep it clean and still have some time left over for, well, even the basics. I've been pushing so hard with this stuff, I haven't had time for things like getting the oil changed in my car, going to the library, etc. Maybe this change will make a difference... And speaking of kitchens, it's time to get started on mine. Off to work!

An Age-old Debate

One cosmetic issue just as hotly debated during the 1940s as it is today: whether or not to be gentle to your face when washing it. I find myself now - at 35 - being much more gentle with my face than I was in my early 20s. When all the world was my oyster and my skin would be beautiful forever... On the other hand, you do see all those infomercials with gorgeous women in towel turbans praising appliances meant to massage and stimulate your facial muscles. That's supposed to be the key to keeping a youthful skintone, so they say.

I'm not sure what to think, but it is a comfort knowing that my '40s counterpart probably would have been just as confused. Helen Follett, touched on the debate on the women's page of the St. Petersburg [Florida] Times during the early 1940s.

Never Be Afraid of Your Face

November 9, 1940

Don’t be afraid to give your complexion a thorough friction with soap and water. Some women clean their faces with little dabs as if the skin were something sacred, should be treated with the utmost gentleness. Friction tones the tissues, stimulates glandular activity and rouses up the blood streams which give good coloring to the flesh. Muscles and tiny fibers are exercised.

To Improve Defects in Facial Skin

February 28, 1941

Mirrors magnify complexion defects; let that be a consolation to the girl whose complexion is of coarse texture, pores large and falling into little dents. She longs for a fine-grained facial coat, and if she will be persistent she can improve the one that is so disappointing to her. She must avoid the use of hot water when washing her face, have the water just warm enough to form a suds. Friction is a help in skin toning and refining, so when rinsing away the suds she should use the palms of her hands, dashing the cold water first on her chin, working up over her forehead. A first-class face washing can be a pretty fair facial treatment. When drying the face, wrap the towel around the hands and do that same upward slapping.

Catchup

I can't believe it's been three days since my latest vintage dinner and I haven't posted the results! Yesterday was kind of a tough day. I was running late in the morning and ended up having to dish my oatmeal and pineapple into a mug and eat it when I got to work. (Not the most relaxing breakfast I've ever had!) I'd forgotten about some lunch plans and needed to get my five walks for the week in - so I went to the park after work. Which made me late getting home and feeling very unmotivated to do anything else. Yep, the routine took a hit yesterday, but I was back in the game when my alarm clock went off this morning. With a new resolution: No internet allowed in the a.m. on a weekday. I love getting online to find out what's going on in the world, but it's definitely a liability when it comes to time.

Here's the 1945 dinner menu I whipped up last Sunday evening:

Browned Potatoes

Asparagus Salad

Enriched Bread

Fresh Fruit Cup, Three

The Browned Potatoes are also called American Fried Potatoes in the cookbook. Potatoes parboiled, then cut in slices and fried on the stovetop in a "very little fat." I boiled mine for too long to start, so they were a little softer than I'd have liked - but still good. The Asparagus for the Salad was boiled, then chilled 'til cold. (Canned asparagus was suggested as an alternative.) The recipe instructed me to cut rings from a green pepper, place four stalks of asparagus through each ring, and serve on a bed of lettuce. The basic French Dressing recipe was dressed up this week with a squirt of Catchup, but it didn't make much of a difference in the taste. You know, I think if there's one thing I step away from when it comes to these menus, it'll be the dressing. I cut the recipe in eighths and still end up having to throw much of it away. I may go ahead and buy a bottled viniagrette that I can get some real use from.

Fresh Fruit Cup, Three was a real puzzle... I finally realized that the cookbook contains three recipes for Fresh Fruit Cup. The author must have been calling for the third version this evening. It was a tropical fruit salad - diced orange, diced pineapple, and sliced banana served in layers in a tall glass with coconut. The one step I'd do without next time? Pouring fruit juice over the whole affair before serving. I used orange juice thinking it'd go nicely with the fruit, but it just made the whole thing soggy.

My vintage dinners on Sunday evening have become a lovely kind of ritual. I still make lots of mistakes, but I guess that's the only way you can learn how to cook. The one thing I'm really proud of is that I've been making myself eat at least one serving of leftovers. (Those of you who have been following along know that I have some issues with leftovers!) I've found that if I nudge myself hard - and eat 'em before they're three days old - I can shelve those phobias about food spoilage.

Unlike my housework last night, my vintage beauty missions were not sacrificed to my mood. And the walks might be paying off. I could be imagining things, but I think I actually felt a little spring in my step today. Fancy that! It's as if my muscles are slowly waking up - fiber by fiber - and remembering what they're there for. I had this strange sensation just in walking around the office at work today. This feeling that I could go a little faster and a little farther. It's been just two weeks since I started exercising. That's only ten walks. If it feels like this at two weeks, can you imagine what it'll feel like at four weeks - and eight weeks?

"You're a Hard Man, McGee!"

Ahhh, Monday nights. One of the more relaxing evenings of my week. The only special task for me on Monday evenings is putting all my clean laundry away and prepping the clothes and linens that need ironing on Tuesday night. The living room gets a tidy up, anything soaking in the kitchen sink gets washed, and it's off to bed for a very good night's sleep.

I groaned when my alarm clock went off this morning, but - as I was toting all that dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room - I found myself thinking of my great-grandmothers... Alice, widowed with seven children during the Depression and doing laundry with only a woodstove to heat her water. Margaret, the daughter of Irish immigrants, who proudly wears such a sparkling white apron in the only picture I've seen of her. How hard she must have worked to keep that apron so white! Agnes, a Canadian immigrant who roomed in a boarding house near the lumber camp where her husband was working. Did she have to do her wash in her landlady's kitchen? Addie, who did her washing for herself while "baching it" on a homestead claim on the plains of South Dakota. She must have scrubbed her clothes clean with water from a well.

All these women must have faced Monday mornings with trepidation. Wouldn't they would have been astounded to know how easy their great-granddaughter has it! All I have to do is tote the laundry basket up and down stairs, move two loads from washer to drier, and clean a lint trap or two. My great-grandmothers would probably have grown faint at the thought of the luxury Wash Day has become by 2009. It makes me feel very lucky. The only real sacrifice I have to make is waking up a little earlier than normal.

I treated myself this evening to one of my favorite vintage radio programs, The Great Gildersleeve. Have you ever heard this program? It's a wonderfully sweet comedy which made its premiere on NBC in August 1941. A spin-off of one of radio's best-rated programs, Fibber McGee and Molly. Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (played by the amazing Harold Peary) was a neighbor of the McGees and proprietor of Gildersleeve Girdle Works. In 1941, he moved from Wistful Vista to the city of Summerfield, where he became guardian to his niece and nephew, Marjorie and Leroy Forrester.

Gildy finds work as the Summerfield water commissioner and dates up every attractive lady in town. Though little Leroy never ages, we see Marjorie grow up, marry, and eventually become a mother before the series ended in the mid-1950s. (Marjorie was first played by one of radio's hardest working women, Lurene Tuttle.) Gildy continually butts heads with the local judge, though deep down they are fast friends. And the local pharmacist, Mr. Peavy, always steals the scene - and a roar from the audience. It's such a thrill to hear these programs delivered before a live audience! Kraft was the longest-running sponsor for the program and ran a number of popular promotions during the late '40s and early '50s.

http://www.otrcat.com/great-gildersleeve-p-1337.html

If you've never listened to any OTR, this is a wonderful place to start!

Beauty and the Bath

Have you ever noticed that food becomes much more interesting the minute you've barred yourself from snacking?

From the minute the clock struck 8:00 last night, I could think of nothing but the snacks I'd like to be eating. (Even though there are probably many nights when I'm not snacking at that hour!) And with a kitchen full of new groceries, there was plenty to tempt the palate. I ended up turning in early just to banish those awful cravings. Well, wouldn't you know, I managed to survive the night. For years, I've indulged every whim when it comes to eating, so to put even the slightest of boundaries on food feels harsh and twisting --- but I'm sure that feeling won't last forever.

I survived my walks as well. 35 minutes - that's three laps 'round the track at the park - on both Saturday and Sunday. I'm glad I broke out the baseball cap, because it was already a sunny 89 degrees by the time I got to the park this morning. I may give some thought to walking on the weekend before I eat my breakfast and do my morning chores. Maybe even before I shower for the day...

This evening's 1945 dinner menu:

Browned Potatoes
Asparagus Salad
Enriched Bread
Fresh Fruit Cup, Three

My first decision as I prepared to begin washing my face in the mornings? Whether to do it in the shower or in the sink. This would have been a moot point for most women in the 1940s as showers were just beginning to gain in popularity. The grooming routine does recommend that the face be washed in the evening after taking a bath. With that in mind - and in order to give my face the attention it deserves - I decided to wash my face in the sink after my morning shower. Besides, the skin's already been steamed. The pores are open. It should be an ideal time for cleansing. Next, I had to decide on a soap. I've been using a bar of Ivory soap scented with lavender in the shower. But my face has always been sensitive to fragranced things, so it was off to the drugstore to hunt up something mild and fragrance free. What a disappointment not to see almost any of the brands I'd been admiring in vintage magazines! No Lux, no Woodbury's, no Palmolive (at least not in the face soap aisle!) --- I ended up taking home some unscented Ivory.

The soap and water does make my face feel clean, but it also feels a little taut. I can't tell yet whether that's the soap itself or the toning effect of the cold water splashed on at the end. Judging from the articles in magazines and newspapers of the period, women in the '40s were also concerned then about the drying effect of soap. Beauty experts seem to have universally advised the daily use of cold cream to re-moisten the skin, but soap was still deemed the best cleanser available: "Nothing can cleanse the skin so satisfactorily as soap and water, leaving the face fresh and glowing." A warm water rinse was essential, though, as cold water wasn't thought to thoroughly remove soap residue. Check out this darling article I found in the women's column of the April 18, 1943 edition of the St. Petersburg Times:

Beauty and the Bath
by Betty Clarke

Dear Housewives:

There's no excuse girls for looking fagged out and weary when papa comes home from work! It's just as much your duty to give his eyes something to feast on as it is to have his dinner on the table.

Even though time seems to be on your rationed list now that you're cook, cleaning woman, laundress, and gardener yourself, you still must sandwich in a few minutes for nothing but beauty...

[The author goes on to extol all the merits of a late afternoon bath.]

While you're running the tub, you can do so much. First be sure to tuck your curls high on your head or they will get wet and stringy. Then take care of your complexion by lathering your face with a deep pore-cleansing soap delicately scented with lavender. The next step is skin lubrication - smooth on a night cream generously and let it soak in as you soak in the tub...

And now back to your face. Remove every speck of cream that hasn't been absorbed and dash on a refreshing skin lotion. Then, your make-up.

Do you remember last winter when I realized that I really ought to start wearing a bathrobe and slippers around my apartment in the morning? That streaking about in my nightclothes probably wasn't very vintage-minded? That's been a hard habit to break. Until yesterday. As I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off, ran a brush through my hair --- I found myself reaching for a bathrobe. I didn't want to stand there over the sink washing my hair and trying to keep a towel wrapped around me at the same time. I guess when you spend even a few extra minutes tending to yourself in the morning, that robe or housecoat really comes in handy.

Week Twenty-two: The Mission

There are few irreparably homely people and all of us owe a duty to ourselves and to everyone who sees us to be just as handsome as possible.

Lily Haxworth Wallace, The New American Etiquette (1941)

I still have some fiddling to do with my kitchen routine. I've been working at it for several weeks now, but it's become apparent that it's just too lengthy a job for a weekday evening after a long day at work - and there are chores still to be added! For whatever reason, the daily and weekly routines laid out in the manual don't attend to kitchen floors, small appliances, or the dining area --- so it's quite plain that my kitchen routine is only going to get longer.

With that in mind, I've been trying to come up with some solutions. There are several things I could try, and what I like to try first is just to move the weekly cleaning of the kitchen from Friday evenings to Saturday afternoons, when I'm fresher and have a little more energy than I do after a long day at the office. Pushing the kitchen routine forward also means I'm pushing the marketing forward from Saturday afternoons to Saturday evenings. Reason being that the manual recommends the refrigerator be thoroughly cleaned just before the housewife does the bulk of her weekly marketing. I was originally planning to give my bathroom its weekly cleaning on Saturday evenings, but I'm eventually going to shift this job to Friday evenings instead.

While I'm thrashing out some of these changes to the work I'm already doing, I'm going to launch another vintage beauty mission. Did I mention I lost 1 pound? Whoo-hoo!!! I weighed in this morning and was very happy to see the scale at 193. So I'm going to step my game up a notch. Here's the new mission for the week ahead:

Fitness
Walk 30 minutes a day, three times during the week.
Walk 35 minutes a day, both days during the weekend.

Diet
No snacking after 8:00 p.m.

Grooming
Here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. First thing in the morning - as soon as you get out of bed, go into the bathroom, and drink one big glass of water - you're to "carefully brush your teeth." Well, shoot! I already do that. Though I do wait 'til after breakfast. (Isn't it healthier to brush your teeth after a meal?) I guess I'll just jump forward to #3:

Wash face gently but thoroughly with a clean washcloth, a good mild soap, and plenty of warm water. Splash on cold to tone your skin - and open your eyes!

The exercise was most intimidating last week. This week, it's all about the diet. I was going to make this 7:00 p.m., but I don't want to be so draconian I set myself up for failure. So it's 8:00. For now...

One Foot in Front of the Other

I've always wished I could snap my fingers, find myself with the figure I'd like to have, and get on with life. There are more important things to think about, you know? That's impossible, of course, but that's never stopped me from wishing I could make it so... As I was walking today - had to get those 30 minutes in - it occurred to me that as nice as that kind of magic would be, it wouldn't equip me in any way to maintain the weight loss. I'd snap back to where I am now in no time. Just like with the housework. Even if I could magically have a spotless house overnight, I wouldn't be able to keep it clean if I hadn't learned how to keep house. There's no way around the learning process.

That's the thought that kept me putting one foot in front of the other today. My walks may be the long way 'round to a great figure, but for now 5 walks per week x 30 minutes = 150 minutes = the minimum weekly aerobic exercise recommended for a healthy adult (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans).

Once upon a time, walking was more a matter of daily function than it was a special kind of workout women needed to fit into their lives. I always think of the 1940s as an era when long rambles through the countryside or the park were popular weekend entertainment. Of course, walking was part of the workaday routine for just about everybody. Whenever possible, women walked to do their marketing, to pay a call on the next farm down the road, to make one appointment or another. If the distance was too far for city dwellers or suburbanites, they'd walk to a point where they could pick up a bus or streetcar. Cars were around, but they were used much more sparingly as the war continued. Many ended up on blocks when the last set of tires gave out and - for those with cars still in working order - gas rationing and the ban on pleasure driving must have made any kind of unnecessary automobile travel seem unpatriotic. Walking most places was a way of life, so a regular low-impact aerobic workout came along quite naturally with getting from point A to point B.

Living in a city with public transportation, there are certainly some very environmentally friendly ways that I could make less use of my car. My workplace is just a walk, bus ride, and walk away from home. The grocery store where I do my shopping on Wednesday evenings is just a short walk from where I live. My eye doctor and dentist, even my bank, are quite close to home as well. If I was ready to make some radical changes in that direction, walking could definitely serve a somewhat more functional role in my daily routine.

In practically every other place where I've lived as an adult, though, this wouldn't have been at all possible. This urban sprawl we've visited upon our landscape has left us so far from every place else we need to be that walking isn't even an option. Instead we commute. We drive great distances to work and to play, to shop and to worship --- even to get to a gym, a track, or a yoga studio where we can get the exercise that used to be a more functional part of our everyday lives. Full circle in a distorted kind of way.

So this is how I find myself here, in 2009, stretching to find ways to fit a walk into my life. Trying to find the thirty minutes needed to schedule a walk and planning a drive to the park in order to get some exercise on the weekends. I will do what has to be done in order to lose this weight, but it's appropriate, I think, to stop and reflect on how we've changed. (Maybe even to lay out some plans for the future.) How backwards this way of life would have seemed to my '40s counterpart! Going to such lengths just to walk.

Cabbage and Chenille

I did some marketing this evening, but before I start planning the next vintage dinner, I wanted to mention a couple more things about the last one. One of the tips I read online after making the Stuffed Cabbage Leaves is that it's easier to peel whole leaves from the head of cabbage if you blanch it first. The blanched leaves are also supposed to be easier to roll up with the stuffing inside. They don't tear like fresh, dry leaves. Now, of course, this tip might have been more helpful if I'd read up on Stuffed Cabbage Leaves before jumping right into the recipe, but maybe it can still help one or two of you in your cabbage endeavors...

Incidentally, this recipe was included in a chapter of the cookbook titled "French Cooking" - along with a whole mish-mash of recipes like Gnocchi and Eggplant Oriental. The author seems to be using the label "French" as a catch-all for anything European - or frankly anything non-American! Which must have been a great recommendation to some of her more adventurous readers. For 1940s Americans, France was still the capital of style and avant-garde sensibility.

When I was washing up some of Sunday's pots and pans, I spilled a ton of water on my countertop and my microwave did not appreciate it. All that water must have shorted something out, because I haven't been able to use it since. I may be able to get it repaired, but I've been toying around with the idea of not replacing the microwave if it can't be repaired cheaply. Do I really need one? The only thing it truly comes in handy for is reheating leftovers. If I'm mindful about any thawing I need to do and don't mind washing a few extra baking dishes, I might be able to make it without one. There's still a microwave a work for my weekday lunches. Hmmm... Getting that counterspace back would be killer. My microwave easily takes up 50% of my kitchen counter footage.

On a much more exciting note, I finally picked out a vintage chenille bedspread to replace the quilt I've had on my bed for ages. I bought it online, so won't get to see it in person for another few days, but this one has such a lovely homey charm to it. It probably dates to the '40s or '50s, but I don't know chenille well enough to date it any better than that. Are there any chenille aficionados out there? Here are some pictures from eBay. Though the background washes out in the picture, it's supposed to be a super pale green, with the darker leaves for contrast:

Couch Carrot

The last few days have been such busy ones and today I'm feeling kinda un-bloggy, but I thought I'd stop in while I wait for my iron to heat up and post an update.

The first week of my first vintage beauty mission ends tomorrow night and it's coming along successfully. I've done four of my five 30-minute walks allotted for the week. On Saturday afternoon, I went to a park about a 10-minute drive from my home to workout. We had some unusual rain that morning and it had ended a short time ago, so the park was dead. Usually there are people all over the track; this time, there were only four or five. It was a little creepy! I was nearing the end of my first lap when I heard some raggedy man's cough about 20 feet behind me. Immediately, my mind jumped to all kinds of terrible thoughts. You know the type: "He must be alone." "He's a murderous thug." "He's about to jump me." "Can I make it to my car on time?" "Oh, there's a car pulling into the lot. Wait! Wait, people!"

Of course, this does get me walking faster - and burning more calories. I made it back to my car, leapt inside, locked the doors... and looked up to see a very undaunting dad-ish fellow with a paunch walking by. All that adrenaline for nothing! So after a few minutes, I got back out and took on a second lap. And then a third. Halfway through the third, it started raining again. No sweat. I've got a hoodie. Three-quarters of the way through, the rain turned to hail. Hail! It was like the heavens opening up and throwing every possible excuse I could use to get out of exercising at me!!!

Excuses aside, I did walk for 37 minutes. Not counting the time I spent cowering in my car.

My vintage dinner menu on Sunday evening was pretty tasty. I wasn't feeling good, though, and didn't enjoy the process or the meal quite as much as usual. Here's the menu, straight from 1945:

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves

Tomato Sauce

Buttered Peas

Carrot Sticks

Baked Caramel Custard

The Cabbage Leaves were stuffed with a mixture of sauteed chopped cabbage, onions, parsley, bread crumbs, and spices (yep, that's all the recipe told me - "spices"!). The cookbook instructed me to garnish them with Tomato Sauce, but I was dying to throw them in the oven just at the end with tomato sauce and parmesan. Those are my modern tastebuds wanting to dress things up in a way that might not have been pleasing to the 1940s palate. These dishes I've been cooking have been fairly - well, I'm not sure how to characterize them. I started to say "bland," but that's not exactly right. The flavors have been very true to life. Not a whole lot of fusion goin' on. Then again, maybe it's just that they're missing all the MSG I'm probably injesting in my modern prepared foods every other night of the week!

It's been ages since I shelled peas, but it came back to me pretty quickly. And, boy, do they taste world's apart from their canned cousins. The Carrot Sticks were a nice break from the weekly salads, and the Baked Caramel Custard was delicious. My big mistake was not in the kitchen. I was feeling so crummy by the time dinner was ready that I curled up in the living room and turned on the TV while I ate. What a change for the worse! I can't remember more than a few bites of what I ate. It's as if television completely short-circuited the connection between my meal and my mind. There wasn't that sense of rest or thankfulness that I'm accustomed to when I've sat down at the kitchen table for one of these vintage dinners. Before I realized it, my plate was empty. And that's with a sour stomach! Strangely enough, my manners changed, too. I caught myself at one point shoveling a piece of Stuffed Cabbage into my mouth with the end of a Carrot Stick - without really tasting either. Gee, I wonder how I gained all this weight?

Look What I Found!

One of my tasks when cleaning the kitchen each week is to "clean out and wash 1 cupboard or several drawers in rotation weekly." So I set to work yesterday morning cleaning out the drawer beneath my silverware drawer. This is my catch-all drawer for small kitchen tools. I'm pulling all the tools out and laying them on the kitchen table so that I could get in there with a soapy sponge and clean the insides of the drawer. This isn't that big a drawer - or that deep - and it's not as if I own a ton of kitchen tools. In fact, there's a lot I've been making do without. What should I discover, but that I've owned several items all this time that I'd forgotten about:

1) Cheese slicer
2) Teaspoon
3) Coffee scoop

Here's the kicker --- last week's "discovery" was even stranger.

Somewhere during the last two years that I've been living in this apartment, I'd completely forgotten that I have a fourth kitchen drawer. Yep, that's right. I've been using drawers one, two, and three, but haven't even opened drawer four since moving in. I know I've been in there at least once, because there were a few restaurant ads inside that date to December 2006. Along with two Brita water filters. (I can't even remembering owning a Brita while I lived here!) How a gal could have become so dis-acquainted with her own kitchen, I'm sure I don't know...

My Daily Constitutional

It's an unusually cool, breezy Saturday, and I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee before embarking on my housework today. Here's one sign of how much my habits around the house have changed since November: I bought a tall container of creamer maybe a year ago. You know, the dry, powdery type. Well, it made sense at the time. I couldn't see keeping these big cartons of milk about the house when the only thing I was using milk for was my coffee. On the few occasions I make coffee at home, I would sooner than not find it had already gone bad. Flash forward five months. I haven't touched that creamer in weeks, at least. It sits at the back of a cupboard waiting to be of service again, but I always have fresh milk in the house now. I need it for my breakfasts, I need it for my vintage dinner on the weekends... what a change!

I remembered to pull out the scale yesterday morning and did a rare weigh-in at home. So here's my official starting weight for this new mission: 194. I'm planning to weigh in once a week - on Friday mornings. I dutifully drank my glass of water yesterday morning and walked for 29 minutes during my lunch hour. This morning, another glass of water and I'm planning to walk at the park today for 30 minutes (+ 6 minutes to make up for my short walks on Thursday and Friday). I also cleaned about 2/3 of my kitchen last night, so I need to finish that this morning, go to the park for my workout, then head to the supermarket to do my weekly shopping. Here's the menu I'm planning for my 1945 dinner this weekend:

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves

Tomato Sauce

Buttered Peas

Carrot Sticks

Baked Caramel Custard

The Stuffed Cabbage Leaves recipe sounds very interesting and possibly delicious. We'll see! The whole menu feels very springlike - apropos for a supper on Easter Sunday. I'm even going to shell some fresh sugar peas for the hot vegetable dish...

One of the challenges for me when it comes to walking is definitely going to be timing. If I don't walk as soon as my lunch hour begins, I know that I won't have the willpower to get out there and do it halfway in. Been there, done that. Once I'm sitting comfortably at the table with my feet up in the next chair reading a magazine and eating my lunch --- there's no way I'll get up and go out there to walk! I know myself too well to take that chance, so out I go at 12:00 p.m. This is where those hearty vintage breakfasts are going to come in handiest. I need that long-term energy that's going to last me from 7:00 in the morning 'til I'm finished with that mid-day walk. A growling tummy doesn't make me any happier about postponing lunch for another half hour!

I'm trying to keep a brisk pace. I certainly ought to start stretching my calves beforehand, though, because my shins feel very tight during my workout and that could probably be alleviated with a little stretching. It's much too sunny to be outdoors at high noon without a hat or cap and/or some sunblock, so I need to give some thought to keeping some of these things in my office. I'm really trying to head off some of these minor discomforts that could otherwise end up as excuses for skipping a workout, do you know what I mean?

One of the biggest things I tend to do to sabotage an exercise plan is to start worrying about how I'm going to be able to walk outdoors once we're experiencing full-blown summer here in the desert. (These walks give me way too much time to think!) In about a month, temps will be at the 100-degree mark everyday and there's no relief even in the mornings and evenings. It's relentlessly sunny here, so there's not even the occasional cloudy day to enjoy outdoors. You're trapped inside 24/7 from about the end of May until the first of October. It's not even comfortable outside at midnight. I've been trying to come up with some exercise options for the summer - and I think I've come up with a few possible solutions - but the trick is not to let worrying about what's to come in a month keep me from exercising here and now. No matter what kind of challenges I'm facing come May, I've got to enjoy the privilege of being able to walk outdoors for as long as it lasts.

I'll talk to you later. My kitchen is calling...

One Big Glass

So far, so good.

I drank a glass of water first thing this morning. (How big is "big" in 1946 standards? I drank eight ounces.) At noon, I walked for 24 minutes. I was bummed that the route I plotted didn't end up taking a full half-hour, but I'll make it a little longer tomorrow and see if I can solve that problem. While I wait for my mattress, bed covers, and pillows to air, I thought I'd pop online and celebrate a successful first day - of many, I hope!

Many of you asked for more on the grooming routine in the 1946 issue of Good Housekeeping. Here it is in full:

GOOD-MORNING!

Out of bed and into the bathroom -

1. Drink one big glass of water.

2. Brush teeth carefully.

3. Wash face gently but thoroughly with a clean washcloth, a good mild soap, and plenty of warm water. Splash on cold to tone your skin - and open your eyes!

4. Pat on a bit of powder to take away that soap-and-water shine.

5. Put on some bright, pretty lipstick, making the edges neat and blotting away the excess.

6. Brush all the nighttime tangles from hair, and comb carefully into place, pinning securely.

7. Take a last look, to be sure you are impeccable from top to toe.

GOOD-NIGHT!

Out of your clothes and into the tub -

1. Coat yourself thoroughly with a susdy lather, and don't spare the elbow grease. Rinse well, doing face separately with water from the faucet.

2. Rub yourself dry, so that you tingle all over and chest and back turn a healthy pink.

3. Don't forget the deodorant under your arms.

4. Give your crowning glory a good swishing with the brush, dampen ends and pin up curls.

5. Brush teeth carefully.

6. Down with a nice, long glass of water - and so to bed.

ONCE A WEEK WITHOUT FAIL

1. Shampoo hair, and rinse six or seven times until it squeaks "clean." Perhaps you might need a little vinegar or lemon juice or a special rinse to bring out some "sunlit" luster.

2. Clip toenails.

3. File fingernails, push back cuticle, and apply a polish to go with your lipstick.

4. Defuzz legs and underarms.

5. Pluck scraggly eyebrows.

6. Go over clothes, and mend, clean, and brush as necessary.

The article is designed for high school-aged girls, so the routine is much more basic than a grown woman might have followed --- but it's a good place to start. I think. Some of this sounds a bit scary to me, but I'll just take it one step at a time for now.

There's nothing wrong with a glass of water first thing in the a.m., but I'm curious about the timing. Was it thought to be an aid to the digestive system? Something to perk up the appetite for breakfast? Or was it meant to benefit the skin? Roxanne mentioned in her comment on yesterday's post that our bodies are quite dehydrated when we wake up in the morning. Today in 2009 we know all kinds of benefits that water can have - from making our insides run more smoothly to flushing toxins from our bodies - but I wonder what it was in 1946 that prompted the woman writing this article to recommend drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Is it because people weren't prone to drinking very much water during the day, so she tried to squeeze a little in by making it part of a grooming ritual?

Week Twenty-one: The Mission

The accepted modern silhouette is slender. Try to attain it in whatever way is easiest for you. The slim uncorseted look is especially youthful and graceful.

Lily Haxworth Wallace, The New American Etiquette (1941)

As we all know, there was more to the model 1940s housewife than housework. Women of the era were expected to practice good grooming habits throughout their lives. And even middle-aged and older women were encouraged to wear corsets if necessary to achieve a more youthful figure.

I can remember as a teenager being much less interested in makeup, fashion and hairstyles than my peers. I was a little interested, but nowhere near fascinated enough to spend hours poring over fashion magazines, practicing hairstyles, or hanging out at the mall. I guess I was too busy with music. Fast forward nearly two decades, and I'm still uninterested. But I can't get away with that as nicely as I could when I was young. (That youthful glow can make up for a lot!) When you're in your teens, it's the natural, outdoorsy look. When you're in your thirties, it's just frumpy. Frowsy and frumpy.

Like many women in their thirties, my weight has a biography almost as long as my own. Suffice it to say, it's been an issue since I was 18 and my metabolism finally hit puberty. I've had chubby times, slender times, and long periods when I was able to maintain a great figure through hard work. Between 2003 and 2005, though, I gained 75-80 lbs. and have carried most of that weight around for the last few years. Okay, it's very hard for me to put the final figure down in black and white --- but if I can be even half as successful taking the approach that's working for my housekeeping and applying it to my weight problem, it will be worth it --- *deep breath* - I weigh 196 today. I should say "about" 196, because I only get on a scale when I go to the doctor's office and it's been a month or so. Do I beat myself up about it? A little. But what frightens me more is how accepting I've become about the extra weight.

So the frump needs to go. I'm cleaning house now in every sense of the word and all this extra "clutter" needs to be dispensed with. Easier said than done - as I'm sure many of you know from personal experience. I'm encouraged by the fact that the approach I've taken to becoming a better housekeeper is working. The historical side of it intrigues me enough to get things done even when it seems like torture. Maybe this can help me in losing this weight.

There are no mysteries here. We've known forever that all it takes is to moderate your diet and exercise more. They knew sixty years ago that there weren't any magic answers to this age-old issue: "Try to attain it in whatever way is easiest for you." During my twenties, walking was the key. I walked 40 minutes a day, seven days a week. So I'm going to trust that experience and put it to work again. Walking isn't particularly easy when you live in a sketchy city neighborhood, but I do work in a good location for walking and there's the park on weekends. So here is my three-fold mission for the next week:

Fitness
Walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week. I'll probably aim for three times on weekdays (during the lunch hour) and both days on weekends.

Diet
I'm going to knock the empty calorie breakfast menus off the meal plan, i.e. French toast, griddlecakes, and waffles. I don't particularly like them, and they don't do me any favors energy-wise.

Grooming

I came across a grooming routine for teenage girls in the October 1946 issue of Good Housekeeping. Seven steps for the morning, six steps for the evening, and six items to be done "once a week without fail." I'm adopting the first of these this week. First thing in the morning, as soon as you get out of bed and go into the bathroom:

Drink one big glass of water.

Wish me luck... The fitness plan is truly going to be my toughest mission yet!

In Stores and Shops

As the time for a new mission draws near, I find myself wondering what I've learned when it comes to marketing during the last couple weeks. First, I undershop. That's from years of never picking up more than a basket of things (okay, sometimes a very heavy basket of things) when I went to the grocery store. In this era of roomy refrigerator-freezers and skyrocketing carbon emissions, I need to make my weekly trip to the supermarket count. Can't be afraid to pull one of those grocery carts out of the carrel. And I wouldn't want to shop without a list, but making at least one trip up or down each aisle often jogs my memory about items I may be running a little low on at home.

Mind you, I don't want to overbuy. Something I've noticed about modern grocery shopping is that I never see anybody walking about the grocery store with calculators anymore. And I can't remember the last time I saw anybody using - or used myself - one of the scales in the produce department. Since cash was replaced by checks, debit cards, and credit cards, people have probably become a lot less conscious of the amount they're spending on groceries. I wouldn't have really given this any thought until my wallet was stolen and - while waiting two weeks for my new checks and debit card - I found myself shopping on a cash-only basis. When you've only got a finite amount of money available to you at the checkout counter, you become super conscious of every dime! Things you thought you couldn't possibly do without when you were grocery shopping with a debit card, i.e. real maple syrup, become a little easier to sacrifice when you're actually looking at parting with a five and two ones for it. (Suddenly, store brand artificial maple syrup looked pretty good to me!) Shopping with cash only is definitely anxiety provoking, but it does force you to reassess your priorities.

I'm launching a new mission on Thursday. While I continue working away at this kitchen-cleaning/weekly grocery shopping thing, I'm taking a brief side trip from new housekeeping missions and venturing into the world of vintage beauty. Stay tuned...

I'll leave you with some advice from Lily Haxworth Wallace's New American Etiquette (1941) on etiquette for the shopper. These tips are geared toward women shopping for clothing and other items, but they have some value, too, for those of us making our way to the grocery store.

Many women who make a pretense of fine manners become rude yokels in the department stores and specialty shops. They hunt for what they want with the culture of hungry wolves stalking their prey. They order salespersons and other store employees about, they seize and handle many articles they do not want and discard them carelessly, they rant and complain and shower their indignation upon an offending salesgirl if anything at all should happen to displease them. They act as though the possession of a few dollars in their purse or an A1 credit rating gives them the right to determine the policies of the store and to insult every one working in it. [I guess the A1 credit rating was the '40s predecessor of the FICO score!]

A lady is never rude to subordinates and those who might be classed as her social inferiors. She knows that the men and girls behind the counters are trying hard to please - their jobs depend on it - and their jobs are important things to them and perhaps several others. Accordingly the lady addresses the salesgirl with a smile and is free with her courtesies. "Please" and "Thank you" come as naturally to her lips in the store as they do in her drawing room.

The lady never takes the clerk to task because the accounting department made a mistake in last month's bill. She is directed to the proper clerk or official for that mistake and she politely asks for a correction. She does not raise her voice and she does not insist, "...that I believe this store employs the most stupid people in the world."

Sink or Swim

Let's not forget the sink!

America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommends that the sink be the last item to receive some attention during the weekly cleaning of the kitchen. But last is not least. The sink played a pivotal role as the housewife cleaned each of the other appliances and - just as she was about to hang up her dishcloth - it deserved a good, thorough scrubbing. The manual includes tips for both the ubiquitous baked enamel sink...

...as well as the (then) much less common stainless steel sink. Mine is stainless steel, so let me take a closer look at those instructions:

Monel or Stainless Steel

1. These metals are acid-resistant.

2. Soap and water or a mild scouring powder will clean the surface. After rinsing, use a clean dry cloth to dry the surface and produce a soft sheen.

3. A patina is built up with use and in consequence these metals are increasingly easy to clean.

You know, I was just thinking I'd like to get a better shine from my sink after washing it. I've been using Comet and a cellulose sponge - and they do the job, but the sink doesn't quite give me that shiny payoff I've been looking for from a kitchen I've spent three hours on! Maybe all I need to do is buff it with a dry dish towel. For those of you (like me) who are curious what "Monel" might be, it was the brand name for a nickel/copper product resembling stainless steel. Monel was introduced in 1906 and, by the early '30s, was being used for kitchen sinks.

The manual also gives some advice on keeping your drain trap as sanitary as possible. (Do we even have drain traps any longer? I have no idea... There are loads of ads in 1940s magazines for methods to defeat those dangerous gases emanating from your drain trap.) There's also a tip or two for cleaning metal fixtures (faucets, "towel bars," soap dish, sink strainer, dish drainer, etc.):

Chromium: Wash with a cloth or sponge wrung out of soapy water. Polish dry with a clean cloth.

Nickel: Wash with soapy water. Apply fine scouring powder or metal polish. Let dry. Polish with a soft cloth. Corrosion may be removed with vinegar or lemon juice.

Oh, dear. I don't think I have any idea what metal my kitchen faucet is made from! Housewives in the '40s had to become very well acquainted with the materials in their homes - the metals, the fabrics, the woods. Without knowing the materials they were dealing with, they couldn't have kept things clean with such a limited range of cleansers and tools. We're not quite so intimate with our own homes today.

Potato-rama

Boy, am I tired of potatoes!

Potatoes were clearly a staple in the 1940s diet. Every one of these 1945 dinner menus consists of five courses (besides the meat, which I'm skipping since I'm a vegetarian):

1) Starchy vegetable (potatoes, sometimes rice)

2) Hot vegetable (cabbage, carrots, beets, peas, etc.)

3) Cold vegetable/fruit salad

4) Bread/rolls (which I'm skipping - way too many carbs in one meal!)

5) Dessert

I'm getting tired of the potatoes - and I'm only eating a vintage dinner once a week. Imagine what it would have been like to eat them in one form or another every night! Not only must the taste of them have gotten tiresome, but all the prep. Every night, Mother would find herself scrubbing and peeling potatoes. She'd probably have a pot in which she never cooked anything but potatoes! I guess you'd just have to get very creative with them, which could explain with my cookbook contains more than 30 potato recipes. Tonight's dish was definitely one of the simpler of the bunch:

Mashed Potatoes

Boiled Cabbage

Tomato and Lettuce Salad

Brownie a la Mode

I've never cooked with cabbage on my own before. But it was simple to prep, a quick boil, and blended nicely with the potatoes. One thing I've noticed in the cookbook is that the vegetables are always seasoned by the cook. They're buttered, salted, and peppered before being brought to the table. Did seasonings and condiments even make it to the dinner table in those days, or were they strictly for use in the kitchen?

Here's something funny... The cookbook instructed me to scald the tomatoes in order to remove the skin and chill them until it was time to assemble the salad. How unusual! I know that people canning their own tomato sauce often peel them beforehand, but I'd never imagined it being done for a salad. I guess I always thought the crisp snap of the skin was part of the allure. The recipe for this particular salad called for me to add capers to the French Dressing.

The Brownie recipe made a good ol' fashioned Brownie with a soft, milk chocolate flavor and lots of pecans.

*****

BROWNIES

1/2 cup sifted cake flour

Dash salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3 tablespoons shortening

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons strained honey

2 tablespoons corn sirup

1 egg, beaten

1 ounce (square) chocolate, melted

1 tablespoon hot water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup pecans, chopped

Sift flour, salt and baking powder together. Cream shortening with sugar until fluffy. Add honey and sirup and continue creaming. Add egg and mix well. Add melted chocolate. Add dry ingredients, hot water and vanilla and blend well. Mix in pecans and spread mixture in 1 (8-inch) pan. Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees F.) about 20 minutes. Makes 36.

*****

There's the trick. That serving size is how so many women of the '40s were able to enjoy dessert every night and guard those hourglass figures. I tried dividing my batch of Brownies into 36 pieces and just couldn't do it! Even 16 pieces made very small Brownies. Brownies about the size our modern supermarket labels as bite-size!!! I topped my Brownie off with a small scoop of the banana nut ice cream leftover from last weekend.

Now if I could just master that French Dressing recipe...

Growing Up

I was getting a little worried about my new houseplants this morning. Especially the coleus, which had lost a little of the brightness to its color. So I decided to give them a weekend, too. They spent the afternoon lounging about on my sunny landing. Fresh air, warm sunshine... I hope it did them good! It still gets pretty chilly here at night, so I brought them back in until tomorrow afternoon.

Though I ended up spending the morning with my nieces at a storytime, I cleaned my kitchen this afternoon in about two and a half hours. Mind you, I have lots still to add to this particular routine - floors, small appliances, etc. - but I'm encouraged by being able to do it all "in one sitting." Without having to take an extended break about 2/3 of the way through. Maybe I just need to get things started really early on Friday evenings.

Well, I dashed off to the supermarket while I was still feeling so energized (strangely enough). Reminded myself after picking up the shopping basket that it was time for me to approach grocery shopping again like a grown up and headed back outside to start anew - this time with a shopping cart.

It felt very good coming home to put my groceries away in a clean kitchen. And knowing that, with the exception of some "light marketing" on Wednesday evening, I won't be making any rushed trips to the grocery store to pick up one thing or another that I forgot. I had planned my breakfast menus for the week, planned my vintage dinner for tomorrow night. My shopping list in hand, I felt an unusual sense of control as I wheeled about the supermarket. 50s gal has mentioned this sense of control-over-her-own-destiny in her own blog, and today is the first time I've really experienced that feeling myself. I don't know quite how to describe it yet, but there's something about all those chores I did today - and shopping with a big ol' cart - that makes me feel like a grown up. What is it about housework that makes the difference?

On a shallower note, I was thrilled to spy some chicory in the produce section. That's mentioned time and again in these '40s salad recipes. It's totally not what I thought it would look like! Speaking of salads, here's the menu for tomorrow night's 1945 dinner:

Mashed Potatoes

Boiled Cabbage

Fresh Tomato Salad

Brownie a la Mode

A New Kind of Perfect

I got a call last night from an old friend and we had a great chat. Caught up, had some laughs. It was nice. I'd just started in on my bedroom when he called - stripped the bed, taken the covers outside on the landing to air, turned the mattress - but, by the time we said goodnight, it was late and I was yawning. I made up the bed with clean sheets, finished my evening chores, and called it a day. So I was happy to get back to work this evening and finish the job. This will actually give me a chance tomorrow to see if I can clean all my of kitchen - or even just a little bit more of it than normal - in the one morning. I'd better set my alarm, though. That Saturday morning beauty sleep is not a busy housewife's best friend.

Neither is perfectionism.

It seems like it should be, right? You'd think that somebody who was a perfectionist would keep a spick and span house. But it's always been an obstacle for me. On the rare occasions that I cleaned house over the years, I would be frustrated not to have the time and energy to get every nook and cranny shining. What I'm discovering these days is that even though I can't possibly get a room perfectly clean on any given day, if I keep after it regularly, I get to every nook and cranny once in awhile. And the room begins to look a little cleaner as a whole with every month that passes. It's a different kind of perfection. One I haven't been acquainted with before...

Well, it's late and there are a few dishes in the sink that need cleaning before I go to bed. I've got lots to do tomorrow morning!

"A shining, crystal-clear window"

Every time I clean my bedroom, I've been adding one new task to my list of chores. Instead of jumping in feet first and failing miserably, I thought I'd start with the basics and work my way slowly to a picture perfect bedroom. And it's been working. I haven't even really noticed that tiny increase in work from week to week. This was a pretty intimidating mission at first, so I guess this might be a good way to approach each of the missions that intimidates me.

Last Thursday, my brand new task for the week was washing the bedroom windows. America's Housekeeping Book (1945) dedicates an entire chapter to "Windows and Window Fittings." And why shouldn't they? Windows were one way that even a stranger walking by on the street could form an impression of your skill at housekeeping. Take a look inside:

A shining, crystal-clear window is a real source of pride. How long it will stay clear and sparkling is a moot question. The answer depends on the weather, the amount of dust and soot in the air, the number of times sticky little fingers are pressed against it, and so on...

No matter what method and materials you choose, one word of caution is necessary. Don't ever sit on the window sill to wash the outside of the window panes, and do not allow a household employee to sit there either. With most windows it is possible to raise and lower the panes to get at the outside window without relinquishing a firm footing. If this isn't true of your windows, or if you live in an apartment building, then you must call in a professional window cleaner to wash the outside.

Schnikey! Should I be checking the Yellow Pages for a window cleaning service? I don't think my landlord has any plans to clean the outsides of these windows. They're pretty streaked. The manual immediately mentions the "liquid cleaners" that you could buy for windows, but here are a few alternatives. A word of caution: some of these are not for the faint of heart.

2 tablespoons household ammonia to 2 quarts warm water, or

2 tablespoons vinegar to 2 quarts warm water, or

1 tablespoon borax to 2 quarts warm water, or

1 tablespoon kerosene to 2 quarts warm water, or

1/2 cup denatured alcohol (POISON) to 2 quarts warm water

All these solutions are applied with a clean, soft lintless cloth or a cellulose or natural sponge. Wipe them off with a rubber squeegee, a clean damp chamois or soft dry cloth.

I made a solution of warm water and apple cider vinegar, and it did the job. A nice clean shine, though it didn't coax that delicious squeak from the glass that Windex makes. (How does it make that squeaky sound?) Windex has been around since 1933 and whoever owned it did a heck of a job with the marketing. Ads for Windex are everywhere in women's magazines of the '40s.

Here's one great tip from the manual: "Never work in direct sunlight - the window panes dry too quickly and are apt to look streaked."