33 + 3 = 36

I'm 36 years old and I've lost 36 lbs. as of today. There must be something lucky in that! I weighed in at 158 when I stepped on the scale this morning. Just 3 more lbs. to go to reach that midway point...

I've been experimenting with my Oatmeal and have just about decided that my favorite way to flavor it is with cinnamon and honey. I add a dash or two of cinnamon to the pot as the Oatmeal is cooking - which makes my kitchen smell divine - then drizzle on some honey. Toss a few Stewed Prunes on top --- and perfection. I like my Oatmeal a little chewy, too, so I always take the pot off the burner just before the cereal is completely finished cooking. How do you like your Oatmeal?

As we speak, my Drip-O-lator is bubbling away with a pot of coffee. That's one of my favorite rituals of the week. Saturday morning, a pot of coffee, and a chance to catch up with my dear readers. There'll be plenty of time later this morning to set my kitchen back to rights. And my one-year-old niece, Poppet, is going to be my date this evening. Her parents are taking Kitten to a show - they're trying to spend some one-on-one time with each of their daughters - so I get to have Poppet all to myself for a change! I don't think I could have asked for a more wonderful way to end the week.

It's funny how excited I get when I've got plans with my nieces. It's just like getting ready for a date. What will I wear? Do I have something sparkly or something with buttons she can play with? Poppet loves it when I wear a necklace. She'll turn it over again and again in her chubby, little fingers, then tug at it to see if it comes off. What should we do this evening? Should I pick up a new toy or book before I go over? One thing I know is that I'm definitely getting a goodnight kiss on this date - though it might come along with some cracker crumbs. Poppet's learning how to kiss right now and she loves giving lots of open-mouthed kisses on the lips!

Vintage etiquette guides are chock full of advice when it comes to dating, a term so newfangled in 1941 that Lily Haxworth Wallace still uses it with quotation marks in her New American Etiquette. Let's take a peek. How much of this advice would you say stands the test of time?

Many a girl or young woman is liable to rate the popularity of her girl friends according to the number of "dates" they have. Don't make that mistake. It is the quality of your "dates" rather than the quantity that counts. You probably had a better time with Tom tonight, even though he was the only one who asked you out, than Mary, who turned down three other invitations after she had made a "date" with Harry.

When you meet a young man on a party and enjoy his company, either you or he may properly take the step that will bring about another meeting.

When you are parting, he may say, "May I call on your mother and you some evening?" or you might say, "Mother and I will be home Thursday evening. I should like to have you meet her."

However, do not make the "date" unless you are quite sure that you really want to know the young man. Do not invite him or accept any invitation from him merely for the sake of a "date." Only make "dates" with friends or those you believe will be worthy of your friendship. Anyone you would prefer to class as only an acquaintance should not be your partner on a "date." If you are doubtful at all, make some excuse and withhold your favor until the doubt is removed.

A young man on a very limited budget has a right, if he goes about it properly, to seek "dates" with any nice girl, even though she comes from the richest family in town. He should not give her any false notions about his position but should tell her frankly that he would like to take her to the cinema and ice-cream parlor because that is all he can afford at the time. If the girl likes him, she will have more fun out of that date than she would with a man she doesn't like although his pockets may be well filled.

When you have made a date do not be tardy. That is very rude.

Never attempt to bring a girl friend along and, to the man I say, it is equally rude for you to bring a chum. Three was a crowd in the past, it is a crowd today, and will always be one too many in the future.

When you start out on a casual, unplanned "date," do not force your escort and others in the party to do what you want. Let other people make the suggestions most of the time. However, it is always welcomed if you can provide an answer to the question, "Where shall we go?" when everyone else is stumped.

Rats. Are you telling me I can't date unless I move back in with my mother? I sure hope Ms. Wallace has some advice coming up for the bachelor girl who lives alone.

This Ain't Your Mother's Farina!

Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
That we have it every day.
It makes us strong, so we sing this song.
It makes us shout "Hooray!"

It's good for growing babies
And grown-ups, too, to eat.
For all the family's breakfast,
You can't beat Cream of Wheat!
(Advertising jingle, 1942)

I've been eating my daily vintage breakfasts for several months now and farina has definitely become one of my favorites... You may know it as Cream of Wheat. My mom used to dish this up during the winter when I was a kid. It wasn't a favorite, but I remember preferring it tenfold to the oatmeal my mother made from scratch. (Sorry, Ma!) When I was a teenager, instant Cream of Wheat would sometimes appear in the pantry, usually in the maple brown sugar variety.

These days, I'm loving the cooked version, and - as luck would have it - Cream of Wheat is now available in a whole grain variety. I think it finally qualifies as a healthy breakfast. One serving prepared with water (100 calories) contains 15% of the recommended daily allowance of fiber, 50% of the recommended daily allowance of iron, and 4 grams of protein to boot! This is the kind of breakfast that sticks to your ribs and keeps you from feeling hungry for the rest of the morning.

Sometimes, I take my Cream of Wheat straight up. Especially if I'm having fruit along with it, like a dish of berries or half a grapefruit. Other mornings, it's all about the accessories. If you prefer a little crunch with your hot cereal, how 'bout sprinkling on some flax seed or crushed walnuts? Raisins, bits of date, or dried cranberries would be fantastic in farina --- especially if you added them to the cereal as it was cooking and gave 'em a chance to plump up. My favorite way to eat farina is with a smidge of margarine and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Heaven!

The key to cooking farina is to remember your whisk. Use the whisk to stir the cereal as you cook it - which only takes two or three minutes after adding the cereal to a soft boiling water. In fact, it cooks up so quickly that you can have a hot breakfast in the summertime without heating up your kitchen! Whether you rinse your pot right away or leave it to soak for a bit, it's super easy to clean up after. The ever-thrifty author of The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) even has a suggestion for leftover farina (as if!): "Mold... for tomorrow's luncheon dessert. Sweeten with brown sugar or honey and add vanilla." Farina Pudding should be served with Sliced Bananas and Top Milk.

Wednesdays

Wednesday might just be a good mid-week catch-up day after all... My strategy with these weekly chores has been that when social plans fall on an evening I've dedicated to a particular chore, I'd push every chore forward one day and catch up on the weekend. What I'm finding is that Wednesday is a nice opportunity to keep social plans during the early part of the week from disrupting the entire week's schedule. My only weekly chore on Wednesday evenings is "light" marketing - a brief stop on the way home from work at one of the smaller groceries where I buy organic foods - so I certainly have some additional free time later in the evening.

Case in point: this week. Several days ago, I lost my wallet and the Good Samaritan who picked it up decided not to return it or dispose of it, but rather to start using my debit card. (Thanks, creep.) Fortunately, I noticed it was missing very quickly and stopped the bleeding. Well, now I'm a woman without an identity. I've had to replace everything from my bank accounts and driver's license to my insurance cards and library card. I'm far from finished, but that's the reason I've been a bit upside down this week. I've missed breakfast the last two days because I was busy making phone calls. Last night, my sister needed some last-minute help with the babies, so the ironing got left behind. It's been a bit frantic, but it's nice to know that I still have plenty of time to do the ironing tonight and everything will be back on schedule again...

Wednesdays were a hodgepodge kinda day according to America's Housekeeping Book (1945), too. A day for "specific jobs such as silver polishing, shopping, sewing or something to be carried on throughout the day." I guess that's a 1940s update on the traditional saying: "mend on Wednesday."

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy my new centerpiece? Since studying up on vintage table settings for the kitchen, I realized the centerpiece you most frequently see in advertisements and in photos is a bowl of fruit. Practical, colorful, and pretty (as long as your bananas aren't overripe). Since I started making these vintage breakfasts, I've been keeping more fresh fruit about the house than ever before - grapefruit, oranges, lemons, bananas, apples - so I resurrected a small blue footed cake-plate that'd been gathering dust at the back of a cupboard and made it a fruit plate. It's perfect! Just the size for my kitchen table, and it looks a little different every day of the week. Living art.



Another of my breakfast-table discoveries has been if you dress up a bowl of corn-meal mush with a dab of margarine and a pinch or two of brown sugar, it takes like caramel corn. Yum!

What I've also discovered is that my "cooking" habits over the last several years have left me with a serious case of leftover-phobia. I can make something perfectly good to eat, like the shepherd's pie on Sunday evening, and end up with five servings left over. One day later, I'm craving something different for dinner. Okay, everybody needs a change of pace... Two days later, I start making something else and remember the pie when it's too late... Three days later, I'm starting to get icked out at the thought of eating it. It's probably starting to spoil by now, right? Here's some more perfectly good food gone to waste because I've gotten out of the habit of eating leftovers. This is something I have got to correct.

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

I started off the day with a breakfast menu straight from the pages of the February 1947 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It's one of three menus in an article called "Why Don't You Eat a Good Breakfast?" The author presents profiles of three fictional Americans - the reasons they don't eat breakfast and some purportedly practical and tasty solutions. Here's an excerpt from the first profile:

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

Mrs. F. is overweight, yet has many colds. Her usual breakfast of coffee, frosted sweet rolls (350 calories each) is short of proteins, vitamins, minerals...

While hanging wash, Mrs. F. feels chilled, starts sneezing. Her resistance is low (studies show possible relation between resistance to tuberculosis and foods rich in protein, Vitamins A and C). [Way to scare the skirts off your readers!] A breakfast of fruit, enriched cereal, and egg would have given her food essentials for morning tasks.

Interested in a dieting fad, she decides to skip breakfast entirely, has to draw on her reserves of fat for heat and energy every morning. In a short time she suffers from a fat shortage, marked by constant hunger, lack of pep, vague discomfort...

Woman weighing 130 pounds, keeping house, has a daily energy requirement of about 2,300 calories. Milk is a must.

Suggested breakfast
1 slice canned pineapple with sirup
2/3 cup oatmeal
1 cup whole milk for cereal
1/4 cup coffee cream
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 slices toast (enriched white bread)
Coffee

I did make a couple adaptations. Used 1% instead of whole milk with my oatmeal and coffee. Skipped the buttered toast entirely. But then I'm not yet doing the kinds of hard physical labor Mrs. F. was doing in 1947. After my morning chores, I was free today 'til this evening. Stay tuned for Mr. F.'s breakfast issues in an upcoming post...

My routine is going to see a few adaptations of its own during the next two weeks. My sister is taking her youngest home on Wednesday to spend several days with our parents, so I'm going to be playing substitute mom for my older niece. On weeknights, I'll be picking her up at her grandmother's when I get out of work and staying at her house until my brother-in-law gets home from work around 10:30. And because of the way his work schedule falls, I'll have her both days next weekend from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. It's going to be lovely to spend so much one-on-one time with her, but I am going to be one tired chickadee by the time I crawl into bed each night. (She's only two years old and a ball of energy!) As for housework --- my goal is just to keep things running at the level they have been while all this extra work is afoot. No more new missions until my sister is home and I've had a day or two to recover. If I can keep everything running "as is" for the next two weeks, I'll be very proud.

I may have to shift some of my daily chores around a bit, though. Which is something I need to be able to do with any routine. I want to be sure that I still have some empty-ish time slots left over in every week so that I can make some adjustments when something social comes up or when family calls. As comforting as it is to have an appointed day and time for every chore - and as critical as that is while I'm trying to make habits of these chores - I need to build some flexibility into my schedule so that unexpected things don't trip me up. I think that's going to be key to getting through the next two weeks and getting through life, period. A 1940s housewife would have needed some flexibility herself for that monthly club meeting or when her spouse or child was sick at home and needed extra tending. The daily stuff needs to get done no matter what, but the weekly stuff needs to be more portable. What do you think?

Hold the Cream

I tried to do it, I really tried. This morning's 1945 breakfast menu started out with Sliced Bananas with Cream. My arteries won the contest, though, and I ate the Bananas without the Cream:

Sliced Bananas

Poached Free Range Eggs on Toast

Cream and Top Milk were a staple fixture on the 1940s breakfast table. And not just for coffee. People laced their cooked cereals with Top Milk. They served cold cereals in bowls of Cream. Now it shows up with fruit. I guess they didn't have the constant commentary on health running through their heads that we do today. Cream and Top Milk were considered nutrient-dense foods, not cholesterol-laden substances to be used in strict moderation. I hesitated before the Cream in the dairy section at the grocery store last Wednesday. Thought I really ought to taste the dish for the sake of The Experiment. But I just couldn't do it.

At any rate, this was the last of the breakfast menus in the front of my cookbook. When I started trying 'em out a couple weeks ago, I expected these menus to be a little ritzier than the ones in the budget feature in the back of the cookbook. Fresher ingredients, maybe. So how did they measure up? Here's a bit I wrote about the budget-conscious menus:

Nearly half of the meals (43%) were built around some sort of cooked cereal. 27% of the menus were built around an egg dish. Baked goods were the main attraction for 20% of the menus, and cold cereal for the remaining 10%... I'm also a vegetarian, so I've taken any meat dishes out of the menus. This didn't take much time. These were the war years, and only 20% of the menus even include meat.

The menus in the front of the book are only built around cooked cereal 9% of the time. Nearly two-thirds of the meals (64%) feature an egg dish, and baked goods lead the way in 27% of the menus. You can see right away just how useful cooked cereals would have been to the housewife who had to be especially careful with money. Somebody who was a little more comfortable financially could count on having eggs at the breakfast table several times a week. Another major difference is that 46% of these front-of-the-book menus include meat - twice the amount as in the back of the book. The only kind of meat referenced in the budget section is bacon, while the menus in the front of the book include codfish, ham, and sausage. Another glimpse into the kind of pantry a thriftier housewife would have kept in the '40s.

I'm not done experimenting with breakfast just yet. I've been able to find eight more vintage breakfast menus in cookbooks and magazines, so I'm going to try these out and then move on to dinner. The first trio of menus is from a 1944 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book (New York: Farrar and Rinehart). I'm also going to fire up my "new" Drip-O-lator for the first time. A friend bought me this lovely contraption last summer and it looks absolutely fabulous on my stovetop, but it was missing the aluminum drip unit that fits in the top. Until Christmas, that is. It's all assembled and ready to go, but I feel a bit like I'm trying out a new Bunsen burner in the lab. Will it make good coffee?

A Big, Scrummy Mess

My plan for breakfast this morning was an unmitigated failure.

It started out okay. The Corn-meal Mush came right out of the pan in a single piece. I sliced it into strips and started heating some oil in a large fry pan. Now, I have almost zero experience frying foods in hot oil, so maybe I used too much oil, maybe too little, maybe the burner wasn't just the right temperature. I don't know. The strips never browned. They just kind of sat there in the bubbling oil and fell apart every time I tried to turn one over. There were actually two different recipes for Fried Mush in my cookbook. The first suggests breading the slices of Mush before frying them. The second suggests skipping the breading altogether.

I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I ended up with a mound of oily, hot-ish, half-congealed Corn-meal on my plate. (Just the thought now makes me queasy.) I was very doubtful at this point my breakfast could be resuscitated, so I was sparing with the Sirup. And after a few bites for penance - I'd had enough. Blech! I'm still trying to banish the sight and smell of it from my mind...

In honor of Dr. King and the National Day of Service, some friends and I spent the morning picking up trash on the banks of a dry riverbed. We had a good time - my legs feel like jelly! - but we managed to clean up one little corner of the Earth. What a lot of litter is out there. I picked up lots of glass and bottle caps and cigarette butts. Plastic bags, pieces of styrofoam, dish shards. A $5 Monopoly bill, a shower curtain rod. What surprised me was how much fast food trash we found. Napkins, receipts, bags, containers. It's as if people are just throwing the remains of their drive-thru lunches right out the window when they're finished. Double Blech!

Fashion Plate

In addition to an adjustable or built-in ironing board, the manual recommended that the 1940s housewife keep her board dressed to the nines in pads and covers that might the job a bit easier:

A well-dressed ironing board is not covered with old blankets and worn-out sheets. That's false economy. Ready-made pads and covers come packaged separately or together to fit ironing boards of all sizes, and the covers have either drawstring fastenings or elastic gathers. Keep an extra cover or two so you will always have a clean one while a soiled one is being laundered. Asbestos ironing board covers are available today, also. They give long service and protection from scorching and burning.

The cover on my own ironing board is so thin that the pattern of the metal board sometimes shows right up on the pieces I'm ironing. And a pad? There's a super thin layer of foam between the cloth and the board, but I don't think it could possibly qualify. (I've honestly never even considered removing the cover from an ironing board to wash it!) Judging from these words of caution from The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947), though, I'm not the first woman to try and make do without the state-of-the-art in terms of equipment. "Old blankets and worn-out sheets" may have been what the mothers and grandmothers of '40s housewives once used to pad the surfaces on which they did their ironing.

This morning's breakfast was super simple:

Stewed Dried Apricots
Corn-meal Mush

I wish I hadn't boasted about having become so good at dividing my recipes, because I promptly whipped together a batch of Corn-meal Mush this morning that yielded six servings. Six servings! Without even stopping to consult that last line in the recipe's instructions. Haste is my downfall when it comes to housekeeping. I end up having to throw away grease-stained clothing because I haven't taken the time to remove the stain before throwing it in the laundry and forget about the stain by the time Wash Day comes 'round. I make six times the breakfast needed because I don't take the time to read all the way through the recipe before getting started.

In the spirit of 1940s thrift, I came up with a possible solution. One of the breakfast menus in the back of the cookbook mentioned turning one day's leftover Corn-meal Mush into a dish to serve at lunch the next day - Sauteed Corn-meal Mush with Cheese Sauce. Apparently, you can ladle the leftovers into a shallow pan, cover and refrigerate, then cut it into pieces, and fry them up. (Sounds a little bit like polenta.) Instead of serving mine for lunch, I'm going to make it for breakfast and serve it with Sirup - which is also suggested in the recipe.

Cubism

You can't say I lack curiosity. I'm dying to find out how the ritzy breakfast menus in the front of my cookbook will compare to the coupon clipper menus in the back. After eating one of my tried and true breakfasts this morning (Stewed Apricots, Oatmeal), I made up a grocery list and realized the list wouldn't be any longer whether I picked the ritzy menus or not. As excited as I am to start trying out some of the dinner menus, I think I'll hold off for a little while longer.

I felt so vintage as I sat at my kitchen table picking menus and making a grocery list. Every time I come across an article on kitchen design in a 1940s magazine, they mention how important it is that the housewife have a comfortable, well-lighted place in her kitchen to sit and do that very thing. A desk or nook where she can store her cookbooks, her recipe box, and plan how to work and re-work the foods she buys into her family's meals.

Taking a side trip into the laundry room, there are a whole list of Wash Day chores in my 1945 manual besides Sorting, Washing, Rinsing, and Drying:

Bluing

Have you ever treated any laundry with bluing? I've never used it before and wasn't even sure if you can still buy it, but - sure enough - found a small bottle of Mrs. Stewart's at the supermarket. Bluing is apparently used to correct yellowing in white fabrics. I guess I don't have many white garments these days that get yellow-y. Do our modern detergents already have bluing built in? Lots of 'em are blue in color. According to the manual, bluing was once available in all kinds of forms, "liquid, solid balls, cubes, powder and in combination with soap flakes. Bluing-soap flakes are used in the wash water; all others are added to the final rinse water... mix it thoroughly with the water, to prevent streaking."

Bleaching

Here's a familiar friend. I added some bleach to a load of whites two days ago. "Use a bottled chlorine bleach and follow directions carefully as to the quantity to use. Mix the bleach thoroughly with the first rinse water."

Starching

Do I even own any clothes that need to be starched? Here's a list from the manual:

Children's clothes

Dresses (cotton, organdy, dotted swiss)

Collars and cuffs (pique, organdy)

Blouses (sheer, cotton)

Glass curtains (marquisette, organdy, net, gingham)

Uniforms

Shirts (collars, cuffs, front pleat)

Slacks (cotton)

Well, I guess I do after all. I definitely didn't see any "starch cubes" at the supermarket, but there were several brands of spray starch. Housewives everywhere must have celebrated when spray starch was invented. The process of cooking a batch of starch, straining it, keeping a "skin" from forming, immersing the garments, wringing out the extra starch... Starching clothes was certainly a fine art. Starched anything lately?

Menu Making

My breakfast menu this morning marks Day 30 in my cookbook's special feature, "How to Feed a Family of Five on $20.00 per Week." Let's see... according to a historical inflation calculator, $20 in 1945 would be the equivalent of about $230 today. That's a pretty decent weekly budget for groceries. Even for a family that size.

Sliced Bananas on
Shredded Cereal

Easy, yummy, and filling. It was so filling, in fact, that it made a small lunch feel just right. I like that. It's been a nice perk from eating breakfast again. I've found this is definitely not the case on the mornings my menu is built around Waffles, Griddlecakes, or French Toast.

Nearly half of the meals (43%) were built around some sort of cooked cereal. 27% of the menus were built around an egg dish. Baked goods were the main attraction for 20% of the menus, and cold cereal for the remaining 10%. I adapted most of the menus to leave out the third serving of carbs. This may have worked for a woman preparing breakfast for several people. She'd be able to enjoy a little serving of several different dishes. I'm cooking for one, so I've been adapting the menus a bit to make sure I don't end up with a fridge full of leftovers and some extra inches on the waistline. I'm also a vegetarian, so I've taken any meat dishes out of the menus. This didn't take much time. These were the war years, and only 20% of the menus even include meat.

So, here's the question: I'm trying to decide what to do next. There are 11 more breakfast menus in a chapter on "Menu Making" at the front of the cookbook. Presumably, these were menus designed for a housewife who didn't have to be as budget-conscious as the one with the $20 grocery bill. They'll probably be a little more elaborate. Fresher ingredients, maybe? I'm not sure. Should I pick up some of these ritzier menus? Or go back to Day 1 of the menus I've been using --- maybe drop some of the empty calorie days? (Despite her coupon clipper menus, even the author of the cookbook says "Doughnuts... jam, jelly, marmalade, and pancakes with sirup should be considered desserts... to be eaten only after more wholesome foods have been eaten.") Should I start working on some of the dinner menus. Maybe make a 1940s dinner once a week? What do you think???

A Comedy of Errors

My housekeeping routine fell prey to a comedy of errors this morning - all of them mine, of course. I could blame it on my cold. (I am feeling a little foggy and disoriented.) But that wouldn't be entirely accurate...

Before I begin, here's yesterday's vintage breakfast menu:

Apple Juice

Cracked-wheat Cereal

I should mention that I added some raisins and brown sugar to the Wheatena. Normally, I try to stick quite literally to the menus, but Wheatena needs something extra just to be edible - and that magazine article did suggest adding dried fruits to make cooked cereals more tempting!

I knew that Corn-bread was on the menu this morning, so set my alarm 30 minutes early so I'd have time to do a little baking. 2 cups corn-meal, 3 tablespoons baking powder... Wait a second. Baking powder? Maybe it was too early to do any baking, because there wasn't any baking powder in that recipe - or even in any of the recipes on that page of the cookbook! I'm left facing a mixing bowl full of corn-meal covered with baking powder. The recipe actually calls for baking soda which I don't have in the house right now. It's been on my grocery list, but I must have been thinking I wouldn't need it for another few days. So I whip out my 1990s Betty Crocker cookbook. Nope. No emergency substitutes for baking soda. Can I find another vintage recipe for Corn-bread that calls for baking powder instead? I didn't have to look very far, but all this casting about definitely ate up the extra time I'd planned. I ended up using a recipe from a little booklet published by Clabber Girl, probably in the mid- to late 1930s. Conveniently enough, there's baking powder in every recipe.

Tomato Juice

Hard-cooked Egg

Corn-bread, Honey

The icing on the cake? Not a drop of Honey in the house. Turns out I tossed the last jar shortly after using it on my Griddlecakes a few weeks ago and then realizing it was expired.

The Corn-bread was very tasty with margarine - or should I say oleo - so breakfast turned out okay. By the time I'd finished, however, it was high time to be leaving and my bed was still unmade. On any other day, I'd have taken the few extra minutes to make my bed. But I needed to stop by a mailbox on the way to work. Badly. You can guess how that debate won out.

What a morning! Just a sample of the chaos my household used to run on - and had for ages. My kitchen, my wardrobe, my pocketbook... There's no way I'm going back to that place. Ever. My new routine may be a bit more work everyday, but it also brings a kind of serenity along with it that I've become accustomed to in a very short time.

Catch-up Time

It's high time for one of those lil' bit of everything kinda posts - a catch-up post. The Great Housekeeping Experiment has left me curious about lots of things along the way, and I wanted to report on some of the things I've discovered.

First of all, my decision to straighten up the living room just before going to bed at night seems to work really well for me right now. I haven't forgotten to do it in quite some time, and having that extra few minutes in the morning for bedmaking has come in handy. For now, it works nicely. I'm not sure that'll be the case as I add more chores to my housekeeping schedule. The evenings may become a little more busy. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Remember that article on "eating to reduce" in a vintage copy of Good Housekeeping? I was curious about the portions I've been eating and how they compare to 1945 diet advice. According to the magazine, a standard size portion of cereal (suitable only for the men and teenaged boys in your family) was 2/3 cup. Women, teenaged girls and children should have a slightly smaller portion. A few days ago, Malt-O-Meal was on the menu at breakfast, and I prepared one serving according to the instructions on the package. When the cereal was finished cooking, it turned out to be 3/4 cup. Larger than even the serving size recommended for men and growing boys! I think I'll try cutting the size of the portions I'm making by just a smidge and see if I can get the finished servings of cereal down at least to 2/3 cup. I'd love a vintage waistline!

Speaking of cereal, this morning's menu was perfect for a chilly day:

Oatmeal with Prunes

The description is ever-so-slightly different than a similar meal I had a few weeks ago:

Stewed Prunes

Oatmeal

So instead of serving the Prunes on the side, I cut them in pieces and dropped 'em into the pot of oatmeal while it was bubbling away. A subtle twist on words here, but I think the author of the cookbook meant for these to be two different meals. In a vintage magazine article on bringing your family back to the breakfast table, I read that you might make cooked cereals more tempting to Jim or little Patty by adding dried dates, raisins, figs, prunes, or apricots. No doubt.

One of the questions I took up about a month ago was the wardrobe appropriate for a 1940s housewife during the early hours of the morning. Should I be fully dressed and ready for company by the time I start breakfast? Would a housecoat be suitable for morning housework? How 'bout a robe and slippers? Since I head off for work after breakfast, I've been getting dressed before getting things started in the kitchen - but hadn't given up my comfy slippers until yesterday. Let's face it, though. If a '40s housewife went to the trouble of getting fully dressed before breakfast, she probably didn't dumb down her outfit with slippers! So shoes it is. And though I love wearing a pinafore-style apron while I'm working at the stove, it doesn't seem quite right once I'm sitting down to eat. It's funny --- there's nobody here to see what I'm wearing - or not wearing - at the breakfast table, but wardrobe can really have an impact on your state of mind. Breakfast should be a festive meal.

In the homes of workers breakfast always comes at the all-too-brief period between waking and dashing off for the train to the city. It is the unusual commuter who rises early enough to spend much time at table in the morning... Set your table in the sun, if possible. Look out on a garden if you can do so, or, in winter, on a birds' feeding station. It's fun to have breakfast in company with the juncos and blue jays. It's also nice to pull a small table close up to the open fire on chilly mornings, or to set out breakfast on the terrace in summer. Flowers or fruit on the table. Place mats, or a gay peasant cloth. Napkins at left. People should wake up cheerful and breakfast should be serene and gay. Try to manage your household so that your husband enjoys his breakfast and wishes he could stay longer, even as you push him out the door with a kiss on his way to the eight-fourteen.

Lily Haxworth Wallace, ed., The New American Etiquette
(New York: Books, 1941)

Here's my last bit of catch-up for the day. A glimpse of my favorite vintage tablecloth, which probably dates to the WWII years. It makes my table so bright and cheery. Even on days with a menu like the infamous Tomato Juice and Waffles with Butterscotch Sauce.

The Ugly Side

This is a bit of an aside from my journey into the vintage world of laundry.

I've been sharing my 1945 breakfast menus with a friend from work. So I was telling her today about the yummy Buckwheat Griddlecakes I made for breakfast yesterday morning and how surprised I was by their color. That they were the color of gingerbread or chocolate pancakes, but had about the same flavor as your regular, everyday pancakes. All of a sudden, something dreadful occurred to me.

Do you remember the Little Rascals films that were popular during the Depression era? One of the characters was a little African American boy nicknamed Buckwheat. Yikes. This must be how the character got his nickname. Just thinking of my breakfast yesterday (and the leftovers I ate this morning) makes me feel smarmy.

This isn't the first time I've come up against racial prejudice since beginning The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Just the other day, I was writing up a little post on this darling canister set I saw when I was antiquing in Connecticut last week. You know the type: Coffee, Sugar, Flour, etc. I giggled when I realized the set included a canister marked "Farina." (That's one family who enjoyed lots of Cream of Wheat at the breakfast table!) Well, I was looking around online for a Cream of Wheat advertisement from the '40s and was disappointed when the only things I could find were these dreadfully racist cartoons then used to advertise the product. All those cringeworthy mammy/pickaninny images. I gave up the search in disgust.

I guess it just makes me think about the barrage of racist images out there during the 1940s. Even the white middle-class housewife - somebody you think of as leading a fairly insulated existence - would have regularly come across these images, whether on the cereal boxes in her pantry, in her women's magazines, or at the movie theater. They were part of the common dialogue among the white men, women, and children who bought these products or lined up on Saturday mornings to buy tickets to the matinee. That the name "Buckwheat" would have been a kind of inside joke to people of the era makes me shudder.

While racism is certainly still present today, we've made long strides as a culture since the '40s. This is one aspect of the good ol' days that I'm very happy to leave behind.

The Streamlined Bed

I've found another cereal that ranks right up there for me with Wheatena. Weetabix. At least when it's prepared with heated milk to make Weetabix Hot. Here's my 1945 breakfast menu for the day:

Mixed Fruit Juices (combined leftovers with lemon juice)

Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal

Since I hit the grocery store yesterday, I had three different kinds of fruit juices to mix together. And what thrifty '40s housewife wouldn't love a chance to get rid of the dregs of juice still remaining in several bottles? It's killer to get that fridge space back. Especially if you're headed out to do your marketing later that day. My glass of Mixed Fruit Juices was made up from equal parts orange juice, pineapple juice (should have stopped here), and tomato juice. With a squeeze of lemon which - perhaps not surprisingly - did nothing to improve the taste of the concoction. It was edible, but that's all.

I also picked up some Weetabix yesterday and found a recipe online for Weetabix Hot. It's a Whole-wheat Cereal, so I thought it would fit the bill nicely... unfortunately, it tasted like cereal that was already partially digested. Happily, I've just learned that Weetabix wasn't introduced to U.S. markets until 1968, so it's well past my timeframe. I think I'll try this stuff cold next time a Prepared Cereal is on the menu and see if it's a little more palatable.

Today was Day Three of bedmaking-by-the-book. Because of the warm weather in this corner of the world, I don't keep much in the way of covers on my bed: a fitted sheet, a flat sheet, a thin quilt, and a throw blanket. So making my bed doesn't take nearly as long as it must have for somebody following the instructions in the manual. The authors expected their readers to have two sheets (bottom and top), at least two blankets, a third sheet or blanket cover, and a bedspread. The blankets and blanket cover were all expected to be tucked in at the foot of the bed with mitered corners. It was even suggested that the bedspread have mitered corners if it wasn't already a fitted piece. A streamlined bed, I guess you could say. A design choice right in keeping with some of the latest architecture, vehicles, dinnerware, and clothing.

One of the questions I had early on during this experiment came up when I read the list of bed linens recommended for the new bride in a 1941 etiquette book. The author mentioned a "night spread" and, just now, I found a reference online at the website for Pioneer Linens, a company established in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1912:

Blanket covers are traditionally called a night spread, and used to decorate the bed when the bedspread is removed... Blanket covers are light in weight and can be finished in a pique, seersucker, and matelasse or percale... Use over a thermal weave blanket for added warmth during the winter months.

I had no idea! So it sounds like bedspreads were not used during the night - just folded down to the foot of the bed. The blanket cover and top sheet, which could both be more easily washed, protected heavy woolen "winter blankets" and fancy bedspreads alike from wear or soiling.

Bed Sweet Bed

What is it about human beings that makes us such creatures of routine? I never sleep quite as good as I do in my own bed - on my own pillows - and what a relief to get home last night and fall asleep under my own covers! I slept better than I had in several nights. Haven't quite caught up with the jetlag, but I'm feeling glad to be in my own little nest with a few more days before going back to work on Monday.

I used the 1945 instructions on "How to Make a Bed" the last day before my trip - Christmas Eve - and tried 'em out again this morning after eating my first vintage breakfast in a week. It was a blessedly simple menu, thank goodness!

Tomato Juice

Malt-O-Meal

Bedmaking is a decidedly easier task in 2009 it was in 1945 B.F.S. (Before Fitted Sheets). Back in the day, the only kind of sheet you could buy was a flat sheet. They were sold in sets of six and tied up with ribbons. And so the authors of my housekeeping manual tell me to make mitered ("hospital") corners at each corner of the "bottom sheet." The "top sheet" - what we'd call today the "flat sheet" - should be mitered at the foot of the bed only. I did indeed use a ruler to make my hospital corners and discovered that the 15 inches suggested for the fold is about the length from my elbow to the tip of my thumb. The '40s housewife probably wasn't toting a ruler about from bedroom to bedroom, so I should now be able to use my new rule of thumb (pun intended) to decide where to fold up each corner.

I vividly remember my mother teaching me when I was a little girl that the flat sheet should be spread on the bed with the hemmed side facing down. I couldn't understand why the pretty side shouldn't be facing up and protested. So she spread out the blankets and showed me how, when you turned the top of that sheet down over the blanket, the pretty side of was turned over, too - for all the world to admire! I wasn't surprised to see these directions also printed up in the manual. The authors even add italics to make sure that the reader remembers to spread the top sheet right side down before turning it down over the blankets.

It's time for me to make a grocery list and do a little unpacking. Happy New Year, dear readers!

Are You Eating to Reduce?

"Reducing" was a popular term for dieting in the '40s, and the October 1945 issue of Good Housekeeping carried an article all about reducing: "No fads - no going hungry - this is a pleasant, adequate diet. If it's followed, steady, gradual loss in weight and improved health should result." How does the breakfast menu compare to the ones I've been using in the cookbook?

BREAKFAST
Fruit - Preferably 1/2 Grapefruit or 1 Orange
1 Boiled or Poached Egg on Thin Slice Toast
Or Medium Serving Cereal and
Glass of Skim Milk
400 I.U. Vitamin D

The experts of the day suggested that tea or coffee be taken only without cream or sugar. Dry toast could be made from white, rye, wheat, or whole wheat bread. And just in case this was a burning question, "toast has the same number of calories as untoasted bread."

Another article in a vintage magazine tells us that "wives," "younger children," and teenaged girls should eat a smaller serving of breakfast cereal than did husbands or teenaged boys. They should also be careful to partake in only one slice of dry toast, not two. The standard serving size for cereal was 2/3 cup, so presumably the reducers in the family should only have about 1/2 cup.

I wonder how much cereal I've been eating? Maybe I'll have to break out the measuring cup tomorrow...

Wheat-yuck-a!

How the brand has survived for more than a century, I'll never know. Wheatena blows.

I've been scouring the grocery stores looking for something which might fill the bill for Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal, and I was so happy to find Wheatena at Fry's. When I told my mother yesterday that I vaguely remembered one hot cereal she used to make that was absolutely atrocious, she said she thought it might have been Wheatena and my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. Here's my 1945 menu for breakfast this morning:

Apple Juice

Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal with Maple Sirup

The Maple Sirup is actually a substitute for Shaved Maple Sugar. I've checked several places looking for Maple Sugar - even some of those maple sugar candies shaped like maple leaves. Finally decided just to substitute the Maple Sirup. Was Maple Sugar available in large quantities in the '40s? Could you buy it in boxes like brown sugar and confectioner's sugar?

I tried so hard to jazz myself up as I was cooking the Wheatena. "Think of those golden sheaves of wheat, baking in the sun on the prairie." "Think of the nutty, roasty-toasty goodness of whole wheat." "Think of the yummy Maple Sirup on top." It was just as atrocious as I remembered. Tastes like eating a pile of chaff. And I had to floss a couple times just to get all the little bits of husk out of my teeth before leaving the house.

*sigh*

So, after all that trauma, I was looking around online for a picture of the Wheatena box and - come to find out - Wheatena is actually considered Cracked Wheat. Cracked Wheat Cereal is mentioned in another upcoming menu. The cookbook's author must have had an entirely different breakfast in mind when she described Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal. I wonder if she meant Ralston. I've seen lots of vintage ads for "Ralston Hot" which was 100% whole wheat. The world of hot cereals is still such a jungle to me. I'll bet a '40s housewife would have known right away what it meant when she saw references in a cookbook to Cracked Wheat Cereal, Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal, Cooked Wheat Cereal, and so on.

At any rate, it looks like I've got another bowl of Wheatena to look forward to in a few days. Am I missing some critical step in preparing it for the table? A dash of fairy dust or something? I followed the instructions on the box, and they're pretty simple: Bring water, salt, and Wheatena to a hard boil, then drop to low boil for four or five minutes.

Better keep the floss handy!

A Wardrobe Question

I'm up to my ears in gingerbread this evening, but I wanted to pop in and share some of the things I've been pondering lately as I stir my Malt-O-Meal and tidy up my living room. For starters, the schedule in my 1945 housekeeping manual doesn't tell me when the housewife could shower (or bathe) and dress herself. Did she head down to the kitchen fully washed and dressed and ready to be seen by early morning callers, or was she wearing a robe with her hair still in curlers? If we were to judge by advertisements from the era, I'd say they were fully dressed at the breakfast table. In real life, though, was that really the case?

For myself, I've found that it seems to make more sense for me to get showered and dressed (and to have the bedroom straightened up) before I begin preparing breakfast. That way, if I have something that's going to take a long time - like Stewed Apricots or Prunes - I can get those started before getting dressed and have plenty to do while they're bubbling away on the back burner. Plus, I'm just not able to summon any kind of appetite as soon as I get out of bed in the morning. Definitely need some time to rustle that up! Since I have to head to work by 7:15 or so, I might as well be fully dressed as I go about my early morning chores.

Was it an age thing? Were older women more likely to be dressed for the day before leaving the bedroom? Were mothers - who also had to get the kids up and dressed - more likely to spend the early morning in bathrobe and slippers? Where do housecoats fit in? Here are some wonderful photos of '40s housewives in morning garb courtesy of the Library of Congress. The captions were written by the photographers.

Sheffield, Alabama. Mrs. Hall prepares breakfast for her husband before he leaves for work at the aluminum plant. (June 1942)

Washington, D.C. Lynn Massman, wife of a student at the Naval Air Station, eating breakfast while her eight-weeks-old son takes a nap. (December 1943)

Cincinnati, Ohio. Mrs. Cochran, the wife of a Greyhound bus driver, giving the children Sunday breakfast. (September 1943)

Frankford, Pennsylvania. Although she's one of America's vital production workers eight hours each day, fifty-five-year-old Eva Smuda still finds plenty of time to devote to home and family. Before the rest of the household is up, she has breakfast on the stove. (March 1942)

I was super excited when I found some Wheatena at one of the local grocery stores on my way home from work today. I've been looking all over for something wheat-y in the hot cereal section. And just in the nick of time, too, as I spy Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal coming up on the menu. The next item on my scavenger list: maple sugar. My breakfast this morning was building-blocks basic:

Grapefruit Juice

Cooked Farina and Barley Cereal

You know, I don't mind the lumps in my cereal very much when they happen, but I'm finding it's become a point of pride or something to make lump-free cereal. What's happening to me?!?

Paging Emily Post...

My breakfast table became an etiquette disaster area this morning. My menu:

Sliced Oranges
Cooked Barley and Farina Cereal, Milk

An attractive dessert is made by cutting oranges crosswise in quarter-inch slices and laying the slices in an overlapping row on a glass plate, allowing about four slices to each person. The slices may be sprinkled with sugar and moist coconut or served plain.

As you can see, the American Woman's Cook Book gives detailed instructions for making Sliced Oranges, but apparently not detailed enough for me! They made a pretty little plate of fruit, but I guess I've never eaten Sliced Oranges at the table before. I folded them in half and bit right into them - and promptly ended up with two orange juice stains on my favorite vintage tablecloth. What's a girl to do?

After frantically treating the stains, I consulted my 1941 etiquette book. How can Sliced Oranges be eaten without making a messy faux pas? Alas, Lily Haxworth Wallace was mum on the topic of table manners when it comes to citrus fruit. Several other vintage etiquette books I was able to search online had conflicting advice. Nobody seemed to be able to agree on a strategy. I finally came across a recipe booklet published by Sunkist in 1940 which offered some useful information. Oranges should be peeled before slicing. The outer peel and membrane should be removed entirely before the orange is sectioned, sliced, or cut in pieces. The sections, etc. should then be eaten with a fork and knife.

*blushing*

This must have been one of those common kitchen knowledge kind of things that a girl once learned at her mother's knee. Isn't it something I made it to early middle age without having any kind of basic survival skills in the kitchen? My grandmother would be embarrassed.

An Archeological Dig

I really tried to get some extra sleep last night. I turned out the lights at 9 p.m., but woke up about 3 a.m. and tossed and turned for an hour. When my alarm went off, I was still tired. I'll have to try this again tonight. I think a good night's rest is going to be super helpful as my workload at home increases.

My breakfast menu this morning was very simple:

Stewed Prunes

Oatmeal, Milk

I had some questions about Top Milk last week when the cookbook recommended serving it with Corn-meal Mush one day. Tried some half 'n' half, but it didn't taste very good. So I've done some research online and it turns out that Top Milk (for those who can still get it) has about 7% milk fat, while half 'n' half has 10%. Rather than go overboard, I've decided just to use 1% milk when the menu calls for Top Milk. And it did today. I served the Stewed Prunes in a separate dish and remembered to bring the water and salt to a boil before adding the oats. The Oatmeal turned out perfectly. I'm so happy I've figured that out!

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines, music, games, victrola records, cards, etc.

This week's mission paints a sweet picture of the kinds of things you'd find in a '40s living room: lots of reading material, sheet music (for a piano or electric organ), board games and a deck of cards, phonograph records, ash trays, potted plants, floral arrangements... I had to laugh, though, as I went down the list this morning looking for items to restore to their proper places - and realized that I have practically none of these things in my living room! One lonely library book which needed to be put back on the shelf.

Here's the motley assortment of items instead that I found in my 21st-century living room this morning and had to put away: opened mail, 1 basket of clean laundry, 1 spice rack (gift from friend which hadn't yet been set up in the kitchen), a quarter, tote bag, purse, 3 pairs of shoes and 1 pair of slippers, ironing board and iron, 1 snapshot of my youngest niece, Christmas present I bought yesterday, and 1 new pair of shoes (still in the box). A strange collection of things! Laying it all out like that, like some archeologist examining the finds from a dig, it really says something about how I use - and don't use - my living room. I don't spend much time there. I pass through. Kick off my shoes, put down my bags and my mail, and pick stuff back up as I go through on my way out. It's not a room in which I spend much time reading or listening to music or playing games. The kinds of things the authors of the housekeeping manual expected people to be doing in their living rooms. Is it that my bedroom seems more cozy than my living room? I certainly haven't done very much in the way of decorating in my living room. When I moved cross country, I had to leave a lot behind. And I haven't yet had any of it shipped out here or bought anything new. The walls are that dreadful apartment beige, too.

As I sat back and looked around this morning before leaving the house, I realized just how spacious it seems when all the little odds and ends that are out of place have been put away. My apartment seems so much bigger than it normally does! Now that's a reason to get to bed early...

Pots and Pans

You wouldn't think washing dishes required much in the way of elaboration, but the authors of America's Housekeeping Book dedicated a chapter to that very topic. Electric dishwashers were now available to homeowners, and the chapter includes step-by-step instructions on washing by hand and using a dishwasher. One of my new post-breakfast chores this week is to "[r]inse and stack dishes, pots and pans." The manual recommends taking care of pots and pans before tending to anything else, so here are some tips on caring for any pots and pans used in preparing breakfast.

Put cooking utensils to soak

(a) Use cold water in utensils that have held milk, egg or cheese mixtures, or dough

(b) Use hot water in utensils that have held syrup, frosting mixtures, candy, etc.

(c) Use hot soapsuds in greasy utensils

Here's where the 1940s housewife and I have to part ways as I am not going to be able to return to the kitchen later in the morning - at least on weekdays - to wash the breakfast dishes. If they're going to soak, they'll have to soak until I get home from work at the end of the day, and eventually they'll be washed by hand or tucked away in the dishwasher for a sudsy finale. Pots and pans were expressly off limits when it came to the vintage dishwasher. Which is perfectly sensible. Without being soaked first, they only come clean about 50% of the time even in a modern dishwasher!

The only pot or pan I had to soak after breakfast this morning was used to make a bowl of Corn-meal Mush. Here's the menu:

Grapefruit Juice

Corn-meal Mush, Top Milk

So would Top Milk have been as heavy as cream or a little less weighty - like half 'n' half? I wasn't sure, so I picked up some organic half 'n' half at the grocery store and ate it with my Corn-meal Mush. It wasn't very tasty. I think I'd rather have had the Mush without anything on top. I'd like to say that I'll just save the half 'n' half for my coffee from now on, but I can see from the next page of menus in my cookbook that I'm fated to try it again one of these mornings. In any event, it was good to get back to the basics after my tangle with Butterscotch Sauce. I'm super pleased that my Mush came out almost lump-free this morning! I tried mixing the cornmeal in a part of the water (it makes a kind of paste) then adding the paste to the boiling water in the pot - and it turned out just about right. I think the recipe doesn't call for enough water, though.