Weekends Only!

Here's my new rule: No baking yeast-raised recipes on a weeknight.

What a mess! Even with the things I did along the way to try and clean up the kitchen. By the time I finished, it was late - I was tired - the evening chores hadn't yet been done --- I threw in my towel and hit the sack.

Which is not to say the Yeast Cinnamon Rolls didn't turn out pretty darn good. I wrapped eight of them up in aluminum foil as soon as they were nearly cool and popped them in the freezer. They'll be ready and waiting for me the next time this dish turns up on my menu. The rest are still tender and delicious today! I could have been a bit more liberal though with the cinnamon and sugar. The recipe didn't lay out any exact measurements for those ingredients, so I tend to end up on the safe side when that happens.

I wonder how 1940s housewives fitted something like baking yeast-raised breads into their daily schedules. I mean, I know most housewives weren't baking their own bread any longer, but they still made lots of rolls. Parker House rolls, cloverleaf rolls, sweet rolls, coffee cakes... Maybe once you were an expert at it you just found a way to work each step into the rest of your work about the house. You'd start a "sponge" then go to work tidying up the bedrooms. Knead the dough, set it someplace warm to raise, then head back upstairs and give the bathroom its daily once-over.

These vintage cookbooks can be a bit tricky. They have a lot of general information about certain types of foods towards the beginning of a mini-section of those recipes. The recipe for the Rolls, for instance, was a variation on the Standard Roll Recipe, but you really needed to refer back to the initial section on breadmaking in order to flesh out what looked like a scant set of instructions. That was the case for me too with the Soft Molasses Cookies. I should have read the intro to rolled cookies before even starting the recipe. I guess all of this basic stuff is the kind of thing a 1940s housewife would have learned in a home economics class, the kind of stuff she'd have learned from watching (and helping) her mother cook three meals a day.

Here's something mission-related I learned several days ago. If I'm going to make a trip to the supermarket only once a week, I need to give up fooling myself with a shopping basket. You know, the little plastic one - "I'm just here to pick up a few things!" - that you fit over your arm. It's time to let it go and resign myself to the big ol' shopping cart.

Kitchen Chemistry Redux

I'm baking a batch of Yeast Cinnamon Rolls this evening for tomorrow's breakfast and decided to try the "sponge method" instead of the "straight dough method" I tried last time 'round - unsuccessfully. While I wait to see if the sponge is going to take, I've got lots to post about the weekend...

Friday marked the third week in a row that I've given my kitchen a thorough cleaning. It's hard work - takes me about three hours of good, honest elbow grease - but one thing I've noticed is that I'm finding new hiding places for dirt every week. I guess all those little cracks and niches stand out more now with all that cleanliness around 'em! So the kitchen is getting progressively cleaner every time. The manual recommends that housewives clean one cupboard or several drawers each time they clean the kitchen. By the time they've made their way through each of the kitchen cabinets, it's time to start at the first again. In my own home, the contents of my cupboards have kind of evolved hit or miss since the day I moved in here. I didn't really think through where I ought to store this or that when I started unpacking my belongings and brought home that first bag of groceries. Since I've begun scrubbing out my cupboards, I've collected all my baking ingredients in one place, all my cereals in one place, all my canned vegetables in one place, all my less-used dishes in one place. Things are slowly becoming more efficiently organized.

The thing about the kitchen cleaning that's still a nagging issue for me is that I can't seem to get it all done in one sitting. I can do about 2/3 of it and then I'm just exhausted --- so the rest gets done on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon. I keep thinking that as I get better at this it'll take less and less time and soon I'll be able to do the whole thing at once, but maybe this is as fast as it's going to get. At any rate, I think I may have to make some adjustments to my routine if the kitchen thing can't be done completely on a weekday evening.

Drat - just checked the sponge. It's not taking. The dough should be all light and bubbly. Okay, I'm going to try that dough saver I used last time. Here's a link to the dough saver recipe:

http://destination1940.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-simple-luxury-it-is-to-make-bed.html

Something else that's vexing me is how much I hate messing up my sparkly clean kitchen by cooking in it afterwards! Just when I've finished cleaning it on Saturdays, I turn around and create a great mess of dishes on Sunday evenings. My countertops are messy, my stovetop spattered, and the sink is full of pots and pans. It doesn't take me all that long to clean it up, but it's never quite as clean as it was 24 hours ago. *sigh* I suppose that's a pain felt by every homemaker since time immemorial. A wonderfully clean kitchen is great to look at, but lasts about as long as the morning dew on a summer's day. A kitchen is one of those spaces, I guess, that just needs to be worked at continually to keep it clean.

Now my dough is finally rising. Thank goodness! I've tried to scrub away all traces of that first batch by running a load of dishes and cleaning the kitchen counters, but my table is still all floury. Can't clean that up yet - I've got more kneading to do.

I was reading an issue of Family Circle during my lunch hour today and found myself snorting out loud at some of their decorating suggestions. I guess they were trying to give some recession-friendly suggestions for perking up the look of your home, but they were the kind of things that make it blatantly clear that modern women's magazines don't have any real interest in improving the efficiency of your home. They don't even recognize that the kitchen is a working environment. To them, the kitchen has become a pretty little backdrop in which you can pour a glass of juice, but had better not even attempt to do any cooking. Oh, maybe you could open one of those tubes of refrigerated cookie dough and slice them neatly out onto a cookie sheet. Heck, you could probably even open up your takeout and divvy it up onto plates. But the kitchens in these magazines are not designed for a woman (or man) preparing three meals a day for a family. Never mind baking a big, messy batch of Cinnamon Rolls!

Tip That Annoys Me #1
"Choose a pretty table lamp for the kitchen counter. It's much more flattering than overhead lighting, and it makes the room more like a living space."

Excuse me - since when was a kitchen supposed to be a living space? It's probably the most intensely busy room in a household where people are actually eating meals they've cooked themselves and dining as a family. There's a photo next to this tip of a tall, stylish table lamp with a tall shade. I'm not sure how on earth you're supposed to get any work done in a room with mood lighting!

Tip That Annoys Me #2 --- here's a non-kitchen tip
"Remove all the pictures hanging above your mantel and lean them against the wall for a more contemporary look. Add a framed sketch or photo to the mix."

Yes, and that is going to make cleaning that room sooooooo much easier. Can you imagine the dust bunnies that'll cling to the bottoms of each of these pictures? And you couldn't possibly have any children or pets in a home like this. How is a person supposed to clean the floors? Artistic? Sure. Functional? Not a smidge. I think these magazines have forgotten that we still have to live in our homes. These tips are for people whose homes are sterile places. I would never had noticed this a few months ago, though.

Update on the Cinnamon Roll Dough: The second rising is done. I'm just waiting for my dishwasher to finish the drying step so I can open it up and get my rolling pin back!

My 1945 dinner menu was surprisingly good last night. Here's the menu:

French Fried Potatoes
Beets
Tossed Greens with Tomato
Chili Dressing
Banana Nut Ice Cream
Soft Molasses Cookies

The French Fried Potatoes came out remarkably good. I couldn't believe it myself! They were cut to the size of what we'd call steak fries today. Parboiled, then fried on the stovetop in a fair bit of canola oil. I was terrified of the hot oil --- especially after my disastrous attempt to fry Corn-meal Mush in January! But I dried out the potatoes as much as possible, held my breath, kept the lid on the pan, and let the oil do its thing. Didn't try to get in there and move the potatoes around with a spatula or anything. And it worked! They were hot and crispy and all soft and potatoe-y on the inside. I'm ridiculously proud of 'em. Canned Beets were much easier to work with than the whole beets, but not nearly as tasty. For the Chili Dressing, I ended up adding a tablespoon of bottled chili sauce to the French Dressing recipe. The balsamic vinegar pretty much neutralized the chili sauce, but there was a bit of a zing there.

My first two sheets of Cinnamon Rolls are now in the oven. It's up to my Kenmore to do the work now.

I didn't think I'd have any luck finding Banana Ice Cream, but there are several varieties for sale - Chunky Monkey, Banana Split Ice Cream, Banana Pudding Ice Cream --- I ended up going with Banana Nut as it seemed more basic than the others. The Soft Molasses Cookies were okay fresh out of the oven, but they're dreadful today. I didn't read all the tips on working with rolled cookie dough until it was too late. Apparently, it's easier to work with dough like that if it's been chilled for 10 minutes or so. Better luck next time!

I'll let you know tomorrow how the Cinnamon Rolls turned out...