Week Thirty-one: The Mission

Fitness
As I continue my transition to using the indoor walking track for my weekday workouts, I'm going to begin adding some muscle toning exercises to my daily routine. In the 1940s, they were called "limbering and stretching exercises" and recommended by beauty experts as an ideal supplement to a brisk daily walk. I've found a ton of these in vintage newspapers and magazines, but here are a few from a 1940 edition of the St. Maurice Valley [Quebec] Chronicle for use before and immediately after getting out of bed in the morning. I'll start with these:

1. Before you get out of bed in the morning, do this routine five times: stretch body out with arms out at sides. Lift both legs simultaneously as high as you can, even, if you can, over your head; then down again, slowly.

2. Here is a good stretching exercise that helps to develop the bust and improves the posture and figure generally: Stand with feet slightly apart, arms down at sides. Stretch arms in front up and over the head slowly as far as you can, without straining, then slowly return to original position. Repeat this several times.

3. To improve hips and waist and improve general line of figure: (A) Stand with feet slightly apart, abdomen in, seat well down, fingers interlaced and raised high over head, arms making a frame for the face. Keep face framed by arms throughout exercise, and body absolutely steady from waist down. (B) Swing forward till body and arms are horizontal. Swing body round to right side and travel upwards till arms are over head once more. (C) Turn to the left and swing the body round and down till body and arms are once again horizontal, as in B.

Reducing
In the spirit of reducing my calorie intake, I'm going to begin limiting the portion size of the prepared, pre-packaged foods I typically eat at dinner and for lunch on the weekends. One of these kinds of foods would usually make up my entire meal. Now, I know perfectly well that I can't go from 0 to 60 overnight, so I'm going to do this in steps. This week, I'll try to cut the portion size by a third --- where I would normally eat three pieces of frozen tomato/pesto/mozzarella pizza, I'm going to eat two. If I would normally have 3/4 of a bag of frozen mushroom fettucine, I'll make it 1/2 a bag. What I'm going to do at the same time - and this is equally important - is to fill up the rest of the plate with veggies. They don't have to be anything fancy or anything that requires much time or energy in the kitchen. Frozen or canned vegetables will do just fine for now. Something to try and trick my body into feeling just as full as it would have with that larger portion of the pre-packaged foods. If I can make a go of this, I'll cut the portion size of the pre-packaged foods by another third next week.

Grooming
My face has been powdered, my lips are painted... it's time to attend to my hair! Here's the next step in the 1946 morning grooming routine for young women:

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

In honor of the occasion, I betook myself to the salon this weekend. A rare event indeed for this reforming frump! I'm launching the mission with a new haircut and some freshly manicured eyebrows.

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...

Thrift 1 / Curiosity 0

Yipes! I realized this morning that I haven't blogged about my breakfasts in a couple days. Lest you think the Fried Mush incident scared me out of the kitchen for good, I'll get caught up now. My tastebuds did recover. Tuesday's menu:

Orange Slices

Scrambled Eggs and Toast

Coffee

Nothing wrong with a meal like that one. Here's the menu for today:

Applesauce

Graham Muffins

Hard-cooked Egg

I substituted some of my Graham Muffins - they've been in the freezer since last week - for the Oatmeal Gems that were actually on today's menu. I was curious as can be to try the new recipe, but thrift won out and I decided to eat up some of my leftovers instead. As far as I can tell, the Oatmeal Gems are a biscuity type of muffin with oats sprinkled inside. I haven't noticed any differences in these menus at the front of my cookbook except that there are more baked goods in these menus. Which makes sense. The author is trying to interest her readers in some of her recipes. The very next menu features a whole new recipe altogether! I think I'll stick with today's menu one more time and try to free up some space in the freezer.

Once I've finished experimenting with this first run through the menus, I'm going to revisit that "reducing" plan I found in a '40s magazine. I'll save the baked goods for an occasional treat - once a month instead of once a week! - and take up those vintage serving sizes more rigorously. It'd be loverly if The Experiment had some benefits for my waistline, too!

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.

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...

Clearing the Air

I'm used to clearing the dishes off my kitchen table after eating breakfast, but the most I usually do after that is to leave them on the kitchen counter, sometimes popping an especially sticky pot in the sink to soak. That's it. This morning, I followed the new addition to my routine - step by step - and left my kitchen a slightly tidier place than usual. First, here's the menu:

Prune Juice (saved from Friday) with Lemon

Cooked Wheat Cereal

Coffee

If the Juice they're talking about is the water I stewed the prunes in, I did indeed have about 1/3 cup of Prune Juice to drink at breakfast this morning. I put it through a strainer, added a twist of Lemon, and it made a nice glass of juice - though much smaller than I'm used to! It's well known that people used to drink a lot less juice at the breakfast table than they do today. And when you have to either squeeze the oranges yourself or buy canned or bottled juices that are only sold in small quantities, it's easy to see why a small glass of juice was considered an ample serving. My modern tastebuds are used to drinking a large glass of juice at breakfast. This morning was the first time I tried to drink the recommended serving, and I felt so thirsty when it was gone! Should I try and stick to the vintage serving size and drink a glass of ice water if I'm still thirsty? This would certainly make my breakfasts more easy on the waistline...

There were only three kinds of hot cereals at my grocery store: oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, and Malt O Meal. The menu called for Cooked Wheat Cereal, so I read some labels. The Cream of Wheat is wheat farina, and Enriched Farina is suggested for breakfast another day. The Malt O Meal is wheat farina + barley, so this seemed like the closest match. Later on, I discovered on the internet that Malt O Meal was indeed being made in the '40s, but it was intended as competition for Cream of Wheat. It definitely tastes a lot like Cream of Wheat, so I think I'll save the rest for the next time Enriched Farina is on the menu. I'm still not sure what brands of cereal will qualify and, looking ahead, I also see Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal and Cracked-wheat Cereal mentioned in the breakfast menus. I guess I'll have to check out some of the other grocery stores here in town and see if any of them has a better selection of hot cereals.

Adaptation:

The menu also recommends a serving of Toast with Jelly. I passed on this course as the Cereal was super filling.

Open dining room windows top and bottom for free circulation of air... Open kitchen windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.

Just as each member of the household was expected to open their bedroom windows before breakfast, the manual recommends opening the dining room and kitchen windows immediately after the meal. We have a very small window of time here in the Southwest where open windows in the morning are really an option, and I'm afraid it's already gone. It went from being too hot even to turn off the air conditioner to being quite chilly in the mornings, so even if I had windows in my kitchen, it'd be too cold most days to open them! (I don't have a dining room, just a dining area on one end of my kitchen.)

The authors of America's Housekeeping Book go on and on about how important cross-ventilation in the home is - especially in the kitchen: "Heat and cooking odors should be drawn out, and fresh outside air brought in." If you don't have windows on opposite walls, do you have a transom above a door that's opposite a window? Do you have a Dutch door opposite a window? If all you've got is a single window, they recommend mounting an electric fan on the wall opposite the window. Or you can install an "electric ventilating fan" above the window.

Worst case scenario (Exhibit A: My Kitchen), you should make use of a "ventilating fan or hood over the range" to "draw off steam and cooking odors." Now that I can do. My range has an Air-O-Hood fan which I'd never even used before testing it out yesterday. And it works! So I turned it on this morning while I was carrying out my new post-breakfast chores. I'm not sure if my complete ignorance about kitchen ventilation is a 21st-century thing or just an apartment dweller thing.

Where is the Love?

I have the day off from work today, but I was so tired out after yesterday's revelry that I lost half off it sleeping 'til 11:00! As I realized what time it was - and how wonderful it felt to be so rested - my instincts were screaming at me just to spend the day puttering about the house, warm and cozy in my pajamas and to skip the early morning chores and breakfast altogether... I fought them back successfully and jumped in the shower, vowing to at least put on some clean clothes and stick to my new routine. Instead of skipping breakfast, I'd skip lunch. Twas a close call!

This morning's menu:

Stewed Prunes (saving the juice for another breakfast)
Corn-meal Mush
Coffee

Isn't it funny how we've almost completely removed the prune from modern cookery? There are all kinds of recipes for desserts and salads involving prunes in vintage cookbooks, but the prune has gotten a completely bad rap today. They've been relegated to a bad joke on the playground. I'm just flipping through the index of my 1945 cookbook, and I see Prune Apricot Upside-down Cake, Prune Blanc Mange, Prune Ice Cream, Prune Pie, Prune Chiffon Pie, Prune Rye Bread, Prune Turnovers, Prune Whip, Spiced Prunes, Stuffed Prunes, Stewed Prunes. What happened... when did Americans decide that prunes were to be shunned from our tables?

We still love plums - why not their wrinkly brothers?



Adaptations:
The menu recommended flavoring the Corn-meal Mush with Bits of Cooked Bacon, and this was a no-go for me as a vegetarian. I served the Stewed Prunes on top of the Mush, so they added some flavoring to the cereal. The menu also included Toasted Buns, but the added carbs didn't seem necessary, so I skipped the course.

Lessons Learned:
1.) The Stewed Prunes turned out deliciously, the Corn-meal Mush not so much. I've never made this before so I was flying blind on this one. The cookbook recommended using the recipe on your package of cornmeal. Mine didn't have a recipe for mush, so I had to rely on the proportions suggested in the cookbook. I boiled the water and stirred in the cornmeal slowly. The cornmeal almost instantly turned to mush, but there were already lumps which I was never able to remove. I thought that it would take 15-20 minutes to be ready for the table, so had to leave it on low heat while I waited for the prunes to be ready.

2.) I found myself wondering today how the stewed fruit in this morning's breakfast and in last Sunday's breakfast would have been served. I've dished them up on top of the cooked cereal each day, but I wonder if it'd be more appropriate to the period if the fruit and cereal were served in separate bowls. My mother, who grew up during the '50s, used to serve stewed prunes occasionally and it seems to me that they were always in a separate dish. The dishwashing hater in me is sounding off all kinds of alarms that I don't need to create any extra, unnecessary dishes to wash, but I suspect that the everyone-in-one-bowl approach is not truly vintage. On the mornings I've made breakfast at home, I've consciously used my grandmother's small cups and saucers to try and find a more '40s feel for my breakfast table. They hold a lot less coffee than do modern coffee mugs.