Crushin'

My kitchen and I are becoming friends. I'd never have thought it possible. But as I hoisted my garbage can out from under the sink last Saturday and scrubbed it clean, it became clear that something's shifted in our relationship. I'm not afraid of my kitchen anymore.

Is it the fact that I'm actually learning how the things in my kitchen work? One Saturday, I was cleaning out one of my drawers and rolled the drawer out just a little too far in the process. The little wheel came off its track and, try as I might, I couldn't get it to roll back in properly. For about one minute, I thought I'd just have to leave it sagging there until the landlord could get to it. Something moved me, though, to pull the drawer all the way out, kneel down and poke my head in there so I could figure out how the other drawers operated. Lo and behold, I figured out exactly what I needed to do, and the drawer rolled back into place perfectly! And I had to do some investigating, but I was able to get my microwave functioning again, too.

Maybe it's just the fact that I'm spending so much darn time in there cooking. No longer is my visit to the kitchen just the booty call it takes to reheat a frozen pizza. I'm right in there washing, chopping, peeling, grating, mixing, kneading... doing the stuff it takes to make this relationship work. (I'm not sure I like where this metaphor is going!) I'm not always successful in the kitchen, but I'll not make the same mistake too many times. And all this one-on-one time has really made me notice things I never noticed before. Like that my kitchen sink has a brand name etched into it. Who knew? It's a Kingsford II.

And let's face it, we women like a kitchen that's a little rough around the edges and needs some taming. I've been putting my Saturday cleanings to good use by reorganizing things to make my storage space more efficient. Breakfast cereals are now stored together instead of being mashed into whichever cupboard would have 'em. Likewise with baking staples, canned goods, and dishes that don't get everyday use. Just last weekend, I cleaned out that mysterious fourth drawer I'd forgotten about and put it to use holding my aluminum foil, plastic wrap, freezer bags, cheesecloth, and extra sponges.

Henry Humphrey, the editor of Woman's Home Companion Household Book (1948), tells us that beauty trumps even efficiency when it comes to the kitchen. It is vital that a room in which the average homemaker spends more than four hours per day sustain her spirit with vibrant colors, contrasts in texture, and cheery novelty motifs. Some of his advice is surprisingly practical advice, however. Here are some of my favorites:

• Good kitchen color schemes are bright. Since there is generally so much white in the kitchen (sink, stove and refrigerator), it is advisable to stay away from white walls unless the room must have them to reflect light.



• There are many styles from which to choose when decorating a kitchen. Early American, French Provincial, Mexican, South American, Swedish, Polish, Pennsylvania Dutch all have been used successfully. You may add to the list indefinitely, but your kitchen will be much nicer if you pick a style before beginning to re-decorate.



• Wallpaper is a charming finish for the breakfast nook. It offers both texture contrast and eye-interest as a relief from the smooth kitchen walls. Wallpaper also relieves the feeling that meals are eaten in the kitchen, and gives the effect of a separate room.



• Never hang curtains on a window over or near a stove.



• Breakfast nook windows should be treated in accordance with the view outside. If... nothing can be seen but ash cans, a blank brick wall or your neighbor's kitchen windows, Venetian blinds with a fluffy valance and short window sill-length draperies will make your breakfasts pleasanter and more private.



• In the interest of safety and cleanliness, carpets and rugs of any kind should never be used in the working area of the kitchen.

Humphrey suggests several color schemes for the kitchen, each of them grounded in either a dark colored linoleum or wood floor. Which scheme is your favorite?

lemon-yellow/turquoise
pale turquoise/cherry
yellow/shrimp
apricot/pale green
chartreuse/sea-green
lavender/deep blue-violet

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...

Bins and Boxes

Both my vintage housekeeping manuals are in agreement. Once a week, the housewife should:

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

At first, I thought they were referring to the vegetable crispers in my refrigerator. But they're not. Though vintage refrigerators also contained a bin for vegetables, the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommend that the ideal kitchen include ventilated vegetable bins located near the sink. If I had a scanner, I'd scan the illustration for you - but I don't, so I'll try to describe them. Imagine a sink with a double basin. Under the left basin, is a slim door which opens to reveal two metal drawers with mesh sides that slide out on rollers. I wonder what kinds of vegetables would be stored in bins like these... Were these a holdout from the days when iceboxes didn't have storage space for any but the most perishable of vegetables?

I don't have one myself, but I've seen plenty of bread boxes. Usually the type with the rolling or flip-up top. I've taken to freezing the bread I buy so that it won't go stale before I eat more than a few pieces, but I can certainly see how handy a bread box would have been to a livelier household where all meals were made at home. Here are a couple of darling enamel-coated bread boxes:





I don't think I've ever seen a "cake box," though. Plenty of covered cake trays and cake stands. Do you think that's the kind of thing the manuals are referring to or something completely different? Now, I grew up with a mom at home and a cookie jar always stocked with homemade treats, but even I can't fathom having such a supply of cakes that you needed to keep a separate container for 'em on the countertop at all times! Maybe - like the vegetable bins under the sink - these were found primarily in older homes or rural homes where iceboxes or small refrigerators just didn't have the space to store cakes and other baked goods.

I finished cleaning my kitchen today, so it's full steam ahead for another of my 1945 dinner menus tomorrow night. Here's the plan:

Pie with Carrots, Potatoes, Peas, Potato Crust
Cucumber, Lettuce Salad
Bread Pudding
Lemon Sauce

The Business Center

One of the things I love about the manual and lots of vintage women's magazines, cookbooks, etc. is that they give total props to the work of housewives as a profession. They get it. They get that these women spent seven days a week on the job. And we all need a corner office - or even just a corner of an office - to call our own. In this case, it makes perfect sense to locate the housewife's "business center" in the kitchen. It's the place where she spends hour after hour preparing and cleaning up after meals. It's the place many a housewife stores the tools and solutions needed for cleaning the rest of the house. The first stop when she gets home from doing her marketing and sometimes even the place where she does the wash and the ironing:

The kitchen is one logical location for the homemaker's "office," which need not occupy much space if it is well planned.

Every homemaker needs a desk of some description, where accounts can be kept, shopping lists made out, recipes copied and quiet planning accomplished. Files of bills and receipts, manufacturers' direction booklets, guarantees, etc., should be located here, as well as reference books on homemaking problems.

A calendar is a necessity in this business center, and a small radio and extension telephone might well be part of the equipment. A bulletin board to keep the family posted as to each person's whereabouts, to hold reminders for the forgetful ones, to hold order lists, and to give news of general interest, may be hung on the wall.

Where should I make a little "business center" for my new job at home? I don't have a whole lot of room in this one-bedroom apartment, so I think I'll let my kitchen table do double duty - actually it's triple duty now since that's where I'm doing my ironing! There's a tall cabinet just a couple steps away from the table which has been serving as kind of a catch-all for me, but I'm going to clean it out a bit and clear off one shelf for just the kinds of things the authors of the manual describe: my cookbooks, my recipe file, the operating guides for some of my small kitchen appliances. I've already got a radio on the table and a magnetic notepad on the fridge where I keep track of the groceries and supplies I need to pick up next time I'm out. Now that I know that the drawer under my range doesn't have a broiler inside, I'm going to use that space to store some of the pots and pans I'm not using every day.

I made the Broiled Grapefruit again this morning with just a sprinkling of brown sugar. It was a little better, but I'd certainly rather just have it fresh from the icebox. It's hard to improve on Mother Nature in this case! Humble Labor made a great point though in her comment to my blog two days ago. A warm fruit dish is very fitting for chilly winter mornings.

House of Cards

Along with books, magazines, newspapers, music, and victrola records, the writers of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) reminded their readers to be sure to pick up any games or cards left about the living room. And though I've already discovered how little my own living room resembles the room described by the writers, they've given us a little peek into the kinds of functions a 1940s living room served.

The living room was the place to entertain visitors with music, radio programs, and games - including Mothers's bridge party. (More fortunate families might have a tabletop radio or two in the kitchen or a bedroom, but the large cabinet radios were reserved strictly for living rooms.) The living room was the place to entertain yourself by reading, listening to records, maybe even playing a game of Solitaire. The old fashioned kind. It was a place shared by the whole family in an era before our bedrooms, rumpus rooms, "media rooms," home gyms, and craft rooms splintered us off into separate areas of the house in the evenings. The '40s living room was a busy place... No wonder there were so many things to pick up when the evening was over!

The manual recommends that games and "playing cards" be stored where they were handiest when needed again:

Shallow, enclosed shelves may be built in the living room... to keep games and cards in order and out of sight when not in use.

I don't have any games or decks of cards tucked away in my own living room. Though if I moved my computer in there, I might have to occasionally close a game of Microsoft Solitaire. And speaking of tidying up the living room, I think it's about high time I got started.

The Egg and I

Have you ever poached an egg? I haven’t, so this morning’s 1945 breakfast menu was truly an experiment. I had no idea whether I’d end up with something edible or not. To start, here’s the menu:

Tomato Juice
Poached Free-Range Eggs on Toast

The menu originally included a serving of Prepared Cereal, but the first two courses were filling enough. I like my eggs over hard, so I knew it was going to take a long time for them to do more than just “set.” Thirty minutes later, they were still several shades less done than I like, but it was almost time for me to head to work and I had a living room to tend to this morning! (I think I should have used a smaller pan.) They tasted pretty good - a very rich egg flavor - but it’s probably going to take a while to get this recipe down.

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines…

My vintage housekeeping manual advises the 1940s housewife to treat each of the kinds of reading material she might find scattered about the living room in a different way. Newspapers were just “picked up” and probably soon recycled into one housekeeping use or another. Magazines were returned “to table or rack.” They could be enjoyed for several months and then cut up for Patty’s paper dolls or, for those with a penchant for saving things, tied up in twine and tucked away in the attic. Books, however, merited several pages of advice. And, in fact, the schedule even allots time in the late afternoon for every housewife to enjoy reading or another quiet activity before the rush of the dinner hour. Even the layout of your bookcases was broken down to a science:

Bookshelves should never be crowded, because, if the books are jammed together, bindings may be injured or even split, from pressure. On the other hand, books should stand straight on the shelves, and not be allowed to lean, no matter how much space there is, for leaning subjects the binding to severe strain. If the shelves are only partly filled, support the books with bookends. If books are too large to stand upright on the shelves, lay them flat. Never put them at an angle. The shelves should be several inches deeper than the books and the books should be set well to the front of the shelves, to allow circulation of air around them. Never stack books in unsteady piles from which they may fall and be badly broken.

Check out some of the titles you might find on the carefully stacked shelves of a ’40s home. These are the four bestselling novels of the decade:

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas (1943)
The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas (1948)
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (1945)
The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney (1947)

…and the four bestselling pieces of non-fiction:

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald (1945)
Peace of Mind by Joshua L. Liebman (1946)
Speaking Frankly by James F. Byrnes (1947)
Under Cover by John Roy Carlson (1943)

Drat. Eggs again! I just can’t get away from them today. I’d better take a look at tomorrow’s menu.