Merry Christmas!

I'm headed home for the holidays this evening and won't be online again 'til 2009. Best wishes to one and all for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hospital Corners

I've decided to go ahead and make my bed every morning, but I'll wait to do it until after I've eaten breakfast and cleared away the breakfast things. That'll give my sheets as much time to air as possible. For years, I've been living like an unkempt teenager - only making my bed when I change my sheets or when company's expected. (My grandmothers would be shocked!) It's high time for a change.

Here's a quick tutorial on bedmaking, courtesy of my 1947 housekeeping manual:

How to Make a Bed

1. Spread mattress pad smooth.
2. Spread bottom sheet right side up, even and straight, with center crease exactly in center of bed and wide hem at top.
3. Tuck sheet in at head and foot of bed.
4. Make "hospital" or mitered corners on all four corners. Be sure sheet is smooth.
5. Spread top sheet right side down, even and straight, with wide hem at top.
6. Tuck sheet in at foot. Make mitered corners at foot only.
7. Spread blankets on, one at a time. Tuck in at foot, mitering corners. Tuck in at sides and turn top sheet down over blankets.
8. If desired, spread third sheet or blanket cover over blankets, mitering corners and tucking in sides.
9. Plump up pillows and place at head of bed.
10. Adjust bedspread. If the spread is not fitted it will hang better if mitered corners are made at the foot.

Need a refresher on hospital corners? Not to fear...

To make "hospital" or mitered corners:

1. Pick up edge of sheet about 15 inches from foot of bed. Lift up into diagonal fold; lay fold on mattress.
2. Tuck the part of the sheet that is left hanging, under the mattress.
3. Drop the fold, pull smooth; tuck under mattress.

Better get my ruler handy!

It's All in the Timing

So I'm beginning to feel a little strange about leaving my bed unmade all day.

My 1945 housekeeping manual recommends that the bedcovers be turned down before leaving the room to prepare breakfast, but that the housewife needn't return to the bedrooms to give them their daily cleaning (including making the beds) until after she's cleared away the breakfast things and given both the living room and dining rooms their daily once-over. Every room in the house should have had some attention - and the beds should've been made - by the time the "early forenoon" has come to an end or about 10:00 a.m.

My 1947 housekeeping manual doesn't give me any advice about when to make the beds; it just states that this is one of the daily chores in each bedroom.

When LIFE magazine profiled Jane Amberg of Kankakee, Illinois in the 1941 article "Occupation: Housewife," she told them that she made four beds everyday "after doing breakfast dishes and getting the kids to school."

Here's the dilemma: I have to go to work on weekdays after clearing away the breakfast things. I won't get a chance to give every room in my house a daily cleaning. Those kinds of chores are going to have to be folded over into a once weekly thorough cleaning of each room, but making the bed may just need to be an exception. It's not really true to the spirit of the '40s to come home to rumpled bedcovers. If I make up my bed after clearing away the breakfast things each morning - just before going to work - am I giving my bedding enough time to air properly?

Budgeting Your Time

An excerpt from a chapter on "Budgeting Your Time" in America's Housekeeping Book, compiled by the New York Herald Tribune Home Institute (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945):

Housekeeping is a real job - a job that needs to be planned carefully if one would avoid becoming a slave to housework or have free time for social activities and outside interests.

The easiest way to plan housework is to make a schedule which assigns each household task to the particular day - or perhaps even the particular hour - when it can be done most quickly and conveniently.

The benefits of such a schedule are many:
1. It relieves the uncertainty and nervous strain of "never knowing when you'll get things done."
2. It allows more things to be done in a given length of time.
3. It allows planning for leisure pleasures with the comfortable, confident feeling that housework need not be neglected.
4. It allows planning the work of a part-time or full-time helper, so that endless repetition of orders is avoided and more satisfactory assistance for the money spent is obtained.

In short, when a schedule has been followed until it becomes second nature, you run your house; it doesn't run you.

Jitterbug's Cooking School of the Web

Have you ever listened to a vintage recording of one of those cooking programs that used to be on the radio? Betty Crocker's Cooking School of the Air and the Pet Milk Program are a couple that come to mind... I want to share the recipe I used for Bran Bread last night, but I'm feeling a bit like Mary Lee Taylor, hostess of the Pet Milk Program, slowly reciting one of her recipes -they were always chock full of evaporated milk, of course! She'd read the recipe one phrase at a time, repeating each phrase twice, and you can just picture frantic housewives at home trying to get it all down on an index card in time. You can hear an episode dating to September 21, 1939 at this link (choose the mp3 for part 5):

http://www.archive.org/details/CompleteBroadcastDay

(By the by, the programs at the link above all date to a single day in 1939 when a radio station in Washington, DC recorded its entire broadcast day for the National Archives. If you want to have an idea of what a typical day of radio fare was like for a '40s housewife, this is an extraordinary record. There are some 18 hours of programs, so you'll have to divvy them up into several batches.)

*****
DATE BRAN BREAD
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups bran
2/3 cup sliced dates
1 egg
1 1/2 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted shortening

Sift flour with salt, sugar and baking powder. Stir in bran and dates. Beat egg and add milk and melted shortening. Add dry ingredients and mix only enough to dampen all the flour. Pour into greased molds, cover closely and steam 3 hours. Makes 3 loaves.
*****

I left out the dates entirely and it didn't seem to cause any problems in terms of consistency. I think the author meant for people to use either small molds or cans, as I used small loaf pans and only ended up with 2 loaves. As you can see, the directions when it comes to steaming are very slim...

This was one of those rare mornings when all the stars were aligned and my 1945 breakfast was absolutely scrumptious:

Grapefruit Half
Poached Free-Range Eggs
Toasted Bran Bread

The Bran Bread made wonderful toast. All buttery and hearty and just large enough to serve the poached eggs on top. And now that I've figured out how to pre-segment my grapefruit halves, I don't have to worry about juice stains on my tablecloth!

Bran Bread Reflections

My 1945 breakfast menu for tomorrow includes Toasted Bran Bread, so I was poking around today looking for recipes - figuring it would be just a quick bread. Well, there is a recipe in my cookbook for Date Bran Bread, but it calls for the bread to be steamed for three hours! I have never steamed anything before, but I'm giving this a try. My largest pot isn't big enough for more than one of the small loaf pans, and I don't have any used coffee cans or other metal cans hanging about, so, after doing some research online, I bought one of those aluminum foil roasters, placed water in the bottom with some stones to raise the loaf pans above the water. Covered the filled loaf pans tightly with foil and slid the whole affair inside a 350-degree oven. I have no idea if this is going to work.

This is another of those instances where the author of the cookbook seems to take for granted that her readers have some basic skills most of us no longer learn from our mothers and grandmothers. Steaming bread. Making jam from dried fruit.

It will be six weeks tomorrow since I set forth on The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Six very interesting weeks. I realized the other day that I have a much healthier-looking, better stocked fridge than I've had in years. There are grapefruits and oranges inside, together with some dried apricots and prunes in sealed containers. A couple varieties of juice - and milk and eggs that are still fresh! (That used to be a rarity.) My cupboards are better stocked than they've been in a long time: Shredded Wheat, Malt-O-Meal, rolled oats, cornmeal, Wheatena, flour, wheat bran... These were the building blocks of a '40s wintertime breakfast. If a housewife kept these items on hand, she'd be able to put a variety of breakfasts on the table.

And speaking of breakfast - these vintage menus are just as carb-heavy as I anticipated, but it's easy to adapt them to be a little friendlier to the waistline. What I've been finding - much to my surprise - is that I've come to feel a real sense of pride in making a pot of non-gummy oatmeal, lump-free cornmeal mush, and farina with just the right amount of water. I've also been getting to know my stovetop better. Just where the heat needs to be set to get the water to boil quickly, how far to lower it to keep a good simmer going. It's funny to feel so accomplished when it comes to things most of my friends wouldn't get very excited about.

Good news! I just checked my oven and the batter I left inside those loaf pans actually appears to be turning into bread!!! I'd say they're just about done. Maybe five more minutes.

Something else I've learned in the last six weeks: when I pick up the things in my bedroom and living room everyday, the job is fairly easy each time. The same goes when it comes to the breakfast dishes. Tidy begets tidy, so when my bedroom is picked up, I don't want to set something down where it doesn't belong. It's kind of nice to keep these rooms picked up by putting things back where they belong in the first place. My living room also seems a whole lot more spacious, and, boy, is it nice to come home to a dark apartment and not have to worry about stumbling over something as I'm looking for the light switch.

I've also discovered that my sleeping habits stink. In the American Home article I mentioned several days ago, the author writes that she wakes every day at 6:30 - no matter what the day of the week. This has got to be a whole lot easier on the body than my own habit of burning the midnight oil and sleeping in as late as possible, getting up at a different time nearly every day. I've got a long road to go, so this will be something I'll try and fold into my routine over time.

As I finish writing this, I'm enjoying a slice of my own Bran Bread, fresh from the oven. I can't believe I pulled this off! It's nice and moist, too. I ended up baking it for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F. I'm definitely freezing one of these loaves so I don't have to go through this again for quite some time...

Mission Possible

My crazy week is finally over. I heaved a great sigh at about 1 p.m. today, took a long afternoon nap, and am just now re-emerging to face the damages. I didn't do all that badly at home this week, all things considered. Missed the routine almost completely on Monday, did it partially on Tuesday and Friday, and got everything done on Wednesday and Thursday. The only thing I did wrong yesterday was that I completely forgot to straighten up the living room at bedtime. I was so exhausted and so looking forward to being finished with everything at work today that I just went to bed without even thinking of housework. That's the trouble for me right now with saving that chore for another part of the day - remembering to do it. Until it becomes a habit, I think I'll make myself a little Post-it reminder and stick it somewhere where I won't be able not to see it before going to bed!

Thursday's Corn-meal Muffins are no longer even edible, they're so dry, so I moved on to the next menu this morning which was happily a simple one:

Apple Juice
Prepared Cereal

Post Shredded Wheat fit the bill for Prepared Cereal. I did some homework last night looking for some alternative pancake and muffin recipes in some vintage magazines. And found a recipe for Corn Bread in the November 1945 issue of Better Homes and Gardens that looks quite promising. It's made with twice the egg and twice the "melted shortening" as the recipe I tried on Thursday, so maybe I'll be able to make a moister batch next time. I also found a Basic Pancake Recipe in the February 1947 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, but can't tell yet whether it's going to turn out any differently. They have all kinds of tips on making "perfect" pancakes, so I'm crossing my fingers. It stinks to invest time in baking or making a treat like pancakes and have them turn out half to middling.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting during the last few days on what I've learned during this first month or so of The Great Housekeeping Experiment. And I'm looking forward to sharing some of those reflections, but first - some business. Clearly, I've been struggling since adding this fourth mission to my early morning/bedtime housekeeping routine. As much as I'd like to move on to adding something new, I think it's important that I continue working at making these missions more habit than chore. In just a few days, I'll be off to Connecticut to spend the holidays with my parents and my older sister and brother-in-law. I think I'll continue working at this fourth mission right up until my trip. While I'm on the road, I'll keep the steps up as a houseguest at my sister's place - straightening up the guest room each morning, helping to prepare breakfast, cleaning up after breakfast, and straightening up her living room at bedtime. (I hope she won't object. Maybe I ought to read some '40s etiquette on being a guest in somebody else's home!) It'll help, I think, not just to abandon ship while I'm away. I'll be home on New Year's Day and my plan right now is to add the Monday Wash to my routine shortly thereafter.

I'll be back soon with another post, but will head out now and do a Christmas errand or two before the day is done...

Kitchen Mathematics + Ash Tray Etiquette

Does my oven run a little hot or is it just better insulated than ovens were 60 years ago?

Grapefruit Juice
Corn-meal Muffins, Jelly

I made Corn-meal Muffins for breakfast this morning, and they were well done several minutes early. Tough and dry in such a short time. Maybe it's not my oven. Maybe it's just a sign how radically our tastes have changed in 60 years. Of course, it could also be that I'm not a good cook - but I've been trying very hard to stick carefully to the directions. None of the baked goods I've made so far have been light or fluffy or flavorful. Did people in the '40s just not know how lovely pancakes or muffins could taste, or have we developed greater expectations of our food? Have our recipes for pancakes and muffins evolved? Just a little something to mull over the next time I have some baking to do for breakfast.

It's kinda tricky to work baking into your morning routine. In fact, the whole process in making breakfast still feels very mathematical. "Let's see, if the Stewed Prunes are going to take 45-50 minutes, but the Oatmeal only 5 minutes plus another 5 minutes to bring the water to boil..." You get the idea.

Moving my chores in the living room to the evenings instead of the mornings has worked out pretty well for now. I may have to move 'em on back to the mornings once I'm ready to start doing some heavy-duty housework at night, but I'll take this one week at a time.

Gather up on tray to take out: used ash trays, articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended.

Now here's one item I don't have to worry about when I'm straightening up the living room. There aren't any ash trays to take up and bring into the kitchen for cleaning. That's got to be a messy job. Smoking was h.o.t. during the WWII era. Especially cigarettes. Lily Haxworth Wallace dedicates an entire chapter to chewing gum and smoking in New American Etiquette (1941). In this passage, she firmly explains how important it is that houseguests use ash trays:

You should be very careful of ashes from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Do not let them carelessly fall on the floor or table in your own or your hostess' home. If there is no ash tray close by, ask for one and use it frequently. Do not forget the length of ashes on your cigarette. Never flick ashes into a plate at the dinner table and never let them drop into a wastebasket.

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...

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.

Bit-O-Honey

My crazy, no good, very bad, horrible work week continues, but - despite it all - I was able to get myself out of bed this morning at a reputable hour and make it through almost every bit of my new early morning housekeeping routine. Today's 1945 menu:

Orange Slices
Griddlecakes, Honey

I was determined that this batch of Griddlecakes would turn out better than the last, and they were definitely a step in the right direction! I followed the recipe's instructions to a tee, but the batter was still very thick. So added a little more milk and called it a day. Griddlecakes with Honey are very tasty --- though I should probably have heated the Honey to get it to just the right consistency. All in all, a yummy, but slightly heavy breakfast. At least I'm not dreading the leftovers this time!

I think I am going to go ahead and adopt the 1947 Good Housekeeping manual's recommendation to straighten up the living room before going to bed at night instead of doing it in the evening and again in the morning. As a household-of-one, I don't have to worry about anybody else making a mess of my living room after I've set it to rights. It should be pristine when I get up in the morning. Now if there's ever a Mister Jitterbug about the place, I may have to make a change, but for now...

The living room is tidied, the sink is empty, and the dishwasher has plenty of room for tomorrow's breakfast dishes. Time for some well-deserved rest.

ZZZZzzzzzzzz

Is there such a thing as too much beauty sleep?

Little Miss Jitterbug got her crazy week off to a smashing start by waking with a jolt to realize it was already 6:25 and she'd overslept!

Life. Well, I did a bang-up job on the first step in my early morning list of chores this morning. Just picked up the bedroom. No breakfast. No Air-O-Hood. No rinsing and stacking. No tidying. Just a speedy rush through the door and on to work.

Here's to a better morning tomorrow. And perhaps a little less pillow time.

Apprehension

I've been able to keep up my complete early morning housekeeping routine over the weekend, but the coming week is going to be a challenging one. Christmas is less than two weeks away and there's lots still to do in the way of shopping and wrapping. I'm headed home to New England for the holidays, so I've got packing to do, too. A co-worker is on vacation next week, so I'm going to be covering her job as well as my own for the next five days. All told, it's going to be a crazy week - with lots of temptation to cut corners here and there. And I'll be just plain tired. I'm going to see if I can stick it out, though. Having a tidy (well, tidier) apartment to come home to is going to make a difference. So will having a good, hot breakfast every morning.

I'm sure a '40s housewife with even the best-run household sometimes faced weeks like mine. Maybe she had unexpected houseguests when things were already hectic. Maybe she had trouble keeping up with her normal chores when she was turning the house inside out for spring cleaning. Maybe she had three youngsters sick in bed with chicken pox at the same time. A housekeeping routine probably comes in handiest at times like these. When you've got a fully-stocked pantry and clean linens in the closet, you can deal a little more smoothly with unexpected disruptions. That's the theory anyway. I guess I'll put it to the test 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!

Competing Visions

Since I still had a Grapefruit Half left over from yesterday, today's breakfast was more of the same. Once again, I ended up with citrus juice on my tablecloth. I've decided that I'm either going to have to loosen each of the segments at the kitchen countertop before bringing my grapefruit to the table or take the tablecloth off the table when grapefruits or oranges are on the menu! Maybe I'll have pick up some non-vintage table linens for just these kinds of mornings...

I came across an article in a July 1944 issue of The American Home with one woman's routine in keeping house. "I Run My Career Like a Star" was written by Celia Mattox, a mother of three. Here's the bit on her morning schedule:

Whatever day it is, it begins at 6:30. To wash, I slip into a becoming dressing gown - watch the shade, for a strong color gives a pasty look to a face without any make-up. Then I change into my blue denim outfit to prepare breakfast. [She explains earlier that while at home during the day she likes to wear a "becoming cotton blouse" with a blue denim skirt and "gay apron."] That over, the dishes are stacked, the house is aired, and I snatch a few minutes to do my exercises.

There's one woman who opted for a "dressing gown" while she spent some time in the bathroom washing up, but she was fully dressed before hitting the kitchen. I notice that she mentions stacking the dishes (maybe she doesn't wash her breakfast dishes right away either) and airing her house (fresh air is given lots of emphasis in the 1945 housekeeping manual). It sounds like Mrs. Mattox wouldn't have much to argue about with the authors of the manual - at least when it comes to her early morning routine. Heck, maybe she even owned a copy herself!



The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947), edited by Helen W. Kendall, also contains a schedule for housework, though it's not quite as detailed as the one in the 1945 manual. Each member of the household is instructed to "hang up night clothes and put away slippers" before finishing up in their bedrooms in the morning. As soon as breakfast is over, "the dishes should be washed and the kitchen straightened up before you go about other household work."

• Remove dishes from the table, scrape, and rinse under the faucet if they need it. Stack them neatly at one side of the sink.
  
• Put away foods that belong in the refrigerator.
  
• Clear away waste food. Get rid of grounds from coffee or tea pot and empty cooking utensils which have been soaking during the meal.
  
• Clean sink so that it will be ready for dishwashing.
  
• Prepare dishwater and wash, dry, and put away dishes.

Kendall suggests that the living room be tidied up just before going to bed at night. "To start each day with the room neat, take a few minutes before going to bed to pick up newspapers and magazines, empty the ash trays, and take glasses into the kitchen." While the 1945 manual advises every member of the family to do their part in straightening up the living room at bedtime, they seem to have built this step into the post-breakfast routine just in case others hadn't done their part after Mother retired for the evening. Those crazy teenagers and their record players! As a one-woman household, I have more control over this situation, so tidying up the living room at bedtime rather than in the morning is certainly an option.

Kendall recommends that pots and pans be soaked during the meal so they're ready for dishwashing as soon as you are. A great concept, but what if your family's interested in a second serving? This would probably work out fine for me unless I had any leftovers that needed to be dispatched with beforehand. The biggest way in which Kendall's routine differs from my 1945 housekeeping manual is dishwashing. She is adamant that the breakfast dishes must be washed before doing anything else. This is not a bad idea, but the fact that I have a dishwasher which only gets filled up a couple times a week makes it kind of a moot point. I might give some thought to getting the pots and pans washed up and put away right after breakfast. If I straightened up the living room at bedtime, that'd free up some time for dishwashing in the a.m.

What do you think? Have you come across any vintage housekeeping schedules that offer advice for these early morning chores?

Plan B

Alas, I fell off the wagon today.

I tried to squeeze way too much in the way of holiday baking into my evening at home yesterday. Went to bed late and got up extra early to finish doing up the packages for my workmates. Before I knew it, it was time to head to work and I was still trying to clean up the breakfast dishes... So my living room went untidied this morning, and I cursed myself as I stumbled over something walking into my dark apartment this evening. I've gotten used to clean floors very quickly!

Instead of hurtling myself right on into my new mission on Sunday, I think I'm going to continue with these early morning chores for another week - effective tomorrow. Make sure I take the time to really get them down before adding anything new. I've got to kick Ms. Night Owl out of this nest. And be careful not to overextend myself during this busy holiday season.

On a brighter note, my breakfast menu felt positively luxurious this morning:

Grapefruit Half

Prepared Cereal

This is the first time ready-to-eat cereal has been on the menu. No boiling, no stirring - just add milk and enjoy! The menus in this cookbook often suggest Prepared Cereal as an alternative for warm weather, but it only pops up once in awhile during the winter. Cold weather = hot cereal. I found some Shredded Wheat at the grocery store. The old fashioned kind that comes in paper packets. Three "biscuits" to a packet.

My mom served Grapefruit Halves all the time when I was growing up. I remember my sisters and I sprinkling our grapefruit with sugar and then trying to dig out the segments with our spoons without squirting ourselves in the eye with pulp. It was a talent, let me tell you. And you had to have just the right spoon - something with a nice thin edge. Too bad I could figure out how to cut a grapefruit crosswise this morning. I actually ended up with grapefruit quarters!

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?!?

The Morning After

The living room was the musical epicenter of the 1940s home. The place where teenage daughters swooned over Frank Sinatra records, little brothers practiced their scales at the piano, and Mother and Dad tapped their toes to the Billy Mills Orchestra as they listened to the latest episode of Fibber McGee and Molly. And so my 1945 housekeeping manual reminds me to be sure to pick up any stray "music" or "victrola records" as I'm straightening up the living room after breakfast.

We always had a piano in the house when I was growing up, so any sheet music we were finished playing belonged inside the upholstered lid of the piano bench. The bench was just the right size to hold two stacks of sheet music side by side. And because they weren't as sturdy as music books, they needed a little extra protection. Music books got stacked up in a pile on the top of the piano and the ones that were least popular were kept on a bookshelf nearby. The authors of the manual recognized that the storage of sheet music and phonograph records posed a special problem for the housewife and suggested that sheet music might best be stored in labelled portfolios.

Have you ever handled one of those old shellac records? If so, you know just how heavy and fragile they seem in your hands. One stumble and they can break in two. By the '40s, many recordings were available in celluloid and, later, vinyl. Much, much lighter, but prone to scratching:

Expensive, precious records should be kept in albums or specially designed cabinets, safe from harm. Currently popular dance records that are in constant demand may be kept in open racks, but their paper jackets should not be thrown away. Unless these jackets are put on again after the records are used, dust or careless handling may scratch the records severely.

Our digital tunes in the 21st century don't leave much in the way of a mess about the house. No brightly-colored sheet music, no records, no paper dust jackets. I guess the only places they clutter up are our hard drives and playlists!

I'll wrap up this set with my vintage breakfast menu for this morning:

Stewed Apricots

Hard-Cooked Egg

Toast

Okay, so the menu actually calls for a Soft-Cooked Egg, but undercooked eggs have never been appealing to me. The cookbook included instructions for both. And though it's not how I'm accustomed to making a hard-boiled egg, it was perfect! The secret? Bring the egg to a boil very slowly, then reduce the heat dramatically, cover, and let sit for 20-30 minutes.

Sanitation Engineering

Sanitation engineering isn't something I've given much thought to when it comes to my home. I've just realized, though, that the authors of my housekeeping manual have taken it for granted that I have a waste basket in every room of the house. And I don't. I have a garbage can in the kitchen and another, smaller one in the bathroom. It'd certainly save on the odd piece of trash I need to pick up in the morning if I could have thrown it away from the get-go without taking more than a step or two. I think they're onto something here.

There's certainly an interesting flow of garbage - or refuse, to put it delicately - through the 1940s home. The last step in my early morning routine in the bedroom is to "collect trash in waste basket." As I've added a tidy up in the dining area and the living room to my schedule, the manual instructs me again to "collect trash in waste basket." After breakfast, each room in the house is supposed to get a daily cleaning, and the housewife is repeatedly reminded to "take out... waste basket" and then to "replace" it. The only point in the routine when the terminology becomes any different is in the kitchen, when the waste basket is instead called a "garbage can."

Waste baskets were more decorative items meant primarily for paper refuse. They didn't need to be lined or covered. Some were quite literally baskets, though painted metal waste baskets seem to have been popular. Garbage cans, on the other hand, were lined with paper and the '40s housewife was expected to wash and disinfect them once a week and let them dry in the sun. Paper bags from the grocery store were great for liners, but "moisture-proof liners" designed to fit these cans were also becoming available on the market. Garbage cans had lids - sometimes operated by a pedal at the base of the can.

It sounds as if the authors of the manual are advising the housewife to take the waste basket from each room into the kitchen to empty them into the garbage can. From there, the garbage can will be emptied - into a larger can elsewhere? - once a day, ideally, just before preparing lunch. Once it leaves the kitchen... well, that must be a husband's territory, because we hear no more about it.

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.

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.

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...

Week Four: The Mission

This week's mission will be the last step in building my early morning housekeeping routine.

Put living room in order.

• Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.
  
• Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines, music, games, victrola records, cards, etc.
  
• Gather up on tray to be taken out: used ash trays, articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended. Collect trash in waste basket.
  
• Carry out tray.

Why does the living room come first? Why not get the breakfast dishes washed before embarking on the day's work? Why not get started cleaning one of the other rooms? The authors of the manual explain the method to their madness as they describe why each member of the family should help straighten up the living room before going to bed at night:

The living room belongs to the whole family. To each person it is a place for quiet recreation, relaxation, study or rest. Surely those who enjoy the living room should share the responsibility for seeing to it that clutter and confusion do not mar its restful air of hospitality.

This does not mean that the room should not have the charm of livability. It does mean that each person should be thoughtful enough to put away school books and papers, playing cards, sewing or the stamp collection, as the case may be, when work or play is over. If every one helps by picking up newspapers, returning magazines to table or rack, and emptying ash trays just before bedtime each evening, the homemaker will have just that much less to do during the busy hours of the next morning. And the living room will present a serene face to the earliest caller.

Pop ins! Getting everybody fed and off to school or work was top priority, but being prepared for pop-in visitors was the very next item on the agenda. Even if you were busily working away in another room when a salesman came by or a neighbor popped in for a cup of sugar, you'd have a tidy living room in which to receive them. Our homes today are so much more private than they were once upon a time. We expect visitors and guests only when they've been invited. And rarely do any salespeople knock on our doors these days. Imagine what it must have been like knowing that you might have a caller at any time between breakfast and bedtime...

Week's End

Leftover French Toast reheats surprisingly well. Not in the microwave, of course. I heated up some margarine in a fry pan and was able to get the Toast nice and crispy again. The leftovers are now all eaten up, so I'll be heading back into the Breakfast Test Lab tomorrow morning. For now, though, my dishes are rinsed and stacked inside the dishwasher, I've got two pans soaking in the sink, and I'm sipping a cup of hot coffee while I try and store up the energy I'll need to get out there with the Christmas crowds and do some shopping.

It's been an interesting week. I've had to come up with a solution to my dishwasher dilemma which forces me to think ahead each evening as to whether the dishwasher has room for the next morning's dishes, whether it needs to be run, whether it needs to be emptied of clean dishes... I'm also beginning to really feel the effects of being a night owl. It didn't matter very much when my only objective in the morning was to roll out of bed at the last possible minute and get ready for work. With chores in the bedroom, breakfast to prepare, and chores in the kitchen, I have to get up earlier. Now if I could just convince the night owl side of me to go to bed earlier. The sleep deprivation is really starting to get to me. I've been yawning all week and actually had to take a nap yesterday evening because I couldn't keep my eyes open for another minute. Even now, I'm tired - and I've only been up for an hour. The '40s housewife in there just has to get some beauty sleep!

I've worked my way through about 1/4 of the breakfast menus in the back of my 1945 cookbook, so there are lots of menus still to master. I'm going to take a look at the next few this morning and make sure my grocery list is in order. Time to fly! I'll be back later to post next week's mission.

Automagic

Dishwashers designed for the home were still so new during the 1940s that the bloom had not yet worn off the rose. They were mysterious and magical - and probably only found in the nicest postwar homes. Some of these vintage ads make me feel darn ritzy for having one in my kitchen! Images of a woman loading her brand new dishwasher with one hand confidently on her hip, immaculately manicured hands setting the dials, happy mothers sitting with their children reading storybooks while the dishes froth away in the GE Electric... the picture was a rosy one. Sparkling dishes, hours of relaxation - but wait! What are these drips dried onto my glassware? How am I going to fish out those smelly crumbs in that tray way down in there? "Jim, just look at the water bill!"

Introducing the 1945 Thor Automagic Washer. It washes your dishes - and then your clothes! Why have two machines? And maybe scrambled eggs residue will add that extra je ne sais pas to your favorite blouse...



The 1947 models. Which one is on your Christmas list?

Kaiser


Dishamatic


General Electric

Grade A Medium Amber

I found a loophole.

My breakfast menu yesterday:

Tomato Juice
French Toast
Maple-flavored Sirup

With visions of corn syrup and maple extract, I opened the cookbook to the recipe for French Toast - or Fried Toast, as it was also still known in 1945. And what to my wondering eyes did I see? "Serve hot. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar or serve maple sirup with the toast."

Hooray!!! The real stuff! Nectar of the gods! That's all the permission I needed. My grade A medium amber was out on the table quicker than you can say "Maple Sirup." And what a difference it made... The French Toast was pretty good. It was a very basic recipe. No vanilla, no sugar, no fancy additions like nuts or coconut - just eggs, milk, and salt. The bread was supposed to be 1/2 inch thick and mine was not. It was just from a loaf of sandwich bread, so I had a lot left over. Were pre-sliced sandwich loaves sliced more thickly in that day, or was the recipe subtly calling for homemade bread? I had quite a bit of batter left over.

French Toast is a tough breakfast for the cook to enjoy as it should be eaten almost as soon as it comes out of the pan. When you've got several servings to fry up before turning off the burner, you've either got to wait patiently for the last of the Toast or try to eat while hopping up and down to the stove to flip a few more pieces in the pan. I've got lots of extras so this will be my menu for at least another day or two. Bring on the Maple Sirup!

By the by, I think I figured out why the month o' menus in the back of this cookbook rely on Corn Sirup (sometimes flavored) for Griddlecakes or French Toast. The section is titled, "How to Feed a Family of Five on $20.00 per Week." Corn syrup is definitely easier on the pocketbook than the real stuff.

A Dishwashing Dilemma

I've come up against a bit of a dishwashing dilemma this week... After leaving the breakfast dishes to soak, the authors of the housekeeping manual instruct me to:

Scrape dishes with rubber plate scraper or paper towelling.

Rinse dishes with hot water.

Stack dishes according to size and shape, on right-hand drainboard.

The book suggests that the housewife leave the dishes while she tidies the living room then sets about giving each of the rooms their daily cleaning. The kitchen comes last, and only then will she wash the breakfast dishes. That'd be well and good if I didn't have to work outside the home. Luckily, my dishwasher should be able to take some of the labor off my hands, but here's the dilemma: should I leave my scraped and rinsed dishes stacked up in the sink and pile them in the dishwasher only when the sink gets too full to add any more, or should I treat the dishwasher like it's my drainboard and stack the dishes in there each morning once they're scraped and rinsed?

My modus operandi while doing The Great Housekeeping Experiment has been to do all my other housework just as I've always done it - hit or miss - a little here, a little there. I've been known to use my dishwasher as a cupboard, just taking the clean dishes out when I needed to use them again. (I know, it's been complete chaos here in the Jitterbug household!) That doesn't often leave my dishwasher free and ready for more dirty dishes. On the other hand, my sink can only hold so many dirty breakfast dishes. So I've hit a wall here. The Experiment is going to impact my evenings now as well as my mornings. I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I'm going to have to start making sure the dishwasher is ready for more dirty dishes before I go to bed at night.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

I don't own any rubber plate scrapers, but I do have a couple of rubber spatulas that do the job. They aren't quite the same tool. The scraper was shaped a little more like the spatula you might use today to lift your cookies off a cookie sheet. It was a sturdy piece of rubber affixed with metal to a wooden handle. At one point, they were also available in molded rubber. Our modern synthetic rubber - and now silicone - spatulas are much more flexible. We can use them to clean out bowls and the insides of jars, while plate scrapers were designed for flat surfaces.

Paper towelling was sold in much smaller rolls than we buy today! I guess you'd have used it as sparingly as possible.

Two drainboards are better than one, so that soiled dishes may be stacked at the worker's right and the dish drainer at her left.

A steel sink with a drainboard on both sides was the latest and greatest in 1940s kitchen design. My sink hasn't a drainboard on either side, so that's why I think it'll be helpful to think of my dishwasher as a substitute. Where better to let the rinsed dishes dry while they await washing? The kitchen in my parents' house hasn't been renovated since the '50s and its still got two drainboards, both of them tilted ever so slightly toward the sink. Alas, my little unit here in Apartment Land wasn't built until the '80s - when people thought we would never again need to wash another dish in the sink. Drainboards weren't even a consideration. Well, that's okay. I'm sure there were many housewives back in the day who had to make do without all the drainboards or counter space they might have liked in their kitchens. Women working in older kitchens with cast iron sinks would have had to rig up drainboards that were quite literally boards.

Whoops, gotta run... I've got a dishwasher that needs emptying!

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.

Circle the Wagons!

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Before we turn from the dining room or breakfast nook to the kitchen sink, I just want to mention the tea wagon suggested for aiding the housewife in clearing the table. Here's an alternative to the all-purpose tray - and, boy, I bet you could fit a whole lot more on one of these babies! While I was looking about online for pictures of vintage tea wagons, I realized that they've been called all kinds of things over the years: tea trolleys, tea carts, cocktail trolleys, bar carts. They always make me think of the beverage carts that stewardesses push up and down the airplane aisle. "Coffee? Soda? Snack?"

According to one antique dealer in London, Ontario, tea wagons were all the rage from the 1920s to the '40s. A tea wagon in the dining room could also be used as a sort of sideboard during the meal. Here are some of the most fetching '40s tea wagons I've seen in my travels today, from the traditional...

to high Art Deco...

Tabula Rasa

Now that the leftovers are eaten and the nightmare behind me, I must spill about the atrocious breakfast menu I prepared yesterday morning:

Tomato Juice

Waffles

Butterscotch Sauce

Adaptations:

I don't own a waffle iron, so the waffles were frozen. This certainly made the menu a whole lot easier to prepare and clean up after than it would have been for a 1940s housewife. Of course, my Homestyle Eggos weren't as tasty as they would have been fresh from a waffle iron either!

There were way too many strong flavors going on with this breakfast menu. The tomato juice would have been tastier with an omelet or scrambled eggs and toast. With a sticky, sweet mess like Waffles and Butterscotch Sauce - not so much. The Butterscotch Sauce was a recipe inside the cookbook, made in a saucepan from brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, and nutmeats. My biggest mistake was probably using margarine for something with the word "butter" actually in its name! And none of the ingredients tasted like they melded together. All I could taste as I ate the Waffles was brown sugar, lemon juice, and walnuts. And the fact that it may have been slightly overcooked certainly didn't do it any favors. Nevertheless, I forced myself to reheat the sauce and choke it down again this morning. It was just as gag-inducing as I remembered it. I'm not sure I'll try this one again. The only real good to come of this menu is that I found out my Air-O-Hood does a great job at whisking "cooking odors" away! Here's to better breakfasts tomorrow morning...

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room. Gather up to take out: articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended; place on tray or tea wagon.

So what kinds of things - besides dirty dishes - would my '40s counterpart have been picking up and restoring to their proper places when breakfast was finished? The morning newspaper, I suppose. Small electrical appliances like toasters were often used right on the breakfast table, so they would have to have been unplugged and returned to the cupboard where they belonged. Salt and pepper shakers, pots of jam, and the sugar bowl - all these items might have been returned to the refrigerator or a special shelf in the kitchen. Maybe a child left a small book or toy at the table by accident. These, too, would need to be removed. Cloth napkins would need to be laundered, though the tablecloth could probably just be brushed clean as long as there hadn't been any spills.

The authors of America's Housekeeping Book are so detailed, they even remember the plants or flowers that might serve as a centerpiece in the dining room or the breakfast nook. My impression from the vintage magazines I've looked through is that potted flowers, like small geraniums, and bowls of fruit were the most popular centerpieces for these informal table settings. And if a potted plant needs watering or pruning, it'd definitely be a lot neater to do that kind of thing in the kitchen sink than at the table. The only flowers at my kitchen table are in the design on the tablecloth, so they never need much in the way of tending!

Here's a salute to some tidy breakfast tables of the '40s - and their owners:

Tray-ficiency

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Home economics in the 1940s was all about efficiency. The best kitchens were the kitchens where a woman took the least number of paces during the day as she stepped from sink to refrigerator to table to sink and back again - and again - and again - and again. The best kitchens were engineered so that women were standing at comfortable levels to work and so that light levels were easy on the eyes. And they had to be. Women were spending a good part of their days preparing meals and cleaning up after them... These days, our best kitchens are all about design and style. The trendiest colors and finishes, the latest in gadgets. People building or refurbishing a home today probably place far more importance on the look of their kitchens than the function. So it's quite an awakening to open up a housekeeping manual published in 1945 and see so much reduced to mathematical equation.

Including the clearing of the breakfast table. Every step counts. And the authors of the manual insist that you don't make more than one trip from dining room to kitchen. Just load everything up on your tray or tea wagon and run it all into the kitchen at once. Think of the minutes you've saved! (Ideally, you'd have a "pass-through" or window directly into the kitchen so that hot food could be served immediately and dirty dishes could be slid right on through to the drainboard.)

This is not the only time we'll see the housewife's handy dandy tray pop up. The authors recommend using a tray in tidying up the living room. Bowls of clear warm water are carried on a tray into each room when it's time for its weekly cleaning. Items which need polishing or repair are carried back to the kitchen on a tray.

Trays were hot when it came to entertaining, too. Decorative faux wood or metal trays were sold in dinner or luncheon sets so even a hostess without a dining room could entertain. I have a set of Hasko luncheon trays made in the early '40s that I've been using to clear my breakfast table. They're covered in a light brown woodgrain paper with a geese design at the center. Speaking of which, I haven't yet recovered from the hideous breakfast I choked down this morning. Don't worry, I've got plenty for leftovers. I think I'll save that trauma for another post...

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.