Case in point: this week. Several days ago, I lost my wallet and the Good Samaritan who picked it up decided not to return it or dispose of it, but rather to start using my debit card. (Thanks, creep.) Fortunately, I noticed it was missing very quickly and stopped the bleeding. Well, now I'm a woman without an identity. I've had to replace everything from my bank accounts and driver's license to my insurance cards and library card. I'm far from finished, but that's the reason I've been a bit upside down this week. I've missed breakfast the last two days because I was busy making phone calls. Last night, my sister needed some last-minute help with the babies, so the ironing got left behind. It's been a bit frantic, but it's nice to know that I still have plenty of time to do the ironing tonight and everything will be back on schedule again...
Wednesdays were a hodgepodge kinda day according to America's Housekeeping Book (1945), too. A day for "specific jobs such as silver polishing, shopping, sewing or something to be carried on throughout the day." I guess that's a 1940s update on the traditional saying: "mend on Wednesday."
Have I mentioned how much I enjoy my new centerpiece? Since studying up on vintage table settings for the kitchen, I realized the centerpiece you most frequently see in advertisements and in photos is a bowl of fruit. Practical, colorful, and pretty (as long as your bananas aren't overripe). Since I started making these vintage breakfasts, I've been keeping more fresh fruit about the house than ever before - grapefruit, oranges, lemons, bananas, apples - so I resurrected a small blue footed cake-plate that'd been gathering dust at the back of a cupboard and made it a fruit plate. It's perfect! Just the size for my kitchen table, and it looks a little different every day of the week. Living art.
Another of my breakfast-table discoveries has been if you dress up a bowl of corn-meal mush with a dab of margarine and a pinch or two of brown sugar, it takes like caramel corn. Yum!
What I've also discovered is that my "cooking" habits over the last several years have left me with a serious case of leftover-phobia. I can make something perfectly good to eat, like the shepherd's pie on Sunday evening, and end up with five servings left over. One day later, I'm craving something different for dinner. Okay, everybody needs a change of pace... Two days later, I start making something else and remember the pie when it's too late... Three days later, I'm starting to get icked out at the thought of eating it. It's probably starting to spoil by now, right? Here's some more perfectly good food gone to waste because I've gotten out of the habit of eating leftovers. This is something I have got to correct.
6 comments:
do you have a big enough freezer that you can make 5 different meals during the week, freeze the leftovers and have 2 weeks worth of meals done? I agree that's a hard one - we have 4 of us eating here so we have just enough leftovers for lunches or a small second meal...the legacy of being from a family of 8 is you still cook too much!
The freezing is a good idea. Also, you might consider offering some to a co-worker for lunch, explaining you make too much food for one person and don't have enough room to store it all. You would be surprised how many people will be grateful for a homecooked meal.
Yes, freezing is good. Leftovers can be fun. I know there are alot of cook books from that time (as I have some) that focus alot on leftovers. You could try your own recipe too, maybe the sheppards pie gets cut up goes into a casserole with an egg mixture and becomes a sort of souffle, the 'making up' is sort of the level I am getting to now. Now that I am learning more about cooking, I feel I can 'experiment' and it adds to the joy of the cook. Don't you love the fruit centerpiece? Also, I am excied on marketing day to get home and add to the antique wooden mixing bowl on my kitchen table, and I never have spoiled fruit as it is always out telling me to use it! That is horrible about your wallet. I wonder if it were really the 1940s if they would have returned it. It just seems we are all so disconected from everything, INCLUDING money, that people just don't care!
rebecca77, as smart as the making-all-your-meals-on-the-weekend-and-freezing-them plan sounds, it honestly makes me so exhausted just making one home-cooked meal per weekend that I can't imagine even making two! (It also sounds like it would take waaaaaaaaaaaay more cookware and Tupperware to pull off that kind of thing than I own.) What I really need to do is be smart about that one meal I'm making. Work it into another meal, leave out just enough leftovers for one reheated portion and freeze the rest... something like that.
What's encouraging is that I have begun putting the freezer to work when it comes to baked goods for my vintage breakfasts. I'll leave out just enough for one more serving then wrap the rest up tightly in aluminum foil and freeze 'em. It's awesome to pull them out later and have something good to eat! (Cornbread is a freezer must for me. It gets dry so quickly. I have to get any leftovers of that right into the freezer almost as soon as it comes out of the oven.)
Kalee, what a thoughtful and kind suggestion. I think my lack of Tupperware is starting to become a real issue, because it makes it hard to tote any "real food" to work or freeze it.
50s gal, that's a great thing about the fruit bowl - you never forget you have such and such tucked away in your fridge. It's right out there calling to you, "Eat me!" The wallet thing stinks, but I guess it happens to everyone at least once in their life. And it could've been so much worse!
I, too, am sorry about your wallet. What a hassle! (That must be why the "identity theft experts" say we should have copies of everything. Did you have copies? I don't. Because I tend to misplace things like my wallet and/or checkbook, maybe I should get busy and do that.)
I'm glad you are being flexible with your schedule. DH's grandmother was so strict about staying on schedule that she wouldn't take time out to go to a grandchild's school program or birthday party! She didn't "mellow" until she was in her very late 70's. (Not all of that was her fault. There was always at least one older relative living with DH's grandparents. Schedule was expected of her. Poor soul.)
If you want to be more realistic about keeping food - buy clear glass refrigerator dishes. (Wal-mart and K-mart often have them on sale.) Tupperware didn't come about until the late 50's or early 60's, but real Tupperware sure does keep food fresh in the freezer.) The new glass refrigerator dishes are so nice, because they can be popped into the microwave. (I know, I know.)
You mentioned brown bananas. Banana bread anyone?
Hint: Mash the ripe bananas. (They can be really brown, just not moldy or rotten smelling.) Divide into amounts called for in the recipes you use. Label containers with contents, amount, date, and recipe book and page. Freeze.
Another hint: Not quite enough bananas for muffins or bread? Add applesauce or other pureed fruit to make up the amount of fruit needed. (Drain off any liquid.)
Side note: Have you noticed that all of the women in the pictures are heavy set?
Packrat, I didn't have copies of anything. And that in and of itself hasn't made replace the individual items more difficult - my numbers, etc. were recorded elsewhere on statements and things that I did have - but copies would have been very helpful just in knowing what I'd lost. I could just check them off one by one as I replaced them and feel confident that I hadn't forgotten anything. Once I've reassembled my identity here, I'm absolutely going to make photocopies of everything.
What a story about your grandmother-in-law! I guess she knew that the elderly people depending on her really needed the comfort of that routine - so she stuck to it.
The whole freezing/food storage thing is a bit tricky. I want to kind of taste the historic experience of '40s living wherever possible, but I also want to take advantage of the good things that the world has brought about since 1949. Tupperware was actually patented in the '40s, but it would have taken some time to become widely known. The glass refrigerator dishes are charming - I've seen Martha Stewart's line - are they freezer safe?
Yes, I've certainly noticed the figures of some of the women in these pictures - especially the older women. So while I'm working to have some authenticity with the menus, I'm also keeping modern knowledge of heart health, etc. in mind. Whole grains in lieu of refined. No raw eggs. Pasteurized dairy. I'm certainly going to keep an eye on these menus and make sure they don't veer to heavily in the direction of fried things. I've made a point with the breakfast menus of leaving out an entire course of carbs (in addition to the course of meat) i.e. no toast with my oatmeal. Definitely keeping an eye on those waistlines!!!
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