Pears: The Other Winter Fruit

Pears, apples, oranges and grapefruit are about the only fresh fruits available to most of us at this time of the year. Oranges and grapefruit are used so much for breakfast that our thoughts need to be directed towards uses of the other two. We know a great deal about using apples in cooking, yet most folks serve pears raw. Pears are milder than apples, but there is no reason why they cannot fill the place of apples anywhere.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette goes on in this February 19, 1945 article to share a recipe for Pear Coffee Cake. I've never given much thought to winter fruits, but those ever-resourceful 1940s housewives would have been keen to find new ways to spice up the breakfast table on frigid winter mornings. There certainly are plenty of fantastic looking pears in the produce section these days, but I'm just as guilty as "most folks" who only "serve pears raw." And yet - Pear Coffee Cake is a little too rich for my blood. Not when I've still got plenty of reducing to do. So I've been rummaging through my vintage cookbooks looking for pear recipes suitable for the reducer's breakfast table. Hmmm... Pear and Cherry Salad, Pear Conde, Pear-grape Salad, Candied Pears, Pickled Pears, Baked Stuffed Pears. The only thing that sounds simple enough for breakfast is a recipe for Stewed Pears. It's a quick recipe, too!

***************************************************

STEWED PEARS

Peel pears. Cut in half, quarter or slice. Remove core. Add 1 tablespoon granulated sugar for each pear and water to depth of 1/4 inch. Add 2 or 3 cloves, 2 slices lemon. Cover. Bring to boiling. Simmer 10 minutes or until tender. Chill. Serve for breakfast or dessert.

***************************************************

A November 1949 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also points out that pears can add some variety to winter breakfast menus, but their serving suggestions aren't very imaginative: "Ripe sliced pears are good served with cream... Serve them, too, on prepared cereal." The author does describe some of the varieties of pears that can be found at the market during the winter:

• "The BOSC, the fall russet pear, is distinguished by its symmetrical base and long tapering neck. When ripe, it is a rich, russet color. It is best between September and January."

• "The COMICE is a special favorite during the Christmas holiday season for a gift fruit. It is a de luxe pear, large in size which takes on a creamy yellow color when ripe. It often has a bright red hue. The flesh is fine-grained, sweet and juicy. Best between October and February."

• "The ANJOU is a stubbier, semi-heart shaped pear. It is bordering between a green and creamy yellow when ripe. It has a rich flavor, fine texture and is full of juice, making it a favorite for eating fresh. They are on the market from October until April."

• "The NELIS is a small, russet pear. It has a sweet tender meat. It appears on the market in January and is available until June."

Which variety is your favorite? Do you have any pear recipes that'd be perfect for getting these chilly winter mornings off to a good start? Or an apple breakfast recipe that might be nicely adapted for pears?

This Ain't Your Mother's Farina!

Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
That we have it every day.
It makes us strong, so we sing this song.
It makes us shout "Hooray!"

It's good for growing babies
And grown-ups, too, to eat.
For all the family's breakfast,
You can't beat Cream of Wheat!
(Advertising jingle, 1942)

I've been eating my daily vintage breakfasts for several months now and farina has definitely become one of my favorites... You may know it as Cream of Wheat. My mom used to dish this up during the winter when I was a kid. It wasn't a favorite, but I remember preferring it tenfold to the oatmeal my mother made from scratch. (Sorry, Ma!) When I was a teenager, instant Cream of Wheat would sometimes appear in the pantry, usually in the maple brown sugar variety.

These days, I'm loving the cooked version, and - as luck would have it - Cream of Wheat is now available in a whole grain variety. I think it finally qualifies as a healthy breakfast. One serving prepared with water (100 calories) contains 15% of the recommended daily allowance of fiber, 50% of the recommended daily allowance of iron, and 4 grams of protein to boot! This is the kind of breakfast that sticks to your ribs and keeps you from feeling hungry for the rest of the morning.

Sometimes, I take my Cream of Wheat straight up. Especially if I'm having fruit along with it, like a dish of berries or half a grapefruit. Other mornings, it's all about the accessories. If you prefer a little crunch with your hot cereal, how 'bout sprinkling on some flax seed or crushed walnuts? Raisins, bits of date, or dried cranberries would be fantastic in farina --- especially if you added them to the cereal as it was cooking and gave 'em a chance to plump up. My favorite way to eat farina is with a smidge of margarine and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Heaven!

The key to cooking farina is to remember your whisk. Use the whisk to stir the cereal as you cook it - which only takes two or three minutes after adding the cereal to a soft boiling water. In fact, it cooks up so quickly that you can have a hot breakfast in the summertime without heating up your kitchen! Whether you rinse your pot right away or leave it to soak for a bit, it's super easy to clean up after. The ever-thrifty author of The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) even has a suggestion for leftover farina (as if!): "Mold... for tomorrow's luncheon dessert. Sweeten with brown sugar or honey and add vanilla." Farina Pudding should be served with Sliced Bananas and Top Milk.

Breach of Etiquette

Ladies, I'm sorry to say that I committed a capital breach in vintage etiquette this morning...

I went out in public with my curlers.

*gasps, shrieks, and fainting*

Granted, it was 6:15 and I was only walking to and from the laundry room in my apartment complex. And that the men who live in my complex are all frumps themselves. It takes time for those clothes to dry --- if I'd waited 'til then to roll up my hair, my hair wouldn't have had time to dry before I needed to leave for work.

Etiquette experts of the 1940s railed against the woman who lolled about at home with her hair in curlers. Your husband, particularly, should never - under any circumstances - see you in this vulnerable state. (They didn't even mention wearing your curlers outside the home. Guess that wasn't on their radar!)

There is no excuse for coming down to breakfast in hair curlers undisguised. If you put your hair up in curlers, then wear whatever is becoming to you to cover them - perhaps a bandanna tied on like a bathing cap, perhaps some pinned-on puffs. At the moments, milliners are showing evening helmets made of curled “belting” ribbon to imitate a wig. They would be excellent for breakfast! Anyway, not curlers.

“Be Polite, Even at Breakfast” by Emily Post
(Milwaukee Journal, January 28, 1940)

Women who worked outside the home had no excuses either:

She is often just as tired as her husband is - not only that but she has to take time for cold cream and curlers at some moments when they are both at home…

If you need curlers on your hair, cover them with an attractive turban. This can be made by wrapping silk or net around your head.

“Working Woman Tends to Relax Into Dowdiness”
by Josephine Lowman
(Spokane Daily Chronicle, June 18, 1940)

Despite her dictum against hair curlers, Miss Post does relent a bit when it comes to housecoats at the breakfast table:

But may you wear a housecoat? Certainly, if it be a zippered or buttoned princess dress. But not a wrapper - at least not if you go to breakfast in the dining-room with your family, still less if you work in the kitchen. And yet - if you and your husband breakfast alone and you have servants to prepare it and serve it, a negligee (if it be glamorously becoming) does fit into the picture of breakfast-for-two-at-home.

Rats! I guess only one or two of these beauties will do.

Transitions

One more pound bites the dust! I weighed in yesterday morning at 192, so that's two pounds gone (for keeps) in two weeks...

And though I wasn't aware of it, I must have been snacking every night after 8:00 - because that mission has kept me every.single.night from nibbling one thing or another. One night last week I was tossing and turning at 2:00 in the morning. I finally got out of bed and found something to do with my insomnia and, sure enough, no sooner was I out of bed then the cravings hit. All I could think about was the leftover pizza in the fridge. I went so far even as to open the fridge and hold the pizza --- and then I caught myself and put it back! I'm very proud that I haven't broken that 8:00 rule even once this week.

We're experiencing full-blown summer here in the Southwest, so I'm making the transition to the summer version of my vintage breakfast menus. The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) contains little footnotes just below each menu with seasonal options. I should start seeing some fresh fruits filling in for the dried fruits and cold cereals occasionally taking the place of the hot cereals. So instead of Stewed Apricots and Oatmeal this morning, it was Fresh Berries (whatever kind might be in season - strawberries, here) and Corn flakes. This should be a nice change of pace!

50s gal mentioned a series of photos on Flickr that I've been poring through during the last couple of weeks - and what a treat! It's a series called Mom's World and the pictures were taken by a Michigan woman, almost all of them during her first marriage (late 1940s and early '50s). She had a full-time job in a doctor's office and continued working even after the birth of their first child several years into the marriage. (It's the child, all grown up, whose been posting the photos. His mom narrates the introductions and actively responds to comments left by viewers.)

As you can probably guess, what intrigued me most was her description of housework. Every other Saturday afternoon (she worked on Saturday mornings), she'd give her kitchen a thorough cleaning. Anything done in between was just regular maintenance. This kept her kitchen quite clean and left her plenty of time to spend rambling through the woods, boating, visiting amusement parks, etc. Genius, I thought! Especially as I realized the other day that I could see my reflection in the inside wall of my refrigerator. Does my fridge really need to be quite that clean? And it would be awfully nice to have some time left over on the weekend for something other than housework. Ever since I added the kitchen to my routine, that's become a real problem.

I've been giving this some serious thought and what I'd like to do is try and break my kitchen routine up a bit. The chores described in the manual as daily chores must be done every week:

Every Saturday...
1. Open windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.

2. Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

3. Check and reorganize foods; put away.

4. Collect all refuse and put in garbage can.

5. Wipe off top of refrigerator and all work surfaces in need of cleaning.

6. Wash dishes. Dry and put away, if not room to rinse with hot water and leave to dry.

7. Wipe off surface of range. Clean spilled food from drip pan or oven.

8. Dry damp work surfaces.

9. Dust radiator or register.

10. Take out garbage; put clean lining in garbage can.

11. Clean sink. Rinse dishcloth or mop; hang outdoors if possible.

12. Collect soiled towels; wash. Hang fresh towels.

The heavier jobs, the ones described by the manual as weekly chores, are going to be done on alternate weeks:

Week A...
1. Put away all foods except those belonging in refrigerator. Remove all foods from refrigerator. Wash interior of refrigerator. Return food to refrigerator.

2. Wash exterior of refrigerator.

3. Clean range thoroughly.

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

Week B...
1. Clean out and wash 1 cupboard or several drawers in rotation weekly.

2. Dust lighting fixtures. Dust window shades or Venetian blinds. Wash wall behind sink, stove and work surfaces, if washable. Wash work surfaces. Wash exterior of cabinet work and shelving to remove fingermarks.

3. Clean garbage container thoroughly.

4. Clean metal fixtures, soap dish, sink strainer, and dish drainer. Wash, rinse and scald dishcloth or mop or send to laundry; hang outdoors if possible.

The kitchen routine is definitely a work in progress, but I must find a way to keep it clean and still have some time left over for, well, even the basics. I've been pushing so hard with this stuff, I haven't had time for things like getting the oil changed in my car, going to the library, etc. Maybe this change will make a difference... And speaking of kitchens, it's time to get started on mine. Off to work!

My Daily Constitutional

It's an unusually cool, breezy Saturday, and I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee before embarking on my housework today. Here's one sign of how much my habits around the house have changed since November: I bought a tall container of creamer maybe a year ago. You know, the dry, powdery type. Well, it made sense at the time. I couldn't see keeping these big cartons of milk about the house when the only thing I was using milk for was my coffee. On the few occasions I make coffee at home, I would sooner than not find it had already gone bad. Flash forward five months. I haven't touched that creamer in weeks, at least. It sits at the back of a cupboard waiting to be of service again, but I always have fresh milk in the house now. I need it for my breakfasts, I need it for my vintage dinner on the weekends... what a change!

I remembered to pull out the scale yesterday morning and did a rare weigh-in at home. So here's my official starting weight for this new mission: 194. I'm planning to weigh in once a week - on Friday mornings. I dutifully drank my glass of water yesterday morning and walked for 29 minutes during my lunch hour. This morning, another glass of water and I'm planning to walk at the park today for 30 minutes (+ 6 minutes to make up for my short walks on Thursday and Friday). I also cleaned about 2/3 of my kitchen last night, so I need to finish that this morning, go to the park for my workout, then head to the supermarket to do my weekly shopping. Here's the menu I'm planning for my 1945 dinner this weekend:

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves

Tomato Sauce

Buttered Peas

Carrot Sticks

Baked Caramel Custard

The Stuffed Cabbage Leaves recipe sounds very interesting and possibly delicious. We'll see! The whole menu feels very springlike - apropos for a supper on Easter Sunday. I'm even going to shell some fresh sugar peas for the hot vegetable dish...

One of the challenges for me when it comes to walking is definitely going to be timing. If I don't walk as soon as my lunch hour begins, I know that I won't have the willpower to get out there and do it halfway in. Been there, done that. Once I'm sitting comfortably at the table with my feet up in the next chair reading a magazine and eating my lunch --- there's no way I'll get up and go out there to walk! I know myself too well to take that chance, so out I go at 12:00 p.m. This is where those hearty vintage breakfasts are going to come in handiest. I need that long-term energy that's going to last me from 7:00 in the morning 'til I'm finished with that mid-day walk. A growling tummy doesn't make me any happier about postponing lunch for another half hour!

I'm trying to keep a brisk pace. I certainly ought to start stretching my calves beforehand, though, because my shins feel very tight during my workout and that could probably be alleviated with a little stretching. It's much too sunny to be outdoors at high noon without a hat or cap and/or some sunblock, so I need to give some thought to keeping some of these things in my office. I'm really trying to head off some of these minor discomforts that could otherwise end up as excuses for skipping a workout, do you know what I mean?

One of the biggest things I tend to do to sabotage an exercise plan is to start worrying about how I'm going to be able to walk outdoors once we're experiencing full-blown summer here in the desert. (These walks give me way too much time to think!) In about a month, temps will be at the 100-degree mark everyday and there's no relief even in the mornings and evenings. It's relentlessly sunny here, so there's not even the occasional cloudy day to enjoy outdoors. You're trapped inside 24/7 from about the end of May until the first of October. It's not even comfortable outside at midnight. I've been trying to come up with some exercise options for the summer - and I think I've come up with a few possible solutions - but the trick is not to let worrying about what's to come in a month keep me from exercising here and now. No matter what kind of challenges I'm facing come May, I've got to enjoy the privilege of being able to walk outdoors for as long as it lasts.

I'll talk to you later. My kitchen is calling...

Dinner Plans

Last Wednesday, I began preparing for my first 1945 dinner menu by doing some marketing with the first of the menus in mind. Looking ahead, I noticed there are lots of steamed puddings to look forward to. Steaming is something we pretty much reserve these days for rice, veggies, and other main dish kinds of things - but dessert? It's very vintage. I wonder why it went out of style...

So I decided this morning that it was time to invest in some steaming equipment. As best I can tell, there are four basic things you need to have on hand: a big kettle-type pot, a rack that can be set on the bottom of the pot above some boiling water, a pudding mold (recycled cans from coffee, vegetables, etc. can be used as can ceramic or other baking dishes), and some wax paper or aluminum foil for covering the mold(s) tightly. I have a new chiffon cake pan that'd be perfect for a pudding mold, but I needed to find a kettle big enough - and tall enough - to hold it!

After spending about an hour in the kitchen aisles at Target, I settled on a 12-quart aluminum tamale steamer. (Luckily, tamales and other Mexican cookery are very important locally, so there were lots of pots available that looked like they would be suitable for steaming small and medium-sized puddings.) The pot has a ledge a few inches from the bottom and comes with a steaming insert that sits right inside that ledge. And luckiest of all, when I brought it home, the chiffon cake pan slid right on in. It's going to be perfect. I'm not yet sure which night I'll put this "new" dinner on the table but there'll be a Steamed Molasses Pudding on the menu for dessert!

I'm sticking with the vintage breakfasts, too - though I'm going to take it very easy with the Griddle Cakes, French Toast, etc. I'm going back through the menus a second time now, but I'm going to try and mix things up a bit by taking advantage of some of the suggested alternatives that pop up every so often. And once the weather really warms up, I'm going to shift from the winter menus to the summer menus. I'll be posting my breakfast menus by the week in the sidebar.

Speaking of breakfast, I left the house this morning with a lemon on my grocery list (see Tuesday's menu). What a wonderful surprise to get to work and find that a coworker had brought in a big carton of lemons from the tree in his yard to share with everybody! You gotta love citrus season. Another coworker asked me if I was a "grapefruit kinda person." Heck, yeah. That should slim down the grocery list!

and Jimmy F. . . .

We thought Mr. F. had it bad! Listen in as Better Homes and Gardens delivers the scoop on the unfortunate son of these breakfast-spurning parents. Can his morning habits be reformed?

and Jimmy F. . . .

Jimmy F., 12, has more A's on his absence record than on his report card. His teacher thinks he's dull, but his real trouble is mineral and vitamin deficiency. Underweight and small for his age, he doesn't pay attention.

At fault is Jimmy's habit of getting up too late to eat breakfast. His stomach has been empty more than 10 hours, since average meal leaves in 4. No wonder he can't concentrate on decimals...

In school, Jimmy can't see the blackboard well, his vision is dim from deficiency of B2. By 10 o'clock he feels drowsy, thinks history is the dullest subject he takes.

During gym period, no one wants Jimmy on soccer team. [Twisting the screws of guilt into that lackadaisical Mrs. F.!] He's weak, bruises easily (Vitamin C deficiency). Vitamin C isn't stored in the body, must be provided daily...

Overhungry at noon, Jimmy eats lunch so fast that his digestion is upset for the rest of the day, trying to care for this sudden heavy load of food improperly chewed.

Boy, 12, 58 inches tall, weighing 85 pounds needs about 2,900 calories a day.

Suggested breakfast
Large orange
2/3 cup flaked wheat
1/4 cup top milk
1 cup whole milk
2 slices toast (whole-wheat raisin bread)
1 tablespoon butter
1 soft-cooked egg
2 tablespoons jam

I guess home economists of the time assumed that kids would like food best that they could pick apart for themselves - oranges, soft-cooked eggs. I ate a modified version of this breakfast myself yesterday morning: orange slices, raisin bread toast with butter and jam, and a hard-cooked egg.

Case of Mr. F. . . .

We met Mrs. F. a two days ago and got to know why even a dieting housewife needs a good day's breakfast. Alas, her disinterest in breakfast has led her to prepare boring meals for Mr. F. every morning, and now he can't be bothered with breakfast any longer. Can Better Homes and Gardens save the day?

Case of Mr. F. . . .

Mr. F. has no appetite for breakfast, often goes to the office without eating anything, getting coffee and rolls later on. He feels midmorning hunger pangs, yawns at his desk. His hands aren't steady as he lights a cigarette (B1 shortage) [I'm betting that's just the nicotine!] and he's losing his hair prematurely (B2 deficiency).

Breakfasts served were so monotonous that Mr. F. lost interest in eating...

Mineral and vitamin defects lead to his lowered mental activity. Diminishing glycogen reserves (form in which sugar, starches are stored in the tissues) hasten fatigue, important factor in accidents. Most industrial injuries occur before noon.

In evening, at home, Mr. F. is tuckered out, irritable; doesn't want to romp with the children...

Calculated energy expenditure for man weighing 154 pounds, in sedentary job, is about 2,400 calories a day.

Suggested breakfast

1/2 medium grapefruit

1/2 shredded wheat biscuit

Fried egg

2 crisp bacon strips

2 slices toast (whole wheat)

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup top milk

5/8 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons sugar

Coffee

I sampled Mr. F.'s suggested breakfast menu this morning - without the bacon, of course. I skipped the shredded wheat as I was already eating toast with the egg. A filling meal, though frying isn't my favorite way to prepare eggs. It's tough to keep them from browning and get that yolk fully cooked. I've got half a grapefruit left over, so I'll give that another try tomorrow morning.

Today is Ironing Day, and I think I'm making some headway with this new craft o' mine. The only one of those Top Ten tips that is still eluding me: "Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric." You quilters out there must be able to recognize the "thread" right away, but this is still so mysterious to me. And in some of these synthetic blends, I can barely even discern a weave to the fabric. I think I must have learned to iron by puddling the iron about in semi-circles, so straight strokes feel very awkward. Did the '40s housewife have to maneuver the iron about in this way because the irons weren't as smooth and light as today's irons, or are "straight strokes" actually easier on the fabric?

Well, I've just finished ironing my first sheet. I tried it this first time using the "four thickness at once" method, and it didn't take too, too long. It's neatly folded and stacked up with two freshly ironed pillowcases. (They haven't looked this good since they came out of the package!) But what to do with the fitted sheet? The manual gives me no help on this topic as fitted sheets hadn't yet been invented. I'm going to have to do some additional research and leave the fitted sheet wrinkly this time 'round.

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

I started off the day with a breakfast menu straight from the pages of the February 1947 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It's one of three menus in an article called "Why Don't You Eat a Good Breakfast?" The author presents profiles of three fictional Americans - the reasons they don't eat breakfast and some purportedly practical and tasty solutions. Here's an excerpt from the first profile:

Case of Mrs. F. . . .

Mrs. F. is overweight, yet has many colds. Her usual breakfast of coffee, frosted sweet rolls (350 calories each) is short of proteins, vitamins, minerals...

While hanging wash, Mrs. F. feels chilled, starts sneezing. Her resistance is low (studies show possible relation between resistance to tuberculosis and foods rich in protein, Vitamins A and C). [Way to scare the skirts off your readers!] A breakfast of fruit, enriched cereal, and egg would have given her food essentials for morning tasks.

Interested in a dieting fad, she decides to skip breakfast entirely, has to draw on her reserves of fat for heat and energy every morning. In a short time she suffers from a fat shortage, marked by constant hunger, lack of pep, vague discomfort...

Woman weighing 130 pounds, keeping house, has a daily energy requirement of about 2,300 calories. Milk is a must.

Suggested breakfast
1 slice canned pineapple with sirup
2/3 cup oatmeal
1 cup whole milk for cereal
1/4 cup coffee cream
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 slices toast (enriched white bread)
Coffee

I did make a couple adaptations. Used 1% instead of whole milk with my oatmeal and coffee. Skipped the buttered toast entirely. But then I'm not yet doing the kinds of hard physical labor Mrs. F. was doing in 1947. After my morning chores, I was free today 'til this evening. Stay tuned for Mr. F.'s breakfast issues in an upcoming post...

My routine is going to see a few adaptations of its own during the next two weeks. My sister is taking her youngest home on Wednesday to spend several days with our parents, so I'm going to be playing substitute mom for my older niece. On weeknights, I'll be picking her up at her grandmother's when I get out of work and staying at her house until my brother-in-law gets home from work around 10:30. And because of the way his work schedule falls, I'll have her both days next weekend from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. It's going to be lovely to spend so much one-on-one time with her, but I am going to be one tired chickadee by the time I crawl into bed each night. (She's only two years old and a ball of energy!) As for housework --- my goal is just to keep things running at the level they have been while all this extra work is afoot. No more new missions until my sister is home and I've had a day or two to recover. If I can keep everything running "as is" for the next two weeks, I'll be very proud.

I may have to shift some of my daily chores around a bit, though. Which is something I need to be able to do with any routine. I want to be sure that I still have some empty-ish time slots left over in every week so that I can make some adjustments when something social comes up or when family calls. As comforting as it is to have an appointed day and time for every chore - and as critical as that is while I'm trying to make habits of these chores - I need to build some flexibility into my schedule so that unexpected things don't trip me up. I think that's going to be key to getting through the next two weeks and getting through life, period. A 1940s housewife would have needed some flexibility herself for that monthly club meeting or when her spouse or child was sick at home and needed extra tending. The daily stuff needs to get done no matter what, but the weekly stuff needs to be more portable. What do you think?

The Rewards of Minimalism

My breakfast menus for the last two days were published in November 1943 by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. in a booklet titled Meal Planning Guide. It was probably one of those giveaway-type things you send for with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a dime. Thursday's menu was super simple:

Tomato Juice

Ready-prepared Whole Grain Cereal

I tried the Weetabix again that I bought last month when I was looking for a whole-grain cereal I could serve hot. It's much, much better cold! Today's menu:

Applesauce

Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Syrup

The Griddle Cakes were a little tricky. It was a very leisurely kind of recipe, with lots of stop and go. After boiling water, you poured it over a bowl of Corn Meal and set that to one side to wait for it to "swell." Then you added milk to the mixture and waited for it to cool down. Finally, it was time to add your dry goods, and - just before pouring it onto the griddle - fold a beaten egg into the batter. Corn Meal Griddle Cakes also took a bit longer on the griddle than did your plain ol' everyday Griddle Cakes. Like I said, a leisurely recipe. By the time my first batch was finished, it was almost time to leave for work. I think I must have inhaled my breakfast... I hardly remember what they tasted like! Well, I've got plenty of leftovers, so I'll take my time to enjoy them tomorrow morning.

Cleaning the bedroom last night was surprisingly easy. Yep, you heard it here first --- easy! I followed the steps recommended by the manual to a tee. You can kind of break the routine down into five parts. 1) Emptying the room out - hanging the bed covers outside to air, removing the sheets, bringing all the bric-a-brac out to the kitchen for dusting. 2) Bringing equipment into the room - vacuum cleaner, cleaning basket, clean linens. 3) Doing up the bed. 4) Dusting and vacumming. 5) Bringing the bric-a-brac back into the room and giving things a final straightening.

Not so bad. Of course it helps that I don't have very many things in the way of furnishings to clean. I moved cross-country two years ago and didn't bring anything that I couldn't fit in my car. So my apartment isn't exactly overstuffed these days. The manual attends to all kinds of items I didn't have to dust or brush or polish last night: no lamps, no dresser scarves, no draperies, no woodwork, no radiators, no baseboard, no upholstered furniture, no glass table tops, no shades, no curtains, no ash trays. That certainly made things easier. (And to think how much time I've spent wishing I could afford to have my stuff shipped out here!)

My bedroom doesn't feel all that much cleaner than normal, but the sheets have been changed, the carpet's been vacuumed, and the dust has been shooed back into the corners. And just doing that much every week - week in and week out - will be a big improvement. I think I'm going to add one or two of those "if necessarys" next Thursday, though, and step this up a notch.

Investing in the Home

The serving of fruit in my 1944 breakfast menu this morning was a berry-licious first!

Strawberries
Poached Eggs on Toast

Tomorrow, I'm heading one more year back in time to a menu published in 1943...

It's Wednesday - which here in the Jitterbug household means I did a little marketing. I made a couple stops on the way home from work. Picked up a few groceries, and started collecting some of the items I'll need to build my cleaning basket: a large cellulose sponge, a flannel polishing cloth, and a new pair of scissors (so I don't have to keep using the scissors from my mending basket on household jobs!). These "light" marketing trips on Wednesdays haven't done much yet to make my pantry more organized, and I suspect they're not going to make a real difference until I've added a longer trip to the supermarket on Saturdays. For now, I'm just content to try and make a shopping on Wednesday evenings a matter of routine.



As I was taking another look at the bedroom cleaning routine today, I realized that the manual recommends using either a carpet sweeper or vacuum cleaner when giving each room in the house its daily once-over, but when you clean each room more thoroughly once a week only a vac will do. Boy, do they make good use of the attachments. Mine can go untouched for a year, but the authors of the manual advise using your attachments every time you turn around! The vacuum is used to brush fabrics, dust in all those tall or hard-to-reach places - and of course to clean the carpet. Housewives in the '40s who were able to invest in a vacuum cleaner must have felt as if the appliance replaced several hours of work per week that hired help might have provided their mothers a generation before. Vacuum cleaners were a hefty investment. The $48.50 price tag on the Hoover above (plus trade) would be equivalent to more than $700 today!

Irons in the Fire

No sooner did I get home from work this evening and it's almost time for bed! I don't know how the time away from work slips by so quickly on these weekday evenings... It's going to make some of my weekday housecleaning missions loom large. (Can you tell I'm getting the jitters about the mission ahead on Thursday evening?)

On the other side of the equation, I've noticed that ironing my laundry in one fell swoop has actually created some time in my mornings. How cool is that? I pick out my clothes for the day and just pluck them from their hangers. Ready to go. No lugging out the ironing board. No heating the iron for one or two items. One of the reasons I never used to iron everything at once is because I thought the clothes would be wrinkled again by the time I went to wear them. That they'd get wrinkled while they were hanging in the closet. That's actually not the case - which has been a wonderful surprise. It's been a couple weeks, but it's nice to see some payoff from the ironing mission.

And speaking of ironing, I'm getting ready to do just that tonight. The manual advises me to arrange my ironing area with an eye toward moving the clothes from left to right: "Place the clothesbasket at your left, a clothes rack at your right, and be sure there are coat hangers near at hand." Here are a few of the Top Ten tips I'm still striving to be mindful about:

2. When you straighten material on the ironing board or roll of a rotary ironer, use the palms of your hands and smooth from the center out. Your fingers are apt to stretch the fabrics and pull them out of shape.

3. Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric.

5. Collars, cuffs, sleeves, belts and trimmings are ironed first, then the flat sections of the garment.

My breakfast menu for the last two days has been another of the trio from the 1944 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book:

Half of Grapefruit
Omelet
Toasted English Muffins

The secret I've discovered to making a lovely, golden omelet is keeping the heat at a steady medium. A shade hotter and the omelet starts to brown. At least that's how it works on my stovetop. They're all a little different!

Java Jive

My apron is on, my hair is pinned up, and it’s time to get breakfast started. This morning’s mini-mission? Use my Drip-O-lator for the first time. First, let me warm up the kitchen radio. Here’s my 1944 breakfast menu:

Orange Juice
Scramble Eggs with Cheese
Whole Wheat Toast
Coffee

The only Cheese I’ve got in the house is grated parmesan, so I'll use that. My 1945 cookbook does suggest a few more “adds” for scrambled eggs: onion-juice with parsley, sweet green peppers, or canned pimientos.

The Drip-O-lator (patented in 1921 with revisions in 1930) looks like it works very much like your typical drip coffee maker today, except that the water reservoir is fitted on top instead of behind the coffee pot. The biggest difference is that you have to heat up your water separately. The 1940s housewife probably used a tea kettle. I don’t have one, so I’m just going to run some water through my Mr. Coffee - without the grounds (sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it!).

Deep inside the aluminum fixture is a small well for the coffee grounds. My friend tells me that they didn’t use any coffee filters in the Drip-O-lator, but suggested I use a small filter in there if I didn’t want to end up with any stray grounds in my cup. A perforated metal cap with a tall rod for a handle fits down in there on top of the well. You fill the top of the fixture with hot water and it drips down through the well and into the coffee pot. My water’s heated, but I’m not sure how long I can expect the coffee in the Drip-O-lator to stay warm, so I’m going to start my Scramble Eggs with Cheese first…

The water has been added. It looks like it’s going to take some time for 5 cups’ worth to work its way through the well and down into the coffeepot. While we're waiting, here are a few early ‘40s pictures of the Drip-O-lator in action:

Okay, breakfast is ready, but the coffee’s not. The Drip-O-lator works nowhere near as quickly as my Mr. Coffee. Will the coffee be richer? I’m going to go ahead and eat. Coffee later…

It looks like coffee. It’s not as hot as the coffee I’d pour from my modern coffee maker. (And they didn’t have any microwaves for a quick re-heat!) I gather percolators cooled down real quickly, too. Tastes about the same as the coffee made in the modern coffee maker. It may be tinge richer. Can't quite put my finger on the difference. There must have been housewives trying to keep the coffee warm by putting the pot on a burner, because there's a warning stamped inside the pot. The pot will explode if you heat it on a burner or over an open flame.

I love coffee, I love tea.

I love the java jive and it loves me.

Coffee and tea and the java and me.

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!

Hold the Cream

I tried to do it, I really tried. This morning's 1945 breakfast menu started out with Sliced Bananas with Cream. My arteries won the contest, though, and I ate the Bananas without the Cream:

Sliced Bananas

Poached Free Range Eggs on Toast

Cream and Top Milk were a staple fixture on the 1940s breakfast table. And not just for coffee. People laced their cooked cereals with Top Milk. They served cold cereals in bowls of Cream. Now it shows up with fruit. I guess they didn't have the constant commentary on health running through their heads that we do today. Cream and Top Milk were considered nutrient-dense foods, not cholesterol-laden substances to be used in strict moderation. I hesitated before the Cream in the dairy section at the grocery store last Wednesday. Thought I really ought to taste the dish for the sake of The Experiment. But I just couldn't do it.

At any rate, this was the last of the breakfast menus in the front of my cookbook. When I started trying 'em out a couple weeks ago, I expected these menus to be a little ritzier than the ones in the budget feature in the back of the cookbook. Fresher ingredients, maybe. So how did they measure up? Here's a bit I wrote about the budget-conscious menus:

Nearly half of the meals (43%) were built around some sort of cooked cereal. 27% of the menus were built around an egg dish. Baked goods were the main attraction for 20% of the menus, and cold cereal for the remaining 10%... I'm also a vegetarian, so I've taken any meat dishes out of the menus. This didn't take much time. These were the war years, and only 20% of the menus even include meat.

The menus in the front of the book are only built around cooked cereal 9% of the time. Nearly two-thirds of the meals (64%) feature an egg dish, and baked goods lead the way in 27% of the menus. You can see right away just how useful cooked cereals would have been to the housewife who had to be especially careful with money. Somebody who was a little more comfortable financially could count on having eggs at the breakfast table several times a week. Another major difference is that 46% of these front-of-the-book menus include meat - twice the amount as in the back of the book. The only kind of meat referenced in the budget section is bacon, while the menus in the front of the book include codfish, ham, and sausage. Another glimpse into the kind of pantry a thriftier housewife would have kept in the '40s.

I'm not done experimenting with breakfast just yet. I've been able to find eight more vintage breakfast menus in cookbooks and magazines, so I'm going to try these out and then move on to dinner. The first trio of menus is from a 1944 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book (New York: Farrar and Rinehart). I'm also going to fire up my "new" Drip-O-lator for the first time. A friend bought me this lovely contraption last summer and it looks absolutely fabulous on my stovetop, but it was missing the aluminum drip unit that fits in the top. Until Christmas, that is. It's all assembled and ready to go, but I feel a bit like I'm trying out a new Bunsen burner in the lab. Will it make good coffee?

Plugging In...

One of the best things I've learned at the ironing board sounds so simple: if you're a rightie (like me) and you plug in the iron to your left, you'll inevitably end up with a miserably kinked-up cord. All it takes to prevent that is just to plug in the iron to your right. And vice versa for lefties. That's it! The cord to my iron is now smooth and straight - and sooooooo much easier to use. What a difference that one little change made.

As I was doing my ironing last night, it occurred to me that the casual clothes so many of us wear these days are actually not as easy to iron as were the more formal clothes of the '40s. So many of the "blouses" (for lack of a better word) that I wear are some sort of cotton blend with a soft knit texture. And anyone who's tried to iron a tee shirt knows that you're fighting a losing battle against wrinkles. As soon as you iron 'em out, they pop up again in new places! Ironing a fabric with a little more substance to it is much more simple. It sounds kind of ironic - as I'm sure all those vintage collars and plackets and pleats took time - but the fabrics must have been much satisfying to iron.

This morning's breakfast:

Prunes

Graham Muffin (the last of the leftovers)

Baked Eggs

I've never baked eggs before, so I wasn't sure what I'd find when I opened the oven. I didn't have any of the "individual baking dishes" recommended in the recipe, so I used a mini loaf pan and they turned out just fine. A little rubbery - I think I'll bake them at a slightly lower temperature next time - but still good. Do you think I could use something like a popover pan or muffin pan to make Baked Eggs next time? Or would they turn out better in some kind of ceramic or stoneware?

I set forth on my new mission this evening as I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home from work with a very small list in hand. The manual doesn't have any recommendations for the homecoming shopper, but there are a few words of advice in The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947):

Use all the time you need for marketing for these days and putting the food away. Wash and trim fresh vegetables and put them in the refrigerator ready for use.

That's a great idea. It'd certainly save you some time when it was time to put supper on the table or pack the family's lunch boxes. I didn't get any veggies this trip. Guess I'll have to get those crispers in my refrigerator ready for use next time...

Are You Sure It's Been a Week?

My first thought when my alarm started buzzing at me yesterday morning: "Monday, again? Already?" Yep, the week makes it's round very quickly. I can remember so easily how happy I was last Tuesday evening when the washing and ironing were done. My clothes were clean and pressed. And not a speck of laundry to worry about for the rest of the week. Liberation! I'm not sure how those five days got by me so quickly. All I know is that the Monday Wash was back in my court in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

What a lot of work. I was up late into the night yesterday handwashing the "Gentle Cycle Only" items. Between sick days and holiday weekends, this is the first time since I took on these missions that I've had both the washing and ironing to do along with two full days at work. No wonder it's feeling like a ton of bricks! Nevertheless, I know the weeks are just going to get more and more rigorous, and I don't want to wear myself to the point of exhaustion every Monday handwashing stuff that could be washed just as nicely in a machine. I'll never have enough "Gentle Cycle Only" clothes in a single week to make up a full load, but what's stopping me from washing similar-colored items in a gentle cycle instead of a regular cycle? It's not like the rest of my clothes are so grimy and greasy that they couldn't relax in the gentle cycle from time to time. I'll still have some handwashing to do, but this should cut down on that a little. I still have to put some thought into sorting my laundry on Sunday nights. Should I bleach my whites this week? Do I need to get creative to put a gentle cycle load together? Which items need to be pulled before going into the dryer? Do I have enough quarters?

Tonight: the ironing. It's one big load of cottons and cotton blends this week. American Idol is just starting - the Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour of the 21st century - so that should keep me entertained... Here are some of the Top Ten Tips I still need to work into my technique:

2. When you straighten material on the ironing board or roll of a rotary ironer, use the palms of your hands and smooth from the center out. Your fingers are apt to stretch the fabrics and pull them out of shape.

3. Iron with straight strokes, with the thread of the fabric.

5. Collars, cuffs, sleeves, belts and trimmings are ironed first, then the flat sections of the garment.

10. Do not use too hot an iron or shoe. Most hand irons are thermostatically controlled. Ironers are also equipped with thermostatic controls so that you can select the proper heat for the fabric... Combinations of fibers - adjust heat to fiber needing lowest temperature.

Oh, yes. My breakfast menu this morning included something I haven't had since I was a kid:

Orange Juice

Scrambled Eggs

Toast

Marmalade

It's been years since I tried Marmalade. (There's something about candied citrus peel that's never appealed to me.) It was okay. A very orange-y breakfast, too. It's not every day that your juice and marmalade coordinate so nicely!

I Came, I Saw, I Broiled

I haven't felt so intimidated in a long time as I did when I turned the page of my cookbook and found this menu looking back at me:

Broiled Grapefruit
Omelet
Graham Biscuit (I substituted the last of my Baking Powder Biscuits.)

Broiled Grapefruit? I've never broiled anything - and wasn't even sure where the broiler was! The word is right there on the controls for my oven. I can set it to "Bake" or "Broil," and just above the 500-degree mark on the temperature control is the word "Broil." But using it? Feels a bit like not stopping for gas when the gauge hits "E." And I wasn't sure whether it was located underneath the oven chamber - you know that drawer where some people store their pots and pans - or whether the broiler was actually the heating element inside my oven at the top of the chamber. Would there be flames spitting out somewhere? Did I need special cookware?

Oddly enough, there wasn't even a recipe for Broiled Grapefruit inside the cookbook which recommended it in the first place. So I had to look about online to see if anybody out there was broiling citrus fruit. Sure enough, I found people chatting about it on a few cookery sites. I also found a tip about broilers that steered me in the right direction. If you have a gas stove, the broiler is usually underneath the oven chamber. If you have an electric stove (like mine), the broiler is usually inside the chamber.

Because the homegrown grapefruits I received the other day had so much pith, I decided to pick up a grapefruit at the store. Setting aside half for tomorrow, I loosened each of the sections, then sprinkled brown sugar and cinnamon on top with a dab of margarine. I set the oven rack in the topmost position and checked to be sure the grapefruit would still be about four inches below the broiling unit. Then tentatively started "preheating" the broiler by turning the oven up to 400 degrees - then to 450 -- then 500. The Omelet was finished by this point, so it was do or die. With an imaginary dash of salt over my shoulder and a note to self that I'd enjoyed my brief life even if it was about to come to a flaming end, I turned both knobs to "Broil." A few minutes later, the element at the top of my oven was red hot, so I slid the pan in underneath and counted the minutes. Just three.

The grapefruit was still in one piece when I pulled it out. The topping had melted right into the fruit. Most of it, anyway. The rest was a sticky, burnt mess in the pan (which should have been lined with aluminum foil). After letting it cool for several minutes, I tried a piece. It was okay. Nothing to write home about. The cinnamon really overpowers the taste of the grapefruit. I guess that'd be alright if you didn't like grapefruit, but I do. And I prefer it fresh and chilled. I can see how Broiled Grapefruit might have been considered a fancier way of serving citrus for breakfast during the '40s. If you had houseguests or were planning a holiday breakfast, it'd really dress up the table. If I try it again tomorrow morning I'll use a little less cinnamon - and a lot more aluminum foil.

Can't believe I lived to tell about it... I'm feeling all kinds of bravado this afternoon over conquering my fears!

Week Ten: The Mission

I was planning a quick trip to the grocery store after work yesterday - just a few things on my list. One of them was grapefruit for this morning's breakfast. Happily, it's grapefruit season here in the Southwest, and a coworker brought me in a bag of grapefruit from the tree in his yard! It's interesting how different these grapefruit look from the ones we buy in the store. They're kind of pear shaped, for one. You can see just by looking at 'em how they hang on the tree. The fruit is heavier at the non-stem end. They also have a much thicker pith. In fact, there was probably about 50% less fruit. Lots more juice, though.

Here's this morning's menu (and tomorrow's, as I have leftover biscuits):

Grapefruit

Baking Powder Biscuits

It was a tasty breakfast. Not as filling as a whole-grain cereal or eggs might have been. The Biscuits were super quick. A cup did the trick today, but I'll have to add a biscuit cutter to my growing list of needs for a vintage home.

Speaking of shopping, my mission for this coming week will be to do some "light" marketing on Wednesday evenings. Housewives in the '40s made multiple trips to multiple stores over the course of a week to buy groceries, toiletries, and household supplies. They might have been able to have groceries delivered in a pinch - and this was still the era of door-to-door salesmen - but they probably spent a fair amount of time walking or driving to the pharmacy, the bakery, the green goods grocer, the shoe repairman, etc. Today, our supermarkets and discount department stores are so massive that we can find most of what we need under two roofs.

I probably make three shopping trips per week (unless something special comes up). A trip to the supermarket, a trip to Trader Joe's, and a trip to Walgreen's. I buy my eggs and dairy and a few other odds and ends at Trader Joe's. There are some incredible prices on produce at another natural foods market, so I stop there sometimes. (They also have a good selection of flours - which has been such a help with these 1945 breakfast menus.) So my own habits in this respect fall quite easily into vintage marketing patterns.

The manual has one recommendation as to timing:

The bulk of marketing should be done on a day when local stores offer special prices. Often Friday and Saturday are bargain days.

I might be wrong, but I don't think any modern supermarkets have sale prices effective just one day per week. They seem to offer sale prices that change once a week, but are effective all week long. I'm going to set aside some time on Saturdays to do the "bulk" of my marketing (a trip to the supermarket) with Wednesday evenings dedicated to a shorter trip to either Trader Joe's or the natural foods store. Those two trips - at opposite ends of the week - should keep my pantry in good order. Wouldn't it be nice never to run short of things? Not to have to make any emergency stops here and there to pick up what I might have been stocked up on with better planning?

Thrift 1 / Curiosity 0

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

Orange Slices

Scrambled Eggs and Toast

Coffee

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

Applesauce

Graham Muffins

Hard-cooked Egg

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

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

A Big, Scrummy Mess

My plan for breakfast this morning was an unmitigated failure.

It started out okay. The Corn-meal Mush came right out of the pan in a single piece. I sliced it into strips and started heating some oil in a large fry pan. Now, I have almost zero experience frying foods in hot oil, so maybe I used too much oil, maybe too little, maybe the burner wasn't just the right temperature. I don't know. The strips never browned. They just kind of sat there in the bubbling oil and fell apart every time I tried to turn one over. There were actually two different recipes for Fried Mush in my cookbook. The first suggests breading the slices of Mush before frying them. The second suggests skipping the breading altogether.

I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I ended up with a mound of oily, hot-ish, half-congealed Corn-meal on my plate. (Just the thought now makes me queasy.) I was very doubtful at this point my breakfast could be resuscitated, so I was sparing with the Sirup. And after a few bites for penance - I'd had enough. Blech! I'm still trying to banish the sight and smell of it from my mind...

In honor of Dr. King and the National Day of Service, some friends and I spent the morning picking up trash on the banks of a dry riverbed. We had a good time - my legs feel like jelly! - but we managed to clean up one little corner of the Earth. What a lot of litter is out there. I picked up lots of glass and bottle caps and cigarette butts. Plastic bags, pieces of styrofoam, dish shards. A $5 Monopoly bill, a shower curtain rod. What surprised me was how much fast food trash we found. Napkins, receipts, bags, containers. It's as if people are just throwing the remains of their drive-thru lunches right out the window when they're finished. Double Blech!