Gremlins

How many days 'til my boss gets back from vacation?

Four, I guess. Which means - unhappily - that I'm only halfway done. I'll be so happy to get back to my own job next Tuesday!

Gremlins of every size and shape have been sitting on my shoulders for the last couple days. Procrastination, Sloth, Self-pity... it turns out they've been with me all this time. I just haven't hear their voices very clearly for the last several months. Tempting me to cut corners, put chores off, just skip things altogether. And so I find myself here on a Tuesday evening trying to finish cleaning the bathroom (this should have been done over the weekend), fold and put away my clean laundry (last night's chore) - and, well, forget about the ironing! I'll have to save that for tomorrow evening. I haven't packed a vintage lunch once yet this week. So I'm struggling, but I'm trying to keep my eyes on the prize and get as much accomplished each day as I possibly can. Whatever I do, I cannot let the stress translate itself into snacking or skipping my exercises. Nothing tastes as good as the success I feel when I step on that scale the morning after a snack-free evening.

It's time to re-kit my wardrobe again. My size 16 pants are falling off me and the size 14s are getting baggy, too. I did some shopping last night and I seem to be fitting into a size 12 in most brands. That seems almost surreal to write. A size 12! That's a number I haven't seen in ages... Unfortunately, most of the stores here in town are stocking all kinds of new fall/winter clothes even though it's going to be far too hot here to wear anything but summer clothes until about December. So I hit an online store today and picked up two new pairs of cropped pants that should help tide me over. (I have these same pants in a size 16 right now, so I know the cut will work for me!) By the time I'm in a size 10, it'll be cool enough to pick up some of this warmer clothing. Thank goodness those online merchants are a little less slow to run out of seasonal inventory! I'd have been out of luck sixty years ago. That is if cropped pants were even suitable for a woman my age.

Thanks for listening to me blather on for a bit about my crazy week. Here's to much more vintage fun very soon!

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?

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!

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...

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...