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.

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!

Week's End

The deeper I dig into this way of life, the more often it occurs to me how dangerous it was to be a housewife during the '40s. Between hot oil in the frying pan, a searingly hot iron, and chemicals you have to be super careful using about the house and garden - it was a fearsome job. It still is! Not only can you damage property or waste food if you make a mistake, but you could end up with burnt arms or worse... I think many of us look on homemaking as a very simple, gentle, quiet job, but the housewife is actually working with some very dangerous substances and tools. Even in 2009. I'm a pretty clumsy person and tend to rush into things like new recipes, but clumsiness and haste aren't going to do me any favors on this job.

Since adding Wash Day and Ironing Day to my housekeeping routine, I've been spending a lot more time with my clothes than ever before - and am realizing just how intimately a woman in the 1940s knew her wardrobe. And not just where she bought it and how much she paid for it. My '40s counterpart would've known fabrics inside and out - known what temperature water to wash each fabric in, how exactly it should be dried, whether it should be ironed on the right side or the wrong side. If a garment was made from a blend of fibers, it had another protocol entirely. Add buttons and zippers and decorative trim to the mix, and laundry became an intricate balance of needs. And I'm not even counting the time a woman spent on the articles she made herself! There's a whole different relationship to fabrics that this kind of time and attentiveness brought about - particularly to clothing. You'd be so much more likely to guard against damaging your garments, to work earnestly at removing stains before they set. This is foreign territory for me still.

I find myself truly appreciative these days of the encyclopedia's worth of knowlege a '40s housewife carried about in her head. Rules for everything from which batters needed more stirring than others to which laundry required a cool wash. Everything I'm resorting to the manual to find out. Now, she'd probably been absorbing this stuff since she was a little girl, so it'd have come quite naturally. Maybe I'll start to pick up some of this knowledge, too --- at least some of the more general rules. 'Til then, thank goodness for America's Housekeeping Book!

Top Ten Tips for Ironing

'Tis a sweet, solemn, beautiful day here in the United States of America...



As I listened to President Obama's motorcade making its way to the parade review stands, I fired up the iron and got started on my ironing. After doing some research with my trusty ruler, I decided to position my tabletop ironing board on top of my kitchen table. It's about 35 inches off the floor, so just a smidge higher than recommended by The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book (1947). There's an outlet to the right of the table, so I can plug the iron in without having the cord all twisted about. And plenty of light.

Here's a list of Top Ten Tips for Ironing, courtesy of the manual:

1. Remember that the amount of heat in the iron or ironer does not change the instant you turn the switch from one position to another. For this reason, it is best to start with fabrics needing low temperatures and work up to heavy damp linens which need high temperatures. (Check. I usually iron from hot to cold, so this was a whole new way of doing business for me. I also reorganized the stack of clothes in the basket so the items to be ironed first were on top of the pile.)

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. (I didn't do either of these two things. I was concentrating so hard on some of the easier tips that I forgot the others!)

4. Iron each section perfectly dry before you start on the next. (A reminder of just how damp clothes were after having been "sprinkled" and - in some cases - refrigerated overnight.)

5. Collars, cuffs, sleeves, belts and trimmings are ironed first, then the flat sections of the garment. (I forgot to do this. Not as many of my clothes, though, even have these features. There will be plenty of sleeves in the pile on Tuesdays. I'll try to remember this one next week.)

6. White and light-colored cottons and linens are ironed on the right side, dark cottons and linens on the wrong side; silks and rayons on the wrong side; damask on the right side, then on the wrong side. (Before plugging in the iron, I sat down with my basket of clothes and went through them one by one to decide which category they fell in. I ended up turning several items inside out again so I could iron the "wrong side." Thankfully, I didn't have any damask in my basket this week!)

7. If folds in flatwork are always made in the same place, the wear on the fabric from creasing will cause the fibers to break. Sometimes fold in thirds and sometimes in fourths to avoid this strain. (According to the manual, flatwork = "table cloths," sheets, embroidered pieces, and round doilies. Whoops! I just realized that the decorative kitchen towel I ironed was embroidered. I'll have to be mindful of folding this in a different fashion whenever I wash and iron it.)

8. Hang all ironed pieces on a rack where they may dry thoroughly before putting them away. (In the '40s, many items would still be damp from all that re-wetting! Thank goodness for steam. I was able to hang my pieces as soon as they came off the ironing board.)

9. Save labor in folding and improve the appearance of garments by using coat hangers for blouses, dresses and shirts. (Rats. I only own one coat hanger. Plastic hangers will have to be good enough for my blouses, dresses and shirts. For now.)

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.

Cotton and linen - relatively hot
Wool and silk - moderate heat
Rayon - low heat
Acetate rayon - very low heat
Combinations of fibers - adjust heat to fiber needing lowest temperature. (My iron is marked with similar temperature settings for each of type of fabric - with additional settings for nylon, acrylic, and polyester. I wish I'd remembered that last bit of advice about blends. Next Tuesday.)

My iron did give off a mysterious sweetish smell towards the end of my ironing that I haven't been able to place yet. There is a bit of scorch on the surface that may have come from having the heat set too high once for a synthetic. I'll have to look for some recommendations for cleaning the iron.

Nylon, Polyester, and Acrylic... Oh, My!

It's Sunday night and - cold or no - time to sort my laundry in preparation for Wash Day.

My pile of white garments and towels is big enough this week to make a full load of bleachables. There is one white article I'm not sure what to do with. It's made of 92% nylon/8% spandex. My manual only mentions nylon once (it had only hit markets in 1939) and this is in reference to nylon stockings. Precious articles that they were during the war years, nylon stockings were strictly handwashable. Well, a handwashing it shall get.

I've got another item which is 49% rayon/48% polyester/3% spandex. One of the things I learned about rayons last week is that they could - even in 1945 - be washed by machine in a lukewarm suds, but there are very specific directions about drying these pieces by hand. I'll have to remember to pull this tomorrow morning and dry it by hand in my apartment. That modal/spandex item from last week will get the same treatment.

A few more to go. I've got a shirt which is 65% polyester/35% cotton. Though chemists were hard at work on polyester during the 1940s, it wasn't introduced to the marketplace until about 1953. So I think it's safe to say I'm not going to find any useful guidance on laundering polyester in any manual from this period. Just going to follow the instructions on the garment's label: "Machine wash warm... Tumble dry." Next is a 100% acrylic sweater. From what I've been able to find online, acrylic wasn't introduced to the market as a textile until 1950, so I'm in the same spot as with the last garment: "Machine wash cold. Delicate cycle... Tumble dry low." There is no delicate cycle on the machines in my laundromat, so I'll have to handwash this item.

A bra is quite a tricky item. One of mine is made up of polyester/nylon/polyurethane foam/cotton/spandex - but more polyester than anything else. I'll trust the label on this one: "Hand wash warm water with like colors. Do not bleach. Line dry." The label on another one is nearly impossible to read, but appears to be some blend of nylon/elastic. I'll handwash this one as I would nylon stockings. These are tough little buggers!

That's it. Two handwashables plus my bras. Two more hand dryables. I'm not sure yet whether I'll do the handwashables while my laundry's in the dryers or whether I'll save 'em for tomorrow evening.

Sorting and Subdividing

The 1940s housewife had lots to do before she even set to work with her washing machine, so I sat down this evening to sort my dirty laundry. Here are the steps my manual recommends for sorting:

1. Separate clothes into piles according to type and color:
Table linen - white and colored
Bed linen and towels - white and colored
White and colorfast cotton and linen garments
Colored cotton and linen garments, not colorfast
White silks and rayons
Colored silks and rayons
White woolens
Colored woolens

2. Subdivide these piles, if necessary, into lightly soiled and heavily soiled pieces.

3. As you sort the clothes, watch for spots and stains that have escaped notice, and remove them before the articles are washed.

4. Mend rips and tears before washing (except in undergarments and stockings) to save time and stitches later on.

5. Remove pins and clips.

6. Empty pockets.

7. If you are not absolutely sure that any new article is colorfast to washing, put it aside and wash it separately the first time.

8. Handkerchiefs that have been used by persons suffering from colds or sinusitis should never be put in the hamper, and should be laundered separately. (The use of soft paper tissues by these sufferers is to be highly recommended, as they may be disposed of quickly after use, lessening danger of infection.)

So my bedroom floor is now covered in piles of clothes:

Table linen - colored
Bed linen and towels - white and colored
White and colorfast cotton and linen garments
Colored cotton and linen garments, not colorfast

The sixth pile is a heap of garments made from substances not yet invented at the time the manual was written. All but two of them are a blend of cotton and spandex - which I've just learned was invented in 1959. Two items are made from blends of Modal with cotton or spandex. Apparently, this is a variety of rayon made from the cellulose of beech trees. It's been around since 1965, but is only now becoming a popular clothing textile. My manual doesn't give me any guidance about what to do with items made from a blend of fibers, so I'm going to sort them with the fiber that makes up the majority of the garment... Okay, my sixth pile now contains only one piece:

Colored silks and rayons

I'm reading a little farther on in the manual and it turns out that the only special washing directions apply to non-colorfast cotton and linen, silks and rayons, and woolens. Would the authors frown on me for combining the rest of my items - sorting only for color? That brings me down to just four piles, one of which contains only a single "rayon" item and that can probably be washed by hand. Two of the three remaining piles are big enough for the washer. I'd like to use a bleach with the whites, so I think I'll save that pile for next Monday.

Thank goodness my breakfast this morning gave me fuel for all this decision making!

Orange Juice
Buckwheat Griddlecakes
Sirup

If you've never had Buckwheat Griddlecakes before - like me! - you'll probably be pleasantly surprised. They tasted just like your basic Griddlecake, but they were as dark as gingerbread - and much, much moister and lighter than the Griddlecakes I've been able to make using the recipe in my 1945 cookbook. Must be the molasses. I made enough for leftovers, so that should make tomorrow's breakfast a little easier on the washerwoman. Off to soak some stains!