47 + 3 = 50

Phew! The scale is headed in the right direction again... I weighed in at 144 this morning which means I've officially lost 50 lbs. since adopting this vintage fitness and reducing plan last April.

50 lbs!!! I couldn't have imagined seven months ago actually being able to make that happen. I thought then I'd be thrilled - and content - just to trim off about 20 lbs. Just to make getting around a little bit easier, make the clothes fit a little bit more comfortably, make my face look a little less puffy. Well, "content" isn't good enough any more. I'm pleased as punch with the progress I've made (just this weekend, I realized my cheekbones are starting to be noticeable again!), but I've got a long road to go. 27 more lbs. to reach goal. I'd like to be comfortably in a size 8 --- right now I'm a snug 10. And I'd like to be off the blood pressure medication entirely --- I'm now taking just 1/4 of the dose I used to take. The holidays are bound to take a toll, but I'm determined to continue losing a little something over the next several weeks!

One of the radio programs I've been feasting on these days - in lieu of leftovers! - is The Goldbergs. Known as The Rise of the Goldbergs when it premiered in 1929, this popular daytime serial could be heard every weekday on NBC for some 20 years before it moved to television in 1949. The program follows the ever-dramatic lives of Molly and Jake Goldberg, a Jewish couple living in the Bronx, who move to a farm in Connecticut with their children, Sammy and Rosalie, in an effort to improve the family fortune. The Goldbergs was written by Gertrude Berg, who also starred as the Goldberg matriarch.

I adore this show! Can't get enough of it. Many episodes have disappeared - such was the fate with most soap operas - but there are a few long runs of surviving episodes that allow you to follow along with a handful of storylines. I've been listening these days to a storyline from the early spring of 1941. Sammy Goldberg has fallen in love with a girl named Sylvia Allison and, despite his mother's suspicions and doubt about the girl, has gone to Sylvia's home in the South where Mr. Allison has agreed to employ Sammy while the couple plan a wedding. Molly, Jake, and Rosalie have driven South to attend the wedding only to learn that Sammy has discovered Sylvia's shocking deceptions. Alas, she was apparently entangled with her sister's husband at one point! Will Molly be able to save Sammy from marrying Sylvia out of guilt? Is Sylvia emotionally unbalanced and likely to hurt herself or Sammy if she fears losing him? Can Molly heal the Allison family, too? Stay tuned for tomorrow's visit "with that lovable family," the Goldbergs...

One of the most enchanting things about The Goldbergs is the ads. Oxydol was sponsoring the program at this time and their promotional spots give you such insight into some of the trials and tribulations of washday I'd never really considered before. Laundry was a very public exercise in these days before automatic dryers. In 2009, we can do our laundry at any time of day and on any day of the week and nobody's the wiser. We can wear our robes (if that's all we've got left) while we do our laundry and can cheaply replace most anything that doesn't get clean enough. For most 1940s housewives, there was no such thing as privacy when it came to laundry. A women had to literally "air her dirty laundry" on Mondays by hanging her clean wash on clotheslines that were in view of all her neighbors and passersby. When it came to laundry, there were two measures of success that must have preyed on many a housewife's mind:

1. How early are you able to get that wash on the line?
You may never have been the first woman to get it out there, but it'd be awful to be the last! It must have been a special point of pride for a housewife who was able to hang her wash up to dry early - maybe before it was even time to begin preparing lunch for herself and any children at home. The Oxydol ads point up the idea that with this revolutionary new soap you won't need to boil your laundry or use one of those old fashioned scrub boards. Just a gentle wash in Oxydol, with a little extra attention to stains, and Mondays need no longer be your least favorite day of the week. With the wash dispatched by the time The Goldbergs came on the air at noon, you'd have time to "rest" --- "more time to enjoy yourself."

2. Is your laundry white enough?
Again, you'd probably never have the whitest wash in the neighborhood, but wouldn't your family be humiliated if there were greasy, yellow linens on your clothesline? Oxydol ads promised listeners "the kind of washes women turn to admire, even envy." Whoever the marketing folks behind these ads might have been, they'd clearly found a way to use feminine competitiveness to their advantage. There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to that. Women still pick each other apart more harshly then men do --- and I think we're always much more concerned with how other women will judge us on whatever accomplishments society currently deems "feminine" than we are about how men will judge us on those same accomplishments. That's still something the advertising business uses to drive profits.

A white wash was truly a challenge during the winter when women living in northern climates weren't able to hang the wash outdoors and take advantage of the bleaching effects of sunlight. Not to fear! Housewives who had to dry their laundry in basements or attics wouldn't have to worry about a "dingy and gray" wash if they'd only pick up a box of Oxydol on their next trip to the grocer's.

Here's something this liquid detergent user never thought about in relation to laundry soap. One of the points Oxydol uses to sell its product is the idea that you won't spend Mondays sneezing from the clouds of dust that your laundry soap raises every time you pour some out. For housewives who wanted to get to know this detergent a little better before investing in a box, Oxydol partnered with Apex, a washing machine manufacturer, to make a special offer during the spring of 1941. For a limited time, if you stopped by the showroom of your local Apex dealer, he would personally demonstrate the merits of Oxydol in one of those new "time-control" Apex washers.

All this talk of a laundry has got me all excited for tomorrow's wash. Almost makes me wish there were neighbors around to chat in awed whispers if I had the whitest wash on the street. You know I like a challenge!

The Housewife's Tool Box: Radio

Whether you owned an electric set or a battery-operated set, the radio was a constant and boon companion to the 1940s housewife. I used to think of the housewife as quite a lonely creature. From the time she saw her husband and children off to work and school until they began straggling home mid-afternoon, the work at home must have seemed a bit isolating at times. Especially for women whose children were all in school. But I'm not inclined to think that way any longer. Between marketing, callers, the round of chores they shared in common with neighbors, and - most importantly - the radio, I'd guess that most women didn't feel isolated or lonely at all. The outside world was regularly dropping by, so to speak.

There's an extraordinary recording which survives from Thursday, September 21, 1939 (70 years ago next week) when WJSV, a CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, recorded its entire broadcast day for the National Archives. The reason they picked that particular day is that President Roosevelt was expected to address the House and Senate in joint session regarding the war in Europe, but what's most fascinating to me is all the other stuff. All the mundane, ordinary programs that could be heard by anybody who tuned in a radio between 6:30 in the morning until 1:00 that night. This recording gives you such an amazing window into the kinds of things a typical housewife might hear piping out from the radio as she went about her daily work. It's probably as close as we'll ever get to a time machine... Check out how The Manual's skeleton housekeeping schedule for a Thursday compares to the radio programs as heard on this Thursday in September 1939:

Early Morning: Preparing and serving breakfast
6:30 - 8:30 am: Sundial (a morning radio program/part music-part DJ banter-part local ads)
8:30 - 8:45 am: Certified Magic Carpet (quiz show)
Forenoon: General pickup. Light cleaning of all rooms
8:45 - 10:00 am: Soap operas, in 15-minute episodes (Bachelor's Children, Pretty Kitty Kelly, The Story of Myrt and Marge, Hilltop House, Stepmother)
Thorough cleaning of bedrooms
10:00 - 10:15 am: Mary Lee Taylor (cooking program)
10:15 - 11:00 am: More soap operas (Brenda Curtis, Big Sister, Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories)
11:00 - 11:15 am: Jean Abbey (local department store infomercial disguised as news)
Noon: Preparing foods for lunch and dinner. Lunch, dishes, cleaning up kitchen.
11:15 am - 1:00 pm: More soap operas (When a Girl Marries, The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, The Goldbergs, Life Can be Beautiful, Road of Life, This Day is Ours)
Early Afternoon: Thorough cleaning of bathroom
1:00 - 1:15 pm: News
1:15 - 1:45 pm: Still more soap operas (The Life and Love of Dr. Susan, Your Family and Mine)
1:45 - 3:15 pm: President Roosevelt's Address, along with pre- and post-address commentary
Late Afternoon: Rest, relaxation, correspondence, reading, personal care, etc.
3:15 - 3:30 pm: Another soap opera (The Career of Alice Blair)
3:30 - 3:45 pm: News
3:45 - 4:00 pm: Scattergood Baines (a Western)
Final dinner preparation
4:00 - 5:15 pm: Cleveland Indians vs. Washington Senators (baseball game)
5:15 - 5:30 pm: The World Dances (music)
5:30 - 6:00 pm: News
6:00 - 7:00 pm: Comedy programs (Amos and Andy, The Parker Family, Joe E. Brown)
Early Evening: Washing dishes
7:00 - 7:30 pm: Ask-it Basket (quiz show)
7:30 - 8:00 pm: Strange as it Seems (true stories/tabloid-type program)
8:00 - 9:00 pm: Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour (variety/reality)
9:00 - 9:30 pm: The Columbia Workshop (drama)
9:30 - 10:00 pm: Americans at Work (true stories/documentary-type program)
10:00 - 10:15 pm: News
10:15 - 10:30 pm: Music
10:30 - 11:30 pm: News
11:30 pm - 1:00 am: Live big band music from city ballrooms and hotels (Teddy Powell Band, Louis Prima Orchestra, Bob Chester Orchestra)

Even today, in 2009, when I could just as easily have something playing on the television or the computer while I do my housework, it's always the radio I reach for. Sometimes it's vintage radio programs like The Great Gildersleeve or Suspense - which is great for cleaning the bathroom! There's nothing like a suspenseful drama to get you through the grimiest chores. I read one reminiscence from a Michigan housewife who remembered that she loved listening to Dragnet while she cleaned house in the late '40s. I can totally identify.

Sometimes it's modern radio, like a local country station. A great beat or a melody you love singing along to (especially when there's nobody around to hear) can make all the difference when you're doing something repetitive - like ironing or sweeping. In fact, if you could peek into my kitchen on Tuesday nights, you'd probably find me dancing at the ironing board! And I bet there was many a housewife in the 1940s who jitterbugged her way through her chores and sang along with Bing Crosby as she sectioned the family's grapefruit for breakfast.

Incidentally, what I think I love about radio most is just its randomness. I can choose the genre, but I don't have complete control over what music I'm going to hear. Modern entertainment has become so controlled. Between our TIVOs and iPods, we can easily choose precisely which programs and songs we want to see and hear every day of the week. We don't even have to listen to commercials. But isn't there something kind of exciting watching TV or listening to radio in real time and discovering new programs or songs you might never have planned on catching? These days, it feels a bit like I'm walking on the edge.

A Little Bit of Everything...

I'm still slogging away at the bathroom. Ran out of Comet partway through the job yesterday and decided to head on out and do my marketing, then finish the bathroom later. Sadly enough, now it's "later." The Comet has been replenished, I've had a good night's rest, my morning walk is finished. I'll patch off some breakfast and then get back to that miserable room.

My mantra while cleaning the bathroom this week: "It will never again be as hard to clean as it is today." "It will never again be as hard to clean as it is today." "It will never again be as hard to clean as it is today." That's true, I know. As grimy as it is right now, if I'm cleaning it every week - it will never again be anywhere near this bad. Each week, I'll get it even a little shinier. I'm holding on to that! More on bathroom cleaning in another post...

Alas, the coleus I adopted for a houseplant a couple months ago did not survive. It did okay as long as I was taking it outdoors to my landing on weekends. But once it started getting really hot, I worried about leaving it in the intense heat and kept it inside. The colors faded, it shed some leaves, and one day just crumpled up and died. *sigh* My grape ivy is doing well, although one side isn't very perky looking. (That's the side that doesn't even get much artificial light in the corner of the kitchen where I've kept it.) So out it goes! Maybe the fresh air and sunshine will do it some good. I don't want to lose the grape ivy, too!

A co-worker offered me some bell pepper plants last week. Determined to press on in my quest for some great plants about the house - inside and out - I brought home a tiny seedling and a more mature plant, both in pots. I think they might do okay on my landing, but I'll need to water them more often than the succulents. I also picked up a small sansevieria- commonly called a bowstring hemp in the 1940s - to fill the spot near my sink where the coleus used to sit.

Here's one of the things I'm really looking forward to after this interminable summer is over --- my parents will be in town for the winter! They've been doing the snowbird thing and spend a few months most winters at one of the resorts on the edge of the city. I can't claim to be the reason they're here - it's all about the grandbabies - but I love having them so close. And I can't wait to share these vintage dinners with them! (My mother, God bless her, oohs and aahs every time I tell her what I'm up to in the kitchen.) This was last weekend's 1945 dinner menu:

Boiled Rice
Buttered Beet Greens
Orange Salad
Cherry Batter Pudding

I think I've finally got this non-instant rice thing down pat --- now if I could just remember not to make so much. 1/2 cup dry rice is just enough for me + one serving of leftovers. I've always loved Beet Greens - fresh from Mom's garden with a splash of vinegar - yum! The instructions in my cookbook call for you to work with young beets and to chop the roots right up with the greens after they've been boiled. Unfortunately, my supermarket only carries a few raggedy ol' bunches of grown-up beets. So I chopped the tops off these beets - along with the greens - and used those in lieu of young beets. What's great is that the next dinner menu in my cookbook calls for beets, so I may be able to use what's left of 'em in my next homecooked meal.

The Orange Salad was very simple. Chopped orange segments on a bed of greens with a drizzle of viniagrette --- "French dressing" in '40s lingo. I made a substitution for the dessert course. The menu included a Bread Pudding made with Honey. After my last disastrous attempt at Bread Pudding, I just couldn't face it again this soon. So I picked out another recipe in the chapter on puddings and tried to find some way to use up the bottled cherries in my fridge. The Cherry Batter Pudding came out wonderfully - a light, fluffy cake over a layer of fruit - but, between the heat and my unexpected success on the scale Tuesday morning, I haven't had any desire to eat the rest! (Plus I read a horrifying bit of trivia in a magazine the other day. Did you know one cupcake can undo 115 minutes of walking?) I'm not thrilled about wasting food, but I think I should take this as a warning. If I'm going to continue making the desserts for my vintage dinners, I've got to cut the recipe down as small as I would the rice. And I need to invest in some containers for the freezer. There are some things you just can't wrap up in aluminum foil! Speaking of cutting recipes, do any of you know how to cut a one-egg recipe in half?

I've been listening to lots of vintage radio this week, including the second season of The Great Gildersleeve. The second season (1942-1943) is when the program really came into its own. Gildy got a job as Summerfield water commissioner. Leila Ransom, a flirtatious Southern widow, moved into the house next door and stole Gildy's heart. They became engaged and planned a wedding in June - just in time for the season finale and a wild turn of events on the wedding day! Richard LeGrand joined the cast during the second season as Mr. Peavey, the local druggist ("Well, now, I wouldn't say that.") and Floyd Munson, the local barber, pops up every time Gildy heads downtown for a shave. Marjorie got a war job over the winter and began dating a coworker, Ben. At season's end, Ben joined the Navy. Will Marge see other young men while Ben's away?

Kraft spent much of the second season promoting Pabst-Ett, a product that sounds a heck of a lot like Velveeta. Ads often combined a spot for the product with a public service announcement promoting things that might make marketing on the home front a little easier: menu planning, shopping early in the week, and shopping early in the day. Are you a menu maker? Do you find that planning your meals, say, a week in advance, makes feeding your family easier on the pocketbook - or easier on your waistline? Or do you prefer to stock up on the things you like and wait until mealtime to see what you're in the mood for eating?

Streamlining Housework

If you haven't noticed me grumbling about cleaning my kitchen lately, it's because I haven't been. (Grumbling, that is!) When I decided a few weeks ago to split up the big jobs into alternate weeks, it made all the difference in the world. Cleaning the kitchen still means a good solid two hours of work once a week, but the work just seems a lot more manageable than it did before.

And there isn't anything I really enjoy about this particular chore. When the job is done, though, my kitchen looks so nice. I catch myself doing a double take or two just to see how lovely it looks with a shiny sink, clean countertops, and a stovetop that positively gleams! If I can find something interesting on the radio, it always makes the work go faster, and I take a few breaks to drink some water and to put on some hand lotion. The good stuff. If I going to baby my hands at some point during the week, this is definitely the time to do so. Working with all that soap and water can be super drying to the skin.

Speaking of cleansers, soap and water aren't the only things at work in my kitchen these days. I use baking soda when cleaning the interior of the refrigerator/freezer and Comet to scour the sink. Cellulose sponges and dishtowels are my tools of choice, with an occasional Brillo Pad on a stubborn drip pan and - once in a great while - a paper towel. It's funny. On the rare occasions that I'd do any kind of cleaning in my kitchen in the past, I would never have set foot in there without a roll of paper towels and a canister of disinfectant wipes. I guess I was just afraid of having to put any kind of elbow grease to work. I thought chemicals could do the work for me. These days, I can go a month before having to change the roll of paper towels in my kitchen. And that's one of the small rolls! Paper towels get used now only for spot cleaning.

As I get accustomed to the mechanics of cleaning the kitchen, I catch myself finding little ways to make the work go faster. Here's my latest discovery: If I remove the drip pans before scrubbing the stovetop down (Is that what those metal trays under the burners are called?), then pop the lid and clean out underneath the stovetop, then wash the drip pans in the sink --- the stovetop and the area underneath it will be practically air-dried by the time I'm ready to reassemble the whole affair. That means my dishtowel will get less wet on that particular job and I can use it longer before having to replace it with another. I love finding little techniques like this to streamline the work!

Sadly, I don't think there's a soul among the women I talk with on a regular basis who could understand my excitement over something like this. Shoes? They could understand. A decorating idea for a dinner party? They'd get it. We just don't talk about housework in this day and age. It's that hidden thing that must be done, but isn't very fashionable to discuss. How are girls supposed to learn how to maintain a home if it's no longer cool even to mention the process? If our mothers hardly have enough time to keep house themselves - never mind teaching their daughters how to do it - and it isn't fashionable to discuss it with your girlfriends, how are we supposed to learn or better our craft? Housework's become the great unmentionable among women, and yet it's getting done is indispensible.

One of the other things that gives this little housekeeper a thrill these days are the ads for Parkay Margarine and Kraft Dinner that have been preserved along with episodes of The Great Gildersleeve from 1941 and 1942. The ads reference a rhythm to housework that must have been completely familiar to listeners of the era... Kraft Dinner - which we now call plain ol' macaroni and cheese - was billed as a fabulous option for dinner on Monday nights. A night when Mother must have been worn to the bone by the wash... As the announcer describes all the perks of using a product like Parkay Margarine, he mentions the baking that would have been done in a Christian household on Saturdays. (The program was aired lived on Sunday evenings):

I wonder how many of you housewives baked a cake or some cookies yesterday for your Sunday dinner today. A lot of you did, I’m sure, because there’s nothing like that real home-baked flavor. Well, here’s a hint for the next time you bake. For luscious, extra flavor in cookies, cakes, and pastries, use delicious Parkay margarine for the shortening...

My own 1945 menu for dinner this evening features a wartime meatless dish:

Peanut Roast
Pennsylvania Cabbage Salad with Sour Cream Dressing

The dessert, Apricot Whip, is made with raw egg whites, so - rather than play around with salmonella - I may substitute a Dried Apricot Cake. Is there any Parkay in the house?

The Show Must Go On

I made the first of my newly extended walks early this morning at the park - four laps around the track instead of three. By the end of the fourth lap, I was sweating like crazy. Partly because it was already getting hot, but partly because I was feeling the burn. By the time my car was in sight, I had to really force myself to move those feet and finish the thing. The whole ordeal took me 52 minutes, so I can check off my 45-minute workout for the day. Whew! That's the most exercise I've gotten in years!

The only thing that truly frustrates me when I'm walking at the park is thinking about all the workout opportunities I've wasted over the years because I was too self-conscious to get out there and walk by myself. I would tell myself things like, "If my sister and I could just figure out a good time of day to get out there and walk together." I'm not sure what made me so self-conscious to begin with, because there are oodles of people working out by themselves and probably an even split between people who are fit and trim and people who really have some work to do - like me! Lots of older folks working hard to maintain their health, lots of people walking dogs, lots of moms (or dads) trying to get back in shape. My super self-conscious self has always been an obstacle when it comes to working out in public, but I gotta tell you - if anybody at the park even gives me a second thought, they're probably thinking, "Good for her. Keep it up!" There's a feeling of camraderie there, even as all of these people propel themselves individually around the track at their own paces. We may be strangers and most of us may be rocking out to one thing or another on our iPods, but it's as if we're all a mutual encouragement to one another by getting out there and fighting the good fight.

One thing I'd really like to find is a great pair of cropped workout pants. Shorts always ride up between my legs as I'm walking and I'm constantly having to pull them down. My longer track pants are fine, but they're starting to feel a little warm for this climate - even at 7:15 in the morning. And though I've never really had a desire for one before this, I'd really like to have an iPod myself. Especially on these longer walks when something interesting to listen to could really make the walk go by a little faster. Hey, maybe I could even upload some of my vintage radio episodes and just replace them with new episodes once I've listened to them!

Speaking of radio, I listened to the episode of The Great Gildersleeve the other day which was originally broadcast on December 7, 1941. The program then aired on NBC Red on Sunday evenings at 6:30 Eastern, 3:30 Pacific. In other words, it's only been about five hours since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began and only four hours since word of the attack first went out over the radio networks. What's striking to me on this momentous day is just how calm the announcer and cast seem as they go on with the show. The network had not cut away to 24-hour coverage, instead they interrupted the program five times to broadcast a bulletin. The program itself was performed in the studio from beginning to end, but the network cut away from the feed several times for just a minute or so at a time.

The program was broadcast from Hollywood, so the cast and studio audience are much closer to the scene of the battle than were folks on the East Coast. And yet they seem so cool and collected, no signs of emotion or anxiety. I guess most Americans had already accepted the fact that they would be entering the war at some point. They'd listened to news of the war in Europe and in China for more than two years now. They'd seen their country mobilizing, neighborhood boys being drafted, and defense bonds being sold. Americans were mentally much better prepared for the war than they would have been had the attack on Pearl Harbor taken place in 1938 or 1939. Then again, maybe the networks weren't reporting just how devastating the attack had been. They certainly don't give any indication of the number of American lives lost and ships destroyed. The news bulletins are striking in their crisp matter-of-factness, but they are guarded. They also report some optimistic developments that later proved to have been rumors, such as a Japanese aircraft carrier being sunk off Honolulu by American forces. I guess most people listening to the news probably pictured a much more evenly matched battle taking place than was the case.

Oh, I almost forgot. Here's that wartime Gingerbread recipe I promised I'd share a few days ago. Tomorrow's vintage dinner has another wartime dessert recipe in store!

Gingerbread

2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup molasses

Sift dry ingredients together. Melt shortening in boiling water. Add molasses. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix well. Place in a greased (8-inch) baking pan and bake in moderate oven (350 degrees F.) 30 to 40 minutes.

"You're a Hard Man, McGee!"

Ahhh, Monday nights. One of the more relaxing evenings of my week. The only special task for me on Monday evenings is putting all my clean laundry away and prepping the clothes and linens that need ironing on Tuesday night. The living room gets a tidy up, anything soaking in the kitchen sink gets washed, and it's off to bed for a very good night's sleep.

I groaned when my alarm clock went off this morning, but - as I was toting all that dirty laundry downstairs to the laundry room - I found myself thinking of my great-grandmothers... Alice, widowed with seven children during the Depression and doing laundry with only a woodstove to heat her water. Margaret, the daughter of Irish immigrants, who proudly wears such a sparkling white apron in the only picture I've seen of her. How hard she must have worked to keep that apron so white! Agnes, a Canadian immigrant who roomed in a boarding house near the lumber camp where her husband was working. Did she have to do her wash in her landlady's kitchen? Addie, who did her washing for herself while "baching it" on a homestead claim on the plains of South Dakota. She must have scrubbed her clothes clean with water from a well.

All these women must have faced Monday mornings with trepidation. Wouldn't they would have been astounded to know how easy their great-granddaughter has it! All I have to do is tote the laundry basket up and down stairs, move two loads from washer to drier, and clean a lint trap or two. My great-grandmothers would probably have grown faint at the thought of the luxury Wash Day has become by 2009. It makes me feel very lucky. The only real sacrifice I have to make is waking up a little earlier than normal.

I treated myself this evening to one of my favorite vintage radio programs, The Great Gildersleeve. Have you ever heard this program? It's a wonderfully sweet comedy which made its premiere on NBC in August 1941. A spin-off of one of radio's best-rated programs, Fibber McGee and Molly. Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (played by the amazing Harold Peary) was a neighbor of the McGees and proprietor of Gildersleeve Girdle Works. In 1941, he moved from Wistful Vista to the city of Summerfield, where he became guardian to his niece and nephew, Marjorie and Leroy Forrester.

Gildy finds work as the Summerfield water commissioner and dates up every attractive lady in town. Though little Leroy never ages, we see Marjorie grow up, marry, and eventually become a mother before the series ended in the mid-1950s. (Marjorie was first played by one of radio's hardest working women, Lurene Tuttle.) Gildy continually butts heads with the local judge, though deep down they are fast friends. And the local pharmacist, Mr. Peavy, always steals the scene - and a roar from the audience. It's such a thrill to hear these programs delivered before a live audience! Kraft was the longest-running sponsor for the program and ran a number of popular promotions during the late '40s and early '50s.

http://www.otrcat.com/great-gildersleeve-p-1337.html

If you've never listened to any OTR, this is a wonderful place to start!

What a Fabulous Surprise!

What a treat to learn this morning that Weenie_Elise had given me the "Your Blog is Fabulous" award! Especially since I've so enjoyed reading her own blog, Ode to Mrs. Beeton: Fun and Frivolity from Housewifery's Greatest Patroness. I'm still new to this whole blogging thing, so I hope I'll follow the rules correctly:

1. You must pass it on to 5 other Fabulous bloggers in a post.
2. You must include the person who gave the award to you and a link back to their blog.
3. You must list 5 of your Fabulous Addictions in the post.
4. You must copy and post these rules in the post.

I have lots of Fabulous Addictions, so these are just a sampling:

1. Playing with my darling nieces. Seeing the light in their eyes and hearing the sound of their laughter... They make me feel like a little girl all over again!

2. Vintage radio programs - from music to drama to classic comedies like Fibber McGee and Molly and The Great Gildersleeve. What a treat to get a glimpse of my grandparents' world through these programs.

3. Playing the piano. I don't own one right now, so I'll take my chances anytime, anywhere. I can storm out all my passions and leave the keyboard relaxed and refreshed.

4. Pad Thai with Vegetables and Tofu. Yum-a-licious!

5. New England. It took moving away to realize that I'm a New Englander down to the marrow of my bones. I miss the woods, I miss the trees, I miss the lakes and rivers and streams, I miss the brick factories with their hundreds upon hundreds of windows, I miss the beach. What I wouldn't give to be able to magically transport my nieces (see Fabulous Addiction #1) back there to live. Oh, I suppose their parents can come along, too. :)

So I'm also allowed to bestow this fabulous suprise on five other people. It's like Christmas in March!

from laura ingalls wilder to cyberbessie... for scouring the Little House books with a historian's eye.

Vintage123... for sharing the quirky, wonderful goodness of vintage ads.

Roxanne at The Haven of Home... for making me look at my pantry with a whole new perspective.

Things Your Grandmother Knew... for reviving the home economics that can add so much to our homes in 2009.

And last, but certainly not least:

Stuff White People Like... for regularly making me laugh 'til I cry.

Jitterbug's Cooking School of the Web

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

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

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

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

Sift flour with salt, sugar and baking powder. Stir in bran and dates. Beat egg and add milk and melted shortening. Add dry ingredients and mix only enough to dampen all the flour. Pour into greased molds, cover closely and steam 3 hours. Makes 3 loaves.
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I left out the dates entirely and it didn't seem to cause any problems in terms of consistency. I think the author meant for people to use either small molds or cans, as I used small loaf pans and only ended up with 2 loaves. As you can see, the directions when it comes to steaming are very slim...

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

Grapefruit Half
Poached Free-Range Eggs
Toasted Bran Bread

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