The Business Center

One of the things I love about the manual and lots of vintage women's magazines, cookbooks, etc. is that they give total props to the work of housewives as a profession. They get it. They get that these women spent seven days a week on the job. And we all need a corner office - or even just a corner of an office - to call our own. In this case, it makes perfect sense to locate the housewife's "business center" in the kitchen. It's the place where she spends hour after hour preparing and cleaning up after meals. It's the place many a housewife stores the tools and solutions needed for cleaning the rest of the house. The first stop when she gets home from doing her marketing and sometimes even the place where she does the wash and the ironing:

The kitchen is one logical location for the homemaker's "office," which need not occupy much space if it is well planned.

Every homemaker needs a desk of some description, where accounts can be kept, shopping lists made out, recipes copied and quiet planning accomplished. Files of bills and receipts, manufacturers' direction booklets, guarantees, etc., should be located here, as well as reference books on homemaking problems.

A calendar is a necessity in this business center, and a small radio and extension telephone might well be part of the equipment. A bulletin board to keep the family posted as to each person's whereabouts, to hold reminders for the forgetful ones, to hold order lists, and to give news of general interest, may be hung on the wall.

Where should I make a little "business center" for my new job at home? I don't have a whole lot of room in this one-bedroom apartment, so I think I'll let my kitchen table do double duty - actually it's triple duty now since that's where I'm doing my ironing! There's a tall cabinet just a couple steps away from the table which has been serving as kind of a catch-all for me, but I'm going to clean it out a bit and clear off one shelf for just the kinds of things the authors of the manual describe: my cookbooks, my recipe file, the operating guides for some of my small kitchen appliances. I've already got a radio on the table and a magnetic notepad on the fridge where I keep track of the groceries and supplies I need to pick up next time I'm out. Now that I know that the drawer under my range doesn't have a broiler inside, I'm going to use that space to store some of the pots and pans I'm not using every day.

I made the Broiled Grapefruit again this morning with just a sprinkling of brown sugar. It was a little better, but I'd certainly rather just have it fresh from the icebox. It's hard to improve on Mother Nature in this case! Humble Labor made a great point though in her comment to my blog two days ago. A warm fruit dish is very fitting for chilly winter mornings.

Thanksgiving Successes

I just finished a scrumptious '40s breakfast (for real, this time!) and am sitting down to enjoy my coffee with the 1941 Thanksgiving episode of the Jell-O Program with Jack Benny. I've got to get back to the kitchen soon and begin work on my contributions to a Thanksgiving potluck - I'm in charge of appetizers this year - but I've still got a few minutes. Here's the menu I chose from my 1945 cookbook:

Grapefruit Juice
Omelet
Toast, Dried Fruit Jam
Coffee

Was ruby red grapefruit juice available at your typical grocery in the 1940s? I know canned grapefruit juice was out there, but I suspect it was made from white grapefruits. I couldn't find any white grapefruit juice at the nearest Trader Joe's last night, but I did pick up some ruby red.

There were lots of recipes for omelets in my cookbook --- and two recipes alone just for the Plain Omelet. One was a Puffy Omelet - egg white beaten separately until stiff and then folded into beaten egg yolks. The other was a French Omelet - eggs beaten only until mixed. I opted for the French Omelet and tried to stick strictly to the directions. And it turned out great! Yummy free-range eggs, salt, pepper, and melted "fat" (margarine for me) - all fried up in a small pan 'til golden and folded in half.

Adaptation:
The only thing strange about this menu was that there weren't any recipes for Dried Fruit Jam inside the cookbook! Did they just presume that anybody using the cookbook would have committed this recipe to memory years ago? I found some recipes online for Dried Apricot Jam, but most of them instruct you to soak the fruit for anywhere from 12 to 48 hours before starting the jam. I didn't even look at the menu until last night - and didn't want to end up with a bowl of undersoaked apricots in the a.m. - so I passed on the Dried Fruit Jam and spread strawberry preserves on my toast instead.

Oatmeal Revelations

There are 41 breakfast menus in the vintage cookbook I leafed through yesterday, so it didn't take me very long to find one that would be compatible with the contents of my cupboards.

Stewed Apricots
Oatmeal
Toast
Milk, Coffee

There are breakfast menus suggested for weekends and breakfast menus suggested for weekdays. I decided to choose one of the weekday menus, hoping they would be easier for somebody just getting started with the whole cooking-a-meal-and-eating-before-noon thing.

I gather the milk is meant as a children's beverage with coffee for grown-ups, so I fired up Mr. Coffee and brewed a pot. This step is definitely something I won't be doing at home on weekday mornings. There's plenty of free java at work - and lots more time while I'm sitting at my desk to enjoy it. Unless I start getting up with at least an extra hour to spare, it's hard to imagine being able to really enjoy a pot of coffee at home. Now, for a '40s housewife, having a pot of coffee on hand would make sense. You and Jim would enjoy a cup or two at breakfast, and you could have a second later on that morning. Jim might read the morning paper at the breakfast table and so he'd be there long enough to really enjoy a cup himself. I don't get a paper here at home, so I turned on my 1950 Zenith tabletop radio and listened to NPR while I ate my breakfast - but hadn't planned my time wisely this morning, so had to eat pretty quickly and head out.

Adaptation
The combination of apricots, oatmeal, and toast seemed a little excessive in the carb department, so I skipped the toast. And the meal was more than filling as is. Looking ahead at a few of the menus, I suspect I'm going to have to make more than a few adaptations in the interest of my waistline. Maybe I should have prepared a much smaller serving of apricots and oatmeal - then a single piece of toast would've seemed okay...

Lessons Learned
1.) My 21st-century tastebuds were screaming for me to add something crunchy to the oatmeal. I had a hard time not adding some chopped walnuts, just to make the texture a little more --- I don't know. Modern recipes are usually packed with such a combination of ingredients that stripping them down to something more plain is difficult at first, I guess.

2.) Dried or preserved fruits would have likely been all there was available in the way of fruit during the winter. It's so easy in 2008 just to pick up a few fresh apricots at the supermarket. While I watched the apricots bubbling away on the stovetop this morning, I wished that I could just have added some fresh fruit to my oatmeal. It would have seemed so much healthier - and tastier! The stewed fruits weren't bad, though. They were a little chewy even after 40 minutes on the burner. The insides were still quite sweet and apriocot-y. My cookbook recommended adding sugar "to taste" during the last five minutes of stewing, but I thought the apricots were fine without any added sweetener.

3.) At last! I think I've finally figured out why my mom's oatmeal was always so gummy (sorry, Ma)... I used the real stuff today - no instant oats, no quick-cooking oats - just plain rolled oats. And the recipe on the carton specifically says to bring the water to a boil first before adding the oats and bringing everything down a simmer. I didn't do this the first time. Just threw everything in together and turned the heat up. In only a few minutes, it was bubbling and already looking just as gummy as the oatmeal I hated when I was a kid. I followed the instructions when I made the second batch, and it was an entirely different bowl of oatmeal. Could that really have made such a difference?