Prune Juice (saved from Friday) with Lemon
Cooked Wheat Cereal
Coffee
If the Juice they're talking about is the water I stewed the prunes in, I did indeed have about 1/3 cup of Prune Juice to drink at breakfast this morning. I put it through a strainer, added a twist of Lemon, and it made a nice glass of juice - though much smaller than I'm used to! It's well known that people used to drink a lot less juice at the breakfast table than they do today. And when you have to either squeeze the oranges yourself or buy canned or bottled juices that are only sold in small quantities, it's easy to see why a small glass of juice was considered an ample serving. My modern tastebuds are used to drinking a large glass of juice at breakfast. This morning was the first time I tried to drink the recommended serving, and I felt so thirsty when it was gone! Should I try and stick to the vintage serving size and drink a glass of ice water if I'm still thirsty? This would certainly make my breakfasts more easy on the waistline...
There were only three kinds of hot cereals at my grocery store: oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, and Malt O Meal. The menu called for Cooked Wheat Cereal, so I read some labels. The Cream of Wheat is wheat farina, and Enriched Farina is suggested for breakfast another day. The Malt O Meal is wheat farina + barley, so this seemed like the closest match. Later on, I discovered on the internet that Malt O Meal was indeed being made in the '40s, but it was intended as competition for Cream of Wheat. It definitely tastes a lot like Cream of Wheat, so I think I'll save the rest for the next time Enriched Farina is on the menu. I'm still not sure what brands of cereal will qualify and, looking ahead, I also see Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal and Cracked-wheat Cereal mentioned in the breakfast menus. I guess I'll have to check out some of the other grocery stores here in town and see if any of them has a better selection of hot cereals.
Adaptation:
The menu also recommends a serving of Toast with Jelly. I passed on this course as the Cereal was super filling.
Open dining room windows top and bottom for free circulation of air... Open kitchen windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.
Just as each member of the household was expected to open their bedroom windows before breakfast, the manual recommends opening the dining room and kitchen windows immediately after the meal. We have a very small window of time here in the Southwest where open windows in the morning are really an option, and I'm afraid it's already gone. It went from being too hot even to turn off the air conditioner to being quite chilly in the mornings, so even if I had windows in my kitchen, it'd be too cold most days to open them! (I don't have a dining room, just a dining area on one end of my kitchen.)
The authors of America's Housekeeping Book go on and on about how important cross-ventilation in the home is - especially in the kitchen: "Heat and cooking odors should be drawn out, and fresh outside air brought in." If you don't have windows on opposite walls, do you have a transom above a door that's opposite a window? Do you have a Dutch door opposite a window? If all you've got is a single window, they recommend mounting an electric fan on the wall opposite the window. Or you can install an "electric ventilating fan" above the window.
Worst case scenario (Exhibit A: My Kitchen), you should make use of a "ventilating fan or hood over the range" to "draw off steam and cooking odors." Now that I can do. My range has an Air-O-Hood fan which I'd never even used before testing it out yesterday. And it works! So I turned it on this morning while I was carrying out my new post-breakfast chores. I'm not sure if my complete ignorance about kitchen ventilation is a 21st-century thing or just an apartment dweller thing.
