Week's End

Leftover French Toast reheats surprisingly well. Not in the microwave, of course. I heated up some margarine in a fry pan and was able to get the Toast nice and crispy again. The leftovers are now all eaten up, so I'll be heading back into the Breakfast Test Lab tomorrow morning. For now, though, my dishes are rinsed and stacked inside the dishwasher, I've got two pans soaking in the sink, and I'm sipping a cup of hot coffee while I try and store up the energy I'll need to get out there with the Christmas crowds and do some shopping.

It's been an interesting week. I've had to come up with a solution to my dishwasher dilemma which forces me to think ahead each evening as to whether the dishwasher has room for the next morning's dishes, whether it needs to be run, whether it needs to be emptied of clean dishes... I'm also beginning to really feel the effects of being a night owl. It didn't matter very much when my only objective in the morning was to roll out of bed at the last possible minute and get ready for work. With chores in the bedroom, breakfast to prepare, and chores in the kitchen, I have to get up earlier. Now if I could just convince the night owl side of me to go to bed earlier. The sleep deprivation is really starting to get to me. I've been yawning all week and actually had to take a nap yesterday evening because I couldn't keep my eyes open for another minute. Even now, I'm tired - and I've only been up for an hour. The '40s housewife in there just has to get some beauty sleep!

I've worked my way through about 1/4 of the breakfast menus in the back of my 1945 cookbook, so there are lots of menus still to master. I'm going to take a look at the next few this morning and make sure my grocery list is in order. Time to fly! I'll be back later to post next week's mission.

Automagic

Dishwashers designed for the home were still so new during the 1940s that the bloom had not yet worn off the rose. They were mysterious and magical - and probably only found in the nicest postwar homes. Some of these vintage ads make me feel darn ritzy for having one in my kitchen! Images of a woman loading her brand new dishwasher with one hand confidently on her hip, immaculately manicured hands setting the dials, happy mothers sitting with their children reading storybooks while the dishes froth away in the GE Electric... the picture was a rosy one. Sparkling dishes, hours of relaxation - but wait! What are these drips dried onto my glassware? How am I going to fish out those smelly crumbs in that tray way down in there? "Jim, just look at the water bill!"

Introducing the 1945 Thor Automagic Washer. It washes your dishes - and then your clothes! Why have two machines? And maybe scrambled eggs residue will add that extra je ne sais pas to your favorite blouse...



The 1947 models. Which one is on your Christmas list?

Kaiser


Dishamatic


General Electric

Grade A Medium Amber

I found a loophole.

My breakfast menu yesterday:

Tomato Juice
French Toast
Maple-flavored Sirup

With visions of corn syrup and maple extract, I opened the cookbook to the recipe for French Toast - or Fried Toast, as it was also still known in 1945. And what to my wondering eyes did I see? "Serve hot. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar or serve maple sirup with the toast."

Hooray!!! The real stuff! Nectar of the gods! That's all the permission I needed. My grade A medium amber was out on the table quicker than you can say "Maple Sirup." And what a difference it made... The French Toast was pretty good. It was a very basic recipe. No vanilla, no sugar, no fancy additions like nuts or coconut - just eggs, milk, and salt. The bread was supposed to be 1/2 inch thick and mine was not. It was just from a loaf of sandwich bread, so I had a lot left over. Were pre-sliced sandwich loaves sliced more thickly in that day, or was the recipe subtly calling for homemade bread? I had quite a bit of batter left over.

French Toast is a tough breakfast for the cook to enjoy as it should be eaten almost as soon as it comes out of the pan. When you've got several servings to fry up before turning off the burner, you've either got to wait patiently for the last of the Toast or try to eat while hopping up and down to the stove to flip a few more pieces in the pan. I've got lots of extras so this will be my menu for at least another day or two. Bring on the Maple Sirup!

By the by, I think I figured out why the month o' menus in the back of this cookbook rely on Corn Sirup (sometimes flavored) for Griddlecakes or French Toast. The section is titled, "How to Feed a Family of Five on $20.00 per Week." Corn syrup is definitely easier on the pocketbook than the real stuff.

A Dishwashing Dilemma

I've come up against a bit of a dishwashing dilemma this week... After leaving the breakfast dishes to soak, the authors of the housekeeping manual instruct me to:

Scrape dishes with rubber plate scraper or paper towelling.

Rinse dishes with hot water.

Stack dishes according to size and shape, on right-hand drainboard.

The book suggests that the housewife leave the dishes while she tidies the living room then sets about giving each of the rooms their daily cleaning. The kitchen comes last, and only then will she wash the breakfast dishes. That'd be well and good if I didn't have to work outside the home. Luckily, my dishwasher should be able to take some of the labor off my hands, but here's the dilemma: should I leave my scraped and rinsed dishes stacked up in the sink and pile them in the dishwasher only when the sink gets too full to add any more, or should I treat the dishwasher like it's my drainboard and stack the dishes in there each morning once they're scraped and rinsed?

My modus operandi while doing The Great Housekeeping Experiment has been to do all my other housework just as I've always done it - hit or miss - a little here, a little there. I've been known to use my dishwasher as a cupboard, just taking the clean dishes out when I needed to use them again. (I know, it's been complete chaos here in the Jitterbug household!) That doesn't often leave my dishwasher free and ready for more dirty dishes. On the other hand, my sink can only hold so many dirty breakfast dishes. So I've hit a wall here. The Experiment is going to impact my evenings now as well as my mornings. I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I'm going to have to start making sure the dishwasher is ready for more dirty dishes before I go to bed at night.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

I don't own any rubber plate scrapers, but I do have a couple of rubber spatulas that do the job. They aren't quite the same tool. The scraper was shaped a little more like the spatula you might use today to lift your cookies off a cookie sheet. It was a sturdy piece of rubber affixed with metal to a wooden handle. At one point, they were also available in molded rubber. Our modern synthetic rubber - and now silicone - spatulas are much more flexible. We can use them to clean out bowls and the insides of jars, while plate scrapers were designed for flat surfaces.

Paper towelling was sold in much smaller rolls than we buy today! I guess you'd have used it as sparingly as possible.

Two drainboards are better than one, so that soiled dishes may be stacked at the worker's right and the dish drainer at her left.

A steel sink with a drainboard on both sides was the latest and greatest in 1940s kitchen design. My sink hasn't a drainboard on either side, so that's why I think it'll be helpful to think of my dishwasher as a substitute. Where better to let the rinsed dishes dry while they await washing? The kitchen in my parents' house hasn't been renovated since the '50s and its still got two drainboards, both of them tilted ever so slightly toward the sink. Alas, my little unit here in Apartment Land wasn't built until the '80s - when people thought we would never again need to wash another dish in the sink. Drainboards weren't even a consideration. Well, that's okay. I'm sure there were many housewives back in the day who had to make do without all the drainboards or counter space they might have liked in their kitchens. Women working in older kitchens with cast iron sinks would have had to rig up drainboards that were quite literally boards.

Whoops, gotta run... I've got a dishwasher that needs emptying!

Pots and Pans

You wouldn't think washing dishes required much in the way of elaboration, but the authors of America's Housekeeping Book dedicated a chapter to that very topic. Electric dishwashers were now available to homeowners, and the chapter includes step-by-step instructions on washing by hand and using a dishwasher. One of my new post-breakfast chores this week is to "[r]inse and stack dishes, pots and pans." The manual recommends taking care of pots and pans before tending to anything else, so here are some tips on caring for any pots and pans used in preparing breakfast.

Put cooking utensils to soak

(a) Use cold water in utensils that have held milk, egg or cheese mixtures, or dough

(b) Use hot water in utensils that have held syrup, frosting mixtures, candy, etc.

(c) Use hot soapsuds in greasy utensils

Here's where the 1940s housewife and I have to part ways as I am not going to be able to return to the kitchen later in the morning - at least on weekdays - to wash the breakfast dishes. If they're going to soak, they'll have to soak until I get home from work at the end of the day, and eventually they'll be washed by hand or tucked away in the dishwasher for a sudsy finale. Pots and pans were expressly off limits when it came to the vintage dishwasher. Which is perfectly sensible. Without being soaked first, they only come clean about 50% of the time even in a modern dishwasher!

The only pot or pan I had to soak after breakfast this morning was used to make a bowl of Corn-meal Mush. Here's the menu:

Grapefruit Juice

Corn-meal Mush, Top Milk

So would Top Milk have been as heavy as cream or a little less weighty - like half 'n' half? I wasn't sure, so I picked up some organic half 'n' half at the grocery store and ate it with my Corn-meal Mush. It wasn't very tasty. I think I'd rather have had the Mush without anything on top. I'd like to say that I'll just save the half 'n' half for my coffee from now on, but I can see from the next page of menus in my cookbook that I'm fated to try it again one of these mornings. In any event, it was good to get back to the basics after my tangle with Butterscotch Sauce. I'm super pleased that my Mush came out almost lump-free this morning! I tried mixing the cornmeal in a part of the water (it makes a kind of paste) then adding the paste to the boiling water in the pot - and it turned out just about right. I think the recipe doesn't call for enough water, though.

Circle the Wagons!

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Before we turn from the dining room or breakfast nook to the kitchen sink, I just want to mention the tea wagon suggested for aiding the housewife in clearing the table. Here's an alternative to the all-purpose tray - and, boy, I bet you could fit a whole lot more on one of these babies! While I was looking about online for pictures of vintage tea wagons, I realized that they've been called all kinds of things over the years: tea trolleys, tea carts, cocktail trolleys, bar carts. They always make me think of the beverage carts that stewardesses push up and down the airplane aisle. "Coffee? Soda? Snack?"

According to one antique dealer in London, Ontario, tea wagons were all the rage from the 1920s to the '40s. A tea wagon in the dining room could also be used as a sort of sideboard during the meal. Here are some of the most fetching '40s tea wagons I've seen in my travels today, from the traditional...

to high Art Deco...

Tabula Rasa

Now that the leftovers are eaten and the nightmare behind me, I must spill about the atrocious breakfast menu I prepared yesterday morning:

Tomato Juice

Waffles

Butterscotch Sauce

Adaptations:

I don't own a waffle iron, so the waffles were frozen. This certainly made the menu a whole lot easier to prepare and clean up after than it would have been for a 1940s housewife. Of course, my Homestyle Eggos weren't as tasty as they would have been fresh from a waffle iron either!

There were way too many strong flavors going on with this breakfast menu. The tomato juice would have been tastier with an omelet or scrambled eggs and toast. With a sticky, sweet mess like Waffles and Butterscotch Sauce - not so much. The Butterscotch Sauce was a recipe inside the cookbook, made in a saucepan from brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, and nutmeats. My biggest mistake was probably using margarine for something with the word "butter" actually in its name! And none of the ingredients tasted like they melded together. All I could taste as I ate the Waffles was brown sugar, lemon juice, and walnuts. And the fact that it may have been slightly overcooked certainly didn't do it any favors. Nevertheless, I forced myself to reheat the sauce and choke it down again this morning. It was just as gag-inducing as I remembered it. I'm not sure I'll try this one again. The only real good to come of this menu is that I found out my Air-O-Hood does a great job at whisking "cooking odors" away! Here's to better breakfasts tomorrow morning...

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room. Gather up to take out: articles belonging in other rooms, plants or flowers to be tended; place on tray or tea wagon.

So what kinds of things - besides dirty dishes - would my '40s counterpart have been picking up and restoring to their proper places when breakfast was finished? The morning newspaper, I suppose. Small electrical appliances like toasters were often used right on the breakfast table, so they would have to have been unplugged and returned to the cupboard where they belonged. Salt and pepper shakers, pots of jam, and the sugar bowl - all these items might have been returned to the refrigerator or a special shelf in the kitchen. Maybe a child left a small book or toy at the table by accident. These, too, would need to be removed. Cloth napkins would need to be laundered, though the tablecloth could probably just be brushed clean as long as there hadn't been any spills.

The authors of America's Housekeeping Book are so detailed, they even remember the plants or flowers that might serve as a centerpiece in the dining room or the breakfast nook. My impression from the vintage magazines I've looked through is that potted flowers, like small geraniums, and bowls of fruit were the most popular centerpieces for these informal table settings. And if a potted plant needs watering or pruning, it'd definitely be a lot neater to do that kind of thing in the kitchen sink than at the table. The only flowers at my kitchen table are in the design on the tablecloth, so they never need much in the way of tending!

Here's a salute to some tidy breakfast tables of the '40s - and their owners:

Tray-ficiency

Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon.

Home economics in the 1940s was all about efficiency. The best kitchens were the kitchens where a woman took the least number of paces during the day as she stepped from sink to refrigerator to table to sink and back again - and again - and again - and again. The best kitchens were engineered so that women were standing at comfortable levels to work and so that light levels were easy on the eyes. And they had to be. Women were spending a good part of their days preparing meals and cleaning up after them... These days, our best kitchens are all about design and style. The trendiest colors and finishes, the latest in gadgets. People building or refurbishing a home today probably place far more importance on the look of their kitchens than the function. So it's quite an awakening to open up a housekeeping manual published in 1945 and see so much reduced to mathematical equation.

Including the clearing of the breakfast table. Every step counts. And the authors of the manual insist that you don't make more than one trip from dining room to kitchen. Just load everything up on your tray or tea wagon and run it all into the kitchen at once. Think of the minutes you've saved! (Ideally, you'd have a "pass-through" or window directly into the kitchen so that hot food could be served immediately and dirty dishes could be slid right on through to the drainboard.)

This is not the only time we'll see the housewife's handy dandy tray pop up. The authors recommend using a tray in tidying up the living room. Bowls of clear warm water are carried on a tray into each room when it's time for its weekly cleaning. Items which need polishing or repair are carried back to the kitchen on a tray.

Trays were hot when it came to entertaining, too. Decorative faux wood or metal trays were sold in dinner or luncheon sets so even a hostess without a dining room could entertain. I have a set of Hasko luncheon trays made in the early '40s that I've been using to clear my breakfast table. They're covered in a light brown woodgrain paper with a geese design at the center. Speaking of which, I haven't yet recovered from the hideous breakfast I choked down this morning. Don't worry, I've got plenty for leftovers. I think I'll save that trauma for another post...

Clearing the Air

I'm used to clearing the dishes off my kitchen table after eating breakfast, but the most I usually do after that is to leave them on the kitchen counter, sometimes popping an especially sticky pot in the sink to soak. That's it. This morning, I followed the new addition to my routine - step by step - and left my kitchen a slightly tidier place than usual. First, here's the menu:

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.