Week Three: The Mission

This week's mission may sound kind of lengthy, but it shouldn't take more than ten minutes a day. Just a general straightening up of the dining area, scraping and rinsing the dishes so they'll be more easily washed later on, and putting away the ingredients used in making breakfast.

Clear away dishes and misplaced articles from dining room, after breakfast.

• Open dining room windows top and bottom for free circulation of air.
• Clear breakfast dishes from table to tray or tea wagon. 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. Collect trash in waste basket.
• Carry out tray or tea wagon.

Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans in kitchen.

• Open kitchen windows top and bottom for free circulation of air, or open kitchen ventilator.
• Rinse and stack dishes, pots and pans.

Put away food.

• Check and reorganize foods; put away.

Week's End

Now here's a breakfast I've got some experience making! I did pick up some interesting trivia from my cookbook today. Scrambled Eggs were once known as Battered Eggs.

Grapefruit Juice
Scrambled Eggs
Toast
Coffee

I've definitely learned a little something during the second week of The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Looking ahead at some of the breakfast menus in my 1945 cookbook, I can see the same cereals used over and over again in different ways. I should note that the menus I've been using are all "winter" menus. There are alternatives suggested for warm weather, usually involving prepared cereals and fresh fruits. If a '40s housewife wanted to be well-equipped for breakfasts on winter mornings, her shopping would have been fairly simple. She'd keep a stock of cereals on hand (rolled oats, cornmeal, wheat, farina), a prepared cereal or two, dried fruits (apricots, prunes), milk, eggs, bread, canned/bottled juices (apple, grapefruit), and some fresh citrus fruit.

And this may sound strange, but I feel like I'm getting better acquainted with my stovetop. Better able to judge where I should set the burner, that getting the water to boil before adding the cereal is always best, that stewing fruits need lots of water. Each cereal has it's own protocol --- as I learned yesterday with Corn-meal Mush. Speaking of which, I may not have been able to find a recipe on my package of cornmeal, but here's a recipe from the Aunt Jemima website with a whole step I missed!

Corn Meal Mush

1 cup Quaker or Aunt Jemima Enriched White or Yellow Corn Meal
1 cup cold water
3 cups boiling water
1 teaspoon salt

In large saucepan, bring 3 cups water and salt to a boil. In small bowl, mix corn meal with cold water. Gradually stir corn meal mixture into salted boiling water. Cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Cover, and continue cooking on low heat 5 minutes for white corn meal or 10 minutes for yellow corn meal, stirring occasionally. Serve hot with milk and sugar. Yield: 6 servings

Dinner and Dancing

Mr. and Mrs. Amberg are having the Millers over for cocktails and dinner, and then they're off for a dance at the country club. Probably more of a fantasy for the average American housewife than a reality. Unless they had hired help, the Ambergs would have had dinner dishes to clean up after and kids to get off to bed. They would only occasionally be able to afford an evening out. I suspect these pictures were actually taken over a series of days than being "a day in the life," otherwise Mrs. Amberg's changed her clothing six times in one day!

Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, prepares for dinner party by carrying roast beef platter to dining table she has carefully set w. colorful place mats, silver candlesticks and silver center piece w. flowers & a bottle of Chianti as her guests finished cocktails in living room.

Hostess housewife Jane Amberg (C) chatting w. her dinner guests Mr. Bert Miller & wife, as her husband Gilbert stands behind her, carving a roast beef to be served at table set w. place mats, candlesticks & a bottle of Chianti, at their home.

Jane Amberg dancing w. husband Gilbert (3L) amidst other couples at their country club formal dance.

Jane Amberg mending a pair of socks as she lounges in bedroom while listening to her favorite jazz records during her "leisure" hours (time w/o kids) at home.

Where is the Love?

I have the day off from work today, but I was so tired out after yesterday's revelry that I lost half off it sleeping 'til 11:00! As I realized what time it was - and how wonderful it felt to be so rested - my instincts were screaming at me just to spend the day puttering about the house, warm and cozy in my pajamas and to skip the early morning chores and breakfast altogether... I fought them back successfully and jumped in the shower, vowing to at least put on some clean clothes and stick to my new routine. Instead of skipping breakfast, I'd skip lunch. Twas a close call!

This morning's menu:

Stewed Prunes (saving the juice for another breakfast)
Corn-meal Mush
Coffee

Isn't it funny how we've almost completely removed the prune from modern cookery? There are all kinds of recipes for desserts and salads involving prunes in vintage cookbooks, but the prune has gotten a completely bad rap today. They've been relegated to a bad joke on the playground. I'm just flipping through the index of my 1945 cookbook, and I see Prune Apricot Upside-down Cake, Prune Blanc Mange, Prune Ice Cream, Prune Pie, Prune Chiffon Pie, Prune Rye Bread, Prune Turnovers, Prune Whip, Spiced Prunes, Stuffed Prunes, Stewed Prunes. What happened... when did Americans decide that prunes were to be shunned from our tables?

We still love plums - why not their wrinkly brothers?



Adaptations:
The menu recommended flavoring the Corn-meal Mush with Bits of Cooked Bacon, and this was a no-go for me as a vegetarian. I served the Stewed Prunes on top of the Mush, so they added some flavoring to the cereal. The menu also included Toasted Buns, but the added carbs didn't seem necessary, so I skipped the course.

Lessons Learned:
1.) The Stewed Prunes turned out deliciously, the Corn-meal Mush not so much. I've never made this before so I was flying blind on this one. The cookbook recommended using the recipe on your package of cornmeal. Mine didn't have a recipe for mush, so I had to rely on the proportions suggested in the cookbook. I boiled the water and stirred in the cornmeal slowly. The cornmeal almost instantly turned to mush, but there were already lumps which I was never able to remove. I thought that it would take 15-20 minutes to be ready for the table, so had to leave it on low heat while I waited for the prunes to be ready.

2.) I found myself wondering today how the stewed fruit in this morning's breakfast and in last Sunday's breakfast would have been served. I've dished them up on top of the cooked cereal each day, but I wonder if it'd be more appropriate to the period if the fruit and cereal were served in separate bowls. My mother, who grew up during the '50s, used to serve stewed prunes occasionally and it seems to me that they were always in a separate dish. The dishwashing hater in me is sounding off all kinds of alarms that I don't need to create any extra, unnecessary dishes to wash, but I suspect that the everyone-in-one-bowl approach is not truly vintage. On the mornings I've made breakfast at home, I've consciously used my grandmother's small cups and saucers to try and find a more '40s feel for my breakfast table. They hold a lot less coffee than do modern coffee mugs.

Busy as a Bee

After lunch, it's time for Mrs. Amberg to give the living room a final touch. She's got guests coming for dinner tonight! Then off to the garage to see about the car - and a trip downtown with the children after picking Peter up from school. I love her spectator pumps and the striped awnings over the windows looking out on the backyard...

Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, standing on ladder to place special china plate as decoration above doorway in living room that she decorated herself, as her son Tony plays on the floor in their rented house.

Jane Amberg conferring w. mechanic at gas station about the car she uses to chauffeur her husband to & from his office & get the children back & forth to school.

Jane Amberg, w. Peter, Tony & Pamela, as they go to drugstore to buy ice cream cones after the boys had haircuts at local barbershop in town.

Jane Amberg rapping admonishingly on window in bkgrd. as she oversees her kids Peter, 7, climbing slide ladder while Tony, 5, blocks the slide & Pamela gets kicked out of tent while playing w. neighbor children in backyard playground.

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.

Wife, Mother, Waitress

Prepare and serve breakfast.

There's more than just one chore here and, if I were a '40s housewife, I would most likely have spent most of my time at breakfast serving the meal to my family. Getting up and down from the table to pour another cup of coffee for Jim, plate up a couple more hot griddlecakes for young John, and find the strawberry jam for Patty so she'll eat something. I'm feeling guilty even as I write this - remembering my own mother in the kitchen at breakfast time when we were small. She worked pretty hard to get a warm meal in all of us before we left the house.

As a single woman, I have the luxury of sitting down myself when I've finished making breakfast and eating it. In one sitting!

Did you ever see the movie A Christmas Story (1983)? Ralphie (as the narrator) delivers one of the film's most memorable lines when he describes his mother's useless attempt to sit down and eat her own dinner in the evenings:

"My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in fifteen years."

A Morning with the Ambergs

A few more pictures of Mrs. Amberg hard at work at home in September 1941. It's interesting that the shoes she's wearing are not the pumps we usually see in vintage ads of women at work; they're just oxfords. And she's wearing cotton socks. So she's dressed for comfort, with her hair tied up in a simple ribbon. Before preparing lunch, she's changed into a striped dress - maybe because Gilbert was coming home. Looks like it's toasted sandwiches and soup on the menu at the Amberg house. Stay tuned tomorrow to see how this 1941 housewife spent the afternoon...


Jane Amberg, housewife & mother, busy straightening up before launching into some heavy cleaning w. dust mop & carpet sweeper in her living room at home.


Jane Amberg scrubbing the bathtub in bathroom at home.


Jane Amberg using pop-up toaster w. slices of bread as she makes sandwiches for her three children at lunchtime in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg, serving lunch to her husband Gilbert who has come home fr. the office a few minutes away & her ever-present kids at the kitchen table at home.

Mrs. Amberg

Today was kind of a maintenance day. I did my early morning chores in the bedroom and sat down to some microwaved leftover pancakes for breakfast. There are plenty left for breakfast tomorrow morning, so it'll be another day or so before I have any new tales from the kitchen.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that the Griddlecakes recipe calls for "melted shortening." Vegetable oil must have been just coming onto the market in 1945 and not yet widely available. It certainly saves some time - not having to melt a tablespoon of shortening on the stovetop - but maybe vegetable oil's one of the reasons my pancakes weren't very good.

LIFE magazine has just made its photographic archives available online and there's a sweet little series of pictures called "Occupation: Housewife" that were taken in a Kankakee, Illinois home in September 1941. Since I don't have much news to report from the home front today, I'll post a few of these photos and add a few more as soon as I have a chance. Here's a real '40s housewife hard at work... Enjoy!


Housewife & mother, Jane Amberg, 32, posing w. her husband of eleven yrs., Gilbert & their three kids Pamela, 4, Tony, 5, and Peter, 7, in front of large two-storey house they lease.


Jane Amberg, shushing her husband Gilbert, as they sit having quiet 6:30 a.m. breakfast before their three kids wake up, in kitchen at home.

Jane Amberg making one of the four beds she does daily after doing breakfast dishes and getting the kids to school, at home.

Jane Amberg loading the automatic washing machine w. several days dirty clothes in basement at home.