Mrs. Hey's Hot Cocoa and Hoosier Headwork

Mrs. Dan Hey ~ From the Farmer's Wife Magazine ~ October 1938

One of my favorite all time articles from my vintage collection is that about Mrs. Dan Hey and her 'hoosier headwork' in planning school day meals. 

It is filled with wonderful tid-bits of the time. She came to St. Paul as a Country Kitchen guest, recommended by the extension folks at Purdue University as a rural homemaker who did a good job of planning meals and solving school lunch problems.  She was also the President of the Indian Home Economics Association. 

She put up 400 quarts of meats, fruits and vegetables the prior year, as well as home cured hams and bacon. The family doctor says the Heys do not give him a chance for living -- they are all so healthy. The Heys had three children, ages 18, 14 and 7.  This particular article was about Mrs. Hey's planning of the school day meals. 

According to Mrs. Hey, any plan for meeting the food needs of school children must take into account the whole day's meals. A glimpse into her own kitchen would show that the day's food preparation proceeds according to a well-planned  pattern.   Breakfast is not a heavy one, but quite satisfying for their needs.  There is fruit, orange juice, or tomato juice, apple sauce, canned pears or stewed dried fruit.  There is sometimes a cereal - a prepared cereal in the warmer weather perhaps with berries or sliced bananas, and hot oatmeal or a wheat cereal in the colder weather.  Instead of cereal there may be eggs or bacon and eggs.  Then there are rolls or toast, and always hot cocoa for the children and coffee for the grown ups. 

Since the children are away at noon the parents eat more of a luncheon than a dinner.  Then comes the extra meal in the late afternoon, for the minute the children are inside the door after school, it's eating time again.  They are always hungry then and again at supper time.  Supper then is the hearty meal of the day.  It is depended up on the supplement a moderately hearty breakfast, a fairly light lunch and a "piece," so it includes meat, two or three vegetables, one a green leafy one and a light dessert.  On Dad's night out -- Kiwanis Club -- the children could have their special favorites, which usually meant macaroni and cheese for one thing and on Friday nights, some of the children's friends might be brought home, and supper often boasted friend chicken.  The meals are easy to plan for their cupboards are always well stocked. 

Let's not forget Mrs. Hey's school lunch ideas:

I keep on hand a quart or so of homemade salad dressing in order to be able to mix up into sandwich filling any materials I may have at hand:

Minced ham and pickle

Hard cooked eggs and mango

Baked beans, even cold navy beans moistened with mustard or catsup

Left over meats or any kind ground with mango, pickles, pimento or onion

Carrots and raisins

Cream cheese and pimento

For vegetables I often send our favorite, tomato, but a whole tomato is rather soft and warm and quite unappetizing after a morning in the lunch box.  I peel one, cut it into pieces and place it in a small glass jar; then salt it and on top place a nasturtium leaf on which is a small dab of mayonnaise. When the child is ready to eat, he puts the dressing directly on the tomato, and the serving is much more attractive. 

The glass jar may also carry puddings, baked beans, custards, the dabs of pie fillings that are sometimes left over, fruit salad, slaw, stewed fruit, cottage cheese or anything that has been served on the family table that is good eaten cold. 

In the thermos bottle I have sent besides the customary cocoa and soups such things as creamed meats, creamed vegetables, spaghetti and tomatoes, fruit juices and jello.  

When baking a cake some of the batter may be dropped into muffin pans or paper cups to make just a few cup cakes to help in packing a school lunch.  

In years gone by I could not have sent school lunches, I sometimes think, had it not been for graham crackers and marshmallows.  I always kept these in the house and they served in emergencies many times. If you have too much cake icing use the surplus on a few graham crackers.  They will help you out after the cake is gone and you've forgotten to replenish the cookie supply.   Place some marshmallows on crackers and place in the oven.  When marshmallows just begin to melt, put another cracker on top and press down.  Toast slightly.  These marshmallow sandwiches stay crisp and help to give children their needed cereals. 

And now, for Mrs. Hey's unusual hot cocoa recipe:

Mrs. Hey's Cocoa

1 c. cocoa

1 c. sugar 

1/4 c. corn starch

salt

Mix and combine with water to make a paste.  Cook in top of double boiler 1 hour or longer.  Cool and store.  Add as needed to scalded milk and beat until frothy. (I have made this.  Do keep it on low and keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn.  She doesn't give a water amount but I would start with 1/4 cup and add as needed.  Store in the refrigerator as ours did once mold on the counter top even though there was no milk or dairy in the mixture.  I'm guessing someone double dipped a spoon, but to be safe store in the fridge.)

We Imagine That Time has Passed...

But has it?

The other day my son and I watched The Great Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin.  The year was 1940.  It would be more than a year before the United States would officially join World War II.  The world was reeling from Hitler's rise to power. At home in the United States, it would be another 28 years before Jim Crow laws were legally removed from the books.  We would then go on to enter two more wars, Korea and then Vietnam.  

Some 78 years later we still find ourselves struggling and resisting ideals and beliefs of separateness and hatred, of dissent and violence, and his speech is just as relevant, just as persuasive and just as painful as it was in 1940, when a man in power was calling for the encampment and extermination of a people who were different in religion, in heritage, in culture, and that of people who dissented, opposed or disagreed, and desired a pure, white, fresh faced nation.

It wasn't until 1920 that women received the right to vote and we fought hard for that right.  I hope that we as women will use our voting power to vote for good and righteousness.  After all, it was not so long ago that we were marginalized and unable to make our voices heard.  When we vote to remove rights away from one, we move towards removing rights for all. Let us learn and know our own histories and strive not to repeat them. 

On Tuesday November 6, here in the United States we have the opportunity to vote. 

I will be voting and I hope you will too. 

The Poetry of Life

"I'd rather be knitting." ~ Me

"The poetry of life always has a practical side to it, and most practical affairs rightly worked out are full of poetry."

(Lippincott's Home Manuals ~Housewifery by L Ray Balderston, A.M. ~ 1919)

In the midst of wearing more hats than the cap salesman  in Esphyr-Slobodkina's 'Caps for Sale,' (which was one of my older son's most favorite books when he was little) and feeling more like the monkey than the cap salesman, I took a few minutes to take a break and post on more pleasant and comforting mundane things.

In case you haven't noticed, America seems to be in awful state right now, so I'm not complaining for the gift of being rather busy.  Very busy in fact and very glad to be so.

The school year usually means a return to 'the busy,' but this year is particularly so, as I myself am also back to a full class load, partially on-line and in person, including a full-day Saturday Anatomy and Physiology class. So, my days go somewhat like this:

Monday through Saturday, alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m, and I am up by my second alarm at 4:45.  Monday through Friday, I get up and prepare husband's breakfast and oldest son's.  I also prepare their lunches.  I get them off to work and school, and most days both are gone by 6:30.  My husband's schedule varies.  Saturdays I get up and prepare breakfast for everyone to leave out for when they get up, eat, get myself together and leave for class at 7:00 a.m, waking my husband up when I go.

Sundays, I allow myself the luxury of sleeping in until 6 a.m. I prepare everyone's breakfast, try to slow down a little and plan my day.

Monday, my younger son who I home school, is normally at his father's house doing his schoolwork there.  That is my day to run errands, make appointments, get groceries or work on my own home work.  I get my older son off the bus every day around 2:30 or so.  and on Monday's he goes to his father's that night for dinner.   I still have my husband's dinner to prepare. Monday is also my baking and meal prep day if I'm going to make anything ahead.  I've hopefully planned our menu the afternoon before on Sunday.

Tuesday through Friday I normally have both children staying with me.  The youngest gets up around 8, has his breakfast (which I normally make, but he sometimes prefers to grab his own,) and does his morning routine and begins his schoolwork which is in a planner prepared each week by me on Sunday afternoons. He is fairly independent in most cases, and about half the things we go over together. He also takes some classes on-line.

I have the house cleaning and laundry broken out to a few items a day so I'm not overwhelmed. If I stick to this I'm in relatively good shape.  The dogs and birds get daily care.

Assuming there are no pressing mid-week appointments, I start the day with the making of the beds (my younger son makes his own), start any laundry if it's a laundry day, tidy the upstairs and baths, and then check the calendar, take anything from the freezer or prep for dinner if needed, have my own breakfast if I haven't already, and get to work.

I work most of the day on my own course work and household things that need to be done.  Because I'm up so early, I strive for at least a 20 minute nap in the early afternoon.  That doesn't always happen.  I try to shower either just before bed, or first thing in the morning after my husband and older son have left and my little one wakes up.   Then the afternoon is bus duty, more school work of my own and then dinner preparation and clean up.  My husband and sons do help where they can.

Bills, appointments, extra-curricular activities are all in the digital and paper calendars.  I have a third weekly calendar where I note what assignments I have due.

By Friday, my sons are either with me or their father every other weekend.  During the school semester, most of the weekend will be spent on coursework for me. When I have the boys, I try to keep that to early mornings and later evenings and make sure we have some fun time together.  I am of course in class on Saturdays from 8-2 from now through the Spring semester.

On Sundays, my boys are normally with their father and I try to visit a hospice patient if I have one.  I also do my weekly calendar, meal planning and my son's lesson plans for the week (which I've already prepared ahead of time during the summer months.)

Somewhere in there I try to rest.

I don't know that I've quite reached the level of poetry, but I have at least established a mostly reliable routine. My sons and husband do their share, and my youngest is learning to help with the cooking where he can.  (A blessing for his future wife.)

In between I squeeze in a bit of gardening, and was able to put up some elder flower and elderberry and wild black raspberry goodies this year, the Rumptof of course and hope to dry a batch of hops for tea, and I also to keep up with the inevitable little touches that make a house a home.

I have learned the hard way to let nothing wait until tomorrow if I can help it.  I planned for Halloween mid-September.  The decorations (although few in number and mostly vintage style black cats) were out almost a month ago.  Why? Practicality.  We cleaned out the garage at the end of August, and there was no good practical sense in taking things out and putting them back again only to take them out again three weeks later.

If it's dirty and I have a minute, I clean it.  If I find myself idle (say waiting for something to cook,) I put something away, or take a few minutes to read an assignment.  Somewhere in there, I also try to maintain contact with my older daughters, by at least texting or phoning weekly.  Sundays are usually the day my husband and I can enjoy a movie at home together if I don't have too much course work.

I promised myself on the decision of returning to school that I would not let my children's childhood suffer in any way if possible.  Yes there has been some belt tightening on mother's free time, but the baking of homemade goodies, the little reminders of holidays (even though they are much older now at nearly 12 and 15) and my youngest son's flights of fancy on random small projects, I do my best to indulge. Even if it's just for popcorn and a movie on the couch.  After raising two children to adulthood, the fact that the time flies and childhood is over faster than the two shakes of a lamb's tail is not lost on me.The time is so brief, yet its effects are so eternal on the minds of children, so I strive to keep in the forefront of my mind what my sons will think back on when they remember these days.   There is nothing wrong with demonstrating a good work ethic to your children by any means, but it also must be that joy and magic remain to feed the soul.

In all of this, I am looking forward to the winter break, the quiet, and some hand work.  And maybe, just maybe, a little rest.

An Open Shop and Back to Basics

After what seems like an unreasonably long absence, I'm back to giving this little project of mine some well-deserved attention.

First news, the shop is now live, and over the coming weeks I'll be posting digital versions of some of my lovely vintage pattern collection for sale.  Be patient, check back often, it takes time and it's a labor of love.

I do have some very unique and charming patterns to share.

Perhaps it is the impending on-set of spring and the longer daylight hours that have given me the additional energy and brain power I need to consider just one more thing in a day.

I find that despite my best efforts to wear fewer hats rather than more, I still somehow end up wearing several hats at a time. So please bear with me as I balance those unavoidable obligations of daily life with my pet projects and passions, this blog being one of them.  

I haven't forgotten you!

~Mattie

A Bit of Shameless Self-Promotion

Only one of these posts and I promise to get back to the vintage writings which were the intent of this blog to begin with.

Yet, it never does hurt to do a bit of self-promotion.

As my ability to live a 1930's style farm life has faded over the last four years, I've had to find my alternative calling.  Granted raising sheep and goats wasn't terribly profitable to begin with, but awfully lots of fun and gave me great personal enjoyment.  I still miss them.

However, I was finally forced to admit that I had an additional calling and that is to help others. 

In 2008 I had received my Level I Reiki attunement never planning to take it outside of family and friends.  Recently it came to my attention that it was time to do just that.

So I pursued the upper levels with more focused intent.  Being me, however, I am rarely if ever satisfied with the status quo so my practice is slightly different from the norm, incorporating elements of Qi Gong and other biofield modalities as well as aromatherapy which I will eventually offer as a separate service upon completion of my certification.

I will be working with both people and animals and I look forward to growing as a practitioner in the coming year.

If you are curious and want to know more, you can view my other website here:

Reiki and Energy Therapy

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part III

Woman's Home Companion ~ August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part III

Isabel was an attractive little woman as she trudged off to her meeting.  She was rather short and prettily rounded, with crinkly brown hair and a pink skin which flushed easily under excitement or pleasure.  she had a nice taste in dress and always managed to have a stylish and becoming hat.  This afternoon its summery brim shaded a tiny pucker in her brow, a pucker which was growing to be a more and more frequent occurrence.  At first it had merely indicated perplexity; now it spelled rebellion.

"I have had just about enough of this dictation," she mused, as she walked down the elm-lined street.  "Here I am, thirty-six years old, and cannot say my soul is my own!  I cannot even do the work in my own house in my own way!  I cannot go where I like or see whom I like nor do what I like and I am sick to death of it!"

It seemed to her that she would gladly exchange several years of her life for a taste of freedom.  As Belle Pike, she had been one of a large family and had had a delightfully carefree girlhood.  Where there are five girls and two boys coming and going, all about of an age and all full of liveliness and sociable habits, there is bound to be considerable latitude for each one.

Perhaps it was the law of opposites which had attracted her to the serious, conscientious young preacher.  She was proud of his ability and he was proud of her gay charm.  Then, after their marriage, with apparent unconsciousness, he had gathered the reins into his own hands and guided both his affairs and hers undisturbed by any doubts as to his own competency.

It left Isabel bewildered.  It was as though a gay yellow butterfly, accustomed to sunlight and warm caressing airy breezes, had flown through an open window into a room and could not find its way out.  The butterfly was not broken; it still flew around in evident activity but always within walls and now it seemed as though the walls were closing in, like those in a nightmare.

"I am getting older and older and there is nothing different ahead of me,: thought Isabel, wildly, as she mounted the steps of the Community House.

The speaker of the day had already begun her address, "Sociological Problems in America."  It  seemed a big subject to be handled that warm afternoon, just as they were about to adjourn for July and August and could not attempt much in problems before fall anyhow, and Isabel did not give full heed to the earnest lady who had come from out of town to start them untying sociological knots.  After awhile, however, she realized that they had arrived at point three, which was Marriage, and she suddenly sat up.

"Statistics show," declared the earnest one, "that more separations occur after eleven years of married life than at any other period either before or after.  When a man and a woman have been married eleven years the first illusions have worn away, the first romance has passed, charm is likely to have been buried in routine and life begins to seem like a treadmill.  This truth is most vividly portrayed in Pinero's 'Mid-Channel,' that realistic drama of married life.  the fact that so many separations take place during this vital period would seem to indicate--" She paused for emphasis and Isabel fiercely finished the sentence for herself:

"It would seem to indicate that after eleven years women have had about all they can bear and they can't stand it a minute longer!  I am an eleven-year woman and I know!"

She slipped out before the program was over.  On the way home she stopped at the library and took out "Mid-Channel" and so far had her desperate defiance advanced that when the hour came for mid-week prayer meeting she announced that she was not equal to going.  Then, when her husband was safely on his way, she sat up in bed and read the realistic drama of modern life.

Her sympathies were all with the poor heroine.  To be sure, it seemed foolish to quarrel so fatally over which hotel they should patronize on their pleasure trip but with sisterly insight Isabel realized that with matters at such high tension it would have been something else if it was not the hotel.

Womanly Wednesday ~ The Secrets of Charm

From Secrets of Charm by Josephine Huddleston ~ 1929

The dictionary tells us that charm is a number of things-- "a trinket to be worn around the neck to ward off dangers; the chirp of a bird," and as the interpretation of "Secrets of Charm," "it is the ability to fascinate, to please, to allure, to bewitch, to enchant."

To be charming one must cultivate the inner power that lies in every human being.  This power is awakened through the emotions and comes to its fullest development only when the individual can make people laugh or cry, curse or pray, love or hate, by merely touching upon the heartstrings.  When one has progressed this far, he must go still farther and make people laugh and cry at the same time; curse one and pray for one with the same breath; hate and love one with the same heartbeat.  When one can bestow happiness so poignant with pain that misery is pure joy, then and only then has the inner power or charm been cultivated to its fullest.

I'm not talking nonsense!  It is the development of the emotions and the ability within one's self to arouse and play upon the emotions of others that has made every great opera star, actor, writer, painter, musician and hero the world has ever known.

It is the cultivation of this inner power that lifts a few human beings out of the restless, bored, unhappy, seething horde of people called humanity.  It is this power that leads the shop girl who is mistress of needles and pins into the mansion where she is mistress of silks and satins.  It is the power that takes a chorus girl out of tights and puts her name in electric lights.  It is the power that makes the Only Man place a plain gold band or diamond circlet upon the finger that tells the world you are his to love, cherish and protect for as long as you both shall live.  And it is the power that makes most woman hate with a burning intensity the woman who has it, for women know its great influence.

The name of that power is CHARM.

(To be continued...)

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part II

Woman's Home Companion ~ August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part II

"It would help some," he continued, "if you would always put things back into their right places as soon as you have finished with them.  Now this pan is dry,' he lifted it from the stove and put it up on a shelf, 'it ought to be put back and if all the handles were placed one way each one would be easier to pick up.  You ought to have separate places for spoons and knives.  As it is, you are likely to cut yourself with a knife trying to find a spoon."

"I was going to use that pan for frosting.  Then I'll be through here and I am due at the Women's League meeting, the last for the summer.  Perhaps I'll stop a minute at Mrs. Spicer's on the way home.  She has a book for me to read."

He had started toward the hall, but that arrested him. 

"If I were you I wouldn't go to Mrs. Spicer's today," he called back.  "You are going there pretty often and you don't want to run one place into the ground."

Sudden hot tears sprang to Isabel's eyes, partly from indignation and partly from disappointment.  She had been looking forward to the refreshment of a few minutes with Julie Spicer.  She loved Julie; they were warm, congenial friends and she could drop in at any time, sure of a welcome, a good laugh or an understanding which included, as a matter of course, absolute loyalty to any confidence.

"The next time I wish to go anywhere I will keep the idea to myself and just go," she thought, but she immediately yielded all intention of the Spicer visit that day.  It would be wildly imprudent in the face of Aunt Libby's coming.  Stephen would be provoked if his wife deliberately ignored his expressed opinion.  With Stephen, "If I were you" was just as effected as "Thou shalt not."  He declared his views with apparent mildness but if Isabel did not promptly act in accordance with them it aroused his anger.  His temper was not of the flashing variety, quick and crashing and sooner over; it was still and cold and unyielding.  Perhaps a more phlegmatic temperament than Isabel's could have battled it out on the same lines, but to her, lively, loving and companionable, an impregnable silence was a torturing thing.

To do him justice, Stephen Chapin did not realize that he was afflicted with a temper of any kind.  He was simply right and when his wife deliberately ignored that rightness he was astonished, grieved, hurt, and he managed to convey the impression to the culprit across the table.  There was unconscious histrionic ability in the Reverend. Mr. Chapin.  He could put his feelings "across" beautifully.  Perhaps that was why he was a good preacher.  He was no hypocrite; he always meant what he said but any thoughts that happened to lie too deep for words could be expressed wonderfully with a gesture, a shrug or a sigh.

Isabel had tried to harden herself against his disapproval and to learn not to care when these times came but she did not seem to make much progress at that.  The best she could do was to avoid trouble, to guard her tongue and watch her step, but even there she was not too brilliant a success.  There was a good deal of spontaneity left in her yet.

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part I

Woman's Home Companion August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part I

The Reverend Stephen Hopkins Chapin was passing through the kitchen.  It seemed to his wife that he was always passing through the kitchen and stopping to make suggestions on the way.  Today he noted the confusion of utensils on the table, the two sweet-smelling brown layers of cooling cake, the gas stove burning full-head and the moist beads on his wife's forehead as she stepped quickly around in the pantry.

"I should think," he commented, "You would plan to get our cooking done in the forenoon when it is cooler and not bake in the very hottest part of the day."

"I do plan, but what do you suppose happens to a plan when old Mrs. Whipple comes and stays an hour and a half?  She wanted to see you, but I told her you were preparing your prayer-meeting topic, so she stayed on with me.  Then that agent came and talked and talked and the telephone has rung every five minutes all day with somebody asking a question about the church sale."

"Of course everyone is liable to have interruptions; you have to allow for them when you plan your work."

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort, "You don't have them because I save you," but she kept the words back.  She did not want to say anything that might upset him, because Aunt Libby was coming the next day, Thursday, to stay over Sunday which was also the Fourth, and she wanted Aunt Libby to have a pleasant visit.

So, she quietly dodged around him as he stood in her path to the oven, wiped her fair flushed face and only answered placatingly, "I'll be through here in a little while,” hoping he would move on.

The Reverend Chapin held his ground in the middle of the floor.  He was unusually tall, a slender graceful figure topped by a sleek black head a trifle too small for his height.  His face was always white and his regular features were dominated by large dark blue eyes which ran the whole gamut of expression from vague vacuity, when he was dreaming out some theory, to the hardness of agate when he was opposed.  Opposition rarely occurred because he had an almost hypnotic way of making people believe that he was right.  However, the effects of hypnotism are not permanent and after eleven years of married life Isabel Chapin was well out from under the spell.  She knew that quiet frequently Stephen was wrong, but she kept that knowledge to herself.

"The trouble with you," went on Stephen, the omniscient, "is that you lack system.  If you worked with more system, you would not get so far behind."

Her mind leaped to his own system, which he never seemed to get perfected.  When he first came to Rockton he had made a complete card catalogue of his parishioners, their families and addresses, so that in the matter of calls he might deal all in exact impartiality, but unfortunately the A's had not grouped themselves into one neighborhood; they were scattered all over the village.  When he went to see Mrs. Adams it seemed very foolish not to call upon Mrs. Minot, who lived next door.  Besides, Mrs. Minot might feel hurt.  The sensible thing was to call on both, but it worked havoc with the system.  Some day he was going to do the whole thing over by districts and try that, but he had not got around to it yet.

"Housework is different every day," argued Isabel.  It doesn't seem to fit into a system.  You see, you are baking on one day and mending on the next and the interruptions are never twice alike; some take more time and some less."

She stopped, realizing that she had tried, quite futilely, to explain this to him at least once a week for a long time.  She might as well save her breath.  

She might indeed, for he was not half listening.

(To be continued....)

Outfitting the Bride's Kitchen Part I ~Utensils in Aluminum ~1922

From Cheating the Junk Pile by Ethel R. Peyser ~1922

Chapter XIX

'We moderns are so up to date that although we expect our women to marry, they know less of the kitchen needs and the infant's psychology than of the constituencies of the planets' atmospheres.  So to correct some of the deficiencies we are going to list in this article the prices of the necessities of the bride's kitchen at the present...

A first-class aluminum manufactory believes the following to be a complete set of aluminum for the home.

Tea Kettle............................. $7.05
Double boiler......................... 4.05
Sauce pan and cover.............. 1.40

Straight sauce pan (2)............ 2.35

Preserving kettle, cover......... 3.62

Strainer...................................1.20

Steamer Section.....................1.80

Coffee pot..............................4.15

Tea pot...................................5.85

Fry Pan..................................3.60

Griddle..................................5.55

Waffle mold..........................3.65

Pudding Pan (2)....................1.60

Bread pan..............................1.15

Tubed cake pan.....................1.85

Mountain cake pan...................85

2 jelly cake pans (ea).............1.20

Corn cake pan........................1.20

Gem pan.................................1.60

Roaster....................................7.20

2 pie pans (ea)............................62

Measuring cup............................60

Tray..........................................1.65

Water Pitcher............................6.00

Jelly Mold.................................2.90

 (additionally recommended per the author)

Funnel...........................................90

2 Muffiners, 6 cups...................1.65

Dish drainer...............................4.00

Ladle..........................................2.25

Quart measure............................2.00

Dripping Pan..............................2.95

Categories to be continued:  utensils in enamel, glass, earthenware, japanned ware, tin ware, iron ware, woodenware, cutlery, hardware, brushes, wireware, fabrics and paper, machinery and general.

A Timely Introduction or Everything Old is New Again

Courtesy of Vulcan Stove Co.  The smooth top 38" gas range takes the stoop out of stoopid cookery.

As we deal yet again in 2017 (some 95 years later) with the struggle to establish and maintain women's rights, Ms. Peyser's words could have almost been written yesterday.  There should be no negativity attached to the home being a woman's domain.  For even today as working women, mothers, caregivers of our adult parents or siblings, single or married, we find ourselves still the primary purchasing agent of home goods, decorator, and home maker.  Making a house a home still remains largely a feminine task.  The ability to do so should be a badge of honor, and not a prison or mark of shame.

From Cheating the Junk Pile ~1922 by Ethel R. Peyser

Introduction

The Housewife as Manager and Purchasing Agent

'Several years ago we heard a great deal of talk about women's place being in the home.  The slogan was used as a campaign challenge and as a sneer.  It was bandied up and down the country-side until we got pretty tired of hearing it.  Since the privilege of voting has been given women and since their weight is being felt in the elections, the cry has died down.  The simple reason is that neither the employment of women in war-work nor the radical challenges of the ultra-feminist has altered the  fundamental fact that the home is a women's realm.  Now you can banish her to the home and make it such a place of drudgery that she loathes it; or she can abide there as a queenly figure, director of its work.'

How To Cook Husbands

I waffled a great deal about how and what to make the first post about.  The issue being, there was simply an endless supply of material to choose from.

  

Since I am newly remarried as of August 2016, I decided to start here, with Elizabeth Strong Worthington’s interestingly titled book ‘How to Cook Husbands.’

It is a thoughtful little book about the author's struggles with the idea of marriage and motherhood at the ripe old age of 34 in 1898 at the time of its writing.  My copy is from the 1907 printing.

Sadly, there is little immediately available information about the author to know how much of her story is truth or fiction, and whether she ever did indeed marry.  She did follow up with a companion book ‘The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives.’

My favorite part is the beginning pages.

I

A while ago I came across a newspaper clipping—a recipe written by a Baltimore lady—that had long lain dormant in my desk.  It ran as follows:

“A great many husbands are spoiled by mismanagement.  Some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up; others keep them constantly in hot water;  others let them freeze, by their carelessness and indifference.  Some keep them in a stew, by irritating ways and words; others roast them; some keep them in pickle all their lives.  Now it is not to be supposed that any husband will be good, managed in this way – turnips wouldn’t; onions wouldn’t; cabbage-heads wouldn’t, and husbands won’t; but they are delicious when properly treated. 

“In selecting your husband you should not be guided by the silvery appearance, as in buying mackerel, or by the golden tint, as if you wanted salmon.  Be sure to select him yourself, as taste differs.  And by the way, don’t go to market for him, as the best are always brought to your door.

“It is far better to have none, unless you patiently learn to cook him.  A preserving kettle of the finest porcelain is the best, but if you have nothing but an earthenware pipkin, it will do, with care.

“See that the linen, in which you wrap him, is nicely washed and mended, with the required amount of buttons and strings, nicely sewed on.  Tie him in the kettle with a strong cord called Comfort, as the one called Duty is apt to be weak.  They sometimes fly out of the kettle, and become burned and crusty on the edges, since, like crabs and oysters, you have to cook them alive.

“Make a clear, strong, steady fire out of Love, Neatness, and Cheerfulness.  Set him as near this as seems to agree with him.  If he sputters and fizzles, don’t be anxious; some husbands do this till they are quite done.  Add a little sugar, in the form of what confectioners call Kisses, but no vinegar or pepper on any account.  A little spice improves them, but it must be used with judgment.

“Don’t stick any sharp instrument into him, to see if he is becoming tender.  Stir him gently; watching the while lest he should lie too close to the kettle, and so become inert and useless.

“You cannot fail to know when he is done.  If thus treated, you will find him very digestible, agreeing nicely with you and the children.”