Quick Breads

This is the oldest cook book I have. It's a bulletin of the Agricultural College Extension Office, The Ohio State University reprinted in June, 1940. The faded stamp on the cover is Elizabeth Wallrabenstein's signature. She was the Home Demonstration Agent for Oak Harbor, Ohio.



On page 5 there is this interesting illustration of balls of flour. The caption reads, "Fig. 1--Gluten balls from equal weights of flour: (a) bread flour; (b) family flour; (c) pastry flour; (d) cake flour.













Turn to page 8 and you'll see this picture of various types of egg beaters: (a) rotary type; (b) whisk type; (c) turbine type. I've yet to find the turbine type.















Here's how to form biscuits. Notice how perfect everything looks--there's no messy flour on the board, the dough circle is perfectly round and the biscuits are all consistent! I think the most important thing I've learned over the years is that my results are never, ever going to look like the one in the picture. If you can get over that fact you're well on your way to becoming a really good cook!


Biscuits: (a) Biscuit from lightly kneaded dough. Note symmetrical shape, smooth crust and large volume. (b) Biscuit from dough which has not been kneaded. Note small volume and coarser appearance. (c) Drop biscuit. Note irregular shape which is characteristic of this type of biscuit.

Great Bargains

It has come to my attention that there was a typo in yesterday's blog. Here's the correction. All kidding aside, can you imagine the stampede that would result from this price in today's economy?

Here's an interesting ad promoting home pasteurizers. I don't know how much it cost since most of the ad is missing. We don't think about pasteurization when we buy milk today. The milk we bring home in neat little plastic jugs has already been pasteurized. In light of the fact that China is trying to poison our food it might be a good idea to start thinking with a 1950s mindset. It's easy to take food safety for granted when you look at it from our perspective today, but people in the 50s had to do it themselves. That's why you'll see vintage recipes call for "scalded milk". To be safe, cooks would scald milk before cooking with it.

Now on to less serious topics. How about a wedgie? You have a choice of 7 colors and they're only $3.35! If you click on the ad and read the fine print you'll see that these particular wedgies are made from elk hide. No C.O.D.'s please.

I wonder if they'll accept a personal check? I don't know the year this check was printed but it came from my hometown bank which is still in existence today, although it's now the National Bank of Oak Harbor. The bank is celebrating its 75th year of service.

1956 Bisquick Cook Book

I adore vintage cookbooks, especially the little paper back booklets that women sent away for using proofs of purchase from their favorite brands. This 1956 Bisquick cookbook is one of my favorites. There are 28 pages of recipes, color photos and monochromatic illustrations to browse through.

I also love to see how Betty Crocker morphed throughout the years. Her neat and tidy 50's coif is very prim and proper. Doesn't she look smart in that tab collared smock?



Here's an example of some of the illustrations. I love the use of monocolor illustrations. The pink color is especially pleasing to me. Other colors used in this booklet were teal blue, mint green, goldenrod and rose.

The recipes are still useful today and I wouldn't hesitate to make a batch of biscuits or "tuna broccoli casserole"!

There are also some helpful cooking tips or menu suggestions at the bottom of each page, framed within a block of 50's-style color. The tip on this page reads, "Griddle is right temperature for baking when a few drops of water sprinkled on it jump around."



Just look at all the tasty things you can make with Bisquick! What's your favorite Bisquick recipe?

Instant Lounge Lizard

Isn't this a tempting offer? With 850,000 students how can they be wrong? I'd have been sold instantly if they were advertising drums. I've always envisioned myself pounding away on a drum set with skill. Admittedly, I have no musical talent. Alas, one can dream.

So THAT'S What's Wrong!

Coffee nerves! Who knew?

When I look at ads like these it makes me think about the women of the 50's and how much the home depended on her. The housewife was the backbone of the American home during that post-war era. And you know the saying: if mama's not happy, nobody's happy!

Personally, I don't get the jitters when I drink coffee. I can even go back to sleep after having it. This poor lady here better give up coffee altogether!

Plastic and Iron

Raise your hand if you've got some Lustro-Ware in your kitchen. Uh, huh. And how about a cast iron skillet? Uh, huh, uh, huh. Very good.

I have a red Lustro-Ware recipe box that belonged to Mrs. Gulau which contains retro recipes along with some modern ones.

I confess that I do not own a cast iron skillet...yet. I'm waiting for the right one to come along. I'm hoping for an exceptional skillet that used to belong to someone's great-granny. One that has a patina like that of shiny coal. One that is perfectly seasoned and more nonstick than Teflon. It's out there. I can feel it.

You don't hear much about Lustro-Ware these days. It seems Bakelite gets more attention. I'm not sure why that's so, but it's interesting. I'm glad to have Mrs. Gulau's recipe box. It's a real treasure to me. And I know that, some day, my skillet will come.

Ad was published in February, 1952.

57 Year Old Bread

Funny, it doesn't taste that old! I found this recipe for "Oatmeal Molasses Bread" in Mrs. Gulau's stack of recipes that I "inherited" from Lene's Web. This one was published in the February, 1952 edition of "Household" magazine. It was folded and kept in a red Lustro-Ware recipe box along with many, many other bread recipes, most of which I didn't keep.

I replaced the 1/4 cup of molasses with honey and the shortening with butter. I added 1/8 cup of water to the recipe too, since it's very dry this time of year. The bread came out delicious! We enjoyed some warm slices with honey drizzled on them. Tasty!

I didn't follow the pictorial series of shenanigans used to form the loaves (below). My approach to loaf-forming is very straightforward. I let the bread maker mix and knead the dough. When the dough is finished proofing, I roll it out into a rectangle close to the recommended size, roll it up gently (not too tight) with my hands, tuck in the ends and place it in the loaf pans for the second rise. Easy!

And now that I've indulged in two slices of this wonderful, honeyed bread I'm afraid I'm going to have to order some clothes from Roaman's catalog for "stout women". Is that a nice way of saying "plump"? Roaman's is still in business today and caters to "plump" women. What I really want to know is why does Roaman's send me catalogs? (If you click the photo and enlarge it, you'll notice that the clothing sizes range from 38-52.)

Here are the loaf-forming shenanigans I referred to earlier, in case you wanted to know. Click to biggify.

Mystery Utensil

Sunny sent me these photos of a mystery utensil in her kitchen. She asked me if I could help her identify it so that she can sleep tonight. She suggested that it might be used in the cheese making process when the curd is cut. Here's what she had to say about it:

"The main boby of this utensil is 9" long and 5 1/4 " wide. The interesting thing is that the wires going across are flat on one side and wedge shaped on the other, so as to make one think it is used for some kind of cutting."

I have never seen anything like this before and I don't know the first thing about cheesemaking. Can you help Sunny?

Well-Hung Furniture

Got your attention, didn't I?

Check out the furniture in this article. Those skinny-legged, low-backed chairs are so retro! The concept of hanging furniture on the wall so that it can be moved up out of the way is a bit strange, but practical. I have to admit, I've never seen it done. The only drawback I can see is the inability to rearrange the furniture once it's installed.

The retro colors in the drawings are nice and make me think of the colors my grandma used in her house. Remember avocado green? Mustard yellow? Aqua blue? Yeah, I knew you would.

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness

I'm a big fan of a super-clean kitchen. I even clean my kitchen sink after each use. So this ad for Clorox bleach is right up my alley (click to bigify). Note that it's:

1. Gentler
2. Greater

I don't know about that clown looking bottle guy though. He's kinda scary.

While looking at this page of ads from the February, 1950 edition of Farm Journal, I couldn't ignore the image of the coughing man in the Foley's ad. Now, it might be just me, but wouldn't you look that bad if you took a honey and tar cough compound? I'll have a cough drop, thank you.

It's interesting to note how our cleaners and medicines have changed since 1950. I'm so grateful for the improvements! We certainly know a lot more about what makes us sick and ways to prevent food-borne illnesses.

I'll also take one of those cut-to-fit homes for $1885! What a bargain!