Vintage Magazines - Wild Bill Hickok

I was born 50 years too late.

A Helping Hand

If you were a novice or nervous cook in 1923, and wanted a guide to take you by the hand and walk you through some easy entertainment menus, Alice Bradley's little book For Luncheon and Supper Guests  would have been very useful.  It is quite possibly the most thorough cookbook I have ever read, since Miss Bradley gives you not only the menu and the recipes but also the market order and a prep schedule (if you are an experienced cook, you may question why Miss Bradley believes hard-boiled eggs should be cooked for 60 minutes in a double boiler.  Picky, picky).   The entire cookbook can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

MENU 

Fruit Cup
Hot Ham Sandwich
Currant or Grape Jelly
Tomato Salad with Cheese Dressing
Cocoa Ice Cream
Fig Marguerites
Tea with Candied Mint Leaves

Rather an ambitious menu particularly since the cook-hostess was expected to make everything from scratch, including the jelly.  Still, Miss Bradley was there to guide you every step of the way.

PRELIMINARY PREPARATIONS

Fruit cup ready to chill
Ham prepared for the sandwiches
Tomatoes peeled and placed in ice box
Salad dressing made
Fig marguerites made
Candied mint leaves prepared
Ice cream ready to freeze
Jelly made

MARKET ORDER

1 pound cooked ham
1 cream cheese (Roquefort flavor if desired)
1 quart milk
1 pint cream
½ pound butter
6 eggs
½ pound white grapes
3 or 4 oranges
2 lemons
1 pound (4 small) tomatoes
1 green pepper
1 head lettuce
1 bunch mint
½ can sliced pineapple
8 maraschino cherries
2 tablespoons mayonnaise dressing
½ pint raspberry or strawberry syrup
¼ pound figs
2 ounces walnut meats
1 ounce tea
⅛ pound cocoa
1 loaf sandwich bread
½ pint grape or currant jelly or juice
Oil of spearmint
1 package small round crackers
1 ounce marshmallow cream
1 cup salad oil
Loaf sugar

HOT HAM SANDWICHES

Put
1 pound cooked ham through food chopper. Add
4 tablespoons creamed butter,
1 teaspoon mustard and
1 teaspoon paprika, and mix well.

Cut
Bread in sixteen ¼-inch slices, spread eight slices bread with the ham mixture, cover with remaining bread and press slices firmly together. Cut each sandwich in three strips.

Beat
2 eggs slightly and add
2 cups milk. Dip sandwiches, one at a time, in this mixture, and sauté in butter, cooking on one side until browned, and then turning and browning the other side. Serve very hot.

Other meat, or marmalade or jam may be used in sandwiches in place of ham.

TOMATO SALAD WITH CHEESE DRESSING

Cut
4 tomatoes in halves in such a way that they come apart in points.

Arrange each half in a nest of
Lettuce leaves. In the center of tomato pile
Cream cheese forced through a coarse strainer. In center of cheese put a
Few bits of green pepper finely chopped. Serve with cheese dressing.

CHEESE DRESSING

Mix
2 tablespoons mayonnaise dressing with
2 tablespoons cream cheese. Add
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon table sauce
½ teaspoon paprika and add very slowly
¼ cup salad oil, beating with egg beater until very thick. Add slowly 1 ½ tablespoons vinegar. Keep in cool place till ready to serve.

Cream cheese with Roquefort flavor is desirable in both the above recipes, but the usual cottage or cream cheese may be used if preferred.

The rest of the book is similarly painstaking. If I were a "bachelor girl" or a new bride, I'd probably take my first baby steps at entertaining with something like the above menu, particularly since I could probably get away with cooking the sandwiches in a chafing dish in front of my guests.

I'd buy the jelly and the cookies, though.

Caturday!

Quote of The Day

If we want sanctity of marriage then stop cheating, stop having affairs, stop looking at porn, stop getting divorces.  That is the way for the church to stand up for the biblical definition of marriage, not by someone martyring their self-righteous self. ~ Rev. Russell Williams

With A Little Help From My Friend

There’s a reason I’m known as the slowest knitter in the Midwest.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

Marines do not "wait on" anything. We go get things. We attack things. We take things. Contrary to popular belief "waiting" is not an action verb. Waiting doesn't make things happen. Lions do not wait on gazelles to leap into their hungry jaws, they pursue prey. 

What "I'm waiting on ... " really means is "I'm not doing a dang thing about that."

Be a lion. Pursue your goal until it hangs limply in your fangs. ~ SgtMaj Mike Burke

Dep't of Non-Sequiturs, Household Division

He: (stalking past from the direction of the kitchen) I’m boiling more eggs for science.

Update:  He's teaching his kids about osmosis this week.

Roughing It

“The Requirements for a Camp.  Each person should be supplied with a good, big-bladed jack-knife; a woodsman, or what is about the same thing, a person with good common-sense, can supply himself with food and shelter, with no other ready-made tool than a good strong knife.

Salt, pepper and sugar, must be put on the list, then flour in a sack, oatmeal, cornmeal, rice and lard; crackers, beans, coffee in tin, tea in bag, cocoa, condensed milk in cans, evaporated cream in cans, butter in pail, pickles, dried fruit in bags, a bag of potatoes, molasses, pork, boneless bacon, and, if you are fond of it, a few jars of orange marmalade; sal-soda for sweetening “dubs,” and ginger for medicinal purposes; several cakes of common soap for dish-washing, some dishtowels, and some soap for toilet purposes; also a tin coffee-pot, a long-handled frying-pan, a small griddle, a nest of tin pails, the smallest capable of holding a quart or less, and the largest a gallon or more; two or three paper pails or water-buckets, two or three iron kitchen spoons and forks, and a camp boiler, a firkin and a wooden spoon, also a strong axe and a hatchet.”

The Jack of All Trades, New Ideas for American Boys, by D. C. Beard, 1900.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

Downloadable patterns from Vera Venus

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~ Dorothy Parker

Signs Of The Times

Go Forth And Multiply

We have ten confirmed cases.  So far.

UPDATE 9/11/15:  Fourteen.

Update 9/19/15:  Seventeen.

Mystery Meat

I’m stumped.  Are these some kind of croquettes?  And what is a clear sauce?

“Meat Toast.  Take any sort of meat that has been served at table, cut it into small square pieces, and make a well-thickened ragout of it; when cold, put in the yolks of two raw eggs, arrange the meat upon some crumb of bread and draw a knife dipped in a beaten egg over it.  Grate some bead upon the whole, fry, and serve with clear sauce.”

Tempting Dishes for Small Incomes, by Mrs De Salis (1903).

Going Out With A Bang

When I joined the Health Department six years ago, we were on the cusp of the H1N1 mass vaccination response.  I am retiring in 28 days, and there is a weird sort of symmetry to this.

Caturday!