Vintage Images - Japanese Art Deco

Unusual and pretty Japanese art deco illustrations, copyright-free from Dover.

To Tempt a Sweet Tooth

To Make Barley-Sugar. – To every pound of sugar allow one-half pint of water, one-half the white of an egg.  Put the sugar into a well-tinned saucepan, with the water, and when the former is dissolved, set it over a moderate fire, adding the well-beaten egg before the mixture gets warm, and stir it well together.  When it boils, remove the scum as it rises, and keep it boiling until no more appears, and the syrup looks perfectly clear; then strain it through a fine sieve or muslin bag, and put it back into the saucepan.  Boil it again like caramel, until it is brittle when a little is dropped in a basin of cold water; it is then sufficiently boiled.  Add a little lemon juice and a few drops of the essence of lemon, and let it stand for a minute or two.  Have ready a marble slab or a large dish rubbed over with salad oil, pour the sugar on it, and cut it into strips with a pair of scissors; these strips should then be twisted, and the barley-sugar stored away in a very dry place.  It may be formed into lozenges or doprs, by dropping the sugar in a very small quantity at a time onto the oiled slab or dish.

To Make Everton Toffee. – One pound of powdered loaf-sugar, one teacupful of water, one-quarter pound of butter, six drops of essence of lemon.  Put the water and sugar into a brass pan, and beat the butter to a cream.  When the sugar is dissolved, add the butter, and keep stirring the mixture over the fire until it sets when a little is poured onto a buttered dish; and just before the toffee is done add the essence of lemon.  Butter a dish or tin, pour on it the mixture, and when cool it will easily separate from the dish.  Butterscotch, an excellent thing for coughs, is made with brown, instead of white sugar, omitting the water, and flavored with one-half ounce of ginger.  It is made in the same manner as toffee.

Molasses Candy. – One cup of molasses, two cups of sugar, one tablespoon vinegar, a little butter and vanilla; boil ten minutes, then cool it enough to pull.

From What Shall I Eat? The Housewife's Manual, by Miss E. Neill, 1892.  It's not surprising that candy was such a rare treat, given the effort required to make it.

(Image from The Confectionery).

Caturday!

(The PC has returned.  Everything on the desktop looks a little different, but it all appears to be there).

Youth and Speed

While the old PC and the new PC are in the hands of someone who is going to do the files transfer (and who is younger than my last pair of combat boots.  I could probably still outshoot him, though).

It's Going To Be That Kind Of A Week

Oh and I have a new PC so until I re-locate everything don't expect much in the way of posting right now....

Further Signs That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

Photographed this afternoon in the main hallway of a local junior high school.

Caturday!

That Was Harrowing

Smitty decided, God bless 'im, that three weeks was too short to try and quit his job, get rid of his apartment, put his car in storage and ship his belongings 2000 miles.  So he's deferring medical school.

(Whew!).

He's still going, just not for another 2 semesters.  Maybe by that time he can show me how to use the Department of Homeland Security's after action report template without taking a baseball bat to the PC.

Note To Self

Don't read any more about the 1900 San Francisco bubonic plague outbreak while eating.

Two-fer Tuesday - Crocheted Doilies

From 1949 and available at the Purple Kitty site.

Sewing - A 1950's Flower Basket Quilt

An applique pattern from Workbasket.  My notes say February of 1950 but I don't think that's right.

Anyway, it's pretty. Right-click to enlarge.

Vintage Images - 1930's Fashions

(we nominated Xena for a Governor's Service Award, which she won.  She asked me what she should wear to the ceremony and I recommended a suit.  She's balking.  She's an awfully nice kid but her generation has no sense of the fitness of things.

We're Supposed To Fear This

I realize that what I see when I arrive at web pages like iGoogle is carefully designed to tempt me by reflecting what my browsing says about my personal taste.  It doesn't appear to be working; today alone so far, there has been a Google book announcement in what appears to be Dutch, an Italian soccer video, and ads for cholis.

Either I'm a schizophrenic or their information-gathering and interpretation mechanisms are incredibly inefficient.

More Leftovers

From a cookbook sent all the way from the other side of the Mississippi River!  (Missouri, actually) by my oldest sister.  It’s an advertising cookbook for a dairy, the Prairie Farms Cookbook, and it was put together in 1941 by our old friend at the Chicago Culinary Arts Institute, Ruth Berolzheimer.


Creamed Chicken with Macaroni

3 T. butter
1 T. flour
3 oz. cream cheese
1 small pimiento, chopped
1 c. milk
1 c. chicken broth
2 c. diced cooked chicken
1 ½ c. cooked macaroni
1 t. salt
dash pepper

Melt butter, add flour, cream cheese, pimiento and seasonings.  Blend.  Combine milk and chicken broth and add gradually to first mixture, stirring constantly.  Heat to boiling and cook for 3 minutes.  Add chicken and macaroni, pile into buttered baking dish and bake in moderate oven (350°F.) 25 to 30 minutes.  Serves 8 (according to Mrs. Berolzheimer, who has obviously never met my family).

Chicken and Asparagus

2 T. butter
1 T. flour
salt
pepper
paprika
2 c. cream or evaporated milk
1 egg, beaten
2 c. diced cooked chicken
2 c. cooked asparagus tips, cut into 2-inch lengths
2 T. chopped pimiento

Melt butter, add flour and seasonings.  Add cream; cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.  Pour over egg and blend.  Add chicken, asparagus tips and pimiento and heat thoroughly.  Serve on hot toast.  Serves 4.

Chicken a la King

1 T. butter
1 T. flour
dash white pepper
¼ t. salt
½ t. paprika
1 c. milk or diluted evaporated milk
¼ c. cream
1 c. cooked chicken, cut into pieces
2 olives, chopped
1 pimiento, chopped

Melt butter in top of double boiler, blend in flour, add pepper, salt and paprika.  Add milk and cream gradually, stirring constantly until thickened.  Beat well.  Add chicken, olives and pimiento.  Cook for 15 minutes and serve on toast, baking powder biscuits, in patty shells, or bread croustades.  Serves 2.

(Olives must be a Chicago addition.  Downstate we prefer peas).

The last recipe on the page – in a chapter devoted to entrees – is something I have never run across before, at least under this name.

Farmers’ Chop Suey

1 c. shredded lettuce
½ c. sliced radishes
½ c. diced cucumbers
¼ c. diced green pepper
½ c. shredded carrots
2 recipes Sour Cream Dressing

Have all ingredients cold.  Combine and toss together in a salad bowl.  Serves 6 to 8 (where on earth did these people come up with their serving size suggestions, one wonders).

Sour Cream Dressing

2 T. sugar
¼ t. salt
dash white pepper
1 c. sour cream
2 T. lemon juice

Mix sugar, salt and pepper, add cream and pour in lemon juice slowly.  Makes 1 cup (two servings of this would drown the salad given above by, modern standards).

Cat Geometry

The shortest distance between two points is across the computer keyboard.

Caturday!

Good News/Bad News

The good news is that Smitty got accepted into medical school.  The bad news is that he's leaving next month.

Damn that boy.  I'm going to have to start doing my own DHS paperwork.

Grrsday

Tatting - A Bowknot Medallion from 1950

From Workbasket magazine, December 1950.  Left-click to enlarge.

Vintage Advertising - 1930's Ad Cuts

Copyright-free, from Dover.