The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog. ~Ambrose Bierce
Little Grey Bungalow
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Patterns of the Past-Nylon Sweater Blouses
In 1950, four dollars not only bought you the pattern, but enough yarn (your choice of nylon, wool zephyr, or "crepe velene") to complete this sweater blouse, as advertised in McCall's Needlework & Crafts.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Vintage Paper Crafts-Crepe Paper Costumes
The last of the selections I'm going to post from an undated 1950's booklet, Paper Arts and Crafts for Teachers and Group Leaders, published by the Dennison Crepe Paper Company. Left-click to enlarge, or go to my Flickr account to download.
Four pages of general instructions for working with crepe paper are here.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Strawberry Fields Forever
Once upon a time, before distributors figured out how to import South American fruit year-round, strawberries were a special and seasonal treat. They would start to appear in the market in the middle of May and last until the end of June. Since my frugal mother could only give us desserts on our birthdays, and since my birthday is in May, I always asked for strawberry shortcake. Shortcakes on a Midwestern table are simply rich baking-powder biscuits, covered with fruit and whipped cream. These biscuits are from a great website called Mennonite Girls Can Cook (who would ever question that?) and they are the real deal.
Schnetchi
2 ¾ c. flour
¾ t. salt
4 t. baking powder
¼ c. lard or butter
1 c. heavy cream
2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 400º. Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the lard or butter until it is the size of frozen peas. Make a well in the mixture and add the eggs that have been lightly beaten with the cream. Stir together just until the dough comes together. Quick bread dough toughens if you handle it too much, so be careful.
Pat out the dough to ¾ inch thickness and cut out with a round cookie or biscuit cutter. Place on a baking sheet, and bake for 15 minutes or until the tops are golden.
Split the biscuits open and spoon a generous amount of sliced, sweetened strawberries over them. Garnish the berries with whipped cream.
(Another delicious, but very different version of biscuits, can be found at Southern Plate).
I have met deluded people who believe that strawberry shortcake is made with angel food cake, not biscuits. They are welcome to this particular recipe, which I have not made but comes from a WWI-era cookbook called Mary At The Farm, and can be found at the Michigan State University’s online historic cookbook library.
Aunt Sarah’s Angel Cake
“When preparing a dish calling for yolks of eggs only, place the white of eggs not use in a glass jar in a cold place or on ice. When you have saved one cupful bake an angel cake over the following recipe.
One heaping cup of pulverized sugar sifted 8 times. One cup of a mixture of pastry flour and corn starch (equal parts) also sifted 8 times. The whole then sifted together 4 times. The one cupful of white of eggs beaten very stiff. When about half beaten, sprinkle over the partly beaten eggs one scant teaspoonful of cream of tartar, then finish beating the whites of eggs. Flavor with almond or vanilla. Then carefully sift into the stiffly beaten whites of eggs sugar, flour and corn starch. Fold into the whites of eggs rather than stir. Bake in a very moderate oven, one in which the hand might be held without inconvenience while counting one hundred. The oven should be just hot enough for one to know there was fire in the range. Bake slowly for about 55 minutes.”
For something richer and a bit fancier, for a special Mother’s Day meal, perhaps, there is coeur a la crème. I suppose there is no reason not to eat this in the middle of the winter with canned or frozen fruit, but it’s an excuse to buy strawberries in season (not that I have ever needed an excuse). I don’t have the proper French mold for this but I do have a smallish round plastic colander that works just as well. If you have a metal mold to spare and want to dedicate it to coeur making, you could pound drainage holes in it with a hammer and a sixteen-penny nail.
Coeur a la Crème
2 eight-oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup sour cream
Strawberries.
Beat together the cream cheese and the sour cream, thinning it with a teaspoon or so of cream if it is too stiff. Line your mold with cheesecloth, rinsed out in ice water and wrung out almost dry. Press the cream cheese mixture into the mold, cover and place over a bowl to drain. Refrigerate until quite cold, several hours. When it is ready, unmold onto a chilled serving dish and serve with strawberries cleaned and tossed with a few teaspoons of sugar.
This recipe is from James Beard’s Menus for Entertaining. Note there is no sugar added to the cream cheese mixture because Beard is a purist. If this seems a little plain to you, beat ½ cup of confectioner’s sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract or grated lemon peel into the cream cheese/sour cream. The coeur is not supposed to be very sweet; it gets that from the berries, and Beard recommends it be served with French bread or brioche.
And of course there is my favorite way to eat strawberries, which is standing over the kitchen sink with a knife in one hand and a towel tucked into the front of my shirt.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Internet
If you hated the Hamsterdance, for God's sake don't go here.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Alarums and Diversions
The laundromat caught fire this afternoon. Of course, by the time the volunteer fire department got there one of the bank tellers and the guy who owns the welding shop had raced over with fire extinguishers and put it out.
Quote of the Day
Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point. ~ E.M. Forster, A Room With A View
(print from голова at Pattern Recognition).
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Patterns of the Past-Practical Playtime Garments
From Needlecraft magazine, June 1915. I like the cut-in-one collar on the right. And yes, that is a little boy wearing Mary Janes.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
PsyOps
The lady across the street, as it turns out, is the owner of Evil Stranger Cat. She has been calling for him all evening, and I've been watching him toy with her. She'll come to the front porch and call, and he'll whisk around the corner and conceal himself in the bushes. She then goes to the back door to call, and he hops back up on the front porch.
Vintage Paper Crafts-Wigs and Hats for School Plays
From Paper Arts and Crafts for Teachers and Group Leaders, published sometime in the 1950's by the manufacturers of Dennison crepe paper. Left-click to enlarge, or these pages can be downloaded from my Flickr account.
Four pages of general instructions on using Dennison's crepe paper are here.
This is the second page of the menagerie that I posted about here (but forgot to include the second page). It's now on my Flickr page, as well.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Word of the Day-Bask
Pronunciation: \ˈbask\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, probably from Old Norse bathask, reflexive of batha to bathe; akin to Old English bæth bath
Date: 14th century
1: to lie or relax in a pleasant warmth or atmosphere
2: to take pleasure or derive enjoyment
(See also cat).
...And I'll Cry If I Want To
From The Good Housekeeping Party Book, 1958.
"Party Pointers for Little Folks:
- Don’t plan a party to impress the parents.
- Plan a party suited to what your child likes to do, can do and will do at his particular age. It changes each and every year!
- Be an executive. Plan everything on paper. Know exactly what’s to happen and when.
- Don’t wear yourself out. Don’t make a production out of it. A party to a child is having a few pals plus something to eat.
- Don’t minimize the importance of prizes and food. If pennies count, save on invitations, favors and decorations instead.
- Decide with other parents on rules about birthday presents. Shall they be given; if yes, how much should they cost, etc, etc.
- At gift-opening time, have a wastebasket handy; wrappings will fly.
- Consider having a simple party at your child’s kindergarten or nursery school. At a time suitable to the teacher, you provide cake or cookies, and fruit juice or ice cream for the class. If too many parties threaten to interfere with the daily class program, the instructor may set aside one day each month when mothers of that month’s birthday children co-operate on refreshments.
- Then you can make the celebration at home just a family affair, at breakfast or dinnertime. In this way, the thrill of a more formal birthday party is saved for later years.”
And finally, this counsel (which I heartily endorse):
“The First Birthday. The very soundest advice is, don’t give a first birthday party.”
The food recommended for these events is the very simplest; sandwiches cut into different shapes with cookie-cutters, fresh fruit, cupcakes and ice cream. I think everyone has a horror story of a party menu gone wrong, but mine comes from the birthday dinner for the five year old son of a colleague (It was a long time ago and I was not as expert as I am now at ducking invitations. I did not realize until I arrived that the only guest under the age of twenty-one was the birthday boy himself). His mother with more zeal than sense had decided on a rather tricky main course of chicken flambéed with an exotic sauce, prepared on a hibachi on the patio.
It set fire to the back wall of the house.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
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