Patterns of the Past - Dresses and a Feedsack Apron

From Workbasket magazine, November 1951. All you need for the apron is one 98-lb feedsack!

"For thousands of years, the high ground has been used during conflicts to gain a tactical advantage..."

Her Majesty likes the porch swing because it puts her at just the right height to reach out and smack Babyface's ears.

(The porch really does slope like that. It's for runoff).

Crochet - Potholders à Deux

A sugar and creamer from Workbasket, April 1953. This was a popular idea for potholders in the fifties; I've seen a couple of variations in different vintage magazines. Pattern on my Flickr account.

Vintage Images - 1920's Automotive Ad Cuts

Copyright-free, from Dover Publications.

The Melting Pot

Our local minor-league baseball team hosted a Health & Wellness Night yesterday and the department bought a block of tickets. The centerfielder for the Cornbelters is a young man named Asif Shah.

Girl Sitting Behind Me (in tones of strong disapproval): Asif Shah? Where’s he from?
Boy Sitting Behind Me (reading from program): Cincinnati.

(Mr. Shah, a former Southeast Missouri State standout and 2007 All-Ohio Valley Conference Utility Selection, was 4 for 5 and despite a piss-poor performance by the Cornbelter’s third base coach, demonstrated some very heads-up base running).

No Nutritionists Were Harmed In the Making Of This Cookbook

“Whence cometh the strength, physical and intellectual, of New Englanders? It has come, along with their famous conscience, from the natural and sane diet which, except for the first hard years at Plymouth, has contained all the vitamins essential to sound bodies and sound minds three centuries before vitamins had been discovered. They found their main sustenance in what their Lord God of Heaven would let grow on the land and in the waters of this paradise of the New World.”

So wrote Wilbur L. Cross, governor of Connecticut, in the introduction to the New England Yankee Cookbook, written by Imogene Wolcott and published in 1939. Governor Cross goes on to wax lyrical over corned beef, salt pork, maple syrup, fried mush, and traditional breakfast foods such as baked beans, apple pie and doughnuts.

“The way to the finest plain cooking in the world lies all before you in this book so that you may learn what to eat so as to live long lives in the joy of perfect health.”

The following recipe (“eating fish balls for Sunday morning breakfast is part of Boston’s tradition…”) is on page 29. It is not recommended for anyone with hypertension, kidney disease, or a family history of congestive heart failure.

Codfish Balls

1 ½ cups salt cod
3 cups potatoes, diced
1 ½ tablespoons butter
pepper
1 egg

“Soak codfish in cold water ½ hour; drain and “pick up” (flake); boil fish and potatoes together until potatoes are tender; drain and shake over fire to dry. Mash, being sure there are no lumps; add butter and pepper and beat until mixture is fluffy. Add egg and continue beating. Shape in a tablespoon and drop by spoonfuls in hot deep fat and fry not more than 4 or 5 at a time until a golden brown. Drain. Serves 6. Serve with gherkins or sliced green tomato pickles.”

Caturday!

The Understatement of the Century

A colleague of mine recently described the spousal unit as “freakin’ enormous.” I repeated the remark to him this evening, and it made him cross.

“I am not ‘freakin’ enormous,’” he retorted. “I am a presence.”

Quote of the Day

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch? ~ Winnie-the-Pooh.

The Online Bookshelf - Just So Stories

With illustrations by Joseph Gleeson, on Project Gutenberg.

Just Because I Love Messing With Their Minds

Burly, Shaven-Headed IT Specialist (popping abruptly into my office and looming over my shoulder to read a number off my PC): Twenty!

Me: Fifty-five, but that's awfully sweet of you.

Patterns of the Past - Separates and a Shirtwaist

From Workbasket magazine, September 1951. That is an interesting-looking blouse fabrication but I wonder how comfortable it was to wear.

Crochet - A Bleeding Heart Potholder from 1951

From Workbasket magazine, February 1951. The first of four, as promised. Two pages of instructions on my Flickr account.

Vintage Images - Summer Fruits

From Patricia at Agence Eureka. Luscious.

A Tale of Two Sundays – July

The menu for the first Sunday in July, 1927, is certainly a more practical approach to summertime cooking than last month’s offering: jellied chicken broth, creamed chicken and potatoes, stuffed eggplant with cheese sauce, tomato-lettuce salad, rolls, layer cake and lemonade. Toss out the stuffed eggplant, and everything for dinner is either served cold, or made in advance and re-heated, although who wants to eat creamed chicken and potatoes with the thermometer at 86º in the shade?

The salad recipe calls for scalding the tomatoes, skinning them, and serving them on lettuce leaves with boiled dressing, that pre-war hot weather standby.

Boiled Dressing. Put in double boiler 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon dry mustard, 2/3 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper. Cook until mixture thickens, then add 1 cup vinegar and continue cooking 3 minutes longer. Chill, and when read to serve, thin with plain or whipped cream to suit the taste.

The 1953 menu offers anchovy appetizer salad, broiled chicken with tomatoes, corn on the cob, steamed rice, peach banana sundae, and iced coffee. Omit the rice and we’ve got a nice summer dinner, particularly if you split and flattened the chicken, and broiled it outside on the grill. The salad is not to my taste but here is the recipe.

Anchovy Appetizer Salad. 1 small head lettuce or romaine, 2 cans rolled anchovy fillets, 8 ripe olives, sliced, ½ small can caviar, 2 hard-cooked eggs, Horse-radish French Dressing (which is oil and vinegar dressing with 1 teaspoon of horse-radish added). Arrange lettuce on four plates and in the center of each place two anchovies. Arrange olive slices around the anchovies and fill the center of each olive slice with caviar. Border with sieved hard-cooked egg yolks and arrange chopped egg whites in outer circle. Serve with dressing.

Prize this month to 1953.

Caturday!

I May Have To Leave Town For The Weekend

Curse you, AMC.

Quote of the Day

From little towns in a far land we came,
To save our honour and a world aflame.
By little towns in a far land we sleep;
And trust that world we won for you to keep.~Rudyard Kipling.

Bling

I managed to leave my lunch on the counter this morning and remembered it when I was halfway to work. This of course forced me to walk over to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place about three blocks from my office which also forced me to walk past the Main Street Thrift Store. The owners mostly sell used furniture, but their junk jewelry offerings rival the Mission's.


These four and a twisted silver chain set me back three dollars. None of the pins have any markings. The safety pin brooch is of course new. The two silver pins are pretty hefty and my guess is that they are 1950's-1960's (if I buy any more circle pins I'm soon going to be able to create my own chain mail). The little gold circlet is not flimsy, but it's not heavy enough to be real gold, either. I have no clue how old it might be.


I didn't get this pin, even though I'm a big fan of Dolores.


The spousal unit got lucky. I really wanted to buy this, and the matching chair.

The Online Bookshelf - A Caldecott Sketchbook

A lovely little book from Project Gutenberg, full of sketches and watercolors by the famous English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, and including this one of a rooster decked out in Napoleonic uniform.