30 march 1955 “Academy Awards, Beauty, Food, and Spring Cleaning for your Life”

March 30, 1955 Brando and Grace Kelly wind for “On the Waterfront” at the 27th annual Academy Awards.

This New Yorker is actually from the 26 of March 1955, but I forgot to picture it before. I think the image is very telling of the times. The bucolic setting, the innocence of the children, the serenity of an autumn New England day as a jet cuts across the sky. The ideals of antiquity are now being poised to receive modern life.

I know some of you have asked about beauty and personal care in the 1950s. So, I thought I would show some articles and images from some of my magazines.

This is rather sweet how they encourage you to help and guide your daughter through a good beauty routine. I need to up my game, as I thought I only needed 100 strokes to my hair, but I guess I was wrong. I do know, that hair washed once a week and brushed thoroughly shines wonderfully. I realized another savings I have come upon with my 1955 life. I used to wash my hair alot. I would shower, not everyday, but at least five times a week and my hair is thick and needs conditioner. I now wash and condition my hair once a week. That means I use my shampoo and conditioner only four times a month. I can now get five months use out of what was one months use! I am not sure when the daily showering/hair washing began, but I can bet if we trace it far enough it will lead to some advertising on soaps and shampoo. Your hair does not need to be shampooed that often. Think of all the water, energy, money and waste if we used 1/4 of the bottles of shampoo and conditioner per person per year. Now, I still shower more than once a week, but I use my trusty friend, the shower cap. I do not, however, shower every day. I now have a good wash up on days I don’t show and probably shower three times a week of which one of those days is to shower and shampoo. It might sound disgusting, but I do not feel any dirtier and in fact think my hair looks the better for it. I keep coming upon these little realizations and they are amazing. I just really thought about it the other day, wow, five months of product out of my old one months supply. And the amout of plastic I won’t be throwing out, the amount of money I will save, and the energy costs. Again, something done to be authentic to the 1950s has lead to a green decision without my knowing it. I think it is funny that marketing and advertising follows trends, so as green is now the ‘it’ thing it uses that. So, people can feel green by going out and buying more things. We just respond to change in this way, “Oh, I need a new way of thinking, let me go buy the stuff that goes along with it” when, really, instead of buying green bags, use bags you already have or take some of your old shirts or clothes you don’t want and fasten those into green bags, but now our response is to buy more things. I know we reuse the bags, but do you sort of see where I am going with this. Even green cleaning products, silly. You can make all you need with vinegar, soda, pinesol, bleach and water. Use an old bottle you ALREADY have over and over again. Decorate it, like I and some of my followers did. Just because some product comes out in a new shape bottle with cooler writing you are still buying things that have to be put into plastic bottles. Here is an example of SC Johnsons approach. See, how happy and earth friendly this page is, but you can make your own green products and use the bottles you have.

Now, I was suppose to be talking about beauty, but you see how these rants just come upon me. This is, however, how my days often will unfold. I will be doing something or trying something ‘vintage’ and realize how ‘now’ it really should be.

Here is an article on antiperspirant use. It is scary to me how they point out in this article that the aluminum works well to keep you dry but that it can irritate and ruin your clothing. “However, because they check perspiration so well, they have a faithful following”. I know that many studies have shown that the aluminum in antiperspirants are harmful and can lead to Alzheimer’s disease. I tried to find a woman’s product that did not contain aluminum and had a hard time. The idea of not sweating was so important that good sense was set aside for social stigma. It is odd to me, too, as these women’s grandmothers would certainly have had sweat and the smell as part of their life and thought little of it, save using lemon verbena water or something. I think I found another chemical product that used advertising to promote the need to ‘not be sweaty’.

And, finally, here are some sweet beauty tips:

I am sort of behind in my food discussions here, so I have a couple of meals to cover. I wanted to make a souffle’ with some left over pork shoulder, as I had mentioned in a previous blog, so it would be a ham and cheese souffle’. I could find no recipe for this, so I simply created my own using the basic souffle recipe I had. It turned out lovely, but I used a too large dish. I actually have this dish in the next size down, too, so I could have really made it look spectacular, as I made the ‘paper crown’ for it with wax paper, but as the dish was too large, it did raise properly, but does not look like it in this dish. I was so proud of it, as I served it, it stood so tall and was so light to eat. As I was preparing it, I saw how similar it was to making a cake. The beating of the egg whites, the beating of the egg yolks, folding in the ingredients, and honestly it looked like cake batter as I poured it in. It was heavenly and light. I am really beginning to see the skill set grow in cooking. As I have mentioned before, what used to seem like a random assortment of recipes to follow, are now really displaying the various similar traits. Now, I know when I look at a new cake recipe why it needs this or that and I am now rearing to make my own. I mentioned to Gussie yesterday that I want to make a maple walnut two layer cake with a maple cream cheese frosting decorated with crushed walnuts and topped with a circular halo of whole walnuts. I can see it in my mind. I tried finding a recipe for a maple walnut cake but could not find one in my old books and magazines, so if I can find a maple cake, then I will simply alter it. Although I really want to just try, based on my growing cake knowledge, to make up my own recipe. If it turns out good, of course I will share the recipe with you and pics.

Now, onto another dessert, that is all eat up now, is a blueberry apple pie. I mentioned it before that I was going to make it for our Saturday dinner and I did. I had some left over fresh blueberries from jam in my fridge and some apples, I had not enough of either to make a blueberry or an apple pie, so I combined them. This was also really a made up recipe. I used my ‘easy’ crust recipe that I have listed before where you use shortening and add boiling water etc. It really is so simple and this time it was wonderfully flaky. Almost as good as my lard crust. It was not too sweet as I mixed the fruit fresh with one cup sugar and I made a topping of butter and flour to crumble on top. And I squeezed half a fresh lemon on top before I popped it in the oven. It was really good, if I do say so myself, and I do! I know the crust looks a little sloppy, but I liked the rusticity of it. I will try my hand at fancy braided crusts and such in the future. Here is is waiting for coffee and me to devour it.

Here are my lovely Chicken croquets I made for our Saturday Vintage Dinner. I was so proud and they were so good.

Here is the recipe:

You will see it says to serve with Cream sauce. That is simply the plain white sauce recipe I have given in a previous blog, but make it with 1 cup cream instead of milk. I have not tried the sauterne Jelly, but will next time. Sauternes is a French dessert wine from the Sauternais region of the Graves section in Bordeaux. Sauternes is made from Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle grapes that have been affected by Botrytis cinerea, also known as noble rot. This causes the grapes to become partially “raisined”, resulting in concentrated and distinctively flavored wines. Sauternes is one of the few wine regions where infection with noble rot is a frequent occurrence, due to its climate. It is a sweet dessert wine and it is commonly served with Fois Gras (which I adore!), caviar, and pates. This wine is fairly expensive due to what goes into making it and there are really no domestic versions worth mentioning (however, if you know differently, please let me know as I love a good dessert wine!). I have heard there is a California version, but that it is not very good, I have not had that type. I would, and probably will, use an inexpensive Riesling when I make this sauce. I know it is a German wine and not a French wine, but I think in cooking and wanting to save on budget, the sweetness of a Riesling would work for this recipe. If anyone tries it let me know or if anyone wants to spend the money on a good Sauterne and use it in a recipe, let me know how it tastes. I would probably save the ‘real deal’ for a special occasion, Thanksgiving or something. If you have not heard of this wine and would like to try it, let me know what you think, oh, and for those of you who don’t know it is pronounced “So-Tairn” I know sometimes people feel funny asking for something if they are uncertain of how to ask for it. Anyway, here is the recipe.

Okay, so how I actually made my croquettes, which I was so proud of and I really liked how they looked on the table. Was as follows:

I used boneless chicken thighs, as they are less expensive and dark meat is much juicier in a croquette. I think the white meat would be nice, but really liked the more moist quality of a thigh and it the cost can’t be beat! To moisten the ingredients, I did not use the white sauce but used their first recommendation of the 3/4 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cream. So, I took my chicken thighs and boiled them earlier in the day and put in my various spices that I like. I put in about 4 cups of water, let them boil and simmer for a few hours as I was about my day, until it boiled down to about 2 cups. Then I took my 3/4 cup of stock and the rest went into the freezer for future sauces and soups. You could use canned stock in a pinch, but I like making my own stock as it is easy, less expensive and I think much nicer and you can control the sodium more. I also chose to use fresh cut cilantro in lieu of the parsley. I am not sure if cilantro would have been used in 1955, I need to check on that, but I really like the taste and it did add a nice bite to the croquettes. So, I shredded the cooked chicken and mixed the ingredients, adding the above sauce of stock and cream as needed an shaped my little pyramids. Then I rolled them in bread crumbs (if you have any old croutons sitting about, these work great too!) and I popped them in the freezer for about 1/2 hour while I made my cream sauce. Don’t let them freeze, because when you deep fry something you want it to be close to room temperature so it doesn’t cool the oil. For my cream sauce I used the rest of the mixture of stock and cream that didn’t go into my croquettes and added that with the flour to the butter as I made the sauce. I put it in a serving pitcher and set it aside. Before I fried the croquets I dipped them in beaten egg and rolled them again in crumbs, this gives them a nice coating, then into the hot fat. You don’t really need them in there that long, just enough to brown the coating, as the chicken is already cooked from making the stock. I got many raves from these at our dinner and will definitely make them again, next time with the Sauterene sauce (or Riesling sauce). I think they would be a great answer to leftovers. Really any left over meat would be lovely this way and breaks the monotony of leftover predictability.

Now, with this ‘gourmet’ recipe, I used a recipe from my Campbell’s soup book. I like the idea that I am using a book that teaches you ‘high cooking’ and paring it with an advertising book that I would have most likely got as a promotion at my local grocer. That is the joy of cooking. Gourmet does not have to be hard, nor does it have to be exclusive. If you pair things that sound as if they would be good together, most likely they will.

Now, when I used this recipe, I did not make the sauce with Campbell’s chicken and rice soup, as I really don’t buy canned soup and enjoy making my own. However, with that said, I am certain it would be good and easy for a busy mother to use the soup as directed. I used, instead, the same sauce I made for the croquettes. It was lovely and tasted great and so no need to have another type of sauce with the dinner. Oh, and as I used bacon for this recipe, I put the bacon fat into the stuffing with the egg to hold it together. It was lovely and the tomato was just cooked enough.

So, after I prepared the croquettes, I put them in a pan and then I put in the tomatos with the stuffing, but did not cook it. I put the whole thing in the oven and 20 minutes before my guests arrived I turned the oven to 350 and it heated up the already prepared croquets, and cooked the tomatos. Then I just had to reheat the sauce and serve it all. The clean up was easier this week as well, as I am getting more skilled at doing things in stages and thinking ahead to what can be prepared and heated at the last minute. I can see now how women with multiple children ran a home and still put on lovely meals. It is just training and practice. When you approach this type of work as that work, but if you also love it, as I do, then multiple tasks become easier and in the efficiency of it you also garner more pleasure as you test yourself and think, “Oh, I can do one more thing, or Oh, I am going to make the soup from scratch or the cake from scratch etc.”

Yesterday, Sunday, was a good day. The three of us, hubby, myself and Gussie (yes, she is sporadically around) had a good lazy but productive day. It was raining. It was that good heavy Spring New England rain. It falls straight down, with purpose and hope, wetting the birds, the ground, those leaves that missed the rake. The light is soft grey shot with moments of bright. The tip-tapping on windows in my little sitting room gives me leave to stay inside and not feel the guilt of the approaching planting season. Instead, that busy yet lazy energy of a Sunday morning was put to the kitchen and its increasing list of little odd jobs. Today it was the pantry. Gussie and I took out everything! The kitchen was littered with canned goods and things long forgot in the dark recess of the pantry. When I do my little breakfast room addition there will be a new pantry. One I have oft dreamed of and imagined. There will be a window and neat white shelves edged in vintage shelf paper. Drawers below, tall spaces for cookie sheets, everything labeled and lovely. No have twisted bags of chocolate chips with ill-used twist-ties, but honest clear jars, standing ready and at attention, the soldiers of the cooking world; Ready and clearly labeled for battle. That, however, is in the future. Now, my pantry is a fairly large but deep and dark closet. It is the perfect place to hide out, if you so chose, for you could slip there, on that top shelf behind the countless bags of opened rice that you meant to condense and next to the odd batch of hideous Halloween plates that someone brought to a party and you hadn’t the heart to throw away. You could safely linger there for months, never being spotted and you’d have many cans of beans and various goodies to keep you going.

So, all of this came out as well as the two closed cabinets above the stove. It was all laid out upon the kitchen table and Gussie and I looked at each other, then the piles and stacks of things, and with a nod of a surgeon to the nurse, dug in.

This was rather cathartic and we dubbed it the ‘official’ beginning of Spring cleaning.

I have a darling set of vintage milk glass spice jars. They have been patiently awaiting their proper labeling and filling. Today, we did it. They needed to be scrubbed and washed and then I ran them through the dishwasher (ah, it’s good to be middle class in the 1950s) . I used a very 1950s idea of applying your own decoration to make something match your home, but did it in a very 21st century way. I scanned a Pyrex dish with part of the pattern that I collect. I then added the name of whatever space would go in that jar and printed it on sticky paper. The result is darling I think. They have great lids that screw on and a little shaker top that are not on in this picture. I think the result is darling, as they are milkglass and the rooster image from my Pyrex in my color is very effective, don’t you think?

So, I had to sit down, with all the spices I use and collect up before me, and consider, what are the 12 most used? I have so many spices and began sorting through realizing I use this most often this only in certain things, this for holiday cakes etc. It was really a great mini-exercise for the overall project of doing over my house; my life. Sit down, put all your cards on the table, what do you do most, what is a dream or a plan for the future, and what is just left rotting in the back shelf. By going through and check-listing out your life, you can decide what is worth keeping, worth striving for and what you realize is just something you are holding onto that would be better tossed aside. Spring cleaning for you life, I like it! Let’s all do it, shall we?

Happy Homemaking.

27 & 28 March 1955 “Tony Awards, Child Rearing, and more Ranting”

 

The 9th Annual Tony Awards, presented by the American Theatre Wing, took place at the Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom on March 27, 1955. It was broadcast on radio by the National Broadcasting Company. The presenter was Helen Hayes .

Steve McQueen makes his network debut on CBS.

Time cover for March 28 1955. Computers and Automation are starting to change the world.

 I thought this was an interesting cartoon.

I have never raised children, so I will never presume to give advice. I do know that some of you have asked about information on child rearing during the 1950s. This article which I have scanned for you to see is from a 1951 Better Homes and Gardens. I think as the decade progresses the concept of child rearing begins to change. (Sorry about the poor scan quality, but what do you expect, I am from 1955 who can understand this new modern technology)

These four steps of the ‘situation’ were posed on pg 10 with the results in the back of the magazine, in an almost test-like format. It was given to you, the reader, to put yourself in their shoes and see what you would do. Here is the answer:

I think their reasoning is sound. I think, and again I am speaking from NO experience with children, that today many children seem confused or unsettled by the lack of actual boundaries and rules on how to deal with others as well as their own needs. But, many people today are not really allowed to live in a world that requires us to be ‘true grownups’ so how can we teach children this. I like that they point out that an exact across the board ‘tit for tat’ is unrealistic for the child, which is a great life lesson. The world certainly does not work on the tit for tat method of equality. What do any of you parents think of this article?

Here are two ads from a 1951 magazine, so this answers my question as to when ‘prepared whip cream’ was available. I detest this type of whip cream and it is SO easy to whip up fresh whipping cream and then you can add any thing you like to it, I love adding Almond extract, mmmmm.

Tonight is my saturday for our ‘vintage dinner’, Recipes and photos will be up on Monday. I am making an apple blueberry pie ( I did not have enough of either in the house and instead of buying more, I thought, ‘heck, combine them!) Chicken Croquettes ( which I have never made, so we shall see. But anything served with a cream sauce can’t be that bad, right?) and stuffed tomato slices. I may do brussel sprouts as my green vegetable.

Now, for today’s rant:

I am almost starting to feel that those of us into the vintage lifestyle owe it to ourselves AND our community and therefore the world, to include in our love and desire for history the importance of social history. I think we may find rather than having to want to wrap ourselves only in a fantasy of better times, it is more fulfilling and more ‘right’ to take what we love and can learn from these times and set out to insert them into the present. Our joy of old things, cooking, enjoying family, helping others, EVEN wonderful clothing, could really help make a better future. The respect you show yourself and that which you receive from others by your clothes is an integral part to self-worth and hope. When the concept of caring for you family and helping others is seen as a job and a valid action, think how we can change the world? One neighbor at a time.

I think also, this responsibility involves helping others who may  seem to be unhappy, as a real quality way to inject your life with meaning and purpose. Through both our example and teaching, as we live with community and care for ourselves and family and our homes etc, we may also find ourselves seeing a friend or associate who turns to you for guidance. If you see a wayward sister, let her know how homemaking (rather it leads to marriage or not) is a means to an end. Sometimes when we are lost and looking out into the world for answers, they are right there in our own hands. I know it sounds cutesy or simplistic, but even a single gal who may feel hopeless or unsatisfied, working, shopping, watching tv and hanging out, should look to your home. Make it a place you feel like an honored guest and have your friends and family over. You’ll save money on food and entertainment and get to know yourself as well as those around you. I know it sounds silly to say,' “Hey make your bed when you get up, iron your clothes, paint and decorate affordably and clear out the clutter (donate all that stuff you don’t use because someone can use it) wear your ‘nice clothes’ just for you, even if you are at home, shut off the t.v. and tadah you feel purpose” I know that can sound odd, or too easy (though it is not easy to learn all the things, but worth doing.) the act of doing it gives you a purpose each day. It makes you focus on making yourself nice for you and your mind, then you will find you want to share this with others.

I just really think our modern society has made us SO self-centered in a bad way that we are intrinsically unhappy. I know, many of you are already much more accomplished than am I at cooking and sewing and homemaking, but perhaps your skills are a great way to show a new batch of women (and men too!) what personal satisfaction comes from living your life in a more controlled manner. Take control and responsibility for the way you look and how you live and what you think and buy, and you will feel better. It is a great aid for the blues to have things we now seem to think are silly, as important tasks you need to do and want to do for yourself, your family and friends.  Even if you are not volunteering at a soup kitchen, if you make homemade food and entertain your friends, or help your family by providing them with clean clothes and a good home cooked meal, you are doing for others and you will feel good about it.

I guess, I just really feel I can say this because it is all new to me. I was one of those unhappy consumers. I had moments that felt like happiness, but in the pit of my stomach or my heart I felt sort of aimless or empty. But, really taking control and action of each day has made a world of difference. I feel like I could do more in my life than I thought I could before. I know I sound like a self-help book, but really and truly, I feel more in control and happier than I have ever before.

There were so many things I wanted to do and I would always say, “I need 10 lives to do half of the things I want to try in my life”, but now I am finding, I may do much more than I thought. By taking control of my days and spending habits and my environment, I actually know I can add another item to my day and be able to handle it all. Again, I am not saying being a time Nazi is the answer, but by scheduling my days I find I get more done than before and soon do things faster as my skill level increases. Before,  I thought things like a clean organized kitchen or making my bed was silly or a waste of time keeping me from doing what I want, now I  see it as a means to disciplining myself to be ABLE to do what I want. If I cannot take 10 minutes to make my bed so it is nice for me at the end of a long day, or spend 15 minutes at my vanity, doing my hair, or checking my pearls, than how am I going to have the discipline to learn an instrument, or write a book, or hike 20 miles? The importance of daily living seems to always get a bad rap and yet people won’t mind spending two hours on a day off watching some t.v. program. I know, I used to do it. But, you know what, going out and raking my leaves may not be the most fun, but by doing it I get to then have a beautiful garden or the reward of going to the local greenhouse and picking out those roses I have always wanted to try. I think one of the main points I seem to have come across that we have in the modern world is that we want result with no prep work. We want to have a perfect home and life, but don’t want to do any of the work to get it. We want to be thin and beautiful but don’t want to bother to try. Even someone overweight and not model beautiful will be lovely if she is happy with herself and if she is wearing a nice dress, accessories, hose etc, you will be surprised how nice you feel and in so doing, people will see how beautiful you are. Not because you had to hide your true form in all that, but because you took the time to look nice for the people you encounter, they respond to that and see you looking beautiful.

I do realize a lot of what I am saying sound like tired old self-help rules, but I know I didn’t follow these norms before and am happier now for doing so. And I am not saying “Just feel good about yourself and your life will be better” because you know what; IT WON’T! You need to work hard at learning to care for yourself and your home and get a skill-set that makes you feel happy, then you WILL feel good about yourself and you will have every right to do so. Because, you are a good, cook , or your home is clean and welcoming, or you have a beautiful garden people love to sit in or eat from. I just want we (the 21 century gals) to feel we can take control of our lives and make a change for ourselves and in so, we will make a generation that others will look back on and think, “Wow, those early 21st century gals were amazing. One day they just turned away from commercialism and became super women” Because, were we to slowly acquire the skill-set of those women in 1955 we would probably be considered super woman by today’s standards.

Many people think, “Oh, well they got to stay home while their man took care of them. Or things were cheaper than, so one person could stay home” When, really, I am finding comparatively prices were similar and actually food is much cheaper today, and yet they managed, because their core desires were to care for their children or entertain themselves in ways that did not involve being on an endless revolving spending spree. The concept of ‘spending on yourself into your savings account’ is often a foreign concept. And, really, those of you who are in a relationship who think you have to work two jobs, maybe look at what and where you spend and you might be surprised. Now, I am not saying that is true for everyone, but again, how many cars and phones do you need. Do you need cable and tivo.  Do you have to eat out x amount of times a month. Do you have to spend x amount of junk food etc.

It is amazing to me that there are more big stores with great ‘bargains’ and yet we are all more in debt that any previous generations and no one can save. It is because we have been trained into being bargain shoppers instead of just not being shoppers at all. Obviously we need to go shopping to get food, but when we go where they have everything else too, we buy those things. Those stores that have everything in them aren’t really doing it to make your life easier, they are doing it to make you buy more and spend. They don’t honestly care if you save money, if you save it, you are not spending it on their products. When you have to go to various shops to buy various things you will buy less as you will be thinking in between your purchases. Malls and Chain stores that carry ‘all you need’ are there solely to make money. Don’t be their victim. I know you may think, “Oh, I can just hop in and buy this I don’t HAVE to buy other things” but even if you don’t you are still giving them your money and not the local guy. And if it costs more locally, than don’t buy as much. I know that sounds glib, but I really believe it. Now, don’t get me wrong I know it is hard, but for me, when I do go into a place that has everything you bet I come out with things I would not have bought. I do it all the time. The hardest part for me, and again I sort of tried it originally for  my project to stick to 1955, was not going to HomeGoods and Christmas Tree Shops (any of you from this area will know the lure of Christmas Tree Shops). I would go there as they had house ware cheaper.  Yet, now as I am doing over my house I am finding all this stuff that I have no idea why I ever bought it? Just to buy it? I mean I would just purchase things, as if I were a zombie, I’d walk in the store, fill the cart and handover the money. It is a sort of zombie like existence, but it is so ingrained into our culture you think nothing of it. SO, now instead of an afternoon shopping with the girls, I’d rather stay at home with them and have tea and food I have prepared and we can talk about how we want to decorate or do things with what we have or inexpensively. I still get that same rush (as I love interiors and design) but I am not just aimlessly buying things.

So, anyway, just more of the same thing I guess. And, again, I don’t want to feel as if I am telling people what to do, only what I have discovered and how it has made me feel better and more empowered. Hopefully, even if you think I am a crackpot, you can enjoy my enjoying it!

Well, have a good weekend, and I will see you all on Monday. I have a dinner to prepare and tomorrow, if the weather holds, I will get back to my garden.

Happy Homemaking.

March 1955 "Time Warp Wives Interview"

I am so busy today, rearranging my husbands new study and making room for the dinning room makeover. I will be back with a regular post tomorrow, I promise, but for now you can check out my Time Warp Wives interview by following the link. Just scroll down and it should be open to the page. Enjoy and let me know what you think, I actually haven't read over it yet, if you can believe it, too busy. Until tomorrow, then.

Happy Homemaking!

24 & 25 March 1955 "H.G. Well, Computers, A New Book, Cooking, Decorating and Chickens"

"At last I came under a huge archway and beheld the Grand Lunar exalted on his throne in a blaze of incandescent blue . . . The quintessential brain looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, undulating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within . . . Tiers of attendants were busy spraying that great brain with a cooling spray, and patting and sustaining it . . ."
—H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon

The newest calculating 'brain' was installed in Monsanto Chemical Co.'s St. Louis headquarters. To IBM, it was the "Model 702 Electronic Data Processing Machine." To Monsanto and awed visitors, it was simply "the giant brain." Seated at its control console, a man has at his command the computing ability of 25,000 trained mathematicians.

In just twelve machine-hours the brain will do 1,200 cost reports that normally take 1,800 man-hours; in barely two hours it will complete a financial statement that takes a staff of accountants 320 hours. For Monsanto's chemists it will open up new horizons by rapidly working out complex equations to help discover new products, improve old ones, find out which of dozens of technically "correct" answers' to problems are the best.

[so it begins, the computer. Governments would have probably killed then to have 1/10 of the power that I am using to talk about how to clean your kitchen or make a cake. I hope we can now use our abilites to learn how best to be human so we can go forward with technology the right way. I used to think there was no 'right' way. Things were more subjective. Now, I know the right way is they way of Humans, community, and personal knowledge over endless faceless greed. I want Rosy the robot maid NOT the Terminator!]

I am very excited, as well you all should be, as I just got this in the mail today! I couldn't believe it when I found it on ebay. It is even better than I had hoped. It was published 1951. Just to give you a sample of what great things this book will be teaching us, this book goes into detail addressing the construction of rugs and how to make your own rugs! It is very thorough and I am really excited.There are even before and after shots of redecorating a room. This mingled with the previoius book I had posted about from 1908 will be a great comparrison of that time span and will cover all a 1955 woman would know from her grandmothers time to her 'present'. Be excited, as I am!

Here is my latest cake. I liked the recipe, but it was rather light because I used some squares of an actual chocolate bar instead of baking chocolate, as I normally do, and so it was lighter. My hubby, who does not like very sweet things, really likes it. The frosting is two kinds mixed. I made this new recipe, which was good, but I felt it was too runny, so I made up a batch of my 7-minute frosting (see previous blogs for recipe) and added this to it to make the frosting you see. It made a nice stiff frosting ( if you do make it, though, when you add the two frostings together, add a handful of confectioners sugar then let it sit for a good hour, it will bet a nice stiff consistency. It is a sweet frosting so paired nicely with the more mellow not-to-sweet cakes. It is nice to have a dessert always going, as vintage friend popped in last night as we were sitting down to dessert and I could dish her up a piece and a cupa and it was lovely.

This was a nice sidedish I just tried. I, of course, always have potatos in the house. There are some lovely ways to make them in my Boston Cooking School book from 1951. These were really good and I thought very 1950s as they have both a cream sauce AND pimentos in. It was yummy.
This is the white sauce recipe you use with the potato dish. I love what is says here: "Learn to make a perfect white sauce, not only for itself but because it is the basis of many sauces."
I am beginning to get to that point where I see cooking not as a bunch of random recipes, but a skill-set that you build up and then build out on. My attempts in the kitchen are beginning to result in my making up my own recipes. Last night I wanted to make a Ham and Cheese Souffle' but only had a recipe for a cheese souffle, so I began to think about what it takes to make a souffle rise and how it works and realized chunks of ham would not cut it. SO, I say my blender and it hit me, puree! So into the blender when the bits of ham I had diced and slices of sharp cheese and I just poured in what seemed the right amount of milk and ta-dah! This went into the other parts of the souffle. I will show pics and more of that tomorrow, now here is a picture of the original Pork Shoulder that I cooked with the above potate dish. It was so good. I slow cooked it for a few hours and basted it with, what else, brown sugar and syrup glaze. This is a bone in pork shoulder and I really prefer it to the precooked smoked boneless pre-cut hams. It cooks nicer and juicer and and you get so much more bang for your buck. I believe this 8 lb pork shoulder cost me around $7.00 on sale. We have had it for this meal. Then it went into two lunches for hubby, last night I used part of it to make my ham and cheese souffle and today the bone and the remainder of the meat will go into a bot to boil. From that I will get some great soup to eat and freeze and before it is a soup, I will take a cup or two of the stock and freeze that for future use. This is the kind of 'freezer' use I like. I really get so much out of one cut of meat. ALso, having the bone in is important. Any good chef will tell you that the meat and a stock and soup are only improved by having the bone in. The marrow and such add greatly to the taste. The skin being left on also really helps seal in the juices and I like scoring it. True, it looks like a pigs skin, because IT IS. I just feel, as I have said before, almost more honest about my food when it is in this form. Almost as if I am respecting the animal in a way by saying, yes you were alive and now you are going to feed my family. But, you know, we homemakers often have a running dialogue in our heads! Also the dogs LOVE this crispy skin. I will cut it up into strips and bake it crispy and the dogs love it AND they are cheaper than dog treats and I know there are no preservatives in.

This concept of really using as much of an animal is really part of my trying not to waste. I bought some lovely cow heart on sale yesterday. I saw it and it was only .70 cents so I bought two packages. I knew there had to be recipes for these in my cookbook and there are. I just think, why let this part of the animal go into the dumpster. We killed the thing, at least have the decency to eat as much of it as we can! I love organ meats, kidney liver brains etc, but I do not know if I have ever had the heart. So, it will be exciting to see what it tastes like. Some people might think "Ick the heart" but honestly, should we just throw away bits of the animal because we think they might be icky? They might not, and why not NOT waste MORE? What do any of you think? Have any of you had heart befor? I Adore sweetbreads and we know that is brain, but if you have never had it made properly in a french restaurant, you don't know what you are missing. There was actually a great little french restaurant tucked away in a basement in Boston that had the best sweetbreads. But, now I can simply try to make them myself. But, then when I do use the 'restaurant budget' you can bet it will be for something good, I mean I can make hamburgers, or whatever at home, I am only going to eat out now if I know I can have very well prepared foods beyond my own current skill level.

Now, onto some decorating:

Dorothy Draper gives us this advice for ceilings and wallpaper.

"As you select your wall paper it's a good time to decide aobut your ceiling. If you don't wnat to paper it, the ceiling can match the background color of the paper.Or it can match a dominant color in the pattern of the paper. For instance, in a room hung with flowered paper the ceiling might match the pink of the roses or the pale green of their leaves."

I know wallpaper is definitely having a renaissance right now, and brava or bravo, not sure what gender wallpaper is! Anyway, I have never ever hung wallpaper before, but I am determined to use it in my decorating scheme.Have any of you ever hung paper before? What am I getting myself into?

Aren't these dreamy wallpapers? I know I could never afford them, though I am writing to find out. They are from SecondHandRose in NYC. They are actual vintage papers NOT reproductions. I think if I paid alot for them, I might be scared that I would ruin them, but it is fun to dream. I am sure I can find some things that are similiar new.

I know this paper seems rather silly, but I ADORE it. I really want it for my first floor poweder room! I wanted to do it over in grey and pink. I already have a lovely silver accented mirror in there and could just see this in there along the top of a half wall of lucious pink tile! YES, I said PINK TILE! I know, but living in 1955 you really begin to have such lovely doll house fantasy's of pink! And, if you see, it still fits with my overall home scheme. The pink and red in the warm color, the touches of the blue I love in the plants and you can see the shades of brown and tan in some of the fish and everyroom whould have some black to ground it as this paper demonstrates. Have any of you paper in your bath and if so, how does it hold up. This would be for a powder room, so it is not as if peopel would be showering or taking long baths in there. [Addendum: I just recieved an email and this paper is $200.00 a roll! Wow, I think reproduction will have to do. That is out of my budget, plus now I am really going to try and redo this place with fleamarket, local thrift sale finds, the free dump shop, some paint fabric and cheaper wall paper and of course my 1955 Homemaking powers of creativity and ingenuity!

Speaking of the dump. I mentioned our dump as a great 'swap shop' where you drop off things you don't want but SHOULDN'T throw out. After all, one mans garbage IS another man's treasure. So, here is my hubby this past Sunday playing with his new free toy. It is a great early 1960s typewriter and it is truly portable. He already has visions of sitting in a chair in the yard, pipe in mouth with this little devil typing away. Free things...how fine, indeed.

Isn't this 1876 Copeland creamware dreamy?! The colors are wonderful. I am not sure if any of you noticed my french chair upholsterd in orange in one of my photos, but this would be perfect with that fabric.

I am certainly not in the market to spend on such things, but a gal can dream can't she. AND, if you are going to buy something precious that you don't NEED but just WANT, make it something with some intrinsic value because then you can always 'sell it off to uncle when your in need of some stumpy' as they say. You can find bargains. My 'good china' which is bought mostly due to is having my favorite blue in it, was not expensive, as I got it marked down at a sale in an old antique store, but as a set it could be sold for more than I paid for it, if I needed to.Or, if you have children, the joy of having things that were passed down is priceless. I know I have things that are not terribley costly that were, my grandfathers, but becuase of that, they are all the more precious to me. I think this idea of something you care for and have your whole life and leave to your children, is sort of missing a little today as well. Unless you are really wealthy, most things people buy today are throw-away. Yet, what we pay for computers today would certainly have been an expense our ancestors would have put onto somthing of real value that you could still own. I doubt lil Tommy will be happy to see in the will that he gets Nana's black and white 386 laptop. I know our modern technology can't but help be throw away, but I wonder, if you are not into video games with your computer, could we stop buying new computers now, at the current stage of technology, as they can handle graphics of youtube and Hulu, and are fine for emails, blogging an such. Could we honestly stop at some point. When I say, we, I mean anyone who thinks, you know, this computer is fast enough and cutting edge enough for me. I don't want to stop progress, but I also want to think for my family when is enough technology. Wait until computers are screenless or whatever space-age future they have and then buy a new one.
I really want to take my computer I have now and turn it into a sort of 'vintage look' with wood I can polish etc. There is a movement now of people who do this, called Steampunk. I guess I would want mine to be more Eams meets early american.

I was thinking today, no surprise there, that I really seem to come to this cross-roads everyday: What is ME and what is the character Me in 1955?

This project has just become so engrained, enmeshed into my life, that I often find myself confronting a new idea with a question, "wait, would I want to do that in 1955?"

Then I have to say to myself, "Look, Self"(housewives have often, intimate, and sometimes heated debate with themselves!) "You do not want to just try and be some one-dimensional 'character' or 'art piece' of what you think a woman in your circumstances in 1955 would do. You want to take on the aspects and ideas of her world and then see what YOU would do."

Case in point: I am now the proud owner of some chickens. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. The amount of eggs I go through is incredible, and I love the sound of the Rooster (though we have to make sure the ole' boy is locked away at night as he wakes up hubby and presumably some of the neighbors!)

So, I put to myself, "well, here I am a middle-class homemaker in 1955. My husband works in the city. We live in the country/suburbs. There is abundance everywhere, but I was a young lady during WWII. I know what rationing is and may therefore still have the habits of that time as well."

You see, I worry if I am trying to justify things that might seem like an ecological/safe or green thing to do know with what my 'character' would do in 1955. It is true keeping a garden and chickens certainly became suburban practice in the 1940's, but would I have worried about what the bridge club thought?

Then, I go one step further in this line of resoning ( My conversations with myself often go on for a long time, I am rather long-winded with myself!)"Honestly, I am not a character." I say, " I am a person and I really think the concepts, morays and ideals I am picking up are true to the time period and earlier and might seem like the 'in thing or green thing' now, only because we lost our way along that path somewhere. What seems like a modern 'green' concept, is really just natural living in 1955"

My point is this: Here I wanted to sort of make a character to portray to myself in order to experience history at first hand as possible. Now, the things I am learning are becoming such a part of me that I do not always see them as some character-set. This project has forced me to really face myself in the mirror and try to separate project from whom I thought I was. I realize, now, that only the project is forcing me to do somthing that we all SHOULD and will do:evaluate our life.

We are confronted daily with a barrage of information and physical stimuli. We are told what to eat, when to eat it, where to buy it, how much to pay etc. Overload of info at every street corner and we take it all in stride, but really it can often silence that voice in our head which tells us who we really are or what we would like to strive to be. Although, I am not truly in 1955, in some way I have shut off some of those voices. I no longer watch tv and that is a big distraction. The tv silences that voice in your head that tells you, "Hey, what are you doing GO LIVE YOUR LIFE, this is it, don't waste it tryin to decide what toothpaste to buy or if joe or sue are going to be the next american idol".

I also no longer read modern magazines. This, at first, I didn't really think about. Now, however, when I go to a modern bookstore, there are SO MANY MAGAZINES. Everything has a magazine. It is another way to separate out little bits of who we might be. An entire book on just kitchens for example. When I read my magazines and my homemakers manuals, they cover EVERYTHING in one book or issue. You can literally learn how to strip a chair down to its base, refoam and wire it etc. There was a certain level of ability that was just expected of you as a human being then, that now is almost gone. Think of the layers of skill we no longer use. Even cooking. It is not really that hard. Yet, we zombie ourselves to the store, buy prepared foods, pop it in the food heater (micro) and eat it in front of the tv while it tells us what better frozen meal to buy next. I know I know, another rant and all because of chickens!

I also now only listen to music before and up to 1950s. This at first, I thought, would be hard. I certainly think there are alot of great modern musicians out there. I adore Joanna Newsome, and I thought, "This will be hard". But what I have found is not that I listen to the same amount of music, but replace it with'oldies', but that, in fact, there are hours that go by in the day where I listen to nothing. I can be in my little sitting room having my afternoon 'homemaker break' with a cup of tea and a book and it is quiet. The dogs rustle in their heap of blankets. The parakeet rings its little bell, maybe the rooster crows. But, it is silence. It is as if I can hear the actual voice in my head.

The endless need for sound and visual stimuli has become such a normal part of modern society that I had not realized it until it was all shut off. I have to say, I really like silence. Now, I would probably go mad with it all the time, but I can see if I were in 1955 and I had children who would watch tv and such in the evening, during the day while they were at school, you could see how this would be a time of bliss for the homemaker. I think someone my age, too, would not have succumbed to the soap operas. I would have grown up without tv and of course had radio, but I would have had alot of freedom to use my imagination. I would have craved the silence during the day. Even in the grocery stores and such there is always music. One aspect I am upset about our little local store that I will be doing my marketing at next week, is since the renovated they added a flatscreen tv to the wall over the newspaper rack. WHY? It just sits there spewing 'news' over the printed news. This was not here last summer and this is a genuine old store. Crooked wooden floors, old shelves with canned goods individually priced with now scan bars, but now A flat screen tv? And they have taken away some of the seating where many locals would sit and chat over coffee or have a good town gossip, now what? Are we suppose to stand there and watch the news instead of converse? Very odd, indeed.

Even toys, which are really a big business growing in 1950s, begin to give the distraction to kids. To prepare them for the noise and information of adulthood and really on some level, take away a little of their silence.

As a child in the Depression, I would of had very little in the way of toys. Even if I were still staunchly middle class, I would have had nice dolls and miniture tea sets, surely, but that is most likely it. I would have had a freedom to go and run and be free that is no longer available to children. Even, during the 1950s, this was being discussed. The new generation of children were not given the freedom of their parents. Perhaps it was the war that scared the new mothers. Watching a child leave the house could feel as if they never would come back. I do know that I have no children now and we have no plan for any, but this is the point in my life where I have most thought about possibly having one. However, now I am not sure what I would do. I do not think I could raise my child completley in the modern world. Would it be unfair to the child, as he would then possibly not relate to others because of it, like Branded Frasier in that movie where he was raised in a bomb shelter completely free from modern norms. I used to not even think there was any big deal with video games, but now I cannot honestly say that I would even let him know they existed until he discovered them at a friends house, but I would want him to learn to play and create on his own first. SO, perhaps it is good we do not have children, maybe I would warp the poor thing into some sad vintage human who was self-reliant but unable to communicate with others as he who have no modern pop-references or know how to play video games. I have to hand it to all of you parents out there, how do you make the decisions on how to create and grow your child?

So, trying to get back to my main point: I am not a character, but a real person. I do not really live in 1955, but am trying to recreate as much of it as possible in so doing I am closing out alot of the 'modern world' and that is making me open my eyes, hear my own voice, and become, I hope, a better person. IF not better, at least someone I can respect.

Now, when I look in a book that says I can reupholster a chair, make a souffle', build a bookcase, make a rug, and also look pretty for my husband AND myself I don't think, "They were crazy back then." but "Oh, okay, I will try that tomorrrow and the next day add one more thing to that."

Life is for living not just watching.

I could see how I can come off as some sort of 'conspiracy theroist' when I make such statements as "THEY don't want you to entertain yourself" or "THEY don't want you to be skilled enough to make your own dress, your own rug and curtains and lampshades, do your own nails, grow your own food, etc" But, honestly, if we all learned to do HALF of what is in my latest Homemakers Handbook, we would spend alot less money by merely making things ourselves and wouldn't need the latest tv because we would be so busy living our lives and adding to our skills that we would laugh at the idea, "What? Sit in front of that thing for hours watching someone else live their life? I have jam to put up, I am braiding these rags from the ragbag to make a rug for the front hall, and I have to make a cake for the local charity, No thank you".

Have you wondered why reality tv is so big? It is because now it is allowing you to vicariously "LIVE" through others. It gives you the perception of whatever the life is they are portraying, all while you sit down and consume more products! I know, I did it.

I have found so far that when I come upon somthing that I think is going to be too hard or is a bit scary [like I am a little scared next week about only shopping local and keeping to my budget] that once I do the thing I find it was not hard but challenging and learning.I was actually a little worried about not getting to shop at my Stop and Shop (grocery store chain on the east coast) next week for my food. Then I just said to myself, "Self (see, you have to really sit yourself down somtimes and have a good heart to heart) Self," I said,"Stay in your dollar amount budget. If you have to buy LESS food, then so what? Make what you have stretch to fill the week. We are just so tricked into thinking that we have to have SO much around us and it is so easy to just pop down to the store and use our debit or credit card and just get 'a quick meal', when really we are spending more than we need to! Case closed. We buy too much. You cetainly would have had less in 1944 then 1955, so I just figure I will have to make do with what is in my icebox and my pantry next week.
When you do your own cooking you realize how meals are actually put together. You can see that if you are low on somthing or you have leftovers you know how to make it stretch and make it into a new meal. I honestly believe this very basic skill of cooking so so important to the money saving of the majority of America and yet there is no push nor need to learn it. Why is it required to read Dickens in school but not learn how to make three basic meals?

So, fianlly (I know I am like a rollercoaster of rant) back to my very original point: The Chickens. I don't know if A middle class homemaker in 1955 would have had chickens, but I know THIS middle class homemaker of the new 1955 does.

After hubby left this morning, I took my pile of scraps and a bucket of water and headed out to the little darlings. At the end of each day there is alwasy something that I won't give the dogs and won't make it for 'leftovers' that goes in a little bowl, "for the chickens'. In this way, not only am I making less garbage, but I am putting it into an animal that then uses it to produce that wonderful perfect ingredient for cooking: THE EGG. There is a feeling of connection when I do this. Again, maybe it is all the time I spend with myself thinking too much, but I stroll out (today it was bitterly cold) with my little bowl. Sometimes the dogs follow me, today they chose to stay bundled up in blankets. I pull open the door to their house and they come rushing out; the cluck cluck of their 'good-morning' and the confidence of the rooster. I open the door to their run and they come up to me, for I am the bringer of wonderful table scraps. Today they had the leftover pancakes (some of which went to the dogs as well) and the end of my romaine lettuce. A few green beans that didn't get eat last night. Then, there is that magical moment, when I go into the chicken house and see, in perfect little circular nests ( I swear they make honest to goodness perfect little nests out of the hay I give them. I don't use straw, I think it is too picky, and the hay smells so wonderful) lay the eggs. Like magic, there they sit waiting to be made into souffles and breakfasts and yummy cakes. How distanced we have come from our food.

I know not everyone can have chickens where they live, but you would be surprised that people even in the city, keep chickens. I guess it is a new thing that many people are trying to lift the bans in their cities to allow them to keep chickens (just hens NO roosters, as you know you don't need a rooster, but ours was an accident and so I am gonna keep him. I actually thought of eating him, but I really think he does a good job of protecting my gals) If any of you have the land or the opportunity, go for it! If you don't like it there are ALWAYS people looking for good laying hens. The satisfaction from watching these pets that provide for you table is worth it ten-fold and their feed is quite cheap especially when supplemented with your table scraps.

So, I am not telling anyone what to do or how to live their life, there is plenty of that IN your life already, but even if just for one day, turn off the tv the radio, grab an old book (no modern magazines) and see what you hear inside. Think, "what if this were my everyday? Would I go batty without my show. I need to watch this or that. I don't want to not have distraction!" See what all that noise is really hiding. I think when someone cannot live without distraction, they are trying to silence something in them. Just listen to that something, it might be the real you screaming to get out and live.

Well, that is my rant for today.
Until tomorrow, happy homemaking, and listen to your inner voice, it might be trying to get your attention.

22 March 1955 "Closed for Gardening, Open for Discussion"

I am half way through a blog post, but know if I spend anymore time on it today I will not get out to the yard as I had promised myself.

My veg garden needs some attention. Besides the basic turning of the soil and prepaing the area, there are leaves to be raked and I have to move some plants to go

with my over all new landscape scheme. There will be a new fence and gate (made by yours truly) surronding this area and some new permamnent plantings (possibly a grape arbor).

I have to get my beets, onion sets and snow peas in today!

So, enjoy your sunday and maybe you could share with me some of your gardening tips, stories, ideas, questions etc. I would love to know anything about vintage gardening if anyone has any tips and also maybe stories of parents and grandparents gardening or perhaps hating gardening.

Have a great day and enjoy your weather where ever you are. I will be back tomorrow with a post. I will most likely pop my head in time to time to see if anyone has commented. It might be a fun all gardening day for all! If you are trapped in the city in a small space, live vicariously!

Happy planting.

23 March 1955 "Middle East, a New Bread Pudding, Kedgeree, and a challange!"

Convertible Boat. A steel, all-purpose boat that looks like a shallow square box on pontoons has been developed by Trail-Craft Corp. of Clarksburg, W. Va. Designed for use with an outboard motor, the boat weighs 230 lbs., can carry 750 Ibs. as a trailer, and also converts into a tent for four, a duck blind, a wading pool, a swimming raft. Price (including tent top and four cots): $324.50. (I love that this one even has fins!)

The Central Treaty Organization (also referred to as CENTO, original name was Middle East Treaty Organization or METO, also known as the Baghdad Pact) was adopted in 1955 by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1955, at the urging of the U.S. and Britain, to counter the threat of Soviet expansion into the Middle East. CENTO was never very effective. Iraq withdrew after its anti-Soviet monarchy was overthrown in 1959.(It was dissolved in 1979.) [We see the beginning of that middle east rumble. Also the Saudi Arabian Rulers are gaining in power and money as their hold of oil begins to become the shinning beacon of power for our countries production of everything from gas to all the increasing plastics and other pertroleum products. It is amazing to me how so much of EVERY aspect of our daily life is somehow connected to petroleum. The plastics in just the computer I am now using are all possible due to it. We are so deeply entrenched, it can sometimes be rather scary to me.]

Now, let's hop right into the kitchen:

Here is the recipe I used as the base for my 'leftover cake pudding'. I had a yellow cake mix in my pantry from pre 1955 that I had forgot about and decided to make early this week. I wanted to 'jazz it up' so I added coconut and chocolate chips to the mix and then coconut on top so it would toast as it baked. It was good but hardly a contender with my other homemade goodies about (see cherry pie recipe in previous blog!) so for tonights dinner I thought, hey that leftover cake would make an interesting 'bread pudding'. I used only 1/4 cup brown sugar, as it is already sweet as it is cake. I put less raisins in and sprinkled extra cinnamon on top. I also whisked all the ingredients save the cake and then cut the cake into little squares and lined my casserole dish. Then I poured in the mixture over that and sort of mixed it and setteled it until it looked pretty, topped it with a sprinkle of cinnamon and popped it in the oven. Oh, and I (surprise surprise) drizzled maple syrop on the top half way through baking. I think if I had to go to a desert island I would need to take bacon and maple syrup, they seem to play a large role in my life.

It was funny, though, as we really didn't like or eat up the box cake, it just wasn't up to snuff compared to what I make homemade (if I can toot my own horn) but taking it and using it in a new form of a homemade recipe was such a hit. My hubby isn't really a fan of sweet, but he loved this! He said it was the best, cold in the morning as a snack as he waited for our Saturday breakfast. I am definitely going to grab some cake mixes the next time they are on sale to experiment with some various versions of this 'busy gal bread pudding' as I am calling it! Vintage friend and I were already dreaming up a version with carrot cake as the base! I think I feel a challange coming on to perfect a cream cheese/whipped cream for that one!

Ahh, the smell of my chicken boling for the homemade stock and the warm fragrance of this pudding in the kitchen was heaven. This is why I don't think I would want to do the cook for a month that hairball had mentioned some people do. I would miss that daily cooking smell. Honestly, I don't know how I lived without it before. It does make a gal want to 'feather her nest'.

Now, back to the smell of chicken boiling away. I had this recipe I wanted to try.

It is from my Boston Cooking School vintage cook book. I love the name, as if you know french, poulette translates to pullet which is a female chicken or a hen. So this is basically chicken chicken. Anyhoo, I am a jeune poulette (spring chicken) when it comes to cooking. I had some chicken thighs, which I really love. They are always so expensive as most people prefer the white meat. The juicyness AND the cost of thighs make them a favorite for me to use.

This is the sauce that goes with this recipe. Simple to make and I like adding another sauce to my repetoire. My French is a little shaky, but I think Veloute means 'to soften' not sure. (Any french speakers want to help me out with that translation?)

This presentation is not the best, I actually dressed it up with some greens, but it was really delicious. I squeezed fresh lemon on it just before serving it and though I had intended the leftovers to go into hubby's lunch come monday, he squirreled this away to his den on Saturday for a snack. I think he is really getting into my cooking! I would defnitely recommend it and plan on trying many of the other chicken/sauce dishes in that cook book.

Now, if any of you have had a good English breakfast you will have had Kedgeree. It is actually scottish. It is usually made with curry powder and I think that is because the scottish took it with them to India and it became what it is today due to that. Any English/Scottish readers can correct me on any of this. Anyway, I love eating it and found this recipe for it in the same Boston Cooking School cook book from early 1950's. I did not have any curry, so it did not have that taste, so I suppose it was sort of pre-Anglo/Indian. It was good none-the-less. It would be wonderful with fresh salmon, but I had a can of Mackeral that I wanted to try. I have to say, for canned fish, it was rather yummy. And served warm with the rice and boiled eggs on toast with fresh grilled tomatos (another English breakfast treat) it was quite fine. My hubby loved it. (do excuse the wrinkles in my linen. I put it on fresh that day and had not got to it in my ironing pile.) I have to say, fish and tomatos are really good at breakfast time. If you have not tried it, go for it. It is a nice filling start to a busy day, or a lazy day off too!

Here is what I wore this Saturday to our Vintage Dinner. It was vintage friends turn to cook, so I enjoyed having saturday off from making dinner. She made a wonderful roast and a great vegetable dish from my new campbells soup recipe book I illustrated on an earlier post. She did the eggplant dish (recipe is on previous post) and I loved it. She also made a lovely banana cream pie in her first made from scratch pie crust. It was delicious and I KNOW she loved making it. We had our usual fun and watched a Vincet Price movie 'The Tingler'. It was rather silly, though meant to be scary. I love Vincent Price films, and though this was from 1958, I still watched it. The womens dresses were wonderful and there is a dressing gown in it that I have to copy for myself.

I often come across many fun little ads when perusing my magazines. They are the intersting little black and white ads, with say 10 to a page. They often show an interesting element of the time. They offer up another level, or layer of you will, of the time. I somtimes feel like an archaeoligist of pop culture, combing through my old mags and peeling back another layer of society through what they may have sent for with their pin money from the 'kitchen money jar'.

Here is a great one, for a 'phony phone' which is in fact a usuable flashlight for safety, but disguised as a car phone. I would imagine to have a car phone in 1950s you would need to be quite wealthy or high up in the government. I wonder how many people had these? I bet they were recieved as fun 'dad' Christmas gifts with a laugh!
I am not sure if visors do not yet exist, or if this is just another attempt at one. I makes me think of the invention in the Steve Martin movie ( I know, it doesn't exist for me yet!) The Jerk, when he invents that eye glass holder that makes you cross-eyed (boss-eyed). I wonder how many stockings recieved these little lovlies for mummy on the course love Johnny and Susie, or somthing along those lines.

I like this ad for both pointing out another piece of evidence of women working in trousers, as well as showing how tight women wore their trousers then. Though, I suppose, many women recalling the 1940's would still have and wear loose trousers. I think these were more for work, biking, gardening etc. I love that the ad encourages you to buy and wear these toreador pants because it is safe, it reads:

"safe, yes, because so many home accidents are caused by tripping over a skirt hem! Save your skirts for streetwear!"

Sometimes these little ads speak volumes. They give a segment of the times that is sometimes telling of our own. This ad, for example, for this board to make it safe for your child in the back seat. I am sure at first viewing of it, as I did, you almost gasp! You think, "How could they just leave their children to sit freely in the cars". It does make you realize how much legislation has gone thru for 'safety'. Now, I am not saying it is safer to not have a child in a car seat, but how did the people back then survive? We often act as if we, in the present, have a monopoly on how things should be done or the right way to do a thing. Certainly, there are more cars today, maybe driving faster etc, but I wonder how many accidents their were with children in cars then? It would be interesting to find out.

These ads also sort of confront us with another current issue: our garbage and waste. In this little snippet about various labor saving deviced for the home, it states "doesn't it seem we have more garbage to dispose of today then we used to?" Simply stated to promote this new type of garbage burner. Yet, how loaded is that statement! In is then that so many pre-packaged goods are coming out. And boy, oh boy, hold on, because the level of packaging you will have in the future kids, you would not believe. I don't know if these are still legal today. I imagine if you are just burning trash that is animal, vegetable and packaging that is just paper, it wouldn't matter. But, did they burn plastic? I imagine it was starting to show up on some products. Then, there is this ad. I am not sure, but I think this might actually be a precurser to the composting bin. I do recall that in the 'old days' people used to bury their garbage. But, what did they have for garbage in say 1900? Old clothes that were beyond reuse, maybe old shoes beyond repair, tin cans and bones? Isn't it amazing the amount of throw away we actually have today. Just the junk mail in my mailbox is insane! Does anyone remember what sort of garbage you had if you were around in the 1950s? Did you have a dump you went to, or garbage pick up? It is all very telling and interesting

Finally, I keep badgering on and on about shopping local etc, so I thought, maybe I could prepose a project for any of you who would like to participate. What if for one week we said, only buy local? JUST for one week. When you need anything (even gas or oil change) try to go to a local place. It might be intersting don't you think? We can see what has been completely removed from our communities, like perhaps you no longer have a butcher or a baker locally, only in your chain grcoery store, if you do have one or try looking one up, go try it out and see what it was like. Did you like it? was it too expensive? How did it feel compared to just popping in and getting everything in one place etc. So, what do you think? Should we try it? Let me know. I prepose we start next monday if anyone is game.

I often feel as if I am at the university of Home and so, if we are learning, then let us make this an assignement. Let me know if you want to try it out. Next monday we will start. It will be hard, I know, as I will not be doing my weekly grocery shopping at my local Stop and Shop, but we do have a new place that just reopenend that has some groceries etc. Even for an oil change, no jiffy lube but the local guys garage. Let me know if anyone wants to try this challange with me. I think it could be fun and a great learning experience.

Until tomorrow: Happy Homemaking.

19 March 1955 "Advertising, Savings, Interiors, Bulk Buying, and Fashion"

ADVERTISING spending is still climbing at a rapid pace, reports Advertising Age. In 1954 the 60 top ($10 million or better) U.S. and Canadian agencies billed $2.2 billion in ads, a 10% increase over 1953. Four U.S. advertising agencies cracked the $100 million mark. [And so it begins. The money pours into the propaganda machine, hold on tight 20th century, your in for a long and controlling ride!]

ROBERT R. YOUNG won his fight to keep Allegheny Corp. out of reach of the Securities & Exchange Commission's strict regulations. The Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that Alleghany, which controls the New York Central railroad, is a railroad carrier coming under its more flexible rules, thus overriding SEC, which had contended that Alleghany was an investment company. [Here we begin to see the game being played by the growing corporation. Through a loop-hole in that the corp. controls the entire NYC railroad system, it is able to not be guided under the stricter guidelines of the S.E.C.]

I promised to scan the whole of the 1950's childrens book on savings, so here it is:

They say "familiarity breeds contempt", but in my yearning for vintage design, I am finding it quite the opposite. Out of all the various trials I have had in trying to stay 'true' to 1955, the one constant has been magazines. I have had slip ups of course: Thousand dollar microwave use, swiffer etc, and so on and then in the realization, corrected it and also learned my modern dependency on the item. The one aspect that has been purely 100% (so far) 1950s for me has been magazines and books.

I have not, even once yet, touched a book or magazine later than the 50s (sometimes a magazine from 56-59 slips in but never even 1960). So, by having only seen these magazines about interiors and the home (the type of modern magazine I enjoyed reading before my trip to 1955) it has begun to affect my taste. My esthetic has changed somewhat, in regards to 1950s interiors.

I have always collected vintage magazines. The last couple of years I had really begun to find myself "into" the 1950s, where before I had adored the early magazines of pre WWI. Perhaps it was the precurser to this project. I naturally am drawn to magazines on the home, decorating and gardening and their ilk. However, I never really had much but disdain or a passing apalled gasp when vieweing mid-century interiors. However, I am finding myself (especially with my current pile of 1951-54 House Beautifuls) to find things I may have otherwise considered horrendous, "normal" or even somthing to aspire to or that I might try in my own interiors. While I had every intention of trying various 1950's deocrating ideas, it was mostly for the project. Now, I am actually finding myself drawn to the design esthetic.

This, of course, has got me thinking. Again I am finding another element of my personality (my esthetic taste) being questioned.

Taste. What we are drawn too, obviously, is highly affected by what we are shown. I no longer can, nor do I, watch modern design shows. I read no modern magazines. My continuing 'taste' in decor and design now can only be formed from the 1950s. Now I am finding when I see a wallpaper or a even, yes, wood panelling, from this era in my magazines, I no longer recoil. It, like ads for girdles, have just become 'normal' to my viewing.

This brought up two points for me:

The first: I am beginning to see a certain beauty and element to which I am drawn in these 1950s interiors. It is really enticing me to redo the whole house and furnishings.

The second: Oh, my god! The same thing is happening to me in 1955! I am succumbing to advertising. Is this because the 1950s is really when this is beginning? Or, is it because, as a modern woman, I am transferring my modern desire to covet and want what I see in a magazine simply now being transferred to these new 'tastes'? (Perhaps I just thing to much, but I am a homemaker and I am training my mind to a razor sharp decision maker and evaluator.)

I want to make over this house. I want to make it feel the way I wish it to feel. But, is my wanting to change and have a 'new style' to go along with the project for the project, or is it just another aspect of the old me wanting to spend and redo?

It is becoming harder to separate my conditioning from the real me. Who IS the real me? I also don't want to get bogged down in the other thing I fear: that sort of delusion of phsychotherapy where you are left evaluating yourself so much you just end up obsessed with YOU and only thinking about how YOU feel or what makes YOU happy.

It is at this point that I channel my 1955 self.

I tell myself, "alright, you made it thru WWII and the Depression, don't worry about YOU so much. If you want to change the house to make you feel more 'connected' to your work place AND to make it more efficeint to live frugally, then just do it! Don't over-analyize! If you can't afford something, take somthing you have and repaint it or decopage it. Make your life happy and comfortable within the reason of your funds and move on. This will give you time to worry more about what you can do to become more a part of your neighborhood rather than wasting time on if you can find wallpaper to match the drapes!"

This IS important to me: my home and my interior and how I decorate and live. But, don't make it become an excuse to fall into the habit of the 21st. century. Do what a 1955 housewife could ONLY do. Live within your means. I know you could 'charge' things back then, but it was not really common. Take what you have and make it different and better and only buy here and there to supplement it. Also, try to buy actual vintage that is sturdy and worth more in that if it is still around, it is probably fairly well made.

This is the balance I am beginning to strike.

I am beginning to see my 1955 personna as a sort of 'symbol' I can call upon. Let us hope I don't end up with multiple personalities! Really she has become more of a Jimminy Cricket character for me, or the angel on my shoulder. After all she has been through a war and a depression, so she knows hardship!

So, with that said, I thought I would share some of the images of different designs in my magazines. You may find them hideous due to your own living in the modern world. Maybe they look like 'grandmas' house. Any way, I am responding to them, either good or bad, and thought you might like to see them.

This is an ad for Heywood-wakefield furniture which was actually quite well made and I somtimes come across such pieces at sales and antique shops. It often is rather inexpensive, as most people don't consider it worth collecting. I love the almost 'doll house' like quality of the line. It has a rustic simplicity mingled with a modern esthetic that seemed unique to this time. What once looked like a bad hotel to me, now seems to have charm and warmth. If you saw the post I did where I found the top of a china cabinet, you will see how similiar it is to the bottom picture in the dinning room. Mine will end up in the breakfast room, either in its orignal wood or painted.

I like the daring of this room. I am also, since 1955, beginning to view pink as an actual choice for interiors. I used to loathe it and found it to twee. Here I think it is treated in a nice way and I like how the pattern on the ceiling is carried into the draperies. There is a sort of calm organized maturity to these rooms. There is never too many 'things' and each item seem well thought out. I find this 'decorating' less 'overdone' than many modern ways of decorating (21st century I mean)

Though I don't, myself, really respond to this green (having live in the 1980's I am still shell shock from all the Forest Green) the concept of the design is good. I like that the fabric on the sofas is bold and that the series of paintings over the mantle share not frame styles but the color. I think that grey-white painted frame is quintessential 1950s. I am really growing to love it and I am sure by the end of the year, some of my non-antique frames will be recieving some such paint affect.

I really like this room. I like the color. I like that the calm of the room is the result of minimal amounts of color. I think a room can be too matchy, but here, for me it works. Another thing I now like that I used to make fun of, is that froth of sheer curtain at the window. You often see it in movies of the 40s and 50s. I really think I want some. This is a great example of taking a bunch of disparedged garage sale finds, giving them all a lick of paint, and suddenly you have a pleasing set of furntiure. I would use more artwork on the wall, but again, less seems to be more in these instances.

This is one of my latest acquistions. It cost me the whopping amount of $5.00. I bought it at my favorite little antique shop. The woman said, "well the frame is really nice and worth more than that" to which I replied, "oh, the picture is staying in there."

This blue is the perfect color to my bedroom which is this blue and deep brown. She will hang in my corner next my dressing table. I will post a photo when she is in her new home. Isn't she adorable. I might have thought this too sweet once, but now find it the perfect boudoir pic. When I see it, it just makes me smile. Perhaps I see myself at my own dressing table, waiting for a big evening in the city.

Now, onto cooking.
I thought I would share a little experiment I made yesterday. I keep coming across various recipes with advertising for pie crust. Each claims the recipe ONLY works with their particular brand, which of course I do not believe. Yesterday I made a pie with this recipe. I have cut out and enlareged the directions as well as leaving the whole ad in tact. I do not think they make this type of shortening any longer, so I just used my store brand.

It was a very quick and easy recipe.
The result was really nice. (that is cinnamon on the crust not burnt) It does not compare with my homemade pastry that uses lard and ice cold water, but it was fast and delicious. I explained the flavor as having a definite homemade taste, but more like the 50's diner we go to, where I know they make their own pie. It was flaky and nice, but not like my old fashioned recipe. I would recommend it and it is great in a pinch for homemade taste and feel ( I mean it is homemade) but when you don't want to take the time to properly cut the flour into the lard. It rolled out quickly and was much like sugar cookie dough.

To make it more of a 'quick busy day' recipe, I used a can of canned cherries (which I would never use, but someone had given me a can for some reason.) I added to this a can of whole canned cranberries. It was easy and made a nice tart/sweet pie. It served beautifully and hubby enjoyed it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. There is a piece in his lunch today as well.

I found an interesting article in my 1954 House Beautiful entitled: "What is a woman's time worth?" At first I thought it would be an article pointing out the hard work and efforts of a homemaker. But, on further reading, I found it to fit with my ongoing look into the subtle manipulation that is to become the modern consumming we endulge in today.

The article is pointing out the positive of doing all your grocery shopping in one day for the whole month. They compare your spending $300 to $500 a month as an investment kin to the ease of owning a washing machine! You only buy the machine once, but they go on with various ways to 'persuade' you to this type of shopping.

They point out the following:

"Any good domestic worker knows she can get from $50 to $60 for her 40-hour work week. [that is $350-$420 a week now] 40 hours doesn't begin to suffice for all we have to do around the home. SO, if we can save eight hours a week why wouldn't we?"

This is article the goes on to say:

"Having a variety of food on hand gives us freedom to do the kind of imaginative cooking we have always wanted to try.

Having a lot of food on hand in all stages of readiness is also very calming. For you can provide for any unexpected situation, whatever it may be."

I really think they are beginning to really prey on that feeling many would still have remembering the shortages of the war. And the idea that doing a large shop all at once for the month with every sort of food 'just in case'. Just in case, what? And also to give you a 'calming effect'. Very subtle. They call this type of freedom of choice in your own food pantry and meal making 'chain cooking'. This image I thought was crazy. The heading to this cartoon reads:

"Here's an artist's drawing of Mrs. Wiley's dream:"in our next house I want a whole room of open shelves and freezer space for storing all the supplies I need for chain-cooking"

If you look at the drawing, what she basically wants, and what they are illustrating, is your own grocery store! You would spend so much more than you would need. You also need to use more electricity to keep the freezer running and you have to have more space and maitenance on this much prodcut. This is the mentality that has lead to such places as BJ's in the modern world. Those places often result in people shopping in 'bulk' thinking they are saving, when they are in fact spending more and buying more!

What is so wrong with going to the grocery store once a week? The french housewife often goes daily to the market to get what she needs for the evening meal. This concept of hoarding, consumming, and endless quantity is becoming to me almost vile. Who would need that wall of food and products? Click on the image, you can see there is one shelf for endless Soaps!

The cost they expect as well, which is equivalent to $3500 a month! Perhaps those of you who have children spend this, but there is no way I would now spend even half that on a months worth of groceries. In fact, since I am trying to really budget and control all the aspects of my home, my shopping is in a very tight budget, which I never vary too greatly.

What do any of you spend per month on food?

It is all very interesting and now that I am more aware of it, I can see the subtle beginnings which have formulated and lead to our current spending. Certainly, I could imagine a room of shelves filled with canned good, you yourself have canned. You grew your food and you need to preserve it, but to go to the store, where they keep it anyway, and then buy it up as if there is an impending food shortage?

They almost try to address food buying as you would savings in a bank:

"The term 'Chain-Cooking' is based on the freezer, the refrigerator, and ample shelf space for canned and packaged foods. It means Wuantity buying, quantity cooking, and quantity storing, instead of hand-to-mouth buying and cooking."

Now, not to seem that I am always now on some anti-buying or having nice things tirade, I thought I would end with this image someone set me. It is from Michael Kors Fall 2008 collection. Now tell me that isn't 1950s. I guess his line was inspired by MadMen, which is the early 1960's but that is still a very 1950's time in style. This coat actually looks alot like my fur, though I am sure mine was not even 1/8 the price this would go for. So, true classic style will always be around. Even in two years when the vintage look may be considered dated, I will still wear it. Because, what better way to have nice quality things that you can care for, then dressing a particular way and NOT changing it. Then you can care for your wardrobe instead of needing to constantly shed your clothes every year to remain on the fashion hamster wheel. Go vintage! Also, there is somthing about a dress at the natural waist, a full or a nice pencil skirt and tweed that just makes a gal feel good. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

17 & 18 march 1955 "Riot, Sports, Saving and Schemes"

The Richard Riot was a riot that occurred on March 17, 1955 in Montreal, Quebec. Maurice Richard, the star ice hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens, was suspended for a violent attack on a linesman and it provoked a riot at the Montreal Forum that spilled out into the streets. Some commentators have linked the Richard Riot with the birth of Quebec nationalism and the Quiet Revolution


I took an history course at university, the history of sport (yes, I know, a liberal arts education, all thought and no substance! but it was interesting!) and it really showed me how even the concept of the american male as being the macho tough guy was born out of this time during the turn of the last century. we began to break away from the concept of the more feminie (or then beginning to be percieved as such) aspect of the english man. Though, there are plenty of tough as nails bull-dog cockney lads, the idea of propaganda was used to demonstrate to us that the american male were not the foppish men of europe but the tough as nails men in sport. This was during Theodore Roosevelts time and I think it might also be the time when American English took on some of the spelling differences we now use, such as we spell galmor without the "u". But, I dirgress, anyway this really began the idea which was later formulated into what we have now with sports stars being role models and recieving millions of dollars ,while the conept of education for intelligence and work is put aside. The goal of the star athelete is added to the 'dream list' for the average american, one they can never achieve (save for a very limited few) and in their dashed hopes they can makeup for lost dreams in millions of dollars of merchandise in jerseys, baseball caps, and video games where they are the star. Not just a fun little game of baseball with friends, but a frenzied merchandise buying and feeding ground. It is becoming more and more apparanet how we were fed such things. But, you see, had I not had a class that took me specifically to before we had organized teams of sports which then became business, I would not have known that the concept of the sport world is just another element made up of someones enjoyable past time twisted into some extreme business model.
I am not a sports fan, but I have friends who go to baseball games in Boston and they said the ticket prices are ridiculous and do not know how an entire family can afford to go.
In the story I had been mentioning in previous blogs about the young american couple, The McClosckys , her husband was both an high school coach but made 'extra money' playing basketball professionally. In 1955 this entailed his having to drive to the game where he recieved 50 dollars a game. Sure in todays money that is $350 dollars, but can you imgaine a modern basketball player recieving this and also living just a normal life at 50 dollars a game? But, on some level, it is rather nice. You can use your ability to make extra money for your family instead of being a product some company needs to use and sell.
I don't mean to keep coming back to this point, and please forgive me, but I am like a blind person who has just recieved their sight. I want to keep explaining to you how much I like the color yellow! The more I 'uncover' of the past, the more I begin to see our present on shaky ground. That things one just considers a normal part of life, like giant money-making sports teams, are just another product of the corporate world.

On to other topics,
I found this wonderful book when I found the 1908 housekeeping manual.
I think the sage advice from this one page would do so many of us some good. I really don't know that much about children's books, but a quick look around that section of a large book chain mostly showed me books about how it is 'okay to be who you are' and 'don't worry about it we are all different and yet the same'. Certainly, it is good to teach children to be happy and to co-exist, but practical living should not be put off until college or later. Why should not a child of 4 or 5 begin to understand spending and its consequences. But, really, probably most parents (and I am not saying 'oh bad parents') most likely themselves do not know how to save or how to spend appropriately. We have come from a generation of those who were not responsible for spending and now even our government and big business is teaching the lesson, "Don't worry, if you overspend or don't save, some one will 'bail you out'". I don't think that is a very good or realistic lesson.

I don't want to seem that I am becoming more preachy or political, but I cannot help that everytime I look deeper into the simplest aspects of the past I keep uncovering mistakes I make today that I would like to fix. How funny that a child's book from the 1950s is humbling me to a lesson that should have been with me since the cradle!

If you are all interested in the book, I would be willing to scan the whole of it, it is not too long, but why not share it with your own children? I love, too, that the book was written and illustrated by women. How funny, working women with sound advice in 1950 co-exisiting with homemakers and mothers. What a novel idea! (pun intended)

Since my last blog I have got quite a few wonderful things to help me with my ongoing project that I want to share with you. This cook book, for one, which was put out by the campbells soup company. There are some interesting recipes including a lamp recipe that is made in gelatin, and believe you me, I will be trying it for one of our Saturday vintage dinners.

This saturday is my vintage friends turn, and I think she will be making the tomato dish pictured here and the recipe as well, if any of you would like to try it. I will tell you how it turned out this weekend.

I also purchased a huge stack of 1954 House Beautiful magazines that I am so excited about, as well as some Good Housekeeping. I have a great book called creative decorating too. ALl of these will be playing a role in upcoming days and blogs. There is so much information and so much to do and with spring upon us I am excited to get out into the yard.

There is a great article on outdoor plants and I found an article on houseplants that I would like to scan, as I remember Jitterbug asked about vintage houseplants in one of her own blogs.

Now, I feel bad as I seem to have become a little lax in my blogging these past few days. This is due to a project that vintage friend and I are working on. The jist of it is, we are working on a small building to become our 'sewing studio workshop'.
My hubby and I own a darling little house in another town here. It is a wonderful old house, built in 1718, before this was even the united states. We, ourselves, once lived in it. Then, I had my parents in there, but they have recently (through some sad events I don't want to dwell on now) have left. We could not afford to keep the house vacant and so have rented it out.

Now, on this property, last year, I had built (and I helped with my own hands) a two story barn structure. The hope was it would be my studio (for painting) and a sort of extra sleeping space when we visited my parents and family from the city. We no longer live in the city and have a house we currently live in. That house will be featured in all my 'vintage renovations' as the year progresses.
The other building, which we call the "studio", is finished to a point, but was sitting idle. Vintage friend and I began a "Lucy and Ethel" scheme to turn it into our 'dream sewing room'. The second floor can be our place to sew and create. I also would LOVE to, in time, do our podcasts from there. We could treat it like the central spot for our vintage ideas and dreams. Pictures and progress will follow. But, it has taken up most of my non-homemkaing time. SO, I feel I have been rather lax here, and I do not want that to happen. I really believe the community I am beginning to feel with all of you is very important and I want it to continue as best as I can and to include all of you in it and perhaps ask your advice when we need it or give out our won, which I love to do of course!

So, look for that in the future as well as more adventures. I need to post more pics, I know, I will try to catch up with that. My own sewing has been put on the back burner until we get the 'studio' up and running. I even have a pipe dream of one day having the first floor of this building eventually become a sort of 'clubhouse' for like minded people. A place for homemakers, future homemakers, vintage lovers, crafters, artists, (even closeted homemakers who have to hide their need to decorate and nest in a cubicle in some office!) to gather and sip coffee, tea, trade recipes and swap stain removal tips.

A vintage gal can dream, can't she?

Until tomorrow, then...

Happy Homemaking.

16 March 1955 "Bombs, Peace, and Grandmothers Life"

President Eisenhower declares that the United States would use atomic weapons against military targets in the even of war. "Now in any combat where these things can be used on strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else."

Prime Minister Winston Churchill tells the House of Commons that he is working for a big power meeting to ease world tensions. That meeting should now include West Germany, France and the big three. "O still believe that vast and fearsome as the human scene has become, personal contacts of the right people in the right place at the right time might yet have a potent and valuable part to play in the cause of peace which is in all our hearts."
So, today I had planned on having my blog up sooner than this. However, as I had mentioned in previous blogs, there is a new house going one door down. Today, they came to connect their electricity, so they shut off the power for the street for a good hour or so. Thus, in the middle of wash day, and blogging time, I was left powerless. It certainly made me think of my ancestors. And, had I been really my age in 1955 my grandmother could have lived without power. Not only would I not be blogging (no computers in the 1950s) but I would be spending a lot of time hand washing (no electric washers in 1900)

That brings me to this great find! The book of Household Discoveries. It was printed in 1908 (this is the frontice piece) and belonged to some member of my family. Who that was, I do not know. Could have been for a homemaker of the past or for her servant or for the pair of them. It is SO interesting. I feel as if the knowledge in here would be the stories I would hear from my grandmother as she visited me here (in 1955 of course). I would be using my electric washer and dryer and she could regail me with stories of the 'old days'.

There are pages and pages on 'wash day'. To give an example of how one would have to just 'make do' until wash day due to its being so involved, here is a tidbit:

"To dry-clean White Goods.-Small mud stains and a clen white skirt may be concealed until ready for the laundry by pipe clay or painting over with white water-color paint.

Or if a clean white skirt or shirt wasit is spattered or spotted by mud or soot, let it dry, scrape off with a penknife, and rub over the stain with white crayon or school chalk.

Rub with a clean white cloth until the spot disappears."

Better to coneal the stain, it seems, as the act of washing was perhaps rather involved and you certainly did not have a closet full of clothes.

It looks like dry-cleaning in grandmothers time was also a 'do it yourself' job.

"To dry-clean shirt waists-Put 4 quarts of corn meal into a 24-pound flour sack or a pillow slip. Put the waist into this, and rub or knead gently so that the meal will come in contact with all parts of the fabric. Leave it there for a day or two, then shake and dust thoroughly, and press with a hot iron."

I wonder if this actually worked? It would save on your modern dry cleaning bill, I suppose.

So, this would be my grandmother or her servant.

While I enjoyed this luxery. I have to say, as well, that I would love that set of waher and dryer as that is one of my favorite colors. I am sure these are still around and working fine. It would be interesting to see if I could come by an old set like this. I love how you step on the floor and the dryer opens, even my 'modern' dryer does not have that option.

So, there will be more from this book in the future. It could be called :"My Grandmothers Corner" or "The Good Ole Days". Anyway, I am certain as a 1955 woman I would know of many of these things. My own mother would remember some of these things as a child or my grandmother telling them to me.

Again, I like the idea that a 1955 homemaker didn't just land on earth one day:magically be-pearled and be-petticoated in her electric kitchen. She had a history as told by her mother and grandmother and her own childhood in the 1930's would also be ever present in her mind as she went about her day. Opening the 'icebox' and remembering when there really was a block of 'ice' in there (although many middle class families in the 1930s had electric iceboxes, many did not). Or when she sat down with her family to watch Father Knows Best, recall huddling in front of the Radio to listen to 'Little Orphan Annie' or her grandparents regailing over the 'wireless'. If I am going to look back, I am going to keep looking back. As a woman in 1955, I would have this whole segment of American history from the late 1800's to the present day through my families memories as well as my education.

We often think of the good ole days as those that were more natural or green. And, quite often, they were. Yet, this bit about cleaning wood floors from 1908 sounds like a chemical explosion waiting to happen:

"To clean wood floors.-Detergents recommended for cleaning kitchen floors and other coarse and unpainted wookwork are caustic potash and soda lyes, soft soap, sand, lime, chloride of lim, ammonia, kerosene, gasoline, and various mixtures of these."

What a comparison to my fictional grandmothers time and my own fictional 1955 time. Does ease of living breed complacency, boredom and unrest? With more time do we simply fill it with pointless spending and then work to pay the bill? I am not saying I want to trade places with the woman on the floor. Nor, do I want to turn back the clock on womens rights, but it does beg the question, is more and easier always = better life quality? And if we find the answer different for each of us, then living in the modern world we can make the choice of which is better for us personally? Obviously, though, without walking for a moment in our ancestors shoes, how will we know? We cannot see the future, but in living the past for just a moment, is not our present a sort of crystal ball? Can we not look forward while stepping back and think, "Ah, yes, isn't that lovely, aren't we lucky we have this, or Oh, I never realized this or how much I enjoy that."

Those things which seem second nature or normal or just 'the American way', we may find are indeed only modern interpretations of the world. Better to know what and why we think and do what we do. Then, like a futuristic time-travelor, we can speed back to our present with the knowledge of the past. And knowledge is the key to any answer, really.

What is amazing to me, is look how close we actually are to this 'future prediction'. That floor cleaning robot on the lower left could be a roomba. This kitchen looks like it could be duplicated easily from IKEA. And could not that homemaker be any of us sitting at our table with our computer? Eerie, isn't it? It is amazing how far we have come in 100 years. I only hope we can keep and raise up the level of respect and reality there is in being a homemaker. Let us celebrate our past womanhood and revere her life in our own homemaking today. Don't worry if we are trying to 'recreate Leave it to Beaver', but look at what they were trying to portray and take the good in it. The knowledge of the home and the ability to ask why and to manage money, spend wisely, and sustain yourself as much as you can without the aid of 'instant meals, closests of cheap throw away clothes, and mindless spending.'

We can do it.

Happy Homemaking!

14 march 1955 "One More Rant"

socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Here is where I think people get confused and scared. Here is the definition of socialism under MARXISM:

(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

The ideals of 'fear of socialism' began after WWII and were really propogated by the coporations. The idea that we work together as a community and help one another out, that is socialism. The fear that we will live under a totaliterian state is Marxism. We now, quickly withouth thinking, so, "Oh no, not socialism." and what we are saying is "no we do not want to help our neighbors." That doesnt always have to be through the goverment.

It is true that the high cost of healthcare is from all the insurance companies and their lobbying but they exist in their form because this was a captialist and not a socialist society. The healthcare never got to be in the hands of the people and there are many cases when a person NEEDS modern medicine. An appendicitis and cancer are not going to be cured by home remedies. I don't want to sound harsh, but I am also afraid of the upswing of home healthcare that is a response to our not affording actual healthcare, certainly preventative medicine, could be dangerous in that it is not a be all cure all solution. It must go hand in hand with actual scientific medicine. They are not mutually exclusive.

I began to think this morning, after going over all the posts and then discussing with my hubby our current culture:am I a part of a newbreed: the over-educated homemaker?

Now, I am certainly not against homemaking, but I am returning to a role at closer to 40 than 20 that would have become the role of a young girl out of high school or jr college, only I have years of university in my head and my general need for education. IS that a modern concept? And I don't mean 1950s housewives were stupid, but they did not feel the need to have a vast education, probably because they would depend upon the schools to teach their children what they didnt know or else they valued their skillset and home knowledge AS valuable knowledge that could be passed onto their dauthers. I am not making judgements in this idea and in fact doing this project so I can UNDERSTAND where we stood and where we stand now?

Is it good, we new breed of overeducated homemakers? Or, in our over analyzing our we the reason that the home-skills are thoguht to not be valid education and knowledge in the first place? It is all very interesting to me, and hopefully you as well. That simple concept: the value of our current idea of education compared to that same idea in the past. In this case 1955.

We may now say, oh the housewife in 1955 in middle america maybe had no education beyond high school, therefore she is under educate. However, we, as a collective socitey, set the norms for what is education. The ability to, in this example, stay in a budget, make things when the money is not there, plan and prepare meals, clean effectively and efficiently. These are education in that they had to be learned. They are not inherent behavior. So, therefore, do we now say that those things (cleaning, budgeting, cooking) are education? I am not sure that we do.

Is that why, for the most part, they have been removed from our schools as they are not deemed actual knowledge? And, if this is the case, why have we come to think this in modern socitey? Why is it that learning Dickens is more valid than learning to budget your money? This path of reasoning ALWAYS leads me back to the original concept of our modern society being consumer driven. I know, I keep harping on it, but I am just feeling suddenly as if my eyes are opening!

In the very time when this knowledge of homemaking was most valued (1950s) is also the time we began to de-value it. But, why? To give women their freedom? Perhaps, that was used as the cause to get behind, but think about it. If you have a generation that despises this knowledge of self-preservation and the ability to make your own clothes, cook your own food, grow your own food, manage your own money, take care of your own children and elderly, who will buy and need all the things we now depend on? I mean even our children and our old people now are a product within a consumer economy, because of daycare and nursing homes. The coporate sturcture that now exists in our country relies heavily on our inabilites and our not asking "why"?

Again, maybe I am just being a conspiracy nut all of a sudden, but I really believe the more you follow a path with reason to its point, the truth is reavealed.

That is also why I do not want anyone to think I am picking on them for their opinion that they think Socialism is bad. I just wanted to point out that our idea of socialism in this country was formed in post war America by corporations. I have an ad ( I can't find it today but will post it this week, as I am out of the house again today, because Vintage friend and I are working on a project!) in one of my women's magazines, a full page ad, against what is described as Socialism. It is an ad put out by the phone company. When I found it, it was very frightening. Because, to change a generation, you do it through the then heart of the home: the mother. This is a very machiavellian ideal. The phone company was putting out anti-socialist propaganda, because they wanted to put the spin on it that it was un-american, as they described it as going against individual business ownership, which is not true. And, by doing so, they could allow people to support their idea of large monopolies that in fact only helped their business interest and eventually lead to the growth of corporations that took the freedoms of individual business and community out of the hands of the people. Socialism is basically about community.

Also, it is just a term. I don't think our country should allow itself to be defined by any term. I don't necesarily want the government taking care of us, but I do know that for the amount of tax we now all pay, to help fund things that put money into pockets of the few, could certainly help the masses with basic healthcare. Such reform would also address the Insurance company. Another corporation born out of the fear and propaganda of post war 1950s where companies used our fears of the changing world to have us buy into their idea that we need to pay them for future woes. The fact that they are as powerful and have as many lobbyists now, is because we bought into the concept they began to feed us at that time and because we didn't ask "WHY" and get involved in our local politics. They defined what being american should be and by that very act make it un-american. As we were the country of people who thought for themselves.

Someone commented that people run to the doctor with the first sniffle. This, in fact, is not ture and CANNOT be true for many, because they cannot run to the doctor as they have no healthcare. My close friend is an ER physician, and he often gets those hard working honest people who cannot afford healthcare and could NOT go for the first sniffle but now are forced to go to him on the thrid week of sniffle and end up with a high ER bill they cannot pay and then we all pay for anyway but a higher cost all of which goes to the insurance companies which are, yes, corporations!

I don't want a socialized state as some people view it. I want a nation, that we had once planned, of people with the gumption to ask "WHY?". That is why we have this country. IF my and my husbands ancestors hadn't said to England, "why do I have to follow your religion? Why do I have to do as you say" they would not have come here.

If other immigrant nationalites hadn't said, "Why, do I have to live under this dictatorship, Why do I have to live this way?" they would not have come and made this country stronger with their traditions.'

I am just afraid that many people today are fed the anti-socialist hype from the very corporate structure that has it all in place, so we don't ask why and just go out and buy.

I mean, do you ask yourself, "Why is this toothbrush $1.00 at Walmart, but $5.00 at the local owned store" Oh, it must be Walmart has magic fairies that build items for free for them. Every action has a reaction. Every choice we make has a consequence. We can try to believe what we are fed and say "It is American to do this or that" but to be "American" is to think for yourself and ask 'WHY" that is that aspect of this country and it's people that I am proud of, not because a corporate chain store sells an american flag made in china for .50 cents!

We seemed to have traded the tyranny of kings and dictators from our past for the sublet tyranny of the corporations. How are they not like a king, making all the governement decisions that decide what is good or bad for our tax dollar. The basis for ANY society is its education and health. Plain and simple.

Please, no one be offended by anyting I have said. I am speaking from my heart and from what I feel I am finding out from my research. To look at the daily magazines and news of a different time is very enlighteneing and I want to share all of this with you.

I also, don't want you to think that this blog will only be political. I still care (even more so!) for the knowledge of recipes, and cleaning tips and dressmaking, and in fact this political aspect of asking "why" makes me realize how we have devalued such skills. I want to get those skills back. I also want them to recieve the same respect and acceptence that they are as much knowledge as reading Dickens (and I love Dickens!) but why can only one skill set be valid?

So, do not think that now my posts will be all rant. IF anything I am becoming more excited to learn and take back the education and knowledge of our past mothers, grandmothers etc. I just want to live in a world where these things are important and that if we educate our selves in them, we may find we don't need to spend so much and may not need two incomes etc. And we may be able to tell our government from the local to the whitehouse, what is important to ALL of us and that we do not want to be corporate fodder.

Thanks for listening to this unedited rant, as I need to go off to my project with my vintage friend. We are working on somthing that might be giving us more space to continue to learn our 'homemaking' skills. More about that in future blogs.

And remember, Love first. We all may come to this forum with different views, ieals, religions, beliefs, but at the root of it all, we are all women and human. We want what is best for all of us and through knowledge and thinking we can come to it. Who cares if we cannot affect the white house, but if we can all change our own small communities, maybe it will ripple out someday and become a part of our overall culture.

Until later, happy homemaking and remember...

Ask WHY?

12 March 1955 "TV, Steak and Kidney Pie, and My Rant"

Tonight on NBC would premier :A Connecticut Yankee with the Cast: Eddie Albert, Janet Blair, Boris Karloff, Gale Sherwood



It is coming next year! planned obsolescence is beginning. Why stand up to change the channel? Why have such a small screen? Why have such a bulky screen? and it goes on.


Last night I made Steak and Kidney pie. I was excited the last time I visited my grocery store to see that they offered for the day, both liver and kidneys. I snatched them up. As mentioned before, my husband did not like the liver as a large piece, as I had cooked it (though I thought it was quite beautiful tasting) but said today, that he would eat liver again, but wanted to try it cooked the other way I had mentioned it, that is in strips, pan fried.

He did like the Steak and Kidney pid and I loved it as well. Here it is before it went into the oven, the crust construction was not my best piece of artwork, but I actually wanted to keep it rather 'rustic' looking. Next time (and believe me there will be a next time!) I may add some decorative pastry leaves etc. The crust looks odd in the photo, but it turned out golden brown and flaky.



Here is it served Hot for dinner.


And here it is today for lunch. I think it was actually better the next day. The flavors really had a chance to marry and it solidified nicely. Hubby had today off, which is unsual for him, so we partook of this today and it was really wonderful. I would highly reccomend it. Even if you think it sounds odd, it is worth a try. The steak is merely inexpensive stewing beef and Kidney is not dear, I think my one pound package was around $2.00.


Here is a more american version of a meat pie. This is a great recipe advert from one of my magazines. Though I would probably not buy premade beef stew ( I would just make my homemade and put in the pastry), I am sure it is good. And I could not find in my store a package of this boxed pastry dough, but I have a wonderful recipe in one of my new favorite cook books : the 1951 edition of the Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cook Book. It is my new bible. It is my endeavour to eventually try many of the recipes, as they are definitely of the 'gourmet' variety and what would have been considered so in the 1950s. There is a great recipe in there for a Pastry Mix which you can make ahead and store. It is as follows:


Pastry Mix

6 cups pasty flour or 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp salt
2 cups vegetable shortening ( I would use Lard or you could use butter as well)
Sift flour with salt. Cut in shortening as for Plain Pastry. Store in covered jar in the icebox or cool cupboard.

For 2-crust pie use 2 1/2 cups of the mix and sprinkle 1/4 cup ice water overmix by tablespoonfuls, stirring it in with fork until just enough has been added so that you can pat the dough lightly together to form a ball. Handle as little as possible and do not knead! wrap in wax paper and chill. Then roll out as needed.

ENGLISH STEAK WITH KIDNEY PIE

1 lb. beef round steak
1 beef kidney
1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
3 tbsp. lard or drippings
1 med. sized onion, chopped
1/4 c. chopped pimento
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. thyme
1 1/2 c. water
Pastry for 1 crust pie

Cut round steak in 3/4 to 1 inch cubes. Remove tubes and fat from kidney and cut in 3/4 to 1 inch cubes. Combine flour, salt and pepper. Dredge steak and kidney cubes in seasoned flour (reserving any extra flour) and brown in lard or drippings. Remove meat from frying pan. Add onion to drippings and cook over low heat until transparent. Pour off drippings, add pimento, Worcestershire sauce, thyme and water to onion in frying pan and bring to boil. Stir in browned meat cubes and any remaining seasoned flour. Invert 9 inch pie plate over pastry rolled to about 1/8 inch thickness. Cut a circle about an inch from rim of plate for top crust. Cut a design in crust to allow steam to escape.

Cut a second circle about 3/4 to 1 inch from edge of top crust to provide pastry to circle edge of pie plate. Moisten edge of plate and top with outer circle of pastry, adjusting to fit. Turn meat mixture into pie plate and cover with top crust. Seal top pastry to edge and flute. Bake in preheated 325 degree oven for 1 1/2 hours. Makes 6 servings.


I was thinking today about my project. It was originally as a challange to myself, for the novelty, and to hopefully trick myself into some of the routine I felt was commonplace to a homemaker at the time. (Oh, and to have an excuse to wear a petticoat and hat and gloves!)

Obviously, I cannot live strictly to 1955. The fact that you are reading this typed on my computer is a blaring example. But, in 'giving up' some of the modern things, what I have come to realize is this is not about time-traveling but more about changing the future. The things I have forced myself to give up due to it being 1955 have come to show me the power those things weilded.

I never watched alot of tv, but I certainly watched my share of design shows. I loved BBC America, and shows like Project Runway. Yet, by not allowing myself to have these anymore( I mean they are not possible as there is no more tv per se in my home.) I can only watch 'tv' that is 1950s. I do occasionaly watch these shows, but there are days that go by where I have not even thought of entertainment on that level. And when I do watch a show I find myself very antsy. Where I once could happily sit with some tea and muchies through a Sunday afternoon of Changing Rooms and Project Runway marathons, now to get through an half hour episode of Father Knows Best is almost like work. And, on some level, I do consider it part of my 'job'. The watching of such shows is a sort of research.

If I can digress a little more here concerning such shows. I used to, along with my modern compatriots, make fun of such shows of the 1950s. I am, however, finding them to have a certain element of endearing truth. Such as family is important. Be honest. Think of others. Be considerate of your neighbors, friends, relations. Your actions have consequences.

I LOVE Father Knows Best, and before this project I had never seen an episode . So, for me, it is honestly a new show. It is funny, because I find their clothes more normal now, than when I look around me in public. I now notice, when I go shopping for example, how slovenly people dress. What would have been considered just casual clothes to me, now really have that 'work clothes' look to them. Now, not that you should judge a book by the cover, but then again somtimes you can. You certainly could be a serial killer and dress up clean and neat, or be a saint in rags. However, I think for the average masses, who are neither killer nor saint, really represent themselves in their clothing choices. AND I have found, surprisingly enough, by changing your outfit, you actually change your own self-image and emotional state. I know, because it has happened to me.

I have always felt I had a good amount of self-esteem. I thought I felt good about myself and confident in my place in the world, but when I slip on that girdle and hose, a simple skirt and cardigan, reach into my scarf drawer and tie some silk around my neck, I feel a sense of myself and place that is quite unique. Even my work clothes have a sense of style and grace that I enjoy that is merely taking a few more minutes to prepare myself. My highwaisted jeans with one of hubby's flannel shirts tied at the waist, a neck scarf and head scarf. Nice comfortable flats and I really looked pulled together and yet completely comfortable to work.

I think somewhere along the line (most likely the 70s) we began to think that 'nice clothes' were for 'special occasions'. Well, don't you want to feel special more often than weddings, funerals and holidays? Are your friends and family not worth your looking nice? What we now view as post-war propaganda to 'make over' a person into a mold, or make everyone conform, is in actuality just dressing to express your place in the world. You are worthy enough to be dressed nicely to go shopping. It is as if you are telling yourself, "Darn it, I am worth wearing that nice dress today. Why do I have to keep it for 'special occasions'?"

Even nice dishes and cutlery end up being relegated to 'special times'. My vintage friend used to use paper plates because it was 'easier'. She now finds herself glad to take out those dishes gathering dust in her closet to use everyday. It is better for the environment and saves money and certainly makes your day feel more structured and it is nice to look forward to dinner at a table with nice plates and conversation. It is as if we care more for the coporate sponsers we advertise to us, that we allow them to have our dinner and conversation time! I would much rather talk to my friends and family over dinner, than hear about some new soap product or rather or not Paris Hilton did or didn't do this or that!

I think what is really missing from our modern world, at least from my little bit of it, is structure. We, as a modern generation, feel so much freedom and so 'above' routine or necessity to 'look nice' or eat at a certain time with nice things, that we often find ourselves floundering around feeling as if we don't have any control. We have no time to do this or that or any time to spend with our friends and family. When really we just need more structure.

One of my best revelations so far (and don't laugh as I am sure many of you were already so organized) was this simple concept. MAKE A DAILY LIST.

Such a simple thing. Some words on paper. A matter of minutes with a pen and a pad, but my, how it has changed my life! The vast array of what I need to do and would like to do would loom before me, taunting my like some old halloween skeletons, jangling before me. All I needed to scare away those Bogies were a pen and a pad.

Each morning I think about what I need to do, with a schedul I have made for my week already, and what I would like to do (depending on the weather for example as Spring is upon us.) I make that list at my little desk with my cup of coffee and I feel like the 'homemaking executive'. There it is. In black and white. Sometimes seeing things written affect us on some level, maybe all those handouts we had to do at grammer school. And, by the end of the day, if most of that list is checked off, I feel so good. It is a challange and a guide. If they could bottle that feeling you get when you walk up to your list and slide your pen through that item done and put it in an energy drink, they'd sell gallons of it!

This idea of lists and organizing has really got me thinking how the modern world does not really, on a personal level, reward such behavior. It is expected at work. You do your work and get it done or you don't get paid. Then when you are off work you relax. Somehow it feels as if your work is more important to you than your own free time. Aren't YOU worth a list of things to get done and check them off? Even if the list is:

see a movie,

talk to my husband for one hour about global warming,

have coffee with my friend

and read three chapters in my book.

Obviously don't be a time nazi about it, but if you really did want to have time to read today, then your worth it. Visit with your friend for awhile and watch tv for awhile but don't just waste your time. It is YOUR time and you deserve to use it not WASTE it.

I know it sounds almost anal, and I am far from anal believe me, but somehow along the way we seem to have lost our own improtance. We seem a generation of ME ME ME, but with that me time we waste it fulfilling the needs of the consumer society in which we live. We need the tv to tell us what is entertaining. We have to buy things at the store to feel good for that hard day at work. We don't have enough time to get to cleaning and cooking (cuz of our tv time) so we will just throw some prepared food on our laps later and toss that pile of clean laundry in the corner; we will get to it later. But, don't you deserve to live in a nice house? Aren't you worth a dinner at home with napkins on laps and nice wine? We don't mind going out and spenging 12.00 on a hamburger at a restaurant, but we could spend less on a nicer home cooked meal in your own home where there are no tips, rude waiters and your dogs can be with you (I love my dogs)

So, I know I am rambling on again, but it just really hit me today how much of our modern world, the simple actions we take, are so affected by things like tv and 'modern concepts'. I think by my giving up these things that I felt were not 1955, I have begun to realize how we don't really need alot of them. And by taking on actions that I felt were important to people in 1955, I am finding that they are as important today!

Why don't we live like this today? I find myself asking. Certainly we think things cost more, but is that it, or do we just need to buy more things. I know it is not the same for everyone across the board, but I am just finding, maybe we are just mindless consumers who don't want to really think about how we spend. If it is important to get more of our time and life back then maybe you don't need a car for every member of your family. Maybe you don't need multiple cell phones or any at all. Or maybe one cell phone and no home phone. Do you need to buy a new car and pay it off, when you can buy one five years old and buy it outright? How many new clothes and shoes do you REALLY need? It is just a matter of choice, but it is YOUR choice. You can change your daily actions and life.

For me, even the making of my bed is really a 1955 concept. I didn't do it everyday before 1955. Now, I don't even think about it, I just do it. After hubby is off to work and the kitchen is all clean and dishes put away, I make the bed and straighten up the room. Now, I find myself sometimes going in there to relax. An organized clean room really makes you feel like a special guest in your own home. Think of it- a life long vacation in a hotel that caters specifically to your needs. It's true you are often the bell hop and the chef, but you can't beat the price and you can stay as long as you want.

I think one reason we have such celebrity and star worship in this country, is we view these people as the lucky ones who get to wear nice clothes and go to nice places, well, whats stopping you? So, you cant' afford a $10,000 gown, but one you make yourself or get on sale for 50.00, if it makes you feel good, isn't it the same thing. And so you can't afford some high-end restaurant, set your table with your 'nice dishes' get some good wine and make a great gourment meal for yourself. Why live your life vicariously through some media ideal, when the real thing is much more fun AND rewarding. You don't have to be rich and famous to be happy. You can wear nice clothes whenever you want and eat at your own table set with nice things and good food made by your hand and actually save money in the process. It is more work personally, but if it results in your having to do less actual labor/job work to pay for all the things that somehow make your not having to cook your own meals, make your own clothes, entertain at home necessary, isn't it worth it? Wouldn't you like to spend half the amount of money on igredients and take the time to cook and eat at home. If you did it enough you might find you don't need to work as much. It is a strange consumer cycle we are all stuck in. Just really evaluate what and where you spend. That seems to be the key to homemaking in the old days and this key should be used by all of us nowadays for our life. You don't have to be a homemaker to make these good decisions.

Maybe I am just spewing nonsense and most of you think I am crazy, or perhpas you already do these things and are thinking, "well, I know that already". But, you see, I did not. I just didn't know it. Know one ever taught me to sew or cook. I had to learn to do laundry on my own and only recently saw how wrong I was doing it. No one simply said, look at what you are spending and evaluate if you need this or that. Just because it is easier to buy prepared foods, have two cars and buy your own clothes doesn't mean it is the only option. But, in trying to limit myself to things in 1955, I am realizing how these limits can really make a happy life for us. Why save up all year to rush through two weeks of a holiday when you can make more of your daily life a great vacation?

I was talking with vintage friend the other day and she is not a homemaker. She has a full time job. She was telling me how she really would like to be a homemaker. Now, she doesn't have a husband, but she lives with her fiance'. When I started talking with her about if it could be feasible to stay home, you realize it is BUT, there is always a but, it might involve getting rid of things we think we NEED: such as, two cellphones, two cars etc. IF you stay home and your husband works relatively close by, why have two cars? If you have things to get done that day, drop him off and you have the car. If not, let him have the car and you will need to stay home and get your work done, because it is a job. You cannot say, "Oh, never mind I will go off and get some starbux instead". Because, again, I really think many people believe being a homemaker means you have a lifelong day off. Not true. In fact, I never leave my place of work. It is always there and ALWAYS needs my attention, but it is my responsiblity as the boss of this outfit, to make sure I budget my time so I can have an official 'punch out time' at the end of the day. And in treating it like a job, I make sure I meet deadlines, don't overspend, make sure my work area is clean. I mean, when you are at work you follow all the rules set by your boss and your job. Why not have those same rules for your home and yourself even if you are not a homemaker. It is still your home.

So, back to my friend. At first she balked, as many of us would, "live without my cell phone? only one car?" But we have to realize people used to do such things. In fact in our own living history we all lived without cell phones. Our consumer socitey is SO good at what it does, that we have no memory when it comes to consumption. We have short term memory when it comes to purchasing. Who can remember not having cell phones, well it wasn't that long ago! "Oh, I need my cell phone, I can't live without it," even though ten years ago you would never have even thought of it.

Now, many of us are concerned about the environment and such, what better way to reduce our carbon footprint then to get rid of one car! We started adding up the cost of insurance, excise tax, inspection each year (at least here in MA), gas and the hidden cost: When you can just drive where you want when you want, you spend more! If you cannot take off for starbux, you won't have spent five dollars on a cup of coffee. When I think of what I used to spend on one coffee! I can buy coffee beans for the week! AND I don't give myself atitude when I order my own coffee at home and if I want to leave a tip, it goes in a jar for me!

Another moment of revelation for me happened the other day. I had bought the closest thing to a sponge mop I could, as I saw these existed in 1955. I had seen an ad in my vintage magazine for a sponge mop and so went out to get one. So, I thought, good this is better than my old swiffers, I just use this sponge over and over agian and then only need to buy the refill. Not everytime I mop.

Then I thought about it. The consumer socitey is beginning in the 1950s. Here I am merely buying the 1950's version of the swiffer. I checked and the refill sponge was 8.99. Certainly, I do not need to buy it as often as swiffer refills, but I do need to buy it. Then I saw a 100% cotton mop was the same price as one sponge refill. The mop head detaches and I can wash it and use it probably indefinitely! Then I went back even one step further, before mops, you got on your hands and knees took a brush and some soapy water and did that. No product required but the buket and the brush that was probably your mother's old one. This sort of backwards analyzing has really opened my eyes. The levels at which we spend is amazing. No wonder so many people think they cannot afford to have one spouse work and one stay home. But, if you do want to think and treat it like a real job ( which means take it seriously and realize sometimes it is a messy hard job) you could do it.

There is another level of spending that is part of our consumer society that I am become to laothe. It is a type of spending that seems on the surface to be saving you money, but in fact is still part of the whole ploy to pull you in and spend. For example, I found myself buying a shirt at old Navy the other day. It was very vintage inspired and was marked down to $4.00, I HAD to buy it. And, true I could NOT make this shirt for this price. But, then I had to stop and think, what does this shirt really cost? Such stores exist on the suffering of other human beings. I know that sounds crazy, but how do you think such places can sell you a shirt for four dollars? It certainly is not because the local neighborhood tailor is making it for them. But, China (to whom we are increasingly becoming indebted to) has tons of people and they do not care how they treat them. They literally have children sewing shoes for pennies while we buy them for hundreds of dollars, or we buy somthing really cheap because, we could never make it that cheap. But, do we need that many clothes? Wouldn't we rather pay a little more, have less, but buy it from our neighbor who runs a dress shop?

We are apalled when we think of the Holacaust and wonder, "How did people let it happen?" And yet, we buy without thinking! We just wonder around like mindless zombies with our pocketbooks open, mindlessly buying because it is so cheap I HAD to buy it!

I have mentioned Walmart before, because I am always baffled at how good they are at the game they play. Their whole concept is 'good ole america'. Yet, they undersell small business until they are forced to shut down. They buy from China. There is a price for everything and if we don't pay it for the product we are paying for it in our destorying of a way of life we may still want. I am amazed at how easy it is to fall prey to them, for example, I found a blog the other day that was about being green and getting back to the earth. It showed how to make your own jam. It went on about nature and picking your berries locally etc and then in the list of things needed, it said, 'All of these things are really cheap and available at Walmart'. It just really hit home for me.

Really? Pick berries from your local farm, but buy the supplies from the beast himself? Or why not just buy on ebay or from your local store. Then you are helping out your local economy, or buying something used, so it doesn't have to be manufactured again, thus being even more green and thinking local!

Many people pine for the old days and wish we could return to the local downtown where little johnny can go to the five and ten and get a soda at the counter. You know all your neighbors, there is the local butcher and bakery. But, we act as if some magic Genie came and took it all away. We don't want to have the accountability to accept that is is OUR fault it is gone. But, in accepting that we can see that we can also bring it back, HOW? Stop shopping chain stores. DON'T go to walmart and Home Depot. I know, "It's cheaper there, " you will say. But, is it? Is it okay to help purpetuate the continuing harm to others so we can save $1.00 on some cleaning product we could proably just make with vinegar and water anyway!

It makes me sad, because we as a collective in this country could make a difference, but we won't want to because, oh, it'll be too expensive. But, we don't think, well, maybe we could buy LESS things support locally and still only spend the same amount. And what about when all stores are only chains and corporations and China calls in its debts, then what? Then they can charge whatever they like! No wonder we pine for the good ole days, but we need to be like those people and work harder locally, and think before we spend.

I know I might sound like a fanatic, but this trip to 1955 has really shown me self-worth and self empowerment. I can say, "No, I won't go to walmart or Old Navy I will shop locally and make it myself if I can". I needed the guise of a time-travel project to do it, but then I realize, I could have just done it anyway. Any of us can just make the decision to buy less, buy local, make what we can and barter for what we can't. We don't need a cell phone for each of us and everyone their own car. What saddens me, is I think it will only take such a huge financial crisis of epic proportions to get us to HAVE to return to these ways. When, really, we can do it right now. We can change in our own backyards and it would ripple out like a stone dropped into a pond.

A good lesson in consumerism is your local dump. If you have a local one, go to it. Just go there and look at it all. I am surprised by the decreased number of my own garbage bags by the simple act of using cloth napkins, rags for cleaning instead of paper towels, mop instead of throw away swiffer, toilet brush instead of toss away scrubber, not stopping for coffee and bringing home that throw away cup. Even my vintage Kirby vacuum uses no paper bags. It goes into a cloth bag inside another cloth bag and emptys out of the bottom. Both of those bags are washable. These few changes have already decreased the amount of garbage bags (bin liners) I have at my curb as well as what I spend on products.

It somehow has seemed that the very act of being a grown up, which means thinking things through and being responsible for your actions, is just disapearing from our community landscape. Why?

It is fun to scorn or scoff the homemaker, at home cooking for her family, keeping her house. "She is a slave" you might think, and yet happily go through life working hard to pay for all the things the tv and society tells you you need. Now, honestly, who is the slave? The woman who gets to be her own boss, design her own surroundings and use her own imgainations to make do with what she has? Yes, indeed, poor slave. What a sucker, now I need to go work more hours at my loathsome job so I can pay for the gas to get there and then shop to buy things to make myself feel better and not have to go home to that messy house.

Even single people can be their own homemakers. Because really, being a homemaker simply means being in control of your own life, thinking before you buy, and making your surroundings the best they can be for yourself.

That is the type of slavehood I like.

11 March 1955 "Penicillin, Painting, Workday Blahs, and Gardening for Victory"

11 March 1955- Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered penicillin, dies. Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. Fleming's accidental discovery and isolation of penicillin in September 1928 marks the start of modern antibiotics.

I just like this painting by the Australian artist John Brack, and this piece is from 1955. Although it depicts a busy street in Melbourne, I feel it could be New York or Boston or any of the American cities in post war times. The march of corporate worker is beginning. It is interesting that we lead ourselves into a sort of mindless hive mentality in the work environment but in personal or community life, we became obsessed with the me. Which, I guess, really makes sense. Slowly becoming part of a corporate world where all things begin being watered down and there are Walmart Starbux etc and endless cold grey office buildins, you will want to retreat to just yourself in your free time. I hope a move towards smaller business and community really is on the rise, because with that I am certain we will see the Me generations change to the We generations. (I know this is a modern hope, but I almost wonder if we wouldn't all be better if the government did let all the large corporations and banks fail. Why should we save GM? Why not let them go and let our country rebuild based on small local productivity?)

Now, I know this is not specifically 1950s, but this robot made by an MIT student is based upon the movements of 2-D Disney Cartoons of the 1950s. I felt it was worth a look as it is another odd way in which the 1950s has touched the 'modern world'.

Although in 1955 I would not be considered a new nor a young homemaker, because I am only two and half months into this experiment, I do think I have some of that new homemaker emotion. At least I feel the excitement and rush of all that lay before me. I sometimes feel a bit like I get to play house on a large scale. So, with that, I believe I feel those "new homemaker" ups and downs. Sometimes I move about with the determination of a seasoned homemaking vet, lists checked off, Kirby attachements thrown over my back as I rush up and down the stairs, dust bunnies recoiling at the sight of me. Then there are those other days...

With any job, especially one started with such anticipation and hope, there has to be some slump. Yesterday I felt a sort of slump. It was not sadness nor disillusion, just that sort blah. I had that "Oh well, I guess I better get to work", sort of mentality. Those are the days when I know this IS a job. When the alarm rang at 7:00 I wanted to hit snooze, only my vintage electric alram clock (in lovely early american styling with light up dial!) has no snooze. I had that type of day I am sure many office people have when they are just going through the motions. I got my work done by the end of the day, but only just what needed to be done. Just...

The ironing got moved to today. The floors got a quick sweep, but the Kirby sat idle and waiting in the cleaning closet. Dinner was made, nice fried chicken and even home-made cut french fries and greenbeans. But, no new cake, as planned. Luckily a 1955 Homemaker always has a backup, so it was a repeat of the previous nights dessert, Brownies with coconut and icecream.

I even forget to run out and do some quick marketing, which left my poor hubby (and me!) without a fresh pot of coffee. We had to have tea. I am sure to any non-U.S. readers this would seem no problem, but you must understand the importance of the American and his morning pot of coffee. It is almost a patriotic duty to have that smell, the aroma and the thick black heavenly brew before you can start your day. I adore tea, don't get me wrong. It is, in fact, what I drink for the remainder of the day. I look forward to that pot and some cookies (biscuits) in the afternoon when I get a few moments to peruse my magazines and research materials, but in the morning, it has GOT to be coffee. And, today, it wasn't. Even my hubby's thermos contains tea today, again almost a sacriliedge to we americans. Maybe even more so for we Bostonians, as there was that incident in the past when we sort misplaced all those cartons of English Tea in Boston Harbor. Ooops!

Anyway, it was one of those days.

But, it was a sunny day. S,o I made my 'schedule' in my Homemakers Housekeeping journal for the coming spring for the gardens. However, after talking to a friend on the phone and hearing she had already put in her peas and lettuce I felt my balloon again deflate. "Behind, before I even started!" It really was one of those days.

So, I stood there: dunagarees, hubbys old plaid wool shirt tied jauntily at my waist, work gloves and wellies, and stared at my vegetable garden. I have two 8 x 8 raised beds for veg. They need to be turned over and some mulch added for the season. Around these are the weeds and things that didn't get taken care of last season (Remember, I wasn't a 1955 conscientious homemaker then! Just a lazy modern girl whose ideas of liberation somehow involved slovenly behavior, apparently). I began to think, "Here I am in 1955, am I going to get lazy?"

Then, it hit me. Yes ,today I am lazy in my attempts to keep going with what I want to do each day for this project as well as my life.

This lead me to ponder, did a 1955 woman my age wonder this as well? She would have lived through the war. I would have been old enough to have to play a big part on the homefront. Our Victory Garden, rather it was city or country, would have been important to us. There was no time for laziness or self-pity during the war. Yet, in my quiet easy suburban existence, would I have moments like this? Moments where I was tired and thought, 'Oh, well, I will just leave those clothes in the dryer and iron tomorrow" and then be struck by the memory of only 10 years earlier when I had no dryer and working a garden meant having extra food to aid the rations?

During the 1950's when we all wanted to 'get back to life', the victory garden certainly began to ebb. The cabbage patches where grandmother's roses once grew, could become roses once again. All the spare ground that had been given over to any kind of food production, slowly became lush green lawns and annual flower patches. Pansies and roses replaced peas and carrots. I am sure if there were a timelapse movie from the end of the war to the 21st century it would be interesting to see the slow decline in anything practical being grown to purely ornamental to acres of grass. It is a sad side affect that in the desire to forget about the war and to make a lovely little safe home, free from outside harm, gradually turned into another form of consumerism.

Even the farmers changed from small family farms to large production. The new era of big business and corporations has begun.

"In 1950 the farm population of 23 million stood at slightly more than 15 percent of the total population. Ten years later only 15.6 million farmers remained, constituting 8.7 percent of the total population. The American farmers of the 1950s did not necessarily resemble the gentleman farmers of Thomas Jefferson's day: they had become specialized and mechanized "agri-businessmen."

The need for large perfectly weed free green lawns gave us pessticides, more gas to run the mowing machines, more machines to cut the lawn, more things to buy to keep the lawn unnaturally green etc etc. It is really telling how every part of our modern day homefront has been permeated by the change in our socitey from an agricultural/urban socitey to a suburban/comsumerist society.

Now, I want pretty flowers and I also want to supply my table and larder as much as I can with my plot of land. I honestly feel, for my age in 1955, the war would be vivid enough in my brain to encourage me to keep "some of those cabbage amonst the roses", sort of speak.

In fact, the idea of Victory Gardens are having a come back in 2009. With the constant threat of global warming, concern about our carbon footprint, and the increasing costs down the road, many are looking at the big green lawn and invisioning some small crops there.

"Today our food travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to table. The process of planting, fertilizing, processing, packaging, and transporting our food uses a great deal of energy and contributes to the cause of global warming.
Planting a Victory Garden to fight global warming would reduce the amount of pollution your food contibutes to global warming. Instead of traveling many miles from farm to table, your food would travel from your own garden to your table.
Our current economic situation is other good reason to start a Victory Garden. Every time that food is shipped from the farm to the store and your table, gasoline is used. As gasoline prices rise, food costs rise. "

The site I found that information offers this advice:

I have no backyard, what can I do?
You can combine vegetable plants with flowers in your frontyard.
You can plant containers on your porch, patio, or balcony and can grow sprouts indoors.
Check to see if you have a community garden available.
Perhaps a neighbor or friend without time or ability would let you garden their yard, in exchange for some produce.
If these options are not available, you can also choose to purchase foods which are grown close to home by visiting your local farmer’s market or joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). If local foods are not available to you, choose foods which use fewer chemical pesticides - such as organics, are in season, or have minimal packaging.

What is nice about these examples is they definitely all have a very 'vintage feel'. The idea of community garden (I joined our local community garden last year, so I can buy what I cannot grow in my own yard there, support the community, meet my neighbors and support the reduction in the use of pesticides.) It might not be exactly purely 1955, but I really do belive people my age and older in 1955 would keep the memory of food shortage and the Victory Garden to heart.

This really does demonstrate a movement towards the past. It is another example of people looking towards a vintage lifestyle not only as a way to wear darling outfits, but as a way to get back the idea of family, community, AND the earth! It is these types of ideas and concepts that really encourage me to not only go ahead with my project but to really think that the vintage ideal can really be a life movement.

I want to take all the aspects we love of the 1950's, the way they wanted to make the world new and wonderful, but learn from all the mistakes we made from the 60's until now. Now, we have the benefit and knowledge of all that time before us. I say, leave the future to science and human rights, those both need to always advance, but culture in the home and community, maybe we really do need to take a step backwards so that our future will be something we can be proud of. And there is a certain amount of responsibility when you try to 'live up to' the past, when the future has an almost no accountabiltiy to it.

How much, I wonder, did war time memory provide the guilt and then the impetus to continue on with the 1950s homemaking lifestyle. Certainly, knowing what one had to go through to get to the 1950s and all the loss and strife that lead up to it, helped the homemaker to keep going. So, if we chose to make the world many of us long for with a sort of non-present nostalgia, we can use that same impetus. We can look back at the world wars and use them for our guide to betterment.

This also demonstrates how subsequent generations, without having to lose so much, did not appreciate what they have and are becoming almost like Rome at its decline. Bloated, lazy slovenly spoiled nations with no hardships.

Of course, I do not want a war or hardships per se (though we do have a war and our on the brink of a great financial woe) but let's face it, it is not 1940s. Yet, if we can feel a collective longing for a time in which most of us did not live, then certainly we can look back to their struggles, compare them to our day and think, "I had better get up off the sofa and get to work. Be thankful for that full pantry and make some wonderful meals and desserts. Be glad I can, for pleasure and to help the budget, go out and plant and harvest and do some canning and preserving or support my local farm for the same reason. Of course I can go buy anything I want at the store, but what if it were gone?"

Maybe with a mixture of the guilt of global warming and keeping the memories of the wars in our minds, we can move into a new world designed after the elements we find endearing in the old world. What do you think?

Now, needless to say, these thoughts did get me going for the rest of the day, but I had still lost a good portion of the morning to mopey tired bored 'day at work' syndrome. The good thing about this job, however, is I am allowed the time to contemplate my situation, evlauate it and move on. Today, after all, is another day and I am determined to get back to the routine, although I now have ironing to catch up on!

Happy Homemaking!

9 March 1955 "Space, Beef Stew, McClosky's continued, and a Pheasant"

Tonight would air the Disney Feature "Man in Space" . It is worth a look. Below is the first part. All the episodes can be found on Youtube HERE.

I think I will definitely do a future post on science and concepts of space travel today (1955). It was becoming a much talked about topic and became the polar opposite of the other favorite childhood pastime, cowboys and indians.

It seems the new frontier of space held a certain level of hope and escapism much needed in post war 20th century. It was a possible new world untouched and unscathed by the horror of two world wars. It could hold promise of a clean slate; a brave new world where there were no wars and everything was shiny and new. The irony being, I think, that by the Reagan 1980s years of rising capitalism and greed, space was the place to consider war defense and spying. What had been a realm of hope and possiblity, merely reverted to the 'old ways' of the human animal. Protect your territory and try to increase it.

Today the space program gets little press. I am sure there are many activites going on now with NASA that would once have been feature news, but I feel with the increasing money worries and failures of the worlds banks and corporations, space is the last place we want to turn. It is not unthinkable to compare the past, our increasing view of nostalgia, as the 'New Space'. My hope for tomorrow seems to be in the past. Maybe they will begin making toys to allow your child to relive the glory days of the 1950s. Who can tell. I know I would rather travel back in time than out into space, and it is a more feasible 'everyman' position to try and relive or recapture a fond time period, than it would be to travel into space. I wonder what those who dreamed of space in 1955 think of our world now?

Now, into the kitchen:

I am sure my inexperienced petticoat is showing, when I say I have never made a beef stew before. I knew of beef stew and had certainly tasted them before, but have not ever attempted it. I know, I am sure there are some experienced homemakers out there shaking their head in disbelief. I had a very small range of dishes pre-1955. I do, however, think is says a little about the art of homemaking that one can really address the cookbook like some great learned tome. I have called this approach "The University of the Home" in previous blogs and I am sticking with that. It truly it. The fact that I can skim through a magazine or a cookbook, find, like some great wizard pouring over my book of enchantment, the ingredients needed to make my intoxicating concotion. It does bring to mind images of dry ice fog, long gnarled fingers and a cackle or two. Or, perhaps you enjoy the image of the intelligent lady-scientist. Prim and crisp in her white labcoat (ironed by her own little hand of course!) hair properly pinned up and bespectacled in horn-rimmed glasses. She moves about her laboratory (her kitchen) with determined movements adding a beaker of this a dram of that and ta-dah (Poof a cloud of smoke clears) a braised leg of lamb with homemade mint jelly! However you choose to view this person, she can be you. She is you, most likely.
Now, I know, stew...it doesn't sound exciting. But, for me, it was. There was the quite evening sat in front of the fire with hubby, he smoking his pipe, feet up and slippered, reading a book. I, next to him with my dogs around me, a cup of hot tea and a pile of vintage magazines. I tell you ladies, this is heaven. Then, as I casually flip the pages, there I see it. An ad for Hunt's Tomato Paste with a recipe for Beef stew. My finger slides down the recipe list in anticipation. Yes, I have that and Oh, I did buy a package of cut up beef that said "for stewing" on it. It is waiting patiently in the freezer. And, yes, I even have Tomato Paste (It happened to be Hunt's too, though not due to any faithful adherence to the brand, but it was probably on sale that day).
Now, for you who have made stew, you know it is fairly easy. I liked the process. The gathering of the ingredients. I think this is part of the allure of cooking for me. I check the pantry ( a growing collection I might add. Part of my hopeful kitchen enlargement will reslut in a larger area dedicated to this space)
"Yes, I have that. Oh, good, I bought a jar of bay leaves for that last recipe", and so on through the list of ingredients. This perusal through my recipe books and magazines also often preceeds any marketing I am about to do. It helps me to pick up future things I may need. Things I had never bought before, but now normally stock in my pantry. Things like condensed milk (which after an exhaustive search and finally asking I found at my grocery story it lives with the peanut butter, jelly and coffee. Why? I have no idea. I looked forever in the baking aisle!) Jar of pimentos. (have had them in olives, did not even know you could buy JUST the pimentos. You can and they used them ALOT in the 1950s) Cream of tartar. Shortening. Lard. Knox Gelatin (unflavored gelatin), Sure-Jel, and I am sure the list will expand as does my research. I find myself excited to find these items and to use them. As if I am a real time travelor allowed to test these ancient artifacts in their new state and to be amazed and the outcome of their combinations. Who knew a kitchen and pantry could be so much fun!

The above items will recieve in time my own personal labels or copies of vintage labels. I like they way they look and the effect they have on me. Speaking of which I was glad to get this image from one of my loyal readers/commentors/new friend. She was inspired by my post about making my own labels. Here she has followed suit with a label for her own 'homemade' cleaning solution of vinegar and water. Well done!

Now, back to stew. The recipe I used last night was a 'quick fix' recipe which would encourage you to use the Hunt's product. My hubby loved the result and he took the leftovers as well as the last two home-made biscuits with him for his lunch today. But, next time there is stew on my menu, I am going to attempt the more traditional recipe I found in my General Foods cookbook which includes dumplings. As I said, I had made hot biscuits, which were lovely with the stew, but the dumplings might be very nice and the presentation could be good.

I am going to attempt my own steak and kidney pie this week. I have a great recipe in my Betty Crocker. I will let you know how it turns out.

If you read my previous blogs, you'll know I am continuing on with the feature articles on the McClosky family in my 1953 Ladies Home Journal. The article is showing various aspects of the McClosky family to illustrate the young middle class American family. Here are some more pictures from that article:

What a darling little house. I really like Mrs. McClosky's haircut. I think this might be the cut I want as I can curl it tight and still wear a little ponytail for housecleaning.
In the article, she mentions how she makes dress shorts for her son out of an old wool skirt. Very industrious. (I have not forgot about my own sewing, either. I just have not done enough worth showing yet. I have cut out and begun a muslin version of the blue dress I showed in an earlier post. I learned my lesson and will make a mock up of any pattern I use now in muslin. If the muslin dress looks good, I am going to dye it with my vintage dye and can still use it as an outfit for cleaning at least.)

Here she is cutting her sons hair ( I love the expression on his face!) It says she does her own facials, manicures and permanents. This does show a young couple homemaker needing to do these things for herself. I do think, however, being an older homemaker and not having children, I most likely would pay for these items. And, in fact, I am NOT going to attempt my own hair or permanent and am taking your advice and having it done professionaly.

Though hardly my cup of tea, the McClosky dinette is rather darling. The walls are wall papered in white brick pattern. They second hand chairs were purchased from an ice cream parlor for $12.50 each. (That seems a bit high to me, as that in todays money would put them around $98.00 each. Maybe I am just used to the bargains I find at my local tag sales!) They painted a 'carpet' on the linoleum with floor paint because, "The wall to wall carpeting in our living room stops at the entrance to the niette and so dod our budget," said ANita McClosky.

While on the subject of decorating, I did a "Color Story" photo to help me design and decorate my hubbys new den. By gathering together these various objects I like, I can really get into the manliness I want of my hubbys Den. The stuffed pheasant is not somthing my husband shot, in fact he is not a hunter (though is a crack shot at a caly pigeon). It is one of my past Christmas gifts, which might

seem odd, but I like antique stuffed birds. He actually found this in the back of a great little antique shop in Beacon Hill (in Boston) on Christmas Eve. I definitely like how it has a very distinct manly study/den feeling. It has the color family I have chosen for the house, browns and reds and even a touch of blue.
Sometimes a closer view of my 'story' will help reveal a color way for my design. The one red key on this typewriter of my hubbies mixed with the blue/grey of the typewriter and warm wood tones really speaks to me. I am even considering doing one wall of wood 'paneling' which in fact would be individual wood boards stained or painted. I am not going to put up wood paneling. Though available in the 1950s it has too many 1970s connotations for me. If it were really 1955, I would not yet now of the orange shag rugs, harvest gold and pea green and wood paneling of the 1970s, but in fact, I do, so it is out.

Well, until tomorrow then, happy homemaking!

7 March 1955 "Peter Pan on TV, The Executive Homemaker, Liver, and a Scavenger Hunt"

On March 7, 1955, NBC presented Peter Pan live as part of Producers' Showcase (with the show's original cast) as the first full-length Broadway production on color TV. The show attracted a then-record audience of 65-million viewers.Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard had already won Tony Awards for their stage performances, and Martin won an Emmy Award for the television production. It was so well received that the musical was restaged live for television on January 9, 1956. Both of these broadcasts were produced live and in color, but only black-and-white kinescope recordings survive.

Peter Pan opened in New York on October 20, 1954 at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York for a planned limited run of 152 performances. The show had been sold to NBC, which ensured that it was a financial success despite the limited run. It played its final performance on February 26, 1955. The show closed so that it could be broadcast on television, although box office continued to be strong throughout the Broadway run.

FROZEN ORANGE-JUICE prices will go up because of the recent cold snap in Florida and pessimism about next year's crop. Two big producers, Birds Eye and Libby, McNeill & Libby, have just boosted wholesale prices 5¢ per dozen six-oz. cans, and the rest of the industry may follow suit. Retailers are expected to pass on the increase.

Now, I want to continue on with this large article in a 1953 magazine a friend had given me. I have really just started to look at it and it is really a great and thourough piece. I am going to continue to cover it over the next week, as it is long and deals with The homemaker (Mrs. McClosky) on many levels, from the breakdown of her day, to her decorating, her realtionship with her husband and family, and how they entertain including recipes as well as how she spends on clothes. The recipe for the hamburger casserole is from this feature.

Today I am going to show the breakdown they have done representing what a homemaker would be earning over the year. They show a total over $200.00 a week if they paid someone to do the work she does in the home. This in todays money is $2,074.01. this would mean she would earn $12636.00 a year in 1953, in todays money that is $99,552.35 a year!

One of the costs I found interesting. It states that it would cost $354.53 a week for maid, which is about $17,000.00 a year. Now, I only have Gussie twice a week so that would be around $100.00 a week in 1955 dollars. As it so happens, I may be losing Gussie as she has some new responsibilites with the local theatre, so I am suddenly faced with that 1955 homemaker dillema: "I have lost my housekeeper, what can a gal do with rising prices and help so hard to find?"

The article goes on with some wonderful photos and lays out the various roles that Mrs. McClosky plays.

Here she is in the role of the plumber.

Here she is as bargain shopper and decorator. So, In the coming week I am going to eventually have the entire article and photos and recipes from this feature. There is a lot of information to cover and I don't want to just cram it all into one post.

I love this shot of Mrs. McClosky, as it proves my own theory of what a homemaker wore while cleaning. No June Cleaver pearls and heels here. I was actually taken aback a little, when I first read the article, as I really saw myself in this shot. I wear cuffed jeans socks and loafers or flats and a man-style shirt and often have my hair in a scarf rather in is set in curlers or just held back while I am cleaning. I love her old electrolux, as well. I really like that vacuum and may need to add this cannister to my cleaning closet. I could have one vacuum per floor, how is that for decadence?

Speaking of cleaning, yesterday morning I had a nice little suprise. I was doing my normal morning routine of straightening up the bedroom and making the bed. Part of my bed making includes a nicely folded pair of pajamas under our pillows. As I was gathering up the bedclothes to make the bed, I lifted my husbands pillows to find a neatly folded pair of his pajamas. He had done it, by habit, on his own! I couldn't believe it. Now, my husband is a neat man by habit anyway and before 1955 I would say his closest and clothes were often more organized and hung up than mine. However, here I had simply made this small habit a part of my routine and suddenly, without his thinking about it, he folded and put his pajamas in place as that was how he has become accostomed to finding them.

Also today, after breakfast, before I realzied it, he had emptied the dishwasher for me and picked up the breakfast things. Again, it is not that he has not helped me in the past, but my new 1955 routine often involves me so rapidly clearing away and cleaning up, that he never even really had the chance. But today (he is off weekends) he just did it, naturally. It was nice. Normally I have Gussie on weekends, but, she is getting involved in a local theatre production and may now have no free time to be Gussie. Luckily todays 1950's meal is at Vintage friends house, so I won't feel her absence as the dishes won't be piled at my house, nor will I need to have the kitchen in high-prodcution for a large meal for a group of people. However, last Saturday the meal was at my house and I had no Gussie. I really found myself scrambling to catch up on Saturday evening dishes. Thank god I had the dishwasher. That is sort of a very 1955 moment, as well, out with the help in with the automatic aides!

But, I digress...back to my original point. In my articles and books it says that by my example of tidyness and thoughtfulness around the house, the other family members will follow suit. And, as I am living the experiment, I got to see first hand it is true. I am glad I am getting into these habits, as if we were ever to have a child (a BIG if) I feel I would be a little more prepared for what type of home life I would want for a child. The structure and routine. I am sure all of you mother's just rolled your eyes and thought, "You just wait honey, your routine goes out the window when that baby gets home" which I am sure is true, but I would feel that once I wanted to regain that routine, I would be able to doso from having been in the routine at one point. I could revisit it, as I had already learned and lived it. This project would either not exist or be much different had I a little child running about. Would I still try it? Well, considering how crazy I am and my desire to challenge myself, yes I probably would. To much more hilarous and frustrating results for all of you, of course!

Now, onto food and recipes:

I learned last night that hubby is not a fan of Liver. I have always loved liver, but rarely can find it in the store, and up until 1955, never really thought of preparing it. The last time we were at our favorite diner I say they had liver and onions on the menu. I believe this is a very 1950s meal. Although, not everyone loves liver. I happen to adore it and was so excited to see it while marketing. It is so cheap. SO, here are the ways my cookbook tells me to cook it.

I pan fried it. I started with bacon (of course!) and made enough to crumble the bacon on our salad and to leave a piece each to place on top of the liver when served. Next, I pan fried thinly sliced onions in the bacon fat until lovely and brownish yellow. Next, I dipped the liver in a mixture of cornmeal and flour mixed with seasonings. This went into the bacon fat. The result was wodnerful. Like I said, my hubby did not like it, but like a trooper he ate most of it. Though, the way I prepared it was lovely, as a liver eater I really enjoyed it and the onions in the bacon fat were heavenly. At least my hubby had room for dessert which was this:

The presentation was not quite what I had wanted with this, as my egg whites did not stiffen. I think there was water in the bowl I used and I learned water in eggwhites will keep it from stiffening. However, the taste was not affected and I really liked the result as did hubby.

It was a cross between a rich homemade pudding and a mousse. The changes I made to the recipes involved me dividing the milk quantity between milk and whipping cream (in its liquid form of course I would NEVER use prepared whip cream, although I know it was available then.) I think next time I will toast the coconut before I use it or toast some to sprinkle on the whipped cream on top. I love cooking with a double boiler and a whisk, as it makes me feel like a chef. I imagine a crew of helpers lined up about me as I make the important finishing touches on my grand meal! A homemaker has a rich imagination. I think it is one of the most important elements to homemaking, as it gives you all the ideas to make do with what you have.

So, one of the reasons I did not get to my blog yesterday was that I was out on one of my Homemaker Scavenger hunts. I am lucky in that we have many little antique shops and a local church has a year round 'rummage sale' where a gal can get a very good deal. So, here are some of yesterdays treasures:

I was excited when I saw this hamper, as I often see this ad in some of my vintage magazines. I love that Groucho Marx somehow seems to be the appropriate person to sell a hamper, I don't get the logic, but I love it anyway.

The ad says these hampers start at 8.95 and I bought my hamper at $8.00. Of course in 1955 money that would only be around .60 cents while really these cost close to $60.00 new (that is in 2009 money by the way) I love that it is still around. I also know it is vintage as I found some scraps of old newspaper with the date of 1953 and an old tinker toy inside. I wondered how long this had been sitting in an attic waiting to come home with me. One day little Johnny was playing around with his mothers hamper and lost his toy piece. Then, when grandmother was old and ready for the home, daughter put this horrid thing away in the attic, hoping to deal with it later. There it sat, its little tell-tale scrap of newspaper and tinker toy, aging and yellowing with the passing Cape Cod summers and winters heating and cooling it. Now, once again, it will hold clothes waiting for monday washdays.

I love the lid and the detailing as it is a heavy plastic that is marbelized. The detailing on the top are like two fins on an american car from the 1950's. I guess they really DON'T make them like they used to.

I have been hunting for some matching side tables for our bedroom. I found these yesterday for $10.00 for the pair. They are so 1950's 'Early American' and they fit the bill perfectly. I love the side detailing and the botton shelf is perfect for a collection of magazines or books to keep at the bedside table without cluttering up the top. Also, the built in lamps have a swing arm to may reading in bed easier, and though the shades are not wonderful, they are easily remedied with covering of new fabric or just purchasing a shade I do like and replacing them. They are nice solid wood, and I think maple. Very well made and I love the styling.

This is a large heavy maple hutch top. It was only the top and it is definitley 1950s "early american/colonial". It is SO heavey and well made. Even the back slats of wood are individual pieces of maple. This was a steal and will end up either in the new dinning room or the breakfast room. It will most likely recieve a coat of paint to go with the room and will set atop perhaps a nice dresser to serve as extra china storage. I have a collection of vintage milk glass dishes that might look lovely displayed in this in the breakfast room, in which case I might paint it a pretty butter yellow with the inside robins egg blue. I would try it first in its natural wood tone, as well, to see if I like it that way.
Now, you can never have enough trays, I think. I found this lovely vintage set of metal painted trays for .50 cents for all five! The colors are much nicer than this image is showing. They have a lovely faux bois (fake wood design) background. They are small enough to make for easy carrying, but large enought to bring out supplies for the barbeque or to serve the ladies iced teas on the verandah.

6 March 1955 "Housewife or Executive?"

I have been unexpectedly busy today and feel bad that I did not get to my blog. So, I am going to post this article that is part of a larger piece I want to discuss in my next blog. I think it is really fitting concerning the idea of the homemaker as a real career woman. It is interesting to see that it was even an issue in 1955. Perhaps those woman who did choose to go 'back to the home' were actually chastised even then by their fellow WWII Rosy the Rivetor compatriots that wondered why they would do it. Obviously, by what the article demonstrates, many men did not view it as a career either. I found it odd, actually, as I believe many people today would think that in the 1950s it would have been considered a real job, but it appears that was not always the view. So, here is the piece that is part of the larger article. Read it if you have a chance and comment on it and then tomorrow I will be adding more info from the piece.

5 March 1955 "Tupperware, Decorating, and Casseroles"

Tupperware debuted in 1946. I think it is one of those quintessential american 1950s icons. It is also very practical and much used to this day.

Tupperware was developed in 1946 by Earl Silas Tupper(1907-1983) in the USA. He developed plastic containers used in households to contain food and keep it airtight. The formerly patented "burping seal" is a famous aspect of Tupperware, which distinguished it from competitors.

"During the early 1950s, Tupperware's sales and popularity exploded, thanks in large part to influence among women who sold Tupperware, and some of the famous "jubilees" celebrating the success of Tupperware ladies at lavish and outlandishly themed parties. Tupperware was known -- at a time when women came back from working during World War II only to be told to "go back to the kitchen" -- as a method of empowering women, and giving them a toehold in the post-war business world. The tradition of Tupperware's "Jubilee" style events continues to this day, with rallies being held in major cities to recognize and reward top-selling demonstrators, managers and distributorships."

Tupperware spread to Europe in 1960 when Mila Pond hosted a Tupperware party in Weybridge, England, and subsequently around the world.

I have a few vintage pieces in my soft sky blue that I love. It is a hard color to come by. I am always on the lookout for it. If any of you ladies have any in that color that you aren't using, let's make a deal. A gal can never have enough tupperware.

My vintage friend and I would totally do a great job if we were to throw a tupperware party. Maybe I should make it one of my summer things as part of this project. How fun, all we ladies in the yard in sun dresses, hats and gloves, oohing and ahhing over the burp of the tupperware lid! Lemonade, finger sandwiches. Sounds like fun to me!

Now onto Decorating:
I am reading (over and over again I might add) Dorothy Drapers Book, "Decorating is fun". I am not sure who has this book or who has seen it. I luckily found it due to a comment by a very nice person early on in my blogs. I immediately ordered it and have not regretted it.

There are only a few photos (black and white) and some random drawings, done by Draper herself, I believe, which do help illustrate her point. This is not a coffee table book of casual perusing while you sip your tea. The images have to be drummed up in your mind and her almost militant approach to her ideals is rather refreshing. I thought I might give little snippets of advice here and then from the book every so often. I hope you will like it.

In chapter 3 COLOR, she tells us this:

"It is the rock on which your house is built. Without a keen sense of color, without the ability to get real enjoyment and exitement out of lovely colors, we might as well quite right now. I firmly believe that nothing contributes so much to the beauty of this world as color. And, happily enough, I bleieve with equal convition that every man, woman and child alove has within him a true instinct for color"

Well, that sounds promising anyway. I also believe color is so improtant not only in the world but in your home. It is funny how it honestly affects your moods. I love my vintage dishes as they have one of my favorite colors (robins egg blue) throughout them. Once this project started and I began our breakfasts all laid out on a pretty blue linen table cloth with my dishes and everything soothing, what a difference to the start of the day. Honestly, my husband now leaves often more rested and with more time to relax with me in the morning before he is off to work. Before 1955, it was just shamble out of bed when you could, throw some cereal in the first bowl you grapped, eat at the kitchen table amongst, perhaps, yesterdays mail or some random things that always seem to collect up on the kitchen table. There was always a scramble for a lost coat or keys, ets. I cannot tell you how nice it is to pull up to a nicely laid table with lovely dishes and a full hot breakfast and actually talk with my hubby before he leaves for work. Even though it means my getting up earlier and making it all possible, it would be a lie to say I do not enjoy it as much as he does.

This morning, the sun was streaming in the dinning room, the hot coffee tasted so nice and it was actually cheery and warm. I almost felt as if I had hopped, Mary Poppins style, into one of the old photos in my magazines I have often coveted. It isn't just a sham. It is real, or it can be. And it isn't pretense, but really living. It was like the joy you got as a child playing house, but with a feeling of maturity I have never really felt. I know that sounds silly, but I almost feel like an actual grown up now, with my homemaking duties.

It seems my generation, and those after mine, often have that feeling of never quite knowing when to grow up or what it means. Now, I am not saying I know what it means, but it does seem to come along with the responsibility of your dailiy living. Making chocies that affect the happiness and comfort of your home and your future seems very mature. And, surprise surprise, it isn't a bad thing!And, I don't feel I have lost any of my childlike joy of the world. I merely feel more a part of the world, as if I would like to contribute to it...as if I have SOMTHING to contribute to it, even if that is just making a happy home and becoming a memeber of my community. I just wonder how many people who flounder about trying for some vast unrealistic greatness, miss out on the joy of simply living. I feel I may have up until now. This playing house and being a grownup it is almost as if it is some secret to happiness. As if it was some guarded talisman of the older generations. Only, they probably wanted to pass it on, but the generations before us seemed to have mislaid it.

Well, I have gone a little off topic...

So, back to color:

I totally agree with this passage about the harmony of a color theme throughout your house:

"Just as the main theme appears and reappears throughout a symphony, so you can carry one note of color through your whole house to beautiful effect. I don't mean that the color scheme in each room should be just alike-anything but. You just bind the whole thing together by light touches of the same shade.

For instance, if you have red curtains in your living room, you might have white walls in the hall with a red design stenciled on them. Then in your dining room you mihgt place a rug of the same color. In your bedroom you would just strike the note lightly-put a red quilt, folded, on the end of the bed. Just for fun you could even paint the ceallar stairs of the inside of your kitchen closets that same red.

In this way you can create a sort of intelligent 'color continuity' that is very satisfying, and smart to boot."

I, myself, like to even go one step further and really make a 'color story' for the house. As I have been mentioning, I am planning as part of my project to slowly make over the whole of my house and garden. I have been gathering things together that I love, objects and things with the color I love, in my house and taking 'color shots'.

I think this 1950 painting by Edware Hopper "Cape Cod Morning" is in, itself, a great color story. It really tells my combination I am drawn too, the shots of red/pink and yellow and green with a base of soft blues and held in balance with crisp white and shots of black.

My love of red and blue and warm shades of yellow and brown with stark couterpoints of crisp summer sail white and black really are going to tell that story. Each room will have it's own interpretation of that story, but I think it really allows you to address the entire house (even if you are going to spread your decorating over years) as a single project and it really helps to curb any decorating fear you might have. I think just gathering together some things you love and really looking at them pretty much tells you what colors you love and what 'style' you feel comfortable with. I hate the idea of trying to copy a look out of a magazine, I mean be inspired, but make it your own house, right?

I love, too, that she goes on to give examples of color combinations for different rooms and then states, "These are just suggestions-not ironclad formulas." And she openly invites you to break her rules, but really she is giving you a good solid base in which to create your own rules.

I think I will post some 'color story' photos tomorrow to get your opinions.

On my own decorating front, my living/drawing room cum library, is now going to stay just a drawing/living room. I have rethought my houseplan and our large finished room in our basement is going to get the first facelift by being turned into our library and my husbands study. His current study on the first floor will become our dining room, making room for an eventual redo I am planning that will give me a bigger kitchen with a breakfast/morning room. I will include you in all the mayhem that I am certain will follow with all that, as well as the success.

I belive I post this recipe before, but I just made some lovely doughnuts yesterday morning and wanted to post about it. Obviously I do not have any Swifting's, but I think it is just basic shortening. That is what I used, though next time I am going to use lard and I think I am going to get a vintage deep fat fryer for my kitchen. There are many things that could be cooked properly in it, and I think if I don't overdo it we should be able to stay away from hard attacks! They were so yummy and even cold the next day, they were not heavy nor greasy at all! Next time I will make icing and top them with coconut and jimmies (sprinkles for you non New Englanders).

My husband actually prefers them plain. But, of course, I adore them dredged through the sugar until they are almost white!

Sometimes the most simple things recieve the most lauded reviews. I had wanted to try this simple little casserole for some time. I was drawn in by the article, detailing a couple and their social life. This image and recipe just looked very middle class american 1950s. Before this project I had never ever made a casserole in my life. Actually the word drummed up horrid images of marshmallow covered meat and veg or overcooked hamburger and overdone noodles. I am a convert.

As far as having time in your busy schedule, the casserole is a homemakers salvation on busy days. We had an impromptu plan yesterday to go with some friends to have a fun evening of cards at my vintage friends house. I had these ingredients in my house and thought, "I'll throw together that casserole and bring it along for our dinner there" It was so easy to make and it was so good.

My husband took the rest with him to work today and even said again this morning, "That was so good". My vintage friends fiance' even commented twice and I think would love to see it show up on their table. I do highly reccomend it, even if you are like me and think casserole is a four-letter word.

Until tomorrow, then, happy homemaking!

4 March 1955 "Propaganda and My Battle Cry"

STOCK GAINS in the next two years may push the Dow-Jones industrial average as high as 500, nearly a 25% rise, predicts FORTUNE. Barring war and no recession worse than the 1953-54 slump, stock dividends will jump 48% by 1957, and 65% (to a total of $16.5 billion) by 1959. Gross national product will soar an estimated 16% to $440 billion in the next four years. [ today in 2009 the Dow is at 6836.63 while in 2007 it was at 14,000! That is less than half what it was.)

AIRPORT PLAN for New York's International Airport at Idlewild will turn it into the world's most modern terminal, capable of handling 140 airliners at one time. To cost $60 million, the project calls for a 655-acre "Terminal City" with an eleven-block-long arrival building, two adjacent wing buildings, seven individual airline terminal buildings, plus a maze of taxiways and aprons. First buildings will be ready for their first passengers early in 1957.

(The airport was originally known as Idlewild Airport and it was later renamed "Major General Alexander E. Anderson Airport." General Anderson was a Queens resident who had commanded a Federalized National Guard unit in the southern United States and who had died in late 1942. In 1948, the airport was renamed New York International Airport, though the original name remained in common use. The airport was renamed in 1963 in memory of the late President John F. Kennedy. It is colloquially referred to simply as "Kennedy" or "JFK.")

Today I feel like giving my two cents (well a buck fifty's worth really), so hold on:

Sometimes propaganda can be good. It gets its point across.





Sometimes I feel it is bad in a very subtle way:

How has being a housewife become compared to being Hitler. Well, maybe that is a little strong, but this sort of image now gets my dander up. It used to amuse me somewhat and I could think, "Oh, those silly women back then. Slaves to their husbands and their house, haha, not free and alive like we modern women."

Yes, I used to laugh at this sort of thing, but now I am beginning to think that these images are actually anti-housewife propaganda. I may just be touting conspiracy therom, but honestly, is this some subtle coporate propaganda that pokes fun at a housewife? Does this make the idea of staying home and caring for you home similiar to that of a dictator? IF a woman isnt home and caring about her house, then she cannot realize how easily it is to clean with a few items, instead of the vast amount on the market. Why, she can't even stay home at all, as the need to buy and pay for everthing we have to make our not staying home easier after working all day. That means both husband and wife have to work. Now you are at work, so you need to get the housework done quickly, both because your busy and also you don't want to be a 'homemaker' (ck that is so 50's!) So, you buy swiffers and other throw away cleaning products. Who has time to do laundry so you buy too many clothes that you don't need and cheap things (think WalMart and Old Navy) to replace any tears or rips that you don't have the time nor skill to mend and toss those old ones in the junk heap. Now, with your busy schedule and your hatred for the bondage of the kitchen you don't have the time nor inclination to make meals, so prepared foods are your answer, all the while creating more and more garbage for landfills. Who has time to make a PBJ, just buy them pre-packaged and toss away what you don't need. And forget about setting a nice table for everyone to sit around and eat that prepared food, no way! Now the concept of the family meal is completley out of the picture. I know, I know, it does sound extreme, but don't you think there is a grain of truth in it? The removal of the woman from the home leads to more spending. The less time families spend together the more all members can go out and spend more. They need more money to buy all the things they 'need', so they have to make more money and then they have more money and they spend it. It is like a mobius strip of consumerism.

Isn't it funny how one little poster could bring all this up in me? However, that is the main point, really: A picture IS worth a thousand words.

You see an image and it slips into your subconscious and you file it away. "I hate these people, buy this product, this is the best of its kind." It just gets in there. I wonder what way we could use the propaganda to return the lost glory to the homemaker? Maybe a poster of Martha stewart standing in a spotless room with a broom and a mop in her hand and behind her piles of cash and gold and jewels with the caption "She did it, why don't you?" This would give the double draw of celebrity and money which often makes the most mundane thing seem extraordniary. Just a thought. A promise of whiter teeth, use this toothpaste, A happier more fulfilling life, clean and cook.

There is a line in one of my favorite movies "Mr. Blandings Builds a Dream House" where the daughter tells her father that his profession of Advertising is basically a 'parasitic profession'.

Says she, "It makes people buy things they don't want with money they haven't got", taught her by the teacher in her high-priced private school.

The father (played by wonderful Carey Grant) retorts,"Well, that basically parasitic profession pays for your expensive schools and puts the braces on your back teeth!"

It is an interesting and poignant relfection of the coming world. The movie is from 1948 so it is just the beginning of what the 1950s are to become. Thus we begin to walk that line of what we can do to make ourselves feel better, prettier, more comfortable and more popular. We soon learn to swallow propaganda as if it is gulps of oxygen, feeding us through our modern lives.

Even images like this irk me somewhat. First off, it isn't true. Marie Curie? Eleanor Roosevelt? They weren't some bad asses riding in on their motorcylces spitting in the eye of THE MAN. This concept that you have to be a rebel and throw over every current norm is a very modern idea. And why are you only a valid member of society if you DO make history? All the great people we do hear about did have mothers or nannies, people who cared for then, fed them, hugged them. Why is that not valid? Maybe I am being extreme, but I honestly feel these sorts of things make little jabs at wanting to be a homemaker or mother or just happily working and living a quiet life, wrong! It might even confuse things. I think the generations now have this horrible stress to be great: Be a star! Be Paris Hilton or a famous Basketball player etc. Maybe if they televised housework in an exciting way and made million dollar contracts for wives this wouldn't be the case.

What happened to trying to do the best job with what you are doing while you are doing it? I really feel tv and other media just show that you need to be like a few very wealthy spoiled population who always get in the papers! But, who can ever afford or hope to get to their status and if you did, why use your power and money the way they do? They are an annoying minority. There are scads of very wealthy people living normal lives, tipping waiters, being kind to their help, loving their families, but they don't make it in the paper because it isn't shocking or cool. It is funny how we have come to the culture of cool. I don't know, maybe James Dean started it, but things that are important to teenagers, like what is cool or 'in your face', seem to be the gauge we use for what is important in 'grown up' society. When did this exactly happen? I think it has really just been slowly coming on since the 1950s. Now we now seem to disdain things which are reachable goals and quiet happy lives for some 'ideal of celebrity' that many young people aspire to. They need to have the labels and the cars and the image, but it is all hollow and empty. Maybe that is why the teenager working at the local store is so rude, she figures she is gonna be a star or somthing 'better' someday so why should she put up wiht you? And why isn't a homemaker a viable option any longer? Why isn't it talked about in schools as an actual occupation and goal for a person (woman or man)?

It seems to me that the more I get into my project, the more I uncover both the myth and the reality of this small window in modern american history, the more I respect it. I am sure that a large portion of what we think of as "the 1950's" is our interpretation of the propaganda of the time. I am certain that many things we mock may or may not have even been true then. But, and here is the rub, the more I consider it and contemplate it, the more I want it to be true. And not just some truth in the past but an honest and real truth now.

Some day I won't be living in 1955, just as those who really did live it had to let go and move forward: 1956 showed up, then the turbulent 60's. The 1970's with its drugs and rising prices and increasing worries of foreign affairs. The 1980s taught us all to love greed and that it wasn't a bad thing to chase the mighty dollar. The 1990's tried, after the 1980's, to 'Grunge' it's way to a more homespun reality, only to be followed by more pop iconography and materialism at its end fueled by the sham of endless wealth and technology. Then the new millenium rolled in with all its promise of wealth built on sham foundations which have since broken down leaving the world wondering, "what just happened?". We seem to have been on some rollercoaster ride which started off well enough just after WWII and has ended at some odd destination.

Perhaps part of my project was to hide away in some forgotton decade, to turn my back on the real problems of my own time. The thing is, however, that now I don't want to turn away. I want to fix the mistake that we always seem to make as the human animal: The inability to look back in order to go forward. I can never know truly what 1955 was like for those who were there, but I know many of the things I am discovering are things that increasingly becoming important to me. Home, Family, Community, Self-Sustainability. I don't want to let go of these. And considering the technology we now have, we really can build a new world. I want to further those 'old-fashioned' ideals. I want to make the things we now see as silly or wasteful as valid and worthy. I want to wear my homemaking badge with honor! I will stare down any funny looks square in the eye when I am wearing my outfit of hat and white gloves in the heat of July like a soldier in uniform.

I would like to think I can make my only little bit of my world however I like it. And, 1955, I really like you. I know I cannot ever truly understand you nor honestly visit you, but in paying you respect and honor, I might make a better future for myself and hopefully for those around me. I can learn from your mistakes and fix them, but also learn from your success and adapt them to the 21st. century.

Who ever thought an idea for a fun project on a blog could be so life changing?

Who would ever have thought putting on a hat, gloves, petticoat and organizing my house and cooking meals could make me feel more powerful and more proud of being a woman than any modern concept of equality ever could?

I don't think I will ever really leave 1955 entirely. I think, like Dorothy, I may return to the black and white reality of the modern world, but I will hold all OZ has taught me in my heart. I am not quite ready to click my heals just yet.

You know, Dorothy, I am not yet ready to go home.

Maybe we can take this propaganda and put it to our cause: We can do it, we women. We can have the courage to make our homes and, even if we can afford new, sew and mend our own clothes. We can grow our food and make and bake it, we can clean our homes top to bottom with minimal products and plenty of elbow grease. We can hold up and support our families and husbands through clean homes, pretty smiles and the strength of all womankind behind us. WE do it for ourselves as well as for others. Goodbye ME generation hello WE generation.

Yes We Can.

3 March 1955 "Bombs, Sewing Failures, Pie, and Hope"

Waterproof Shoes. The Dow Corning Corp., jointly owned by Dow Chemical and Corning Glass, has developed a silicone product that will make leather virtually waterproof. First use of the chemical (trade name: Sylflex) will be for shoes. The Charles A. Eaton Co. will use it on golf shoes; Endicott Johnson Shoe Corp. will try it on a combination work-and-sports boot. Treated shoes will shed water, still allow air to come through to cool the foot.

Do-lt-Yourself Sink. For do-it-yourself hobbyists, American Kitchens of Connersville, Ind. put on sale a knockdown kitchen sink. Made of steel, baked enamel and porcelain, the sink can be assembled by one man using only a screwdriver and pliers. Each unit contains a regular 42-in. single-bowl, single-drainboard sinktop, a complete faucet and hardware kit, and all the parts for an undersink cabinet. Price: $59-95 [$464.00-748.45] (I guess this is what was available before IKEA and HOME DEPOT! It is amazing that cost, however, as I am sure you could get somthing for under $100.00 modern money at either place.)

This article in a March 1955 Time Magazine gave me chills:

"All week long a cold wind hurled grey clouds out of the Northwest and across the bleak Atomic Proving Grounds in Nevada. The Atomic Energy Commission, well aware of public concern about radioactive fallout, kept on postponing the big blast. But at 5:45 one morning, it touched off a small one.

Newsmen huddled on cold (10°), windy (40 m.p.h.) Mt. Charleston, nearly 50 miles away, muttered with frustration. The blast was a disappointment: the sky lit up with a dull red glow for a second; the mushroom cloud was hidden in the dark overcast; the sound bounced over Mt. Charleston completely.

But for less jaded observers the explosion had authority. Small though it was, the blast lit up predawn Los Angeles 250 air miles away. It rattled through Las Vegas, Nev. 75 miles away, rumbled on through St. George, Utah 135 miles to the East, and sounded like distant war drums in Cedar City, Utah 175 miles from the blast. Some in Los Angeles claimed to hear the distant drums 20 minutes after the flash."

The beginning of the spread and danger of large scale bombs. The fact that such tests were done while people were in 50 miles to report it, is frightening. We were and are children playing wiht fire. Nearby towns must have been affected. I wonder how much cancer and other horrors came about from such testing. Even though we have gone through two World Wars (or rather BECAUSE we have) I am really beginning to see the loss of the innocence of the world. Of course man has always been a terror to one another and there has always been war and bloodshed, but now is the beginning of fear on a new level. No wonder then, and I really think now as well, people are trying to return to a simple or more family/community centered life. We should enjoy and appreciate what we have together before those in power blow it all away!

Now to the Home:

I am rather frustrated with one of my patterns. It was the one for the wrap dress. I tried it last night and I was rather unimpressed. I unfortunately used up the pretty light blue printed fabric I showed yesterday with the pink cotton. It was such lovely fabric and I am so unhappy with the dress. I have decided to take my lemons and make lemonade. I am going to cut off the bodice and reconfigure what I can with the left over pink cotton and try to salvage it as a skirt. I will post a picture of the result.

This has made me more determined to try more of the patterns today, so I think this will be a short post today, so I can get through my ironing, and get to sewing. I feel challanged now and need to make something nice before I get too frustrated. It is just when I put the darn thing on I looked like a stuffed sausage. It did nothing for my self esteem, I can tell you that much, but I am determined. I did have to laugh, however, as I had posted that that scene from 'I Love Lucy' and certainly the dress did not look as bad as that, but it did not look good. I think this has definitely helped me decide NO to home perm. When the time comes I will take the trip to the city and go to a professional.

Here are some photos from this past Saturdays 1950's dinner. It was at my house this past week. I made Roast pork with a mango glaze. Roast potatos and asparagus with Hollandaise and for dessert a Magic Cream Pie. As I had been busy and thought, I wonder what I could do in 1955 to make my home cooked meal easier for me. So, I bought a frozen pie crust (as I didn't have any of my own in the freezer at the time) and chose the pie recipe for its simplicity. I also made dinner rolls from the pillsbury tube, as I saw they were invented and there are many 1950's recipes involving them. I also used this recipe for Mock Hollandaise to make it easier. (I included the recipe for actual Hollandaise as well, as it is soo yummy.)

Now, these are the changes I made to the pie. First off, the Pie called for Lemon juice but I was out of fresh lemons (as I like to squeeze them with my vintage juicer) so I raided the bar and found some lime juice. I think I liked it better as it was more tart. The recipe calls for no sugar, but I found it rather to tart so added 1/4 cup when mixing it. The whipping cream I added almond extract too, as I liked the combined taste with the tart lime. This was suppose to be a pie that would just set, but I am not sure why it did not, it could be due to my adding sugar. What I did instead, was to freeze it and it became a wonderful frozen pie. It was like a creamy tart icecream and the bananas, as they were frozen, were like little candies inside. I would make it again, maybe next time Chocolate and banana!

Here is the table set. The napkins were not on, as of yet, when I took this. You can see how busy I was, as I nor Gussie had time to iron my new tablecloth, those lines drive me crazy when I see the photo. Of course, no one noticed and as you all know I am working on my tablecloth therapy. "let it go," I must say to myslef.

The roast was nice and tender. I like to sort of do the opposite of what my books tell me in cooking a standing pork roast. I cook it first for about an hour covered and then cook it uncovered at the last to crisp up the fat on top and to give the potatos a nice crisp brown edge.

This is a great shot of my vintage friend as she arrived, removing her gloves. She told me she had used my blogs advice on whether to keep her hat on. I had posted before from my Amy Vanderbilt book of etiquette, that if the hostess is hatless and gloveless (which I was) you may do so youself.

You can see one of my dogs, Sophie, watiting patiently for the impending dinner in the background.

Of course, I forgot to get a picture of myself, but here is a great shot of my vintage friend and I that I cropped turned black and white and framed in white to look like an old photo. I think it really looks like a vintage shot, don't you? I love being a be-furred, hatted and gloved lady who lunches. Wouldn't you?

Well, I am sorry this is such a short post, but I must get back to my sewing. The challenge awaits! Hopefully this will be me today and into the future.

1 & 2 March 1955 " Speed, Technology, Hair, Clothes, and Food"

Lightweight Motorcycle. Milwaukee's Harley-Davidson Motor Co. unveiled a lightweight motorcycle called the Hummer. Weighing 160 lbs., the Hummer will get up to 100 miles per gallon, a top speed of 40 m.p.h. Price: $320 f.o.b. Milwaukee (about $100 under Harley's previous low-priced model). (that is $2521.11 in todays money)


Briefcase Tape Recorder. A battery-operated magnetic tape recorder that is built into an average-sized leather briefcase and weighs less than 12 Ibs. has been put on the market by Manhattan's Amplifier Corp. of America. The recorder, operated by touching a combination lock and switch, can pick up whispers at 12 ft. and ordinary speech at 100 ft. It provides recording for 1½ hours. Price: $225. (that is $1772.66 now that is an expensive gadget! )

On the personal technology front, the march towards better sounding music is really beginning and mingled with consumerism, get ready future, here we come. The beginning of quickly outdated technology with high price tags is beginning. The comparative price for today are in [ ] brackets:

Some 1,000,000 Americans have begun switching to Hi-Fi systems and established a new and burgeoning industry. Each week about 3,000 more homes go hifi. A mere fad until recently, hi-fi has become a $250 million business (equipment sales have increased as much as 500% in some areas since 1952). There is a standard pattern: about two years after an area is saturated with TV, hi-fi moves in.

The best buys among the package units—perhaps not as hi as fi should be, but certainly better than most old-fashioned phonographs—sell at around $150. [$1,181.77] A good custom hi-fi rig costs at least twice that much, and the price can go as high as $2,500. [$19,696,18]
In the wrong equipment, a great deal can go wrong with sound. Its top can be lopped off, like a headless amateur photograph, making a violin sound like a flute because its characteristic overtones are gone; its bottom can be restricted, making the basses sound an octave or more higher (or not at all). Overtones can be added that were never played by the musician (harmonic distortion) or be thickened (intermodulation).
Expensive equipment is not necessarily a guarantee against such hazards. But a good hi-fi system must include at least a turntable, price $60 [$472.71], a diamond stylus, $20 [$157.57] and magnetic cartridge, $15 [$118.18], a good amplifier, $100 [$787.85] and a loudspeaker system, $150 [$1181.77] which now usually consists of at least one woofer (a speaker designed to reproduce low tones) and tweeter (high tones). Tweeters may be cones (sweet, not too brilliant), horns (plenty of highs and often tinny), or the newly developed electrostatic type, in which a flat sheet of metal foil moves in the open air. Most speakers still need an enclosure of some six cubic feet, but it is no longer necessary to have huge coffins standing about the living room.
Looking Forward. When the all-out audiophile swings into action, his pet weapon is the tape recorder, with which he captures music for future use from his FM radio or his own and his friends' LPs.
At the current price of tape up to $5 per hour [$39.39], the tapeworm's music will cost him about as much as the most expensive LP; often it will sound better, because tape at its best reduces surface noise.









How is this for portable music. The pre-ipod maybe?




I thought I would talk about hair and clothes today.

I really want to get my hair cut short and plan on doing so in the future.

Here is a great commercial for a home perm showing wonderful short hairstyles of the day.

For my, it is a toss up between the loose casual style and the medium style. I want some where between those two.

However, I really want this look and I , too , do not want any "fussy frizzy styles" and I think I WANT a Bobbi perm.


What is wonderful about this advert is there is a great shot showing how she set her hair in the bobby pins to get that look! I want to try setting my hair like this after I get it cut and if I like the look of it, get a homeperm and try it this way with the pincurls and NOT perm rods. It makes sense, really. I never thought I would get another perm after my horror of one in the 1980s. I looked like a drowning poodle!

Unfortunately, I cannot find Bobbi perms any longer but the Vermont Country Store has the Lilt version. I am not sure, yet. I would have my hairdresser do it, but since my project I don't really trust anyone to try and recreate a style they little to nothing about. What do any of you think?

However, with my recent foray into home sewing my clothes and now considering doing my own permanent, I am concerned I may be reliving this hilarious scene from an "I Love Lucy" episdoe.



Now, before I said I would try to show some of the places I try to use as resources for vintage. Obviously one great source for vintage one of a kinds is Etsy. These Shoes are wonderful and though I would have once thought them only appropriate to the 1960s, I see many shoes similiar to this in my 50's magazines. I have two pair similiar to these in navy and white and red and white. Believe you me, if I could wear a size 8, I wouldn't be showing these to you except for maybe in a photo of them on my feet! But, for any of you 8's out there, $24.00 is pretty cheap for these shoes.

With stockings, sometimes I come across things like these. But, really for me, as I need to wear these as a normal part of my life, I stick with new reproductions. It is more afordable and realistic for me. There is the LadyGrace I had mentioned before. These are some of my favorites, though they do not have seams, but they are cheap and indestructible. I am very tall so the Queen size is perfect for long legs. These cost a little more and also do not have seams, but are really nice and hubby's like them, believe me! (I sometimes think lace was invented for men as much as women!) Now These are nice and I think a good buy, only they are in black. It is finding the seamed tan/nude stocking that is hard for me and they are honestly what you wear most of the time. Black is really more for evening, I believe. These are nice and you can get them in beige but not in the large, so they don't work for me. But, they look like a good price and if you can wear a small or a medium and want the beige, they look nice. Let me know if you try them.
For shoes it is really just hit and miss. I think I have found most of my really great vintage and vintage inspired on ebay. I have a large foot and it is hard to always buy vintage, but a site like this has great reproductions, but they are not cheap. But, then again, a frugal style of a few pair of high quality shoes that won't go out of style (another boon to dressing vintage!) can sometimes allow for a high priced shoe.
Now, for clothes, as you have been witnessing, sewing is going to hopefully be my salvation there. As I said, I am tall, so it is not always easy to find vintage things to fit me. But, I have good luck with cardigans and accesories at local thrift shops and also ebay. My fantasy by the years end is a redesigned newly built walk in closet (based on ideas in my homemakers manuals) neatly organized with hats in hatboxes (besides vintage ones, they always make hatbox size boxes in very pretty patterns at places like HomeGoods an such that are used for storage boxes, but they are indeed the original size of hatboxes.) Drawers for all my vintage hose and underthings organzied, scarves and gloves divided up for summer and winter wear. Shoes neatly placed on one wall with off season ones neatly stored in shoe boxes papered in a similiar pleasing pattern. And, of course, rows of my homemade dresses mingling happily with my vintage and modern but vintage inspired store bought items. Ahhhh. That will be a nice christmas present for myself, I think.

With my sewing I want to show some of the fabrics and the pattern I got the other day. As you remember, I post this pic as it was an inspiration for a pattern and some fabric.

Here is the pattern. I know the sleelves are different, but I think it was fairly close. This is the fabric I chose which I think has a very vintage feel and rather close to the original don't you think? This photo shows an enlarged closeup of the pattern, which I think is just lovely, don't you?











I had bought this pattern before and posted it for you, but I am showing it again to show the pattern I will be using for these fabrics.
The black and white two tone version of the dress will be made in this fabric. I am going ot use the pink in the front and the blue as the overskirt.

Here is the blue close-up and I really think it has a vintage feel as well.

This color combination will also be for the black and white dress. I will have the brown on the front and the back of the bodice and this pretty pink fabric as just the overskirt. I hope it looks good. I think the pink fabric is a very 1950s dusty/salmon pink.



Now, in the kitchen here is the eggs benny I made for our sunday breakfast. I actually prefer to make them on toast and they were quite yummy.






Gussie made us some delicious cinnamon rolls for Sunday breakfast, as well.
Here she is rolling it out.
Rolling them up,
and yummy,

here they are done.

They were delicious.



I am going to show pics and talk about recipes tomorrow concerning saturdays 1950's dinner.

Okay, I have spent too much modern time trying to figure out how the heck to imbed this MP3 they sent me of my interview. I have tried numerous times and it will not work. Please if anyone can help me or tell me how to do it.

Addendum: I think I may have figured it out, so hold on this may work. IF it does, please excuse my voice. I had been very ill and had actually lost my voice the day before, so please excuse it.