Memory Monday: Summer Family Holiday Get-Togethers and How They Will Change

My husband and I and our daughter, who now is about to be a mother herself

OUR SUMMER FAMILY HOLIDAY GET-TOGETHERS AND HOW THEY’RE GOING TO CHANGE

Today is Memorial Day—a day to remember those who have died fighting for our country. Memorial Day was first known as Decoration Day when people decorated the graves of the fallen soldiers from the Civil War.  It is also one of the non-birthday/Mother’s Days/Father Days summer days all my children sometimes come to my house for lunch (the other days being Independence Day and Memorial Day—you know, the holidays in the summer when everyone is off work and school is out).
We always have the same thing—sort of a tradition. The menu is hot dogs, chips, and some kind of carbonated drinks. Sometimes, I’ll add baked beans or fruit or anything else I feel like making—usually some kind of dessert. This year it is individual strawberry shortcakes.
Afterwards, we will sit around and watch TV, play some kind of game, or just talk. But this will be the last of the “usual” summer holidays for us. Wednesday, our first grandchild is scheduled to “arrive.” YEAH!!! YEAH!!! YEAH!!!This two-year old granddaughter will change every holiday from here on out.  A new generation—maybe, new traditions. Maybe, next year, we’ll have something different for those summer holiday get-togethers. I just have to wait and see what my new granddaughter likes (can you say this grandma is going to be wrapped around those little fingers?)

Throwback Thursday: Older Woman in a Wrap

From my old and unknown collection;

Here's my caption:

"Just waiting for my son to bring home his big-city bride. Then the fun will begin."

What's your caption? Feel free to it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Modern Conveniences of the Time

My maternal great-grandmother

My great-grandmother was born in Russia and came to America as part of the great Mennonite migration.  She married in 1889 while living in Kansas. I’m not she ever read the book 1000 Shorter Ways Around the House: A Handbook of the Horne, The Building, the Furnishing and the Work Therein by Mae Savell Croy, published in 1916. I’m not even sure she could read English. I know her daughter (my grandmother) could. But even if my great-grandmother couldn’t read about these modern conveniences, she might have seen them in the local mercantile.
As you read through these new-fangled items, what do you think about them? Would you like to use them? Would they help you and save time in your day?
For keeping food warm a hot water platter is most satisfactory as the lower vessel can be filled with hot water and a plate set on this any length of time without injury to the china. They are very cheap in price.
A combination mayonnaise mixer, egg beater, and churn comes in glass, enabling one to see just when the ingredients are properly mixed. They are in various sizes and at different prices.
An egg fryer made of aluminum and shaped so that the sections containing the eggs do not rest directly upon the stove is made with a long handle, and each egg being in a separate compartment is cooked in nicely rounded shape.
An excellent dish-washer is a string-mop with a rectangular brush set in one side. The tool is small enough to allow the mop to be used for washing cups and glasses, while any material that has a tendency to stick can be loosened by means of the brush. Dishes can be washed rapidly by it without a dish pan and with merely a fine stream of hot water from the faucet. Only silver and glassware require drying.
An inexpensive silver-clean-pan renders the task of cleaning silver an easy one. The process of cleaning is merely to put a little salt and soda in hot water and pour into the pan and let the silver soak in the solution for half an hour. If it is then washed with soapy water no tarnish will remain.
A gas-saver consists merely of a piece of sheet metal lined with asbestos. When placed over a gas-flame, three irons can be more evenly heated than over the burner alone and in less time. Four irons can be heated and kept going on ironing day.
I think these items should stay in the books as curiosities of a bygone era. Give me a microwave, a dishwasher, stainless steel flatware, and NO asbestos, thank you very much.
What are your thoughts on these modern conveniences?

Throwback Thursday: Two Seasoned Women

Here's my caption:

Taller woman—How much trouble do you think we can cause this new bride?

What's yours?

Leave your caption for this picture from my "old and unknown files" in the comments.

Memory Monday: Cooking from a Male Perspective, Part 2

My maternal grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary

COOKING FROM A MALE PROSPECTIVE, Part 2

Today I am continuing the post from last week from the cook book, THE STAG COOK BOOK,

WRITTEN FOR MEN BY MEN. Last week I mentioned that my paternal grandfather was married when this book was published. Not so with my maternal grandfather. The year this book came out, he married the woman who became my grandmother.

So, here are a few more of the recipes that men of that time liked to eat and in some instances make.

William Allen White (a renowned a renowned newspaper editor and author)

VEGETABLE SALAD

My idea of good food is a vegetable salad. Any kind of a vegetable salad is good; some are better than others. Here is a recipe for a French dressing on a lettuce salad which you should try on your meat grinder, or your potato masher, or your rolling pin or whatever kitchen utensil you can play.

Get a crisps head of lettuce, discard the outer green leaves, using the inner yellow and white. Wash it thoroughly, and after pulling it apart dry each leaf with a tea towel. Put it in a big bowl—a big mixing bowl, six inches deep anyway. Then set that to one side, and get about as much onion as the end of your first finger would make, if it was chopped off at the second joint. Mince that. Put it in the bottom of a bowl. Take a large tablespoon; put in salt and paprika to taste, and don't be afraid of making it salty, then add oil and vinegar, about three or four to one, mixing them in the spoon until it slops over into the onion, and then stir the salt and paprika and oil and vinegar down into the bowl of minced onion, taking a salad fork and jabbing it around in the mixture until the onion has been fairly well crushed and the onion flavor permeates the mixed oil and vinegar, and the salt and paprika have become for the moment a part of the mass. Don't let it stand a second, but pour it quickly into the bowl of dry lettuce, and then stir like the devil. Keep on stirring; stir some more, and serve as quickly as possible.

Cheese may be mashed into the onion before putting on the oil and vinegar and paprika and salt. If one wants to add tomatoes, wait until the last three jabs of the stirring fork into the lettuce, and then quarter the tomatoes and turn them in just before you turn the lettuce over the last two or three times. This is done so that the watery juice of the tomatoes won't get smeared over the oil on the lettuce leaves. If you stir the tomatoes in early, you get a runny, watery, gooey mess. Cucumbers may be added, and they should be stirred in rather earlier than the tomatoes in the business of mixing the lettuce leaves and the dressing. Green peppers may be added if they are cut into strings, but too much outside fixings spoils the salad for me. The tomatoes are about as far as one can go wisely.

Dan Beard (American illustrator, author, youth leader, and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America)

A BURGOO

Clean and dress the meat of a soft-shelled turtle, a painted turtle, a poker-dot turtle, or almost any other kind of turtle. Clean and dress a rabbit, a ruffled grouse, moose meat, elk meat, deer meat, sheep meat, in fact any sort of game. Cut your meat into pieces about the size of inch cubes. Save the bones, especially the marrow bones, to put in with the meat. Add some salt pork cut into cubes, if you have it.

If you have been thoughtful enough to supply your outfit with some ill-smelling, but palatable dry vegetables, they will add flavor to your burgoo, put all the material in a kettle, and fill the kettle half full of water. If you have beans and potatoes do not put them in with the meat because they will go to the bottom and scorch. While the stuff you have already put in the kettle is boiling, or simmering, peel your onions and quarter them, scrape your carrots and slice them, peel your potatoes, cut them up into pieces—about inch cubes. After your caldron has commenced to boil dump in the fresh vegetables, they will cool off the water and kill the boil. Do not let it come to a boil again, but put it over a slow fire and allow it to simmer. There should always be enough water to cover the vegetables. A can of tomatoes will add greatly to the flavor. Use no sweet vegetables like beets or sweet potatoes. Put the salt and pepper in just before you take it off the fire. When the burgoo is done, strain it into tin cups. The liquid out of an olive bottle adds greatly to the flavor if you pour it in while the stew is cooking. If you have such luxuries in camp as olives and lemons, a slice of lemon with an olive in each cup over which the liquid is poured makes a dish too good for any old king that ever lived.

The excellence of a burgoo depends upon two things, the materials you have of which to make it and the care you take in cooking it. No two burgoos are alike, and every one I ever tasted was mighty good. Civilized material such as can be purchased at the butcher shop and the vegetable store makes a good soup, but the "goo" isn't there. Consequently you cannot call it a burgoo.

Dr. Charles M. Sheldon (American minister. His novel, In His Steps, introduced the principle of “What Would Jesus Do?”)

LIKES BREAD AND MILK

A recipe of my favorite dish is very simple—bread and milk with American cheese broken into it. I eat this dish once a day every day and find it wholesome and nourishing. It does not require any skillful putting together, simply a good appetite and a taste for that sort of provender. If there is an apple pie anywhere around to top it off with, I do not despise that.

I find as a rule that the simpler and more elementary the food, the better so far as the body is concerned. And take it the year around a bowl of milk with fresh bread and rich American cheese, finishing up with "good apple pie like mother used to make," is all the midday meal I need. I can work on that all the afternoon and feel better than if I had had a seven course dinner.

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the past at what some of the men in the early 20^th Century like to cook and eat.

Did any of them sound like things your fathers, grandfathers, or great-grandfathers liked to eat?

Throwback Thursday: A Woman Behind Two Men

Here's my caption:

Man on left--You gotta get past us if you’re gonna ask our little sis to marry you.

What's yours?

Leave your caption for this picture from my "old and unknown files" in the comments.

Memory Monday: Cooking from a Male Perspective, Part 1

My dad and his dad

COOKING FROM A MALE PROSPECTIVE, Part 1

I recently came across a most delightful cook book from 1922. The title is THE STAG COOK BOOK, WRITTEN FOR MEN BY MEN. My grandfather would have been married about twelve years when this came out and had two very small children (my father and his younger sister).

Since I have enjoyed this book so much, I plan to take two weeks to share some of the recipes from it. I hope you enjoy reading the recipes (and the editor’s notes) just as much as I have.

Warren G. Harding (29^th US President—serving from 1921 until his death, August 2, 1923)

WAFFLES

2 eggs

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons butter

I teaspoon salt

pint milk

flour to make thin batter

2 large teaspoons of baking powder

Beat yolks of eggs, add sugar and salt, melt butter, add milk and flour; last just before ready to bake add beaten whites of eggs and baking powder.

Bake on hot waffle iron.

EDITOR'S NOTE:—There is a great deal of argument about the proper dressing for waffles. Various gravies are used by one school of waffle eaters; while honey, maple syrup, and various specially flavored sugar powders are preferred by another.

President Harding is a staunch upholder of the gravy school and likes his in the form of creamed chipped beef.

Jules J. Jusserand (Ambassador to the United States from France) RADISH SALAD

The French ambassador presents his compliments and begs to state that he does not believe that any dish, or food, is more palatable than a salad of radishes, the radishes to be cut in very thin slices and to be seasoned with the usual salad dressing.

EDITOR'S NOTE:—This salad will be at its best if the foundation, upon which the thin slices of radish are placed, is made of small crisp leaves of romaine. The usual dressing—french, of course—is prepared in this way:

To one tablespoonful of lemon or vinegar add three table-spoonsful of the best olive oil, a dash of black pepper, and a half teaspoonful of salt. Beat well with a silver fork, and add enough paprika to give it a ruddy color, and a rich flavor. If the salad dish is rubbed with garlic it will do no great harm to the mixture!

Bruce Barton (American author, advertising executive, and politician)

RICE PUDDING

I am president of the S. R. R. R. P.—the Society for

Restoration of Raisins to Rice Pudding.

I have made a list of New York hotels and clubs and rated them according to the number of raisins they put in a portion of rice pudding as follows:

Class D—no raisins

Class C-1 raisin

Class B-3 or more raisins

Class A—plenty of raisins

To my mind, rice pudding without raisins is like Hamlet without the eggs.

1 cup rice

4 cups milk

3 eggs

cup sugar

teaspoonful salt

package seedless raisins

teaspoon of vanilla

Bake one hour in a hot oven. Set the pan inside of another containing hot water.

Serve with whipped cream and garnish with Dromedary dates.

EDITOR'S NOTE:—Cook the rice twenty-three minutes.

I hope you enjoyed this look at the past and the foods some well-known men (at the time) liked. What were the favorite dishes that the men in your family always requested or like to make themselves?

Throwback Thursday: Two Well-Dressed Men Evaluating Something Off Camera

Here's my caption:

Man on right “Who do you think they’re looking at, you or me?”

What's yours? Leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Dental Care

My great-grandmother

ALL FOR THE CARE OF THE TEETH

I love to watch the tv show “Survivor.” One of the interesting things I have noticed is the way they take care of their teeth while they are on the island. You can often see one of them scraping his or her teeth with a small stick. I guess that is the best way to keep your teeth clean when you don’t have a tooth brush and toothpaste.

Personally, I like my electric tooth brush and Arm and Hammer or Crest toothpaste. All this led me to research how our ancestors cleaned their teeth. Now, I knew that there hasn’t been toothpaste for all that many years (understand, I’m in my sixties, so I’m talking about “all that many years” before my parents were born), but I found a couple of recipes for making tooth powder that my great-grandfather might have used as he fought in the Civil War in the 1860s. Of course, my great-grandmother might have use some of this powder also, since she wasn’t born until 1862. The following is from a book that came out in 1858 and is titled INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW OR OVER THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FACTS WORTH KNOWING. (Don’t you just love titles like this—ones that explain the “real” title?)

Here are the recipes:

AMERICAN TOOTH POW DER. — Coral, cuttle fish-bone, dra gon's blood, of each eight drachms; burnt alum and red sanders, of each four drachms; orris root, eight drachms: cloves and cinnamon, of each half a drachm ; vanilla, eleven grains ; rosewood, half a drachm; rose pink, eight drachms. All to be finely pow dered and mixed.

QUININE TOOTH POWDER.—Rose pink, two drachms; pre cipitated chalk, twelve drachms; car bonate of manesia, one drachm ; qui nine (sulphate), six grains. All to be well mixed together.

I don’t know what most of the things in the recipes above are and I don’t think I want to know. Just the thought of everyone in the family sticking their damp toothbrush in to the same jar of tooth powder does funny things to my stomach, especially when I know that some of them chewed tobacco. Let’s just say that I’m happy to have the tubes of white paste that I can squeeze out of a tube—stuff that tastes like mint. Yep, I’m really happy to use what we have today, and everyone in our house has their own tube.