Alkalize This!

Here’s the blogging equivalent of – oh, I don’t know – a sorbet, a palate cleanser if you will. All these recipes and the staggering amount of jellied salad have inspired me to post this early 1950s ad for Tums.

The copy is as follows:

Relax and enjoy your food! If acid upset follows, simply take TUMS. These delicious antacids neutralize the excess acid that causes your stomach distress. That is why you feel fine – so fast. TUMS are carminative, comforting, soothing. Never over-alkalize [sic]

On the roll of Tums it reads “Eat Like Candy” – they’re so much better than all those non-delicious antacids out there. But can this be a good thing? After all, some people eat candy pretty fast. I don’t know how comforting and soothing it would be to bolt them down like Rolos or M&Ms, do you?

Mind you that guy does look pretty well medicated. I wonder how many he had, and what was in them? Do you think it ever occurs to him that the pipe-smoking might be contributing to his acid upset? I mean, it isn’t good for you, is it. But clearly he cares not, he is floating on a virtual sea of antacid contentment.

Furthermore the man seems to consist only of a disembodied head and a hand – where’s his stomach got to? Does Tums take away the “acid upset” by – taking the entire stomach away?

But let’s not over-analyze – er, over-alkalize! - the situation.

One final thing – I very much enjoyed seeing that the ad writer used the word “carminative,” which I haven’t seen since reading Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow, which satirizes various wealthy and/or literary types of the 1920s. The main character is a bad poet named Denis who, not knowing that this word means gassy, decides that it is the most beautiful and poetic word he has ever heard, and wants to use it in a poem thus: “And passion carminative as wine…”

And then he decides to look it up in the dictionary. He is crushed, of course (satire of disillusionment of 1920s youth, etc).

Perhaps a Tums would have cheered him up.

Alkalize This!

Here’s the blogging equivalent of – oh, I don’t know – a sorbet, a palate cleanser if you will. All these recipes and the staggering amount of jellied salad have inspired me to post this early 1950s ad for Tums.

The copy is as follows:

Relax and enjoy your food! If acid upset follows, simply take TUMS. These delicious antacids neutralize the excess acid that causes your stomach distress. That is why you feel fine – so fast. TUMS are carminative, comforting, soothing. Never over-alkalize [sic]

On the roll of Tums it reads “Eat Like Candy” – they’re so much better than all those non-delicious antacids out there. But can this be a good thing? After all, some people eat candy pretty fast. I don’t know how comforting and soothing it would be to bolt them down like Rolos or M&Ms, do you?

Mind you that guy does look pretty well medicated. I wonder how many he had, and what was in them? Do you think it ever occurs to him that the pipe-smoking might be contributing to his acid upset? I mean, it isn’t good for you, is it. But clearly he cares not, he is floating on a virtual sea of antacid contentment.

Furthermore the man seems to consist only of a disembodied head and a hand – where’s his stomach got to? Does Tums take away the “acid upset” by – taking the entire stomach away?

But let’s not over-analyze – er, over-alkalize! - the situation.

One final thing – I very much enjoyed seeing that the ad writer used the word “carminative,” which I haven’t seen since reading Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow, which satirizes various wealthy and/or literary types of the 1920s. The main character is a bad poet named Denis who, not knowing that this word means gassy, decides that it is the most beautiful and poetic word he has ever heard, and wants to use it in a poem thus: “And passion carminative as wine…”

And then he decides to look it up in the dictionary. He is crushed, of course (satire of disillusionment of 1920s youth, etc).

Perhaps a Tums would have cheered him up.

Kitchen Sweetheart

This is from 1951, from Good Housekeeping’s Home Encyclopedia, published in Britain. It’s a huge, heavy book, full of information. Lots to see here. But today, here is the bigamous appliance, a Trianco boiler. These boilers are so good that women want to marry them! How about that. It’s not very tall, and kind of – square-looking – but it really has a certain something. Just ask the checkered-fabric-addicted gal who looks like she just had a couple of gin and tonics (and probably did).

This lady is very excited about the boiler, but insists that her marriage is just fine:

…is hubby worried? Not a bit of it – saves him tons of money on fuel. Am I happy? Yes, I should say so – both my sweethearts are wonderful; and this one keeps the whole house snug and warm at any temperature I choose; is always ready with hot water for my every need, and requires almost no attention whatsoever. In green? Yes, you can get them in a lovely range of colours and sizes…

In fact she prefers the Trianco to the ‘hubby,’ because at least the Trianco keeps things warm and “is always ready with hot water for my every need,” we won’t even go there. And you don’t have to pay attention to it, that can get really aggravating. They aren’t – high maintenance. You know.

Hubby doesn’t really mind, though, he just wants to save that proverbial ton of money. And also to get this maniacally smiling woman off his back. She’s gone all funny since they got the boiler.

Plus hubbies do not come in green, unless they have been eating this lady’s cooking.

Kitchen Sweetheart

This is from 1951, from Good Housekeeping’s Home Encyclopedia, published in Britain. It’s a huge, heavy book, full of information. Lots to see here. But today, here is the bigamous appliance, a Trianco boiler. These boilers are so good that women want to marry them! How about that. It’s not very tall, and kind of – square-looking – but it really has a certain something. Just ask the checkered-fabric-addicted gal who looks like she just had a couple of gin and tonics (and probably did).

This lady is very excited about the boiler, but insists that her marriage is just fine:

…is hubby worried? Not a bit of it – saves him tons of money on fuel. Am I happy? Yes, I should say so – both my sweethearts are wonderful; and this one keeps the whole house snug and warm at any temperature I choose; is always ready with hot water for my every need, and requires almost no attention whatsoever. In green? Yes, you can get them in a lovely range of colours and sizes…

In fact she prefers the Trianco to the ‘hubby,’ because at least the Trianco keeps things warm and “is always ready with hot water for my every need,” we won’t even go there. And you don’t have to pay attention to it, that can get really aggravating. They aren’t – high maintenance. You know.

Hubby doesn’t really mind, though, he just wants to save that proverbial ton of money. And also to get this maniacally smiling woman off his back. She’s gone all funny since they got the boiler.

Plus hubbies do not come in green, unless they have been eating this lady’s cooking.

Health Food Pudding

Elizabeth Craig (1883-1980) was an early “celebrity chef” in Britain, who wrote dozens of books and articles, mainly about traditional British food. She was born in Dundee, Scotland and spent more than 50 years as a food writer, chef and home economist whose first cookery article was published in 1920.

She endorsed a lot of different products, including Borwick’s Baking Powder, for whom she wrote a rather nice recipe booklet, published in 1930. There are a lot of good recipes in here. She tends to stick to well-known English and Scottish dishes, with the odd “Canadian” dish thrown in (she married an American war correspondent, Arthur Mann, but I don;t know where the Canadian connection comes from).

Here is an amusing recipe from the Borwick’s book entitled “Health Food Pudding,” which is a rare attempt on Craig’s part to marry the old-fashioned steamed pudding to the concept of “health food” –

Health Food Pudding

4 oz. breadcrumbs

4 oz. flour

2 eggs

Little nutmeg

2 oz currants

2 Tbs treacle

1 tsp Borwick’s Baking Powder

2 oz brown sugar

3 oz shredded suet

Rind and juice one lemon

Mix all well together and steam two hours in a basin covered with a buttered paper. Turn out on a hot dish. Spike if liked with blanched, peeled and browned almonds. Serve with custard sauce.

All that suet and treacle are not healthy, never mind the almonds and the custard sauce. I don’t know what the figure of the girl next to the Health Food Pudding is up to. It looks like she has a big bunch of celery sticks under her arm and has turned away from the stodgy dessert which has reached a size – relative to her – of a compact car. In her basket she has got, apparently, hard boiled eggs. She is about to go on the diet that a lot of my friends did in high school in the late 1970s. A figurine ahead of her time!

Steamed Apple Pudding

Health Food Pudding

Elizabeth Craig (1883-1980) was an early “celebrity chef” in Britain, who wrote dozens of books and articles, mainly about traditional British food. She was born in Dundee, Scotland and spent more than 50 years as a food writer, chef and home economist whose first cookery article was published in 1920.

She endorsed a lot of different products, including Borwick’s Baking Powder, for whom she wrote a rather nice recipe booklet, published in 1930. There are a lot of good recipes in here. She tends to stick to well-known English and Scottish dishes, with the odd “Canadian” dish thrown in (she married an American war correspondent, Arthur Mann, but I don;t know where the Canadian connection comes from).

Here is an amusing recipe from the Borwick’s book entitled “Health Food Pudding,” which is a rare attempt on Craig’s part to marry the old-fashioned steamed pudding to the concept of “health food” –

Health Food Pudding

4 oz. breadcrumbs

4 oz. flour

2 eggs

Little nutmeg

2 oz currants

2 Tbs treacle

1 tsp Borwick’s Baking Powder

2 oz brown sugar

3 oz shredded suet

Rind and juice one lemon

Mix all well together and steam two hours in a basin covered with a buttered paper. Turn out on a hot dish. Spike if liked with blanched, peeled and browned almonds. Serve with custard sauce.

All that suet and treacle are not healthy, never mind the almonds and the custard sauce. I don’t know what the figure of the girl next to the Health Food Pudding is up to. It looks like she has a big bunch of celery sticks under her arm and has turned away from the stodgy dessert which has reached a size – relative to her – of a compact car. In her basket she has got, apparently, hard boiled eggs. She is about to go on the diet that a lot of my friends did in high school in the late 1970s. A figurine ahead of her time!

Ivory Laundry Starch and Its Relation to the Unconscious

You know you want to cook with corn oil. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of putting corn oil and corn syrup and corn starch into as many recipes as you possibly can. All three at once would be ideal.

May I present the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario, and their promotional cookbook, circa 1955-60 (there is no date but it is a whopping 34th edition – which in itself is a tribute to corn products).

Doesn’t the very name reek of dense white carbohydrates – the St. Lawrence Starch Company! This is the hard stuff, gentlemen – bready, pasty, potato-laden. Sauces thick as all three Stooges. Pie that takes a week to digest. Christmas puddings that double, in the New Year, as door stops.

As you can see from the picture (which is on the back cover) the St. Lawrence people (unwearied by corn) make laundry starch which “also works in the wash.” I thought laundry was wash. Maybe you can wash dishes with it, is what they mean. Dishes sticky with corn oil and corn syrup, no doubt.

In one triumphant recipe entitled “Tangy Spanish Sauce” they have manage to press all three products into service. This is the sauce that has it all: tomatoes, green peppers, onion, celery…and corn oil, corn syrup and corn starch. That’s tangy all right. Depending on your definition of tangy.

And we move through the oil-drenched salads and really heavy doughnuts until ending up on the last page with “Corn Starch Pudding” (blancmange, in other words: classic invalid fare for the fans of Mrs. Beeton and of Louisa May Alcott, who had Jo bring some to Laurie in Little Women when Laurie was not exactly sick, but cranky because of his cranky grandpa).

There’s something Freudian about it all. Trying to sneak in the little references to corn-based products, which build and build through the book to culminate in the catharsis of: oh what the hell, let’s just make it the main ingredient.

At least they never tried to put Ivory laundry starch in any of the recipes. Unless it was somewhere on a subconscious level, signified on the back cover where the bottles and boxes float on a white background, the stuff of dreams.

Or perhaps just the stuff of indigestion. Like when Scrooge thinks that Jacob Marley’s ghost is “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” Actually, he was more like a heaping cup of Tangy Spanish Sauce, that’s what.

Ivory Laundry Starch and Its Relation to the Unconscious

You know you want to cook with corn oil. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of putting corn oil and corn syrup and corn starch into as many recipes as you possibly can. All three at once would be ideal.

May I present the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario, and their promotional cookbook, circa 1955-60 (there is no date but it is a whopping 34th edition – which in itself is a tribute to corn products).

Doesn’t the very name reek of dense white carbohydrates – the St. Lawrence Starch Company! This is the hard stuff, gentlemen – bready, pasty, potato-laden. Sauces thick as all three Stooges. Pie that takes a week to digest. Christmas puddings that double, in the New Year, as door stops.

As you can see from the picture (which is on the back cover) the St. Lawrence people (unwearied by corn) make laundry starch which “also works in the wash.” I thought laundry was wash. Maybe you can wash dishes with it, is what they mean. Dishes sticky with corn oil and corn syrup, no doubt.

In one triumphant recipe entitled “Tangy Spanish Sauce” they have manage to press all three products into service. This is the sauce that has it all: tomatoes, green peppers, onion, celery…and corn oil, corn syrup and corn starch. That’s tangy all right. Depending on your definition of tangy.

And we move through the oil-drenched salads and really heavy doughnuts until ending up on the last page with “Corn Starch Pudding” (blancmange, in other words: classic invalid fare for the fans of Mrs. Beeton and of Louisa May Alcott, who had Jo bring some to Laurie in Little Women when Laurie was not exactly sick, but cranky because of his cranky grandpa).

There’s something Freudian about it all. Trying to sneak in the little references to corn-based products, which build and build through the book to culminate in the catharsis of: oh what the hell, let’s just make it the main ingredient.

At least they never tried to put Ivory laundry starch in any of the recipes. Unless it was somewhere on a subconscious level, signified on the back cover where the bottles and boxes float on a white background, the stuff of dreams.

Or perhaps just the stuff of indigestion. Like when Scrooge thinks that Jacob Marley’s ghost is “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” Actually, he was more like a heaping cup of Tangy Spanish Sauce, that’s what.

The Clock’s Strange Desire For Campbell’s Soup ("It’s That Good!")

Here is a surreal play in photos from a Campbell’s Soup booklet, circa 1958.

In the top photo four cups of foamy mint green stuff have gone to the opera. There is only one pair of opera glasses and only three ticket stubs. Invariably some of the cups have been left out, and even the ones who attended couldn’t see. Except for the Alpha Cup, despite the fact that they have no eyes.

But they do not realize this. The Alpha Cup has deceived them in some way.

The Alpha Cup is clearly the one whose powers are sucking a bunch of red plastic grapes into its sphere of influence. A small brass alarm clock hovers nearby with a couple of candlesticks. It tries to rectify the situation, but can only look on, helplessly. It ticks on but can do nothing. Very significant! So symbolic of modern angst. And modern soup.

In the middle photo the alarm clock has made friends with an egg cup and a reclining banana. They are staring at someone’s bowl of soup, trying to comprehend it. It isn’t working. They can’t even tell what it is made of. Nor can I. Puzzlingly, the mug of milk has a telephone cord for a handle. It must mean something, but it is too deep for the clock and his egg and banana friends.

The banana in fact has given up and gone to sleep.

In the last photo the ubiquitous clock has made friends with a wooden bird, who is attempting to drink three cups of orange soup with strange white bits in it. As with the opera-loving soup cups, the bird’s attempt is futile. You’re made of wood, maybe you didn’t notice. The apple and the bits of greenery lend an air of the outdoors. As does the thermos. But they are indoors on some vast avocado melamine savanna. Trapped in a world of pastel melamine.

The clock is obsessed with soup and does not know why. Friends come and go, bringing with them bits of plastic greenery and ticket stubs, opera glasses and telephone cords. All useless! They are all standing around waiting, waiting for the Godot of the canned soup to come.

But Godot does not come. He has gone out for Chinese. Because that soup does not look good.

The Clock’s Strange Desire For Campbell’s Soup ("It’s That Good!")

Here is a surreal play in photos from a Campbell’s Soup booklet, circa 1958.

In the top photo four cups of foamy mint green stuff have gone to the opera. There is only one pair of opera glasses and only three ticket stubs. Invariably some of the cups have been left out, and even the ones who attended couldn’t see. Except for the Alpha Cup, despite the fact that they have no eyes.

But they do not realize this. The Alpha Cup has deceived them in some way.

The Alpha Cup is clearly the one whose powers are sucking a bunch of red plastic grapes into its sphere of influence. A small brass alarm clock hovers nearby with a couple of candlesticks. It tries to rectify the situation, but can only look on, helplessly. It ticks on but can do nothing. Very significant! So symbolic of modern angst. And modern soup.

In the middle photo the alarm clock has made friends with an egg cup and a reclining banana. They are staring at someone’s bowl of soup, trying to comprehend it. It isn’t working. They can’t even tell what it is made of. Nor can I. Puzzlingly, the mug of milk has a telephone cord for a handle. It must mean something, but it is too deep for the clock and his egg and banana friends.

The banana in fact has given up and gone to sleep.

In the last photo the ubiquitous clock has made friends with a wooden bird, who is attempting to drink three cups of orange soup with strange white bits in it. As with the opera-loving soup cups, the bird’s attempt is futile. You’re made of wood, maybe you didn’t notice. The apple and the bits of greenery lend an air of the outdoors. As does the thermos. But they are indoors on some vast avocado melamine savanna. Trapped in a world of pastel melamine.

The clock is obsessed with soup and does not know why. Friends come and go, bringing with them bits of plastic greenery and ticket stubs, opera glasses and telephone cords. All useless! They are all standing around waiting, waiting for the Godot of the canned soup to come.

But Godot does not come. He has gone out for Chinese. Because that soup does not look good.