The Kitchen Cabaret

Oh boy, this is something I just don’t understand. Why would you want your kitchen to sing? When I go in there I don’t want a Disney movie. You know, like Beauty and the Beast. All those plates and the teapot with the voice of Murder She Wrote (which is to say, Angela Lansbury). All that singing and – and cuteness.

I just want to cook something that’s halfway edible. That’s all I want. Oh, and a cold drink, it’s kind of hot out now. First rain, then hot. I feel like a piece of steamed broccoli.

And also – getting back to this lovely ad, which is from 1953 – why would cabinet-edging inspire any sentient being (or inanimate object for that matter) to burst into the sort of frenetic high notes that I fear are coming from the disembodied mother and girl in the upper left hand corner? Why are they up there anyway? Get down please, you know you’re not supposed to climb all over the furniture. Even if it IS singing.

But wait, there’s more. “Your kitchen can ‘dance’ with sparkling decorative color for pennies, in minutes.”  Dancing, too? I don’t want my plates and glasses dancing, thank you very much. The only thing that’ll be sparkling is the shards of glass all over my kitchen floor, that’s what.

Wartime Recipe Service, 1940

Sorry about the what-look-like-someone-poked-a-pencil-through-it marks on the 1940 Woman’s Weekly offering above.  That wasn’t me. I rescued the poor coverless magazine from a secondhand bookstore basement and I need to scan all the ads before it just gives up and falls apart (the basement didn’t do the cheap paper much good, not to mention the pencil pokes).

Anyway, here we have some scrumptious Ration Recipes: Liver Sandwich, which is liver in pastry (so really not a sandwich per se), Cold Meat Pasties (more meat in more pastry), and Economical Spotted Dick, which is a steamed currant pudding. And I don’t know why it is called that but it certainly doesn’t sound like dessert to me as much as the punchline of a dirty joke. Which I am not making except in this indirect and roundabout way, sort of implying it.

Apparently “spotted” refers to the currants (duh) and “dick” is derived from the last syllable of the word “pudding” or from “dough.” A hospital in England changed the name to “Spotted Richard” on its menu in 2002. They thought that the sick people might be too embarrassed to order a Spotted Dick. They have since changed the name back. I think maybe if you are in hospital you have other things to worry about.

The recipes are from the McDougall Self-Raising Flour people…Oh, I just thought of a good joke. I’ll bet you know what it is, too.

I might come back and post some more ads later. It is a rainy day here, as soggy and depressing as – as a Liver Sandwich. So more funny retro ads are definitely in order.