Running Rampant With Silver

What a strange picture the Ladies’ Home Journal Cookbook of 1960 conjures up in my head. They write:

You do not have to run rampant, as your grandmother did, with silver cake baskets, pickle forks, olive spoons, cocktail shakers, filigree vases, and chafing dishes, but you will get more enjoyment from the many hours you spend at the dining table – about eight hundred a year – if you have attractive silver with which to eat.

I am trying to imagine my dear grandmother running rampant with a silver cake basket and a pickle fork.

And trying to work out if I really DO spend 800 hours a year at the dining table. This is about 2.19 hours per day, I have worked out laboriously and with the online calculator. Not on weekdays, I don’t. And on weekends it does depend on what else is going on. And there’s not a filigree vase or olive spoon in sight. (I would love some olive spoons, though, now that I think of it!)

Image of forks from 1920s household book. No pickle fork, alas, but second from the right, top row, is a lemon fork. Grandmother could use that, possibly. And the cake basket picture is from NYPL Digital Gallery.

Betty Crocker: Mistress of the Unusual and Exotic

Betty’s been sampling the Tea Punch in advance of the party, I suspect. It’s the only way to explain it. She writes, “Isn’t it fun when your friends exclaim with admiration over the unusual and exotic dishes you serve them at your parties?”

Yes, that does sound like fun. I think.

Friday night is party time. And our old pal Betty Crocker is giving what she calls a “Stand-Up Party.” She must have hidden all the chairs. And she is (if the title of the booklet is correct) serving Frankly Fancy Foods. Or perhaps she means Frankly Freaky Foods. Hard to tell.

But at this party I am going straight for the drinks. I’m skipping over those appetizers. Bambinos? Cock kabobs? What was going on with Betty in 1959? (FYI, the Bambinos are the little teeny pizza things hanging out on the top tier with the olives and grape tomatoes, and the, um, kabobs are at the bottom, next to the Pastry Boats being manned by olive slices).

I will have some more of that unusual and exotic Tea Punch, though.