Saturday Night Gingerbread

Here’s an ad with the backstory already firmly in place – the marital doldrums of one Jack and Alice, saved by…well, I’ll just bet you can’t guess what brought these two brilliantined-and-Marcelled dopes back together. I’ll let the suspense build a little.

Alice, you see, has noticed that “Jack was getting tired of domesticity and just her…his eyes wandered all too often in the direction of pink and white Betty Thornton, a recent arrival in town.”

Ah, ’twas it ever thus! Those pink and white new gals, the ones who use Dorothy Gray creams and slink around the country club batting their eyelashes.

Well, Alice springs into action. She buys a black satin dress “which made her figure look like a movie star’s.” Presumably she also hides the bill, because if Jack is anything like, say, Ricky Ricardo, he ain’t gonna like the look of that. And then she cooks up a meal, the high point of which is gingerbread made with Brer Rabbit molasses. I trust that Alice did not whip it up while wearing the black satin.

And then, as Jack is stuffing down dessert, he says the magic words. To wit: “There’s something about this dinner, darling, that makes me feel like a pampered prince! Everything is so perfect – and you look like a princess.”

Alice is happy with that (personally, I would be excusing myself to hunt down a spare air-sickness bag, but to each her own). She thinks “it’s the gingerbread that did the trick…” Maybe it did, Alice, maybe it did. Maybe that molasses will slow Jack down a little. In which case, aren’t you going to have to pony up the gingerbread 24/7? That’s quite a little baking precedent that’s being set, don’t you think?

I’d still keep an eye on Jack and Betty, that’s all I’m saying.

One Day A Griddle Came To The House…

Well, I couldn’t let Kitchen Klutzes of America Day go by unnoticed here at Kitchen Retro…even though I know we talk about lots of retro things besides kitchens these days. And it’s Friday the 13th too, the perfect day for a holiday for klutzes…I sense that one might drop a lot of things on a Friday the 13th. Best to just send for takeout, probably (this is usually a good idea on a Friday).

The unseen heroine of this 1930s ad may have been klutzy, which is why she has retired baffled from the fray. She has been replaced – voluntarily or not – with a talking griddle. Or perhaps this is Mrs J, under a spell? Is she being punished for her inability to please the fussy males at her table? Has she run away? Or has something more sinister occurred?

We may never know. What we do know is this: there is a very specific menu in place now, and it involves vast quantities of – well, what do you know? – Pillsbury’s Pancake Flour.

Mrs. J. may have had a lot of trouble with Junior, says the “busy griddle,” – but now he’s stuffing down flapjacks like there’s no tomorrow. The dad, too. And the griddle is mighty proud of this.

Do they eat nothing but pancakes now? Will the griddle be angry if someone asks for, say, roast chicken or a piece of blueberry pie?

I don’t think we want to see this griddle get angry, do you?

And whatever has happened to Mrs J?