Moving Back

Well, you know, when Kitchen Retro started up in January, it was over at Blogger – along with my other blog, The Virtual Dime Museum

Anyway, I joined Entrecard with VDM and enjoy it a lot, so I wanted Kitchen Retro to join it over there. And as for the Foodie Blogroll, I wasn’t able to use it here at WordPress. And I have been having a devilled egg of a time trying to unify the way I sign comments and having people go to one or the other Kitchen Retro and – well, and so on and so on.

I never gave up the Blogger blog, so I am going back there…It is the same URL except of course for the middle bit:

Kitchen Retro

See, easy as bumbleberry pie! And I’ll be keeping the WordPress blog as a “mirror blog” (to back everything up), so while I am transferring the archives over to Blogger you can come back and read them. If you want to, that is…Everything is basically the same, except the new posts will be over yonder.

I will transfer the September posts first and work backwards, I think. I’m up to March but it will take me a couple of weeks, since it is strictly cut and paste for now. That means your brilliant, lovely comments will be over here – until I can transfer the whole kit and caboodle (I think they will be letting people do that down the road).

I sure hope that Technorati won’t kick me downstairs to zero like it did the last time, but c’est la vie and all that.

I have today’s post over here. See you there!

Image from the fabulous Duke University digital collection.

Pecan Cookies And Sinks

And the connection between the pecan cookies and the sinks, is…?

- It is apparently National Pecan Cookie Day (it is also National Banana Day, which I am celebrating over on my other blog. Cueing the shameless plug!)

- I found a good recipe in Mabel Claire’s 1932 opus, The World’s Modern Cookbook.

- Mabel is a little bit obsessed with showing, via black and white photographs, just what you need to have a perfect kitchen, the right supplies to cook with, and seven thousand kinds of mops to clean up afterwards with. She does not, however, show a picture of delicious cookies, pecan or otherwise.

- So we will have to use our imaginations – or else come up with some of these cookies. To wit:

PECAN MACAROONS

3 egg whites
1 cup powdered sugar
3 Tb flour
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
3 drops vanilla

Beat the egg whites stiff. Add the softed powderred sugar gradually. Fold in the flour. Add the vanilla and chopped nuts. Drop in spoonsful on a buttered cookie sheet or pans. Bake 15 minutes in a moderate oven (350 degrees) until a delicate brown. makes 3 dozen macaroons.

There you go!

I know, I know – I haven’t done that many recipes lately, and as for the retro cookbooks…same thing. I actually prefer baking recipes and strange recipes (also, of course, strange baking recipes – which is why I adore the Pillsbury Bake Off series).

Also I really, really love retro ads. You may have noticed! New things to come though – not sure what, yet. Stay tuned! Oh, and have a good rest of the weekend – I’ll see you tomorrow! I’m off to think of something good to post then…

Hyatt Gothic

Was this supposed to be a recreation of American Gothic? Because that couple looked like they would be pretty scary to eat with. In fact, having a meal would be about the last thing on your mind. The first thing would be to get away from them.

Same deal here. I don’t want this guy’s veggies. Look at him with the pitchfork! He ain’t giving that basket of goodies to anybody – least of all that weirdo chef. Ad from Newsweek, 1977. Grant Wood’s little masterpiece from Wikipedia. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Go away, I have a pitchfork.

The Mysteries of Salad Dressing

Tell me, was this stuff ever mysterious in the first place? I don’t think so! Even when I was a kid, and a lot of things were mysterious – French dressing was totally obvious. It’s orange, it comes in the bottle, you throw it on the iceberg lettuce wedge and voila! salad!

Other things were mysterious, yes. Like why there was a black-licorice Chuckle at all. Why L’Eggs tights were so uncomfortable (it’s like they gave up, design-wise, after they thought of an egg-shaped container). Why they stopped making chocolate No-Cal soda (that stuff was excellent).

And why, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, did the counselor always manage to happy things up for the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” couple.

And why were the Scooby Doo gang (and Nancy Drew for that matter) always, always on vacation? During which there was an inevitable mystery to be solved. Doesn’t this make the concept of vacation kind of a moot point? If you are always going on vacation, does it not cease, technically, to be a vacation?

And furthermore – when can I test that theory?

Anyway…salad dressing. Yes. Back to it.

This French dressing does seem to be more of a vinaigrette than anything else. Which makes sense since the ad is for olive oil. I get it. No mystery there.

I still don’t understand what the black mask has to do with it, though.

Big Brother & the Curtain Company

But I don’t get emotional about curtains! Honestly, I don’t think it ever occurred to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like curtains. They can be very nice. Although we really just have mini blinds. Not because I am overwrought about curtains in any way. It’s just that the blinds are enough.

Once I tacked up an Indian bedspread over the front window, back in grad school. That made a pretty good curtain. I felt fine about it.

Why do they think I might get emotional about curtains but not about curtain track?

Because curtain track can be sort of annoying. I made curtains once, and it was very tough trying to hang them up and get them in the track thingie. I am not much good with sewing and crafty stuff, I admit it. It really isn’t my thing.

So I was a little bit annoyed. That is not the same as emotional. I mean, I wasn’t getting all weepy and dramatic and tearing the curtains down and so on.

I cursed a fair bit and then I did the best I could.

After which I got on with my life.

Having said all that – this guy looks like he might get a bit emotional about curtains. You don’t think he’s the guy in 1984 – Cyril Cusack played him in the 1984 movie – whose old-guy disguise is given away by his black eyebrows. He owns the bookshop where Winston and Julia meet secretly – Mr. Charrington is his name. Seems like a nice old guy but is really a member of the Thought Police.

Who knew that he was emotional about curtains? I thought they didn’t like curtains in 1984 – Big Brother can’t peek in on you when you have curtains!

Big Brother is not going to like this, Mr. Charrington. And then he will get emotional. That’s not going to be good.

Remains Of The Tray

I am having some trouble with this 1960 ad on a number of levels. For starters, I know this is supposed to be a Hot Tray but they way they spell it with only one ‘t’ it looks like  Ho Tray or Hot Ray – neither of which sounds all that appealing.

This woman has a smile that would terrify a wolf – surely she is not the sort to keep a Ho Tray around the house. Right?

And that ghostly staff behind her!  They are all so elderly, too. Are they Edwardian great-house servants who, through some bizarre time-travel mishap, are being punished by having to work for this evil matron?

Or did they emanate from the Ho Tray, like Jeannie from her TV bottle? That would make a great sitcom – I Dream Of Hot Ray.

But which one is Ray? Maybe he’s still in the tray. Nobody else looks very – er, hot. Do they?

Also Benny Hill appears to be the chef. And he seems to be leering at the grande dame. I’m not certain what’s going on there. She doesn’t really look like his type, does she?

If Benny makes any of the kind of jokes he used to make on his show, he’s going to get that plateful of dinner right in the face!

After that, maybe Hot Ray could sing. He just sounds like a retro lounge lizard – a suburban Dean Martin clone with a martini and a microphone. And that will make the evening really gracious and charming.

The Grumble Seat

This may be more of a Monday post but hey, Tuesday can be like Monday Redux some weeks. You aren’t that much closer to the weekend, are you?

And what if canned asparagus is on the menu on a Tuesday? You’ll be grumbling on a Tuesday all right.

I’ll be in the grumble seat then. I hate veggies in cans. Hate them! Used to sit in front of canned green beans, refusing to eat them, as a kid. Ah, 1968. College students were having sit-ins up at Columbia, taking over Low Library. I was just a taxi ride away from them, having the first-grader’s version of the Revolution. Hell no, that’s got to go!

And so does this canned asparagus. Just take a look at it! It looks like something Jacques Cousteau met on the way down to the ocean floor. Are they absolutely sure this isn’t something called sea asparagus? Is there even such a thing? I know there’s sea cucumbers. Hey, maybe we can make a salad!

Oh, for heaven’s sake, lady, I’m kidding! Please, please don’t make a salad.

And what in holy hell is the garnish on the bottom picture? No, don’t tell me. You know, I’m kind of full from lunch…I think maybe I’ll skip dinner.

Because if that’s what we’re having, it won’t be technically the grumble seat, it will be something far more – digestively…revolutionary.

And look at the expression on her face. I think maybe she already tried some in the kitchen.

The tagline below reads “The world’s most popular salad and vegetable delicacy.”  I think that’s probably what my mother said about the canned beans.

Aunt Emily’s Revenge

Indeed, what a charming young lady! If I was an elderly relative with antique furniture, I’d be panting to give it to this pouting ingrate. Not.

She is so charming, in fact, that Aunt Emily is busy rewriting her will.

And Cousin Alice? She wants her Empire Secretary back (after all, it’s so hard to find a good secretary these days! Alice thinks it even takes dictation).

As for dear old Uncle Gerald, he’s been a bit lacquered himself these days. But when he snaps out of it, I think he might reconsider who’s going to inherit his chinoiserie.

And Aunt Emily, who’s been demoted to sofahood?

She’ll be leaving the family fortune to those white elephants. They make good pets if you have a big enough mansion, she always says.

Ad from 1968 McCall’s.

Harben’s Alligator

Well, not a real alligator, of course. It’s just that when I came across this photograph in Philip Harben’s Cookery Encyclopedia (1955) I was quite startled for a moment.

But this is, in fact, a gurnet, which is a kind of fish.

It really does look menacing on that plate, though. And the shadow/plate design just under the head looks like a big jaw with long teeth.

Philip Harben was a British cooking authority of the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote a cooking column for Women’s Own magazine, and wrote many cookbooks. He also had the first TV cooking show ever, in 1946, on the BBC. It was called Cookery. (And that is about as many times as I want to use words beginning with c-o-o-k in one paragraph!)

And gurnet or gurnard is a rather cheap, inexpensive and bony fish. Apparently Mrs. Beeton had a recipe for it, see here. It does look bony, doesn’t it? And like it’s ready for a good meal itself, as opposed to vice versa.

Into White

OK, people, people – I don’t know how to tell you this, but you may be overdoing the color scheme just a little. Could someone please sneak out to the garage and take the rest of the white paint away from this couple?

They were listening to Tea For the Tillerman while they redecorated. Big mistake:

1. Building house from barley rice: Who’s the contractor here, the Three Little Pigs?

2. Construction materials include green pepper walls and water ice: see above. The water ice is an especially bad idea.

3. Tables of paper wood: OK, I see we’re going to be shopping at IKEA!

4. Windows of light: Slight problem here. They are supposed to let in light, not be made of light. May I add: heat loss, A/C issues and all the wildlife in the neighborhood getting into the house (and I don’t just mean the neighbours).

5: Summation of design goals: everything empties into white. Yeah, and look at the result!

Because I have to tell you – and please don’t wave your paint brushes at me! – a new light fixture is not going to solve your basic room-decor problem. Or any other problems that you might have.