Square food, perfect kitchens.

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1954 Square Food

It is a gray afternoon here. Dull. Dull in a way that requires much more in the way of descriptive adjectives, but it’s so dull, you can’t be bothered. One syllable is all you can manage. “Man, it’s dull. Dark, too.” There you go, the verbal power of homo sapien in winter. Winter in Seattle can be like this, as we here are reminded about this time every year. We are fairly bright & cheerful during the fall. It can be lovely. We don’t get too much in the way of fall colors here but it does happen some. We go out & scritch around in the leaves with the kids. You & the child bring in bouquets of leaves in red & gold, all so lovely there on the sidewalk that you can’t stop adding to your pile. You bring them in & array them on the table, inordinately pleased at this simple inclusion of nature.

And then the days get quite short, & it’s dark, but there are the holidays to think of. Evenings of gay parties, festive times with friends & plenty of interesting snacks on the buffet table. Kids running around buzzing with anticipation. And then the holidays pass & we find ourselves facing the real winter. Dark, dark days. It’s 4:30 as I write this & very nearly dark. Cold. Cold in a way that is unlike the east coast. Not even freezing. But the cold is heavy with moisture & chills you slowly, almost without your noticing, like the breath of death. Like the calming exhalations of a detached nature deity, insisting with a certain implacability that it is time to bank our fires, it is time to eat heavy foods & we should sleep, sleep. Have some bread. Perhaps a short nap now, just for a little bit.

I went out today & got a space heater for the attic, my garret office. Damned cold up here. I plugged the heater in here at my desk, & it only took a couple of minutes for one of the 2 power strips to flip off. So now I’ve moved the heater to the end of the attic. Then, because I really need the heat here, I plugged in the floor fan at the other end of the attic, & I’m sitting here with my down coat zipped up to my chin, waiting for the heat to become tangible enough to let me comfortable putter on projects. And now some old images for your consideration.

The ideal 1934 kitchen according to GE. Many booklets of this era pictured the “ideal” kitchen. I absolutely love that pattern in the linoleum.

The modern refrigerator of 1934. GE promised it would enhance your life in uncounted ways, & the book worked hard to teach people to use this new thing – an always on non-ice-using ice box. The book cautions that you will not save money by turning off your GE in the winter & storing things on your porch. It says that the temperature in the GE refrigerator is steady, & food will keep for longer than it will out in the weather, & the savings will pay for the power & more. I remember being shocked to read this. That people would turn off the fridge in winter! I enjoy reading how many booklets from this era must actually teach people about new technology, new ingredients.

The

Corned Beef & Cavier- 1930s advice book for single women.

Ok, Ok. Time to get back to the main purpose of this indulgent little blog – discussing entertainingly goofy old ads & books. Today’s’ offering is “Corned Beef And Caviar” by Marjorie Hillis. This is a first edition from 1937. Ms. Hillis also wrote “Live Alone & Like It,” (1936) “Orchids on Your Budget,” (1937) “Work Ends at Nightfall,” (1938) & “You Can Start All Over: A Guide for the Widow and Divorcee,” published in 1952, leading me to wonder if the germ for that particular book came from harsh personal experience.  I only have Corned Beef, & Orchids, tho I would dearly love to get my paws on the other titles.

I can’t seem find much info on Hillis. Based on what I surmise from the books I do have, she was a denizen of the Big Apple in that odd time after the depression, when things had stabilized somewhat. She lived in a city of “smart” & slender young women, women who often had maids & laundresses to attend their needs, yet their standard of living had sunk enough that they were wanting of advice on how to become resourceful. The thing that strikes me the most about her writing is that, based on the titles, you would think these books tell you how to get by in the city on little money. But Hillis’ idea of little money is miles away from mine. On the second page, as she tells you that planning & cooking for yourself can be done economically & efficiently, she illustrates this as follows:

“It has, in fact, been done so efficiently that one woman we know managed a part-time maid, from five to eight, who did her cleaning & even a little washing of table linen & silk underwear, & still cost no more, meals included, than the former restaurant quota.”

See what I mean? Educated economizing means eating out less so you can have a maid to wash your underwear.

A main theme is the use of canned foods, which were the “new” thing in the 30s. And I’m sure that living in New York City gave you the best possible selection, as that would have been a prime market for new products. Also the menus are unfamiliar to me. Not like the menus of me or the people I know. Here’s one for summer nights when you come home hot & tired. Iced bouillon (from a can), seafood newburg (meat is canned), endive salad, triscuit wafers, cantaloupe with sherry. She also recommends that you prepare your meal, then change into a cool tea dress before sitting down to dine. Also, tho the push of the book is easy stuff for kitchen klutzes, she has oddly complicated dishes, such as stuffed eggs in aspic, which involves using the broth from homemade stock, chilling it for aspic, boiling eggs, pulling out the yolks & making a stuffing, stuffing the eggs & fitting the halves seamlessly back together, forcing the eggs down into the nearly jelled aspic, pouring on the rest of the aspic & chilling it entirely. This is very time-consuming & not something I would strive for on a weeknight after working late.

The maid issue is quite present throughout. Do-it-yourself menus quickly give way to meals which she says would be best handled by a maid, & these are contrarily simple. One menu lists a very basic potato soup recipe, of which she says,

“Try out a new maid on this one. It’s very simple-in fact, if she can’t do it, you’d better not keep her. You might, of course, substitute a canned soup, but if you’re going to have a maid at all, you’d better train her to make homemade soups at least some of the time.”

In chapter 2, she admits she let herself go a bit last chapter, & the new section is entitled, “Little Time or Money.” Lots of stuff we don’t seem to eat these days: beef kidney, water cress salad, veal birds, frequent appearances of shad roe, which apparently could be got in a can, & clam juice, often showing up as a cocktail. Also, a great many things are molded- aspic, macaroni, salmon. The next chapter, “Live Alone & Entertain,” sees a return to the maid theme. For a brunch, she suggests a menu of 4 juices, sausage, hominy, pancakes, toast, coffee, & melon. This sounds quite simple to me, but she says, “This menu is better for a hostess with a maid, since not much of it can be prepared in advance.”

A deeply entertaining chapter is, “Getting the Man With the Meal.” She suggests menus for:

• dieters – think consomme;
• teetotalers – he likes creamy things & sweets so she buries him in it, serving sherbet between courses & leaving candy dishes around on little tables;
• the guest on the wagon – he will “munch” candies absentmindedly & she specifically recommends plain chocolate caramels or peppermints, but his real interest is meat & good cheese;
• the heavy drinker – feed him anything & save your money;
• the older man, possibly your guardian (how old fashioned!), who is keeping an eye on his health;
• the man with digestion on his mind – he gets chicken broth, carrot sticks, prune whip, bran muffins, & Sanka;
• the gourmet – don’t get uppity, just serve him something simple, yet done very, very well;
• the perfect gentleman, which segues into the constant beau – the idea here is that since he’s dining with you so often, ask him to bring something to donate to every meal to offset your expenses.
• And need I say that virtually every menu in this chapter is prefaced by, “with the aid of a maid.”

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I got an email this morning from Guyot Designs, announcing a new product. So of course I went immediately to their site & lifted this photo so you, my pretties, can have nice pictures to look at. The gadget you see to the left is called a TapGuard. It’s like the filter in your Brita pitcher, only made to fit wide-mouth bottles. I can really get behind this! I can easily recall many times when I’ve been traveling & drunk little sips of water, because the last faucet I filled up at gave me water that…just tasted unpalatable. The filter in this Tapguard thingie removes chlorine, iodine, & whatever else a carbon filter will trap. $16 gets it for you, it comes with 2 replacement filters, enough to do 200 L of water. (One standard Nalgene bottle is a liter.) And FYI – Guyot makes a stainless steel version of the Nalgene. Nice if you’re fretting about chemicals that can leach from plastic into your water.