Vintage Cookery

Martha Logan breakfast specials, part 2

2012-01-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention it yesterday but Martha Logan, in the title, is the home economist for Swift Co. Without further ado, here are the other pages. This isn't a bad looking omelet, especially if you have some fresh garden tomatoes on hand. These are a bit too heavy for me. I haven't had eggs benedict for a while. Upside down ham on cornbread seems like an interesting dish.

24 Martha Logan Breakfast Specials

2012-01-25T19:53:00.003-05:00

>This is the title from the pamphlet that I picked up in a batch of things in an antique shop. It was published by Swift's Premium brand meats in 1964. If you're planning to do a full day's work in the woods on a cold January day then this is the way you might eat: a big load of meat, fat and cholesterol to start the day. There's few of these recipes that my tired old digestive system would

Roasted Root Vegetable Soup

2012-01-24T15:50:00.002-05:00

I bought a half rotisserie turkey breast from the grocery store the other day. It's amazing how far one of those things can go. We had turkey sandwiches to start and the next day I made creamed turkey over noodles with roasted root vegetables. When we were finished eating I had plenty of vegetables left so I pureed them in half batches with a little milk, a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice and

Salad ephemera from 1948

2012-01-23T13:08:00.001-05:00

Another of the pamphlets I picked up in an antique shop, this one was issued by the Extension Service of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1948. It's only 12 pages, but the section on gelatin salads is interesting in that these were served in nearly every American household for a certain time and are still served and eaten with great relish at Church and Grange suppers throughout rural

Food and Your Weight, ephemera from 1946

2012-01-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

Maintaining your weight in 1964, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is a pretty basic food guide and calorie counter. It doesn't have any recipes at all and the information is pretty basic and boring to read. I collected this as one of a batch of food related items. The best thing about it is the illustrations. The cover of the pamphlet. The two people on the left look like they are

Sucaryl ephemera

2012-01-19T10:06:00.001-05:00

This little pamphlet came from a drugstore in Coaticook, Quebec in 1958 and shows recipes using Sucaryl, an artificial sweetener taken off the U.S. market sometime in the 1950's. It was still being made and marketed in Canada by Abbot laboratories in Montreal. The recipes are probably not anything useful but I did scan the cover and an inside page for the pictures. I think they are showing

An olive is not always quite what you think.

2012-01-18T09:12:00.001-05:00

Here I was happily adding sliced black olives from a can to various things: quesadillas, pizza, casseroles, salads, etc. Now I find out that black olives are not really black olives. Let me go back a bit in my story. I was perusing a sample magazine sent to me by Cook's Illustrated and saw a recipe for Provencal pizzaladiére which is made with black olives, anchovies, fresh thyme leaves and

Fish ephemera

2012-01-13T19:18:00.001-05:00

From the Cooperative Extension service of the U.S.D.A. and the University of Massachusetts comes this little pamphlet called Kitchen Quotes for October of 1980 which was designated as fish month. There are three useful recipes and some outdated but interesting information. Without further ado here are the scans. The cover of the pamphlet. I think the little chef is holding a pen and leaning on

Applesauce cake

2012-01-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

I had a craving for an applesauce spice cake with cream cheese frosting, so I made this one. This was a very gooey and moist cake and very tasty. Here's the recipe adapted from the Betty Crocker's Cookbook. 2 1/2 cups cake flour 2 cups sugar 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda 3/4 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. cloves 1/2 tsp. allspice 1 1/2 cups applesauce 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup canola oil 2 eggs

Corning Ware Ephemera

2012-01-06T15:35:00.000-05:00

I have some Corning ware that looks much like the piece with the deep dish apple pie. I've had the dishes forever and they are terrific for baking and for microwaving. I may have had them since the advent of microwave ovens, that's how old they are. I'm seeing this stuff show up in antique shops. Makes me feel old. I don't know how old the ephemera is. A friend of ours toured the Corning Museum

Good Housekeeping Ephemera

2012-01-05T16:14:00.002-05:00

Good Housekeeping's Summer Cook Book is a pamphlet I picked up in an antiques shop the other day. I'm thinking the time frame for this is late 1940s to early 1950s. It is a book of rather pretentious recipes to the taste of that time but certainly not to modern tastes, at least not mine. I scanned a few pages for your amusement. The cover shows a housewife of the period, scurrying about,

Corn Flake Crumbs

2012-01-04T17:28:00.000-05:00

Well if you have an assembly line at the corn flake factory, you're bound to have crumbs. So what do you do? You come up with some recipes using the crumbs, you package them in a box and voila! New Income! Then you publish a free pamphlet so people will know some good ways to use the product. When I bought this booklet I immediately got a craving for my mother's corn flake crumb chicken, so

Cranapple Bread

2012-01-03T16:18:00.002-05:00

I had made up some refrigerator dough for dinner rolls but only used half of it. The rest sat in the refrigerator for a couple of days, so I made this: Cranapple bread I rolled out the dough, brushed it with butter, chopped up an apple and spread it over the dough, sprinkled about a handful of craisins, some brown sugar and some cinnamon over it. I rolled it up like a jelly roll and put it in

Happy New Year

2012-01-02T10:18:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year one and all. Vintage Postcard for New Year's Day

Tortiere

2011-12-27T13:01:00.001-05:00

There are as many recipes for tortiere as there are French-Canadian households, but they seem to fall into two broad categories: Those made with leftover roast pork and mashed potatoes, which was the way my grandfather made it, and those made with ground pork, sometimes mixed with ground beef, bread crumbs and boiling water. The addition of various spices, onion and garlic is according to the

Woodpeckers

2011-12-25T14:13:00.000-05:00

Christmas morning. 14 degrees and big fat snow flurries. Downy woodpeckers have been visiting our suet feeder all morning and I've been trying to get a picture. Below is the best I could do so far. Downy woodpecker just outside the window. Our Christmas tree off to the side.

Somewhat of a white Christmas

2011-12-23T11:55:00.001-05:00

We awoke to snow this morning, but not much. If the sun comes out at all, our white Christmas will melt in short order. We may get a few snow flurries over the next two days and the temperature is not suppose to rise beyond the 20s, so just maybe we will have somewhat of a white Christmas. A little snow in the backyard for Christmas Speaking of Christmas, I read in the Concord Insider that

Merry Christmas

2011-12-22T13:39:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to all our readers. I'll be busy cooking tomorrow and working Saturday and cooking and eating on Christmas day. It's a balmy 52 degrees here in NH with snow on the forecast for tonight and tomorrow. If it stays around we'll be having a white Christmas. Pat and I in our re-enactment get-ups posing in our new den, decorated for Christmas. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Christmas potholder

2011-12-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season for displaying Christmas Crafts, in this case a vintage potholder made with Poinsettia fabric. A vintage Christmas potholder. If you click on the image to get a larger view, you will notice the crooked stitchery. This was probably a child's project and it thus becomes a more endearing treasure. Circa 1950s, I believe.

Ephemera

2011-12-20T16:10:00.001-05:00

Here's a page from a vintage social cookbook from the Salem Creative Arts Fellowship of the Congregational Church of Salem Connecticut published in 1969. Take note of the Early American Scripture Cake. I'm wondering how long this recipe has been around. I'll leave it to some one else to puzzle out the precise ingredients, not to mention the temperature to cook it. The other two cakes don't look

This and That

2011-12-19T19:45:00.003-05:00

We had our anniversary on Saturday. I worked all day. I came home to the wonderful smell of Pat's cooking: Turkey soup, corn muffins, molasses cookies, chocolate candy, and pumpkin pie. God bless a hard working wife. Today I made turkey-enchilada casserole. I used my standby recipe: http://quiltersmuse.com/enchiladacasserole.htm, but I used just one zucchini and one cooked and sliced sweet

Pat's new blog

2011-12-16T19:46:00.000-05:00

Pat has started a new blog to replace her old quiltersmuse blog. We find that Blogger is a much better tool to use than WordPress which we were always having to fiddle with to make everything work right, then we got hacked. Enough of that, she decided to say everything she had to say, mostly, but not always about quilts in her new blog while still leaving her old blog up, for now, in case anyone

Christmas Stocking

2011-12-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

Just in time for the Christmas holiday here is a link to a pattern for a Christmas stocking that Pat designed. It is highly unlikely that you would be able to find the exact fabric for it, but she has published the templates to print out and the instructions. Poinsettia Christmas Stocking. Poinsettia Christmas Stocking

Christmas Tree

2011-12-08T19:53:00.001-05:00

We are ready for the holidays, perhaps a bit early in some cases. I made the holiday cake which in Pat's family usually was put out for Santa on Christmas Eve. It is a basic white cake from her mother's old recipe for "Happy Day Cake." with seedless blackberry jam in the middle and butter cream frosting and coconut sprinkled on top. Sometimes we make it with apricot or peach preserves. Below is

Rock Cornish Game Hens

2011-12-06T16:52:00.001-05:00

I was asked by a reader for recipes for Rock Cornish Game Hens for Christmas. We have had them for Christmas in past years and they are quite a tasty little bird. Renee's request sent me scurrying to my cookbooks, especially some of the old ones for recipes. I couldn't find any in the old books. To my surprise, that is because Rock Cornish Game Hens were not developed until the 1950s in