Happy New Year 2017!

I want to wish each and every one of you the greatest of joy and happiness in the coming year!

Adult Tartar Sauce

   
     I made this recipe while playing around one day trying to come up with something better than regular old tartar sauce.  I consulted a couple of my old recipe books for ideas and revisited some of the better ingredients in my remoulade  recipe I wrote oh so long ago.  I like remoulade, it's just a pain to make and involves tarragon which goes brown quicker than an avocado in a heat wave.  Dried tarragon has no flavor because it doesn't dry well so it was off to come up with something that has the flavor of remoulade but not the headache.

The Ansonia Sunwatch & Instructions

     It's a rare day I come across an ad for something I actually own, especially when it's as rare as this gem.  The Sunwatch is a pocket sundial with a compass to orient yourself properly with the sun.  I just happen to have found one of these when I was cleaning out my dad's house and as far as I know, it belonged to my grandfather.

The First Efficient Lightbulb

     The light bulb has gone through many incarnations throughout it's lifetime from the early carbon filament Edison Bulbs up to the curly fry CFL bulbs we have today.  Those who know me know that I have no love for either CFL's or LED bulbs for various reasons I don't feel like getting into today.  I'm here to talk about the Mazda bulb, the first energy efficient bulb.

Ad: 1905 Tabasco Sauce

     Ah Tabasco Sauce, love it or hate it, it's been around since just after the Civil War.  This fiery pepper sauce is the backbone of Louisiana cuisine and graces tables all over the world.  So what are the beginnings of this iconic brand?

Great Western Champagne

I've run across these ads for Great Western Champagne from time to time and I always wanted to see who this vintner was.  I used one of their 1935 ads yesterday and this is another from the same year.  All of their ads are great pieces of the deco art form. 

1919 Grape Nuts, Making Girls Round and Rosy

Little girls don't want to be round and rosy today.  They'd rather be thin like the girls that grace the pages of magazines but that is an impossible kind of beauty to achieve since it's all done with computers today.  This ad is from 1919 when the world was well... certainly more innocent than it is today but having just gone through The Great War it certainly had lost the idyllic innocence of the pre war years.  100 years ago this year World War I started, the first but certainly not the last war to be started by an act of terrorism.

Playing Doctor and Nurse

This is a child's play set that would not fly today in the prevalence of PC attitudes.  I find it a great item and believe it or not, I had a similar set to play doctor with in the 70's when I was growing up.  My mother was a nurse and of course she encouraged anything to do with medicine.  This set was a bit different however in that it actually contained candy pills... ugh those have definitely become as dead as the Dodo because little miss or jr might actually take a real pill by accident... kind of like how candy cigarettes have disappeared from shelves since it encourages smoking (and big tobacco said they weren't targeting kids).  At any rate this wonderful cart includes "everything needed to pull the patient through until lunchtime"... well except for the ekg.  And little Billy isn't left out since he has the Jr Doctor Case at his disposal.

The Veg-All News

Here's a recipe that needs to stay forgotten in history, they only thing that would make it more regrettable is if it was encased in Jello and molded into something ridiculous.   Let's open a can of veg all which looks like a concoction of kitchen scraps from the local restaurant and we'll serve it on a lettuce leaf with some mayonnaise topped with pimento... Yummy, or not. 

Catsup or Ketchup?

When I was a kid growing up I remember that Heinz was the only "Ketchup" and everything else was "Catsup".  You have to laugh just saying the word catsup, as it sounds like something a sick cat would produce.  Since my grandparents were cheap frugal in a Great Depression sense they always had Del Monte Catsup on the table.  Now I prefer Heinz, as do alot of people and I'm so happy they came out with the Simply Heinz line that has no HFCS in it.

1931 Shredded Wheat Ad

I've been following the recommendations of this ad recently on the cold mornings here in North Florida.  If you don't think Florida can get cold then you've never been here in the winter.  I find that if you heat the biscuits in an oven set at 350° (I use my toaster oven) for about 8-10 mins they stay crisper in the hot milk.  It's an easy dish, just set the biscuits in the oven and get your milk warming in a pot on the stove.  The biscuits are done at the same time as the milk starts to steam and you're good to go.  I can't recall ever having tasted the large "original size" biscuits as we more often bought the mini-wheats but I took an immediate liking to the taste.  I like cereal in the morning and I like to stick with the old style cereals, Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts and of course Shredded Wheat.

Living On $900 a Year

Royal Baking Powder Ad 1934

Ok, I know you're reading the title of this post and thinking "Has he lost his mind?"  Well to be honest, I think I lost it years ago but I digress, the title has everything to do with the Ad above from 1934.  In that year, America was still in the grip of a devastating Depression and Americans were looking for more ways to save money.  Manufacturers took advantage of this trend to stress the quality of their products over the competition. 

I See You Tonight, Tonight...

Today I have for you a 1904 ad for Bausch and Lomb Camera Lenses.  I love this ad because it has a look similar to the Smashing Pumpkins Video for "Tonight, tonight" which in itself was a tribute to an early century movie about going to the moon.

Gift Baskets Galore

Man they don't do gift baskets like they used to.  In this 1947 ad/order sheet, we can get the mother of all fruit baskets, a crate of goodies really, weighing 90lbs!  Holy goobers that's alot of fruit!  I guess they could afford to be generous back then because labor and fruit were cheap.  Even the simple fruit basket, weighing in at a measly 27lbs, only costs $6.  I can't even go to the store and buy 2lbs of fruit for $6 let alone a fruit basket today.  Such is the march of inflation though.  It's a sad fact of my life that when pouring over all the vintage ads that I do in search of something for the blog, I often run across ones with prices.  Ridiculously low prices compared to today, inflation is the culprit, slowly eating away at our wages and our fortunes.

Coffeematic Makes Me Ecstatic

Yes, all brides swoon at the gift of a Coffeematic percolator.  Well I would swoon at least, this thing is an Art Deco dream.  Now here's the truly amazing thing, I just saw one on Ebay the exact same model and it was priced at $25, pretty much the same as what it sold for in 1948 when this ad was made.

Fair Wind and Calm Seas for the SS Cream of Wheat

 

Jack Sparrow he is not but a heady imagination always takes you to places of wondrous adventure.  This ad is from 1920 when the world of high fashion was transitioning into a more modern appeal.  His outfit actually would have been at home from 1900 onwards and boys wore short pants until they attained the age of manhood and could don their first pair of long pants.  

A Uniform Nurse

My my, how nurses uniforms have changed over the years.  In years past they were crisp, snappy and form fitting, not at all practicable for the chores associated with your nursing duties.  My mother would tell me stories about having to wear uniforms such as this when she was in nursing school.  I rather get the impression she hated it, but today we have a much more efficient alternative... scrubs.  Scrubs are baggy rather than form fitting, not flattering to the figure but certainly easier to move around in than the old starched uniforms.  With all things there is progress, sometimes this progress is a bad thing, eliminating what was old and useful in favor of the new fad.  In the case of nurses uniforms though, progress was a good thing.

Also it's like the changes in health insurance, you need a good agent for health coverage to find the best insurance... if that's even possible anymore.

Guide To Good Nutrition (1942)

Since the dawn of the 1900's the Government has been subjecting us to "guides to good nutrition" highlighting what what we should be eating in our daily meals.  It's interesting how health modes have changed so much since the 1940's to today.  When I first grabbed this ad it was the meat at the top that caught my eye.  Wonderfully marbled meat with a nice bit of fat to give the meat flavor and to make the consumer full.  Yes, you didn't need to eat as much meat back in the old days because the meat was more filling owing to the fat content.

Ad: Hires Root Beer

1931 Hires Root Beer

Does anyone else like Root Beer?  I know I do, along with it's distinguished brother Birch Beer and it's back of the woods cousin Sarsaparilla.  I suppose you could argue that Moxie is a part of the family, although Moxie's main taste is Gentian, the same herb they put into Peychauld's Bitters, used in the Sazerac Cocktail.  But all that is for another time as I'm going to concentrate on the Hires ad above.

To Boil or Not To Boil

Back in the vintage era when they referred to ham it was what we call "Country Ham" or "Virginia Ham" today.  These hams are heavily salted before smoking and are not injected with any flavorants or water to make them juicy.  Sometime in the 30's though Swifts brought about the ham revolution with the more modern process of injecting their hams with flavors and pre-baking them.  It was a great time saver over the older method of cooking a ham which involved soaking and par boiling the ham to remove some of the salt before baking in the oven.  Swifts hams also were juicier than the old country hams because they were not smoked and dry cured.

All this convenience has a price though as the flavorings injected are quite artificial and over the years Americans have developed something of a sweet tooth when it comes to ham so increasingly large amounts of sugar have been added to hams with the sugar eventually being replaced by High Fructose Corn Syrup by some companies.  I remember when I was a kid and ham tasted like ham, a bit salty, maybe a slight bit sweet but not cloyingly so.  Today though everyone seems to want to copy Heavenly Hams and their overpriced sticky sweet monstrosities.

If you hunt around you can still find country ham, usually in slices but if you're lucky you may stumble upon a whole one.  These hams need to be parboiled 5 minutes a pound then let to sit several hours before removing and rinsing.  Score the fat and then cook in a moderate oven for about half an hour before serving.