I am continuing scans of the Good Housekeeping cookbook series. There are a lot of them, so it will take me a while, but I realized that I had two of the latest scan – Good Housekeeping’s Appetizer Book. Then I remembered that waaaaaay back in the day when I was starting my blog and scanning journey, I had acquired this book somewhere and was looking through it for ideas. To my horror, I saw the following recipe:
I mean, C’MON. Some flavors are just not meant to meld together, amirite?
I decided to use my family to test this concoction out. Their assessment was “not bad,” although I didn’t have the guts to try it. Are YOU brave enough?
Check out this lovely recipe (p. 4) and many others here.
I’m kind of on a scanning kick, y’all. After about a year of not having a scanner because my old one didn’t survive the move, I purchased a new one a few months ago, and now I’m ready to make it earn its keep.
Last week I scanned the wonderfully corny MEAT POWER cookbook, courtesy of Swift. I now have a smattering of other cookbooks that I’d like to scan in, particularly a collection of Good Housekeeping cookbooks that I found all grouped together in a disintegrating binder. The binder’s gone, but the cookbooks live on, and some of them have such great crazy 60’s graphics that I just have to scan them in. Case in point:
Lots of crowns going on in these illustrations. Not sure what that’s about, but it’s goofy enough that I like it. Also lots of angry-looking people with crowns and dorky-looking animals wearing crowns. I dunno . . . but I’m drawn toward funky graphics that have no point.
Ok, I get the first two things are lobsters, but what is that other thing on the right . . . with legs? A table (since there’s a vase on it)? Why does it just look so out of whack?
Lest you think I’ve lost my ever-lovin’ mind, let me assure you that I did not just blurt out this phrase without any inspiration. My inspiration was, in fact, a little booklet published by Swift — the meat company — with tips and tricks for holding different types of parties. The back of the booklet touts the “meat power” – and it’s a graphic that I’ve seen in various vintage groups. I mean, c’mon . . . it’s funny.
Here we have the usual selection of 1950s animatrons (I want to know what mom is thinking in that middle picture!) with everyone living their best life. They even have some spectacular ideas for holding a stag party. Forget those plans of visiting the strib clubs! Here ya go:
Decorations: Make a cigar centerpiece, using at least one cigar for each man present. Write humorous fortunes on narrow strips of paper and tie them on each cigar with ribbon bows. Guests helps themselves to cigars after dinner and read their fortunes aloud.
Games: At a stag party, men usually get together for games of their choice. For extra entertainment, have a soap box contest. The only thing needed is a soap box for the guests to stand on while they deliver a 3-minute talk on silly subjects that they draw out of a hat. Write the subjects on slips of paper for the guests to draw in turn. Sample subjects: “If the barter system is adopted, how much should. a good wife be worth?” and “An effective method of stopping snoring.”
Now doesn’t that sound like FUN?
It’s on page 5 if you need a complete menu for said stag party.
Smack dab in the middle of the booklet is a nice colored insert touting all of Swift’s new products, like square shaped turkey roasts (I wish I were joking). It also contains a nice little reference for how long to roast different types of meat and types of boneless oven roasts.
Whoever owned this cookbook must have used it quite a bit, for many pages wear the proof of various dishes being made, which you can see on the scanned pages. That’s how you know that the recipes must be fairly good.
Last year I turned the milestone age of 50. This year, I turned — wait for it — 51. I remember when 50 was drawing near that I found myself not dreading it as much as I did when I turned the big 4-0. Forty was when I had to start wearing readers and coloring my gray hairs on a regular basis. Forty was when I felt my body start to slow down a bit; it wasn’t as easy to lose weight. Everything began to gather an extra bit of “padding.” Life was busy while I raised my teenage boys and kept on going in my teaching career.
Fifty kind of just appeared because I didn’t think about it as much. Two months after my big birthday, my college roommates came for a girls’ weekend. All of our birthdays are close together; Alex turned 50 on January 3, Suni turned 50 on January 9, and I turned 50 on February 3. So by the time the girls’ trip came about, we were all officially entrenched in our new decade. We had such a fun time shopping in Chicago, going out to eat, and even taking in an Elvis show at Buddy Guy’s Legends with my husband’s band playing. We spent time doing absolutely nothing, and that was perfect. We didn’t really have to pack our time together with activities; in fact, most of our time together was spent at my house.
In my younger years, I was a little obsessed with audio and video recording moments with my life. This obsession has become a little bit of a blessing and a little bit of a curse, for it is completely cringy to observe the idiocy of my younger years. I thought I had life all figured out — and I had no freaking clue. I know that is just the way life goes, but it is hard to watch it now.
And yes, I took plenty of videos of my college roommates and me, and it is interesting to compare us at age 21 to age 50. Back then, we were so worried about what we were going to wear to the bar and spent SO much time getting ready. Was our hair OK? Did we have the perfect shade of lipstick on? Was so-and-so going to be at the bar, do you think? There was so much mental energy that went in to just fitting in – but also wanting to stand out and be noticed by that perfect guy.
Fast forward to age 50, and none of that matters. All of us have been divorced, and two of us are currently remarried to the people we feel we should have married the first time. When we go “out on the town,” the focus is being together and laughing and remembering good times we’ve had in the past. I give zero craps about whether I’m in fashion or if my hair is perfect or if my makeup is on point. Friendships that have lasted over half of your life are rare and precious, and that becomes increasingly obvious as one ages. Our time together is definitely focused on each other rather than ourselves.
This past February, my husband’s band had a week-long gig at Busch Gardens in Tampa, and my best friend from high school decided to also fly down there and spend several days with us there. I marvel how I can rarely see these friends, but when you’re with them in person, it’s like you’ve been with them every day. You fall back into old patterns. Our time together was a breath of fresh air, and I am so thankful for the ones that stick around throughout time.
As of December 2024, I have been an official resident of Illinois, having bought our house at that time. Of course, we lived here longer than that, but we were house hunting and living with friends during that time. The time has gone by very quickly, surprisingly enough, probably because we were spending the past year trying to figure out how all our stuff fit into our new space. Some of it did, some of it didn’t, and we are still in the process of sorting through boxes.
Moving after spending years in the same location is hard because you’re forced to finally deal with all that stuff in the basement and in closets that was easy to ignore. Boxes of pictures, for instance, or sentimental items from high school. It seems inconceivable to throw all those things away, but I tell ya — when you are in the depths of moving and the truck is getting full, it’s mighty tempting to turn off the sentimentality and just chuck it all. I didn’t, of course (although I did throw an entire dumpster’s worth of stuff away), and that is why I find myself in the “too much stuff” predicament. We’ve already made one Goodwill haul and need to make another one soon.
The holidays presented an unwanted gift to my husband and me, as we both ended up with pneumonia. That made the actual holidays and New Year’s fly by, as I was struggling with just surviving while also trying to create the holiday magic for everyone. In spite of how I felt, I was able to create some delectable lasagna on Christmas Eve and prime rib on Christmas Day, so pneumonia lost and I won. Kind of.
When I turned 50 last year, I vowed that I was going to get healthier and stop putting things off that I needed to pay attention to.
Let’s just say that “year of 50” slid by and I most certainly did not stop putting things off, as moving provided a convenient excuse to be really, really busy, and once we lived in the new house, that trend continued. Now I am about to turn 51 and that nagging voice in my head finally got through to me. This WILL be the year that I get healthier — both mentally and physically — by taking care of things that I have neglected for too long and developing some new hobbies that I had avoided taking up because of the endless array of excuses that I tended to supply. I call the nagging voice in my head “Madge,” because I envision her to be kind of a rough-and-tumble OTR trucker with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I could hear Madge say something derogatory every time I decided to put off a task, for instance, or do something lazy. “Yeah,” she’d cackle. “Let’s do that! Good choice all around!”
I hate Madge.
However, Madge started to get to me. I started to realize that Madge was actually the voice of reason that I should have been listening to this whole time. However, listening to a nice, nonconfrontational, sweet version of that VOR would have resulted in my ignoring her. My conscience knew that. So Madge was born, and Madge irritates the hell out of me, but she gets my attention. Whenever I feel like cutting corners or putting something off, there she is in the corner, cackling with cigarette smoke being snorted out of her nostrils as she watches me teeter on the cusp of doing something dumb. There’s nothing worse than being verbally bullied (in my imagination, anyway) by a woman who probably needs to work on herself as well. So, in an effort to shut Madge up and make my own soul happy, I’m going to delve back into my hobbies this year.
I want this year to be a year of reflection and introspection. The last few years I’ve been running with the wind and rarely taking a breather to enjoy downtime. This year I am simplifying for my own good. I want to read more — much more than I already do — and maybe start keeping track of what I’m reading. I want to write more as well, possibly developing a novel along the way. I have helped several people edit books over the years, and I’ve always been a bit jealous; seeing my name on a book cover would be a thrill for me, and I hope someday I am able to see that.
I also want to take the time to make some of the recipes out of the WNAX cookbooks that I’ve collected over the years. I get a kick out of reading those books (most of which I’ve scanned here for others to enjoy!). I’ll spare you the details of why I love these books because I have droned on and on about these for years, but they are gems. There is one particular book that amuses me because the design has a pin as a part of it, like this:
Well, one clever lady, Alice Johnson, decided to put a recipe for pfeffernusse cookies inside the front cover – and use a pin to secure it.
And I just. can’t. get. over. the THREE CUPS OF LARD. Yes, it makes a ton of cookies, but . . .
THREE CUPS OF LARD!!
I don’t care how good these cookies are . . . I just don’t think I could stomach dumping that much lard into a bowl and then proceeding to make something with it.
But hey, if you are braver than I, then go to it – the recipe is right there!
Anyone who has followed this blog for a time knows that I am a big fan of the WNAX Neighbor Lady cookbooks, put out by Yankton, SD-based WNAX from 1941 until the early 70s. They are a treasure trove of recipes, home tips, poems, insights, and pictures from Wynn Speece’s appearances around the WNAX listening area, and that program was a much-needed lifeline to lonely housewives everywhere. I even scanned in several of the cookbooks that I have in my possession, so check them out here!
As I understand, there are a few recordings that exist from this program, but they have not been made public. I hope that someday any recordings that exist can be shared with all of us.
I ran across a short program called Voices on the Prairie from the South Dakota Public Broadcast System. This video shows Wynn as she recalls the start of her career and how it blossomed throughout the years. Have a listen!
I think I said a couple posts ago that I wasn’t going to buy any more tablecloths.
Ha ha! What a funny joke that was!
All my tablecloths have been sitting in the 5 bins they were packed in when I moved. I’ve started going through them and realizing I should probably catalog them, as I have found some good ones lately and I’m starting to forget which designs I have.
I found a couple of vintage Christmas tablecloths during an antique store shopping spree last weekend, which thrilled me because they are getting harder to find, and when I do find one, they are usually crazily overpriced. Well, the ones I found were sitting together in a locked glass case and I could see they were $20 apiece. Not bad – if they were in decent shape. I had the guy open the case, I did a quick inspection and noted a couple of stains, and assured myself that I could get the stains out. I still have to work on them a bit, but they turned out great.
When we got home, I told my husband how excited I was to find another couple of Christmas cloths. “I already have like 3 or 4!” I said.
When I went into the basement to find the other cloths, I realized I lied to my husband – and to myself. “Three or four” is actually more like twelve. I have a hard time resisting them when I come across them because the graphics on them evoke such wonderful feelings about the holiday times and from pictures I run across from time to time. I decided to break them all out and photograph them to document what I have and to share them all with you, of course.
First, I want to share my newest acquisition, which is a non-Christmas cloth. However, it IS a California Handprints cloth, so I was pretty excited to see it in a bin for a pretty awesome price. It seemed to have some brown stains on it, but I gave it a couple days’ worth of a soak and it’s as good as new.
I also found this adorable little card table cloth. Cherries are always a winner.
Obviously, I didn’t take the time to iron these tablecloths before I took a picture.
Life is just too short.
OK – now onto the Christmas cloths.
This first one is one of my absolute favorites because of the retro ornaments. It’s such a cheery cloth and I love how it looks.
This next one is very vibrant and is in perfect condition. It astounds me that some of these have escaped getting stained over the years of use. It’s always exciting to find one that looks brand new, as this one does.
So many of these old tablecloths have silver color on them, which has been worn away by washing or by people using Oxyclean to wash them with, which seems common with online sellers who don’t know how to handle vintage fabric.
This is another recent find. Perfect condition.
This next one is signed Francis Dearden and has some cute little whimsical Santas. I didn’t know anything about Francis when I bought this, and I still don’t know much about him. Google searches reveal that he was a textile designer in the 1950s, but that’s about all I can find. This “flying Santa” tablecloth seems to be a popular representation of his work. So if anyone has any info on Francis, I’m all ears.
I love the simplicity of the colors and the pinecones. It gives a cozy, wintery vibe.
This is a Luther Travis cloth – another person I don’t know anything about.
This next one is a little faded, and I was disappointed to see that a major stain (see arrow) on it. Either I never stain treated this one or this is from my own use. Either way, it went right into the sink to soak after this pic.
This last one is not a Christmas cloth, but it is a recent acquisition. I fell in love with the pale beige-colored fabric with the dainty daisies on it. It had a couple of dark yellow stains in some spots, so I soaked it for a few days, stain treated it, and repeated the process until the stains were gone. Here it is now:
The lighting makes it difficult to see the detail, so here is a closeup:
Darling, isn’t it?
When I do finally get my collection cataloged and photographed, I will be sure to share it here as well. Definitely won’t be happening until after the holidays, though.
If you have any vintage cloths to share, post them in the comments!
Since I started this blog in 2008, I usually would post a back-to-school post, mourning the end of my summer and hoping that I would have the strength to endure the coming school year. This is school year #2 I am not returning to school, and I am still trying to adjust to the new normal.
I still have the compulsion to buy school supplies. I don’t think that instinct will ever leave me.
I still enjoy the personalities of teenagers and kids in general. After years of living in a fairly secluded development, I am part of a larger development that is ALIVE. Today I saw some kids were selling something — probably lemonade on this hot day — and I felt bad when I drove by them twice without stopping while I ran errands. When I knew I was done shopping for the day, I stopped. They were selling lemonade and bracelets that they made. I picked up one of each, overpaid, and told them to keep the change. The looks on their faces were worth it.
I remember the days when my friend Suni and I would hold Kool-Aid stands at the end of our driveways. We had themes, such as Hawaiian hula girls (an idea from Suni’s creative mother, Val) and we were always so delighted when someone stopped for some of our Kool-Aid. We were even more delighted when someone gave us a bigger bill and told us to keep the change. We were going to be RICH! I would be dreaming about all the candy I would be able to buy with that money.
Even though I don’t teach school now, I still get a kick out of the teenagers I encounter around town. I told this story on my Facebook page, but I think it’s worth repeating. I stopped by Starbucks after buying a huge bag of bird seed from the local Tractor Supply. It was sitting on my passenger seat. When I pulled around to pick up my coffee, the barista asked me what the bag was, and I told her it was bird seed. (I always love how so many teenagers have no filter; if they want to know something, they will ask!). I told her I liked to feed the birds in my yard. She said, “Oh, you feed the birds? That’s cool.” All of a sudden another teenage barista came running over to the window. “YOU HAVE A BIRD?” she exclaimed. I hated to disappoint her, but I couldn’t pretend I had a bird with me when I didn’t. “No, I just like to feed the birds in my yard.”
Her crestfallen face was almost comical. “Oh,” she said, “people always bring their pets through here. I haven’t seen a bird yet. I was hoping you had one.”
That’s the energy I miss. If you looked tired and worn out, they’d tell you. If you looked nice, they’d tell you. If they thought your lesson sucked, they’d tell you. As a rather reserved introvert, that took some getting used to. I had to let go of my pride and get used to standing in front of the peanut gallery every day and being able to take their criticism AND their praise.
I think I will forever be in the middle of that paradox – loving the idea of teaching but hating the red tape attached to it.
I have been gone nearly every weekend for the past few months as I have traveled around with my husband’s band. To say that I am exhausted from being on the road is an understatement. It is fun seeing different towns and seeing old friends at different events, but man, I miss having lazy Sunday mornings where I could relax with a good cup of coffee while snuggled in bed. The schedule will be slowing down slightly in upcoming weeks, so I hope I am able to get some long-awaited projects done.
I’m slowly discovering where the antique stores are around this area. I visited a couple a few weeks ago and picked up a couple of treasures. I saw this rooster tray the first time I visited one, and then I brought my husband back to the store later so he could see it. I knew that since I kept thinking about it, I probably should just pick it up, and now it has become part of my kitchen decor. There is something about funky 1950’s chickens that I just can’t resist.
At another nearby store, I ran across a bunch of boards that had retro matchbooks on them. There are few things I love more than retro advertising, so I picked up a couple of the boards and have a strong urge to go back and get the rest of them. Zoom in on the pics if you can; there are some fun designs. I do want to unstaple some of them to flip them around. Some of them don’t have the most interesting side facing forward, in my opinion.
Although I’ve lived in my house for 9 months, I have been undecided about a decorating strategy. My old house was all 50’s, and because it was a 50’s house, it all fit. My current house was built in 2005, and a lot of my 50’s stuff just doesn’t fit in well with the more modern feel of this house. However, I love old advertising, and I love funky little things that you can’t find at Home Goods or TJ Maxx, so I have decided to start collecting some of those items and using them to enhance these spaces. Funky chicken is now adorning my kitchen, and the matchbooks will provide entertainment to anyone using our bathroom off the kitchen.
*****NOTE: I originally wrote this post in March. I had forgotten I wrote it and noticed it just now when I came here to write a new blog post. Although we have now lived here for 9 months, the sentiments are still the same. Therefore, there will be two posts dated today. **********
I have lived in this house for three months now, and I am gradually getting to know the area. Still haven’t met the neighbors yet — cold weather kind of puts a damper on that — but I trust I will meet them as the weather warms up.
There are things that I love about living here, such as the convenience of living near pretty much any store I want to go to (something I definitely have not had for the past 23 years). I am getting used to the commute, which can be surprisingly good or frustratingly slow, depending on the day.
I think the biggest thing I’ve needed to get used to is “the fire.”
When my husband and I were traveling to this area often, before we lived here, we would drive by “the fire,” which is visible from the interstate, and we wondered what it was. We would describe it to people and ask what it was, but no one seemed to know.
“The fire” is a natural gas plant and it’s about five miles away. I’ve never lived close to industry like that, and we are learning that living next to one provides some dramatics. About a month ago, I heard a dull roar outside and I was curious as to what it was. I opened my front door and exclaimed, “Holy crap! Come look at the fire!” Usually, you can not see the fire above the houses in my neighborhood. That night, though, the flame shot up in the sky. My husband I watched it for a while and then I said I wanted to get a picture of it closer. When we were about on the edge of town, the fire died out. According to my local Facebook groups, the event triggered multiple 911 calls, as this area is growing rapidly and there are many new locals, like me, who have never seen that before. (No, I was not one of the 911 calls . . . ). Here’s what it looked like that night:
The other night I could hear a low rumble when I woke up at 2:30 a.m. I pulled my bedroom shades up and could not believe what I was seeing. I ran downstairs and took this picture from my front door — a sight made even more ominous-looking because of the low cloud cover that morning.
From what I understand, the fires escalate when there is excess gas to burn off. I don’t know anything other than that, but it has been interesting to see what “the fire” looks like every day.
I have slowly begun to explore some of the antique shops in this area. I have become a lot more selective about what I buy, though, because moving tends to make you realize that you have TOO MUCH STUFF! I did visit an antique store about 30 miles away a few weekends ago and I scored some great tablecloths, including a brand-new-looking Simtext tablecloth that came with four napkins. All the cloths were reasonably priced, so although I only walked away with one that had a label, all the cloths were in great condition. They’re a little wrinkly in this pic, but you can see the patterns:
A couple of months ago, my husband’s aunt passed away. When we went to her house to get some sentimental objects, like photographs, we were walking through the basement when I saw a cracked ice table (no chairs) with legs that were so totally atomic and rocket-ship inspired. I will take a pic of that soon after I get the table back together, and I will probably be offering it for sale because, c’mon, no one needs TWO cracked ice tables, no matter how cool they are. I had never seen a table with legs like that and I just could not leave it behind.
So, like I was saying, I have learned to not keep so much stuff. <eye roll>
Happy New Year! As I sit at my kitchen table in my new-ish house (new to me, anyway), I am full of pensiveness on this New Year’s Day.
A year ago, I was deeply unhappy in my teaching job and desperately searching for answers: what career could I go into? Did I have enough skills to switch to a new job? Was I even able to learn enough before the next school year in order to change careers? Was the thought of doing something different just a temporary feeling and I’d get over it eventually?
Let’s face it: I had a decent-paying career with a top-notch insurance plan. I had holidays and summers “off” (I put that in quotes because, as an English teachers, many of my breaks were overshadowed by essays I had to check and other work that just could not be done during the school day). But my holidays were never long enough, it seemed, and I started to seriously dread going back to work. I very much experienced the “Sunday scaries” — that feeling of dread that teachers have on Sundays or the last day of break where you know you’re going back to endless piles of papers, emotional overload, and stress.
It was about this time last year that I started researching schools where I could learn how to transition into instructional design. I knew it would cost money, and I knew it was going to be a financial setback of sorts. I wanted to train, I was highly motivated, and I wanted OUT of education before my mental health deteriorated. I worked like a dog for months, threw myself into the job-searching routine all summer, then was handsomely rewarded just as school was starting back up by getting hired and being able to work right on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago.
A year ago, I could not see any of that as being a reality. I had a lot of doubts. I had not been in job search mode in years and I didn’t even know if I had a resume hiding on my computer somewhere. All I knew was teaching, and I paid a little too much attention to the naysayers who said that teachers flooding the ID field were making job attainment nearly impossible.
I wish I could say that I was one of those “I set goals and reach them!” kind of people, but I’m not that methodical, nor that organized. All I knew was that I was in a job that was killing me with stress and that my values no longer aligned with the way I was expected to teach. That was the fire that sent me charging ahead.
This past year was a challenging one for many reasons; not only was I trying to change careers, but I was trying to relocate to another state. That meant putting $$ into my house to get it ready for sale, uprooting myself to a state I’ve never lived in, and adjusting to a whole new way of life. I traded a 7-minute commute to work through nearly empty streets for a 45-minute commute on a busy expressway.
However, I am here a year later looking back over the transition and giving out a little sigh, saying, “I made it.” I look at all the little baby steps that got me to where I am now and I am so grateful that I took those steps – however frightening they may have been at that time.
Change is hard. Change is damn scary. Change is incredibly difficult and sometimes frustrating when you don’t have the right support system in place. Most of that fire for change is going to have to burn in your soul and you’re going to have to keep feeding that fire yourself. Change is going to require believing in yourself and where you want to go in life. Close your ears to all the ones who want you to stay where it’s comfortable and familiar for them. Find the cheerleaders. Believe everything they tell you about your talents, your strength, and your ability to do whatever you want to do. They’re the ones who will be at the finish line and genuinely happy for you. Find your tribe and kick others to the curb. Clean house if you need to.
I don’t think I’ve ever thrown out so many rah-rah statements in one paragraph, but I cannot impress upon you enough: if you’re happy where you are, great. If you’re not, start envisioning what you want and do whatever you can to get there.
Trust me: in a year, you’ll be looking back with a smile on your face.
