the other night, my mom and i discussed her letting me keep our “ump-teen”-years-old Drip-O-Lator (manufactured in massillon, OH) as long as i found a larger one online. now, this aluminum contraption is genius for easily making delicious coffee with no electricity (except, you know, boiling water). no fuss a-tall.
i was able to find a larger one from gloria’s treasures. here’s an example. i’ve been poking around this online store and loving all this classic dinnerware. yes, it’s true. i also like how gloria describes so many of her products as “SHINY IN AND OUT.” that’s exactly what i like to hear when buying some vintage stuff.
anyway, all this excitement got my mom and me talking about old pre-WWII era fannie farmer cookbooks. my mom’s mom had one from about 1936 and learned most of her cooking from it. i never knew my grandmother and i’ve been subsequently learning about her through her cooking. i guess she wasn’t a very good cook (“couldn’t cook her way out of a wet paper bag!” says my mom) because she roasted meat til it tasted like shoe leather and steamed veggies til they were mushy. but she did make a mean fresh orange icing (butter and powdered sugar, creamed, plus orange rind and fresh orange juice).
fannie farmer
(she was an aries)
our fannie farmer cookbook is from the 70′s or 80′s and you can tell which recipes are good cause those are the messiest pages (brownies, for sure). i guess what’s important about the pre-WWII era cookbooks is that they were published before rationing went into effect, which drastically changed how america cooked. there was also food rationing in WWI but mostly on meat and sugar. i wonder whether the u.s. would do well to ration now, to curb over-consumption of junky and high-calorie foods by the people who need them the least. rationing gas might also be a good idea, or taxing gas and using the tax to pay for public transportation development.
anyway, i’m on the hunt. and it’s really not that easy to find a fannie farmer cookbook from this particular time period. there’s a bunch from the 1990′s & after, and there’s a bunch of the original 1896 boston cooking-school cookbooks. fannie farmer was a graduate of the school and later published a collection of recipes she learned and perfected there. in this book she stressed the importance of exact measurements. no more of this “pinch” and “handful” business. she was called “the mother of level measurements” according to wikipedia, anyway.
farmer considered her most important work food and cookery for the sick and convalescent.
Overall, the book reveals Farmer‘s touching intimacy and sympathy for the invalid’s needs -something she knew firsthand. The invalid’s tray should be orderly, cheerful, with small portions in dainty china. A heart-shaped bread and butter sandwich will be eaten when the slice of bread and ball of butter would not. She writes: “Men and women are certainly but children of an older growth, which fact is especially emphasized during times of sickness and suffering.”
i like cookbooks from the early-to-mid 1900′s because there’s only about 50 ingredients used to make everything, there’s a focus on seasonable cooking, and i guess it reminds me of everything i’ve learned about cooking from my mom (never wash out a sifter, paprika goes rancid, iron frying pans are essential, never soak wood in water, how to “cut in” butter with two knives, real baking requires serious elbow grease…)
elbow grease–
humorous.
Vigorous rubbing, proverbially referred to as the best unguent for polishing furniture. Hence allusively, energetic labour of any kind.
1672 MARVELL Reh. Transp. I. 5 Two or three brawny Fellows in a Corner, with meer Ink and Elbow-grease, do more Harm than an Hundred systematical Divines with their sweaty Preaching.(thanks, OED! you’re the best!)
