Cutting & Chopping Food Tips

More tips from Cookies Galore (by Frances Barton, General Foods Corporation, copyright 1956).

Tips On Storing Cookies

These tips on storing cookies come from Cookies Galore (from Frances Barton of the General Foods Corporation, copyright 1956).

Store cookies in a refrigerator if they are the no-bake type. Store baked cookies in a tightly covered metal or earthenware container. To soften cookies, keep a piece of fresh apple in the cooky jar.

Best of all is the adorable photo tip: A cookie jar should have a tight lid, "but not so tight a small boy can't raid the jar." *wink*

How To Pack Cookies For Mailing

If you're packing cookies to send to those in the military or folks a bit closer to home, there are some great tips in Cookies Galore (from Frances Barton, Consumer Service Department, General Foods Corporation, copyright 1956). While many of these are pretty basic, I found the part about the best cookies to ship helpful.

Hot Under The Collar, Little Woman? Cool Off Freezing Pies

As I said at my other blog, I've been collecting cookbooks and cook booklets primarily for the little cultural asides. One of these examples is 1952's Aunt Jenny's 12 Pies Husbands Like Best Recipe Book, a promotional cook booklet featuring Lever Brothers Spry "Homogenized" pure vegetable shortening). Naturally, the title was reminiscent of the 1950s "little woman cooking for Daddy" phenom, much like the premise of The Way To His Heart.

While equal parts amusing and frustrating, the vintage booklet also provides recipes and facts. The facts that currently catch my fancy revel in the "miracle" of freezing pies. Tips include when to cut steam vents in crusts and thawing pie shells in an oven (as this is before microwave ovens).

Unusual Vintage Pudding Dessert Recipe

We've all heard the expression, "a face for radio," right? Well, what does that say about Radio Pudding?

I'd never heard of such a thing until I paged through a cookbook from the 1930s called Butter-Made Is Better Made. After reading the recipe, I'm pretty sure this is a dessert made for a radio stomach. But you tell me... Does it sound yummy? And if you make it, pretty please tell me!

UPDATE: 1/29/2014 The amazing S.S. tried it and posted a complete review at A Book Of Cookrye. She's got a contest there too, so if you love recipes be sure to enter!

Hot Pineapple Eggnog

In Favorite Recipes From America's Dairlyand, by the Wisconsin State Department of Agriculture, comes this recipe... The photo looks lovely, but, as I do not love eggnog, I will not be trying this, err, interesting recipe. But I would love to hear from those of you who do! (There are other vitnage beverage recipes here too: Banana Milk Fluff, Buttermilk Fruit Shake, Chocolate Mint Flip, and Eggnog Supreme.)

The History of Cake

Infographic by Foodbeast.

Gingerbread House Recipe & Pattern

Pages inside the Christmas Cooky Book from Wisconsin Electric Power Company; circa 1960s.

Pretty Stenciled Pie Crusts

From the September 1978 issue of Decorating & Craft Ideas Magazine, which has the stencil patterns, pie crust recipes, as well as recipes for fruit pies and vegetable and beef pies, and how-to information. Confident cooks can just be inspired to paint their own pies with with egg yolk and food coloring.

Fortune Donuts

From that 1945 donut party book, how to make fortune telling donuts. (See also.)

A Cheesy Quiz Contest

As promised, today there's a cheese quiz.  Can you name all the cheeses? Post your answers in the comments (or email them to me at Deanna.Pop.Tart@gmail.com) by April 12, 2013 -- get all 18 right, and get 18% off in our Esty shop! (Be sure I have your email in your entry so that I can send you your discount code!)

Better Know Your Cheeses

From Favorite Recipes From America's Dairlyand, by the Wisconsin State Department of Agriculture -- who else? You'd better study, because there will be a quiz tomorrow! (Click to read larger scan.)

Minute Meat Loaf

Another tip found in Here’s How The Farm Weekly Serves You, this one on baking meat loaf in muffin tins for faster cooking time and individual serving sizes. (Likely great for dieting and portion control too!)

Brown Sugar Substitute

This vintage tip was found in Here’s How The Farm Weekly Serves You. (More info on the publication here.)

Making Donut Animals

The following advice on getting children to play with their food is from How To Run A Successful Party: Party Ideas, Games, Fun, For Children & Grown Ups!, written by Elizabeth King (Fun Editor of Parents' Magazine), copyright 1945, Doughnut Corporation of America.(More from this vintage booklet here.)

Tough Cocoanuts To Crack?

Have a lovely pair of cocoanuts, but you're having a hard time opening them?  The 1967 American Farm & Home Almanac suggests placing them in a hot oven for a few minutes.

Free Copy Of The DinnerRevolution

Chef Jeff is giving away free copies of his latest book, DinnerRevolution. These recipes from Chef Jeff Pirtle of Mydietchef.com are super family-friendly, healthy, have less than 10 ingredients, and take less than 30 minutes to prepare. The ebook has a $27 value, so grab your free copy here! Oh, and the book is the 2.0 version he's counting on us to give feedback for the final, 3.0 version; so send your thoughts in to him.

Meatless Italian Dishes From Chef Boyardee

Meatless recipes from a vintage Chef Boyardee cook booklet titled Famous Italian Dishes, by Chef Hector Boiardi -- with Recipes tested and approved by The Chef Boy-ar-dee Housewife, Lois Nichols. These meatless recipes were not for the benefit of vegans or even wartime rations. No, these inexpensive and tasty dishes to take the place of meat, "thereby making Friday or Lenten Season dishes of them."

The Worst Thing About Fruit? The Fruit Flies

The worst thing about fresh fruit is the darn fruit flies. I know, because we've been hit - arg!

Normally, they seem to live and die and cease to be a problem, but this time...

I'm not one to tolerate bugs or insects of any variety in my home. Especially having just been battling with the icky Box Elder Bugs this fall.

Zero.

Tolerance.

So first I grabbed a left-over roll of the sticky fly tape.

But it didn't seem to be working fast enough for me. (Patience may be a virtue, but so is a house free of fruit flies!)

My complaints spurred on the hubby who went and created The Farm Version Of The Fly Trap.

This trap is based on the bait method; a bit of fruit juice in the bottom of a clear glass jar (another excellent reason to keep baby food jars!), with a funnel of paper taped at the opening. You can modify this by using wine, sugar water, etc. -- any sweet and fermenting liquid will work.

The theory behind this natural method of ridding your house of fruit flies is that the flies will be lured to the sweet stuff, flying into the wide opening of the paper funnel mouth but, as the end narrows near the liquid, they will land in the liquid and drown.

It's a theory, anyway.

The fruit flies we had seemed to not only survive the death trap (including, when one did manage to die in the juice, other fruit flies standing upon the dead body of their fallen comrade to partake of the juice), but thrive. Yup, after two days of watching the damn things walk around inside the jar, I concluded that The Farm Method of fruit fly removal was more like feeding and perhaps breeding than ridding us of the pests.

Seriously, other than my concerted efforts to spot them near the tape and smush or imprison them, they seemed to proliferate.

I again brought hubby into the bathroom, told him my (obsessive) observations, and asked him if he had any modifications up his sleeves. When the answer was, "Nope," I has him disassemble the contraption and just left the store-bought fly paper roll there and tried to ignore it all.

Two days later, food and beverage gone, the fruit fly population not only dwindled, but the infestation seemed to be over. (Though I'm keeping the ugly roll up a few more days, just to be sure...)

While The Farm method sure looks better than a long unwound roll of sticky tape with dead insects on it, it just didn't work. And while you can argue that The Farm method is more natural, and/or, pending on the manufactures of all the items in question, more environmentally friendly, I myself just wish to be rid of the icky insects.

PS I've filed this under Advice From My Grandma because hubby learned this from his mother and grandmother and that's close enough for me! *wink*

Recommended Serving Sizes, Chilling Times & Uses For Jell-o Gelatin

From my 1962 spiral bound copy of Joys Of Jello, General Foods Corporation.