“These are heavenly and should be called ‘Oh-no-I-shouldn’t’ cookies. They’re terribly rich, but terribly good, particularly when served with coffee as a dessert.” Grace Barr, Orlando Evening Star Food Editor, 1968 The Back Story of Sweetened Condensed Milk In New York, during the early to mid-1800s , the most dangerous food a child might consume […]
Hello Friends, Over the weekend, I did some Cooking With Ida, this time exploring stuffing recipes from a hundred years ago. Mrs. Allen’s book Cooking Menus Service (1924) was my source. The heading of the Meats and Meat Dishes section restates Ida’s primary focuses in her cookbooks–economy through self-reliance (cooking with what you can produce […]
“Life is SO much better with whipped cream on top.” ~Unknown Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream It turns out that Whipped Cream has been around for a long time. Records show that the Italians were whipping cream in the mid-1500s, with the French not too far behind. Evidently cooks used a handful of twigs or […]
I came across a recipe for Raisin Cake in a narrow column of advertisements in the October 1926 issue of The Farmer’s Wife magazine. The recipe was sponsored by the Crescent Manufacturing Company of Seattle, Washington, makers of the wildly successful imitation maple flavoring branded Mapleine. Growing up my mother always made homemade pancake syrup […]
Hello! I’m Elaine, the Cookbook Lady, and a twenty-first-century farmer’s wife. I collect old cookbooks and read them like novels to piece together the history of rural women in America. I recently stumbled upon a cache of farm magazines and newspapers from the nineteen-teens through the 1930s. These publications enrich and add depth to my […]
Today’s post is a letter written by a resourceful farm woman with several young children. She shares her ideas on how to keep away the winter doldrums by allowing her children to plan a bit of fun for special days. Even today children can while away the long hours of a winter afternoon doing simple […]
Hello Friends! The hard economic times and food shortages brought about by World War I were the impetus for a small Kansas community to launch what would become a years-long tradition — a Community Thankfeast. Demonstrations of industry, generosity, reverence, patriotism, compassion, and hospitality accompanied the overarching sentiment of gratitude as folks, young and old, […]
Thanksgiving Blessing Mix is not a new idea. Many variations can be found on the internet, but I would like to share the recipe that I have used for the past twenty years. Printed in a charming cookbook titled Sweet Surprises for the Holidays 1997, each ingredient is a reminder of the sacrifices made by […]
National News of Interest to Farm Women By Alice Gram, Washington Representative of The Farmer’s Wife News from Washington was a monthly column published in The Farmer’s Wife. Below is a bulleted list of topics covered in this article: The value of a college education in 1921 is spelled out in dollars and cents by […]
The American Dairy Council’s slogan from the late nineties — “Behold! The Power of Cheese” — would have been the perfect title for the one-hundred-year old Farmer’s Wife article below. Home cooks from the 1920s were well aware of the ability of cheese to elevate any meal through both flavor and nutrition. During WW I, […]
Imagine being able to sell your high-quality, homemade butter for a dollar a pound when the going rate at the local grocer was fifty to sixty cents. That’s what Mrs. Foster was able to do in 1921 giving her a little extra “pin money”. She even took home first prize in the county’s Better Butter […]
The publication The Farmer’s Wife — A Magazine For Farm Women was published from 1897 through 1939 boasting a readership of over one million at its peak. In opposition to “pretty” magazines for women. In October 1926, The Farmer’s Wife’s proclaimed mission was to be the voice of and for farm women in politics, women’s […]
A century ago parents had the same concerns for their children’s health and nutrition as parents of today. Printed in the October 1921 volume of The Farmer’s Wife – A Magazine for Farm Women is an article sharing a community’s success in providing a warm noon meal for their school children through the help and […]
A witty subscriber from California writes The Farmer’s Wife to share her go-to family meal for the Sabbath – the classic pot roast dinner. She states that with some advanced preparation, she can have a meal on the table twenty minutes after getting home from church, a feat of which her Scottish ancestors would be […]