Elvis and the Ice Cream Breakfast

We get it, we get it. We all scream for ice cream. On pie, why not. In a dish, if you wish.

But what in the world is ice cream doing in the middle of a bowl of cereal? If I want ice cream for breakfast - and the Sealtest people seem to be encouraging this sort of culinary insurrection - I'll jolly well have it on a waffle cone or in a bowl and never mind the looks everyone is giving me as they look up from their cornflakes...what is the point, I ask you, of putting it in the cereal?

Maybe you were fixing your Wheaties and then you thought: you know, I'll bet a big scoop of ice cream would be just the ticket. Or maybe you just wanted to show everyone what a rebel you were. But this ad is from 1953 and there wasn't that much rebellion going on - oh, maybe this was the extent of it. Was this before Elvis swiveled around on TV and shocked everyone? Let me go and check....Yeah, it was. That was on the Milton Berle Show in June 1956 and this ad is from August 1953. Newsweek said, of Elvis' performance, that the middle-aged audience reacted as if he was "a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party." Or like a scoop of Sealtest ice cream slapped on a bowl of Wheaties. That audience just needed to have worked up to "Hound Dog" with a few cereal sundaes, that's all.

Hoffman and the Headache Powder

All good drugstores, back in 1890, probably had something like Hoffman's Harmless Headache Powders for sale - though I can't imagine any remedy having a better name than that, can you? It was, at the time, just the thing to have on hand when a little horned devil got inside your brain and started prodding your facial nerves.

Hoffman also made Hoffman's Harmless Liver Pills that were "small, sure, and safe" in case you needed a laxative, "as is the case with some headaches," says another 1890 ad, this one in the Pittsburg[h] Dispatch - featuring the same confused-looking gentleman and his inner demon. According to Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience by J.K. Crellin, Hoffman's powders were among the first headache medicines ever to be sold in Newfoundland, Canada. Hoffman made his medicines both in New York State and Ontario.  However, powders like Hoffman's usually contained coal-tar derivatives, which were (as you might imagine) rather toxic.  Not so harmless, really. And not so good for your headaches.

Happily, this is no longer the case. There are much better choices for us today, in real and - even more conveniently - in virtual drugstores. At Canada drugs, for example, you can buy over the counter drugs - whether you want to buy lipitor, or any number of other medicines. It's quick and fully certified by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association. And I'm happy to say that they have plenty of excellent headache remedies, too; ones that would cure Mr. Hoffman's hapless head in no time at all.

The Soup Party

I just had to share this one with you. Yes, it seems to be just a rather boring 1940s Campbell's Soup ad, with the lady talking to the grocer on the phone. Doesn't seem like anything much - and it isn't, visually. But the dialogue is priceless. Get this:

The Grocer: "Campbell's Cream of Mushroom? Sounds like a party at your house!"

The Lady: "No...just the family. But they call it a party when we have that soup!"

OK everyone, let's back up a minute.

Have you ever looked at a can or a plate of Cream of Mushroom Soup and thought: Party time! Well, these folks do. Streamers, balloons, disco ball on the ceiling instead of the old porcelain light fixture that's been in the kitchen since 1932. And then, before they've even cleared the bowls off the table, there's music playing, and the neighbors are knocking on the door armed with champagne. And before you know it someone starts doing the Charleston on the coffee table. Mother, probably - as usual.

Yay, we have Campbell's soup!

And all because there was canned Cream of Mushroom Soup for dinner. Now we know what they had at those bacchanalias in ancient Greece. Not to mention what Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had for dinner before they went carousing through the fountains of Paris. Too bad Mother had to make do with the birdbath out in the yard.

The Curious Case of the Missing Cell Phone

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sprint for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Popular Science, December 1923

Back in the 1920s, if you lost something valuable or needed some extra security, what did you do? Why, you called in detectives with snappy fedoras and magnifying glasses, just like the gentlemen below. It took four of them to examine a single fingerprint though - so it was going to be expensive, and it looks like it might take them awhile.

Or maybe you'd misplaced a Toronto Millionaire. It seems unlikely, but maybe you had one hanging around the house and before you'd asked him to chip in for mustache wax and that extra caviar, he wandered away. You'd want to call in a detective in this case, too.

Popular Mechanics, October 1929

But today, it's not a matter of misplacing gentlemen with enormous mustaches and high collars. For example, if you lose your cell phone - which is probably packed with valuable contacts and all sorts of information that would astonish the 1920s sleuths.

And that is just what Sprint has developed. Sprint has a new Sprint Total Equipment Protection App for all TEP subscribers - it's available for Androids, Blackberys and select feature phones. If you get the Sprint Total Protection App you can locate your phone when it's lost, sync all your contacts, wipe the info remotely, and sound an alarm that helps you find a lost phone, too.

This is just exactly the sort of thing I could use - I've lost my cell phone a few times, and believe me, it would have been so nice to locate it quickly. And if my phone ever gets stolen, I can wipe off all the info quickly and get some peace of mind - that's something that really appeals to me. So do check out and download this new TEP app - Sprint customers have until August 30th to do so and add it to their current phones. It costs $8 a month and to find out lots more, do go and visit www.tepenroll.com as well as a cool video over here at YouTube.

And that's really good detective help - much more powerful than five guys in suits examining a table with a single magnifying glass.

The Answer Cake

Answer Cake was a 1950s Betty Crocker invention which gave you all the this-and-that you needed to make when people started asking you difficult questions like, Didn't you make any dessert, Gertrude? And Gertrude had been busy washing all the sheets and cleaning the fridge and maybe getting to play a little bridge if she was lucky. And she wasn't about to start in with the creaming of sugar and butter and the whipping of the egg whites and the folding in and never mind all the extra dishes. Susan Marks writes in Finding Betty Crocker (2007) that Answer Cake first appeared in 1954 and came with cake mix, frosting and a baking tin. It served up to 12 people who needed to answer the casserole that had just landed in their stomachs with a little (or rather a lot) of sugar.

All signs point to cake!

I love the name Answer Cake because all I can think of is that when you bake it, it will sit in the pan and answer all your questions - like a delicious Magic 8 Ball. The tag line even says "You'll have fun with Betty Crocker Answer Cake" - which is good, because I certainly like to have fun. And if I had the wherewithal (which I am running a little low on today) I'd write the fairy tale about the Answer Cake that sits out in front of  Hansel and Gretel's witch's gingerbread house (in some magic Tupperware that allows it never to grow stale) on a little golden cake stand, telling passersby what to do. "Say you, ask me a question! Seriously, I know all the answers to everything. But the witch put me under a spell so I couldn't run away and go on Jeopardy!" How it got out of her oven, I don't know.

Actually, I will write this. I've been reading a lot of fairy tales and writing some stuff based on them...also I'm working on a fiction project and a non-fiction project and...maybe I'll activate my writing blog if I can figure out what sort of things to post regularly - not the actual book projects but maybe some of what George Eliot called quarry, the jumble of things that inspire you. And goodness knows that's what all my blogs seem to be, jumbles of things. So that could work.

September is sort of like New Year's for me, so things will get stirred up a little! And I mean to start commenting/visiting and interacting with you all again. As soon as it gets cooler and my brain cells wake up. They are not much good when it is hot, you know.

Just One Spam Thing After Another

Graphic Design - TJS Labs

Hear them under that yellow smog
While camping in a piney bog
Vacationing in 1940
On a rustic little sortie

You'd think that dinner would be swell
A-barbecuing in the dell
But such a fit of nervous giggling
Does not imply that trout are wriggling

Delectably upon the grill
Those glassy eyed grinning people will
Say "Flippity flop, hurrah, it's done!"
And put some SPAM upon a bun.

Oh, people who overcompensate
Pretending to love the things they ate
Will often find that indigestion
Will pitch a tent near their intestine.

So please approach with looks askance
Any strange meats that come in cans
And, happy people, just please stop
Extolling meals that "flippity flop."

Victorian Shoes and Advertising Cards

In the late 19th century, advertising cards were one of the best ways to get people to take notice of your business. My great grandfather Charles Hicks, like Jacob Stolz, had cards for his Syracuse, New York shoe store; my great grandfather's was in Brooklyn. My grandmother was born in the apartment above the store in 1889, so I've always been very aware of his store. She used to talk about it when I was growing up. His father had invented something to do with children's shoes, she said, but he lost the patent in a card game and the family never forgave him. I'm still trying to figure out what it was that he invented!

Riding in Central Park

A lot of Victorian business cards had pictures totally unrelated to the business - my great grandfather had a picture of a train set that he had in the front window for Christmas, for example. I like Jacob Stolz's card for giving us a peek at the inside of the store - look at all those boots hanging up! And the customer seems to be in riding pants -I guess he was going to go riding, wherever you went in Syracuse. In New York City, you'd go to Central Park.

Now, if you have a business, you have so many more ways to let people know what you have to offer the world - whether it be riding boots and shoes "constantly on hand" or anything else, for that matter. The internet, of course, is the first resource you'll look to - and it is an amazingly powerful one. Since 1996, Superb Internet Corp. has offered managed hosting, dedicated servers and colocation centers for storing your business hardware in a secure and excellent place. All things that my great grandfather, with his shoe store cards full of colored pictures of model trains, never dreamed of.

[Images from Wikimedia Commons.]

The Unbearable Lightness of Chiffon Pies

In 1958 Jell-O tried a line of instant chiffon pie fillings - lemon and strawberry. I don't think that they were around for very long, though it sounds like a good idea.

Chiffon pies were first mentioned in print in the 1920s, and are named for chiffon fabric, a light sheer fabric whose French name comes from the word for cloth or rags. According to John Mariani in The Dictionary of American Food and Drink, the very first chiffon pie was a pumpkin chiffon pie presented by the Beverly Hills Women's Club in their 1929 recipe book. The filling of a chiffon pie is lightened by folding beaten egg whites into it just before it is chilled.

Chiffon cake is made with oil instead of butter or shortening, and like chiffon pie has whipped egg whites folded into it before baking. It was invented in the 1920s by a California caterer who kept the recipe a secret until he sold the recipe to Betty Crocker in 1947.

I've seen chiffon pie recipes from the 1940s-50s ranging from cherry, prune, lime, pineapple, and orange - as well as the more popular strawberry and lemon flavors. The most unusual? This Toffee Chiffon Pie from The American Woman's Cookbook (1962 edition, p. 603):

A lovely grey chiffon dress, circa 1905

TOFFEE CHIFFON PIE


1 Tb unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
2 cups hot milk
1/8 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup crushed pecan toffee
1 Zwiebach pie shell [any plain cookie crumb crust would do, I think]
Pecan toffee shavings


Soften gelatin in water 5 minutes. Combine milk, salt and 4 Tb sugar; stir until dissolved. Add to slightly beaten egg yolks and cook over boiling water until thickened, stirring constantly. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Cool. Add vanilla and toffee when custard begins to thicken. Beat egg whites until stiff, add remaining sugar and fold into custard. Fill crumb shell and chill/ Sprinkle with toffee shavings. Makes 1 (9 inch) pie.

There is also a Sherry Chiffon Pie variation, in which you use almond extract instead of vanilla; and add 2 Tb sherry and use 1/4 cup chopped almonds instead of toffee and toffee shavings. Toasted almonds would be really good in this, I think. I'll bet you could substitute liqueur for the sherry and then you could do all kinds of lovely boozy chiffon pies. What do you think? It's too hot for me to start baking now but i might try this in the fall and I'll let you know what I come up with...

P.S. Yes, I used the jokey title before - back in 2008, in The Unbearable Lightness of Beans. I like to think of it as recycling!

Spectacular Spectacles

The 'Glasses Apostle', 1403 [Wikipedia]

Did you know that eyeglasses were invented in the 13th century in Italy? I had no idea that they were made in the Middle Ages, but people had noticed the magnifying properties of lenses as early as the 5th century BC, in Egypt. The first sunglasses were made of thin slices of smoky quartz in 12th century China - I don't know whether there were frames for these or whether you just had to hold them up when you went out on a sunny day.

The Rotarian, October 1919

Eyeglasses were certainly well known by the 19th century - and many of my ancestors wore specs, mostly the women. My great great grandmother wore little green or blue spectacles, even indoors, as early as the 1850s. My grandmother wore little gold-rimmed specs without side pieces, even in her wedding portrait - she liked how she looked in them! And I like my glasses, too. I've been wearing glasses since I was 7. They were quite heavy back then, though. Today you can get the most amazingly powerful thin light glasses and that has made reading and writing (and just plain getting around, because boy am I nearsighted and astigmatic!) such a pleasure. No more 1980s half-inch thick rimless glasses  - and no more indentations on my nose. This is all good.

You know what else is good? Zenni Optical (prescription sunglasses)* has all kinds of cool prescription sunglasses (and regular glasses, too)  for excellent prices, so that you can get the 'best bang' for your money - a good idea when purchasing anything, right? Clark Howard, a nationally syndicated financial expert, thinks that buying your glasses online from Zenni Optical is an excellent idea; check out what he has to say here at CNN. So...maybe I will get some new prescription sunglasses! I love mine because not only can I actually see in bright sunlight (always a plus!) -  but also, since I'm not in ancient China, I don't have to hold pieces of smoky quartz up to my eyes.

*Or else try Zenni Optical here, because I'm not sure the first link is working...

This Magic Disc

Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1932 [big version]

Years ago I was in Elkhart, Indiana overnight because we were driving across the US and it was on the route. So we stayed in a mote. Didn't sightsee or anything. It was one of those get-up-in-the-morning-and-drive-all-day trips. So I can't really tell you anything except that I learned that Elkhart is the band instrument capital of the world. I don't play any band instruments, so did not pursue the matter.

Of course what I should have looked into was the Amazing Magic Disc, which came from Elkhart in the 1930s. Because who wouldn't love something that hands you $30 (and more, it says - I like the sound of more) in cash every single day? None of my kitchen implements do that!

Popular Mechanics, October 1931

Now what they mean, of course, is more prosaic. Go out and sell the Disc and you will make $30 a day! It looks like you plugged it in and stuck it in a pot of water.  Another one of these ads says, in purple prose:

What strange element is hidden in this curious disc which makes people gasp when they see it placed in a pan of water - a dish, a boiler, a bath tub - and in split seconds amazingly produce Boiling, Sizzling, Steaming Hot Water...

Well yes, they'll be gasping all right if they get in a tub of boiling, sizzling, steaming hot water and start cooking like a dumpling in a pot of soup. And then they reach for the soap and hey look, it's red! Hmm, organic strawberry soap - and in the 1930s. That's interesting. Possibly anachronistic. But wait, that's not soap...

This sounds altogether dangerous to me. I think you'd want to be laying in a supply of asbestos gloves and first aid supplies. And even then, I think I'd just prefer to use the stove. And also: someone should tell the lady in the black and white ad that setting a boiling pot on a counter is - well, counterproductive. I guess she can use that $30 a day to replace the counter.

Vacation Zombie Hair

Duke University Digital Collections

Trust me, Vacation Hair is the least of this guy's problems. For one thing, he appears to have escaped from a department store window. Wearing a striped bathing suit from 1919. And really unsubtle eyebrow pencil and eyeliner. Also there is a scared badger clinging to his head.

But if the badger uses a little Kreml shampoo, things will be much better. And neither of them will have the dreadful problem that is Vacation Hair.

Actually, you know what Vacation Hair problem I have? It doesn't involve stripes, badgers, department store mannequins or Kreml. But when I'm traveling, my carefully chosen shampoos and conditioners just don't work very well. They don't like unfamiliar water, I think. And then I run out and buy new stuff and try that, but it's sort of hit or miss. No one else notices (I think) but I do! And I promise I'm not using what this ad calls (and I love this wording): "sticky, dust-catching, gigolo concentrations that plaster your hair down tight to your scalp."

This ad is from 1936; many thanks to the fabulous Duke University Ad Access collection, which is full of good things, although no ads (alas!) for Gigolo Concentrations. I'm going to look for one, though.

Derrida's Sunnyside Salad

Graphic Design - TJS Labs

Once upon a time when I was a not-so-earnest college English major some people I knew used to talk about Texts Reading Themselves. I never knew what that meant, which is part of the reason I am here typing drivel about gelatin ads and not teaching somewhere. Instead I perfected a little comedy routine wherein I had an exam write itself while I took a nap. Quality entertainment it wasn't. Which brings me to this slightly addled and confusing post, which I'm just going to put Out There and see what happens. Please don't try to deconstruct it, though. That would not work out at all.

Derrida would love some Jell-O

 

I'm pretty sure that the whole Self Reading Text thing was related to literary criticism (don't get me started) and probably to Derrida (really, I mean it, don't). Actually, it probably didn't have anything to do with Derrida. The connection? My hopeless, foggy sense that I really just wanted to read and analyze Victorian novels in a historical context.

Jacques Derrida says that there is nothing outside the text. So that must apply to ads, too, right? I see some text right over there. So there is nothing but gelatin salad. Gelatin salad is a whole world unto itself. And it is the perfect dessert for pineapple lovers and philosophers alike. In case you happen to have some of each over for a riveting dinner party.

Anyway, I have never claimed to be able to cajole texts into reading themselves, or into doing anything else (too bad they can't write a few posts for me). Nor was I ever able to deconstruct anything more significant than a stale non-Sunnyside Jell-O cube, which bounces if you put it in a glass of Sprite.*

But now I can offer the critically adept a delicious meta-dessert: the Sunnyside Salad, which almost makes itself. Almost? Not good enough. It needs to take a few more seminars, I guess.

*I don't think you can do this with Sunnyside Salad, though.