I love this 1922 advertisement. I want my kitchen work to be a pleasure. Maybe I need to buy some new kitchen cabinets (and, while I’m at it, maybe I should throw in a new linoleum floor).

I often hear parents say they are their children’s best teachers. I guess that sentiment has been around for at least a hundred years (and probably a lot longer than that).

 

Some brands have been around for more than a hundred years – Swans Down Cake Flour is one of those brands.

As canning season swings into full gear, I’m taking inventory of my canning equipment and supplies, and figuring out what I may need to purchase. The pan I use when making jams and jellies doesn’t have a very thick bottom, and I’ve occasionally scorched jams and jellies – especially when making old recipes that don’t call for pectin and require a lot of boiling to thicken the mixture. So I found this hundred-year-old advertisement for a Wagner Cast Aluminum Preserving Kettle intriguing. I think that I need a modern version of this kettle with it’s thick bottom and sides.

Certo pectin has been around for just over 100 years. According to the Heathy Canning site, it was first advertised in 1921.

Cooks today worry about the high cost of food. They also worried about food costs a hundred years ago, and tried to save money whenever possible. For example, some cooks apparently skimmed cream from the top of a bottle of milk to save money. Back then homogenized milk was just being introduced to the consumer market, so the milk that most people drank was not homogenized. This means that the cream and milk separated, and that the cream would float to the top. The milk beneath the cream was basically skim milk. If whole milk was desired, the jar or bottle of milk needed to be shaken before using to get the cream and skim milk to recombine. The Skimit Kitchen Cream Separator sounds like it could be used to easily remove the cream from the top of the milk.  Who would have guessed that kitchen gadget drawers a hundred years ago may have contained a milk skimming tool?

 

Sometimes I’m surprised how modern things were in 1922. Until I saw this ad for a water heater in a 1922 church cookbook, I never would have guessed that homes had water heaters a hundred years ago.