I went to the farmer’s market yesterday. It was a warm day, so I wore my beige shorts, a peach t-shirt, and my old, comfortable, black Clark sandals. I fit right in. Most shoppers were wearing t-shirts – though some had logos. One person had a shirt with a Vikings’ logo,  another shirt said University of Minnesota. A teen was wearing a black shirt that said, “”Don’t follow me, I’m lost too.” Many were wearing shorts, others had on jeans, sweatpants, stretch pants, or leggings.

This is very different from a hundred years ago when women (it was usually women back then) shopped for food. Many were homemakers, and shopping was the fun outing for the day (or week). A hundred-year-old photo in the July, 1925 issue of Ladies Home Journal, showed a woman shopping at a produce market. Fresh vegetables sit in crates outside a small store. She is wearing a tasteful knit sweater suit over a  crisp white round-collared shirt, a sophisticated velvet hat decorated with a few feathers, shiny flesh-colored hose, and 1- or 1½- inch pumps. She displayed her prosperity by wearing a fur stole made using a full animal pelt that included the animal’s head and paws.

The picture took me back to my childhood. Each Sunday my family sat on the left side in the fifth pew from the front in a small rural central Pennsylvania church. After all these years, I’m a bit foggy on names, but a family I’ll call the Smith family sat two rows ahead of us. Mr. Smith, a highway contractor, was wealthy by the standards of the isolated area where we lived. His wife, in the spring and on cool autumn Sundays, often topped her church outfit with a mink stole made of four mink pelts, each still with its head and tail. Several of the minks were biting the tail of the mink ahead of it.

My mind would drift away from the minister’s sermon. I was entranced by Mrs. Smith’s stole. It must have cost hundreds of dollars. I dreamed of buying one someday . . . if I ever got rich.

Fast forward, 40 or 50 years. I visited the area where I grew up and, on a lark, went into the Roller Mills Market Place in Lewisburg. It is an old three-story brick flour mill that has been converted into an antique store (aka flea market) with more than 400 venders, each with a small stall. It’s a building where it’s easy to get lost, and time flew by as I looked at old knickknacks, pot and pans, mid-century calendars, tools, and much more.

And, then I turned a corner, and there IT was, draped over an ancient manikin with frizzy, unkempt, blond hair – a mink pelt stole made from four animals with several biting the tail of the one ahead of it. It looked just like Mrs. Smith’s stole. Maybe it actually was Mrs. Smith’s stole. After gasping, I walked over to the manikin, and turned over the attached price tag. $15.

Only $15!! I removed the pelt stole from the manikin and headed to the checkout. I was finally wealthy enough to own a mink stole.

When I got home, I showed it to my husband. He said, “Egad! Why did you buy that?”

I said, “Maybe I’ll wear it a party.”

He said, “I’m not going with you. What would people think? You’ll get into trouble with PETA.”

I said, “That’s silly. These animals were killed years ago. I’m recycling them”

I hung the stole in an empty closet in a bedroom that once had been our son’s room. It’s hung there ever since.

While writing this post, I decided that it was time to give the stole another try. I flung it over my shoulder, and looked in a mirror. I looked great. I decided to go outside to take a photo.

An Excel Energy truck was parked in front of our house and a repairman was fixing a street light. It might just be my imagination, but I think that he gave me a strange look.

I told a friend about the repairman’s reaction. She said, “Next week wear the stole to the farmers’ market. You could be a Glam Gran.”

I thought about it a little, and concluded that I’m not confident enough to wear the stole to the farmers’ market. I’ll never be a Glam Gran. I hung the stole back in the closet.

Oh well. . .I have something that once was a symbol of prosperity, but times change, and that symbol has become flea market junk. I guess that I’ll never look as fashionable as my childhood fashion icon. Sigh. . .I’m just going to have to continue wearing my ratty t-shirts when shopping for vegetables.

When browsing through hundred-year-old magazines, I always look for food-related cartoons, but seldom find any. I finally found one in the July, 1925 issue of Ladies Home Journal about baking a pie, but – ouch – it reinforces stereotypes and is very dated. Some things have changed for the better over the past hundred years!

Here’s some tips in a 1925 home economics textbook for selecting canning jars, lids, and rings:

Glass jars rather than metal cans should be used for home canning. Jars should be constructed so that there is no contact of the fruit with the metal, hence a jar having a glass cover is desirable. A large opening, simple construction, ease in cleaning, and perfect sealing are characteristics of good fruit jars.

Glass jars should be tested before using. Partly fill the jar with water, adjust the rubber and cover, seal, invert the jar. Examine carefully for leakage.

Rubber Rings. – Soft, elastic rubbers should be chosen. It is poor economy to use old rubbers. Rubber after usage becomes hard and inelastic; it may cause imperfect sealing and hence decay of the fruit.

In certain processes of canning, it is necessary to subject the jars provided with rubber rings and covers to long periods of boiling or to the intense heat of a pressure or steam cooker. When such a method is followed it is especially necessary that rubber rings of good quality be used. To meet this requirement, the United States Department of Agriculture advises that rubber rings conform to the following:

1. Inside diameter of 2 1/4 inches (for a jar of standard size).
2. Width of ring or flange from 1/4 to 12/32 of an inch.
3. Thickness of 1/12 of an inch.
4. Tensile strength sufficient to “stretch considerably and return promptly to place without changing the inside diameter.”
5. Firm enough so that no crease or break shows after it has been tightly folded.

School and Home Cooking (1925) by Carlotta C. Greer

I have several hundred-year-old church cookbooks. All of them contain favorite recipes of individuals affiliated with the church publishing the cookbook. These cookbooks were also created for fund-raising purposes.  The published cookbooks were sold. They also all have advertising sections at the back. Then (as well as now),  selling ads to local businesses increased the profits. A 1925 cookbook compiled by the Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Paul, Minnesota has a page in the book right before the advertisements calling attention to the ads. And, here’s one of the pages which contained ads:

The Sisters probably solicited ads from members of the church who owned businesses or from vendors who sold products to the church.

Old cookbooks have lots of hints and tips. A 1925 cookbook supplement in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota newspaper tells readers to wait to form an opinion of an egg until something happens with the lid. But the old newsprint is blurry and I’m not sure what the last word says. Is it “off”? . . . or “on”? . . or perhaps “of”? (which makes no sense). It may be trying to say that you can’t tell how well fried eggs are going to turn out until the pan lid is removed (assuming that a lid was put on the pan as part of the process of frying the eggs).  Or maybe the egg’s lid” is the shell, and cooks can’t really judge the quality of an egg until the egg is cracked.

Bottom line, I have no idea what this tip means, but I’ve spent much more time than I should have trying to decipher it.