Archive for Companies & Advertising

Fluffy Fun With Food

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I recently came into possession of a cookbook pamphlet called “Fun With Food by Lynne White”.  While it is not dated, I am making a best guess estimate of printing as the late 40’s, based on the illustrations in the book and the backstory I found online from the company website. I have many cookbooks and pamphlets claiming to make food and baking “fun” but this one caught me by surprise as it was published by Marshmallow Fluff and all the recipes feature Fluff.

I made note of a few recipes to try right away — Marshmallow Fluff Fudge, Chocolate Crispy Bars, and from the Sandwich Fillings section — Peanut Butter and Orange and Peanut Butter and Cherry.

If you’re not from the New England region, you might be wondering about sandwich fillings using Marshmallow Fluff.  I’m not from that region either, but my husband is, and it was his love of Marshmallow Fluff and Peanut Butter sandwiches (called Fluffernutters) that he grew up on that first piqued my interest in these Fluff recipes.

None of these recipes disappoint! They are super easy to make and don’t last long.

The recipe for Chocolate Crispy Bars got me to wondering — is it possible that Marshmallow Fluff invented the first crisped rice treat recipe? I know from other leaps down food history rabbit holes, that the Kellogg’s “Marshmallow Squares” recipe was developed in 1939 by two Kellogg’s Home Economists, Malitta Jensen and Mildred Day. The recipe first appeared in newspaper ads to sell Kellogg’s Rice Krispies and Campfire brand marshmallows.  My research brings the recipe to being printed on the box in 1942 (I could be off by a year). And guess what, the original recipe is not the same then as it is now!

Without taking credit away from Ms. Jensen and Ms. Day, I wanted to know if it was possible that Marshmallow Fluff was the original inspiration for Kellogg’s famous recipe.

Luckily, Marshmallow Fluff shares a wonderfully detailed story of their company on their company website.

In May 1920 two men named H. Allen Durkee and Fred L. Mower who had graduated from the same high school and who were both veterans of WWI, announced in a local Lynn, Massachusetts newspaper that they had formed a partnership to manufacture Marshmallow Fluff. They had been working together previously, making candies, but felt a joint $500 investment in the purchase of a formula for Fluff from a man named Archibald Query was a good idea. By night the two created Fluff from their kitchen and sold it door-to-door during the daytime.

Local housewives loved the product and eventually local grocers added it to their store shelves.  

As years when by Durkee and Mower moved into a bigger factory and hired additional employees.

Durkee and Mower became pioneers in radio advertising when in 1930 they began to sponsor the weekly “Flufferettes” radio show, broadcasting all over New England. The 15-minute show aired Sunday evenings before Jack Benny.

An ongoing storyline of the radio show included a fictional scholar who frequently ended the show by disappearing to continue his work writing a mysterious book. When the nature of the book was finally revealed in the last episode, listeners are (maybe or maybe not) surprised to learn that the book he was writing all along was a collection of recipes for cakes, pies, candies, frostings and other confections that could be made with Marshmallow Fluff. It was named the Yummy Book. Marshmallow Fluff has updated the original book many times and still makes it available for free on their website.

When WWII began for the US, Durkee and Mower had a decision to make about how they would continue production given the sugar rationing shortages. In order to not alter the ingredients of their recipes, which would have lowered the quality, they were forced to cut back on production considerably. The company participated in the war effort by converting part of their factory to wrap war critical electronic and optical parts in special waterproof packages. Some of their advertising helped promote victory gardens in cooperation with the Massachusetts State War Garden Committee and radio advertising went to support the armed forces, particularly the Navy, where two of Allen Durkee’s sons served during the war. Can you imagine what was in their care packages sent to them?!?

In the years that followed WWII, the company moved forward with changes to their factory size and efficiency, the jar shape (based on input from Massachusetts housewives) and added even more attention to the quality of Fluff. Still to this day, because of the sanitary environment and practices of the factory, it is not necessary to refrigerate Marshmallow Fluff even though it still contains no preservative of any kind.

By the mid-1950s Fluff was collaborating with Nestle and printing recipes for fudge in Ladies Home Journal and other magazines. The same award-winning recipe can be found on the back of Fluff labels and in the online cookbook.

A 1966 Marshmallow Fluff co-promotion with the Kellogg’s Company modified the well-loved Marshmallow Treat by adding chocolate, dried fruit, and sunflower seeds. (Recipe also found in the free online cookbook.)

The company’s history page covered all this information splendidly but one thing they only hinted at was the identify of Lynne White in their recipe for “Lynne’s Cheesecake”. Who was Lynne White?

Additional research found another foodie historian asking the same question. In a written response, they confirmed that Lynne White was, like Betty Crocker, a fictional character created to be a feminine voice answering questions about their product. Her first name was a tribute to the city that Marshmallow Fluff called home, Lynn, Massachusetts and her last name came from the color that comes to mind when one thinks of Marshmallow Fluff.

So, back to my original question about who first brought the rice crisps treat to us?  Marshmallow Fluff offered their first recipes in 1930. The wonderful women at Kellogg’s introduced their version in 1939.  You be the judge while I wander off to enjoy more of this wonderful fudge!

Posted in Companies & Advertising, Dessert, In the Kitchen

The Essential Workers of the Joliet Arsenal

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In the far corner of a grassy clearing within a national cemetery in Joliet, Illinois stands a life-size bronze statue of a WWII-era worker carrying a lunch box.

It is stationed on a pedestal with the names of 48 home front war workers, killed when the plant they were working in on June 5th, 1942 exploded at 2:45 am. Another 46 were injured. Not one person in the building escaped without serious injury.

In 1940 the small town of Elwood, Illinois became a major preemptive player in a war that its country was not yet participating in.

What was the site of 40,000 acres of farmland, home to 450 farms that dated back to the original pioneers of Illinois settlement, became property of the federal government through the process of eminent domain.

Two government contracted companies joined on the property to form what was commonly known as the Joliet Arsenal. One company manufactured various types of explosives for use at other plants and the other loaded artillery shells, bombs, mines and other munitions. One started production in July of 1941, the other in September of 1941 — months ahead of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At its peak during WWII, over 10,425 war workers were employed at the two plants. One loaded more than 926 million bombs, shells, mines, detonators, fuses and boosters. The other produced over 1 billion pounds of TNT. The grounds of the operation held 1,391 buildings.

No one will ever know what exactly caused the explosion that was felt for a 100-mile radius and left a 12-foot deep crater where Building 10 once stood. At the time, anti-tank mines were being loaded into railroad boxcars, ready for shipping. They were pressure mines, designed to set off when weight rolled on top of them. The mines were packed five to a box, with an additional tetryl fuse booster for each mine. Used in blasting caps, tetryl sets off the rest of the mine. Two railroad boxcars were already filled with mines and fuses. A third was nearly full. Perhaps as many as 12,000 mines — 57,000 pounds of TNT. Source: Stephen Jesse Taylor

From a United Press newspaper article written at the time, “Explosion shattered buildings of one of the units of the $30,000,000 Elwood Ordnance plant gave up the bodies of 21 workers Friday. Army officials said 36 more were missing from the blast that could be felt for a radius of 100 miles. Another 41 were injured, five of them critically, from the explosion that leveled a building…. Not one of the 68 men inside the shipping unit when the blast occurred escaped death or injury.”

“The explosion put one of the 12 production units out of action temporarily, but operations continued in the others.”

And that’s how important war work was — worth giving up a life. Some remains of those lives, never found, were only identifiable by pieces of jewelry found at the site. But the work had to go on. It was too important to stop. This was essential work and essential workers were doing it.

At least two widows, whose husbands had died in the blast, later went to work at the arsenal. Charlotte Hammond started working July 5, only a month after her husband’s death. She had bills to pay and few other choices, so worked in the mail room. Isabel McCawley, widow of Lawrence A. McCawley, went to work at the plant packing TNT.

Source: WWII Museum New Orleans, LA

According to a 75th anniversary article in the Chicago Tribune, Bernie Levati was not alive when his uncle Frank Levati, the oldest of the four brothers in his father’s family, was killed. The other three boys served overseas during the war and all returned unharmed, she said. Only Frank, who remained at home, died.

“The loss goes farther than that. I never got to meet my grandfather, who died a year and a half later of a broken heart,” Levati said.

The Joliet Arsenal finally stopped production in 1976 and closed for good in the 1990s. The property where it once stood is partially in ruins and very much so in recovery. The land has been turned over to the U.S. Forest Service to be restored as the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Another 1,000 acres was given to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the national cemetery.

Other Interesting Articles:

From the Chicago Tribune: Click Here

From the Daily Journal: Click Here

From the University of Illinois: Click Here

Posted in Companies & Advertising, Memorial, The Way It Was

Crisco – It’s Digestible!

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It’s time to talk about Crisco. And the conversation starts with — What the heck is it?

Crisco was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil (cottonseed) in 1911 by Procter & Gamble. The original intent of the chemists behind Crisco was to find alternate uses for cottonseed oil as the demand of candles and soap, its primary output, was diminishing. Until that time alternatives included lard and butter.

Lard had taken a bad rap in 1906 when Upton Sinclair wrote a novel called The Jungle which told a quite memorable story about where lard comes from. (For a wonderful NPR telling of lard’s history, listen here: NPR’s Planet Money January 6, 2012 podcast

Butter was very time-consuming to churn, expensive to buy, and during WWII was hard to find or highly rationed.

The vegetarian answer to a demand ahead of its time was Crisco. It was not only revolutionary in its creation, but it was also revolutionary in its marketing. It was one of the original brand managed products with catchy radio ad jingles and radio show endorsements. It had a marketing slogan – “It’s digestible!”

But is it really? It’s made of 100% fat (with no water) so Crisco allows steam to form during the baking process, which leads to more tender baked goods overall.  It has a higher melting point, so pastry crusts stand taller and retain their shape. It can be easier to work with and has a longer shelf life than butter.

The modern Crisco is not the same as the original version – not even close.  What we learned in the 1990’s about trans fats and the bad news behind it, forced J.M. Smucker (today’s manufacturer) to re-engineer the process of making Crisco to eliminate almost all trans-fat in the product and to use soybean oil or a combination of cottonseed and soybean oil in its creation. And remember, it originated as an experiment in soap making!

Whether you decide to include Crisco today in your diet or not, it is hard to avoid in my WWII kitchen.

Aside from a full myriad of recipes from Crisco’s Famous White Layer Cake to Soybean Chop Suey in my Recipes for Good Eating cookbook, printed by The Procter & Gamble Company in 1945 for the exclusive marketing of Crisco, I also have quite a few leaflet recipes endorsed by Mary King, spokesperson for King Midas Flour.  This one for Peanut Butter Crisps was edible…and digestible.

Mary King’s Peanut Butter Crisps

Sift together… 1 ½ cups King Midas Enriched Flour

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon soda

½ teaspoon salt

Blend in…            1/2 cup vegetable shortening, room temperature

½ cup chunk style peanut butter

½ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup quick rolled oats

Drop…                  by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet

Bake…                  at 375° F for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

NOTE…                 If desired, dough may be chilled and used as needed.

 

Posted in Companies & Advertising, Dessert, In the Kitchen, Radio

Earning the Home Legion Distinguished Service in Homemaking Medal

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In an earlier post (here) we learned about the prestigious Home Legion medal for distinguished service in homemaking. I was incredibly fortunate to come into possession of a medal, but I don’t feel that I have ‘earned’ the pin until I have completed the steps that all original Home Legion members had to complete for the recognition.

Step one: Join the Home Legion by filling out the application. I shall check the boxes of ‘good meal planning, careful household management, thrift — preventing waste, maintaining morale, creating a happy atmosphere, and interest in and work for the community’.  Check!

Step two: Hang the Homemaker’s Creed on a wall in my kitchen. Check!

Step three: Answer the questions in the first round of mailings: “How do you make your meals fit your situation?” and “What do you do to insure taste, appeal, and eating satisfaction in your meals?”

How do you make your meals fit your situation? My household consists of me, my husband and our beloved dog. I prepare meals in smaller batches for the two of us and freeze what cannot be eaten in one sitting. As my husband likes meat dishes and I don’t, I prep food that is half vegetarian all in one dish. This works great for casseroles or soups where I can pick out pieces of meat (guess who gets to eat what I don’t). I can also cook meat ahead of time, freeze it in servings and add it to dishes after I have taken out my portion. Breakfast meals are usually quick and on-the-go, like homemade granola bars. Lunches are on our own at work, usually a peanut butter sandwich and cookies packed the night before. Dinner typically follows a routine of my go-to dishes that can be made from memory.

 

What do you do to ensure taste, appeal, and eating satisfaction in your meals?  For taste, I use as many spices and seasoning as possible. Everything can use a little something — lemon peel in broth, sage and thyme added to gravy mixes, etc.

For appeal, I rely on simplicity. Plates and serving bowls are all pure colors such as white or jadeite or similar. As long as plates and utensils are clean and the food on them is tidy, not spilling over or splashed allover the counter tops and prep areas, I feel they are appealing.

For eating satisfaction, I rely on experience of past meals and knowing what we truly like to eat. I have a collection of recipes that are ‘tried and true’ in our household and only try new dishes once in a while from ingredients that I know we like. There is enough variety in our meal routine and we end up always eating our favorites.

 

Bonus Step: Tuning in to the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air radio show.  (No affiliation with The War In My Kitchen — just a cool website to find old time radio shows.)

Posted in Companies & Advertising, In the Kitchen, Radio

The Home Legion Medal of Distinguished Service in Homemaking

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“Believing that good homemaking is a vital contribution to a better world…

Homemaking should have a greater recognition as a contribution in the world…

I would like to be a member of the HOME LEGION dedicated to good homemaking for a better world.”

So read the Betty Crocker Home Legion membership application in Fall, 1944.

My endless search for home front keepsakes never fails to remind me of the goodness of people willing and supportive of a mission to honor and memorialize the women who held together the country and values of a nation at war.

In October of 2018 I received an email from a soon-to-be friend in Texas who had found The War in My Kitchen through her own research of an item found that was too good to be true — The Home Legion Distinguished Service Medal. !!!!

The gift of this medal was truly the 2018 highlight of The War in My Kitchen. I had never come across mention of a Home Legion medal in all my research or reading and found it to be incredibly difficult to find any Google mention of it either. Piece by piece, through persistent emails, phone calls, and searches I was able to find just two more instances of the medal on auction sites and an honest-to-goodness, still-in-the-envelope Home Legion membership application.

Let me start from the beginning (thank you to Rebecca Brown, an archivist at General Mills, for filling in the details):

“The pin you have is indeed from the Betty Crocker Home Legion, started during World War II. The Home Legion was dedicated to “Good Homemaking for a Better World” and “Greater Recognition for Good Homemaking”. It began in the fall of 1944 through the Betty Crocker Radio Cooking School. To join the legion a homemaker registered (for free) in the Betty Crocker Radio Cooking School. Once Betty received the membership application, she would send back the Homemaker’s Creed (a list of ideas and beliefs that legion members held to) and it could be hung up in the kitchen for inspiration.

Source: General Mills Archive

 

To receive the pin, two questionnaires had to be returned. The first was sent out with the Homemaker’s Creed. It had to be returned before January 5, 1945. Questions on the first report included: “How do you make your meals fit your situation?” and “What do you do to insure taste, appeal, and eating satisfaction in your meals?”  Then, later in January, the second questionnaire was sent. This one was a bit longer. Questions on this one included: “What do you do to insure a smooth-running home?”, “What little tricks do you use for saving time and labor?” and “How do you practice thrift in conserving food, household supplies, and equipment?” The second questionnaire had to be received by March 23, 1945. If both questionnaires were turned in on time, then the homemaker received that pin as proof that they were a distinguished member of the legion.

Source: General Mills Archives

Additionally, the questionnaires (which were more like essays with several prompts) were given out to those who “show that they are making the greatest contribution to other American homemakers”. The questionnaires were judged by a group of experienced homemakers. By the end of March 1945, 20,000 women had joined the legion.”

Source: General Mills Archive

Source: General Mills Archive

So…here’s my task before January 5th: Reply here answering the first questionnaire — How do you make your meals fit your situation? What do you do to insure taste, appeal, and eating satisfaction in your meals?

Wish me luck in earning the Home Legion Distinguished Service in Homemaking Medal! My responses will be posted in my next entry within deadline!

Posted in Companies & Advertising, Food Fighting, History & Why Am I Doing This WWII Rationing Project Thing, In the Kitchen, Make it Do, Memorial, Radio, The Way It Was

Betty…Rosie…Please Meet My Dear Friend – Diana Prince

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Betty Crocker and Rosie the Riveter held their own as fictional female super heroines of WWII. But, let’s not forget Wonder Woman who made her debut in 1941.

 

Prior to television, media entertainment consisted of radio shows, newspapers, and comic books. The latter being sold at a rate of 15 million a month. Rationed supplies of paper and war production make it difficult to document how comic book sales held during the war, but it is no accident that their continued popularity led to the introduction of a women super hero who fought war with love instead of violence.

 

Created in a time when women were increasingly asked to take on some male roles — factory work, wearing pants, holding down the home front, etc. William Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, based a character on his own wife, Elizabeth, who was ahead of her time in regards to what was socially acceptable for women.

 

While women were not encouraged to earn a degree, Elizabeth held three. She was an attorney and a Harvard-graduated psychologist. Elizabeth was on the front lines of women’s liberation, specifically on voting equality and reproduction rights. Her husband’s motivation behind creating the comic heroine in 1941 was to influence the public into accepting a new independent woman. Wonder Woman was incredibly capable, yet beautiful, kind and still feminine.

 

Wonder Woman was quickly met with resistance, dressed in her short skirt and a revealing top that had no straps. She was deemed, “insufficiently dressed”. It took roughly a year for the creator of Wonder Woman to come forward. The public outcry of indecency was met with the identity of an internationally famous psychologist (William and Elizabeth had met at Harvard pursuing their psychology degrees). And it was good that Wonder Woman’s creator was a psychologist as the skeptical crowd needed to hear that such a heroine was not a bad thing.

 

Dr. Marston was pushed to explain how the character was not a detriment to public decency and young minds. As Marston once put it, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.”

 

As her acceptance and popularity grew, so did the team responsible for making Diana Prince…err, Wonder Woman, who she is today.  Dr. Marston died in 1947, but Wonder Woman and her fight for peace continued under the creative mind of Joyce Hummel who was only 18 years old in 1944 when she was hired to write the comic strip.

 

Even though Wonder Woman was created before the US entered WWII, influences from the conflict and Hummel’s young age during the war play a huge role on the core values of Wonder Woman’s story. The original outfit was American patriotic, of course – blue with white stars, red top. Pin-up poses are reminiscent of nose art on a bomber.

Oh…one more thing, Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth?  It turns out Dr. Marston is the original inventor of the lie detector.  Photos of the prototype device show test subjects wrapped in wires that measure pulse and blood pressure.  Wires…closely resembling a truth lasso of sorts.

 

 

Source:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/#p3A6sfvzRTReOGyi.99

Posted in Companies & Advertising tagged with , ,

Vintage Lemonade Like Great, Great, Great Grandma Used to Make

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Here is a sad fact: the powdered concoctions found in the drink mix aisle labeled as “lemonade” are not real. Not even close. And for anyone who has never had a true and genuine glass of lemonade, I worry that life may pass by without ever having a real, honest-to-goodness glass of genuine lemonade.

 

As I pour myself a second glass of vintage lemonade, I think about what it must have been like when my great-grandmother tasted her first sip of the fake stuff. I bet they thought the fad would never catch on. Certainly people would not be satisfied with the missing flavor of the powder, nor would they ever believe it could be passed off as good.

 

Sadly, convenience won out and we’re likely on to a fourth generation of kids not knowing what lemonade is supposed to taste like.

Kool-Aid® may be considered by soKool-Aid 1940sme to be vintage. Invented in 1927 by Edwin Perkins in Hastings, Nebraska, (more specifically in his mother’s kitchen until 1931 when he moved to Chicago), the mix was introduced in six flavors: cherry, grape, lemon-lime, orange, raspberry and strawberry. The popularity of the drink mix didn’t explode until 1953 when Hastings sold the product to General Mills and “Oh Yeah” Kool-Aid Man® became the spokesperson. Now manufactured in Mexico, the mix is also good for temporarily dying hair to match the fake colors found in the packet.

 

No better, Countrytime Lemonade® was introduced in 1975, by the same parent company as Kool-Aid®. It appealed to many as a more grown-up image for adults who didn’t drink buy their lemonade from a talking pitcher of sugar water.

 

Enough about the fake stuff. Let’s move on to the good stuff. Yes, it takes time. Yes, your counter will end up a sticky mess before you’re through with the straining and pouring. But, you won’t even remember all that once you take your first wonderful sip.

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5 Lemons

1 ¼ Cup White Sugar

1 ¼ Quarts Water (38 ounces)

 

Peel the rinds from the lemons and cut them into ½ inch slices and place in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle the sugar over them. Let stand for about one hour.

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Bring water to boil in a covered saucepan and then remove from heat. Add sugared rinds to the hot water. Allow this mixture to cool for 20 minutes. Remove rinds.

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Squeeze the lemons into another bowl and then strain to remove seeds.

 

Pour lemon juice into sugar mixture and then pour all into a glass pitcher.

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Posted in Companies & Advertising, Make It Yourself tagged with

Waste Not.

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Stop WasteAn overriding value of the WWII project is about avoiding waste. Whether the value was learned through the years of The Great Depression, or through government facilitation, it has always been clear to me that people alive during WWII were conscious about waste. Their efforts made them selfless in our minds and to them each following generation seems indulgent and living with a growing sense of entitlement.

 

About waste in general, I turned to a valuable timeline found on the Association of Science – Technology Centers site.

 

1927: John M. Hammes, an architect in Racine, Wisconsin invents the InSinkErator® food disposer in his basement. It is patented in 1935, a year when only 52 models sold.

 

Why is that important, you may ask. Well…think about it. 52 garbage disposals installed; do you know of any modern homes without a disposal these days?

 

There was a real problem at the company ten years later, as their salesforce was still trying to figure out how to sell disposers. They just weren’t necessary for the small amount of kitchen waste produced.

 

After WWII though, 18 competitors of InSinkErator arrived on the scene. Times were changing.

 

In the early 1900s, Americans were estimated to waste 80-100 pounds of food per year, per person. Can you believe we are now tossing 20 pounds per person, per month? That’s 100 pounds in 1900, 240 pounds in 2015.

What has made this change? Availability. Convenience.

Convenience came in the form of several inventions:

1914 – Wax Paper

1928 – Cellophane

1929 – Aluminum Foil

1930 – Plastic (polyvinyl chloride) and polystyrene

1937 – Nylon, the world’s first synthetic fiber

Waste Fat

Before such inventions, we were only able to take what we could eat. We weren’t able to store food easily so we better judged what we really needed. I can give an example. Today I reluctantly tossed out a half full clamshell of grape tomatoes to the compost that had gone beyond their safe ripeness. I don’t do this absent-mindedly. I think about what I did that led to such waste. I realized it’s about size and portions (the American way!). The clamshell held about a 1 ½ pounds of grape tomatoes — roughly 60 of them. Realistically, there’s no way we would have eaten that many grape tomatoes. We have learned to buy for size, without thinking if it’s really what we need…value is in the bigger package, right Sam’s Club and Costco?

 

Speaking of packaging, I’m having trouble with the local grocers. They have a real problem with me not allowing them to wrap household items in plastic before putting in my bags with my other items. Never mind the fact that most of what we buy is wrapped in heavy plastic, slid inside a cardboard box. In the case of most household items (shampoo, soap, moisturizer, cleaning supplies), that are put on our bodies or countertops where we serve food, what is the problem if it comes near my food on its way home from the store?

Waste Paper

Anyway…back to waste. In 1947, J. Gordon Lippincott, an Industrial Designer of the time, made a comment on an observation he had made: “Our willingness to part with something before it is completely worn out is a phenomenon noticeable in no other society in history. It is soundly based on our economy of abundance. It must be further nurtured even though it runs contrary to one of the oldest inbred laws of humanity – the law of thrift.”  That said in 1947, long, long before Apple phones are replaced every two years for the newer version with cooler features! Mr. Lippincott was actually referring to inventions such as disposable Bic pens and disposable Gillette razors. This type of waste just didn’t make sense.

 

Sadly, things only became worse as Americans became increasingly focused on consumerism.

 

1953: The American economy’s “ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods”. – Chairman of President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors.

 

“It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have.” – B. Earl Puckett, Allied Stores Corp.

 

1991: “Our economy is such that we cannot “afford” to take care of things: labor is expensive, time is expensive, money is expensive, but materials — the stuff of creation — are so cheap that we cannot afford to take care of them.” – Wendell Berry

 

1993: “We’re reminded a hundred times a day to buy things, but we’re not reminded to take care of them, repair them, reuse them, or give them away.” – Michael Jacobson, Center for the Study of Commercialism

 

By latest claims, Americans throw out 230,000,000 tons of trash (4.6 pounds per day) per person annually. Less than ¼ of that amount is recycled.

 

And back to food waste — it’s too much. 20 pounds per person, each month of food. Roughly 15% – 20% of what we buy we throw out.

 

Think about the additional waste of resources involved. According to author and food waste expert Jonathan Bloom, food waste is not just a moral issue, but also an environmental issue. “A tremendous amount of resources go into growing our food, processing, shipping, cooling and cooking it,” said Bloom. “Our food waste could represent as much as six percent of U.S. energy consumption.”

 

It comes down to winning the modern war against overabundance and consumerism.

 

Stores overstock. If the shelves or produce displays look empty we think there is something wrong with what’s left. No one wants to take the last head of broccoli.

 

Any produce slightly subpar is tossed before it even goes to market. The USDA standards of grading produce puts a farmer at loss. If something is a Grade 2, two-thirds of its market value is lost, even though taste and freshness is identical to a Grade 1. It’s all about aesthetics.

 

91% of consumers have tossed food for the reason it is past its ‘sell date’. There are no USDA health or safety standards on food expiration (except in the case of baby formula). The dates you see on food in a store is determined by manufacturer — someone who would have an interest in you tossing to buy again.

 

So, here we are in 2015…70 years since WWII and the food rules. ‘Living Green’ is popular…reduce, reuse, recycle feels like a hip concept to us. Don’t be fooled. The trend was a way of life, not a trend, until the end of WWII and we’re not even close to mastering it the way our grandparents did. This is one of those lessons we must hold on to.

 

Don’t buy more than you need. Use what you buy. Reuse or recycle what’s left of packaging, if you can’t avoid packaging completely. Or, as they use to say – Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without!

Food Waste

Posted in Companies & Advertising, History & Why Am I Doing This WWII Rationing Project Thing, Make it Do, Use it Up, Waste

We Interrupt This Program…

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250px-Radio_-_Keep_It_Free

For those who could afford one before the war started (production factories were converted to war production), radios served as important fixtures of the home front house. Styled more like furniture, and called “consoles”, you’d find one in a prominent place of the home within hearing range of the kitchen.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Infamy” speech was delivered through radio waves and it’s easy to picture every home in America tuned in with family and neighbors gathered around. The news of the bombing at Pearl Harbor and the speech land radio an earned spot of WWII history.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan….

“I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again….

“With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounded determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God….”

FDR continued Fireside Chat radio broadcasts focused on rallying the country throughout the war.

“We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war….

“To all newspapers and radio stations—all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people—I say this: You have a most grave responsibility to the nation now and for the duration of this war.”

Broadcast news updates of the war via radio formed the modern style of half-hour news programs. What was three- to four-minute updates a few times a day became a regular thirty-minute event.

Happier times were spent listening to comedies, soap operas and music, especially while cooking and baking. Since the 1920’s, corporations realized the enormous reach of radio to their target consumer: the homemaker. WWII advertising was delicately delivered via sponsorship of radio shows: The A&P Gypsies, The Planters Pickers, The Yeast Foamers, King Biscuit Time , and Light Crust Doughboys.

Proctor & Gamble’s Sisters of the Skillet, a soap opera, was part of Mrs. Blake’s Radio Column advertising Crisco. PET Milk sponsored The Mary Lee Taylor Program from 1933 to 1954. For many, the famous PET Milk Pumpkin Pie recipe was first heard over the radio and hastily written down.

The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air played from 1924 until 1948. Over time, the school saw over 1 million homemakers enrolled. Students took the homework seriously. Listeners mailed in reports for grading and received cooking pamphlets and other promotional literature.

I feel grateful that the Cooking Shows have been saved and archived. The Old Time Radio Catalog collected all of the shows for purchase.

 

Posted in Companies & Advertising, Radio

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

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I have some wonderful ladies helping me in my wartime kitchen project. Betty, Martha, Mary, Jane, Nancy, Anne, Martha M., Mary Lynn, Aunt Jenny, Mary Lee, Ann, Sue, Kay, Virginia, Mary Ellis, and Mary Margaret.

WWII Spokeswomen

L to R: Nancy Haven (Western Beet Sugar), Ann Page (A&P Retail Stores), Martha Meade (Sperry Products), Betty Crocker (General Mills Gold Medal Flour), Aunt Jenny (Spry Shortening), Jane Ashley (Karo Syrup), Kay Kellogg (Kellogg Cereal), Virginia Roberts (Occident Flour), Martha Logan (Swift Meats), Mary Alden (Quaker Oats), Mary Ellis Ames (Pillsbury Flour), Mary Lee Taylor (PET Milk), and Mary Margaret McBride.

 

Advertisements from WWII make it possible for me to feel like these wonderful ladies are right here by my side baking bread, cakes, and pies. I know their faces from the labels on the boxes and cans of their products and I can hear their lovely voices on the archived radio shows.

 

These women were the famous names of food corporations during the war.  In most cases, the women were fictional; made up corporate characters used to sell products to the doubting homemaker who needed the expert opinion of someone she could trust.  “Experience has shown that a corporate personality makes friends for the company, gives it a greater degree of humanness, and frequently increases the readership and response to advertisements and recipes,” one industry executive wrote, “because Mrs. Consumer feels more confidence in recipes which have been tested and approved by another woman.” (Marie Sellers, “Product Insurance for the Homemaker,” in Food Marketing, ed. Paul Sayres McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1950)

 

One trade publication commented that “Ideally, the corporate character is a woman, between the ages of 32 and 40, attractive, but not competitively so, mature but youthful looking, competent yet warm, understanding but not sentimental, interested in the consumer but not involved with her.” (Katherine J. Parkin, “Food is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America”)

 

Almost every food company had a corporate character with an “attractive, but not competitively so” face and a WASP-y name. Mary Alden worked for Quaker Enriched Flour, Nancy Haven for Western Beet Sugar, and Mary Lynn Woods for Fleishmann’s Yeast. (Susan Marks, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food).

 

“The extent of use of the corporate characters varied tremendously. Betty Crocker, whose name and face appeared on products, cookbooks, radio, and television, was one of the most-used characters. At the other end of the spectrum, some characters only appeared as a signature on correspondence to consumers.”  (The Path to the Table: Cooking in Postwar American Suburbs by Timothy Miller)

 

Deceptive? Commercialism? Maybe, but I feel less “sold to” than modern day brand names like Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, Giada De Laurentiis and Ree Drummond.  How about the men? Would Bobby Flay, Gordon Ramsey, and Emeril been credible back in the WWII kitchen? Probably not.  And, isn’t that interesting?

 

Another thought, why was Ann Pillsbury replaced by a Pillsbury Doughboy in 1965?  How about Betty Crocker now being a red spoon? Have we altogether given up looking for advice from experts resembling humans and turned our confidence over to figments of imagination or logos to sway our buying preferences? Throughout the interviews I recorded leading up to this project, many people commented on the change of values and lost sense of community. I can’t help relating the movement away from people towards images being part of the swift change.

Posted in Companies & Advertising
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