World War II Era Spaghetti Valentine's Day Recipe

A lot of my friends are amazing cooks and food enthusiasts but for this Valentine's Day dish I wanted something that even a beginner could feel confident about.  This is a one pot dish. No fancy cooking methods, no complex techniques or hard to find ingredients. Just everything in the pot and done in an hour. Cook with a loved one, for a loved one or just for something fun to do.

This is the final recipe of a full, simple WWII Valentine's Day dinner. Be sure to check out the period recipes for salad and dessert:

Cesar Salad 

Valentine's Day Candies

WWII Era Tomato Spaghetti 

This recipe is from The Searchlight Cookbook (1943)

Ingredients:

- 1/2 Pound of Spaghetti (1/2 a box)
- 2 Cups Canned Tomatoes, chopped (1, 28 Ounce Can)
- 1/2 Pound of Grated Cheese
- 1/4 Cup Oil
- 1/2 Cup Ketchup (Modern ketchup is really sweet so add a few Tablespoons of Vinegar if you want)
- 1 Cup Sliced Mushrooms (2 small cans)
- 1/2 Cup Sliced Olives (1 small can)
- 2 Teaspoons Worcestershire Sauce
- 1 Clove Garlic, Minced
- 2 Small Chili Peppers, Chopped


Cook and drain Spaghetti according to the package. Add remaining ingredients and let simmer for 1 hour. Plate it and top with extra cheese. You're done!


I'm particular about my pasta but this is a surprisingly fun one as the flavor sits between spaghetti and pizza due to the toppings and what kind of cheese you use. I used Parmesan but if you chose to use mozzarella it would definitely still be good. There are a lot of olives and mushrooms which my grandma would call "fluffing" a recipe when her mother did it: adding more veggies so you can stretch it out to feed more people.

If you want to save time, tomatoes with garlic already included can be bought and crushed red chili pepper can be used. If you're cooking the full meal, I won't tell if you get a salad kit at the grocery store and buy your candies. :)

Happy Valentine's Day! I would love to hear from anyone who cooks any of these recipes.   

Civil War Molasses Candy Recipe and Candy Pulls

"Here comes a great paper of candy from Will C. I like it better than his company, for he has been to see me every day, and candy has not. " -Sarah Morgan in 1862

"Candy Pulls," "Candy Parties" or "Molasses boilings" were common pastimes in the mid 1800s during the cold winter months. Groups of friends would gather around a pot of boiling molasses or other concoction and wait until it formed threads when a spoonful was dripped in cold water. They would keep stirring until the liquid formed a soft ball when a spoonful was placed in cold water. Finally, they waited until the liquid formed a stiff ball when placed in cold water. This meant it was ready.

The liquid was poured into buttered pans to cool and once there, the party began. Each member of the group would cover their hands in butter and begin to pull on a ball of candy. Pulling and folding, the group joked and gossiped until their balls of candy grew lighter in color. It was now time to form it into its final shape. It could be rolled into ropes and cut with scissors or twisted or braided, or molded into any number of shapes, but many young women preferred to make chain necklaces out of it. Seating around a warm fire with friends and the gingerbread like smell of molasses cooking wafting in the air, a candy pull was a nice break from an otherwise bleak and monotonous winter.

Making candy was mentioned frequently in Sarah Morgan's wartime diary and many letters of the time. In a letter from a Virginian in January 1861, Angus wrote to Kate of his holidays: "Was at a Taffy pulling; had a fine time eating hard Molasses with unwashen hands. Did you ever pull any, when you had to spit on your hands to keep it from adhering to them?" Another Virginian, Mollie Houser, wrote to her cousin James "I Just wish you Could have been here we had a taffy stewing one nite they was a Couple of our soldiers home & some of the neighbours Came in & we had a fine time boililing molasses &...taffy."  

The majority of recipes from this time period include only molasses, flavoring and bicarbonate of soda, known now as baking soda as the main ingredients and some recipes suggested that peanuts or blanched almonds might be added. However, The Cook's Own Book (1854) includes the addition of brown sugar and lemon juice which is more similar to recipes today. The recipe did not vary much and was a favorite in shops for those who did not want to make it themselves. A writer for the Southern Literary Messenger (1863) remembered going North for school and couldn't remember much about the food there except to say:

I recollect, though, that the boys had a great passion for molasses candy, which was prepared in the Philadelphia shops—not in little pig-tail twists with a knot at the end and wrapped up in white paper, as the fashion used to be in Lynchburg thirty years ago-but in broad cakes, which the boys used to call by the atrocious name of “belly-wax.

This recipe was cooked for the Historical Food Fortnightly. A yearly challenge that encourages bloggers to cook a historical food every two weeks.

The Challenge: Culinary Vices (January 15 - January 28) Some foods are really, really naughty. Globs of butter, lashings of sugar and syrup, decadent chocolate and wine. Bring out your naughty, indecorous side with foods associated with all the bad things, in the best ways.

The Recipe:

The Date/Year and Region: 1850s-1860s United States

How Did You Make It:

Ingredients:

- 12 ounces of Molasses

- 1/2 stick of Butter
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

- Vanilla, Lemon or Sassafras Flavoring

Instructions:

Before you start, butter a large square casserole dish. Pour molasses in a large saucepan (much bigger than you think you need as it will boil up) on medium-high heat. Boil, stirring constantly until you reach the soft ball stage (240° F) add baking soda and stir until the mixture reaches the hardball stage (250° F). At this point, remove from heat and add the flavoring. Stir in the peanuts or blanched almonds if desired. Pour mixture into the buttered dish to cool. Leave in the dish until it is cool to the touch (5-10 minutes.) Enlist helpers. Once cooled, the candy should move in one globular mass. Divide the mass up and have everyone pull at a piece, fold it over and repeat until the candy turns a lighter brown. Form into ropes and cut small pieces with scissors. Wrap in pieces of wax paper or oiled paper.

Time to Complete: About 30-45 minutes

Total Cost: About $5.00

How Successful Was It?: Very. It has a light, sweet molasses flavor. It photographed dark but is actually an amber color in bright sunlight.

How Accurate Is It?: I used baking soda as in the first recipe instead of carbonate of soda which is today sold as washing soda. If you are interested in making carbonate of soda here's a page on how to do it. 

Blogging is Dead! The Benefits of Blogging

Many sources have been reporting the death of blogging, saying that no one reads blogs anymore, blogs aren’t relevant to readers today, and blogs are now only business tools.   

I’ve been keeping my blog going for a few years now and even though the blogosphere has changed in that time, I still feel that keeping a blog is valuable. Many people my age have stopped blogging due to increased obligations or changes in interests.  Some feel that their interests have changed so much that their current interests and writings no longer meet the goals of the original blog. Others mention that they have turned to “micro-blogging” or “photo-blogging.”

Even with this decrease, there are many benefits of blogging. Blogging helps keep up your writing skills, which may deteriorate as we get older and aren’t writing as much for school. It helps keep us in contact with what are friends are doing and creating. It also gives an extra push on those days when you just don’t feel like doing anything.  I blog for all of these reasons but most of all I blog because it gives me a very in depth look at where I was in my life at a given time.  I don’t feel that facebook, twitter or instagram really give much insight into what we are thinking and doing. When I read a blog post I have written in the past, I remember my thoughts, emotions and interests at that time. I am also impressed at how many projects I completed.  

I definitely like to see what my friends are up to and what they are thinking. I know there has been a decrease in the community aspect of blogging. Some of this is due to spam blockers making it harder for people to comment, but it also has to do with how people read blogs now. Many people read on their mobile devices which don’t allow for commenting or make it difficult to comment. Many bloggers hear over and over again “Oh, I read that post and wanted to comment!” or “I’m still reading even though  I don’t comment so much!” 

Also many people are busier than ever and there is more and more content vying to be read every day.  Even I find myself culling my reading list (which I recommend.) There’s only so much time in the day and you can’t keep up with everything. It only makes sense to cull and only read what is meaningful to you. 

Even with these changes, there’s still a lot of value in blogging. Blogs are inspirational and “aspirational.” (You know that made-up word that describes that feeling you get every time you open pinterest.) J  Many bloggers are good role models and looking at their lives, encourages me too start doing those things I really want to do.  Sometimes they show me some things I thought would be very hard really isn’t anywhere near as difficult as I thought.

So even though I don’t blog as much as I used to, I still plan on keeping it up and still love getting to look at the lives of other bloggers.

The Expense Book: Finances in the 19th Century

There once was a time when many people wrote down every purchase made in a household. Today this seems ludicrous as we make so many small purchases on a daily basis. We even make scheduled payments that we don't even think about. Running a home is like running a small business, it only makes sense to keep the same kind of records.

Many books from the time period recommended that income in and expenses paid were calculated weekly to make sure that the family was not spending more than they were making. 


Many books for new housekeepers demonstrate basic record keeping as it was seen as a very useful skill for a wife to have. It was the bane of many men to have a spendthrift wife who had no inclination or want to spend wisely. It's really a great skill to learn in modern times. Due to our culture and lifestyles, many people never learn to manage money to their own detriment. It might seem like a complicated thing, but once you find a system that works, it is really a helpful tool.



Benefits of Keeping an Expense Book:

-You know if you paid something or if someone owes you money. This is the biggest reason, as accounts get more complicated, sometimes it's easy to forget what needs to be paid or how much income you will have coming in.

-You spend less. Writing down and holding yourself accountable for purchases makes you think about purchases more and you're likely to not buy as many little unimportant things.

-You can spot trends. You can spot trends you'd like to promote and trends you would like to see decreased. With an expense book, trends help you spend your money more wisely. $7.00 lunches from work everyday may not seem like a lot but it comes to $35 a week or more than $1,500 a year. You can also see that you aren't spending enough money on important things. For instance, if it's a goal of yours to eat healthier, you may want to dedicate a little more money to do so.

-The more watchful you are, the more leeway you have. This is closely related to "waste not, want not." If you are aware of your fixed expenditures, you can spend a bit more on necessities. It also brings people closer. If you know you and your spouse only have $10 for entertainment this week, you can brainstorm ideas and learn to work together to make the most of it.     

-You have a year to year record. You can see when you bought important purchases and how often you paid for maintenance on big items.

-It's just cool. Yes, it's actually really neat for historians to see what people bought, how often and money spent in any given time period. Remember when your grandparents told you they could see a movie for a dime? You can show our grandchildren the going rates of items and what you bought when. You also can help create a good historical record so historians can learn straight from your life. It's interesting to note that in modern times, we spend the smallest percentage of our incomes on food than ever before. Something we could not have known without expenditure books.   
 

I am old fashioned and use a modernized version of the record sheet in the top page scan. I leave one page for each week. I keep my receipts in an envelope in my purse and total up my purchases at the end of the day to simplify things. It's an especially helpful record for people who have multiple sources of income or irregular paychecks. After you keep a book like this for a while, you can start to create a realistic budget which will allow for economy, which is not learning to do without but learning to do more with less. It's always fun to see how our predecessors did things.

Today we have computer programs and phone apps that do this kind of thing, but I still find the actual writing helps me. Is there anything that you find particularly helpful?

The Fruits of Your Labor

It's January and, as always, I've just received my gardening catalogs in the mail waiting to tempt me with their bright colors and juicy fruits. It always works. I'm not even thinking about a garden because of the frigid temperatures and the frozen ground but once those catalogs come, I'm planning the gardens of Versailles.

I've always had a very small garden. I am very limited in what I can grow so I normally have two small raised beds with tomatoes, green peppers, green onion, etc. and one raised bed of experimental vegetables. Last year, my experimental vegetables were leeks and onions. The leeks grew nice, but if I was to do it again, I would buy plants instead of starting from seeds. The leeks take two years to reach a good cooking size. The onions didn't grow as planned. They sprouted a lot of leaves but stayed tiny bulbs. I don't know what I did wrong, but probably won't try again until I get more space.

This year, I think I'm doing away with the experimental bed and just planting herbs like I've always threatened. No, really this time. :) Then again, half of the fun of gardening might be those plants that are planted just for fun.

Did you know that I was afraid to eat my garden produce for a long time? Yes, I know that's crazy. I used to think that I might have done something wrong and it would kill everyone. I thought that the produce you get at the grocery store must be grown in tested dirt and cleaned a special way to make it safe. :) As much as I laugh about that now, I'm not surprised that a lot of people think the way I used to. Maybe it's the fact that you see dirt on the vegetables that you pick yourself and at the store it looks squeaky clean. However, I also feel that society as a whole tends to perpetrate a myth that grocery store produce is somehow safer than homegrown food.

It also doesn't help that there have been a lot of ridiculous government incidents recently involving homegrown/cooked food, raw milk, privately raised meat etc. Those news articles about people having to pay huge fines for growing their own food are scary but what can be more natural than growing what you eat? You see it from seed to plate. My only limitation is my tiny plot.

Tips for people with tiny gardens:

1. Practice cooking vegetables. This sounds silly but once you have a lot, you'll have to use them in everything. For the time you don't have a big garden, collect recipes that include a lot of the produce you wish to grow someday. 

2. Grow what is cost effective or what is fun. If you aren't worried about cost, you can grow what is fun. If you have limited means grow things that grow easy in your area and are cost effective. Plants like lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes can typically be grown with little effort and are a lot cheaper than they cost in the store. I've never had luck with veggies like carrots so they've always been cheaper for me to buy. 

3. Think creatively about what can be used for planting. I've long had a deck garden of tomato plants in various plastic tubs. Herb plants can be grown in small pots in the kitchen. Plants can be grown in hanging pots. I've even seen some creative "vertical gardens," such as this one made in a shoe organizer. I'm not sure I'd grow tomatoes in there but that would be perfect for keeping herbs away from small critters. 

4. Borrow space. See if your local 4H or park has a garden club or gardening space for rent. If you are really lucky, you may even be able to borrow some land from a friend. 

5. If allowed in your area, consider edible landscaping. This would be my goal, if I had a yard of my own. I've always wanted fruit trees. A house nearby does a little bit of edible landscaping, their driveway is lined by rows of veggies, from smallest to tallest having root veggies in the front and corn in the back.     

Is anyone else starting the garden plans already? I am even more intensely inspired because I read an account of a woman who recreated the historical colonial gardens where I work, back in the 80s. The colonial accounts from women she included were interesting and made gardening seem like the natural way of things.  

Mid-1800s Servitude and Cooking This Week

This etching was taken from a story that illustrated the difficulty of keeping a good cook. It also inadvertently illustrated the Irish stereotypes of the time.

The first cook, Margaret, was perfect, except that she drank in excess and stumbled back to the house on her days off. The second cook, Biddy, had a violent temper. The third, I feel would probably be me.

She put the puddings in and prepared a turkey for 2PM supper at 11 o'clock and sat down and read a few pages of a book. When the mistress came in, the cat was eating the turkey and the puddings were charred. She thought she had only sat down for a minute but it ended up being 2 hours that passed by.

An interesting thing to note is that all food prepared by the cook was still considered the mistress' food. It was her pudding that was burning and her turkey on the floor, which is technically true: she paid for it. When a new cook was hired at a house, her mistress would teach her how to cook things her way and everything cooked at the house would be expected to cooked in the new way. Over time, a cook may add a little bit of her own flair, but she wouldn't want to outdo her employer.

Regardless, women were judged on how good of a housekeeper they were. Back then that meant, how well they kept their own house or how well they oversaw their servants. Most women of any means could typically afford at least one servant if not a few for housework and one for cooking. The constant supply of new immigrants, guaranteed that servants could be employed cheaply.

For a young immigrant girl, a job as a servant was a good prospect. She would have a place to stay and food and would not add cost to the living expenses of her family. Most servants got one or two days off a month when they could visit their families and friends. They also got certain hours off when they weren't needed. A girl would only work in this fashion until she got married. 

This week we will all be preparing that huge Thanksgiving meal, sans servants. I'm actually very excited. Thanksgiving is a pretty boring holiday for vegetarians. (I don't do the tofurkey thing.) But, I am really excited to get to cook. I haven't cooked in ages and the perfect Thanksgiving weekend would be a day of cooking and reading. I have a long list of books I want to read and haven't had a second to read anything not related to school. And while I don't plan on letting the turkey burn while I cozy up with Clarissa Dillon's Ph.D thesis on Colonial Era gardens of Chester County, I'm not making any promises.     

Re-embracing Simplicity

I am constantly struggling with simplifying my life. I tend to keep the house neat and my bedroom full of “creative chaos.”  I think that bedrooms shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the rest of the house because they are very personal spaces. Your bedroom is your cocoon from the world so most of the clean house rules just don’t apply.

I unconsciously pile things up, books, laundry, school things, and projects are all in piles on my desk and floor. I don’t have any entirely empty surface space in my room which I like to have on my computer desk so I can type while still having a few books opened on it. I am not really fond of clutter but I know that it is necessary sometimes and that it accumulates often. I have a theory that the thing that is so relaxing about going on vacation is the fact that there is barely anything in your hotel room. The minute you walk in, the only thing in your hotel room is a Bible. 

I tend to have to have a bunch of things out at once. I always have some kind of sewing, knitting, drawing, writing, musical and reading things around. If I put them away, I will never work on them. However; about twice a year, my room becomes so cluttered that even the scatter-brained me can’t think in there and I need to weed out the cluttering items. My big plan is to eventually just have a place for everything and for all of the piles to be slightly smaller.  

My “Rules” on Clutter (of which I am constantly reminding myself.)

• An object can do you no good if you cannot find it when you need it. If your books are boxed up and it would take you a few months to find the book you need, they aren’t worth keeping around, write down their titles and donate them. I always keep books I use all of the time out where I can access them easily.
• Do not keep any object that you do not think you will not use within the next three years—(I think one year is really short because one year I might be really into gardening and the next year, sewing, but I will probably cycle back to gardening in a year or two.) Exceptions to this rule are expensive items which you will likely use in the future such as computer equipment or hobby equipment (fishing rods, picnic baskets, paints.) 
• It is selfish to keep an item that you have no use for when someone else can be using and enjoying it. For example: There is clothing from high school that I’d like to keep because I think it is pretty, but I don’t wear it now and it just hangs in the closet. I’d much rather see my younger sister and other people wear and enjoy it rather than keeping squirreled away. Exceptions are things that have sentimental value; I still have the skirt that I wore when I met Andy, even though I’d never wear it today.
• Is the cost of an item worth more than the stress it takes to keep and maintain it? Sometimes I find myself constantly tripping over an item or moving it back and fourth in a room because it has no place to go. I have to ask myself if those items are really that important. If I can’t find a place for them it is just extra stress to clean around those items and the clutter just adds to mental stress.
• Don’t keep anything that is beyond repair. I have very relaxed views on what beyond repair is. If something is repairable, I will repair it—Andy can attest to the various surgeries we have performed on his ipod. I need to remind myself that things that can’t be repaired or would not be cost efficient to repair need to be thrown out. Sometimes things are broken for long enough that I realize that I have found a viable substitute for it anyway.      

Is Homemaking a Lost Art?

I have a whole weekend off (if you ignore copious amounts of homework)! I hope to do a lot of the housekeeping that I have been putting off. Anyone who has been in my room knows that it needs a cleaning badly! I love having a clean room, it helps me think better and feel better and it looks better (I’m sure there are a million reasons why a clean room is better than a messy one.) I also have this problem: if I put something away, I will not get around to finishing it (such as sewing, knitting drawing, homework and other projects.)

Homekeeping is an art that has to be perfected for many years. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting away years in school (which for everyone who is in college knows is a complete joke,) when I should be learning the art of homekeeping to be at least a little more prepared in the future. I know some awesome homemakers (check out Curious Acorn in the sidebar) that leave you in awe and some homemakers who haven’t quite gotten it all together or aren’t interested in providing a home for their family and while they consider themselves “homemakers” are rather more like “housekeepers.”

I am astonished at how coveted homemakers were up until recently—somewhere around the time that children started hitting their teachers and the average age of lost virginity became 16. Things that children do in school is appalling and if our parents had done these things when they were in school, they would have been hit. Many parents today are more interested in working to pay for nice things rather than nurture their children and raise them in a loving environment. I was saddened by this comment on this site when a homemaker asked “Have I wasted 20 years as a Homemaker?” and one response was “The question: have I wasted 20 years of my life as a home maker? The answer is YES. Have you spoken to your kids lately? Do they have any respect for you? Does your husband? Unless you have had a job or have worked, I hate to break the news to you, BUT no one respects you.” What job is harder than homemaking? It seems like a worthy aspiration so why is it so frowned upon in American society? 

*Note: The first etching is from The London and Country Cook or, Accomplished Housewife by Charles Carter in 1749. Those chores look like a lot more fun in that clothing. I especially like the small details such as the bee skeps, the drying herbs, the rotisserie chicken and the little kitten in the kitchen waiting to steal fish. It’s a really cute etching.

Economy

        There is something to be said about the "Victorian"  views on economical  spending. Today  many people are confused  into thinking that we need the things that we really want. We may think we live meagerly but if we strip all that we own away, we realize that we own a lot more than the bare necessities. Life today also seems to require these unnecessary things. How would we get to work without our cars? How would we do our homework without computers  (almost all assignments must be typed these days)? How do we keep our jobs unless we dress in the newest fashions?
        In many  period publications, there are fictional stories about women who try to live above their means and how it ruins their lives. This happens frequently today with credit cards and loans, it has become so easy to live above our means. We really need to evaluate the things we buy and whether or not they are true necessities or not-- yes we are entitled to a few comforts (we do work hard for our money.) We should make sure that these comforts facilitate a better household and not destroy it. If no one in the family ever talks to each other because each is in his own room on his own cell phone and watching his own T.V. while sitting on the internet with his own computer, the family will deteriorate. Despite what we may think about relaxation and fun, there were ways to relax and have fun with the family before the digital age started. We should rediscover these activities.

  I am almost envious when I am reading period fiction and sisters are playing games together or sewing together. When a visitor comes, the visitor even if friends with a particular sister, joins in sewing or playing the games with all of the sisters. Today, one of my sister's friends would just prance right into my sister's room with her and we would not see either of them again for the rest of the night. I admit that my friends would do the same, but my sisters would not be interested anyway.

A focus on economy and the family instead of wants, will lead to happier people in the long run. Many people have thousands of friends on networking sites, are they as happy as the family who plays board games on Friday nights or the sisters who go to the local park on Saturday with a few mutual friends? Sometimes work gets in the way of being a family. Through frugality, we can strengthen our relationships by not having to work so many hours and by being creative as a family to have fun on a smaller budget.
        What if we focused on economy with the scrumptious nature that our predecessors did? Lydia Maria Francis Child said in the American Frugal Housewife (1831,) "Look to the grease-pot, and see that nothing is there which might have served to nourish your own family, or a poorer one." What if we were likewise economical even with things that are inexpensive? If the whole family saved usable scraps of paper for quick notes or grocery lists, we would not spend as much on paper specially for this purpose and help preserve the environment. Lydia Maria Francis Child suggests just this kind of frugality. Imagine how we'd prosper, economically and as families?

Note: The pictures are from Arthur's Home Magazine (1860,) the engraving is entitled " The Cottage Home."