Simply Delicious Personal Chef Service

I love reading cookbooks, especially the older ones.  I guess that goes along with being a history nerd.  Our diets change and it's interesting to learn about what people thought a good meal was and how to prepare them.  My mother's cookbook (circa 1950/60's), which I've read from cover to cover, really gets me laughing when I read the When you pack that lunch box section..."Make it a meal-and-a-half for your teen-ager--a hearty lunch, plus a snack!"  The picture shows a ham and cheese submarine sandwich, with lettuce and mustard on the side, a whole pickle, 1 small box of raisins, a banana, a frosted cupcake, an apple, a small bottle of grape juice and, for that special treat, a thermos of hot chocolate!  The hard-working-husband's section is even better...a thermos of chili, 2 hearty sandwiches, several whole pickles, a cup of coleslaw, cheese and crackers, a slice of cherry pie and of course a beverage.  WOW!!  After eating all that, who would ever be able to go back to work or keep from falling into a deep food coma!

A few years ago my husband found a 1925 booklet, Household Helps and a Guide to Household Economy.  It contains all kinds of useful information for running a house in 1925 - kitchen (How to Blacken a Stove), bathroom, bedrooms, laundry (remove grass stains with lard!) and beauty tips.  Poor book is so old that I have to keep it in a zip-lock bag; the pages are all loose and crumble when touched.  I was oh-so-carefully paging through it and found a time-table section for cooking meats and vegetables, baking and canning.  The vegetable cooking times caught my eye...and got me laughing.  It said that asparagus should be cooked for 15 to 30 minutes!  What?!  That would be nothing but mush!  So I grabbed a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook from 1953 to learn if they revised the cook times 28 years later.  That guide said to boil asparagus in a small amount of water for 15-20 minutes.  Okay, 10 minutes less than 1925 but it's still mush and all the vitamins are cooked-out.

Jump forward another 55 years to today and according to Better Homes & Gardens website..."Cook, covered, in a small amount of boiling salted water for 3 to 5 minutes or until crisp-tender. (Or steam for 3 to 5 minutes.)  Now THAT'S better!  Nice crispy, healthy vegetables, no yucky mush :)  Times sure have changed a lot in 83 years.

For grins, I am going to post the vegetable cook times through the decades in my Blog, in the Cooking Techniques section.  Go there for the rest of the story :)