There comes a time in life when, as you advance to the older generations of a family, you receive bits and pieces of the family treasure. This happens when people downsize, even more so when they die. My sister is going through the treasure in Mom’s house and every so often I get a mysterious box of mementos, like pointy-toed spike heeled patent leather red shoes that my feet would never in a million years fit in to. But sometimes, she sends something really great. Here’s what’s cooking from the latest box:
What’s Cooking? A very special recipe collection from 1965. . .
I remember that! We made those in Miss Barton’s class when I was a little kid!
Too funny that you decided to re-do the cover art when your penmanship improved.
Let’s turn the page of charity and see what’s inside:
What’s Cooking? A great big class project!
Hey, that’s me!
What’s Cooking? Port Townsend school system mug shot, enlarged. . .
People of a certain age will recognize the purplish-blue type as the product of a mimeograph machine. As succinctly put by our friend AI Overview:
“The mimeograph machine, or stencil duplicator, is an obsolete, low-cost printing device popular from the late 19th century through the 1960s for creating hundreds to thousands of copies. Developed from Thomas Edison’s 1876 patent, it works by forcing ink through a hand-typed or stylus-drawn wax stencil onto paper.”
It doesn’t mention the smell.
From a follow-up query:
“The distinct, often nostalgic aroma of a mimeograph (specifically the spirit duplicator or “Ditto” machine) was caused by alcohol-based solvents—mainly methanol and isopropanol—used to transfer purple ink onto paper. Freshly printed copies emitted a pungent, sweet, and chemical scent, sometimes described as similar to rubbing alcohol, that was popular to smell directly from the page in schools.”
Those pages were “popular to smell” because the scent was slightly intoxicating. These days, parents would probably have their children taken from them if they allowed them anywhere near a mimeograph machine.
But I digress. . .
Kindergarten Recipes was the combined project of Miss Barton’s morning and afternoon kindergarten classes. No doubt she sent a note home to our moms (if dads cooked in those days, no one talked about it) requesting a favorite recipe to share. I guess Mom liked her copy, since it still exists 51 years later. . .
Let’s turn another page:
What’s Cooking? A whole lot of things, according to the Table of Contents. . .
Isn’t Mom’s recipe one of the salads?
Let’s find out:
What’s Cooking? Whatever it is, let’s use marshmallows!
Was it ever officially acknowledged that marshmallows are not a fruit or a vegetable?
Perhaps it was, Lily, though probably not during the Regan administration, which briefly classified ketchup as a vegetable for school lunch programs so the schools could meet mandated nutritional requirements.
I shared Mom’s recipe with a family text group. My cousin pointed out that getting married, at one time, more or less erased women’s first names from formal use. Because, as we all know, Mom’s first name was Marge, not Mrs. Glenn. Mom and Dad were relatively old for parents of young children at that time (they were in their 30s when Ann and I were born). Some of the younger moms did not bow to this old-style convention and used their own names in Kindergarten Recipes:
What’s Cooking? An underground movement to have fudge classified as a vegetable. . .?
Dad’s fudge didn’t have marshmallow cream. Does using it make fudge a vegetable?
In your dreams, 9.
And who knows, maybe tonight I’ll dream about marshmallows, and Miss Barton’s kindergarten. . .
