Nothing Says 'I Love You' Like A Cow Organ On Your Plate

Looking for a special Valentine's Day Menu for you and your sweetheart? Want to give it a vintage touch? Want to watch him run, screaming in the other direction? Then I have the 1950s Valentine menu for you!:

That's a whole lot of red on one plate. This beauty of a suggestion is from the Searchlight Homemaking Guide and I'm not sorry to say that they didn't include a recipe for the Baked Heart, presumably because they knew no one sane was going to make it. 

"Happy Valentine's Day, darling. I hope you know how much I love you - but if you didn't, here's something you might remember from your high school dissection class. It represents my feelings. Eat up, lover!"

I have, however, included the recipe for the Cranberry Heart Salad which, if you know 1950s cookery, you have likely already guessed that it's yet another testament to the wonders of gelatine:

Yum, yum. Who doesn't love biting into whole cranberries? 

Patrick, if you're reading this and you are about to curl up into the fetal position, let me assure you: My Valentine's gift to you is that I'm not making any of this. That's how great of a wife I am.

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Good Telly

I love reality TV, I'm a sucker for it. I especially like interesting and informative reality TV - something that hasn't really caught on in America (I'm not sure we can count Snooki's urinary tract infection story arc as a public service). However, in Britain, "edutainment" reality programs are far more popular and totally freaking amazing.

One of the inspirations for the 50s Housewife Experiment (and future experiments which I hope to share soon! I know I keep promising this stuff and not doing it ... but I swear, wheels are in motion! Motion!) was a delightful British reality show called The 1900 House, a program where a modern family moves into a Victorian home and lives the turn-of-the-century lifestyle. It is BANANAS GOOD and I was jealous that they had all the original, authentic stuff from the era to use in their social experiment. I, on the other hand, while doing the '50s thing, had to stare at my microwave and will myself with every bit of strength I had not to throw a pizza pop into it:


There have been similar spins of this program, like the Frontier House, Colonial House, Regency House Party, and Coal House At War - all of which are worth checking out and about a billion times more entertaining than any house featured on The Real World.

But as you can imagine, I was thrilled off my ass to discover another British reality show that took a similar approach to tackling eras, one week at a time, to see how the lifestyle impacted a modern couple. "The Supersizers Go ..." features the comedy duo of Sue Perkins and Giles Coren who live and, of great focus of the program - eat, like they did in different times in Britain. Each week they munch through a new era, including the '70s, the Edwardian age, and Medieval times (the period, not the hilarious castle and horse show-slash-restaurant). And .... the 1950s! Oh, it was good. Great. AMAZING. And I've just learned that these episodes are now appearing on The Cooking Channel in the States, and I must insist that you Americans with cable watch it. Like, right now. It's brilliant and will give you a taste of how good reality TV can be. The Situation and gang will never look lamer, something you probably didn't think was possible.

Because I'm so enthused, I've embedded the entire "The Supersizers Go ... Fifties" below for your viewing enjoyment. Let me know what you think of the show!

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The 1950s Do's and Don't's of Parenting Babies Is Remarkably Sane

My cousin Amy just had a baby - her first - this weekend. Welcome to the world, Ethan Brady, and congrats to his lovely mom and dad! I hope these first few days and weeks and months are as calm and sweet as can be!

I imagine new parents are inundated with advice - some welcome, some not. I tend to not be the disher of said advice, given my status as a happy-to-be-childfree type, but I have no problem giving advice to the advice givers, if that makes any sense. And my advice to them is this: Chill the fuck out. You need only take a twirl on Google to see why I say this. If you go online, the top, most-frequently mentioned advice sounds like this:

• ALWAYS BREASTFEED. BREAST IS BEST. FORMULA IS POISON. DON'T QUIT - IT'S ABOUT BABY'S HEALTH - NOT YOUR COMFORT LEVEL! BABY COMES FIRST.
• SIDS! SIDS! Your baby is likely to die at any given moment unless you do everything perfectly. And even then, he might still die. SIDDDDDSS!
• Run to your baby if he is crying. Every. Time. RUNNNN!
• Don't shake your baby - even if you really want to.
• Get medicated!

It all sounds exceptionally stressful. Yes, postpartum depression is real and should be taken seriously, but perhaps we can do a better job supporting mothers and fathers (both in our actions and in the advice we give) to reduce factors that heighten anxiety. With this in mind, I naturally turned to my 1950s materials to see how the advice compared. Was it also riddled with stressful thoughts?

I found a "Do's and Dont's" when it came to baby from the same 1959 Best Wishes magazine that I recently mentioned on the blog. And the advice? Strikingly low-key. Calm. Reasonable. So incredibly opposite to the manic-fest that is 1950s cooking suggestions and 1950s homemaking schedules (open the picture in a new tab to see it expanded):

There are, of course, a couple funny things in there. The magazine is Canadian, so naturally there is a mention not to give your newborn beer and gravy. But those are our staples, eh? I imagine the French Canadian version has been further customized to remind new moms to avoid treating the baby to Quebec family favourites, specifically ketchup, Pepsi, and cigarettes, tabernac.

There's also a shift in advice when it comes to crying; while one modern website states, "DO respond to your baby's cries. You are not spoiling your baby by immediately responding to their cries at this age, so feed, change, hold, or soothe your baby when she is crying", the 1950s advice says something quite different: "Though he cries, don't pick you baby up if he is well. A good lusty cry is excellent exercise." I have no idea if cry-it-out or attachment parenting are right or wrong - frankly, I don't think anyone knows - I just love how enthusiastic the advice is: "a good lusty cry!" "Excellent exercise!" "Go watch some telly, mom!"

And there's one big piece of advice that I just love and wish it was in all the baby books and websites today:

Yes, the generation of women who were often viewed as being the "perfect mothers" and the "perfect housewives" were, in fact, not slaves to the other members of the household. Yes, a baby needs a great deal of care and attention, but you're a person who has needs too. Like rest. And personal time. And a break. Maybe that advice alone - to not be a martyr to your baby - curtailed the need for advice like "don't shake your newborn when you're frustrated" - which is strangely and sadly in all of the "Do's and Don't's" that we see today.

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Are You A Model Mother? Take the 1950s Test.

I love how articles from the 1950s are like Germans: anti-semitic blunt. Sure, we have antagonistic headlines today that also present opinions as fact, but back in the 1950s, this was a rather hilarious norm. Right and wrong, good and bad - it was all often spelled out unapologetically, especially when it came to explaining what it meant to be a "good" mother, wife, woman, father, husband, or man. It's not so much the suggestions within the articles that make our eyes bulge (ok, sometimes it is), but the absolutism of it all.

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about: "Are You A Model Mother?" This little checklist was printed in a 1959 edition of Best Wishes, a magazine that was provided to new mothers compliments of The Salvation Army. Best Wishes was sort of the gift-with-pushes (hee) that women would get in the hospital as they were coming out of their drug haze from having a baby.

The thing I find most interesting about this particular article is that it actually has very little to do with parenting and more to do with the kind of woman you are 'despite' becoming a mother. In short, if you live the "Mom Jean" lifestyle ("I'm not a woman any more, I'm a mom") and commit the sins that would get you a mention on STFU, Parents, you're not a model mother.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger! See for yourself:

That last one is simply magical, especially considering that the woman reading this magazine was likely still in her hospital bed nursing a destroyed vagina newborn.

So, tell me, are you a model mother? Do any of these describe you or the mother you hope to be? Or can this entire article kiss your model mother ass?

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