I love how things can just snowball! You start with one thing or thought, that leads you to another, then another, and another, and … well you get the picture! Here’s how I ended up down the rabbit hole of old recipes.
My co-worker Theron Zahn really enjoys rummaging around all kinds of thrift stores and often times; I am the benefactor of this. Last year, for instance, his buddy found 2 pair of incredibly, fantastic, vintage opera gloves for me! But I digress; right now it’s all about food.
Theron found an old cookbook, really more of a pamphlet, filled with recipes from the Fisher’s Flour Mills. It’s called Around the Clock Recipes and it describes its contents as ‘quick, easy shortcuts to tempting dishes for every occasion with Fisher’s Biskit Mix’. Fisher’s Home Economist, Mary Mills prepared the book, she wrote, knowing that homemakers were looking for every short cut possible in order to conserve energy! So she said she wrote the book to help them achieve that. She wrote: “You will be especially delighted with Fisher’s Biskit Mix because it is a versatile mix rather than simply a prepared biscuit flour as it is adapted to the making of quick breads, desserts, and main dishes as well as biscuits.”
She structured the book, taking her readers through times of the day, starting with 6am pancakes and waffles with lots of variations.
The 8am page includes all kinds of muffins; corn, apple, date, even tomato. The mid-day recipes are all about cookies and desserts.
But then turn the page to noon and you get instructions on how to use Fisher’s Biskit Mix to make Pigs in Blankets, Cracked Wheat Biscuits, Cheese Soufflé Biscuits, plus Foundation Cream Sauce to enjoy Cream3ed Chip Beef, Creamed Salmon, Tuna or Cod Fish or Eggs a la Goldenrod. In the dinner hours, there are recipes for Emergency Stew, which is just like today’s quick and easy recipes of combining several cans of soup you have in the cupboard, plus vegetables, canned chicken, salt and pepper and then Fisher’s Blended Flour mixed with water and boiled to thicken your stew!
Theron introduced me to this cookbook through a Facebook Live segment he does each week, called “Look What I Found”.
The book was printed in 1938! Theron loves to give me recipes or ideas, so that I will bake for him. This time, he chose the Swedish Tea Ring, from Mary Mills’ repertoire of recipes in this book.
I had never heard of a tea ring before, so I accepted the challenge!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have Fisher’s Biskit Mix sitting in my cabinet, (let’s hope nobody does since it would likely not be any good at all!) so I improvised, making my own mix, using a recipe I found on the internet: 3 cups flour, 2 T baking powder, 1/2 t salt and 1/2 cup vegetable shortening. Then I just followed the directions for the tea ring.
Most of this recipe is very familiar to me since I used to make cinnamon rolls all the time. My husband loves them! The one part of this tea ring recipe that was new to me, was cutting the dough and peeling it back to create a petal look, but I did my best and it really looked gorgeous! I slid it in the oven and then my entire kitchen filled the amazing scent of cinnamon! I frosted it with some almond buttercream frosting I whipped up and I (and my husband, who immediately asked for seconds!) thought it was delicious!
And my co-workers agreed, including Theron, who said it was amazing.
Now down that rabbit hole. You thought I forgot, didn’t you?
The morning after baking and taking the Swedish Tea Ring to work, still basking in the compliments I received for it, I was curious about this Mary Mills, who wrote the book, so of course I Googled her. I found an entire Wikipedia page on her! Fascinating!
Her real name isn’t Mary or Mills! It’s Bernice Orpha Redington. She was born in Puyallup in 1891. She was an expert in nutrition, home economics and journalism. And as she moved through her life and career, she used different bylines. According to Wikipedia, she started using Prudence Penny when she became a food editor the Seattle PI. She moved to Hawaii where she lived for 12 years and wrote under the byline Caroline Cuisine.
Back in Washington State in she went to work for Fisher Flour Mills, in charge of home economics in Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona and this is when she started using the byline, Mary Mills. She was well known for her radio programs on Fisher radio programs, telling ladies “it pays to be lazy” demonstrating how to quickly whip up meals for the family, using Fisher products.
She attended the University of Washington among others, was in the Mountaineers, and built a home in Normandy Park; she called “Hale Malowaa” which means “House of Laziness”.
I’m now hooked, trying to find more information about Mary Mills, aka Caroline Cuisine, aka Prudence Penny, aka Bernice Redington!
She was among the first celebrity chefs in our country! There are now several other ‘Caroline Cuisine’ brands in different states and other Prudence Pennys through the years, but I found only one Mary Mills! Her cookbook, “121 Easy Ways to Cake Fame” is listed amongst dozens of other vintage findings, from the likes of Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, James Beard and more. These cookbooks are for sale, some fetching $7 but others priced into the hundreds of dollars! My favorite title, just browsing that vintage site is: “Vitality Demands Energy: 109 smart new ways to serve bread”. That cookbook was printed by General Mills in 1934, well before we had the Atkins, Keto and other protein diets! It could be yours for just $25!
There is no denying that food is nostalgic! The smells and tastes that you’ve had over the years, are memories, that when repeated, take you back to that time you visited your grandma and she took a fresh pie out of the oven, or when you had a bad day at school, only to be greeted by your mom at home, with fresh baked cookies!
I love to cook and love most things vintage, so this has been a fun rabbit hole for me to go down this weekend!
adventureckr 