This July Week in 1940 Study

We tried to do a normal as possible 1940 week.  I did not check all of the boxes but that is okay, I am figuring it out as I go.  

This week I got off to a good start with washing on Monday and ironing on Tuesday but I did not finish the ironing, actually I only ironed just enough to get Charles through because we had been so busy still trying to sort through our closets, drawers and many other things. 

We have this area between our counter and the stove where we keep a trash can.  I pulled it all out to clean this space and each time I take a photo to show you something on my blog I see dirt that I missed, I guess that is a good thing.  So my new advice for cleaning is clean and take a picture and look closely at the photo. :)

I put it all back, the back wood bin keeps grocery bags and the front is for kitchen trash and garbage.  Charles built it and it is tall to keep the doggies out of the trash.  There is a bucket inside upside down and another bucket on top of that with a bag.  Our doggies are small so this works for us.  

Someone said one time that dogs were not in the house in the 1940s but dogs and cats and birds were in the house as far back as I can study. There are old photos with  dogs in the house, one in particular is a dog laying in front of the fireplace while the head of the household reads his newspaper in his special chair. 

we have made it to pear picking season.

I will be water bath canning this coming week to put up these pears.  This year I will use the old method of the simple syrup, I use the weakest syrup so much less sugar.  One year I did no sugar at all and the pears tasted weak so I learned that we need to replace a little of the sweetness lost in preparing the pears for canning. 

Making a cake....

We have a birthday this weekend so today I made a yellow cake with boiled chocolate icing.

I pulled out one of my old recipe books. 

 It was started in 1924 and the recipes were gathered from a  young lady while she was living at home so many recipes would be earlier than 1924.

She did not marry until she was 38 years old and in the year of 1940.  So she had been entering recipes for awhile before she married.  

She indexed her book.

If you are interested I can post recipes along the way in my blog posts, just let me know in the forum.

This is the bottom of the page above this photo.

A interesting very old bread recipe from her book.   The best I can find is a cake of yeast was 2 ounces. I have contacted yeast companies and asked questions because we cannot get cake yeast here where we live or much anywhere in the united states unless we owned a bakery or commercial business. What I was told is that to replace a cake of yeast use 1/4 ounce or 2 & 1/4 teaspoons of dry yeast. 

One of my 1940 diaries shows that the daily schedule of wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday was pretty much the normal way. I am posting about the week we are just finishing because today is Friday that I am writing this.

It took me quite awhile to learn to read the handwriting in the diaries , I have gotten better the more diaries I read.  I am not going to type out these pages to see if you can read them yourself.  I cannot make it any darker because this is written very light in the diary by pencil.  Be patient, give it a go if you will, if you get stuck on something you cannot make out, ask in the forum.  

In the other studies, it was very difficult for me to find the time to type out the diaries but I will be happy to taking pictures and post them.  They do give us a glimpse into this year. Just let me know.

Yesterday was shopping day. I couldn't seem to find Rogers grocery store, seems they closed a few decades ago (LOL) However, this was in todays 1940's paper. 

My peek week posts we talked about laundry, I found this later and wanted to share. 

I tried to lighten this but could not but this is a photo from 1940 from a laundromat.  You can tell there are wringer washers and rinse tubs.  Finding real photos from inside a house or place is difficult because they used the old flash camera.   

Share with us what you are learning from the study. You do not have to sign up to read the forum, just to post in the forum and that is to prevent spamers. 

It is very hot here and the humidity is high and many people seem to be struggling with low energy, including me.  For those of you that are in winter right now, please blow us some cooler weather over where we are.  

Grandma Donna