Tuesday, February 2, 2016

100 year apple pie


In general, it's safe to say that I love all things vintage. Especially vintage cooking and dining ware --plates, pots, pans, napkins, etc.  But you can't help but notice that 100 years ago, everything in the kitchen and dining room was much much smaller. As were we.

People drank tea all day, for instance, but out of tiny, delicate tea cups. One good-sized coffee mug today can easily hold double an older one's volume of a hot beverage, because we live in a culture that's become super-sized. 



Today's large wine glasses are even worse (or better depending on how much you like large quantities of wine) Today's red wine glasses are actually capable of holding a full BOTTLE of wine in them, as opposed to more old-style glasses, which hold the standard 6-ounce glass' worth. Not hard to imagine why we have people becoming inebriated after having "just one glass" of wine these days. Look at the glass.


Plates are the same way...the older, usually the smaller. I have a friend who acquired some early 20th century charger ironwood serving platters and actually uses them as plates. And when you have dinner at his house, you notice nothing awry, because those platters (which your average Victorian cook used to serve the entire entree for four on) is now just about the right size for ONE hearty portion of dinner.

But if you are trying to keep your weight off, that late 1800/early 1900's cooking and dining ware is your best friend.


The other day I used up the last of our apple harvest in some nice pie filling, but did not want a standard, 21st Century deep-dish apple pie hanging around going bad. It's just too much for two people. Heck, it was too much at Thanksgiving for five people! 

So I used a couple of 1940s pie/cake tins and split the recipe in half. I cooked both crusts in the oven, then added my pie filling to each, cooked one and froze the other for some later time. We enjoyed the first pie over two or three days, but there was no pressure to eat it all up before it spoiled because there just wasn't that much of it. What a nice change.

It was so nice to have pie -- delicious, wonderful pie -- in manageable portions we did not have to feel guilty about. Because in addition to the circumference of the pie shell being much smaller, the older pie plate was also not as tall, and therefore held much less filling.  Call it a slim pie. 

As I've bought more vintage wares, I've found smaller plates also work well if you're interesting in serving smaller portions. And for side dishes, 75 year-old muffin, cupcake and popover tins serve lovely half-sized (to us) portions of the stuff you probably shouldn't be over-indulging in, without having to actually cut portions in half. Half for us was normal for those living 75 years ago.

I do wonder about the future of a culture that has spent their years of abundance turning healthy portions into gorging ones, though. It seems as though our 100 year ancestors understood a lot more about how much food we actually need to be healthy and survive than we do.

And so I look to the wares in the vintage kitchen more and more as I try and rein in how much food we consume. Very few of us had obese grandparents or great-grandparents, and perhaps this was the reason.


8 comments:

  1. I've been away from your blog for awhile, but am back and have been reading your previous posts. I just want you to know how grounding they are to me.

    I've had a lot of craziness in my life this past year. My husband finally hit bottom and realized he had a drinking problem after a job loss and arrest for DUI. My life has been revolving around AA, Al-Anon, counseling, etc. I have to admit, I have been envious of your well ordered life!

    I've been following a few blogs where there is too much craziness, and I really need to become more centered and grounded. Your posts bring me to that place.

    I love your writing. And I also wanted to say that you don't need a facelift at all. You were beautiful when you were young (loved the Farrah Fawcett wings! I could never get my hair to do that), and you are beautiful now.

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    1. Molly, thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words! They truly mean a great deal to me. Your year sounds incredibly stressful, my life is not always well-ordered, I think everyone gets their share of difficult times and it all seems to show up at once. My father was an alcoholic so I know some of that insanity and chaos that can cause for those around the person with the drinking problem. ((hugs)) to you and I hope things settle down soon for you and get to a place of peace and normalcy.

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  2. I took control of our portions years ago. Realized, exactly as you said, that a portion filled up a certain percentage of the plate ... and our plates were too big. Found a set of 1950s Homer Laughlin diner plates, bowls, etc., at a second-hand shop with much smaller plates. I cook in bulk most of the time, and I immediately section out the portions to be frozen for later, so there's nothing there to go back for seconds.

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    1. So it's not just me that noticed this -- good to hear! Kind of sad that having to hunt down reasonably sized kitchen ware and plates and adjust recipes and portion sizes is a necessity in today's world. We are just so overfed and as a society we have the health problems to prove it.

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  3. I had no idea plates and glasses were smaller then, but it makes sense. Everything is super sized now.

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    1. It's amazing how much things have grown in size They actually make kitchen cabinets deeper than they did in the old days so those huge modern plates can fit inside them!

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  4. Portion size aside, with massive modern plates and glasses, tables can only fit six settings! When I entertain, I always use salad plates as dinner plates simply so I don't need to have like 15 tables! Now I've found that I drink more wine out a smaller glass. I think I tell myself "well this only counts as half a glass".

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    1. I appreciate this kind of logic! I find that with larger glasses I definitely drink less WHITE wine because it warms up to the point of being yucky before I've managed to get through the entire glass. Wish it worked as well with red!

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