1. Welcome! Mama's Kitchen is a free newsletter about kitchen collectibles. This newsletter is designed to be entertaining and educational, but also a dialogue among those who have a fondness for kitchen items of all kinds. I hope you'll join us for a few memories, giggles, laughs and some useful information about kitchen collectibles. I am not an expert in any field, but I have been buying and selling kitchen items for over 9 years and loving them for a lifetime. Remember collecting anything should be fun. This is especially true when you can use your collection on a daily basis. Please let me know if there is a particular item you would like featured in upcoming issues.

Every day I learn some new interesting fact about a piece of vintage kitchenalia. I am fascinated by trivia that is kitchen related. I thought I would share a few of my most recently learned facts about the history of items we all remember from Days Long Ago. All of these great facts can be found in the book, "300 Years Of Kitchen Collectibles, Krause Publications, 2003, by Linda Franklin.

....the Hunter Sifter is a must have for a kitchen collection. It was advertised over 100 years ago as combining"...12 kitchen utensils in one. It is a Mixer, Scoop, Measure, Weigher, Dredger, Rice Washer, Starch, Tomato, Wine, and Fruit Strainer. It is the most useful kitchen utensil made."

....Some wire baskets were for gathering eggs....Another type...often mistaken for a salad washer....is a snail basket....they are the same size or slightly larger than lettuce baskets, sometimes have a lid, a bulging body with narrowed neck.

....The "Magic Mop" mfd. by Pro Diet Mop, Inc., of Belle Chase, LA, is made of a special plastic that "attracts grease from food like a magnet." It was developed to use in ocean oil spills. Later it was made into mops used to stir hot soup and other food from which grease has to be skimmed or removed. Patent No. 3,748,682.

....Bread Dockers. Used to mark bread before baking....."We make these dockers in any shape& of any number of letters. they cost according to the number of letters"...Jaburg Brothers Catalog, NYC, 1908.

....Collectors sometimes ask if it's safe to use old cake pans for baking, even if they have a bit of rust. It's safe to the user, not quite as safe for the pan, but only if you don't carefully wash and dry thoroughly after use. the solder used in such late pieced pieces is not dangerous, and rust only adds a bit of extra minerals to your cake.

....Figural cookie making was practiced in Europe at least as far back as the 16th century.

....The American Agriculturist, Sept.1846, published a tip on "How To Boil Green Corn," with advice on eating it too. "The proper state in which to eat green corn, is at the time that the milk flows upon pressing the kernels with the thumb nail. It is best when boiled in the ear with the husks on, the latter of which should be stripped off when brought to the table. The ears should then be covered with butter, with a little salt added, and the grains eaten off the cob. Over-refined people think this vulgar, and shave them off, but in so doing they lose much of their sweetness.

....A jagger is a pastry cutter, generally one that makes a jagged (actually zig zag) edge. They are also called pie wheels, pie rimmers, pie jiggers, pie cutters, trimmers, jagging irons, gigling irons (very archaic term), jiggers and probably other names.

....Springerle boards are intaglio carved (that is, carved into rather than carved relievo-raised relief, where the background is carved away, leaving the design raised like a cameo).

....Here's what Mrs. S. C. Lee of baltimore, wrote in her 1884 Practical Housekeeping about waffle irons: "The waffle iron is a very peculiar machine. the waffle is put in, locked up, baked on one side to a lovely brown, turned over, prison and all, until the other side is a still lovelier brown, and then released steaming hot ready for the table."

....Wagner Mfg. Co. of Sidney, Ohio used a lettering system to identify their styles. In addition, they used a four-digit catalog number. Though the pan may not be marked with "Wagner" or "Wagnerware," the letter or a combination of letters and numbers identify the piece as Wagner.

....Early Griswold baking pans , when marked, were marked "Erie" but many were not marked either "Erie" or "Griswold." They are identifiable as Griswold, however, by a three-digit pattern number. Many of these pattern numbers appear to have been inscribed by hand in the mold....

Maria Parloa, Kitchen Companion, Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1887.
  

4. What is it?

Higene Screen Cleaner

This is a Higene screen cleaner, probably from the 50's, as I can remember using one to clean screens.

It has a red handle and the back is aluminum. The brushes roll easily.

Measures 5 inches by 11 inches. This little gadget actually works great. They usually sell for between $10.00 - $15.00

My mother (age 85) lamented recently that she could not find a spatula that was thin enough and flexible enough to replace her old one (probably my grandmother's in reality)  that had broken from years of use.  The more modern ones are stiff and thick!

We looked at garage sales and antique malls without success and finally found the adequate replacement in the painter's area of an art supply store.  The palette knives used by painters are thin, pliable and work like a charm if you want to recreate the flexibility and usefulness of the old fashioned spatula!  They come in a variety of sizes and make an ideal replacement for the good old spatulas like grandma used. 

Carolyn Martin   Florissant, MO

Greetings from Nova Scotia, I just love receiving your newsletter, thanks for all the work you put into it! Although I am over 50 yrs old and have collected kitchen gadgets for years, I was surprised and delighted to read your article on cake spatulas for the simple fact that my mother, grandmother and aunts always called these items 'cookie lifters'.

To this day I use one to remove cookies from the pans and can't recall any of the women in my family using them to spread frosting on cakes. Had they thought of that, I am sure frosting would not have taken so long as they used a knife. While the knife they used was a butter knife, it differed from the butter knives we know today because the blade was longer and wider.

In any case, I always tried to be around when someone was frosting a cake because I got to clean the bowl...finger to mouth, yum!  

Alice

Brushing the Surface -- Household Brushes

I am a sucker for old brushes. If I could I think I'd buy everyone I see. I really don't know why but for some reason they speak to me and seem to tell me stories about the hands that held them. The first one pictured is an old Venetian Blind cleaner. The bristles went between the slats so that you could clean three at a time. I can't find this in any book but I certainly used one and hated every minute of it. Therefore it has to date back to the 50s. It usually sells for between $12.00 - $18.00 depending on condition and market. The second is a Sink Brush made by the Kellogg Company in Kellogg, Minnesota. I don't know this for a fact but I think the purpose was to sweep up crumbs on the built in drain boards on the old porcelain sinks, sort of a dressed up whisk broom.. I would value it at $12.00 - $15.00 depending on condition and market.

The third is called a Fuller vegetable brush. Every home had one of these for scrubbing vegetables. After all, most of the time they were covered with dirt because we had just pulled them from a garden. The value on this is usually $4.00 - $8.00. The last is a Pastry brush also made by Kellogg. I would place the value at $5.00 - $8.00.

7. Tip of the Month 

Polish eyeglasses with eau-de-cologne to make them shine.

Jane from Utah wrote:

Dull leather bags will get back their shine if rubbed with a slice of lemon.

Have you got a great kitchen tip or question, please send it along to mamas@tias.com

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