A Uniform Nurse

My my, how nurses uniforms have changed over the years.  In years past they were crisp, snappy and form fitting, not at all practicable for the chores associated with your nursing duties.  My mother would tell me stories about having to wear uniforms such as this when she was in nursing school.  I rather get the impression she hated it, but today we have a much more efficient alternative... scrubs.  Scrubs are baggy rather than form fitting, not flattering to the figure but certainly easier to move around in than the old starched uniforms.  With all things there is progress, sometimes this progress is a bad thing, eliminating what was old and useful in favor of the new fad.  In the case of nurses uniforms though, progress was a good thing.

Also it's like the changes in health insurance, you need a good agent for health coverage to find the best insurance... if that's even possible anymore.

Guide To Good Nutrition (1942)

Since the dawn of the 1900's the Government has been subjecting us to "guides to good nutrition" highlighting what what we should be eating in our daily meals.  It's interesting how health modes have changed so much since the 1940's to today.  When I first grabbed this ad it was the meat at the top that caught my eye.  Wonderfully marbled meat with a nice bit of fat to give the meat flavor and to make the consumer full.  Yes, you didn't need to eat as much meat back in the old days because the meat was more filling owing to the fat content.

The Myth of the GMO PLU Code

Remember this picture?  There are others like it but they all stay the same thing, that you can walk into a grocery store and pick out GMO produce by the 5 digit PLU code beginning with an 8.  I fell for it myself but after working in the produce department of an upscale grocery chain I've learned alot of things I didn't know before and squashed some things I thought I knew as fact.

The Vintage Diet, An Update

Many moons ago I sat down and dreamed up The Vintage Diet, a way to get back to basics with our eating and perhaps even lose a little weight in the process.  I wrote about it in 2 posts ("Why Am I Fat" & "The Vintage Diet: A Prequel") but then I never wrote about it again.  In truth, I did about 3 months of research on myself and my family with recipes and even posted menu plans every week on the Blog's Facebook Page but then I had to give it up and go to Alaska to work.  So what really happened during those 3 months that I was more or less following vintage recipes and trying to coalesce my ideas into what would become the Vintage Diet?  Well I started off at 360lbs and in 3 months lost weight to about 348lbs.  Alaska was my undoing though as the food was the worst I have ever experienced in my 5 years of working up there and I was backed into a corner, eat junk food or starve.  I ate junk food and with the unpalatable result of bouncing back to 360lbs by the end of the season.

But a funny thing happened after I got home.  Usually I balloon up in weight  because of the reduction in activity and general overeating because I'm happy to get back to the land of real food.  This time however I went more or less back to the Vintage Diet and my weight held the same as before, 360.  There wasn't much I could do to expand on the diet as I was busy with, well life.  Then I got a full time job at a grocery store in the produce department and everything changed.

The place I work at is not a natural foods store but they are upscale so they carry much in the way of organic produce and items.  With my discount it knocks the price down to comparable levels with conventional produce and I was able to experiment with organic food or what our grandparents would have just called food.  It's funny how all these years the food supply has become increasingly compromised to the point that we have to buy organic just to get the food our grandparents would have had but I digress.

I was able to pick up on the Vintage Diet again maybe 75% of the time and began to lose weight.  Keep in mind I do anywhere from 10,000 to 18,000 steps per day at work so that is significant contribution to my weight loss but it's not like I have to go to the gym and kill myself 3 times a week just to lose weight, and lose weight I have.  In 3 months I am down to 328 from 360 a loss of 32lbs.  I am hitting some resistance at the 328 mark but I have faith that in time I will break through to continue losing weight.  I recently acquired some vintage cookbooks that really give me insight into how people at back in the vintage era and will perhaps allow me to put the final touches on the Vintage Diet.

The Old Is New Again

I had a blip on the radar the other day that I ignored much to my detriment.  My old computer had been acting weird for a week or so but I had just chalked it up to it's advanced age.  Then the unthinkable happens and the computer just died.  Seeing as it was using older hard drives I lost pretty much everything to do with the blog, including the pictures and old ads I had collected.  Well I'm back up and running with a middle age laptop until I can get something better but in the meantime it means I have a clean slate to work with as far as the blog goes.  I know I don't write nearly as much as I used to, it goes along with having a full time job now.  Having the job has been a positive experience even if I had to shelve the blog for a few months while I was training.  The biggest thing I have taken away from working at an upscale grocer is my love and newfound depth of understanding pertaining to organic foods.  I started with experimenting with organic and now it's a full on passion.  I don't go crazy with it, insisting that all things be organic but if the option is available I certainly take it.

Monsanto: Poisoning You Since 1943 (At Least)

This ad was a gem of a find because all the previous Monsanto Ads that I have found dealt with the manufacture of Bakelite.  This was the first ad I could find that dealt with food and I can only imagine that Monsanto took up the mantle of of chemical food production as a part of the war effort.  Unfortunately this set them on the path to eventually making the GMO foods that people are only just now waking up to.  The artwork is the typical goofy chef guy throwing a pinch of something in a pot, it's only after you read the ad that you discover what an unhealthy substance this is.  Honestly the look on his face is disconcerting, like he's trying to hold in a fart or something.  Also, heath departments were rather lax in the vintage era because the cigarette over the ear would never pass muster today.

More Salads For Dinner and a 1926 Recipe For French Dressing

Since I've been working so much lately and my usual shift has me ending my work at around 6-7pm I'm really not in the mood to go home and cook dinner.  So most days when I'm scheduled like this I'm satisfied to make a salad with some leftover chicken on it or whatever I happen to have on hand.  The prep is easy, I get to try one of the numerous lettuce mixes we sell at work along with some nice heirloom tomatoes and overall the meal is not too heavy to digest before bedtime.  One thing that I needed to do though was lighten up the salad dressings that I used.  We had been in a rut with heavy creamy dressing like ranch or blue cheese, great tasting but too many calories and too bloating before having to go to sleep.

Kraft Cheese and Breasts

"Did you know it takes more than a gallon of rich milk to make 1lb of Kraft Cheese?"  It's interesting that she should say that while next to a dish that looks like a boob.  As a matter of fact the theme of this ad seems to have been breasts, perhaps a subliminal message to people reading the ad that only pure fresh milk goes into Kraft cheese.  Well that's the way it used to be anyway.  I'm not really sure what goes into kraft cheese today, but it only tastes like cheese like substance so it's probably nothing good.  The real fact is that cheese like this is quite different from Velveeta or Cheese slices that appear on store shelves today. It's a taste that most people have forgotten about, that of true American Cheese.

Karo Corn Syrup

Wow, people used to get married young back in the old days... ok, not really.  This lovely ad for Karo Corn Syrup is from 1910 and coincides with an ad campaign launched by the president of corn products refining board.  He believed so fiercely in the dependable high quality and flavor of corn syrup that he spend an astonishing (for the time) $250,000 in ads for Karo corn syrup.  This ad is one of the most famous and the Karo Kids are featured again in full color on a Karo Cookbook initially released the same year.  Karo itself was invented in 1902 and name came from either the chemist that invented it who named it after his wife's nickname or was from an earlier syrup called "Kairomel" depending on who you ask.¹

Exericse Equipment?

I have to laugh when I read this article or that article about what kind of exercise equipment you need or don't need.  Yes the marketeers are always at their shenanigans trying to get us to buy the next best thing.  What if I don't want to buy the next best thing?  What if I'd rather use the next old thing?  I'm vintage and I'm frugal.  If I don't have it, I'll probably buy it if I can't make it, but if I have something already I'll get some use out of it guaranteed.  So here's my exercise equipment:

Aqua Vitae: Water Is Life

Doctors love to keep changing their minds.  First pasta is bad for you because of the sauce, then it's the sauce is god for you and the noodles are bad, etc etc etc. The American heard of barking seals that consumes every bit of drivel from the medical community is all to happy to parrot the belief of the moment as it is was God's writ on the tablets.  Whatever happened to thinking for yourself?  I suppose it went out of fashion along with personal responsibility, lost in the tide of people who want someone else to think for them so they can pursue the travails of Snooki, you know the important stuff.  Which brings me to the subject of water.  For many years now it's been the standard 8 glasses a day and you can achieve miracles, or so says the medical moffs in all their glory.

Milk, It Does a Pocketbook Good

This is a 1916 ad extolling the virtues of drinking milk every day.  1 quart of milk per person which is quite a bit when you think about it.  I'm lucky if I do a quart a week and that's mostly with cereal.  I grabbed the ad because it gives a snapshot of food prices in the World War I era and of course they're comparing the nutritive value of milk to all the other food items in the ad.  It's brought to you by the dairy board, of course they're going to try to sell you milk.  And of course to make it even more "official" they have the requisite scientist to offer his opinion based on scientific observation.  I love the chart showing the growth pattern of children given milk vs those without.  Of course the children drinking milk are naturally larger, and oh yes, "milk contains fat, in which is a puzzling element that makes young folks grow."  I wonder what this puzzling element is?  Probably calcium, since they had only a speculative knowledge of calcium's effects back then and they didn't understand what we now know about fat soluble vitamins and their effects on mineral absorption.

Cheese It Boys!

In my never ending quest for ingredients that match what would have been available back in the era covered by my new diet plan, I have inevitably turned my eye to cheese.  I was avoiding going on this search because I knew of all things dairy, cheese made from the proper milk would be most dear.  I was not dissapointed.  Prices run from $9.99/lb on the low end to $18.99/lb on the higher end raw milk cheeses.  I can swallow the cost difference and use this cheese as a "cheese and cracker" afternoon snack cheese but I can't see using it in recipes just yet.  Now normally I just buy Cabot Cheese which has all the appearance of being at least semi-organic but when I started delving deeper into their operations I was shocked.  None of the milk they use is free from rGBH the estrogen like hormone given to cows to make them produce more milk.  It's disconcerting, even Publix store brand milk is certified free from that nonsense.  This led me to rethink quite well my position on cheese.

The Vintage Diet

This is me in all my overweight glory.  The goal of this diet is to lose weight by eating in a vintage style with the premise that the food they ate back then wasn't so bad and allowed the a well balanced diet full of the vitamins needed.  My starting weight is 360 and my first goal is 335 by May15th (When I go to Alaska).  The final goal is 260 by next February, a steady pace of about 2 pounds of loss per week.  Calorie Goals are 2,000 per day although sometimes going over for special occasions is no big deal.  The tenets of the diet are as follows:

- No processed food, Everything is made from scratch.  In addition, eating at restaurants is kept to a bare minimum and all fast food is eliminated.

- Organic ingredients where needed.  I'm not as fussed about organic lettuce as I am organic beef, chicken and dairy.  It's the modern day equivalent to what they would have had back then, available in any grocer.

- The diet is varied and because I will be following vintage recipes it will be flavorful as well.  Portion control will be strict, with proper serving sizes observed.  People at alot less back in the old days.

- 2,000 calories on a normal day to 2,500 for holidays and special occasions.

- Sweets are kept to a place that vintage people would have, dessert is for weekends, cakes are limited to special occasions and birthdays.  No other candy is allowed except on rare occasions.

-  There is no specific exercise routine in the diet except 2 miles of walking per day to simulate commuting by streetcar as people would have done back then.

- Weigh ins will be done every Friday and posted to the blog.  Daily progress reports and meal descriptions will be posted to our Facebook Page and Twitter Accounts.


Wish me luck!  And if you decide to follow along with me I wish you the best of luck as well, never give up on dieting for your health!

Organic and Vintage Is Cost Effective

If you think that buying organic is too expensive then you need to rethink your position.  I've heard this argument and I admit, I've made it myself but it wasn't until I started looking into vintage foods and cooking that I started thinking about the true cost.  In the picture above you see my dinner last night.  A piece of Publix Greenwise Porterhouse done medium rare on the grill with steamed asparagus and caprese salad.  Herein lies the most important part of the vintage diet plan, smaller portions.  People ate within serving guidelines back in the day, they just varied what they ate so the taste was more rewarding.  Despite current beliefs, they were not steak and potato fanatics as we would be led to believe.  Vegetables were a part of the meal and everything was fairly well balanced.  It's the gross overcomsumption of today that has led us to think that a 12oz steak is a "serving".  Sorry, a serving size of just about any meat is 5-6oz, this holds true to beef, chicken and fish.  SO with that mind we are able to go from buying 3 common steaks at $7.99/lb on sale to 1 organic steak at $9.99/lb on sale, and effective savings of $13.98!  Lets break the meal down and see what we have:

The Vintage Diet: Prequel

I'm still putting the final touches on the vintage recipe diet, but I'd like to take a moment today and explain my reasoning behind it.  Through the years I've been on just about every diet known to man in order to lose weight.  It all works for a time and then something happens, your body adjusts, you get tired of the unrelenting exercise, or you get tired of the tasteless food.  All these contribute to failure every time, usually with a weight gain to a level higher than before you started.  This so called yo-yo dieting is a viscous cycle that never ends.  So I gave up on dieting and ate what I wanted and soon I returned to creeping obesity.  Something had to be done to reverse this. 

I've always been a student of history, but in my case I prefer to study the day to day life of the average person.  Having grown up around grandparents who lived through the 20's and 30's I became intimate with what life was like back then and better yet, I inherited some of their prized recipes.  Now the first thing you have to dispel from your mind is "fats are bad".  We've been sold this load of dung by the health nazis so they can force low fat cardboard tasting food on us.   "Don't eat the steak! It's high in saturated fat!!!  Drink this wheatgrass smoothie instead!"  Honestly if you want to drink blenderized cow food in the name of health be my guest, but don't do it around me.  I got to thinking, If fat in the diet is really the problem then we should be thin and healthy since we don't have as much fat in the food supply anymore... but we're not.  Instead we have an obesity epidemic the likes of which the world has never seen.  So the pendulum swung in the other direction until we had the Atkins diet.  All protein and fat because carbs are the problem.  People were still fat, it didn't work.  Now I'm left with alot of research and I started with our grandparents.  According the food nazis people in the 20's and 30's ate an extremely unhealthy diet but if that was the case why were they thinner and healthier than we are now?  The truth is, we've been sold a bill of goods by everyone from the government on down to the food producers.

I've outlined it before, but I'll repeat, our food supply is compromised by corporations who don't care about your health they only care about your dollars.  You can eat a diet using vintage recipes but you still won't lose weight because the food (ingredients) have fundamentally changed since the 20's!  Food is no longer produced on small farms outside of towns, it's factory farmed in foreign countries or the USA.  Cattle and chickens are kept in pens so small it's inhumane and force fed an unnatural diet of corn, antibiotics and growth hormones.  Commercial feeds in the USA are from Genetically Modified Organisims (GMO's) whose health risks have not been fully evaluated.  All this combines to the point that not only is our food a nutritional shadow of it's former self, it's laced with ingredients that are poisons in our body leading to diabetes, immune disorders and cancer.  If we truly want to go back to a vintage diet then a fundamental change in how we shop is going to be needed, On Friday I will conclude this series with the fundamentals of the diet itself.

Why Am I Fat?

I'm the first one to admit it, I'm overweight.  6'2" 360lbs, you can get the picture.  This is part of what started me down the path towards making this blog.  What if people back in the old days ate a better diet than we do now?  They certainly weren't fat as a rule.  Modern science and the government will point several different ways as to why this is true.  One, they will say people got more exercise back then.  This is a flat out lie, while people walked more than we are used to today, and they did more by hand, not everyone lived the Jack London life in the woods.  The government knows this but they have to lie to disguise the real truth... our food is compromised due to greed and government collusion.  You'll hear the government go on about the evils of processed foods but keep in mind they were the ones who allowed food to be compromised that way to begin with.  Companies, never knowing when to be satisfied with the profits they have attained, searched for cheaper and cheaper ingredients until most package goods could barely be termed food.  It's empty, soulless food with no nutritional value whatsoever.

What is Organic?

 I remember when the term "Organic" first came out.  It was the butt end of so many jokes and derision that few people took it seriously.  I mean if it's living isn't it made from organic matter?  Honestly in the beginning the term "organic" was not controlled by the FDA and thus anyone could slap the term on their product charge 3 times as much and separate a fool from their money.  Today the situation is different though as anything organic is controlled by the FDA to mean raised in a certain way free from antibiotics and growth hormones.  Of course the FDA also cottons to the mega food corporations by telling us that there is nothing significantly different between organic vs. commercial... yeah right, if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying... cheap.  The difference comes in ways not measured by the FDA so in this instance lets examine 3 things that comprise the major organic items sold in the supermarket, Eggs, Butter, and Meat.

Ah, There's Sweetness, Madam

Could you imagine buying butter packaged this way today?  3 times wrapped and sealed on the end with a presumably way seal?  It gets major points for being retro but you'd be paying $10/lb for it because of packaging cost.  If you haven't already "liked" The Vintage Recipe Blog on Facebook I really encourage you do so.  You get to see so much more than I put up on the blog and I really have such a wonder group of vintage themed pages that I am friends with who often bring up some really good information.  For instance, the other day, Canning Granny posted a link to an article that was about a study done in Australia on the effects of eating butter.  The conclusions may surprise you as they found out that fresh butter made from the cream of grass fed cows was actually very healthy for you.  There was an increase in the number of Omega-3 fats and much more Beta Carotene than is found in commercial butter.

Spa Resorts, The Modern Roman Baths

Any student of Roman History will be well acquainted with the Roman Baths. Places where the citizenry of Roman cities could gather, bathe in hot and cold water and get a massage or work out. These places fell out of use after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but the idea did not go away entirely and by the 1800's a network of "Spas" had sprung up around Hot Springs all over the world. The best spas were to be found in Europe, especially Germany and Austria-Hungary although the USA could boast some impressive Spas as well such as the one in the ad shown here.