Vintage kitchen stuff online and THIS WEEKEND!

I'm in the St Louis area this weekend, and discovered a lovely booth at Vintage Bliss Market at West Port Plaza, Maryland Heights, Missouri, running today and tomorrow, June 24 and 25, 2017, whose owner has an Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/YesterdaysCommunique?ref=ss_profile

Her booth was full of things I've always loved, even as a child, like farming magazines my grandpa used to get and story flyers I was given as a child. I found a lovely apron there, and also the coolest cookbook, Lorain Cooking, copyright 1930, from the American Stove Company out of St Louis, featuring recipes that take advantage of their new-fangled oven thermostat, turning temperatures up and down, or trying different temperatures. Nowadays I just see some bread and roasted fowl recipes calling for this approach. How fun! and how appropriate to find in this very area! You can find it online such as at https://www.etsy.com/listing/220704253/lorain-cooking-cookbook-1926 -- I should mention that mine was in much better condition:


Illtud Llyr Dunsford, time-traveling cook

...from Wales. About him in this month's Jamie magazine, to which I just got a long-wanted subscription:
[He] delves into the history books for [food] inspiration. "I'm happiest trawling dusty bookshops..." His cinnamon- and ginger-spiced polony sausage, for example, is based on a 17th-century recipe....

Meal planning "helps" that made planning harder

Today is the last day of a weekly meal-planning service to which I had a year subscription -- I am so relieved it's over at last! Because I bought it, I felt I needed to check out the ideas every week...even though they were repetitive, and only appealed to my tastes about once in the entire year. I would say only subscribe to such a service if absolutely sure it fits your tastes or offers a very easy all-your-money-back guarantee.

Besides, though I'd love to have someone else plan my meals for a change, I have zillions of interesting menu and recipe ideas from sources such as this that I can use.

Yikes, I also have a menu book I finally wrote for myself, which unlike any other plans I've seen has 3! snack ideas a day as well as 3 normal meals for every day of the year, many of them drawing from very old sources and historical anniversaries but also featuring original modern recipes. I'd been looking for such a book for years and like so many of my interests I had to end up doing it myself. If I ever offer it to others, as a result of this disappointing experience, I'll definitely either offer it free or give a no-problems money-back guarantee...because obviously we all have different tastes and very few of us have unlimited budgets.

A retro kitchen tiny command center

Last week I finally found a cookbook holder that worked for me! Now I'm even happier because I discovered it will hold all my recipe/menu/cooking ideas and plans for the day! My refrigerator isn't magnetic, boo, but this is! and it holds all sorts of paper things....I found it at https://www.target.com/p/cookbook-holder---3r-studios/-/A-52248760 -- the same people make other retro styles and colors, if this one doesn't suit you. (PS It doesn't come with magnets -- this is one I found years ago at a street fair in northern Ohio, made by a fabulous lady couple from Indiana. Note that because the metal holder is embossed, it needs to be a strong magnet.)


What Shall I Cook Today?, c1936

Published by Lever Brothers, makers of Spry shortening. It includes some time-saving ideas (one could substitute olive oil or butter). It also includes some comics, as you can see! same as a similar cookbooklet I posted a while back.