The domestication of Tina

I recently appropriated, with much glee, my mother's set of Kitchen Craft stainless steel cookware from 1963 and her 1969 Singer sewing machine.  Yet more evidence of my growing domesticity, all things being relative, of course.  For a woman whose idea of a home cooked meal has typically consisted of pasta, with my favorite Paul Newman vodka sauce, topped with a healthy mountain of powdered parmesan cheese, my recent adventures with the pressure cooker make me feel practically like Julia Child.  This newly discovered affinity for actually preparing meals of a sort has stemmed partially from my growth as a foodie, the need to prepare meals once we're living on the boat, and watching too much Food Network when I still had cable.  I can watch someone else make food all day long.  The realization that I might want to learn to cook came when I realized that, at the end of the show, Giada wasn't going to come to my house and make that yummy pork tenderloin with port reduction sauce for me.


Though I never had much of a desire to cook it's a little more surprising that it has taken this long for the sewing bug to catch hold of me.  I'm a crafter at heart, thanks to the genes of my paternal grandmother, who always had something homemade to give me when I visited, so sewing seems like a natural fit.  But I didn't take Home Ec (Cooking and sewing?  Puhleeze) in high school and hadn't really given much thought to what I might be able to do with a sewing machine until I met my friend, Kathy, who is a sewing whiz.  She has made her own curtains that wouldn't be out of place in a Pottery Barn catalog.  If I didn't like her so much I'd have to hate her.  Plus having the boat has really stoked a fire in me to learn to sew and she is going to teach me how.  I want to make window coverings and new cushions and who knows what else.  Ideas are flitting around my head like fast little moths.  They're very hard to catch.

But what I really wanted to write about tonight is the delectable, kitschy booklet goodness that came with the stainless steel cookware and the sewing machine.  Gosh, I love the 60's.  And my mother for being so organized that she still had all of the paperwork to go with these things.  Check it out.

"What's new for tomorrow is at SINGER today!"

And on the back we have the "exciting" portable stereo (play your records on the beach!), the portable typewriter, the portable TV (I bet all the cruisers had these in the 60's - looks like it could even double as an anchor), and the portable phonograph (I didn't even realize they still made those in the 60's.  Where's the big tuba piece?)

And then there is the cookware.  I am so thrilled to finally have cookware that will allow me to prepare a gourmet meal in my evening gown.  And thanks mom for your labeling skills that let me know this is a booklet for the cookware and not a guide to being a Vanna White trainee.

This cookware is going to be such a help when I am having a party and preparing for the beau monde (aka the hoity toities) such delicacies as prune whip...

prune custard pie....

And, of course, the always delightful cabbage, pineapple and marshmallow salad.

All kidding aside, all of this begs the question, what were you people trying to do to each other in the 60's?  The only reason I can imagine preparing any of these delicacies for a soiree is if I really, really, deeply detested everybody that was going to attend.  Or if I wanted to help them maintain regularity.


It also makes me wonder what we will be making fun of 40 years from now.  How are those cool iPod commercials going to look to the youth of 2050?