From the category archives:

1966+

Country kitchen in the back woods

by Rena

old country kitchen.

Old country kitchens still exist in the backwoods throughout the United States. Notice the wood-burning Atlantic stove, made in Portland, Maine circa 1920 with the attached hot-water heater.

Flickr Kitchen Scene

by Rena

Flickr has some great kitchen photos…I’ve sorted through to find the best kitchen scenes. Right click on link to “Open in New Window.”

Vintage Reinactments

Good Old Days

Tradition Lives On…

1950s Pre-Fab Diners

by Rena

Valentine Diners were made of metal and manufactured
in Kansas. On their website you’ll discover the history
of these pre-fabricated metal lunchrooms and diners —
even including the White Castle buildings.

For a closer look at the early fast-food industry
visit the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka.

Modern Cereal

by Rena

Some of the processed items it would be great to duplicate from scratch are:

  • blue corn taco chips
  • flour
  • corn flakes, or similar flaked cereals

The first two require a common household mill. But corn flakes? How do the cereal companies make flaked cereal? Flaked cereal has been around since milling machines have been around, and earlier when done by hand. But they make small flattened grains–oatmeal, for example. Here is a site that inspired me to try to obtain an Italian oat rolling mill or flaking machine by the name of Marcato. And the following pictures are of an antique Roller Mill in the process of making flaked wheat from hulled wheat, similar to the household Marcato.

But what we’re looking to make at home are large crispy flakes, such as corn flakes. In 1894 Kellogg invented a recipe of boiled grain in paste form, which was then dried and roasted. In 1906 malt was added as a sweetener which began their commercial success with corn flakes.

Now all major cereal companies make an adaptation of the corn flake and we found one of the machine suppliers for making them:

Baker Perkins is one of the companies that manufacturers the machines that make corn flakes and extruded cereals.

A bakeryandsnacks.com article mentioned that the flaking process consists of converting “grains or extruded pellets” into flakes ready for toasting. And Baker Perkins mentions “wheat and bran flakes [use] the traditional steam cooking process…” and “Other units can be added later to extend the product range to include corn, multigrain and frosted flakes…and…extruded cereals such as corn balls, multigrain rings, alphabet shapes, and cocoa balls can be extended, through additional units ”

Sounds like fun! Let’s write to them and ask them to make a small version for the home kitchen! Or tell your inventor friends. : )

Baker Perkins cereal machine manufacturer: Follow-up

On September 6 [2009] I emailed Baker Perkins using the form on their website and asked them if they knew where I could get their cereal-flaking and extruding machine for home use. A long shot, but who knows?

As of December 7, 2009 I haven’t received a reply, so at this point I’m not expecting a reply.

Vintage Instructions for Making Corn Flakes

I bumped into a few more hints about the making of corn flakes.

Corn flakes are manufactured by passing corn, after the removal of the hull and the germ, between hot rolls. The corn before going to the rolls is cooked so that the starch is gelatinized. The pressure of the rolls is sufficient to flatten out the corn into flakes and the heat of the rolls dries them. The flakes turned out for use in doughs for the baker are so treated that none of the starch is converted into yellow dextrine, nor is any color produced in any other way, the product being pure white. A similarly prepared flake, which has practically been toasted, is sold widely for use as a breakfast food, but on account of its color and characteristics cannot be used for bread-making. — Baking Materials Part Three, 1923, Siebel Institute of Technology.

40 Natural Foods Cook Books

by Rena

see list of 40 books

Sold

with FREE shipping to
PayPal-verified address

I read in an industry book that the cosmetic industry had a ten year plan in the 1960s to lessen expensive pigments contained in face make-up. To sell the consumer to want more water in the bottles of make-up instead of the more expensive “pancake” pigments took companies 10 years of selling “the natural look” — but it worked. It worked so well that some women in the 1970s completely stopped purchasing make-up…what to do? It proably took another 10 years of marketing to bring the bottled color back. Remember how strange it looked in the 1980s when magazines were bringing color back to the faces?

My point? I’m wondering where the Natural Foods Movement got its running start, that’s all. The result? We eat less meat, more soybeans (tofu, etc)… and perhaps we spend time eating healthier foods, granted. I don’t know why I’m adamant about feeling as if we’ve been flim-flammed somewhere…but I keep thinking there was something parallel to the “10-year plan” as in the cosmetic example, above, during the 1960s-1970s, and then the adjustment in the 1980s! Maybe it is because I distrust genetically-modified [GMO] company-patented inorganic soybeans which make up the bulk of the tofu and soy products, unless the soy was grown organically– without pesticides. It is out of the scope of this little article to question the big picture of GMOs—let’s just say I prefer to avoid genetically modified foods, but it is getting difficult to discern.

We all know there were health-food movements in the 1800s and in the early 1900s. We have one book on health-promoting vegetarian recipes from 1855, and then of course Kellogg’s corn flakes originated at a health sanitorium in the 1890s. Mrs Kellogg wrote a cook book with similar recipes. Some Victorian food writers railed against pie doughs being indigestable, or non-scientific cooking, or general stuffing of oneself until the food sits in the stomach rotting and undigested–then blaming it on the food itself and not the stuffer. : ) Victorians were also concerned about adulterated foods such as sawdust, etc. that dishonest suppliers would put in ground foods such as spices, or poisonous colors to deceive the eye into thinking food was fresh.

The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] began looking into problems of chemical preservatives in foods as early as 1862. In 1874 the adulteration of milk with water and chemicals was discussed by the FDA, along with experiments on the effects of arsenic and copper pesticides on plants and the possibility of harm to humans. So the insistance on what is now called Natural Foods didn’t originate with the 1960s counter-culture. It’s been around.

Here is the list of the 40 Natural Foods Cookbooks offered for sale, shown in the above video. All the books cost $104.00 plus shipping, but we will sell you the lot of them for $ 90.00 with FREE shipping within the USA to your PayPal-verified address.