1942 Holiday Dinner Menu

Here's another vintage Christmas or holiday dinner menu. This one is from Good Housekeeping Cookbook, published 1942.

Old English Spiced Cider (served in living room) 

Roast Turkey with Giblet Gravy

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Glazed Small Onions

Buttered Green Beans

Canned Cranberry Sauce

Celery and Carrot Sticks

Mince-Apple Pie, with Fluffy Cream Cheese

or

Stuffed Dates and Spiced Brazil-Nut Chips

Coffee

The menu linked to a couple of recipes in the cookbook. The Old English Spiced Cider is a heated apple cider with allspice, cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

The mince-apple pie is a two-crust pie with part thin sliced apples and part mincemeat filling.

The Spiced Brazil-Nut Chips sound similar to my recipe for spiced mixed nuts. I'll include the Good Housekeeping recipe at the bottom of this post.

There was no recipe or menu listing for the stuffing for the turkey. It must have been assumed that one would stuff the turkey with bread crumbs. It also must have been assumed one would know what to add to the bread crumbs for a stuffing. See the advice below.

What was also interesting was the helpful advice for preparing this menu. 

"Day Before: Make dessert. Whip cream cheese with cream; prepare relishes. Cook and grind giblets for gravy. Make spiced cider. Refrigerate all. Prepare crumbs for stuffing

The day: Make stuffing; stuff turkey. Plan so turkey is done 20 min. Before serving. Put potatoes in oven about 1 hour before dinner. Prepare onions and beans. Start cooking onions 1/2 hr. before dinner, green beans 20 min. before. Reheat cider. Place pie in oven with heat turned off to warm up during dinner."

The menu is actually very appealing in its relative simplicity. The vegetable side dishes sound much less complicated than many of the holiday side dish recipes that circulate today. I may use some of these suggestions in my own Christmas Day dinner this year, such as the plain, buttered green beans and baked sweet potatoes.

Here's the recipe for the Spiced Brazil-Nut Chips.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a well-greased sheet of brown paper. Alternatively, a greased sheet of parchment, a silicone liner, or a buttered sheet of foil.

1. 12/ teaspoons water

1 egg white

2 cups blanched, shelled Brazil nuts

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat the water and egg white together. Halve the Brazil nuts lengthwise and roll in egg white a few at a time, coating well. Then roll these in a mixture of the sugar and cinnamon. Arrange on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until golden. Yields about 2 cups.

Frugal This and That

We're in another expensive period. So I thought I'd focus on areas that we are able to save. I can't help that the oven element burned out and the washing machine needs another part. But there are some frugal things that I can do in other areas. So here's where we've been frugal lately.

• I made a quart and a half of eggnog yesterday afternoon, giving away a pint to my son and daughter-in-law.
• I continue to bake cookies for the baking gifts that I'll be giving this Christmas. So far I've made gingerbread men, peppermint swirls, chocolate chip meringues, and today I baked caramel nut bars. Next up, I'll bake some shortbread, using the mold that my daughters gave to me for Christmas last year. Even with the high cost of butter and eggs this year, home-baked goodies are still a budget gift when you know the recipient will enjoy them. (We have several non-bakers in our circle who always appreciate these goodies.)
• We finally had the salvage yard come and tow away our old, old car. It hasn't run for many, many years. Repair work would have been cost-prohibitive. We hung onto it I guess out of nostalgia. The car belonged to my in-laws. My father-in-law passed away in 2019. Even as the car got older, FIL and MIL continued to think of it as the beauty it once was. So we never got rid of  it while they were alive. Then 2020 happened and many of our plans never materialized. We are finally now getting rid of it. And we got paid to have it hauled off! (For anyone wondering, yes, we did try to sell it. No takers.)
• I washed all of the plastic bags and used cling wrap today. I had gotten behind on this task and noticed we were using more and more new cling wrap. Washing the dirty bags means we'll go through less new wrap in the future and delay the purchase of a new roll.
• I baked 3 loaves of sandwich bread to get us through the week.
• I used ChatGPT to give me some suggestions on movies to watch when I was under the weather. I was able to stream several good titles for free and keep myself entertained during those days.
• I moved the "farm" indoors for winter. I brought 3 of the large plastic containers that I started with seeds in late summer into the kitchen and put them under lights. I have 2 radish tubs and 1 watercress tub. Outdoors I still have 1 more each radish and watercress tub. When we finish harvesting everything in these indoor three, I'll move those two inside. I'm hoping to collect seeds from the watercress. They had flowered while outside and are forming seed pods. If I'd left the container outside for very much longer, there's a good chance the seed pods would become moldy from the cold rains. In addition to these indoor greens under lights, I'm growing lentil sprouts on the counter once again. Between the watercress, radish, and sprouts, I can make a decent salad for myself to go with lunch everyday. Sometime in January I'll take a 6 week break from growing veggies.
• I skipped grocery shopping last week and have been making do with what we have on hand.
• I did go get gas for the car and used a 50 cent per gallon reward. I waited until the car was nearly empty so I would get maximum value out of that per gallon reward.
• My husband is repairing the washing machine and the oven himself. That right there is a savings of a couple of hundred dollars for the service call.
• We've eaten all of our meals at or at least from home this month. Both daughters and my husband take their lunches made at home to work. 
• I cleaned out the fridge last week so I could make sure we used everything up before it spoiled, using some beef fat, beef gravy, pumpkin stock, slice of avocado, wilted celery, softening potatoes, wrinkly apples, and eggs well past their expiry.
• We continue to keep the thermostat for the furnace set fairly low, about 65 degrees during the day and 60 at night.

That's about all I can think of right now. How do you handle those unexpected expenses when they just keep coming your way? Does it help you to focus on areas that you have more control?