This is one of the gadgets that has allowed generations of infomercial hucksters to proclaim “It’s Just That Easy!”. I’m guessing they don’t tell the marks er, audience, that it first came out 70 years ago.
Onion Slicer Spares Housewife’s Tears
EQUIPPED with an airtight cover and a close-fitting plunger, the kitchen device shown at left enables a housewife to chop or slice onions without bringing the usual tears to her eyes. The plunger has four sharp cutting blades and can be used as vigorously as necessary, a wooden disc in the bottom serving as a chopping block.
Interesting quote:
“After being cut, the dough is carried on a canvas belt to the asbestos conveyor of the first oven.”
I wonder how many other food products used to be cooked on asbestos conveyor belts.
Tortillas Meet The Machine Age
By Jack B. Kemmerer
THE INDIANS of Mexico first made tortillas between 2000 and 1000 B.C., when most historians agree that corn originated in Guatemala and southern Mexico.
The ancient method of making tortillas by hand had never changed until recently. Now, the tortilla has met the machine age.
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By 1931 the hippies already had a strong foothold in California. Now all they had to do was wait…
Health Bread Made From Seaweed
BREAD made of kelp, or seaweed, was placed on sale recently in Ojai, California, a little town near the Pacific coast. Though wheat was on sale at as low a price as 25 cents per bushel, William Baker, who introduced the new bread, claims that his innovation is rapidly becoming popular because of its peculiar flavor.
It’s good to know there is more than one way to conquer a grapefruit.
Grapefruit Eaters Use Squirt Guard
At last someone has come to the rescue of grapefruit lovers by building a handy squirt guard. Invented in England, the hemisphere of celluloid clamps over a half grapefruit as a protection against stray juices.
Fun At The Dinner Table
SOUP serenades, spaghetti entanglements, corn-on-the-cob wrestling and other embarrassments at meal time may never be eliminated, but Russell Oakes, a Waukesha, Wis., business man, got so amused thinking they might be that he discovered a new hobby devising dizzy devices to put eating on a mechanical basis.
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Oh, this takes me back. I remember those trips my family used to take to our cabin in the woods. Before leaving mom would throw a roast beef and some potatoes into the good ole’ running board cooker and clamp that sucker closed. By the time we arrived, there would be a piping hot, carbon-monoxide infused, soot covered meal waiting just for us. I can still smell the sulfur wafting off my burnt motor oil drenched taters.
Auto Cooker Uses Exhaust Heat
THE drudgery has been taken out of picnics with a compact device that is attached to the automobile running board and which utilizes the waste heat from the engine for cooking. While driving to your favorite camping spot food may be baked, stewed or roasted without cost for fuel, loss of time or interference with the efficiency of the motor. The device cooks without water and therefore the edibles retain their natural juices and flavors. The cooker rests on an asbestos pad and is connected to the exhaust by a flexible pipe.
Finally, after countless lives lost and ruined, the Grapefruit wars are over.
Grapefruit Conquered at Last
AT LAST the grapefruit has heen conquered. The weapon employed in the conquest is an “umbrella spoon” shown at left, which automatically opens into a large shield when you gouge down into the meat of the fruit. When you raise the spoon to your mouth the shield closes.
There is something about this image that I find very disturbing.
SQUEEZE (not the girl, the container) and heated food put in by Mommy squirts onto spoon and is shoveled into baby’s mouth.
Of course when it is full that thing would weigh 175lbs.
Huge Kettle Affords Tea Room Customers Hot Stimulant
THERE is an old saying that an Englishman can’t do without his tea. The manufacture of this huge kettle shown at left seems to bear this out, for it was made for the purpose of being able to brew large quantities of tea to accommodate the hundreds of persons who drop in a prominent tea room in London at any time of the day or night and demand a stimulant. A study in contrast is afforded in the photo in which a young woman is pouring tea from the immense kettle into an average sized tea pot. Ordinarily she would not be able to lift it so easily, but the kettle is nearly empty. It has a capacity of approximately 20 gallons and weighs 15 pounds.
A long but very entertaining article detailing all of the latest in kitchen gadgetry. Among the marvels: infrared heat lamps, the microwave oven, a magnetically driven chocolate mixer, french fry and burger makers and a polisher that pummels your silverware with 1/8″ shot. The author also goes into all of the ways restaurants can increase their sales including allowing people to order through a microphone and speaker (because people like to hear themselves talk), good lighting and perfect consistency from day to day.
Overall it kind of sounds like a modern day McDonalds…
YOUR SNACK SHOP IS GOING HIGH-HAT
By James Joseph
AN OLD-HAND CHEF, venturing out of retirement, recently spent but an hour in a restaurant’s chromed and push-buttoned kitchen before turning in his white hat and apron for good.
“You don’t need a cook,” he snorted. “What you need is an electronics engineer!”
Like that old-timer, you have only to look behind (and under) the counter of your favorite hamburger place to eyewitness a revolution that’s both gastronomic and electronic:
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