This week, I decided to check a few of the old magazines I had picked up at auction to see if any were published around the Thanksgiving holidays. I wanted to see what articles, photos and other features they produced. I came across three.
Ladies’ Home Journal – November 1948
McCalls – November 1949
Saturday Evening Post – Nov. 25, 1950
In the women’s magazines, I went searching for the dinner choices for turkey day. Were they standard? Were there any dishes that defined the day back then?
The Journal had a nice double-page spread with the title “For That Certain Thursday,”with a menu and recipes by Ann Batchelder, the magazine’s food editor. Batchelder also wrote a cookbook “Ann Batchelder’s Own Cook Book” in 1941.
Menu (for 6):
Hot Vegetable Bouillion
Roast Turkey
Apple-and-Almond Stuffing
Gravy
Cranberry Sauce
Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Dates
Scalloped Onions and Green Peppers
Corn-Meal Yeast Rolls
Orange and Cabbage Slaw
Apricot-Pineapple Sponge
Golden Fruit Sauce
Coffee & Nut Bowl
Except for the Sponge, everything sounded vaguely familiar to me.
McCall’s had an interesting article titled “28 Days in November aren’t Thanksgiving,” offering dishes that can be made on “just any day.” They included Smoked Tongue with Gingersnap Sauce, Swiss Steak Platter, Stuffed Long Green Squash and Planked Barbecued Ham.
Smoked tongue? I don’t think so.
In the Saturday Evening Post was a lovely but dour poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay titled “Thanksgiving…1950,” with an illustration by Allen Saalburg. Millay, considered one of the country’s greatest poets, was a feminist and social activist and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1923. She had died the month before the poem was published. Saalburg, an artist and illustrator, was an art director on the 1936 controversial Biblical movie with black characters called “Green Pastures.”
The first verse of the poem was very foreboding:
“Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn,
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;
To sit at the bright feast, and with ruddy cheer
Give thanks for the harvest of a troubled year.”
It ended on a note of hope:
“From the apprehensive present, from a future packed
With unknown dangers, monstrous, terrible and new –
Let us turn for comfort to this simple fact:
We have been in trouble before … and we came through.”
By the way, I was at a friend’s house for Thanksgiving, and had a lovely meal with a loving family. The host had a centerpiece on her dining room table of pretty little clear glass vases topped with flowers, all different shapes, and she had set them in a wide curved dish. They reminded me of the small vintage glassware I see often at auction. She had found a nifty way to display hers in an amazing centerpiece. She’s one of those hosts who remembers the little things: small plastic containers for take-home food, clementines for healthy eating and environmentally friendly grocery bags to carry home the next day’s (make that the next three days’) meal.
