10 minute vintage breakfast

[pdub]

Brian,

Fantastic pictures (as always). It's always fun to see your family in action too. You've got some great kids there.

Your kitchen and appliances look beautiful.

take care, Patrick

 

[mixfinder]

Let the SonShine IN

The modern kitchen doesn't sparkle and gleam like the chrome laden 50's used to. Having children learn by doing, even if its slower and sometimes messier, is a pay off is well worth the investment. I only have four, so you are having twice the fun with eight. No matter how difficult the moment, you will find you can always keep talking, when your children know and trust you. Some faith, prayer and believing makes it sweeter still. Imagine how much help you'll have when they become teenagers.
Kelly

 

[gansky1]

I love breakfast done Vintage Style!

How fun! This reminds me of Terry and I cooking with my Sunbeam electric skillet, automatic toaster, Coffeemaster, the 70's Vita-Mix and Westinghouse griddle all around one of the vintage ranges I've had over the years! Of course, we weren't cooking for quite as many, I don't know how anyone could have slept through the wonderful smells coming from your kitchen!

 

[paulg]

Very cute

Very cute breakfast story. The prayers by the table are adorable.
Those kids will be left with great mealtime memories that they will carry for a long, long time.

 

[tlee618]

We sure have had some great times in the kitchen cooking together Greg, those vintage appliances make it so much fun. It seems to me that cooking is always more fun when you are doing it with and for those you care about.

 

[exploder3211]

Hey Great Pics!

 

[pushtorelease]

Brian, at a reno I was working on, I found this Mixette recipe book and manual. It's been hanging on the fridge since then,only because the housewife is just SO happy. If you don't have one, I can send it to you if you'd like. I mean really, it SHOULD go to an actual Mixette owner.

 

[danemodsandy]

Nice to See...

Kids actually participating in a responsible, fun, polite manner, instead of going ballistic while the adults do all the work or provide everything for them.

There's not a video game, computer, iPod or TV anywhere in sight, and those kids appear to be having a blast.

You must be doing something right!

 

[frigilux]

I love to see kids in the kitchen. So many children think cooking begins and ends with a frozen plastic tray in the microwave. You're training a new generation of cooks---who will undoubtedly pass the tradition to their own kids. Bravo!

Excellent vintage equipment, too! I love the highly stylized look of vintage ranges, but I sheepishly admit it would take a LOT of convincing for me to give up the self-cleaning oven.

 

[scott55405]

Looks like a wonderful breakfast. I think I was through the pictures twice before I realized there were not one but two Mary Protor 4 slice toasters! If I could change one thing about my kitchen, it would be more plugs, more plugs, more plugs!! I only have one, and I can't do one of those six-things because the disposal switch is right next to it. :-( I manage, but it would be nice. Those bacon cookers are ingenious. Those should be made now!

Tom, I remember that skillet well. I knew it was Dutch something! I liked the GE's push to eject controls.

The best thing ever was to come out here and discover the Dishmaster was still made. We never had one, but I remember them well from my childhood. I'd be lost without it.

 

[danemodsandy]

Self-Cleaning Ovens

frigilux:

Self-cleaners have been around longer than many people realise- GE pioneered the feature on its 1963 lineup. It was called P-7 self cleaning. Soooo, there are really neat-looking 1960s vintage ranges around that have the feature. GE made white, coppertone, yellow, and turquoise in those years. There were 30" models, a 40" with one big P-7 oven on the right and a little conventional clean oven on the left side, and wall ovens. I've seen the wall ovens in stainless as well as colours. So, you could have both vintage and self-cleaning! I know what you mean about self-cleaning being necessary. I'm in a house with one of those damnable continuous-clean ovens that's built in. We haven't had turkey on Thanksgiving in three years, because no one can abide the smell of turkey fat hanging around in the oven, which cannot be cleaned with oven cleaner, due to its special coating. Grrrrh!

 

[danemodsandy]

P.S., Frigilux

The first few years that GE made P-7 self-cleaning, they did not put windows in the oven doors; they hadn't yet worked out how to keep the window from cracking from the heat of the cleaning cycle. Later, they added a little metal guard that slid into place to protect the window. But on early P-7's, you can't get a window, if that's important to you.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The early self cleaning ovens cleaned better than the new ones. GE had a mullion element around the front of the oven that not only kept the front of the liner hot, it also helped clean the door. Now without the front element and those big windows that cause so much heat loss, the front areas of the ovens do not clean so well. With my Americana, the upper oven panels are removable and can be stacked in the lower oven and cleaned when it is self cleaning. The same could be done with the panels from the narrow companion oven in the 40 inch ranges.

Sandy, you can run that continuous clean oven at 500 or as high as the thermostat allows when you can have the windows open and burn that grease out of the porcelain. Actually, if you rinse it very thoroughly after cleaning, you can even use oven cleaner on that liner. You have to use terry cloth so that you have texture for getting into the pores of the stuff and you have to use vinegar in the rinse water to completely neutralize the alkalinity from the cleaner, but you can have alternatives to not roasting a turkey. We used to tent the bird with foil when we roasted it in the oven and that cut way down on spatters. Then we started using the WH roaster oven and just put the whole inset pan in the lower rack of the KitchenAid. Of course, we made gravy in the inset pan and that cooked all of the good stuff off the pan and into the gravy. Once we got the gravy made and it was simmering, we lowered the Load and Lift Rack that held the turkey during roasting into the gravy and let the drippings that were stuck to it cook into the gravy.

Tonight we were in a restaurant and heard the people next to us mention gravy. The women said that they did not know how to make it from scratch, but one said that you used the grease from cooking meat so it was mostly grease and salt. If something ever happens and these people who don't know much or any of the domestic arts find themselves on their own, they will be desperate for help. If they don't know how to make gravy, they probably don't know how to make biscuits that don't come out of a tube or make a cake from scratch.

 

[northwesty]

Hi All

Thanks for the comments. Say, after growing up with a “new” oven I thought it was kinda neat how this one comes apart for pretty easy cleaning. Seems pretty easy.

Anyway, Washerboy, no this one doesn’t have a deep well, it has two ovens and the push buttons control the burners. It is a little complicated – the way the elements turned on and the timed-baked stuff - so after I got it I tracked down a manual right away.

Pete - Yes the dinette, crushed-ice pattern, is new. I had a 1947 red one but it was getting a little old looking, and they all seem to be about the same size – I looked for over a year on ebay. This one is custom – long for our long kitchen – and no seams – no leaf. Anyway I am not into “patina” – y’know everything has to sparkle like new.

Hi Kelly. Thanks again though for the record we do have five kids, not eight. Though the total number in the family is seven. We are trying to teach them chores, etc. I am afraid when I was young my 1950s “can-do” mom just did everything.

John, thanks for the mixette Manual, again I am looking forward to the recipes, etc. in it.

Here is the insides of the oven out. It's a cinch to clean

 

[northwesty]

By the way

Here is the hands-down favorite vintage appliance of the kids.

 

[rickr]

Great looking breakfast Brian. How fun! Love the table and range. I thought the table and chairs were mint vintage. Did not even notice the top was a solid one piece.

Thanks for sharing the pixs. Your children are cute! Am sure they will always have great memories of helping dad get breakfast on.

Rick

 

[oxydolfan1]

"...make a cake from scratch..."

You mean....by HAND????

(shudders)

 

[danemodsandy]

For Tomturbomatic

Tom:

Thanks for the cleaning tips. Scrubbing continuous-clean ovens with ammonia and a soft scrub brush also works (followed by vinegar, of course). My frotz is that it's much more work than either self-clean or conventional clean, meaning that I Just. Don't. Wanna. I very much agree that older self-cleaners worked better than some out there today. My mom had a 1974 or '75 Lady Kenmore 30" smooth-top that was the wonder cleaner of all time. No window in the door.

 

[tomturbomatic]

My older ovens that are primarily used for baking, not roasting or broiling, get thoroughly cleaned when I restore the stove to service. In most of them, I can place a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil on the bottom, under the bake element so that if something boils over, it is a snap to wipe up. The foil stays so much cooler than the porcelain oven floor that the few times that a pound cake has dripped over, I have had a delicious, delicately baked to a perfect golden color cross between a madeline and a cookie when I took the cakes out of the oven. A plastic spatula lifted the cookie from the foil and the little greasy spot was cleaned with a sudsy dish cloth when the oven had cooled a bit, so I do not have to clean my manual clean ovens very much. With a little wiping of spills after they happen, I don't have to use the self cleaning feature very much on the stove in the upstairs kitchen. Since that one has the magnetron under the oven floor with a Corning pie plate covering the antenna on the oven floor, I can't use foil on the bottom of that oven. The Pyroceram tray in the shelf where things are placed for any cooking by microwaves and heat catches most of the splatters and it goes into the dishwasher.

 

[danemodsandy]

Tom:

When I have a self-cleaner, my oven use is a bit different from yours. I don't do a whole lot of baking; I enjoy baking hams, roasting beef, roasting duck- all the spattery stuff, LOL.

It's wonderful to be able to set a cycle and flip the door latch and be done with it. I'm also okay with oven cleaner on a conventional oven if need be. I like a clean oven and I like the smell of roasting cleared out of the house.