Moms "busy" 70's kitchen

[petek]

I finally found a kitchen picture from the day.   Our old double wide Moffat and on the counter the Toshiba 500 microwave I bought her in 75.  Oy... the decor   LOL   After my dad died she had the kitchen redone with new white cabinets, counters,  new flooring etc. 

 

[tolivac]

Yes,70's alright-notice the microwave!Is there a food processor in there somewhere-another mark of a 70's kitchen along with LOUD,metallic wallpaper!

 

[stan]

Hope she

kept the stove!
The dead give away (1970s) is the light shade over the table.

 

[foraloysius]

Great picture Pete! I've seen much busier kitchens, I wish I had a picture of my parent's 70's kitchen...

That Moffat stove is absolutely gorgeous! I found a similar one:

http://www.instappraisal.com/appraisal/1949-moffat-stove

Looks very similar to your mother's. What a beauty!

 

[tomturbomatic]

The electric kettle, a dead giveaway of a Canadian kitchen. The GE electric kettles sold in the US were Canadian made. In the very early 70s, we did not carry them, but visiting staff at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and Emory University came into the store asking for them so we started carrying them.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I grew up in a development that went up in the late 60's. The wooden post/dowels as a room divider is another dead giveaway as to the era.

Electric kettles apparently are/were also a staple in Irish kitchens. Interesting tidbit: I've talked with a number of women from Ireland (who'd be in their 90's if they're still with us). Apparently ALL electric kettles they'd ever used had automatically shut-off once the water had boiled. Here in the U.S. they encountered kettles that did not. A number of kettles were boiled dry and/or ruined from overheating. AFAIK no fires ever occurred as a result; luck of the Irish, indeed.

Jim

 

[countryguy]

My mom had a GE electric kettle sitting on the stove top as well. She would use it to boil water for making coffee in the stove top pot....put the coffee grounds in the bottom of the pot, pour in the boiling water and then place on the element to boil for a few minutes. Even after my sister and I bought her a Philips drip coffee maker she still made coffee the old way unless company came over...then she would use the drip coffee maker.

 

[turquoisedude]

Ah, the epitome of Canadian kitchens!  A plug-in kettle, a Moffat range, and a Moulinex food processor.  No portable Eaton Viking dishwasher though... LOL 

 

[foraloysius]

Very sharp observation Paul, I had missed the Moulinex.

 

[turquoisedude]

I guess they were popular in Canada Louis!  I had one just like it for years.  

 

[rpms]

Look at how long the cord is on that kettle! No safety hazard there.

 

[vacbear58]

I had one like it for years

Wow, that was well observed, I had to take the picture up a long way to see that. I had one of those processors too, bought sometime around 1983 it gave great service till around 1997 or so. As I observed on an item in my current Shoppers Square thread, it was the only processor I knew of that could whip eggs or cream with any sort of decent result
Al

 

[petek]

I'm not sure what happened to the Moulinex fp. Perhaps my sister or niece took it when mom moved out.. I have the same one since new and it still works . Surprisingly they were made in America, not France, and sold in the states as Le Machine.  When she had the kitchen redone with new cabinets those spindles were gone, thankfully, but she insisted those yellow tiles behind the sink remain because my dad had put them on.. The Moffat went as well because she worried that if it broke she could no longer get it fixed or a new one since they don't really sell much anymore, plus a new buyer would be left with a big gap between the counter and a regular sized stove. 

 

[a440]

Great Picture!  Do you remember why this picture was taken?  Was it to show off the new Microwave?

Love the range!  Beautiful!

Is that the exhaust fan in the ceiling to the left of the picture? 

 

 

[petek]

Not sure why it was taken.. and yes that's an original Pryne (sp) exhaust fan in the ceiling. It has a variable speed switch on the wall. There was a Homart one in the 1/2 bath down the hall

 

[Marky_Mark]

Kettles

Although some people in the UK now have the Insinkerator hot water tap, a "cordless" electric kettle (i.e. the "docking station" is plugged in) is found in virtually every kitchen in the UK for conveniently and quickly boiling water for tea, French press and instant coffee and to pour into a pan for cooking pasta etc.  They are usually 3 kW.  They are also sold here in Spain but very few people have one.

 

In the USA electric kettles are normally only 1.5 kW as they are designed for 120V 15A circuits.  So they are quite slow and hardly worth bothering with.  Although I had to have one in the USA for guests visiting from the UK as they would be lost without one if they drink tea.  But they often commented how slow it was.  If people even have a tea kettle in the USA, it will probably be the type that goes on the cooktop.   Are electric kettles common in Canada these days?

 

I have both types, mainly for guests visiting from the UK.  As I have induction, the old-fashioned one is actually faster.  But as some guests have trouble figuring out how to operate the cooktop, I have an electric one too!

[this post was last edited: 2/9/2016-07:10]

 

[countryguy]

I don't know how common electric kettles are but everyone that I know has one.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I have two electric kettles. The GE from the 70s/80s is round and just brings water to the boil and keeps going. I found an older GE that is oval is shape and has a vapor switch which allows a setting for Constant Full Boil or one that shuts down to a simmer once the boil is reached.

I use a Revere Ware Designer's Group 2qt kettle on the 3KW induction unit for my water boiling now.

 

[petek]

Pretty much everyone had an electric kettle when I was growing up. It was rare to see a stove top kettle and even less so a stove top percolator . I do recollect that one of the kettles we had had a steam or vaporizer setting, it was a Sunbeam I think.  My mom drank gallons of tea per day and we as small kids would always have a couple of cups a day. We went thru a few of them.  Dad made coffee on the weekends. We had a GE automatic perc and I still have it.  It's been years since I've drank a cup of tea. I pretty much gave it up when I moved out of the house and became a coffee drinker  

 

[philr]

That's a nice fridge too!

 

No pictures showing the front of it?! 

 

[petek]

The fridge was a Maytag frost free I believe. I never actually lived in that house (when they bought it)  since they moved there  about a year or so after I moved out on my own. We had a single door GE auto defrost prior with those revolving shelves which became the basement fridge. I found a letter dad wrote to Maytag complaining about the noise it made and I also remember him telling me about it, like why couldn't they make it quieter.. He was very particular about things like that.. I didn't find it noisy at all. just the hum pretty much all frost free's make. Their reply was that it was normal and that it was so well built that foods would stay fresher longer blah blah blah..  I'm pretty sure I kept the letter but where it is among the hundreds of other things mom never threw out.. It will show up one day and I'll post it.   

 

[philr]

The fridge in that picture is a Frigidaire from the mid-1960s. Hard to see the exact model in that picture, looks like an Imperial 14 cu-ft.

 

In the US, this style was made from 1963 to 1965, in Canada, they were made much longer. If you find another shot on which we see the handles or the door trim better, I could be more precise.

 

Unlike the US models, they didn't all have the Frigidaire rotary compressors, some also had the Tecumseh AE.

 

Some of those with the different types of Frigidaire compressors are noisy, the Tecumseh had a different sound, not so noisy.. The thin chrome trim on the side looks like from a 1965 or later model (the 2nd picture shows the larger chrome trim on the edge of the 1963 cabinet). 

 

Pictures 1-2 show a 1963,

picture 3 shows a 1964,

picture 4 shows a 1965,

pictures 5-6-7 show a 1966.

 

[delaneymeegan]

Instant Hot water in the U.S., I use Sunbeam "hot shot" counter top dispenser. I get boiling water, great for hot cocoa, in about a minute.

 

[ovrphil]

The flowered enamel cookware on the fridge

Reminds me of a 70's Sanko Ware pot I bought recently...looks very similar if it's not actually Sanko ware.