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No. 217: COLLECT Jeanne in the the late 1930’s or early 40’s.

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No. 216: COLLECT My great-grandmother Marion French Gray and my grandmother Jeanne Hope Gray photographed most likely near their country house in Michigan during the 1940s.

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
- Leo Tolstoy from Family Happiness

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No. 188: VIEW San Francisco’s Hotel St. Francis Luncheon Specialties menu from 1918. Among the dishes listed are mutton chops, Virginia ham, porterhouse steak, sliced tongue, filet mignon, frogs’ legs, succotash, a variety of relishes, green turtle soup, and pumpkin pie.

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No. 182: VIEW Vintage 1910 copy of the L’Art Culinaire by chef Victor Hirtzler on display at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. 

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No. 177 VIEW Vintage copy of the Hotel St. Francis Cookbook by chef Victor Hirtzler on display at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. It was published in 1919 and is an update of L’Art Culinaire.

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No. 170: VIEW Vintage sled on an outside wall of a 19th century home near Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.

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No. 162: COLLECT Vintage found photograph. It is part of a collection inspired by the 2007 photo exhibition Stereotypes vs. Humantypes: Images of Blacks in the 19th and 20th Centuries at the Schomberg Center for Black Research in New York City.

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No. 158: COLLECT A receipt listing sheet music purchased by Miss Ann Calloway French  around 1855 in Kentucky. Song titles include Boy of Dublin, I’m Not Myself at All and France Ever Glorious. The sheet music was most likely organized into a bound personalized music book and organized into categories such as waltzes, marches, and sentimental songs.

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No. 153: COLLECT Vintage found photograph. This image is part of a collection inspired by the 2007 photo exhibition Stereotypes vs. Humantypes: Images of Blacks in the 19th and 20th Centuries at the Schomberg Center for Black Research in New York City.

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No. 152: COOK Gingerbread cookie recipe from the 1905 book A Little Cookbook for a Little Girl by Caroline French Benton, just in time for the holidays.

As a kid, I loved making a variety of Christmas cookies and even took a gingerbread making class.  This year I looked through several vintage gingerbread recipes and decided on Benton’s because it’s simple and playful style looks at cooking through the eyes of a young girl. Using this recipe was the perfect way look back on the days spent baking in my kitchen during my childhood.

Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoonful ginger
• 1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves
• 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water
• flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon

Instructions

Melt the molasses and butter together on the stove, and then take the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe, and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin, and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the bottom of four shallow pans, lift the cookies with the cake-turner and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and sprinkle the tops with sugar.