Found this recipe in a 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal and it sounds delightfully simple.

Years ago, my mother told me stories about her mom, and what a wonderful cook she was. Mom said that Flossie could open up the old behemoth of a cast-iron stove, stick her hand into the large oven and gage the approximate temperature. This recipe (below) is a throw-back to those days, when you had to guess the temperature of your oven and stove top.

An interesting aside, these old cast-iron stoves - typically fueld by wood or coal - were about 2% efficient. In other words, about 98% of the heat went in places you did not want it to go (such as the room). There were stories in these old Ladies’ Home Journals about women passing out from the extreme heat in the kitchen. Lack of oxygen was also a problem and caused many women to faint.

That’s why older homes (such as my 1924 Colonial Revival) have kitchens that are set back from the rest of the house, within an “L” toward the back of the home. Doing so enables a kitchen to have ventilation on three sides. My kitchen has five windows - three over the sink, two on a side wall and then the third wall had a large screened-in door. Less chance of fainting that way!

The number one rule: Keep the cook (aka wife) alive and well!

Here’s the recipe. Happy heating and cooking and eating!

An original recipe from a 1903 Ladies' Home Journal

Dissolve 1 lb sugar in 1/4 cup water. boil until it forms a ball when dropped in cold water.

Stand a minute. Rub portions against side of pan, quickly stir in bulk until milky.

Mix in quickly pint Dunhams’ Cocoanut.

Make into bars and stand.

I’ve read lots of books on internet dating and none of them talked about paying attention to subtle clues. I’ve read that 70% of language is non-verbal. In other words, 70% of our communication comes from paying attention to subtle clues and body language.

During my five years in the dating world, I learned several interesting techniques for learning more about that potential someone. One of those tips is ridiculously simple:  Always ask for directions.

When making a plan as to where to meet you date, always ask for directions. I don’t care if you know the city like the back of your hand, go ahead and ask for directions. The landmarks people use will usually tell you something about where their true interests lie.

I first noticed this years ago when I asked a chubby elder gent for directions to a church.

“As you’re headed down Main Street,” he told me, “you’ll pass a large donut shop with a big pink sign. Keep going. When you get to Brown Street, there’s a little pastry shop on the corner. Turn right. Go a little further and you’ll see Benny’s Bakery and the church is right beyond that.”

I’ve tried this many times and it’s always a winner. Some men use taverns as landmarks, a few use churches and my favorite was the fellow who mentioned a topless bar and a triple-x bookstore as his two points of reference.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that tell you everything you need to know.

To learn more about Rose’s book, click here:

I had not intended to bring a puppy home that day. My daughter Corey and I had gone out to Ahoskie, North Carolina  “just to look.” And then I saw her. She was far too cute to be real. I’m such a sap for puppies and this was one of the cutest living things I’d ever seen.

Theodora Duncan Doughnuts (”Teddy” for short) made the 90 minute trip back home with only three incidents of puppy puking. By then, I suspect she was done. I had never known that one little tiny puppy could hold so much kibble in her little tummy.

My daughter Corey went along for the ride and ended up being the one who held the puppy for the long journey home. That Christmas, Teddy was the happy recipient of about a dozen presents. And she chose to play with a cardboard tube instead. Just like a kid.

Teddy at Christmastime

Teddy and her new father

And you thought Warner Brothers was just a Hollywood Name. So did I, until I stumbled across this advertisement in a 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal. The advertisement boasts that their $5 corsets are “rust-proof.” I’m not sure what corsets were made of but apparently there’s some steel involved in their manufacture. And it seems to me that if a lady were given to perspiration, she could develop a serious rust problem.

Wait, I said that wrong. Let’s see. Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies “glow.” Okay, so if a lady “glowed” she could have a serious problem with her corset rusting. Unless of course, she had one of Warner Brothers’ Rust Proof Corsets.

I wonder if the corset makers sued when the movie makers got famous?

As of 1903, Warner Brothers offered ladies a "rust-free corset."

I purchased this picture on eBay for $3.00 many years ago. What a thrill to find an original picture of a Sears Home from the 1910s!

This house came out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and was shipped in 30,000 pieces.

The house was shipped by railroad and after the boxcar arrived it was moved over to a siding. You then had 24 hours to unload all those pieces of house!  Typically, it took many trips to and from the train station to get the boxcar unloaded and that’s why Sears Homes are often found within 1-2 miles of railroad tracks.  Each piece of lumber was stamped with a letter and numbers to facilitate assembly (see image at bottom of screen).

A 75-page leather-bound instruction book, with the homeowner’s name embossed in gold on the cover, gave precise directions on the proper placement of those 30,000 pieces of house. The book offered this somber (and probably wise) warning:  “Do not take anyone’s advice as to how this building should be assembled.”

In 1908, Sears estimated that a carpenter would charge $450.00 to erect your spacious two-story foursquare, with its hipped roof and a lone shed dormer in the attic. However, Sears also promised that a man with an elementary understanding of construction techniques would be able to assemble the house.

According to their calculations, a painter would want $34.50 to paint the two-story house.  The plasterer’s bill would be around $200, they figured, which included nailing up 840 square yards of wooden lath and applying three coats of plaster.

Masonry (block, brick, cement) and plaster were not included in the kit, but the Bill of Materials List advised that 1300 cement blocks would be needed for the basement walls and foundation.

The salutary effects of living in a modern home were extolled throughout the pages of the Sears catalogs. Beyond the financial freedom and comfort in old age that owning a Sears home would surely bring, Sears promised that their modern homes would improve the health, morals and well-being of its occupants.

The term “Modern Home” was part of the vernacular in the early 1900s. It was a descriptive term indicating that a house had modern amenities (that we take for granted today), such as a primitive, centralized heating system, electricity and indoor plumbing. In some cases, the houses were more modern than the communities in which they were built.

An original photo of a Sears House from about 1912 or so

Here's the catalog page from a 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Picture of marked lumber from a Sears House. The mark is usually found about 2-8" from the end of the beam and is often in black ink. The "D" represented that this was a 2x8, C for a 2x6 and B for a 2x4. This mark, together with that 75-page instruction book facilitated construction.

To buy an autographed copy of  The Houses That Sears Built, click here. It makes the perfect Christmas present!

Did I mention that it makes the perfect Christmas present?

From 1908-1940, Sears sold houses by mail order. These 30,000-piece kits came with a 75-page instruction book that told the wanna-be homeowner how to put it all together. Sears promised that a “man of average abilities” could have it 100% complete in 90 days. Sears offered 370 designs, including foursquares, cape cods, neo-tudors, trailing edge Victorians, Colonials and more.

The specialty catalogs  - devoted to “Modern Homes” - averaged about 100 pages with the peak being 1924, when the catalog hit 140 pages, with 100 designs.  These “Sears Modern Homes” catalogs can now be found on eBay for a variety of prices.

And these really were modern homes. Think about this. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her “Little House” books describing life on the plains in the 1870s and 1880s. She talked about living in a soddie - a house made with dirt blocks - and waking up to find frost on her comforter.

At the turn of the 20th Century, American architecture evolved very quickly. We went from living in tiny cabins and soddies (sans lights, central heat and indoor plumbing) to these sweet little bungalows with three bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a kitchen - wired for electricity!

Sears Osborne, catalog image from 1924

In fact, sometimes these mail-order homes were more modern than the communities in which they were sold.

And that’s why the plumbing and electrical fixtures were NOT part of the kit home, but were purchased separately. If electrical service and municipal water systems were not available in your community, you wouldn’t need to spend money on the plumbing and electrical supplies!

In the back pages of the Sears Modern Homes catalogs, this little jewel was offered:

And it has two seats - for more family fun in the outhouse!!

The Sears Modern Homes department closed their doors in 1940. During a corporate house-cleaning after WW2, all sales records, blueprints, ephemera and other items were destroyed. The only way to find these 75,000 kit homes today is literally, one by one.

To learn more, buy Rose’s book, The Houses That Sears Built.

When my 26-year-old daughter called to tell me that she’d made the decision to donate one of her kidneys to her best friend, Kaycee, I was not a happy woman. In fact, I was against it - wholeheartedly, or in this case,  whole-kidneyedly.

A few days later, I talked with her father and he made a valid point.

“Rose,” he told me, “the odds of those two girls being a match are one in a million. Don’t worry about this. Chances are good that once she’s tested, it’ll all end right there.”

Several weeks later, there was another phone call from Crystal.

“Mom, please understand,” she pleaded. “There’s a good chance Kaycee will die if she doesn’t get a kidney within the next year or two. She’s 24 years old and has already been on dialysis for 18 months. This is something I have to do. Tell me that you’ll support me in this.”

And then I sighed a motherly sigh and promised her that I’d try to grow into a supportive parent.

A few weeks passed when the next phone call came. “Mom, we’re a match. The doctors are stunned. They say that we’re as good a match as if we were siblings. I told Kaycee that there’s a reason that we always felt like sisters. I knew we’d be a perfect match. I just knew it.”

The surgery was scheduled for April 23, 2007. I told Crystal that I’d fly to Peoria, Illinois for the surgery. I was still not happy about this but I knew I had to do the right thing for my little girl.  My sweet little girl.

Less than five weeks earlier, I’d remarried and now I asked my new husband to fly with me. I couldn’t imagine doing this alone.

Continued at Kidney-shaped Hearts, Part II

Crystal (on the far left) with her sister Anna, Grandma Betty and cousin Laurel (1985)

continued from part I

My new husband and I arrived in Peoria the day before the surgery and spent some time with both girls. I needed to meet this Kaycee person. Despite my best “thy will be done” prayers, I still felt resentful toward Kaycee. I asked God again and again to open my heart and let Kaycee in..

Kaycee was a soft-spoken, sweet girl with freckles, fair skin and red hair. The moment I laid eyes on her, I felt an outpouring of maternal love that could only have its source in the divine. Crystal took me aside and said, “A few weeks ago, Kaycee told me she couldn’t go through with this. She said that it was better for her to pass on than to take a kidney from her best friend. I told her that I wanted to do this.”

Crystal also told me a little about Kaycee’s background. She received her first transplant when she was two years old. That kidney (from her mother), had lasted almost 20 years. Since then, she’d been on massive amounts of drugs and had already endured countless hospitalizations and surgeries. A few years earlier, Kaycee’s father, who’d been a touchstone throughout her difficult childhood, had died suddenly. And now Kaycee was in dialysis three times a week, three hours per treatment. It was after Crystal accompanied Kaycee to dialysis that she realized this was no way for a young woman to live. In additional to the physical and emotional strain, there was a financial strain, too. Twenty-four-year-old Kaycee was more than $100,000 in debt, due to the incredibly expensive dialysis treatment.

At one point during the five-hour surgery, Kaycee’s strong and stalwart mother stepped into a corner of the waiting room and sobbed uncontrollably. I felt a wave of compassion for this woman. How blessed I’d been to have had three healthy girls. How short-sighted and small-minded I’d been to rail against this procedure.

Continued at Kidney-shaped Hearts, Part III

Kasee (left) and Crystal (right)