Mid Century Housewife Day 4: Rainy Day Cupcakes and Realizations

Yesterday (Friday) was Day 4 of the being a vintage Housewife.

I had a very slow start to the day, as my stomach was KILLING me since I had my monthly visitor overnight.

I woke up super early because Honey had to be at work early. When she saw how miserable I was she let me sleep in. I tried to refuse but she wouldn't take no for an answer, bless her heart. So, there was no breakfast for Honey this morning. I'm lucky to have the partner that I have. I'm totally convinced that if we actually lived in the 50s and had kids, she would have still let me sleep in as well as got the kids breakfast and off to school. She's the best like that. 

After and extra hour of sleep I was finally able to pull myself out of bed and get some tea and pain killers. Thankfully, that did the trick to get me back on my feet. Then it was off to the supermarket.

I did the marketing, the daily dusting and cleaning of the house. Today was another thorough cleaning day so I cleaned the bedroom and living room. I spent the early part of the day changing bed linens, vacuuming, washing windows and scrubbing walls. This has been the only point since we've lived in this apartment that I thanked my lucky stars that it's small. I got through every thing relatively quickly considering how much I had to do. 

Time to check the list...

I was up to the point where I was supposed to start any long preparations for dinner, so that meant starting on dessert. I was still slightly annoyed by yesterday's disaster (which after googling what may have went wrong and reading comments from you guys, I came to the conclusion that I didn't cook the cream filling long enough. I've made tons of cream pies before but let this one slip through my fingers somehow. No worries, there will be a rematch. And I will be victorious!!!!!!!!! Dramatic much?? hehe) , so I was determined to make this work. I decided on Chocolate Cupcakes with Whipped Cream.

For the next 3 meals I will be using the 1946 edition of The Household Searchlight Recipe Book.

Here is the recipe. 

These were incredibly easy to make! YAY! The one square of chocolate, which may have been for rationing purposes, didn't sound like nearly enough to me so I added a few squares! A girl can never have too much chocolate!

Here they are fresh from the oven.

At first I couldn't pinpoint what looks funny about them, then it dawned on me...they look like muffins. I guess because the recipe didn't call for the use of paper cupcake liners. I looked it up, and there were no cupcake liners before WWII. Maybe the use of paper liners wasn't a  very common thing.

While the cupcakes cooled...and Givenchy eyed them from a few feet away, I took a nap. I was soooo tired alllll day. I guess it was due to that unwelcome visitor...

When I woke I started dinner. 

Dinner was a Hot Tamale Pie

This was also super easy to make and assemble. It just took making the corn-meal "mush" in one pan, and browning the meat and veggies in another. 

I used a lot of seasoning. After yesterday's unfortunate dinner I wanted this to at least be mostly tasty. I couldn't afford another weird look from Honey so soon after the first. I think she would seriously denounce this experiment if that happened.

Fresh out of the oven. Excuse my well- loved square pan.

It looks yummier than it sounds, huh?! Thank the Vintage goddesses above because it was yummy...REALLY yummy. It kind of tastes like Shepard's pie. Honey really liked it and went back for seconds, and thirds and even fourths!!!!

Dessert was also a home run. A small recipe in the back of the book said to remove the center of the cake and insert the sweetened whipping cream. I just sliced them and put the cream in the center, and dab on top. MMmmmmmm... Honey added sliced strawberries to hers. 

So, as you can see it was a quiet day. But I enjoyed the peacefulness of it all. At one point I knew I had been online WAY more than I should have been. That damned Facebook/Instagram addiction. I put the computer away and decided if I was going to make this a truly, mostly vintage experience I really need to cut back on it. I haven't been surfing the web or anything. Just compulsively checking my Facebook. So from now on I'm going to monitor how many photos go to Instagram and how much updating I do on Facebook.

 Then, the best thing happened.  As I was baking it started raining and I just listened to the rain as I baked. It was actually quite beautiful. Baking cupcakes during a breezy summer rain. No television, radio or internet to numb my senses.  It made me realize that even after this is all over I really need to slow down and listen to the rain. To enjoy life's little moments as they come. To try to always be IN the moment as opposed to moving through one moment to get to the next and the next. Life is so beautiful if we just stop to smell the roses, or in my case the rain.

xoxo