Book Review: George the Housewife… By George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter

Published in 1964 it’s not a book you will find on the shelves of any of the uber bookstores out there. I did go to this very cool used and out of print books website and found lots! http://www.abebooks.com/. I recommend getting a copy; it makes the very best reading in the loo library.

It is in my possession, along with another title by George; Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices that is part of my inheritance from my dad. These books and others–mostly science for the lay person-with his white Kitchen Aid mixer, an old Boy Scout compass, the map he made of the Battle of Chickamauga, his prize pastry spatula and a beautiful old scientific ruler for doing cosines and stuff in a leather case comprise my share of the treasures from his life. In the madness that was my apartment when I was painting I found the books in one of the piles on my floor. I sat on said floor and just howled with laughter as I read them.

The author has many titles under his belt which include Bull Cook II, How To Make The Finest Wines at Home in Old Glass or Plastic Bottles and Jugs for as Little as 10¢ a Gallon, a couple on fishing, one on hunting in Africa, one on loading rifles, pistols and shotguns and one called The History and Secrets of Professional Candy Making.

George ends the introduction of George the Housewife with a poke at so called food writers and claims; “I am a man who has cooked, kept house and brought up children, not a fly-by-night socialite and bridge player or navy or army officer’s club housewife, or of a plain self-styled authority. I write only about things that I really know about.”

From there and the exact next page, the book begins a collection of titled paragraphs. All of them are helpful tips or recipes with many useful and hilarious insights. You can get an idea just by some of the headings:

How To Set A Table On A Boat
Watch Your Man In California
Household Salt Is Dangerous And Should Be Handled With Care
Sweet Corn On The Cob Highly Critical As To Age
How To Wipe A Baby’s Posterior
Clean Your Closets When You Are In An Ugly, Angry Mood
Always Dampen the Dustpan
United States “OK” Sign Made With The Fingers Of Your Hand Can Get You In Trouble In Mexico And Central And South America
The Wooden Mop Board Is Obsolete
The Dial Telephone Is a Poor Substitute For A Girl
Be Careful To Avoid Touching Synthetic Clothing With A Gasoline Lantern

There are so many more. My all time favorite is the authors’ solution to getting the last of the ketchup out of the bottle. Of course pictures tell a thousand words so his solution is a full page picture of an upside down ketchup bottle!

There are lots of delightful pictures. Here is another showing the solution to that age old issue; answering the phone when you’ve been baking:

But the piece-de-resistance is entitled, Don’t Let Your Children Grab Your Husband By The Legs, whereby George defies the reader to not splash urine on their trousers, in the general crotch area, while standing up to pee. He declares this the worst place for children to bury their faces, even though it is a wonderful thing to have the kids run and grab the husband in loving greeting. European men do not face this denial; they pee sitting down.

The book has restaurant reviews of old New York establishments and the author is none too impressed by any of them. It’s fascinating to read the menus and the prices of such aged and obsolete relics that include; La Fonda del Sol, Luchow’s, Le Pavilion, The Coach House and some that are still standing; the ’21’ Club, Lindy’s and The Oyster Bar. His brief summary of the ‘21’ club notes that; ‘New Yorkers like to go to the “21” Club, have a drink and wave at people giving the impression that they are spending the day there’ while in his description of the place includes; ‘The hunt room has a caribou and buffalo head that could stand some going over’.

All the recipes in the book have history included. Fried Chicken Sorel is the story of Agnes Sorel from Touraine France in 1422. She died young but before that she made her own clothes. Her one breast exposed style was all the rage in Europe and George writes; “You must admit that this did make a woman look honestly feminine and had its good point. At least you knew what a woman had in regards to breastworks and could avoid such treacherous things as sponge rubber falsies”. Still to come is the picture of a statue of a woman from Elizabethan times with both breasts exposed. In the caption he states “In those days, if you did not have breasts worth showing, you were really in trouble. A flat chested pendulant breasted woman just did not have a chance in life”. The actual chicken recipe begins 2 pages later over a picture of Lucrezia Borgia with one tit hanging out. He says, “As you can well see, this style did nothing for Lucrezia as she had nothing special to show”. Sorel Chicken turns out to be fried chicken with yellow food dye. One wonders where Agnes found such an item in the Middle Ages!

The author provides SCIENTIFIC PROVEN RULES THAT YOU SHOULD FOLLOW IN BUYING DRESSES AND COATS then goes into a long few pages as to how the theory of evolution is pure bunk and I quote; “Evolutionists propound unproven theories in most cases for publicity and to impress school or institutions into increasing their salaries. A little serious church going occasionally would do them a great deal of good. The have made a good living on Barnum’s famous words, “There’s a sucker born everyday” ”. Boy! The Intelligent Design guys could really use ol’ George right about now!

Thank goodness his religiosity does not extend to a prohibition on alcohol consumption. There are wine making recipes galore; Rhubarb Wine, Gooseberry Wine, Dandelion Wine, Elderberry, Chokecherry and Currant wine. He provides us with moonshine recipes as well: Parsnip Moonshine, Herter’s Jungle Juice, a family treasure made from potatoes, raisins, wheat and 4 pounds of brown sugar, and something called Mangold or German Mangel Wurzel root, using a 5 pound mangold that he claims is about a medium sized root. What’s a mangold I wonder?

Cornbread and the Latex Festival:

My daughter was knocking around last weekend with, as usual, nothing to do. She recently had the latest serious tiff with her two friends living in our building. It must have been, maybe, tiff #22 at least. They happened on a regular bases and I can’t think of a full week that they could ever get through without one.

As she sat sprawled across the kitchen table and whined about her state of boredom, I threw out that she should think of something creative to do and stop getting on my last nerve. Eventually she wandered away then came bounding back about an hour later, bursting with plans. Plans for a festival the next day at 2 o’clock, my presence and her brother’s was mandatory. I acknowledged that this was a very creative thing to do and asked her what kind of festival she would be throwing. She obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. She looked around the kitchen and triumphantly declared that it was a Latex Festival.
Ok then…..!
I’m in the process of painting the apartment and have cans of latex paint in a jumble on the kitchen floor. The place is a resounding mess. At least the paint cans inspired my daughter….
I decided to reward her creativity with cornbread. It’s the easiest thing in the world to make, at least the recipe I came up with from years ago for situations just like now: no time to spare in the midst of a project:

Get a box of Jiffy Cornbread Mix and an 8.5 oz. can of Creamed Corn. You can find both in any market be it super or the corner store.
Dump the mix in a bowl; add the creamed corn and one egg.
Mix it up to moisten the dry ingredients. You don’t need much more then that.
Bake in a 400 degree oven until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
The package says it will make 12 muffins but I don’t buy it. I think it could make 6 of a good size. I just use a buttered loaf pan and check it after 20 minutes or so.
A slice with butter and strawberry preserves slathered on is a snack that is hard to beat.

The day of the festival dawned to the smell of paint fumes and apartment chaos. I continued painting. By this time, two weeks into the job, I was numb. The idea of a certain Greek blue for the window frames, the door frames and the base boards that I envisioned for the place, while I sat at the kitchen table, had turned into a huge pain in the ass. I dreamed blue at night. Try getting straight lines of dark blue against white walls that have been painted so many times the junction at the trim looks like pie crust! The building was new in 1931 so you can imagine some of the issues. I call my apartment Sag Harbor: It ‘harbors’ the kids and I while all the floors ‘sag’ in the middle.
My son has to be pried awake at exactly five minuets to two. On the weekends I rarely see him conscious until three or four in the afternoon, but this was a special occasion. He waited, blurry eyed, with me at the bedroom door. As per instructions I knocked and when my daughter asked for the password from the other side I replied–no surprise here…–‘Latex’.

We crammed into the jumble of a room, with all the furniture scrunched into the middle and a narrow passage way around the heap. It too was strewn with obstacles in the way of paint splattered news paper piles, a huge mound of laundry on the radiator that shed its contents on the floor, rolled up area rugs and stacks of books.

The first game was called ‘Just Shoot Me’. Artie instructed us to back up while she crouched behind her bed. We moved back a far as we were able, about four and a half inches. We had each been given a small bag of old crayons. As Artemis held up her various Bratz dolls and naked Barbies her brother and I took crayon shots at them. The winner got an old lipstick A had snitched from my make-up bag.
The next, and the winner Hector and I both agreed, was ‘Hit the Samurai’. Artemis went by the window, with a lampshade on her head and my maroon kimono on, she dodged our wax missiles with a plastic sword.

There was ‘Take a Guess’ and ‘Pick a Bag’ and ‘Futurama’ to play as our fun time at the festival continued. H managed to do most of his game strategy while sprawled on my bed and since most all the prizes were pilfered jewelry and makeup items he passed them all to me and clutched the one prize he liked. He won it at the ‘Pick a Bag’ booth. It was a small lavender pig. The game was a synch: All you had to do was pick one of the black plastic grocery bags that were bunched on the pillows. Find a crayon and you got zilch, anything else was a prize to keep and when Booder found the card he got the pig.

In ‘Take a Guess’ Hector had to lift himself up on one elbow to see the items placed on the dresser that was now crammed up against the bed. We could look at the various items there and after we closed our eyes Artie took something away, we had to identify it by its absence. This took another eight minutes to play. By the end I had won back my entire make up bag, and then it was on to ‘Futurama’.

Artemis, now garbed in her fortune telling getup , gave us a bag with scrapes of paper that we picked one at a time. She would use her powers to tell us what our futures held. Mostly she guessed wrong. My two favorites were “You will marry a bad wife” and “You will live in a junkyard”.

We closed the festival (it lasted close to thirty eight minutes), with a Scavenger Hunt. I won this hands down. Even amidst all the mess I could find the many items Artie had stashed almost in plain sight. Hector never had a chance–he who stands at the open refrigerator door for many minutes staring into its interior looking for the milk that is entirely in front of his face! We all received a reward for this event; I got the gold, Boo the silver and Artie the copper of the key chains she had me pay for at the 99cent store.

We all claimed the affair a huge success and maneuvered our way into the kitchen for some warm cornbread and jam. Next years’ festival is already in the works and she’s going to add a food stand that I’m slated to stock.