Thankful for the Laundry

A couple of ads in the postwar local papers give a glimpse of life for the average housewife over six decades ago. Story.

Until You Have Tasted Trout Baked Electrically, You Cannot Realize What Delicious Meatiness is Achieved by this Healthful Cooking Method

Housewives, have you yearned to save your family money and provide a thrifty "meatless" meal, only to be frustrated by the woeful limitations of the primitive gas stove? Now there's a better way.

You simply can't bake trout properly in anything other than an ELECTRIC stove. Imagine the approving look on your husband's face when, after a hard day of work, he comes home to a succulent meal. Watch the pale, wan faces of your children grow fat and rosy as they gobble up this nutritious treat. Here is the kind of dish that famous chefs glory in preparing--right in your own dining room!

Because gentle moist heat is required to cook it properly, stuffed baked trout is at its finest only when prepared in the flavor-conserving ELECTROCHEF oven. There's really no other alternative. If you want good trout, a happy husband, and rickets-free children, heave out that outmoded gas stove and promptly buy a gleaming new ELECTROCHEF from Detroit Edison!

--Ypsilanti Daily Press, October 24, 1931.

Battling Stoves of 1907

Dusty D loves stories about battling technologies, and here's a sterling example, all on one front page. In the upper right there's a story about some poor schlub who jumped out of his upstairs window to escape an EXPLODING GASOLINE STOVE--that's right, a stove that burned gasoline. In the center is an account of the new Electric Company trying to woo housewives with elegant tidbits cooked in a New! Electric! Stove! (Oooooh!)

The exploding-stove guy stopped to put his trousers on. (Rolls eyes). Perhaps he took a moment to select a matching cravat, and maybe arrange his hair just so with some Dippety-Doo. When your sister yells "THE GAS STOVE EXPLODED!!!" that is not a signal for sartorial musing. Go, man, go!

Over at the electric demo, the stove has 3 settings. Period. Low, medium, high. So for those of us used to baking bread at 350 for 40 minutes--outta luck. You had to guesstimate it; temperature settings didn't come along till later.

But at least you didn't end up jumping out of windows right and left. The story reads like a press release, does it not? Coincidentally, I hope, there's a nice big ad for the Electric Co. right next to it. It shows the menu for the next electric stove demo, headed by Chicken a la Wilke, a dubious amalgam of peas, eggs, cornstarch, and chicken. There are also mac n cheese and coffee and cake. Though Dusty D is one of those snooty (natural) gas-stove snobs, the electric stove must have been a godsend to housewives who, you know, were tired of their stoves exploding all the time, dangit.