• Author L. Frank Baum Book Index

    Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children’s fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. (Source: Wikipedia) This is an index of the Baum books that are available for download on Project Gutenberg. I personally find PG a little difficult to look through when I’m focused on a specific author or topic, so indexes like…

  • Winter Birds (& Poems) Vintage Cards

    These images are from chromolithograph greeting cards made by L. Prang & Co. in the late 1800s in Boston. The artist was Hector Giacomelli, and the poems are signed E.S.F. You can download these images and use them for art, scrapbooking, junk journaling, etc.– they’re in the public domain in the US and come from the NYPL’s Digital Collection here. I’ve cropped them and made them into individual JPG images, which is what you see here. If you’d like higher quality PNGs at 300 DPI, or if you’d like a high quality printable page of all four images on one…

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    Poem: WINTER-TIME (1895)

    Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;Blinks but an hour or two; and then,A blood-red orange, sets again.Before the stars have left the skies,At morning in the dark I rise;And shivering in my nakedness,By the cold candle, bathe and dress.Close by the jolly fire I sitTo warm my frozen bones a bit;Or with a reindeer-sled, exploreThe colder countries round the door.When to go out, my nurse doth wrapMe in my comforter and cap;The cold wind burns my face, and blowsIts frosty pepper up my nose.Black are my steps on silver sod;Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;And tree and…

  • Omelet Bonne Femme Recipe from 1923

    This recipe comes to us from Reliable Recipes (1923), a collection of family recipes from the the Rector’s Guild of St. John’s Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. There’s tons of good recipes in here, and they seem easier to make than some other vintage ones so I’m determined to share as many of them as I can with y’all. For the first recipe to share I’ve picked a breakfast egg dish called “Omelet Bonne Femme.” 👉 More Breakfast Recipes / All Recipes / More from Reliable Recipes (1923) Original Recipe Here’s the original recipe: Cut one ounce of salt pork…

  • Pickled Cantaloupe Recipe from 1913

    This is from the amazing Ultra Select Dishes for Afternoon Teas (1913). It’s a collection of recipes from chefs at high end hotel restaurants, and honestly it’s a crazy collection because all the recipes are meant for huge groups of customers, so the proportions are for, like, 20+ people at a time and not individual families like most other cookbooks. They’re also very high-brow recipes, quite different from the usual family cookbooks from the same time period.

  • Cream Fritters Recipe from 1923

    This is an interesting dessert from the 1920s, from a church recipe book called Reliable Recipes. It looks like it’d be fairly fast to make, though you do have to wait a bit for it to set up before frying the fritters. Would be good to have it prepped before dinner, and then fry it right before eating. 👉 More Desserts / All Recipes / More from Reliable Recipes (1923) Original Recipe Here’s the original recipe text: CREAM FRITTERS1 pint milk1/2 cup sugar2 tablespoons corn-starch1 large tablespoon flourYolks of 4 eggs14 cup sweet creamPinch of cinnamon Warm the milk in…

  • Grandma’s Apple Pie Recipe from 1907

    This recipe comes from Best Recipes for Baking (1907), which has some classic homestyle recipes. An apple pie is just about as classic as you can get, so I definitely wanted to include it here! A caveat: I’m not a baking (or cooking) expert and I’m not obsessive enough to bake something 50 times to get it perfectly. This isn’t that type of blog. Rather, think of this recipe more like an historical artifact, an experiment! You get to see the old fashioned apple pie recipe, and the (hopefully coherent) updated version I put together, with notes on how I…