The war may have ended in 1945, but rationing, utility clothing, Victory Gardens, and so forth continued for another five or six years. Times were tough, you used up every bit of food, you reused clothes, repurposed anything you could ... times were tough. Various radio shows and bulletins offered advice and hits and many of these were compiled by Jaqueline Mitchell in The Good Life on a Budget: Delicious, fun, and timeless times for tough times. From how to supplement the various kinds of fertilizer for better results, to wearing the same outfit over and over (but making it look new and/or different), to preserving the harvest from your Victory Garden, this was an interesting read. It also made it all the more understandable why my folks saved everything. :-)

The kitchen was, for a long time, a hub of activity, partially because it took a long time prepare and cook the meals. Take a look at what that was like in Kitchen Memories: Food and Kitchen Life 1837 - 1939, compiled by Elizabeth Drury and Philippa Lewis from the Amoret Tanner Ephemera Collection. Watch the evolution in appliances and gadgets as the kitchen became more and more modern.

Moving beyond the kitchen to the entire house, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson is a wonderful tour of the various rooms of the house, and how that has changed over the years. (I am particularly relieved that washing clothes is now so very easy). Written with the usual Bryson humor.

Then, moving from a somewhat broad to a more narrow look at things we use every day there's Consider the Fork: How Technology Transforms the Way We Cook and Eat, by Bee Wilson. While the knife has been around for a very, very long time, the fork is rather new, and took a while to catch on. Even the basic plate is newer than I would have expected! I suggest reading this book along with Kitchen Memories for a glimpse at those things that no longer exist in the kitchen of today.

And finally, after books on where we eat, how it is prepared and eaten, a book about how we eat. Three Squares: the Invention of the American Meal, by Abigail Carroll is a nice read about just that. A fast meal, eaten 'on the go' may not be as new as we think. The midday meal was once the largest meal of the day (no more, sadly), cereals made breakfast much, much easier when houses had fewer servants, and so on. Again, a nice overlap with the books mentioned above tied these books together.

Reading Hermit With Dog