DinoTech | Imamother

↑ chen ↓

Wed, May 17 2006, 8:46 am

seniormom, we had that very vacuum cleaner when I was a child. I have yet to find one I like as much--though cleaning out the bag was pretty repulsive. at least you didn't have to look for replacement bags all the time.

a Wundertopf is an aluminum pot that lets you bake on top of the stove. It's round with a spout in the middle like a ringform pan, except the spout is much wider. It has a deep lid with holes in it, and comes with a fitted round iron heat diffuser/director that you put on the flame before you put the pan on it. The center spout directs the heat up into the pan so that the heat surrounds the food and it bakes rather than steaming. People used these a lot in EY in the early years, when an actual oven was an unheard-of luxury. (Later they invented electric Wundertopfs for people who had electricity but didn't have a gas or other flame.)

You can bake pretty much anything in this pan provided that it fits in the circle. (A turkey would not work!) It was the only cake pan my mother ever used, so all her cakes were round with a hole in the middle. The great thing about a Wundertopf (Seer Pele in Hebrew) is you can bake in summer and not heat up the whole kitchen, or bake on YomTov even if your oven does not have a pilot light.

They were still selling these in EY last year, what a surprise!

Last edited by chen on Mon, May 22 2006, 8:29 am; edited 2 times in total

↑ shalhevet

Wed, May 17 2006, 3:21 pm

chen wrote:

You can bake pretty much anything in this pan provided that it fits in the circle. (A turkey would not work!) It was the only cake pan my mother ever used, so all her cakes were round with a hole in the middle. The great thing about a Wundertopf (Seer Pele in Hebrew) is you can bake in summer and not heat up the whole kitchen, or bake on YomTov even if your oven does not have a pilot light.

They were still selling these in EY last year, what a surprise!

A lot of people use them for Pesach if they are machmir not to kasher their oven and can't afford a toaster oven for Pesach.

↑ chen ↓

Wed, May 17 2006, 7:56 pm

sarahd wrote:

My mother threw hers out a few years ago. She hardly used it because every time she tried, the cake burned.

Chen, you forgot to put 8-track tapes on your list.

She must have had the flame too high. You have to have a pretty low flame because it's directly under the pot, even with the diffuser. Ummm....did she have the diffuser thingy?

I wanted to include 8-tracks and a few other items like butter churns and coal chutes but the site would not allow more than 10 choices! also I don't know how to make it so you can choose more than one category, and queen, who helped me (thank you queen!) also didn't know. it may not be possible with this program.

(Just kidding about the butter churn LOL

but not about coal chutes.

Oh, you brooklynites: a man I know, who is in his eighties and grew up in brooklyn, remembers when things were delivered by horse and buggy. when the horses would deposit in the street fresh evidence of their healthy digestive systems, people would rush to collect it to enrich the soil in their gardens. I am not making this up!

↑ seniormom ↓

Thu, May 18 2006, 2:05 am

Quote:

Also a chopping blade* with a wooden bowl to make chopped liver.

*I forget what they're called - a rounded blade about 6" wide and 5" high with a handle on top.

Boy, does that bring back memories! I used to help my mother with the chopping every erev shabbos...now, how could I forget?...senior moment, I guess!

↑ chen ↓

Thu, May 18 2006, 7:53 am

Anyone have an "egg man" who came around to sell eggs? There were Jewish poultry farmers in New Jersey in the early part of the century. Our egg man reused the cardboard cartons. For every carton you gave him back from the previous week, he took two cents off the price of your current order.

How about a milkman who left milk in glass bottles in an insulated metal box in front of your door? Doctors' offices have the same kind of box now for test samples being sent to a lab.

Who remembers when the meat you bought from the butcher was not yet kashered and you had to soak and salt it yourself? Better yet, who remembers bringing your live chicken to the shochet to be shechted?

sarahd, up until a few years ago there was a guy like that who used to park his truck in front of my train station at the time that people were coming home from work. It was very convenient for people to get some nice fruit to bring home for supper-- he was right there as they came out of the train, so they didn't have to make a special stop along the way.

↑ queen

Thu, May 18 2006, 8:24 am

chen wrote:

How about a milkman who left milk in glass bottles in an insulated metal box in front of your door?

my grandparents used to get their milk straight from the farm, in glass bottles- with an inch of thick cream ontop. This was the only way they could get cholov yisroel milk.

↑ seniormom ↓

Fri, May 19 2006, 1:48 am

Oh yes! I remember our eggman and milkman, glass bottles, steel box, etc.

I thought I was the only woman around today who knows how to kasher meat. I don't think we started getting pre-kashered meat/chicken until well into the 1960's. Part of the problem was that my father, zt"l didn't know if their kashering could be trusted, and would rather have my mom do it. At some point all kosher butchers started selling that way, so there was no choice.

I never actually went to the shochet with a live chicken, but I remember the freshly shechted ones that were still warm and I stood in the back of the store with my mom watching the butchcer pluck the feathers and clean out the guts. The reason wasn't curiosity. My mom was watching carefully to make sure there wasn't any mum.

Remember the sawdust on the floor of every butcher shop?

amother ↓

Fri, May 19 2006, 11:54 am

chen wrote:

There were Jewish poultry farmers in New Jersey in the early part of the century.

My grandmother's family either were poultry farmers, or lived among them in in New Jersey. At some point after she married my grandfather they moved back for a while and he shechted. My father remembers living on a "chicken farm". (He wasn't born until the 50's.)

↑ DefyGravity

Fri, May 19 2006, 12:06 pm

queen wrote:

chen wrote:

How about a milkman who left milk in glass bottles in an insulated metal box in front of your door?

my grandparents used to get their milk straight from the farm, in glass bottles- with an inch of thick cream ontop. This was the only way they could get cholov yisroel milk.

I remember when my friends family used to get milk this way. I always hated drinking milk at their house, b/c you could always see the cream, and I thought it was so gross.

(Thank G-d my mother didn't keep chalav yisrael back then, I would've moved in with my grandparents if she did).

girlsmom

Fri, May 19 2006, 12:21 pm

I'm 23 and I used a few of these:

Slide rule

my father has an old one and he taught me how to use it

Carbon paper

used it to take notes for friends in school

Record player with vinyl LP or 45 rpm singles

my parents had one until recently

Typewriter-electric or manual

yup

manual crank-type sharpener

I used to use it in school

↑ chen ↓

Fri, May 19 2006, 1:24 pm

Anyone have a darning egg? A hand-crank egg beater? (These are still sold) How about a knitting spool? This was called "horserein" when I was a child. If you had one of these, did you ever actually make anything useful, or did you just make a skinny snake about a mile long?

↑ seniormom ↓

Fri, May 19 2006, 1:50 pm

Quote:

My father remembers living on a "chicken farm". (He wasn't born until the 50's.)

Your father was born in the 50's? shock

That would make you about the age of my baby Exclamation

Quote:

Yes, yes & yes...how do you remember all this stuff...if you really used these yourself that was quite a few years ago...I'm impressed!

This also brought back an old memory: My friend just mentioned to me that she was going to "press" apples for applesauce...I know she still uses the manual press...the one with the colander type base and the slightly angled "blade" with a handle coming out of the center. When you turn the handle the "blade" mashes down on the apples and presses the meat out into a bowl below, while the skin remains in the "press" (I'm not sure I explained this well, and I have no idea of the real name, but anyone who's used it will recognize it I'm sure Wink

)

↑ chen ↓

Fri, May 19 2006, 2:28 pm

Of course--a foley mill! you described it exactly. I have one and use it for making applesauce all the time. they still sell them, but now they are stainless steel, not tinned steel like mine (which isn't that old--I bought it in 1980), and they are called foley/something else (I suppose the second name merged with or bought out foley).

yep, I have a darning egg, not that I use it. tried a few times but could never get my darning nice and neat. never made anything of value with my horsereins, either--eventually threw out the useless snake. It takes a lo-o-o-o-ng time to make a rug with one of those things!

have a handcrank eggbeater, too, which I use for mixing milchik things that are too much work to beat by hand with a wooden spoon, but I don't want to milchikize the electric mixer.

Remember the little weaving looms that used stretchy loops, from which most people made potholders? they showed all kinds of great things you could make from those little squares: clothing, rugs, and so on--but no one ever did! Just potholders. They still make these, too, but they are all plastic. the one I had was metal, held together with wing nuts and bolts, and could be taken apart if need be.

I have to look through my mother's closets to see what other antiques she has that I haven't already mentioned.