Picnics - Vintage Style

We have a road trip coming up and are planning a motor picnic along the way. Where we're headed, there aren't any cute vintage roadside restaurants, so why not? Better take a peek inside the picnic suitcase - last time we grabbed it for an impromptu outing, we found inside a burned-out sparkler, a lipstick smeared napkin, and a champagne cork - obviously the remnants of some Gatsby picnic long past...

WHAT TO EAT?

Several period menus below can be found on this divine food timeline website. Here are some other picnic menu suggestions from a 1934 promotional booklet VITALITY DEMANDS ENERGY: 109 Smart New Ways to Serve Bread, Our Outstanding Energy Food:

Campfire Picnic

Steak or eggs and Bacon or Wieners

Cooked over the open fire and placed between large buttered buns or slices of buttered bread

Sliced Tomatoes and Celery

or Potato or Vegetable Salad

Coffee

Spice Cake

Fresh Fruit

Corn Roast or Beach Picnic

Fried Chicken or Baked Ham

Corn Roasted over the Fire

Cabbage Salad

Buttered Bread (dark and white)

Coffee

Fresh Fruit Pie

Hamper Picnic For Roadside Lunch

Thermos Jug of Coffee or Lemonade

Cold Meat Sandwiches

Tomatoes Cut in Sections and Wrapped in Waxed Paper

Celery Hearts Wrapped in Damp Napkin and then in Waxed Paper

Little Cups of Vegetable Salad or Cottage Cheese with Chives

Cup Cakes (in paper cups) or Cookies

Fresh Fruit

Salted Nuts

Are your picnic manners everything they should be? We like this excerpt from the 1920s hilarious Donald Ogden Stewart etiquette book spoof, Perfect Behavior: A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in All Social Crisis.

Cocktails

We exaggerated - warm weather also means classic gin cocktails! A favorite of the moment is a Pink Gin, the poisoned cocktail in Agatha Christie's Poirot short story "Triangle at Rhodes." It's a jigger of dry gin with a dash of angostura bitters. Some of our other favorites are from a slender little 1936 book So Red the Nose: or Breath in the Afternoon edited by Sterling North and Carl Kroch. The title is a spoof of Stark Young's then-recent best selling novel, So Red the Rose.

"It takes steady nerves to mix a Singapore Gin Sling or wrestle with king cobras. But only the finest ingredients go into a Bring 'Em Back Alive (Frank) Gin Buck. They're kinder to your throat.

Frank Buck's Singapore Gin Sling

(Otherwise known as the "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Cocktail)

1 jigger D.O.M. (Benedictine)
2 jiggers cherry brandy

3 jiggers dry gin

juice of 1 lime

dash of orange bitters

dash of angostura bitters

Add water or soda (as preferred) in amount equal to the above ingredients.

Mix with swizzle stick until foamy.

Add ice chipped fine, and serve

Beach Pyjamas

They're not just for the beach anymore!

All images from 1929 & 1932

A Bathing Beauty Must Accessorize

All from 1929 and 1932

Bathing Beauties

Heavens! This warm weather means only one thing - wool, of course. We're getting our suits out and heading to the seaside. We wouldn't be caught dead in suits with a back - so 1928. The lifegaurds probably wouldn't even bother trying to save us. At this rate, even We Moderns are wondering if there will be anything left to cover us by 1933...

Bobbed Hair

We have bobbed our hair!

What took us so long?