Tomorrow’s Chicken…Today! The Chicken of Tomorrow Contest

Did you know there’s a National Poultry Hall of Fame? Me neither. The National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland houses it now, although there’s no longer a display space like there used to be from 1954 to 1970 at the University of Maryland. Too bad. The folks over at Roadside America would’ve added it to their list of Maryland oddities.

In my mind’s eye I picture a gallery of taxidermied hens from days of yore, on little stands inside glass cases.

In reality, the National Poultry Hall of Fame has nothing to do with chicken models. The NPHoF is a collection of oil paintings (and later, etched plaques) of notable men and women who won acclaim for raising, breeding, and studying chickens.

Some of these same folks probably competed in the Chicken of Tomorrow Contest. The name conjures up grainy cartoon images of  chickens in rocket ships.

In 1946, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (known today as the A&P grocery store chain)  sponsored the first “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest.

The purpose of the contest was to find the best broad-breasted broiler chicken. State and regional contests were held in 1946 and 1947, leading up to the national finals in 1948.

Check out this vintage documentary film about the 1948 Chicken of Tomorrow contest finals in Georgetown, Delaware.

PART 1

PART 2

 

Also in 1948, the Delmarva Chicken Festival made its debut. It’s been an annual festival ever since. The 63rd Delmarva Chicken Festival took place this past June 15^th and 16^th in Salisbury, Maryland.

One of the festival highlights was a giant frying pan of fried chicken. Yum! 😉

A second national Chicken of Tomorrow Contest was held in 1951. As before, regional and state-level contests in 1949 and 1950 led up to the grand finale at the University of Arkansas in 1951. The 1951 COTC featured a rodeo, a street dance, a barbecue, the coronation of Chicken of Tomorrow Contest Queen, and a 3-mile parade.

Joan Walters of Rogers, AR was the Queen of the 1951 Chicken of Tomorrow Contest.

Thirty thousand people came to Fayetteville, Arkansas for the 1951 Chicken of Tomorrow festivities. The first place winner, Vantress Hatchery of California, took home a $5,000 prize. (Interestingly enough, Vantress also won the first CoT contest.)

While the name may sound quaint to modern ears, the Chicken of Tomorrow Contest signaled a shift in the poultry industry, from strengthening purebred chicken breeds to pursuing high meat yield. The purebred chicken lost out to industrialized farming. Author and farmer Matt John of Shady Lane Poultry Farm theorizes this caused a decline in standard-bred breeds that had a dual purpose of providing both meat and eggs.

“The whole concept behind Chicken of Tomorrow was that genetic progress will be more rapid in a competitive environment.  Private chicken breeders and small farmers led the way over 50 years ago when the emphasis was on bigger and faster. I believe promoting a new nationwide contest where small farmers and private breeders have the opportunity to recapture the productive qualities – both laying and meat – that made our Standard-bred chickens great for small farms is necessary now.  Are we ready for the ‘Chicken of Yesterday’ contest?”

 

Dollar Store Discoveries

OK, so it’s not the same as hitting a thrift store, but there’s still plenty of kitschy delights to be found at your local dollar store.

A charming sign from the store manager.

For starters, if you’re big on Jesus and Mary figurines, you’ll probably have your share to pick from. If that’s not your thing, then the next big theme in my local dollar store’s figurine and clock section seems to be…elephants. Yes, really.

Check out this nifty pachyderm clock!

And here’s another:

Now that many cities and towns are starting to ban plastic bags, having a couple of sturdy shopping bags in the trunk of your car for your next grocery store trip is a good idea.

WWJB (What Would Jesus Buy)?

This one’s not for the fainthearted…although it might convince your fellow shoppers to let you cut in line! 😉

Those who aren’t as dedicated to the Big J can pick from Hannah Montana…

Sweet niblets! Ya think?

…or an American eagle.

Want to get yourself a rolling pin? In this joint, it’s known as a “movable stick.”

The anti-rolling pin. Yes, those are my blue toenails.

Winning the award for “Most Adorable” is this super cute Cupid Kitty sticker pack!

Soooo cute!

 

Double Your Kitschy National Commemorative Events, Double Your Fun

June 1st is both National Donut Day AND the first day of National Accordion Awareness Month. Donuts and accordions: what’s not to love? 😉 Luckily I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for both (grew up listening to polka music) and a full tummy, thanks to a coworker who hit the local donut shop on the way to work.

Donut ephemera from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

I bet the folks who run VooDoo Donut in Portland, Oregon (the world’s coolest donut shop, and the only one on my Roadtrips Bucket List) are earlobe-deep in eager donut fans today. The “VooDoo Doll” looks tasty in a scary kinda way, but my personal fave would have to be the Oreo-encrusted “Dirt Donut”.

Today also kicks off National Accordion Awareness Month. Instigator Tom Torriglia campaigned to make the accordion the official instrument of San Francisco, California back in 1990. He’s spent much of his life sharing the love of the accordion as a musician, teacher, and enthusiast. Alas, not everyone shares the love, although the Saint Report’s musings on the topic made me laugh out loud.

In honor of National Accordion Month, take a listen to some Brazilian country music by Voninho e Marcelo, courtesy of the Squeezytunes blog. If Nashville ever did a mashup of country music with a bossa nova beat — and featured dueling accordionists — I might actually start watching the CMAs! 😉

 

Thrift Crypt: Valentine’s Day 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day! This was too cute to keep to myself. May you share this day with someone special, no matter who they are. (OK, maybe not that beer-goggly-attractive person at the end of the bar when it’s last call…but hey, whatever floats your boat, honey.) 😉

Cuddling Cat & Squirrel Figurine

 

 

Menu from the Apollo 10 Space Mission

The Navy Department Library in Washington, D.C. has a Space Flight Recovery Operations Collection, which is chock full of goodies such as mission briefings, maps, and dispatches “relating to the manned space flight recovery operations conducted by the U.S. Navy during the Apollo 10, 13, 14, 15, and 17 Missions.”

Being a culinary freak as opposed to a space nut, what I found most interesting was this menu from the Apollo 10 recovery mission.

Menu from USS Princeton Apollo 10 recovery mission

It’s an intriguing bit of food-related ephemera because not only did the astronauts get filet mignon for breakfast (?!!), but the Apollo cake baker, cake decorator, and the designated Astronaut Cooks all got shoutouts on the back page.

Per Wikipedia, the Apollo 10 crew holds the distinction of being the humans who have traveled to the furthest point away from home, some 254,110 miles. They also were the only Apollo crew in which all members went on to fly subsequent missions aboard Apollo spacecraft. And apparently they were a couple of guys who got in trouble with their NASA bosses, so badly that they weren’t allowed to land on the Moon. Sounds like ideal material for a feel-good Hollywood underdog flick. With plenty of fictional embellishments added to the mix.

 

Old Country Prune Bread and Aunt Martha’s Prune Pudding

Don’t these pictures look totally delish? (Yes, I’m kidding.)

Old Country Prune Bread

What is it about the 1950s and prunes? Poring through wayback issues of “Good Housekeeping” from 1954 reveals Del Monte was spending some serious money trying to get people to eat them. Apparently they kept it up for at least a decade, per this 1964 recipe I stumbled across on RecipeCurio.

Aunt Martha's Prune Pudding

The lowly Prunus domestica is reputed to have major medicinal benefits, per the Journal of Medicinal Plants Research. Prunes aid blood circulation, measles, cancer, diabetes, obesity and “increase the motility of the gastrointestinal tract.” As for the fruit’s legendary laxative effect, any diners back in the day who smoked (who didn’t?) and who weren’t big fans of prunes could get similar results by puffing on a Chesterfield.

Del Monte Prunes

 

Yes, They Ate Soy Back In World War I

Are you surprised? I was! For some reason I tend to think of soybeans as a product of our modern age, along with yoga mats and Frappuccinos. That is, until I stumbled across a recipe in this nifty cookbook from 1918:

War-Time Conservation: Recipes and Notes (1918)

SOY-BEAN FILLING FOR SANDWICHES

• 1 c. soy-bean pulp
• 1 ts. Salt
• ¼ ts. Paprika
• Speck of cayenne
• 1 ts. Lemon
• ½ ts. Onion juice
• 1/6 ts. Thyme

Will make filling for 1 doz. Sandwiches    U.W.

(from p. 43 of the cookbook. P.S. the “U.W.” means “University of Washington, Seattle” and “ts.” means “teaspoon”.)

I played with this recipe a little.

* 1 cup of cooked edamame (soybeans – you can get  a bag of them in your grocery store’s frozen food section) = 1 cup soybean pulp

* Salt is optional. Recipe tastes fine without it.

* If you use real lemons instead of bottled lemon juice, use half of a medium-sized lemon.

* Substitute onion powder for the onion juice.

* You can up the thyme to 1/8th of a teaspoon (most kitchens don’t have a 1/6th size measuring spoon) and it won’t change the flavor.

Problem: edamame doesn’t play nice in the blender. It sticks (even after adding the lemon juice) and gunks up the blades. I solved this quandary by dumping the half-pulped beans into a glass mixing bowl and using a beater from my hand mixer on it.

Aka "stress reduction"!

I’m sure ladies of yesteryear must’ve used a potato masher, but I don’t own one. A potato masher is an unsung stress reduction tool. Smushing the soybeans into pulp is so satisfying. And unlike using a hand mixer beater, there’d be less chance of accidentally stabbing yourself through the hand while gleefully pounding the stuffing out of the edamame. 😉

Here’s the final result, after adding the spices.

Yummy!

“Will make filling for 1 dozen sandwiches.”

Not by today’s standards, this recipe won’t. Perhaps the author/cook meant sandwiches used for afternoon tea. This batch would probably make 3 sandwiches made with standard-sized bread. Try it wrapped in a flour tortilla with a smidge of mayo, lettuce and tomato.

The lemon juice adds a pleasant tang. If you like things really tangy, add the juice of the second half of the lemon, and 1-2 additional shakes of the onion powder.

 

Springing Back Into This Blogging Thing

New month, new laptop, renewed creative juices. Reinstalling old programs (and/or finding new replacements) is annoying. Especially when my super simple, circa 1999 photo editing software went to Freecycle  before I found out Picasa expects me to pay(!!) to use the clone tool in a so-called FREE software package. (*eye roll *) So I can do things like, ohh, cover up the text at the bottom of some magazine artwork.

Anyway, I’m slowly revamping the look of Kitschy Witch. There’s more goodies to come. I know I’ve said that before, but enforced techno idleness means I’ve now accumulated a stash of vintage recipes from old cookbooks and clip art from a treasure trove of 1950s “Good Housekeeping” magazines. Stay tuned!

 

Blogging On Hold Till I Get My Hard Drive Back

Last weekend my trusty 2002 Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop crashed and died. Permanently. With seven years of data — documents, photos, songs, recipes, even my freakin’ resume–inside it. Sigh. Because I was too frugal to buy an external backup drive ($100), I now have to fork out big bucks ($400+) to a data recovery company to extract my stuff from the hard drive.  It’s worth it to recover my personal info, but I sure wasn’t expecting to replace my computer so soon, nor did I have any inkling that it would up and die on me. Moral of the story: don’t skimp on backing up your data!

KitschyWitch will resume its what-passes-for-normal functioning as soon as I finish getting the replacement laptop up and running with open source software.

 

 

Valentine’s Day Rejects: What Your Significant Other Better Not Give You Unless He/She Has a Burning Desire to Sleep On The Sofa

OK, so much for the promise to post stuff over the past few days.  My deepest apologies to my non-existent fans. 😉

Anywho, lame animatronic dancing stuffed animals are a particular (non) favorite of mine.

Boogie Lion, grooving to Kool and the Gang

Guitar Devil. I think he plays ZZ Top. Alas, not Black Sabbath. 😉

And the crowning glory, Devil Hamster!

So spectacular in its awfulness that it not only made me laugh out loud, but also sorry I didn’t have a jerky ex-suitor to send it to. A squeaky ripoff of the song ‘Devil With A Blue Dress On’ would’ve been so revenge-worthy.

Devil Hamster, Side View. (The eyes…don’t look in the eyes…)

And now for the tacky….

The 'Cool Love' crew shows off their V-Day moves.

…and the darned cute.

Lion with a rose. Awwwww!

Shy V-Day Gorilla

Hello Kitty champagne in front of a roaring fire: best...V-Day...ever! 😉