Guardian Service Ware, Served Everyone Well

Guardian Service Ware - The Best Cookware Ever Made

Here is a wonderful memory, I love tender memories that involve cooking. I have many fond memories of the
time spent in the kitchen with my granny.

Here is the memory that was shared with me:

Guardian Cookware, fully explained at my blog, Reflections From the Fence, 

The post was about memories of Christmas cookies, and read in part: I got thinking and remembering about my mother's Christmas cooking siege and my mind wandered around the subject a bit. In that wandering around time, I remembered how my mother stored her cookies. She stored them in Guardian Ware cookware. 

Guardian Ware (or Guardian Service Cookware) was manufactured by the Century Metalcraft Corporation, Los Angeles, California, between 1935 and 1956. The cookware was not sold in stores. An individual would host a party at his or her house, and a salesman would cook the party guests a meal with the cookware. It so happened that Man's father sold the cookware at one time. He would do the shopping for the food, prepare, cook and serve the meal. Man's mother pulled clean up duty. Now, back to the cookies. 

My mother would make those double sugar rolled pecan balls. They have many different names. She would buy whole pecans and grind them up in a meat type grinder that you attached to the counter top. She baked a LOT of these balls. A LOT! She must have started baking right after Thanksgiving. I cannot imagine how many batches she baked. Since they also have butter and crisco in them, and all those pecans, they can spoil. She would fill the Guardian (in fact, several pieces of Guardian) with pecan balls. Between the layers she placed waxed paper, this would keep the powered sugar from clumping together. 

Now, here was the secret to keeping the cookies fresh for several weeks. She would place the Guardian Ware full of those beautiful delicious round pecan balls with two coats of powdered sugar on the stairway to the attic. Unheated attic. In Michigan in December, in the stairwell of an unheated attic, they stayed fresh. 

location: Country state_lived_in: Michigan

Please share your fond cooking memories with us. You can post them in the comments section and I will then transfer them to the main page. If you can link to a photo please do so and I will post that too. 

Life in a "Dog Trot" House ; I love this special memory

I love this "memory" sent in by a visitor to my antique shop website. Being a Texan myself I recall the days of getting the "switch" to the old buttocks area. It was really bad if you were asked to go cut your own switch, the child mind thinks smaller is better but in actuality it was like a little whip. When you are getting a whoopin' the bigger the better when it came to switches.

No, we were not abused children. Simply everyday kids who were disciplined when we broke the rules and yes we knew what the rules were. We got in trouble and got a spanking when we misbehaved. I can't speak for everyone but I don't have any traumatic emotional scars from getting a butt whipping I grew up to be a pretty decent adult who raised amazing children and used discipline appropriate to the incident including "the switch."

I also remember seeing many dog trot homes and wanting to live in one. The little breezeway between the buildings was a welcome respite from the Texas heat.

To this very day I call the refrigerator the icebox.

Please read this special memory and try to visualize it if you can. Thank you for sharing and bringing memories back for me.

Grandma's Special Platter Memories

year_born: 1948

memory: I have a white platter with with sprays of yellow flowers at N. S. E. and West. There is a faint gold border around the edge of the oval slightly scalloped edge. I have dated it from your site as Feb of 1938.

My dear grandmother was a simple woman who took extraordinary pains as a supurb homemaker. As a small child, I remember her pouring hot syrup that we had carefully boiled to almost the "hardball" stage into this special platter. Then we would wait until it had cooled enough to start pulling for taffy.

I also remember that this was her Fried Chicken platter. The chickens came from her yard and were small and not like the monster birds in the grocery today. The entire chicken fit perfectly on the platter...she fried the back, gizzards and liver also.

Nothing was wasted. Feathers were saved for feather beds and pillows. I have only this one small platter but I treasure it. It is worth more than gold to me.

location: Arkansas