Martha Meade stuffs November full of work. And wheat hearts.

It's November. You know what that means: Time for stuffing things into other things!

No-- get your mind out of the gutter. That's not what I meant, but I do have to appreciate how your mind immediately went there.

I'm talking Martha Meade's 1935 Modern Meal Maker. She is just thinking about stuffing recipes to prepare cooks for the big day: Thanksgiving. (Fun fact: I initially thought Meade had forgotten about Thanksgiving, as the menu for the fourth Thursday of November was just a regular Thursday menu. Then I saw that November had five Thursdays in the cookbook, and prior to 1941 some states celebrated on the last Thursday of the month. Then I went down a wormhole once I realized that the calendar in the book wasn't for its year of publication (1935) or the year after, but lined up with 1939, I guess because Meade wanted to start the book on a Sunday recipe and made January 1 a Sunday? So... I guess there is no reason for you to care about any of this. I just thought it was interesting.)

Ahem. Anyway, Meade seems intent on getting readers ready to stuff the turkey, as a lot of recipes for November require stuffing.

Stuffing a hollow cabbage sounds like less work to me than stuffing individual cabbage leaves, so I'll bet some cooks appreciated that. Plus, this entry is another in the long line of semi-random uses for Wheat Hearts because Sperry apparently really wanted to push cereal sales.

For those who prefer a sweeter dinner, Meade offered this:

I thought Sausage Dumplings would be sausage-and-biscuit-dough blobs to cook on the top of stew, but they're apple dumplings with sausage (rather than cinnamon, sugar, and nuts) stuffed into the apple cavity.

Of course, all this stuffing is leading up to the big day: Thanksgiving, with its big stuffed turkey. I decided to give you the menu for the entire day. (Every single day has a full day's menu, but I don't usually show them.)

There is no skimping on meals outside the big dinner-- no skipping breakfast to save room or expecting people to graze on leftovers later in the day if they get hungry again. Here's the full breakfast menu:

It's pretty typical for this book: fruit, cereal plus an extra carb of some type (coffee cake in this case!), a protein component (so handy to be expected to make ham, eggs, and a cream sauce on Thanksgiving morning! There's nothing else to do...), and beverages.

Dinner is pretty traditional, and probably exactly what you're expecting.

Fruit cup, roast turkey with cracker stuffing, cranberry apples, California sweet potatoes, creamed onions, cider sherbet, hot rolls, lettuce with French dressing, pumpkin pie, and coffee, tea, or milk.

I'll even include the recipes that I didn't have to track down on other pages. Of course, there's stuffing!

I've never had cracker stuffing. I imagine it varies depending on the crackers used-- soda crackers? Buttery Ritz? I can half-imagine my teenage self trying to be healthy and trying out Triscuits. That would probably be weird....

And of course, you have to have pumpkin pie!

It seems pretty standard except for the molasses. I'll bet that's a good addition.

And then, because the day hasn't been enough work already, there's a party buffet-style supper.

At least there's not a lot to fix, assuming the bread and cookies are on hand and the pineapple was sliced ahead of time....

I'll bet cooks were really glad to be done with Martha Meade's marathon of cooking-- well, right up until they realized they were supposed to tackle abalone steaks and a torte, among other things, the very next day. Why cobble Friday's meals out of Thursday's leftovers? I'm sure at least a few cooks might have felt like telling Meade to stuff it....