Porch party!

"An informal porch party, with the right sort of hostess, will rouse enthusiasm...More strenuous but quite as well worthwhile, are community picnics...Refreshments... should be homemade if practicable. Too often our fashions for public luncheons are settled by the caterers, and what they find it most convenient to serve. Wherever there is a historical aspect about our picnic...why not plan the food to be served to fit the period as carefully as we do the costumes? Few would be ready to lend choice, old china, even to decorate the tables, but it may be there are some pewter platters and pitchers, that would not be injured by use, and would lend an 'air' to the whole feast. Pies and doughnuts, loaf cakes and cookies are to be chosen rather than the ices and angel cakes of the present day, and often will win applause because they are less common than ice cream. Since ice cream cones have become daily food, it is no longer a rarity, a 'treat,' in the old sense of that word."
---"Summer Celebrations," Anna Barrows American Cookery, June-July 1925 (p. 23-26) 

What could be more fun in the summertime than a party on the porch? Just call the neighbors over and enjoy a feast! Anna Barrows was talking here about an Independence Day party, hence the reference to historic costumes. Oodles of patriotic fun! (But since when did ice cream cones become "daily food"? In my dreams!)

A porch party wouldn't really work in the Chicago two-flat Dot and I share--unless it were an intimate picnic a deux on the miniscule back porch, which sounds romantic but made less so by the presence of the landlady's lawn mowing apparatus. But it would be just the thing for the big porch of my parents' home in Kerryville.

Just three more months until our book comes out! Then obscure references like "Kerryville" and "Chicago two-flat" will make sense to you--I promise!

xoxoxo
Marjorie