New corner, new look

Around here, nothing is set in stone, especially if it has wheels. I've moved my tea cart/bar again, and now it's home to a full set of Hellerware glassware to go with my Hellerware ice bucket and vintage martini shaker. There's even a spot on the bottom shelf for my Kromex tidbit servers.

For a while the cart was in my dining room, but I bought a teak corner cabinet to hold my Iroquois Harvest Time collection, so I rolled it to a corner in the living room. I looked longingly at the Hellerware glasses on eBay for weeks...maybe even months, because the seller kept relisting...and I finally made a decision to buy them. The glasses slip into a metal sleeve lined with cork, which keeps drinks cold and eliminates condensation.

The other day, I could tell that my Carter Brothers scoop chair wanted its old corner back, so the bar got shunted to yet another corner of the living room. To make it feel better about its vagabond life, it got to take the new Nelson knock-off clock with it. The scoop chair got a Kandinsky print as a consolation prize.

Now the bar is complete and in a permanent spot...or as permanent as things get at my house.

Or could I interest you in a cocktail?

Meet the new teak tea cart that has become my bar. She's a three-tiered beauty that captured my heart the minute I saw her. The clear glass top has a 2" frosted band around the edge for added interest. The smaller teak cart that I've owned for years had been refinished by the previous owner, and the color was a tad too red to look good with my dining room furniture, but this one is just right. I've said my good-byes to the old cart and have moved it out to the workshop with all the other furniture that will be going into our soon-to-open store. (I'll be posting more about that in the coming days.)

The cart not only houses my wine, liquor and barware, but it also is home to my Kromex serving pieces, since my new china collection booted them out of the cabinet. My dining room has undergone a major rearrangement in the past week, but everything is settled in its new spot and looks rather lovely, if I do say so myself.

The search is on for vintage wine glasses and a cool ice bucket.

Kromex

Kromex, a division of Alcoa Aluminum Company, began producing kitchenware and serveware around 1957. Products included canister sets, salt and pepper sets, coffee and tea services, drinking glasses, spice sets, ice buckets, cake servers and trays of all sizes. Although very popular, the items were produced for a very short time.

At the time Kromex was manufactured, Alcoa was already primarily an industrial firm. In the early 1960s the company was purchased by Reynolds Aluminum, who phased out production of items for household use and concentrated on industrial production.

I recently found two Kromex tidbit servers on eBay that are in mint condition. They look like they were stored in someone’s china cabinet and never used. I got one for $4.99 and the other for $9.99. They’ll be great for serving homemade candy and slices of cheese logs over the holidays…made from my mother’s and grandmother’s recipes from back in the 1950s and 60s, of course. I’ll post more old family recipes in December.

In this post, I’ve included a recipe for a candy I remember my mother making in the 1950s. I’m sure she found it in Good Housekeeping or Ladies’ Home Journal, because she was always clipping recipes from magazines and stuffing them into her battered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook with the red-and-white-check cover. The ingredients may sound a little odd, but it was one of my favorite holiday candies…sweet, slightly salty and delightfully crunchy.

My recent Kromex finds on eBay...just in time for the holidays

Martha's Butterscotch Crunch (c. 1956)

Ingredients:

½ c. peanut butter

6 oz. package butterscotch chips

3 oz can chow mein noodles

2 c. miniature marshmallows

Combine peanut butter and butterscotch in double boiler.  Melt completely.  Stir well.  Add noodles and marshmallows.  Allow marshmallows to melt slightly.  Drop by spoon on waxed paper.  Chill until set.