West End Dumplings: Holiday Entertaining with the Winnipeg Tribune's Kay Middleton !

Friday 16 December 2011

Holiday Entertaining with the Winnipeg Tribune's Kay Middleton !

May 18, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

This holiday season I want to share some entertaining tips and recipes from Katharine 'Kay' Middleton.

Between 1935 and 1948, Middleton was the Winnipeg Tribune's Home Economics editor from 1935 to 1958. Her "A Page for Winnipeg Homes" column helped guide homemakers and bachelors through the tumultuous times of the Depression and World War II. She was also a regular contributor in the Free Press, published cook books, and for a time had her own radio show on CKJS.

Her wide-ranging talents and strong public persona saw her lured away to Chicago where she continued to publish and host her own TV show.

Through the magic of the internet we can transport ourselves back to Middleton's era. One marked by food shortages, provisions rationing and the stress of trying to ensure a festive holiday season when the world appeared to be collapsing.

Below is a biography of Middleton. For a post featuring her:

Christmas holiday recipes and entertaining ideas go here

Thanksgiving recipes go here

Cleaning tips for men go here.

(When you get to the Flickr image, click on the down arrow to the bottom right of the image and click on the "view all sizes" box to see a decent-sized image.)

Katharine "Kay" Major Spink Middleton was born in Toronto in 1906 and her family moved to Winnipeg when she was a child. She attended Rupert's Land Ladies College on Carlton Street, (a forerunner to Balmoral Hall), obtained her BSc in Home Economics at the U of M in 1929 and did her post-graduate studies in dietetics at the Mayo Clinic.

Upon returning to Manitoba, Middleton worked briefly at the Morden Hospital before beginning her public career at the Eaton's test kitchen in 1931. There, she regularly demonstrated recipes, new kitchen machinery and provided entertaining tips such as how to set a table correctly.

In 1935, Middleton became the Tribune's Home Economics Editor and began her almost daily "A Page for Winnipeg Homes" column. It offered up recipes, preserving tips, nutritional information, cleaning advice and household budget tips. She is credited with writing 4,000 columns and publishing 7,000 recipes during her tenure at the Trib !

Middleton didn't just spen her time behind a typewriter. She toured schools and visited military barracks to ensure that proper, nutritious meals were being served in a clean, safe environment. She regularly spoke at conventions and service group meetings on topics like food security and the importance of proper nutrition.

Though women were her main focus, she also wrote columns aimed at men and the role they could take in household affairs and she participated in courses that taught bachelors how to cook for themselves.

July 14, 1942, Winnipeg Tribune

Middleton believed strongly in the role of the home economist as change-maker in society.

In 1939 she and fellow Winnipegger Anna Speers founded the Canadian Home Economics Association, (disbanded in 2003), whose purpose was:

"... to strengthen the home economics profession and to promote improved quality of life for individuals and families. Home economics was concerned with all aspects of daily living including: human relationships and development, resource management, consumerism, foods and nutrition, clothing, textiles, housing and aesthetics."

Many of the things advocated by Middleton are ones we are trying to relearn today.

She hosted demonstrations on how to properly carve a turkey so as not to waste any meat. She also advocated for what we now call a 100 mile diet, taking advantage of foods that could be grown in the garden or bought from local producers.

May 2 1942, Winnipeg Tribune

World War II brought major challenges for Manitoba women.

Thousands suddenly found themselves as the head of a single-parent household and, on top of that, many had to go into the workforce. Low military pay meant a slash in household income at a time when inflation was driving up the prices of many food items. Rationing either severely restricted or eliminated altogether the use of many familiar food products.

Middleton, though, felt that through encouragement and proper advice, Manitoba's women could not only survive the war, but use it to make change that would better their lives.

December 9, 1941, Winnipeg Tribune

In 1941, the Women's Canadian Club created a "Health for Victory" campaign and Kay Middleton was appointed chair of the Winnipeg chapter. The goal of the program was to ensure that families on the home front continued to eat nutritious meals in the midst of all these changes.

Initially the program was to be a six week course; a combination of films, lectures and cooking classes for homemakers.

The Women's Canadian Club funded the program whilst the Canadian Home Economics Association, chaired by Middleton, created many of the new recipes that worked around rationed meat, sugar and butter. The Volunteer Bureau supplied instructors and helped secure locations in dozens of neighbourhoods across the city to hold the courses.

Based on the success of the first round of classes, 4,000 participants, and the sinking feeling that the war was going to drag on for years to come, the program was extended and expanded to include printed material, organizing "victory" community gardens, holding seasonal canning classes and national speaking tours featuring renowned doctors and nutritionists.

Middleton was a perfect fit as chair of "Health for Victory". She was able to put her cooking skills to work, advising how you could stretch your meat portions using grains and substituting meat fat to save on vegetable oil. Her regularly published rationing timetables (above) and accompanying columns (also) and recipes ensured that homemakers who followed along would waste nothing.

It also allowed Middleton to step onto a national stage.

In her role as head of the national Home Economics Association, she wrote national columns and spoke in other cities to explain government policy, such as the need for rationing and in favour of an international food security for the U.N.. She told a Women's Canadian Club meeting in Brandon:

Human discontent, which develops from empty stomachs, poor housing and shoddy clothing is basically responsible for wars for hungry, angry people can be led easily by unscrupulous, warring individuals whose lust for power overshadows all humanity.
Winnipeg Free Press, January 18, 1946

In October 1945, Middleton was the Southam News correspondent at the United Nations meetings in Quebec City that founded UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

CBC Program Guide, 1945

Middleton became a multi-media personality in the late 1930s when she hosted "A Winnipeg Home" radio show on CKJS and published her first book of collected recipes. She continued on with guest appearances on other shows through to the late 1940s.

In 1948, Middleton announced that she was moving to Chicago to take up a position as editor of the consumer education bureau at Household Finance Corporation. Two years later, she moved on to publishing house Harvey and Howe, which did test cooking, published cookbooks and produced related media programs. She also edited the journal "What's New in Home Economics".

In 1951, she took over as host of a Monday to Friday cooking show on WGN-TV, which became known as Chicago Cooks with Kay Middleton that ran until the end of 1952.

Middleton was a diabetic and spent many years as a volunteer dietician with the Chicago chapter of the American Diabetes Association. She was working on the final revision of the update of her 1978 best-selling book, The Art of Cooking for the Diabetic, when she died of a heart attack on June 2, 1987 at the age of 80.

Middleton, who never married or had children, is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto.