Frosting - Silicone bathtub/window caulking makes great whip cream or frosting. Looks like the marshmallow type - you can add acrylic paints to it for the color "flavor" you want.

Marjorie in CA

Lite Brite pegs: Where to get Them - I went on the internet and checked the Hasbro Toys site. There is a web site to order the pegs (but only in the U.S.) It is $6 for 400 pegs.

Click on the web site below to print the order form.

http://www.hasbro.com/consumer/forms/litebrite.htm

Paula

Frosting - I use dimensional fabric paint. It's thick, already colored, in a bottle ready to use. It shrinks a bit when it dries, so you just have to remember to put more on than you want (although more can be added after the first application dries). They have all the colors I would want to use for cakes - chocolate brown, white, mint green, pink, yellow, etc.

Marilyn - Wisconsin

Holeless Beads: I saw some really great looking grapes, in a basket of fruit, made from holeless beads. They even somehow got the 'bloom' on them.

Joy Parker

Holeless Beads: Very tiny holeless beads mixed with colored resin makes sauces for desserts etc. Also as fruit in fruit pies, knobs on perfume bottles etc. For grapes we use mustard seed glued to button thread when we can't get beads.

Roberta Pijper

Holeless Beads: Here are a few of my uses for small holeless beads.

'Eyes' for all of my Faeries, Goblins, Pond Pixies and embellishments on dragon's scales. (Use green, blue or black, clear, yellow)

'Raspberries' for Faeries to hold. (Use red and pink)

'Bubbles' (Use multiple sizes of pearl and clear) overflowing in rusty tubs and old men bathing there in.

When light hits the clear glass bead of a Faery eye you can almost see the glint of mischief and life in them.

Fill an old wooden scrub bucket with them to simulate suds. And put a few on an old mop which can then be propped along side. Use clear tub caulking and mound in bucket also drip it down the sides. Put a bit of the caulk of the tip of the mop. Sprinkle beads over entire caulk surface. Then sprinkle with purple blue ultra fine glitter.

VERY important tip: Put bucket and mop on pan with an edge. (Take it from the voice of experience!) Leave overnight In the morning just remove the unstuck beads and use again. I keep all my extra beads and glitter in a "suds baggy" to use over and over.

Looks cute with a scrub woman or just to stand in the corner of a room.

Lyn Trenary

Plastic Tubes: For your candy sticks, would the small plastic straws that come with cardboard juice drinks be the right size? I have seen many with clear plastic straws on the side and they seem to be thinner than usual.

Ann Kozlik

Tubes for candy: How about fuel tubing for model airplanes? Available at model shops.

Jeanne

Colonial Kitchens:  re:canned food, my mother quit canning once she got a big chest freezer, but I'm sure some of the hardier rural Ss’rs will know about it, and Mary  Eccher has probably researched it.  However, I seem to recollect dimly that canning was a byproduct of the industrial revolution, and therefore would be inappropriate earlier than the very end of the 18th century , which would be post-colonial (after the Revolution -- early Federal period). There may have been an early version of potted meats stored in crocks for short periods, but otherwise starchy vegetables were preserved raw in root cellars and people ate what was available seasonally.  Winter diet had to have been boring -- limited salad (slaw), meat, potatoes, turnips, yams, with bread, rice, dried beans and dried fruit.  Hmm.  That's probably why fruitcake is a Christmas tradition -- no fresh fruit available!  Southern diet was probably better, because relatively fresh fruit could be imported in from the Caribbean. 

Loretta.Sniarowski

Colonial canned food--not. According to the docents in Annapolis crocked meat or dried meat or vegetables or herbs were done, but they ate "cold weather vegetables" corn & beans, dried; beets, onions, cabbage, carrots, turnips, cranberries if in New England, squash, and wheat, rice, oats, and molasses, salt and cone sugar and some spices if available.  Check out the Historical Society of Annapolis for good details on that period. It was literally feast or famine most of the time--feast on cabbage or beans, or remain "famished"--thus the origin of that word.

Christmas Carol, Yakima

Colonial food storage: This is a bit about colonial food storage for Rita and anyone else who is making an 18th C kitchen.

They would not have had glass canning jars in the colonial period, they used stoneware jars to store things. Most often, meats were just smoked or salted and hung to dry. Sometimes meats were "pickled" in brine in stoneware crocks. A large stone was placed on the top of the crock to keep the meat from floating up out of the brine and being spoiled.

 Many fruits were saved by drying them. Wines  made from fruits were stored in crocks or barrels. Some root vegetables were stored in sand in root cellars. Sauerkraut and pickles of all kinds were stored in brine filled crocks covered with thin cloth or wooden lids. Even eggs were saved by storing them in brine.

A white sugar cone is shaped as a usual cone except that the very top is slightly rounded off. Sugar cones were quite big and hard, so I don't believe they were used on the table at all. Large sugar nippers were used to cut off pieces of the sugar cone, then the sugar pieces were crushed in a mortar or dissolved whole into a liquid. Brown sugar came in small wooden kegs. I know that in wealthy Southern homes, there was a special locked cabinet used for storing the sugar because sugar was an expensive imported item. The average family would have used wild or domestic honey to sweeten things.

Coiled "sweet grass" baskets were made in the south (and still are) so I would go with these, although you could use  woven ones too. I saw a demonstration of splint basket weaving in Williamsburg, Va. this past fall, so I know those were used in the colonial south too. 

Darlene from LI

Cactus: If you are using air drying clay, how about trying those plastic 'strings' stores use to attach price tags and such? I wouldn't use them in the oven, but they ought to do the trick for you. They also make good drinking straws for milk and soda.

Dani

Colonial:  I plan to make a Colonial kitchen roombox (after retirement next year) and am collecting things for it and got to making foods, veggies, etc. for it.  I have a question about foods they would have, but first I want to share what I found.  I bought several books on architecture from Edward R. Hamilton...*very* reasonably priced at under $5. and found an old kitchen fireplace I plan to duplicate.  The fireplace was built in the 1600s, I believe, so it will be the main attraction in my kitchen of a later time about 1780s, probably).  I loved the fireplace and have found so many other architectural helps and plans in these books that I figured some of you may be interested in buying them for reference, too.  They were all published in the early 1900s (reprints now) and have a wealth of information...and scale drawings!  I bought a bunch just for reference and they may still be available in the architecture section of the website.

  Now my question about what foods would be available to these 1780s people.  I am making a stew of meat, onions, potatoes, and carrots (one of Mary's contributions to NN in 1983). I've made 3 kinds of breads: dark, soda-type, and regular wheat. I've made a cake and 2 pies (pumpkin and berry) and want to have some veggies on the table and in bowls.  Would it be okay to assume they would have: potatoes, carrots, onions, squash, pumpkins, corn, green beans, tomatoes, eggs, apples, peaches?  Will have some cheeses: yellow like cheddar color, and white. Also, hanging from ceiling beams: Indian corn, herbs, and meat looking like sausages.  Are all these foods okay to use?  Should I remove any from the setting?  What could be added?  I want to keep this roombox authentic as to content.

  Mary Eccher, I appreciate your past contributions to the old NN mags. I've been making your foods and having such fun!  I think I have to redo my meat for the stew of yours I'm making.  Last night (3 a.m.) I did what I thought I was reading, but after baking the meat, realized it was so *tiny* compared to the potatoes and onions in your recipe.  So back to the drawing board and make the meat a little larger chunks.  Loved the color...like *real* meat!  You are one talented lady!!!  If I could, I'd hug your neck for all the joy you've given me from these old recipes!  BTW, folks, I make her onion rings like she said and they look great.  She said use transparent, cut with a 3/16" round cutter, then use a small drinking straw to cut the center out.  They look great.  I had tried cutting drinking straws in the past, but they look like cut drinking straws to me...really like these!  You're a wonder, Mary!

  Sorry this is so long, but would like to know about the foods and keep them authentic for this roombox.  Any help would be appreciated. 

Rita Pierce

Colonial American food - 1780s:   By 1780 there were colonists in many different areas, so some foods would be different.  For example, if a colonist did not live by the sea, fish and shellfish would not be on their menus.

      Your list is right on target as to what you should include, although I remember no mention of cheeses in colonial days...would have to look that one up.  Well, here are some more suggestions:

      The four basics - corn, beans, squash and pumpkin.  Corn was made into breads, puddings, such as Indian Pudding using tree sap to sweeten it,  corn cooked with lima beans for succotash, Johnnycakes, and breads as you have already "baked".

      Then there was the eternal pot of stew - long, slow cooking was necessary because the meat from wild game or fowl was tough and that made it more edible.  Lots of all kinds of vegetables and beans would be added to the pot.

  And potatoes too, of course but here's an odd thing.  The Indians grew potatoes, but they were for many years rejected by the colonists as a tasty food. 

      The hog provided colonists with a bunch of stuff...some of it was served fresh, other parts salted, pickled or smoked for ham, the rest made into head cheese or sausage.  So that string of sausages is very accurate, Rita.  The fat was rendered into lard or served as chitterlings.

      Going on a bit long here, so I will just conclude with a few other suggestions for your kitchen.  Basket of berries or apples, some crude pieces of pottery for bean cooking, mortar & pestle (the colonial blender!), jug of hard cider, crocks and pitchers, tin or pewter plates, wooden kitchen utensils, jars of jam & jelly, black cook pots and bread pans, candles in colonial holders, cone of sugar for the table, colonial fireplace stuff such as, long-handled bread pan, etc. 

Mary Eccher

Colonial Kitchen: don't forget to have a salt celler as salt was also a precious commodity and was locked away so that it didn't disappear. 

Rusty

Mini-Food Book: My favorite miniature book, Easy to Make Dollhouse Accessories by Andrea Barham, contains some really fancy confections. This book has instructions for the following foods: Box of Turkish Delights- instructions include how the make the box, Peach Melba, including the sundae glass, Orange and Lemon Segments with box, Box of chocolates (these are adorable), Iced Cake, Fruit in a bowl. This book has so many wonderful things to make in it.

Linda

Elegant Desserts: I just wanted to let everyone who makes mini food know, that I just bought a fantastic cook book that is called "Elegant Desserts". It has about 185 gorgeous color pictures in it. The desserts are beautifully photographed and you'll love this book! I really don't think there's a better one for doing fancy foods. With step by step instructions, it's also a really nice book for making the real thing as well as the mini thing.

Susan in VA

Making Mini Oranges: This is a great site for mini oranges www.compclub.demon.co.us/oranges/intro_page.htm. It has a step by step procedure with pictures.

GeneAnn

Mini Pie Crust: If you can find a game piece that looks like a poker chip (much smaller than the original one), it will make a perfect pie crust edge. The chip is the right size for a 1/12 scale pie and the edging will be perfectly spaced all around. I also use Plaid acrylic light brown for the staining of the "baked look".

Barb

Making Toast: For toast, I would suggest "Model Magic" clay. It is an air dry clay that has a pretty realistic bread texture when sliced. I make loaves of bread, let dry, use paint or chalk to brown the outside and then slice with a new single-edged razor blade. Then you can "toast" each slice with a little light brown chalk.

Sonia