This old cooking video, “Preparation of Foods: Stone Age to Space Age,” gives a brief overview of old cooking techniques and moves quickly into Space Age cooking techniques, shamelessly plugging the amazing capabilities of the microwave and how it brought us into the 20th century.

Microwaves? Truth be told, except for a brief 6-month stint, I haven’t owned one of those things since college, when I lived off Ramen and Easy Mac. Why anyone would voluntarily eat Easy Mac is beyond me now. I got my fill of it then. Now, microwaves conjure up terrible images of drunken eating binges, reheated coffee from the day before, and pulling all-nighters. I’d just as rather not have one.

Maybe this movie will convince me:

This old video shows the way of life of Kentucky settlers. There’s a bit on cooking as well as log cabin building, tallow-candle making, weaving, farming, and even a hoedown!

It’s incredible to see that people lived like this not so very long ago. The video is from 1941.

This is a great series I just found on YouTube called Depression Cooking with Clara. This 91-year-old woman talks about growing up in the Depression and what types of meals they ate. She says all they ate was pasta… pasta with garlic, pasta with peas, pasta with tomatoes. She says the only thing they ate more of than pasta was potatoes.

It’s amazing to capture and record these stories firsthand—what a generation! We can all learn something from these people.

Watch Clara make pasta with peas in this episode. I’ll be posting more episodes in upcoming weeks.

Okay, okay, so this movie is a little dull after the initial opening sequence, but it’s still pretty amusing and worth watching.

From Centron Productions in Lawrence, Kansas, this old movie from 1949 teaches young housewives important terms for how to bake chocolate cake, make scalloped cauliflower, jelly, and more old favorites.