What did Alice cook every day for the Brady kids?

Upper middle class? Hardly.

Oatmeal

They ate meatloaf

Minute Rice

R1, just middle class families had maids in the 70s??

Meat from Sam.

It's bugging me that I can't remember one meal. I'm a stickler for meals on TV shows and movies and I LOVED this show. I seem to remember Alice making cookies for after school and they always had a bowl of shiny red delicious apples on the table. R3 Yes, vague memories of meatloaf.

Oh brother. Everyone knows the answer to that question!

Meatloaf Wednesday

Gurl with 6 kids you know Carol was getting food stamps like a mutherfucker and probably selling them on the side

Probably a lot of meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs, casseroles, chicken a la king, stuff like that. Meat but with plenty of fillers to make it go further.

Spaghetti with magic mushrooms, on special occasions. Alice knew how to party!

R5 it was the seventies. People could afford it back then. The middle class was doing great and one income families were the norm.

This by the truckload

Pad Thai and Tom Yum soup, Rose.

Wadded Beef

Lots of red meat. She was always ordering take out meat from Sam the Butcher.

Swiss steak and spaghetti, which I thought was an insane combo when I saw the episode mentioning it (in reruns), but apparently it’s a thing… or was a thing. Years after seeing the episode, it was verified as a combo common for some families.

Does anyone eat Swiss steak anymore (aside from a TV dinner)?

Pork chops and applesauce

Alice’s prediliction for Sam’s tube steak was legendary!

Thindy ate spethil food at the spethil thool

Pot roast.

We had Swiss Steak with macaroni and cheese, so I guess with spaghetti on the side isn't too strange. A tomato-based sauce on Swiss Steak might taste pretty good.

Cheese soup.

Pizza and salad from the Jesse James episode.

When Alice had the day off, Mike and Carol would take everyone to The Magic Pan.

Alice would whip up elaborate dishes like Beef Wellington and Pheasant Under Glass and Baked Alaska for the simplest of occasions. She was such a treasure, and the Dittweilers were always trying to steal her away from Carol. Eventually it became a kind of bidding war.

Wtf does Carol do all day? Apparently vacuuming and making supper is too much for her.

Alton Brown has a killer Swiss Steak recipe. I make it every few months and serve it with homemade mashed potatoes and broccoli or green beans.

That Meatloaf dinner up thread is just screaming for some tomato gravy.

I have often wondered how Carol Brady filled her days as well. Why would a stay home mom need a maid who is also a cook?

I entered a vegetative state shortly after the kids were sent off to school and would stare mindlessly at a wall until they came home. Hey, anything's better than doing housework.

Carol was a beard for Mike. So she used that free time to have her sexual needs met, sleeping with men, while Alice did all of the work.

R29 I loved helping out when we had Swiss Steak!

I remember practically every kitchen scene had them washing lettuce and salad things for dinner. I thought at the time it must be a California thing. We ate salad with dinner, but it was always ice berg lettuce.

The lettuce was probably for bland homemade ground beef tacos made with 19 cent Lawry's Taco seasoning packet ..... They probably had a ton of "Shake and Bake" chicken legs plus blerf - a lot of hot Tuna Casserole with crushed potato chips on top.

Lesbian Stew.

r29 I make that Swiss Steak recipe a lot, too. Reminds me of my mother's. I serve with either plain noodles or rice.

Wasn't there some episode where Carol and Alice were competing to see who could make the best version of something -- was it chili? Or strawberry jam?

Dinner at the Bradys.

Architects are a step above middle class.

Carol Brady was a useless hag.

Peter - in his best Humphrey Bogart voice:

"Pork chops and apple shaash"

R40: You kids put that milk on your mush and eat it! Screech!!

I think meatloaf is underrated.

Strawberries. Mike Brady was supposed to say "Wow, it smells like strawberry heaven in here" but Robert Reed said strawberries had no scent, had a snit fit and walked off the set.

Spicy Gazpacho Andaluz

R1-A family with a live in maid is definitely Upper Middle Class.

I'm with you R19. Who doesn't know that?

Alice loved some nice beef curtains, but Mike would have none of it.

An architect is not upper middle class.

R50, it really is. A teacher, for example, would be middle class, an architect upper middle class. Depends on location, of course, but architects can make some serious money.

Pork chops and apple sauce, duh.

R51 your correct that it depends on location, but your average architect is definitely not upper middle class.

" Don't drink the milk.

"Why?"

"It's spoiled."

I worked at a theme park where they were filming an episode of the Brady Bunch. Ann B. Davis was sitting behind the scenes just relaxing between takes. One of the park execs was with his children. The kids walked up to her and asked," Are you Alice?" She responded, " Sure am." Then they asked, " Would you give us your autograph.? " She responded, " Sure won't." Then she told them to go away. She was a real bitch to everyone; an equal opportunity offender.

I think I remember one episode where they had a big tureen on the table. Don't know whether it was soup or something like beef stroganoff, but I remember telling my mother that what was in that tureen wouldn't feed as many people as were at the table.

And their house was really weird. It's like they had no dining room at all. It was just sort of a table that was placed to the side of the living room. Their house didn't look comfortable at all.

Fun fact: there is a short movie called Peege about an old woman with Alzheimer's. And they use the Brady Bunch set in that movie. The dorky kid from My Three Sons is in it. We had to watch it in 8th Grade Health class. It was godawful depressing. What a film to show a bunch of young, spirited kids trying to navigate their way through school, a movie that basically says "You'll end up like this eventually."

I clicked on this thread for the social class commentary, and you bitches did not disappoint.

According to the late, great Paul Fussell, class is determined more by taste and values than by money. I'm not at home right now, so I can't quote his book, but I believe that he would classify architects as middle class, unless they were unusually sophisticated and well-brought-up. Upper middle class, he writes, is Oliver's family in "Love Story" and everyone in "The Official Preppy Handbook." It's summering on Nantucket, driving a 20-year-old Volvo, and sending your children to Choate.

Although the Brady family had the money to employ Alice, their lifestyle was perfectly middle class.

Well if Mike Brady was middle class, what did that make Sam the butcher? Lower middle class?

I thought Swiss Steak was always tough. Is there a way to make it less so short of running over it with a steamroller?

I come from a family of six kids from the same era. We had mostaccioli with meat sauce, macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, Hamburger Helper, homemade vegetable soup, meat loaf, chicken cutlets, roast beef, along with rice, noodles or instant mashed potatoes and canned vegetables. When my parents went out, we got to pick a Swanson or Banquet frozen dinner. Yes, we were middle class but without the maid.

I remember when Alice was making a shopping list, she was saying things like cookies, (is she too lazy to bake)?

An architect makes good money but not with six kids and a layabout wife. Then again, if Mike was heavily insured from his first wife's demise, he probably had no mortgage (most couples back then had mortgage insurance, which pays off the mortgage if either spouse dies) and they only took two vacations, both camping.

I know what you're thinking "Hawaii" and Cincinnati, but both times, Mike's firm paid for those.

Tuna casserole

Chicken with a pineapple ring & cherry on top

Salmon patties, tuna patties

Beef stroganoff with egg noodles

Our family was middle class but my parents were a bit ahead of the curve foodwise. We had roast chicken, tortellini with cream, peas, mushrooms and bacon, homemade soup, bbq ribs, and decent salads with homemade dressing -- was always kinda weirded out at the Chef Boyardee my friends ate.

Mortgage insurance is for the benefit of the mortgage issuer. Life insurance proceeds would have been used to pay off a mortgage, but it's doubtful Mike's wife would have had a policy on her. It was uncommon in those days for housewives to have had life insurance.

Did Mike's first wife commit suicide over his homosex ?

They needed Ann "Bulldyke" Davis for the comic relief, so Mike should've just married Alice. Would have made more sense: 'Cut out the middle man' and have a lavender marriage.

They could adopt 6 Asian girls: Jayd, Chynna, Asiah, Lotus, Ming and Thai.

1 every 2 weeks she made an exotic meal, Polynesian, or Swiss, or EYETalian or FAR OUT VEGETARIAN. (Alice's sister was a lesbian and handed her a few recipes from lezzie communes. The boys LIKED it but the girls were fussy eaters.)

Uh rice uh roni

R58, Fussell's replacement for the term "lower middle class" (because he argued that the lower middle class no longer existed) was "high proletarian." Sam would have been a high or mid-prole, depending on his level of skill and his freedom from supervision.

Here are the author's categories, separated into tiers (on page 27 of the linked PDF):

TOP: Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle

MIDDLE: Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low-proletarian

BOTTOM: Destitute Bottom out-of-sight

She made a mean Tuna Salad or Fishcakes , She got tired of Sam's inferior beef, so to speak.

Let me try to clean up that formatting:

TOP: Top out-of-sight, Upper, Upper middle

MIDDLE: Middle, High proletarian, Mid-proletarian, Low-proletarian

BOTTOM: Destitute, Bottom out-of-sight

[quote]I thought Swiss Steak was always tough. Is there a way to make it less so short of running over it with a steamroller?

You have to use cube steak or have the meat tenderized by the butcher first.

What planet is R13 posting from? There was massive inflation in the 70s. Gas shortages, unemployment, etc. My family was middle class and there were some pretty lean times in those years. Stop projecting your charmed life and clearly sheltered world view onto everyone else.

Try learning about people who aren’t exactly like you, for a change. Make an actual effort there.

r63

No, in the 50s, 60s and 70s mortgage insurance, was commonly taken out by the spouses to insure that if one spouse died, the mortgage was paid off. This was totally separate from life insurance. We had a lot of widows and widowers on our block and they all had it.

Swiss steak is made with tomatoes do serving it with spaghetti isn’t all that weird. My mom would pound the meat with a tenderizer and brown then braise it in an electric skillet. Tomatoes and onions in the sauce and serve with buttered egg noodles. It was good!

What was Alice's schedule like? I wonder how many hours a day she worked? The times she started and ended? I know she had a vacation when her dyke cousin, Emma, took over.

Alice never got any time off. They made her live in a dreary room near the washer/dryer and they didn't pay her a salary because Mike and Carol felt it was more than enough to offer a roof over her head and three squares a day. But one day Alice accidentally saw Mike giving Sam a blowjob and well...

And well, what? Sam asked for it. Peter NEVER asked for it, it was expected of him.

I remember watching the show and asking my mother how come we didn't have a housekeeper. She shot me a look and said "with six kids old enough to clean and take care of the house, I don't know why she has one. Now go clean your room!" and she turned the TV off.

40-plus years later: I live alone and have a housekeeper. It is everything I ever dreamed it would be.

"What was Alice's schedule like?"

Up at 5am. Feed/water Tiger and scoop-up poop from the yard; 5:30am: Begin breakfast (bacon 'n eggs for adults and older kids; cereal or French toast for the younger ones); 6:00am: start laundry; 6:30am: start waking everyone up, start packing lunches. 7:00: breakfast is served; 7:30am: get kids off to school, Mike off to work; 8:00am: wake Carol; have a light snack while going over day's agenda; 9:00am: begin dusting and vacuuming; 10:00am: Carol's Bloody Mary; 11:00am: sort/fold laundry; Noon: errands and grocery shopping; 2pm: begin supper; make cookies for kids; 4:00pm: Carol's martini; 5:00pm: serve supper; 6:00pm: clear supper, do dishes; 7:00pm: help kids with homework; 8:00pm: bath time for kids; 9:00pm: retire to my room, watch some TV; or go out with Sam; 11:00pm: read Bible, turn in.

Who the hell makes bacon and eggs 90 minutes before serving them?

Alice did, and you better believe, Mike and Carol put her on bread and water for a month.

The part of Alice's backstory that they edited out, was that Alice was originally from the UK. Mile and Carol confiscated her passport and thus began her many years of servitude.

R12 Whenever i hear that song i immediately think of that scene.

Yeah, the 70s, before lowlife Republicans took over the country. People were allowed to make a living wage.

Lots of quinoa, kale, Asian fusion tacos and other not yet trendy foods. Alice invented avocado toast - inspired by the avocado appliances in the Brady kitchen.

She threw together some slop as quickly as possible so that she could go cavort with her undercover lover, Samantha. Around town, they were known as Alice the butch, and Sam the butcher. Linda the butchest lived a few houses down.

I spoke to my mother about her childhood, which may be similar 5 kids etc.

They ate a lot of Swiss Steak, Pot Roast, spaghetti and meatballs. Chow Mein with La Choy canned vegetables and fried noodles, so really a beef stew of a sort, sloppy joes, meatloaf. It was a meat centered diet.

correct, r87. I grew up at the same time and every night it was meat, vegetable - almost always frozen except in the summer - starch, salad. Salad was usually iceberg, sometimes romaine lettuce, carrots, celery, onion and maybe radishes if they were in season. Never heard of arugula or knew there were so many kinds of lettuce!

Back then chicken was a lot less expensive than beef, so we probably had some sort of chicken four nights a week, beef the rest. Hardly ever fish - even as Catholics during Lent. My dad didn't like it and we complained it stunk up the house whenever my mom did make it. We got the occasional pork chop, which I loved, but my mom and sister didn't. We ate as a family (7 of us) and all ate the same thing every night - no special meals because someone didn't what was being served. Only my parents got to not like something and therefore we generally never had it. Was lucky to avoid liver that way as well - my neighbor made that all the time. We only had dessert served at the table on Sunday nights, my mom or sisters usually baked something. Weeknights we could have cookies (usually packaged) or ice cream when watching TV.

[quote] It was a meat centered diet.

Especially for Mike.

Every night was taco night.

there were fruit salad and sometimes fruits used as bowls. Alice pampered them.

R59 The key to tender swiss steak is to tenderize it well before flouring and browning. Then cook or bake it in tomatoes and onion at a fairly low temp (325 oven) for 1/1/2 - 2 hours. After this thread I am in the mood for it. I think I'll make it this weekend. I'm sure it would be good with pasta, but my mom always served it with mashed potatoes, so that is my plan.

The Bradys were cheap. Everyday, the kids took their lunch to school. By the time we hit high school, we were always buying lunch at school. It was too much of a bother to carry lunch.

I have never had Swiss steak. I may just have to try it just because of this thread.

Bearded clams.

R57- The Brady's were most certainly Upper Middle Class based on Mike Brady's income which would have to have been quite high for the 1970's to support his wife and six children and to be able to afford a live in maid.

The Barrett's in Oliver's Story were NOT Upper Middle Class. They were UPPER CLASS.

Even though Alice was dating Sam the butcher, I think they still ate bland food. Meatloaf comes to mind. I know meatloaf does not have to be bland, but Alice's meatloaf was probably bland.

Pork chops and apple sauce, yes. Someone upthread mentioned that Alice and Carol had a cooking contest. I remember that, but can't remember what the dish was.

HOw do you know Alice's meatloaf was bland, R97?

R93- From 1st grade thru 12th I always brought my lunch to school in a brown paper bag. On rare occasions in Junior High School my mother or father would give me $1 to buy lunch at school.

I tasted Carol's fish taco once. It was dry and flavorless.

For you, R96:

[quote]Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you'll have inferred already, that it's in large part the class depicted in Lisa Birnbach and others' Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of 1980. And it is the class celebrated also in the 1970 Ivy-idyllic film Love Story. (p.34)

I remember one episode they were all in the living room at the dinner table and they were supposed to be eating and in the long shot Marcia’s plate is empty and she is just pretending to be eating moving the fork around and putting it up to her mouth.

As for the Brady family:

[quote]The middle class in distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income. I have known some very rich people who remain stubbornly middle-class.... The middle class is where table manners assume an awful importance and where net curtains flourish to conceal activities like hiding the salam' (a phrase no middle-class person would indulge in, surely: the fatuous "making love" is the middle class equivalent). (p. 39)

Would Mike and Carol hide the salam', or would they make love? I rest my case: You couldn't write up a more middle-class family if you tried.

That's because Marcia was anorexic, R102.

R102 is talking about the episode where Marcia becomes penpals with Karen Carpenter.

I thought Jan was the neurotic one.

Alice was never allowed to sit with the Bradys at dinner, so she served them meals that sat on their faces. Fish tacos, nachos with flicked bean dip, lemon chicken tits & butter thunder thighs, beef curtain casserole. Hidden Valley dressing always had a place on the table. Split princess pea soup and ham drape biscuits. Ripe juicy melons. Desserts were lapped up greedily: Alice's signature red vulva cake, poontang puddin' pie, hot twat coochies - which were just plain sugar cookies with a single red M&M dipped in Tabasco sauce on top of each one for a clitorrific pop of color/burst of hot whore flavor.

Alice was probably a spinster aunt that clung along. Simple Americana foods. Mac and cheese, fried chicken legs, and ice berg lettuce.

All answered here:

A sample of food dialogue from the show:

Carol: “Alice, you can put the hamburgers on any time you’re ready.”

Alice: “All right, Mrs. Brady. That’s rare for you and Mr. Brady. Medium rare for Jan and Peter. Well-done for Marcia. It could be a lot simpler if I just pounded this whole thing together into a meat loaf.”

The “Personal Favorites” chapter contains enough recipes to provide culinary accompaniments - homemade TV dinners to a fair number of episodes.

Readers will find Davis’ One and Only Beef Jerky, Florence Henderson’s (Carol Brady) Divine Stuffed Rigatoni and Chicken Oregano and the late Robert Reed’s (Mike Brady) Chicken Rosemary Cajun and Pumpkin Chiffon Pie.

Christopher Knight (Peter) contributed Rigatoni with Broccoli and Chicken. Susan Olsen (Cindy) sent South of the Border Beef Filet and Easy Pot Roast recipes.

Mike Lookinland (Bobby), apparently one of the most avid cooks in the cast, offered Mike’s Scintillating Chili, Spaghetti Sauce, Clam Chowder and Dreamy Chocolate Cheesecake.

Williams (Greg) sent recipes for Yogurt Chicken and his Showstopper Zucchini and Swiss Cheese Pie. Maureen McCormick (Marcia) provided Chicken a l’Orange and Fabulous Meatballs.

In the 70s, they weren't exactly having pad Thai and quinoa.

Think: spaghetti or roast chicken

Back in the day when they had a lunch counter we used to eat Swiss steak at Woolworths. I remember their cook was a chunky middle aged German woman with a hair net and a pink waitress uniform.

Did you slap her?

I was always more interested in how The Waltons were able to eat so well. They were supposed to be dirt poor, but they never went hungry. Sure, they could grow their own vegetables, but their table was always crammed with pies, cakes, roast beef, loaves of bread etc. They didn't butcher their own cows, harvest sugar cane or grow their own wheat, so where did they get the money to buy all of this??

Here's Alton's Swiss steak recipe. The only think I do differently is add some carrots (in large chunks) because my mother always did.

Alice took shortcuts. She used 2 gallon drums of Chicken Tonight and other favorites to make memorable meals. In contrast The Waltons ate farm to table every night. Very chic.

I've never had Swiss steak that wasn't grainy. Is that supposed to be part of its charm?

R116, no. It should fall apart in your mouth, like pot roast. It doesn't sound like yours was prepared/cooked correctly, no offense meant.

Ramen noodles. Food for 9 is expensive, dear.

R118, food for eight. Alice had to buy her own KFC.

[quote]Their house didn't look comfortable at all.

Because that staircase took up half the damn house.

There was one episode where Alice says, "Those kids have never tasted a cold cookie!" and then nods her head, as she usually does after saying her line.

So this means one of two things: (a) she bakes cookies for them and serves them warm, or (b) she's starving them to death.

r121

She's reheating store bought cookies. Peter must be retarded because Alice gives him cookies and he says "These are the best cookies you ever made." And Alice says she didn't make them, they BOUGHT them from Peter when he was a Sunshine Girl.

Funny how none of the Brady kids (on the original series) was the slightest bit fat. On the Partridge Family, Danny was fat, they even did a show about it. On the Brady Bunch Hour (the variety show) Susan Olsen was chubbyish in her teens.

Alice was fond of butter, which she put to good use in Last Tango In Paris.

Alice got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Peter didn't enjoy selling cookies as a Sunflower Girl.

Remember when Marcia, Peter and Jan all worked at the ice cream store? I think they all eventually got fired. Peter for eating too much ice cream, Marcia because she wasn't as industrious as Jan and Jan because she was, well, Jan, and we expected her to constantly lose at everything.

Alice would whip up her special tuna taco for Carol, when Mike was at work and the kids were in school. Carol would eat it right on the kitchen counter.

“Would you like to buy my cookies?”

R120 I never noticed what looks to be a door to nowhere in the top right, above Alice. Either that or it's a random brown panel for no reason. Don't you think that appears to be a door?

R72-America's standard of living did not peak in the 1950's or the 1960's. In spite of stagflation and the the two gasoline shortages America's standard of living peaked in 1973 but has been declining ever since.

What about the smorgasbord food for the glamorous dinner party?

Small kotbula

Mikes leftover mexican food

And what about Marcias food for dinner that she had to prepare on season 1...that the kids passed down in a standing formation?

Alice doesn't cook here anymore.

The Brady kids certainly have a better longevity record than the child stars of other sitcoms like Diff'rent Strokes and Family Affair.

Is there a door behind the staircase in r120's picture. Mike's Den is just to the right of Alice. What's the door behind the staircase? Or is that just a mirror?

Yes I made the same observation upthread. If you click on the picture you can see an expanded view. Looks like more wall panels, but in that redwood color.

It’s a door that is never to be opened.

It’s where cousin Oliver’s body was put after the “accident “.

We don’t speak of it.

It also doubled as my hanky-panky room.

Of course the Brady were well off - just look at their taste in art...expressionism/abstract in the living room at R120 and kitsch/pop art in the kitchen R125. They had class!

Who was the biggest dyke in tv history, Ann B. Davis or Nancy Kulp?

"... they were all in the living room at the dinner table and they were supposed to be eating"

LOL thanks for the laughs. Classic Datalounge- we still got it!

It's obvious that the show had a $1.98 production value. And $1.50 of it went to Robert Reed to please stay.

Congratulations, r107, you have managed to turn me on AND disgust me at the same time.

[quote]America's standard of living peaked in 1973 but has been declining ever since.

You can tell because that's the year Mary Richards started to look at meat, shake her head and wearily throw it in the shopping cart.

r141

Yeah those ugly bitches always played man hungry spinsters. What losers

r127

Jan wasn't fired, one of the few times Jan actually came out on top.

Whose pussy stank worse? Alice or Carol's? Did either do anal?

Mine didn't, once I was on maneuvers in the Mojave Desert and I had one can of Coca-Cola. I thought I can douche with it or drink it. Then I said, "No, God will take care of the thirst but it's up to us to keep ourselves clean."

[quote]Who was the biggest dyke in tv history, Ann B. Davis or Nancy Kulp?

It's a tie.

The Bradys got their art at My Three Sons' garage sale.

"According to the late, great Paul Fussell, class is determined more by taste and values than by money."

Yes, because he was upper class and thought highly of himself. And he took money for granted.

I think one of Datalounge's great delusions (which is not unique to Datalounge) is that money gives you taste and sophistication. It can work that way for some. But it doesn't. Do I really have to say that given who our President is?

[quote]Whose pussy stank worse? Alice or Carol's? Did either do anal?

Well, Mike certainly did.

Flashlight beans and squishy hot dogs

R151, Paul Fussell called his own upbringing middle-class! In adulthood, he aspired to what he called Category X (a sort of bourgeois bohemian group, decades before David Brooks wrote about it). He most certainly did not harbor any illusions about being upper-class.

But I agree with you that it is delusional to think that money = taste and sophistication.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Thank you, R19! Posters are slipping here. Who could forget Peter repeating that? Now, at dinner I cannot wait for Jan to get George Glass's phone call.

Who knows what the family ate... as for Alice herself, she ate pussy.

Mike’s favorite, Chicken and Dumplings.

Meatloaf with a side of mac & cheese. Apple pie for dessert.

Not Julia Child recipes, because they were designed for housewives without domestic staff.

R113 The Waltons' food never bothered me, my grand parents grew up poor in the rural South of that era, and they said it was exactly how they ate. The grew a lot of their own food, and to supplement that they had credit at the local shop, Ike's on The Waltons, they would hunt and fish, and neighbors would often bring excess produce or pay you in produce for doing some odd job for them. The ate much better than people in the city during the depression.

Back to the Brady Bunch, I don't know why people are assuming Carol was lazy. Most times on the show, they showed her in the kitchen with Alice helping to prepare the food and I assume she also helped clean. Having six children in the house, they needed two people to keep up with the work. Laundry by itself had to be a massive job.

[quote] What did Alice cook every day for the Brady kids?

Whatever meat Sam the Butcher dropped off after dark when he snuck over to bang Alice.

Those six kids should've been cleaning the house.

Alice's hot cunt. She would lift that blue polyester skirt up and make all the kids lick her wet dripping cunt.

Alice and Carol always seemed to be washing leaf lettuce for every meal. That family ate more salads than any family I knew at that time. And most Americans ate iceberg.

[quote]r59 I thought Swiss Steak was always tough. Is there a way to make it less so, short of running over it with a steamroller?

It's not something my mom ever made, but I might have had it on an airplane once (?) Below is what seems to be a pretty old, standardized approach.

Interestingly, it's pointed out that "Swiss" in the name Swiss Steak has nothing to do with the cusine of Switzerland. The process by which butchers run cheap cuts of meat like this through a bladed machine to pre-tenderize it is called "swissing."

This is a 1964 "Month of Menus" from [italic]Woman's Day[/italic] magazine. Carol probably had Alice do dinners like this.

[quote]r102 In the long shot Marcia’s plate is empty and she is just pretending to be eating moving the fork around and putting it up to her mouth.

Perhaps a cut subplot in which the family agrees to ignore Marcia's temporary anorexia?

(Or, was this before or after she was hit in the head with a football? Cuz that could make her act a bit strange, too.)

[quote]Laundry by itself had to be a massive job.

Especially with Mike’s anal leakage, and you just know Bobby didn’t wipe correctly.

Talk about skid marks!

I always wondered why the staircase was right in the middle. All that wasted space underneath it (which you couldn’t even use for storage or a coat closet) and on the side by Mike’s den. What architect designed something so stupid?

There was a bathroom outside Alice's door. I always assumed the path behind that stairway was just another way to get to the back service porch, and Alice's room and it meant Alice's bathroom was actually the downstairs bathroom.

This would make sense as I've never seen a house without a bathroom on the first floor. Not at least since modern plumbing was invented.

In a family with six kids, which we had, the mother would spend a ton of time on activities at the different schools, taking kids to doctor and dentist appointments, dropping them off at sports practices, attending games, etc., etc. My mother would have loved a maid; instead, she had us. We all had chores to do to keep the house running.

They Brady's appeared to live in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles, I was always amused at how quickly Mike could get from his office to his house and how the kids seemed to be able to get everywhere on bike.

The exterior shot of the Brady house were somewhere in THE VALLEY.

r174

Probably but the references in the show refer to Woodland Hills area.

In the episode where the Bradys got a payphone, Robert Reed hated it so much he contacted the phone company and found out it was illegal to have a payphone in a private residence. So when he told Sherwood Schwartz this, Sherwood was ready for him and said, "But it's not illegal in Santa Monica, and that's where the Bradys live."