Celebrate spring with an asparagus pinwheel!

Happy Spring! To mark the season, I'm posting one of my favorite things: an elaborately-decorated molded salad.

It's named, appropriately enough, Fresh As Spring Salad. 

And since it's supposed to be savory, it uses plain gelatin, rather than sweetened Jell-O! That's always a plus. But because it's from Not for Salads Only... Wish-Bone (1980), it mostly just tastes like thickened Wish-Bone Italian Dressing and mayonnaise, interrupted only by occasional veggie bits. So, if your idea of a nice spring day is eating a mound of thickened condiments, this one is for you! I will celebrate spring by going outside in a jacket that I think will be too thin and immediately getting too hot OR by going outside in a jacket that I think will be too thick and immediately getting too cold. Who can say? The surprise is what makes it fun.

The National Live Stock and Meat Board kind of forgot what it was doing...

TV Meat Time (National Live Stock and Meat Board, undated, but given that TV seems like a novelty and TV dinners started being sold in 1953, probably the mid-1950s) is kind of a head-scratcher.

What is "TV Meat" and was there ever a popular show featuring pen-and-ink illustrations of cuts of meat? If you pick up the pamphlet hoping to get any kind of answer, you will be sorely disappointed, as the cover is the only place where TV gets mentioned. I guess TVs are just on the cover to get people's attention.

The recipes are mostly pretty standard, telling how to make a basic beef stew or broil a porterhouse steak. There are a few surprises, though like the recipe to shake up the usual meatloaf routine by making Individual Liver Loaves.

I doubt too many kids were thrilled to get an individual custard cup of liver loaf seasoned with nutmeg, so maybe the cover was meant to suggest the family would be more likely to mindlessly consume whatever you cooked if they were distracted by a TV show.

This booklet also offers an interesting insight into the pre-fast-food conception of the breakfast sandwich.

This is clearly from the days before it was common to eat in the car, as the sandwiches are open-faced and on a floppy slice of bread rather than a sturdier biscuit or English muffin. Portability was not a concern! While the pairing of sausage and American cheese will seem familiar, the jellied cranberry sauce between those layers might come as a surprise, especially if this is served in any month other than November.

The recipe that most puzzled me, though, was the recipe for Cherry Nut Pie.

I mean, I already figured out that the National Live Stock and Meat Board was not really committed to the "TV" part of the title, but I expected them to at least be committed to the "Meat" part. Not so much, though. I guess the recipe is supposed to count because it comes with a crust recipe that calls for lard.

Still, that seems like a real stretch, especially in a booklet that only has 15-or-so recipes in it (depending on whether you count the pie filling and crust as one recipe or separate recipes, whether the instructions on turning drippings into gravy count as a separate recipe, whether an explanation of broiling really counts as a recipe, etc.). That's a pretty high proportion of non-meat recipes for a meat-centric booklet! I'm impressed that the National Live Stock and Meat Board could so thoroughly ignore their own premise, but hey, they did get my attention!

Funny Name: Feelings Edition

Would you like a dinner that's fast, easy, and likes to share its feelings by reading poetry at the open mic night at the independent coffee shop? Modern Approach to Everyday Cooking (American Dairy Association, 1966) has just the thing for you. 

This pasta sauce might not be so miraculous...

Cooking with Miracle Whip Salad Dressing (Kraft) is a little newer than I usually go. It's from 1983. But I couldn't help wondering about that big plate of pasta on the cover.

Is that Miracle Whip fettuccine? And if so, why? (Well, that second answer is obvious. This is a Miracle Whip pamphlet, after all.)

So is this an attempt to make Fettuccine Alfredo with Miracle Whip? Not quite. It's possibly even more controversial...

As if there's not already enough debate about what constitutes carbonara, this version skips past the debate of cream or no cream and uses Miracle Whip plus milk instead. I highly doubt anyone would bother wasting their breath protesting the choice of bacon rather than guanciale with this one!

As if that pastatrocity isn't enough, the same page with the carbonara also offers a Miracle-Whippy lasagna variation.

I am fine with subbing in cottage cheese for ricotta if that's cheaper/ easier, but Miracle Whip? And I can't help noticing how gluey-looking that bottom layer is.

Under a layer of canned dog food. Woof!

So in short, for Miracle Whip's 50th anniversary, Kraft wanted to let everyone know that Miracle Whip makes a fine addition to pasta. I think they would have been better off making themselves a Miracle Whip Chocolate Cake and calling it a day...

A Birthday Wish(-Bone)

Make a wish! Rather than blowing out the candles to make it come true, though, we're going to see what kind of dressing-related wishes Not for Salads Only... Wish-Bone (1980) imagines people will make on their birthdays.

If you're a grownup, then you might have a dream of mid-20th-century parties serving the popular sandwich loaf. It's vaguely cake-like, so the Birthday Celebration Loaf kind of makes sense.

Whether the birthday person chooses Wish-Bone California Onion, Creamy Italian, or Creamy Garlic Dressing, everybody better really like that flavor, as it permeates the bacon-and-egg salad layers and the cream cheese "icing." Only the liverwurst layer offers relief from all that dressing (but it is also liverwurst, so "relief" is a relative term here).

Kids are apparently also expected to want to have something retro-fancy, so their birthday dinner is this little beauty. 

Yep! It's the ever-popular Crown Roast of Franks, because children are well-known for wanting a fancy crown roast for their birthdays, but concerned enough about their parents' budgets to want something a little less pricy. 

The crown roast gets filled with that childhood favorite, hot potato salad with celery, onion, caraway seed, and plenty of Wish-Bone Italian Dressing. At least there will be cake and ice cream to fill up on after the crown roast! 

My birthday wish would be far simpler: keep the salad dressing as far away from me as possible! (That applies to both my childhood self AND the supposed grownup I am now.)

Dairy goes modern!

I'm going modern today! 

Not too modern, though. If the cover of Modern Approaches to Everyday Cooking looks like it's straight from 1966, that's because it is from 1966. And as the the cheese-stuffed peppers and piles of whipped cream on various desserts hint, this book is from the American Dairy Association. 

I'm going to be uncharacteristically social today and have a party. I'll start out with a cheesy appetizer.

More specifically, an Appetizer Cheesecake! A savory cheesecake probably sounds weird since most of us are used to dessert-y cheesecakes. This actually looks pretty similar to a cheese ball though-- what with all the shredded cheese, seasonings, and finely-chopped veggies. It just uses sour cream instead of the usual cream cheese and puts it all on a crushed cracker crust rather than rolling the mixture in chopped nuts.

I think I'll put a couple salads on the buffet, since we had such a heavy appetizer. (Nothing like starting a meal with cheesecake, right?) Maybe something with seafood...

Baked Salad of the Sea combines the expected canned seafoods with celery, Swiss cheese, crushed pineapple, and sour cream before dumping the whole shebang into avocado halves and-- as the title suggests-- baking it. Once again, I'm left wondering whether this is one of those instances where cheese and seafood are supposedly A-OK together (Maybe the crushed pineapple or hot avocado make the combination okay?) or whether this is an instance where the judges on the cooking show I'm watching would act like putting seafood and cheese together is tantamount to scraping an unidentifiable mound of festering goo off the sidewalk and suggesting they should eat it.

For those not up to eating canned seafood and pineapple on hot avocado halves, I could offer Chicken Almond Mousse Salad. 

This has the distinction of combining lime gelatin with chicken stock before blending in the chicken, celery, almonds, and cucumber and folding in some whipped cream. Nothing quite like a slightly jiggly, pale green block of chicken to whet the old appetite...

We need something to go with the salads... Maybe a nice Cheese Buffet Sandwich. 

This one goes all-in on the protein, with tuna, ham, bacon, and eggs in addition to the titular cheese. My favorite thing about this, though, is that it's touted as a buffet sandwich. The construction-- slices of bread topped with tuna, onion, lettuce, cheese dressing, more bread, ham, tomato, bacon, a generous pour of more dressing, plus egg and olive garnish-- doesn't seem like it would work so well on a buffet. The first person to try to transfer one of those towering piles of ingredients coated in goop would probably end up demolishing at least several sandwiches in the attempt. Before long, the sandwich platter would look like a mucous-based alien in a monster movie disintegrating into a pile of goo after the heroes figured out that it could be defeated with, say, a few good splashes of vinegar.

Maybe I should go for something a little easier to pick up individually for dessert: Rice Cakes.

These aren't your 1980s styrofoam-based snacks! It's more like rice pudding bound with eggs and cooked as a patty. There's barely any sweetener, so better leave out a LOT of sweetened strawberries to go with them, or the guests may not realize the cakes are supposed to be dessert.

Have to admit that I'm not too tempted to throw a dairy party now, but it's more because of my aversion to crowds than anything else. While I like to imagine I'm not that susceptible to suggestion, I also have to admit that this post makes me want a baked potato with a mound of sour cream and cheese. So maybe I'll have a dairy "party" for one. Don't tell anybody. 

The March chapter of "Cooking by the Calendar" is more than ready for spring

Happy March! The new month means it is time, once again, to check in on Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978). The March chapter begins by claiming that "When the season changes, our mood changes, too, and the versatility of the egg appeals to our subtle leaning toward lighter foods." I would highlight the "subtle" in that sentence, as the chapter begins  with a few tables suggesting combinations for egg-based dishes, including this one on quiches. 

I'm not sure how "light" I would consider copious amounts of eggs, cheese, and often meat in a pastry crust, but at least if I put aside my unreasonable levels of hatred for mustard, nothing in this lineup sounds egregious. A green bean quiche with basil, almonds, and cheddar would probably be pretty good. (And maybe even better with broccoli or Brussels sprouts subbed in for the green beans!)

March is also the earliest month that might include Easter or Passover, so the book has a few recipes for each holiday. (It's easy to note the recipes and use them later if the holidays are later-- as they are this year-- but no good if the recipes are posted in April and the holidays were early!) Since lamb cakes are so iconic, I picked out that recipe. 

Hopefully, this is a really sturdy cake, or the head might fall off. No amount of ribbon tied around the neck is likely to fix that. (I think I'd go for chocolate rather than this plain old vanilla, though. Always been a bit of a black sheep myself.) 

Appropriately for Easter (or at least near-Easter), March's vegetable is carrots. Apparently, baking bananas with various other semi-random foodstuffs was still a thing in 1978, so here's the recipe for Glazed Carrots and Bananas.

At least it sounds better than baked ham and bananas in cheese sauce! 

Here's hoping that March ends up being better than a headless lamb cake, but the way things have been going lately, I wouldn't count on it...