Damn it! I really wanted to unreservedly love the pictures...

The cover of Quick Dishes for the Woman in a Hurry (Culinary Arts Institute, directed by Melanie de Proft, 1955) looks pretty straightforward: corn on the cob, Brussels sprouts, ribs, strawberries with whipped cream, a relish tray with olives and radish roses lurking in the corner.

A lot of the recipes are pretty rudimentary as well, which is to be expected from a quick cookbook. Need some coffee cake? Rather than making one from scratch or getting one from a bakery...

...simply hack up an unsliced loaf of bread, slather with butter, top with more butter mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon, and then bake up into an ersatz coffee cake. 

Want some cheese bread quick? I'll bet you'll never guess the recommendation.

Yep-- hack up a loaf of unsliced bread, slip in slices of American cheese, slather in caraway-mustard butter...

...and for a slight twist ending, dump on some anchovy/ lemon butter just before serving.

The truth is, though, I didn't really get this booklet for the recipes. I loved the pictures by illustrator Kay Lovelace.

While the inside cover does have the expected picture of a woman dressed up for an afternoon out, slipping a casserole into the oven for dinner later, I was much more taken by this imaginative picture just a few pages later emphasizing the need for speed.

The mice NEED to be quick-- hopefully springing the trap with a fork will be enough to catapult the cheese into the catcher's mitt! The two mice in the foreground have their tails crossed for luck, though I'm not sure why. The morsel of cheese is small enough that the catcher will make short work of it before anyone else gets a taste-- even the "chef" in the tiny hat.

Mice make another appearance in the sauce chapter, bringing a bit of humor to an old cliché.

The geese don't mind the cliché about sauce for the goose and for the gander as long as it means a procession of mice in still more tiny hats and aprons delivering dishes full of goodies.

A bunny gets in on the act too, using the salad chapter as a backdrop for her performance of my grandpa's favorite mealtime joke.

He always said he wanted "honeymoon salad-- lettuce alone!" Miss Lapin approves of that choice.

The adorable pictures are not confined to cute animals, either. Here are some hot dogs getting ready to get hot and heavy.

I'm not sure whether it's a reminder of how buttoned-up the fifties were that one of the hot dogs in a romance clearly has to be female, or whether this is actually secretly subversive.... They're both hot dogs, after, all, the the "girl" is even flatter than I am (and that is saying something!). Either way, we have dressed-up yet shirtless hot dogs in the throes of romance, so what's not to love?

Uh... Scratch that question. There is something not to love about the illustrations. Ms. Lovelace should have stuck with pictures of adorable animals and anthropomorphic foods because her pictures of people are not always... (How to put this delicately?) ... very respectful.

Yep. Unfortunately, we have old cookbook racism AGAIN. 

There's a lot to love about old cookbooks, but there are always plenty of reminders that we really need to keep moving beyond that past they represent, even though a LOT of people seem more interested in regressing than progressing...

At least Marilyn Hansen knew that Thanksgiving is in November

Given that Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978) seemed to have NO IDEA what gets harvested in August or what kinds of treats would be appropriate for Halloween, I kind of wondered what it would recommend for Thanksgiving. Hansen had a much clearer idea of what people would expect, though-- no recipes for random things with titles like "Rumba Rhubarb" or "Prospector's Pancakes."

The month kicks off with a wide range of stuffing recipes.

Whether your tastes are traditional (sage-y bread cubes or cornbread and sausage) or more adventurous ("Hawaiian" bread stuffing with water chestnuts and pineapple chunks or bulgur stuffing with mint and dried fruit), there's something you can shove up the rear end of a dead bird.

And what to do with the leftover poultry? The "After the Feast" section adds some less-expected options in with the usual turkey noodle soup, like Turkey and Olive Manicotti.

I am not sure how many cooks would be up for making manicotti filling and sauce, stuffing individual manicotti tubes, and baking the whole thing a day or two after preparing an entire Thanksgiving dinner, but at least this dish wouldn't add to Thanksgiving flavor fatigue.

The Turkey Cantonese seems more likely to feel do-able after a cooking-heavy holiday...

Well, if you don't mind chopping up celery, onions, green peppers, and maybe mushrooms. It comes together pretty quickly after that! (And the dish may be boiled rather than steamed or stir-fried, but at least it doesn't have cream-of-something soup or bunch of cheese dumped in, so it's probably slightly more authentically Cantonese-style than one might expect from a book like this.)

The veggies of the month are squash and pumpkins. My favorite recipe from this section explains what to do if a bunch of rowdy squash cubes start harassing you on the street.

Oh, wait. "Mace" isn't a verb here. Never mind.

Given how contentious family Thanksgiving gatherings can be, though, macing the squash cubes instead of Uncle Arthur might not be the worst idea.

Whatever you have planned for November, I hope you can get through it without macing anybody. Unless you just want to add a little ground mace to your veggies.

New(ish) recipes!

I'm not really sure why I have Recipes: Homemade Happiness (compiled by Rev. and Mrs. Floyd Miller (Marie) for the Archdale, NC Wesleyan Women). It's from 1994-- later than what I usually pick up. Maybe I just thought the cover looked old and picked it up without checking?

It does have the overwhelming brownish tone that photos from the 1970s often exhibit. Or maybe somebody gave it to me at some point? In any case, I've got a community cookbook from the '90s that looks like it could be from the '70s, and I'm going to make you lunch.

Everybody loves a burger, and since I like you, I'm making Fancy Hamburgers!

You know, the kind with the applesauce and Lipton onion soup mix in them? And of course, the Ritz crackers! That's what makes them fancy. 

If you want pickles on your burger, I've got something inspired by the applesauce in those burgers.

Admittedly, I'm not sure how well Red-Hot-flavored cukes will go with the burgers, but I've never been a fan of pickled anything. I hear that people like Cincinnati chili, so I imagine cinnamony pickles on an oniony burger will be fine. (For someone else, obviously.)

Now we'll need a salad to get some veggies into you. Cincinnati chili often gets slopped over spaghetti, so how about all the spaghetti salad you can eat?

Seriously-- feel free to take home an extra gallon or two to feed family, friends, neighbors, enemies... Hell, use it to make an oily freeform art project for all I care. Just eat all you can and take a bucket to go.

And for dessert, something easy and SWEET.

Yep-- Twinkie Dessert involves Twinkies. All I had to do was cut 'em up, lay 'em in a 9x13, and cover with instant pudding, Cool Whip, and butter brickle bits. (Well, sourcing the butter pecan instant pudding was the hardest part of the recipe. I was lazy and threw some finely chopped pecans into butterscotch pudding and called it a day, but there's a recipe to make a homemade mix for the very specific demographic of people who are not willing to make their own sponge cake but eager to throw together homemade instant pudding mixes.)

I hope you enjoyed lunch! And if not, enjoy something else from 1994. 

Some rare Hallowe'en recipes!

I'm sad that so few old cookbooks have Halloween-specific recipes. Of course they're loaded with traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes. Hell, they usually even have a cherry pie recipe for Presidents' Day! But nothing for Halloween. 😞 That's why I was so excited to find a couple of salads for my favorite holiday in New Delights from the Kitchen (Kelvinator, 1930). 

First up, the delightfully apostrophed Hallowe'en Salad.

It's basically a sweet cole slaw topped with extra dates, mayonnaise flourishes, and "eighth inch peelings from very red apples cut into Hallowe'en shapes such as crescent moons and pumpkin faces." I can't imagine too many cooks in the 1930s spent much time cutting apple peels into tiny shapes-- I'm not even sure how one might go about cutting a pumpkin face into such a tiny bit of apple peel, even if one were so inclined!-- but at least it's a fun thought.

The alternative-- a Goblin Salad-- seems much easier.

Just gussy up a canned peach half with clove eyes and nose and a maraschino cherry mouth. (Leave the mayonnaise out of the cream cheese hair, and I might even consider eating this one!)

Plus, cooks can pair the Goblin Salad with a big bowl of the more-recent concoction Cheddar Goblin for a full meal. Yay! These recipes make me as close as I am likely to get to that "all's right with the world" feeling. 

Betty Gets Lazy

The cover of Betty Crocker's Dinner Parties (7th printing, 1978) promises all kinds of plans, including those for "impromptu suppers."

While there are recipes for more complicated menus (like the homemade lasagna on the cover), the first menu in this cookbook is definitely of the "impromptu supper" type.

The Deli Dinner in Disguise is not joking about the "deli" part. This is just a deli run slightly disguised by light personalization-- the kind of instruction I don't imagine '70-s cooks as even needing. The barbecued deli chicken is just that:

A reheated barbecued chicken from the deli. The cook can brush it "with bottled Italian salad dressing or barbecue sauce" before reheating to make it slightly easier to pretend that this isn't just reheated deli chicken.

The Hot Spiced Fruit 'n Melon?

A can of "fruits for salad" (I'm assuming this is an attempt to make fruit cocktail sound fancy) combined with a jar of watermelon pickles and a little allspice. The cook does have to heat it up so it's clear they exerted some effort beyond opening the packages.

The Garden Patch Coleslaw is-- you guessed it!-- dressed-up deli coleslaw.

It's "garden patch" because it has a bag of defrosted peas dumped in (plus a little Italian dressing to keep the dressing ratio sufficient).

My favorite item in the menu is probably the Onion Rolls.

I love them primarily because the cook is supposed to cut each roll into 3 strips and then reassemble them before heating them in the oven. I have absolutely no clue why the rolls should be hacked up and reassembled. The cut surfaces are not spread with butter and seasonings, as I assumed they would be when I initially saw they were being cut into strips. It doesn't seem like cutting the rolls into thirds will help that that much in distributing the six rolls evenly among four diners. (If that were the goal, cutting them into halves or quarters would have been a better choice.) This strip-cutting is just random, pointless busywork as far as I can tell. Betty Crocker must have gotten tired of trying to think of things to do to make items from the deli seem at least kinda homemade and just said, "I don't know! Cut them into little strips?" when she got to this "recipe." She was done with this menu before she was done with this menu. It's good to know that even symbols of domesticity sometimes got sick of pretending to care.

Recipes for the maniac with a butcher knife

Let's Cook It Right (Adelle Davis, originally 1947, but mine is a 1962 edition) is so convinced of the incredible value of meat in the diet that even most of the recipes in the chapter that is supposed to be about meat substitutes still contain meat. So, it should be no surprise that the book recommends eating a wide variety of cuts of meat, too. 

I rarely see recipes for backbones, for example, but this book has one. 

I'm not really sure how people were supposed to serve or eat backbones-- the recipe ends pretty abruptly. Simmer 15 minutes and... Remove any meat and add it back to a stew based on this cooking water? Hang them from the ceiling as really gnarly Halloween decorations? Decide you've wasted your time trying to cook backbones? At least it shows how to cook them. 

The book also included a lot of variety meat recipes. Why settle for plain old meatloaf when you can have Heart Meat Loaf?

I'll bet grinding is a good strategy for cooking a tough muscle like the heart, and it could keep the kids from realizing what they're actually being served...

And speaking of keeping people from figuring out what it is they're actually eating... Maybe this recipe could do with a title change.

I like that the note at the end reassures cooks that "Brains prepared in this manner are usually assumed to be hard-cooked eggs." So, again, maybe reconsider calling it brain salad. Easier to fool people into thinking they're eating eggs that way!

Sometimes, though, the book thinks cooks should go big and bold when serving variety meats. 

It was sure to be a special night when mom carried a big platter of flaming kidneys to the table. 

The prize for most unnerving recipe might go to Brains with Chives.

The part that gives me pause is "pack brains firmly into ice tray, freeze. Remove and slice before sautéing." I can just imagine hunting around for an ice cube and being confronted with a tray full of brains! In fact, finding something like that in an old, oversized farmhouse freezer seems like a good scene in a horror movie-- the moment when some unsuspecting house guest realizes they have to get out right now as the camera pulls back to reveal a guy with a butcher knife coming around the corner, right behind the person trying not to step on the remnants of the shattered water glass they just dropped...

And now I realize that any of these recipe titles could be written on a mock menu posted on the kitchen walls in that farmhouse, the kind of background detail that would make me pause the movie for a moment to appreciate the small touches that make a horror movie house a horror movie home.

Microwave fun for a crisp fall day

I usually go for older cookbooks, but the cover for Kenmore Microwave Cooking (1985) was so perfectly '80s, and I adore microwave cookbooks anyway, so here we are.

So what might a 1980s microwave owner eat on a crisp fall day? We'll start off with breakfast. How about some eggs benedict?

Sure, you could poach the egg in conventionally-boiling water, but then you wouldn't have the fun of trying to pierce the yolk to avoid an explosion in the microwave. And you could enjoy crisp freshly toasted English muffins as the base, BUT YOU HAVE A MICROWAVE! So you will make those toasted English muffins soggy and rubbery by microwaving them under a slice of ham before assembling your breakfast. 

For lunch, we need something cozy. How about French onion soup? Sure, it usually takes quite a while to get the onions properly browned and and the broth full of flavor, but you've got a microwave! You can get that shit done in just barely over half an hour.

As long as you don't mind that the onions don't really brown, so they won't get much flavor. Or that the cheese on top will only melt-- not get browned and delicious. Or that you will be eating microwaved toast. Again.

Then for dinner, let's have this.

No, we're not going for dessert first with a microwaved fruitcake. This is family meat loaf ring!

It's admittedly a pretty boring meat loaf. I just initially mistook the picture for a fruitcake and wanted you to have that fun too. 

We can have some apple-stuffed acorn squash as a side.

At least this is recipe that actually makes sense for the microwave. The squashes will cook faster (and be easier to halve partially-cooked than they are when they're raw). 

And if a side dish full of apples, cinnamon, and honey isn't enough of  a dessert for you, end your meal with a peanut colada sundae!

Hopefully the cream of coconut will help you forget about eating all that microwaved toast! And then you can go to bed and dream about going to see Freddy's Revenge when it comes out next month. I mean, I love microwave cookbooks, but they weren't the best part of 1985.