Sure, go ahead and microwave that!

I think that The Microwave Guide and Cookbook (General Electric, 1979, though mine is the second printing from 1980) is one I haven't posted about yet.

It's hard for me to judge, though, as there are some major overlaps with The General Electric Microwave Guide and Cookbook (1977) and Guide to Microwave Cooking and Recipe Book (Hotpoint/ General Electric, 1979). I found some things I hadn't covered in earlier iterations, though, so today we'll find out what microwave owners could learn about working their shiny new appliances from this collection.

One interesting point is that many TV dinners apparently still came in foil trays because microwaves were not yet all that common. I'd think those would be a no-go (given that foil is METAL and metal is a no-no in microwaves), but the book actually says it's okay to microwave these dinners in their original trays!

You just have to make sure the foil cover is removed, the tray is "no more than 3/4-in. deep," and the tray is at least an inch from the microwave's walls. There's even a series of photos to illustrate the proper technique for microwaving in foil trays.

I still think I'd just attempt to pop the food out of the tray and microwave it on something else. (Especially considering that a microwave in 1979 dollars could cost around $300-- the equivalent of nearly $1500 today. No point in ruining it for a 50-cent (or $2.50-ish now) frozen dinner!)

The book of course pushed the idea that entire meals could be fixed in the microwave. Why bother getting out the grill when you can just microwave burgers and a can of baked beans on a hot summer day?

Well, other than the fact that the hamburger won't brown, or get those nice grill marks, or get flavor from the smoke... And it might well end up with the texture of a rubber ball...

There's also a somewhat-confusing instructional on making a dinner of microwave ham and apples.

I say "somewhat-confusing" because the instructions specify covering the ham with plastic wrap, but the pictures pretty clearly show aluminum foil. This recipe will take 50-60 minutes in the microwave, too-- a cooking time that most microwave users would find outlandish today. If it takes that long, just use a conventional oven! The book really wasn't afraid of long cook times, though. There was even a special section on an automatic simmering and slow cooking function that apparently turned the microwave into something like a crockpot. So if you really like to just hammer your green beans, the book offers a recipe to microwave them with bacon for 10 to 11 hours.

Or if you feel just a bit more restrained, you can microwave ham and shrimp creole for 4-5 hours.

Yep. This booklet thought not only that microwaving shrimp was a fine idea (I guess the thinking was that it was canned already anyway. How much more could you overcook it?) but also that it should be cooked long enough for the aroma to really fill up the house... (I have to imagine that just using an actual slow cooker would use less energy than running a microwave for this long, even though one of the selling points for the microwave is supposed to be energy savings.)

And yet, microwaves still caught on, even after books like this! Pretty remarkable, even if it is now fashionable to pretend you're above using a microwave. (Funny how a symbol of wealth and privilege turns into a symbol of not caring about food in just a few decades, but that's what happens when luxuries become affordable to the masses. And the microwave still does pretty much the same thing it always has, though at least now we have the benefit of a turntable.)

I wish I could see how the guests reacted to these anniversary cakes....

I was really not sure what to make of it when I came across this picture in the February 1976 Mail Box News (from Maid of Scandinavia Co.).

I mean, I realized the "Happy Anniversary" meant they were probably anniversary cakes, but what the heck are this "Good Together" couple supposed to be? Waning moon and watermelon that's been through some stuff? An undersized wastebasket that's supposed to snug right up against the wall and a MASSIVE multivitamin? Makeup sponge and slightly different shape of makeup sponge? (I'm not that familiar with makeup sponges, in case that isn't clear.)

Unsurprisingly, it's none of the above.

This "really unique anniversary cake" is apparently supposed to be cheese and ham. I think it would have been a lot easier to tell if we had a color photo here. I really want to see layered buttercream meant to mimic "fat and gelatin on the 'meat'" in glorious color! And I wonder if the guests could figure out what this was supposed to be, or if the color wasn't enough of a hint and friends of the happy couple had so smile and say "Wow! What a unique anniversary cake!" and nod in a vaguely approving way.

The booklets don't usually have a lot of recipes, but I did find a pair of recipes for a somewhat unusual pairing: black pepper and cookies. Choose between black pepper chocolate cookies with a pepper flavor that's "hard to detect"...

...or Norwegian pepper cookies with "just a touch of pepper to flavor."

I think I'd go with the former because 1. Chocolate! and 2. The other recipe "makes about 225 3" cookies." I can't imagine ever needing that many cookies.... But people have all kinds of weird needs, I suppose. Like needing cheese and ham anniversary cakes.

A fruity September

Summer is definitely winding down by the time September starts, but Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) reassures us that some crops are still freshly coming into season. Peaches immediately catch my eye since we had peach trees at my childhood home. When we made "peach pudding," it meant that we'd thrown some home-frozen peaches into the blender and turned them into what would probably now be considered a smoothie. Blanchard's Frozen Peach Pudding is considerably more complicated (and probably more exciting).

Since it involves cutting a loaf cake into layers, it reminds me of the sandwich loaf recipes old cookbooks recommended for parties, but this one sounds a lot more palatable than most of them do. I mean, would you rather have layers of rum-and-ginger soaked cake with sliced peaches or white and wheat bread filled with a mixture of cottage cheese, potatoes, celery, and pineapple?

I always think of melons as more of a height-of-summer fruit, but they are listed in the September chapter. I was surprised to see a recipe for underripe melons, but Blanchard recommends turning them into a curry.

This doesn't specify the type of melon, so maybe it doesn't really matter if it's not ripe. It won't taste like a full-fledged melon anyway. In any case, this is recommended as "a spicy relish for plain meatloaf or chicken" (and reminds us that any added spice was all it took to get called "spicy" back in the day).

In addition to the peaches and melons, grapes are coming into season. (September is really the month for fruit!) While I've seen plenty of recipes for raisin pies, I don't usually see recipes for pies using the fresh counterpart.

Considering that you rarely find Concord grapes in the supermarket, I can see why this recipe would be reserved for home gardeners. (I'm sure that the inconvenience of having to separate the seeds, pulp, and skin also play a role in making Concord grapes an unpopular choice for home cooks.)

And honestly, September is already a pretty inconvenient month for families with anybody in school, so there's a good reason why people choose not to spend what little free time they have separating grapes into their various components or wrestling with underripe melons simply to make them taste like sautéed onions. The peaches, on the other hand... Maybe those would be worth the hassle at the end of a long, hectic week? (Who am I kidding? Throwing some frozen peaches straight into the blender is more my speed. But people in the '70s had way fewer devices beeping for their attention and way fewer choices in the grocery store that could taste just about as good as something homemade and be 100 times easier.)

A hamburger holiday

It's almost Labor Day-- a high grilling holiday! That calls for some Holiday Hamburgers! Have to admit that a pasta cookbook would not be the first place I'd look for a burger recipe, but today's entry is from Mueller's Classic Recipes (Marilyn M. Houston, 1972). (And in case you weren't aware, Mueller's is a pasta company, so this cookbook is meant to sell noodles of all sorts.)

Okay, I'm pretty sure Houston was thinking of Christmas since the noodles on which these seasoned burgers are served are spiked with green pepper and (red) pimiento, but 1. I have a feeling a lot of people would gripe about burgers served on noodles not being fancy enough for Christmas and 2. in most parts of the country, the option of grilling is not very appealing in late December. So I feel fully justified in turning this into a Labor Day recipe... even though you'd probably rather not have to make noodles if you're grilling burgers... So much easier to just serve them on buns (grilled if you're fancy!) and with a side of chips. Okay, maybe this is just a good holiday recipe if you want to be irritated on any random holiday. We all know that the potential pitfall of having to deal with your family might not be quite enough to send you over the edge. 😅 Best to have to grill burgers without burning them (Okay, fine, you could use a skillet for the burgers, but where is the holiday fun in that?) AND boil noodles without turning them to mush and then try to eat a burger patty on a slithery pile of noodles just to ensure that someone will end up having a bad day.

I think I will enjoy Labor Day by drinking some canned wine and watching Severance. (I'm sure you're thinking of the TV series, but I'm thinking of the 2006 film. Either choice is appropriate, though, so it's a solid plan.) Hopefully you have something fun and not too labor-intensive to do too (if you're lucky enough to have the day off).

Muellers makes macaroni meh

If you are ever at a loss as to what to do with macaroni (or other pasta, but this book has the most recipes for macaroni), then Mueller's Classic Recipes (Marilyn M. Houston, 1972) has some ideas.

Since it's from the '70s, of course it has its fair share of macaroni and cheese recipes and recipes that call for canned condensed soups. I expected that if it had a mac 'n cheese recipe calling for soup, the soup of choice would be cheddar cheese...

... but I was wrong. This uses cream of mushroom! It still gets copious amounts of cheese stirred in, so the mushrooms might add the right amount of umami to all that cheese. (I imagine that kids would be upset by the tiny mushroom bits, though!)

I'm always curious about what constituted "chili" in all those old cookbooks, so I was eager to see what was in the Macaroni Chili. (Funny that it was so formal! Now it's usually chili mac.)

Impressive that it has more seasoning than a lot of older chili recipes do-- two tablespoons of chili powder, plus cumin, oregano, and a bay leaf (along with the usual salt and pepper). But then I saw it also had a cup of sweet mixed pickles! I don't think I've seen a recipe calling for pickles in chili before. Sounds revolting to me, but I don't like pickles... As popular as pickle-flavored everything has been over the past year or two, I kind of expect to see a canned or fast-food version of pickle chili before too long. (Or maybe they're already here and I missed them. Or maybe, and this is a longshot, the idea really is as revolting as I think it is.)

I'd associate pickles more with macaroni salad, but the Molded Macaroni Salad doesn't have any!

At least it uses unflavored gelatin rather than a dessert-y lemon, but I'm not sure how eager anyone is to devour macaroni, celery, and shreds of American cheese suspended in gelatin and mayo... (Especially when everybody knows the best use of macaroni and cheese is macaroni and cheese!)

The Sweet and Sour Chicken Salad does include both macaroni and pickles with the chicken...

...along with pineapple, sour cream, mayo, mustard, and melon balls! There's a LOT going on here, and not much of it is good. There's maybe a decent fruit salad OR a decent chicken salad, but I'm unconvinced that they belong together.

And just so it's not all macaroni, I'll throw in a recipe for spaghetti...

...served under peppers stuffed with raisin-befouled meatloaf. (It would have been so much easier and better to just cook crumbled ground beef and diced green peppers with the tomato sauce, but what's the fun in that?)

I do have to give Mueller's credit for doing the unexpected. We're all pretty familiar with a lot of pasta dishes, so they consistently added unexpected ingredients to throw you off! From the surprise soup and pickles to the unexpected gelatin, melon, and raisins, the recipes keep you guessing! (Guessing you will just make the same thing you usually make instead of trying one of these concoctions, I'm assuming.)

Another edition of "I do not think it means what you think it means"!

You might wonder why I'm posting this perfectly fine-sounding recipe for homemade pizza from the July 1975 issue of Women's Circle Home Cooking. 

I specialize in recipes that are usually head-scratchingly weird and/or only slightly more appetizing than whatever the cat left in your shoes the time you tried to give it a flea dip. (Yeah, the pair you had to throw away.) And here is a recipe for a simple yeasted dough, topped with a tomato sauce that contains actual flavoring ingredients! Alliums! Oregano! Red pepper! Parmesan cheese! So why did I pick this? The answer is like real estate: Location! Location! Location! You see, the recipe appeared directly under this heading:

Now, I realize ideas about what constitutes a fast-and-easy recipe changed as kitchens got things like microwaves, Insta-Pots, and air fryers, but I have a hard time believing that even in 1975 anyone thought a recipe that took two hours minimum-- and that's only if you're working REALLY fast and the yeast is cooperative-- counted as "Instant Cooking." But then again, the '70s were a crazy time when a guy could cast a fishing line in the same pool that a woman was about to dive into (at least if this graphic is to be believed), so maybe I don't understand the time well enough to judge. Maybe back then, 2+ hours was nothing...

A miraculous bird!

I'm not sure I'm THAT impressed by the concept of chicken, but my booklet The Miraculous Broiler-Fryer Chicken sure is. That's probably because it was put out by the Poultry and Egg National Board. (The pamphlet is undated, but addresses don't include zip codes. That means it probably from before July 1, 1963.)

I'm not entirely sure that whoever owned this before me was all that impressed either. Of the two notes I found in this recipe collection, one was simply "NO." (I thought it was a scribble at first, but then I realized it was a reaction.)

The writer did not elaborate on what the problem with "PRETZEL-FRIED CHICKEN (Deep-fat)" was. Most people love fried chicken, and I'd think pretzels would give it a nice, salty crunch, but the recipe reviewer was clearly not a fan. The other note I found was somewhat more enthusiastic.

There is no follow-up to the "Try" note, though, so I don't know whether this person actually tried hot chicken salad or what they thought of it if they did. Based on the black-and-white photo of said salad, I would never have guessed these things are supposed to be topped with cheese and crushed potato chips. Looks more like chopped egg or maybe avocado.

A lot of the recipes are, as one might expect, pretty standard. Barbecued chicken, roast chicken, chicken pot pie, chicken cacciatore. There are a few somewhat more surprising preparations. You might suppose these are the mid-century version of chicken enchiladas if you didn't look too closely.

But then you'd notice all the greenery and orange slices around the carb-coated chicken tubes. These are actually Chicken Pancakes Imperial. 

I'm still not really sure why the oranges are there, as the pancakes are just wrapped around plain chicken moistened with a milk-based gravy, then topped with more of the gravy. It's giving me bizarre orange-and-cream vibes. 

But then again, orange chicken is pretty common now, and it was back then too.

And just look at the cute half-orange filled with (Cranberries? Grapes? Marbles?) for serving.

Less cute is this chicken mound on the opposing page.

Looks like chicken and wallpaper paste, but it's actually Chicken Cantonese.

I would have assumed this "Cantonese" recipe was Hawaiian Chicken, considering how much pineapple is in it, but this booklet associates coconuts and curry (rather than pineapple) with Hawaii.

Honestly, the thing that sounds best to me out of all this is the pretzel-fried chicken, but the original cookbook owner probably thinks I'm wrong about that.... There is no accounting for taste.