Stretching food dollars with the USDA

As upset as we are over the rising price of... well... pretty much everything lately, it's not like this is the first time in history people have had to stretch their budgets, as today's featured pamphlet-- Money-Saving Main Dishes-- from 1966 attests.

So the USDA used to send out pamphlets like this to help Americans save money. (I tried to find links to similar current publications, but I kept getting forwarded to the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans no matter what I clicked, so if they exist, they are not getting promoted well enough to find easily.) It's interesting that this even came with a stamp from the district representative, as if politicians wanted people to think the government could, in fact, be helpful. Even though Latta was Republican, he was apparently on board with spending money to help make people's lives better (rather than reserving tax dollars for prisons and weapons and insisting any other spending was wasteful).

The booklet offers a lot of ways to stretch the definition of "burgers." There are Meat-potatoburgers. I'll bet you can't guess the filler!

Okay, if you didn't guess that the filler was potatoes, I'm a little worried about you. There's also a variation to use cooked meat and leftover mashed potatoes for maximum savings. Whether you want to stretch the a meager portion of ground beef or use up last night's leftovers, the book has got you covered.

I guess the Scotch meat patties aren't technically listed as burgers, but they still take on that classic shape.

Alternatively, they can be formed into meat balls and be simmered in a nearly seasoning-free tomato sauce for some super-bland spaghetti.

I thought the biggest stretch might just be the Fish-cheeseburgers.

I doubt many self-respecting kids would consider fish sticks with chili sauce and cheese on a hamburger bun to be burgers! Then I saw the "quick pizza" version listed under "For variety," and I had an even harder time imagining kids accepting split rolls topped with fish sticks, catsup, garlic powder, oregano, and a slice of cheese as "pizza."

If you want to branch out beyond burger variations, there are some ways to stretch canned fish, like the Sardine puff.

I'm guessing there is a reason I see a breakfast version of this dish (with sausage and/or bacon in place of the sardines, and which is so common and appetizing-sounding that I don't think I've ever bothered to feature it) far more often than I see this one (which is once, so far).

For the families who want to know how something like pineapple upside-down cake would translate into a fish-based main course, there's Topsy turvy tuna pie.

When it gets inverted for serving, it will have lemon or orange slices on the top, over a tuna-and-mushroom-soup custard and a cornbread crust. It should certainly be a conversation-starter. (Like, "Why couldn't you have made chili with a cornbread topper instead?")

Perhaps oddest of all for our modern "French toast is so sweet it should almost be considered a dessert" sensibilities, there is a recipe for French toast with tomato-meat sauce.

And even if you're not entirely convinced that French toast should be sweet, having a tomato-meat sauce with anything other than pasta sounds a bit weird. (Not to mention that eating the sauce on pasta would be way cheaper than making French toast, but maybe this recipe is for families with eggs and/or bread that is about to go bad?)

I can't be too hard on these recipes, though. They represent a time when there was more emphasis on the government actually making some attempt to help people out when times got tough. I'd certainly like to see more of that....

Don't eat that! (And I'm not just being picky this time.)

When I initially posted about my grandma's recipe box, I noted how few of those recipes I actually remembered her making. Today's post is kind of the same thing. I don't remember her making any of these recipes either, but today's concoctions are reminders that grandma was a farmer. She had to make do with whatever she had on hand when the family faced problems, which meant keeping plenty of "recipes" you weren't supposed to eat, right alongside the ones for zippy zucchini and cranberry salad.

Well, I don't think people were supposed to eat this first recipe. 

I initially wondered if "Catfish Bait" was a cute name for a type of cookie since I couldn't imagine grandma wasting this much vanilla and maple syrup on fish. (Plus, I don't remember grandpa ever trying to catch catfish. He mostly fished for bluegills.) But considering there's no added fat in this, there's so much vanilla that it likely hits an unpleasant concentration, and the ingredients are just mixed up and refrigerated (Grandma would never serve anything with raw flour in it!), I'm pretty sure it's literally supposed to be catfish bait.

I imagine we may have benefited from this recipe whenever we used a sink at grandma's house...

I don't remember her actually clearing sink drains with this, though. (I wonder if it would work better than the version I've tried in the past with 1 cup each of baking soda and vinegar. My guess is probably not...)

And I am SUPER glad I didn't know anything about this recipe. There's only so much you want to know about your grandparents.

Given how much grandma liked to discuss medical problems, though, I'm kind of surprised I don't remember dinnertime conversations about who was suffering from piles. (I also love the "level (scant)" notation. Should the measure be level or scant? They're not the same. Maybe grandma was so used to using rounded teaspoons of everything on the assumption that more is better that she considered "level" to be "scant" and was saying the same thing twice to encourage herself to pay attention? Who knows....)

For additional soothing power, there's a recipe for "linament" on the back of the card.

I'd spring for a store-bought liniment rather than handling an egg soaked overnight in vinegar, but I live in the age of Amazon, when I can order just about anything and have it delivered directly to my home. Someone living on a farm decades ago who considered a trip to town to be a BIG DEAL (and who apparently kept turpentine, spirit of camphor, and oil of "pepermint" on hand) surely saw this as a more practical and affordable solution than the fancy store-bought liniments.

So maybe grandma actually made these recipes? Maybe they were just things she held onto and never really used, like most of the rest of the stuff in the recipe box? Either way, I'm kind of glad I don't know too much about these particular items...

Mostly stuff grandma didn't make, and one big surprise

Today, I'm posting something very special to me. I inherited my grandma's recipe box. Here is a view of the side, which had a fruit bowl print (repeated on both sides).

Here is the front, which is pretty similar. 

Most exciting of all, this had a flip-up top that could hold a recipe card while the cook... well... cooked.

And for the maybe three readers who don't know me personally, no need for too many condolences. My grandma was 102, heartily sick of everything, and cranky AF. I loved her dearly and miss her, but she was READY to go. (And if you've ever wondered where I get my delightful personality, there's a big clue. 😆)

I wasn't really sure what to expect in the recipe box because I rarely saw grandma use a recipe. She just made stuff. (Again, kinda like me.) When I dug through the recipes, very little seemed familiar. She often had multiple copies of recipes that I don't remember her making even once, like Bisquick's Impossible Lasagna Pie (which made another appearance as "Lasagna Squares").

Or Zippy Zucchini (which had the same name for each appearance).

The Zesty Carrot Salad was stained up enough that I think she probably made it at some point, though I have no recollection of it.

I am not at all surprised to see that she had a variation for an oil-free version, though. Grandpa had heart trouble and this was from the low-fat era. Back then, subbing in Karo syrup was the "healthy" variation.

I saw multiple recipes for things she definitely made, but these are not for the actual versions she made. For instance, I found two recipes for cranberry salad, and NEITHER is the one she made for holidays. This first version doesn't even have Jell-O, and grandma's version was Jell-O based.

The next one has gelatin, but it's missing key ingredients like crushed pineapple and orange juice concentrate.

(If you want to see the recipe my grandma actually used, S.S. from A Book of Cookrye made it a few months ago. It was definitely not in this box.)

Grandma also had a couple recipes for cutout sugar cookies. She made cutouts for Christmas every year (and often randomly at other times too). I still use that same recipe every December and know it's not either of the ones from the recipe box.

I can't really imagine grandma buying cake flour or having cream on hand (well, once they stopped owning dairy cows, anyway...). Weird that she had a recipe calling for these ingredients. (And her version uses both almond extract AND vanilla. It's not a "choose one" scenario.)

Her recipe doesn't use confectioners' sugar or butter, either, so I know this isn't the origin of the cookies she actually made.

My favorite thing about this recipe is the ad on the back for "Mood Watch Ladies."

The ad notes that buyers can use Master Charge to buy this monstrosity, so that dates the recipe to sometime between 1969 and 1979.

But I did find one recipe that I remembered very well, and it kind of choked me up that it was so stained. Grandma must have used it. So you're getting the story whether you want to know it or not, just because I want to tell it.

The summer between high school and college, I moved in with grandma and grandpa. One day when I didn't have to work (I was a cook for a nursing home), they had to go somewhere in the morning and would be home around lunch time. Grandma asked me if I could have lunch ready when they got back and told me to use the ground turkey she had in the fridge. I decided to make up a recipe, and when they got home, my grandpa ate three servings at lunch. He was a man of few words (and generally preferred dessert to anything else), so that was about the highest compliment he could pay. Grandma asked me to write down the recipe so she could make it again.

If you can't read the title, it's "Guidelines for [blank]'s Casserole." (The blank is my real name. I blotted it out, but "Casserole" is nearly unreadable for some reason.) Neither grandma nor I were particularly careful about following recipes and I hadn't really measured anything when I made it anyway, so "guidelines" seemed right for the title.

I had pretty much forgotten about that day until I found this, and I can't believe how clearly I remember it decades later. It's like grandma left me one last present hidden amid all the recipes that I don't remember her making. 

You could find mainstream-America-obscure veggies here in the days before Food Network!

When I initially wrote about The Unabridged Vegetable Cookbook (Nika Hazelton, copyright 1976, but mine is from the 1980 Bantam printing), I discussed how it introduced foods that seem commonplace now but were new to mainstream America back then, like salsa, hummus, and kimchi. I didn't even mention something else that was special about this collection, though. It also includes a lot of vegetables that mainstream readers may never have heard of. The produce is not just European veggies that are rare here, either, but veggies from all over the world, and from cultures that the more mainstream cookbooks tended to either ignore or Americanize so heavily that the original, likely hard-to-find ingredients wouldn't even be mentioned. 

Granted, I don't have the knowledge to judge how similar these recipes are to ones that might be considered "authentic," but I am impressed that these veggies showed up in a mainstream cookbook from 1976 at all.

There are a couple of recipes for akee (more commonly spelled "ackee"), including this one that's supposed to be a beloved Jamaican dish.

As someone with boring European ancestry who lives 50 years after this book's initial print run, I still only knew about a[c]kee from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for calabaza.

I only knew about calabaza from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for dasheen.

I only knew about dasheen from watching Food Network shows.

And there is also a recipe for winter melon. 

I only knew about winter melon from watching Food Network shows.

There's a recipe for callalou (more commonly spelled "callaloo"-- which are the leaves of the dasheen root, if I understood the book correctly).

I only knew about callaloo from... say it with me...

Nope! I tricked you. I don't remember seeing this on a Food Network show. I'm a lazy academic who only knew Callaloo as the title of an African-American literary magazine. So I didn't even realize it was food-related!

In short, while white Americans have learned a lot more about recipes from non-European cultures than we did 50 years ago, this book also shows that a lot of common-elsewhere veggies are still not well-known here. (Or maybe that I'm just hopelessly behind the times? Probably a little of both...)

A workbasket full of berries

Something about the cover of The Workbasket from May 1970 feels a bit like a Barbie doll trying to act enthusiastic about having to wear the hand-knitted vest Aunt Clara made. It only comes out when Aunt Clara visits, obviously, but every time is one too many...

I'm not here for the fashions, though. Even though The Workbasket is mostly craft projects, I get it for the recipes. May was berry month, so there's nothing too terrible-sounding in here. Well, actually, the name of Berry Cream Crowdie doesn't sound too appealing to me.

Anything with a crowd in it automatically makes me nervous! But considering this is just a thick, creamy dessert with a crowd of berries on top, it's not too scary. (And yes, I realize "crowdie" doesn't refer to the berries. Apparently it's a type of soft Scottish cheese, which I'm supposing the gelled milk-and-cream mixture is supposed to approximate.)

May is a good month for strawberries, so I wasn't too surprised to come across a recipe for Strawberry-Almond Pancake Torte.

Waking up to basically a layer cake of pancakes, strawberries, and whipped topping doesn't sound too bad. I am kind of surprised that the editors thought they could get away with calling this "glamourous," though. 

The picture looks more like somebody had an idea for a craft project that involved spackle and coasters, and they gave up halfway through when they realized how poorly it was turning out...

The magazine wasn't too concerned about whether the berries would be likely to be in season yet or not, though, as it also ran a recipe for Elderberry Jam. (Elderberries are more of a late-summer crop than a May one.)

And I'm mostly running the recipe so I can tell my only elderberry-related story. My grandma had just gotten brand new linoleum floors in the kitchen and was so proud of them. When we visited, my dad wanted some elderberry jelly, but had to open a new (home-canned) jar of it, and of course he managed to break it and get it all over the brand-new linoleum. So... that didn't go over well. 

There are also instructions for creating a frozen blueberry puck.

Very convenient when you want to bake a surprise blueberry pie. (Not so convenient if you consider the awkward circular space it will be taking up in the freezer in the meantime.)

And even less convenient when you realize you still have to make your own crust and bake the thing for an hour. (If you want real convenience, it's easier to just buy the pre-made pie.)

If all these fruity desserts seem a little too healthy, there's also a Delicious Cake-Pie Dessert.

So, just in case you didn't think chocolate cake was indulgent enough, this version comes in its own pie crust. (You can tell Workbasket's audience must have been older women since nobody seems too concerned about the coming of swimsuit season!)

And finally, because Lace maker would be disappointed not to know what people were supposed to tat in May 1970, here's the tatting project: Spring and Autumn Mini-Pictures.

These look tiny, so maybe they wouldn't be too hard? (Who am I kidding? Tatting looks super-complicated.)

In any case, I am looking forward to the bounty of berries in the coming months! (And hoping that I don't end up having to clean too many up off the floor, but knowing how clumsy I am, that seems unlikely unless I just bypass the berries altogether...)

Some Very Good notes, misspellings and all!

As much as I make fun of Favorite Recipes of America: Meats Including Seafood and Poultry (1966), I know that whoever owned this book before I did really loved it. How do I know this? They left notes.

Sometimes, the notes are rather minimal, such as those for Pork Chop-Pineapple Casserole.

"Very Good" admittedly doesn't give us a lot to go on, but considering this is their opinion of cream of mushroom soup combined with canned pineapple chunks, it's enough for me to know that this earlier owner and I have Very Different ideas about what is Very Good.

Other notes show that this cook liked to modify recipes to their tastes and what they had on hand, and they wanted to remember those variations. Not only do we know that Oven-Chip Chicken is "Great"...

But we also know that crushed taco chips can be subbed in for the potato chips, and lemon pepper will stand in for the plain pepper. Plus, this person will not let extra butter go to waste (I hear you on that, cook from the past!), and they can always go for a little extra garlic salt.

I did learn that our tastes don't always diverge. In Battuto for Roast Beef, the unknown cook subs in onion salt and garlic powder for actual onion and garlic.

That's something I'd do. Not to get too detailed, but actual fresh alliums tend to make my digestive system unhappy, while a tiny bit of the dried stuff for flavor is usually fine. Plus, this cook would rather use "sesma seed" than caraway seed, a substitution I heartily recommend because caraway seeds taste the way I imagine poison tastes. 

And to round out our recipes with the cook's notes with yet another interestingly-spelled variation, here's Scalloped Potatoes with Salami Slices.

I love knowing that "pepornie" can be subbed in for the salami! And if you want to know what this recipe looks like in black-and-white, this is the only recipe from my selections that has a photograph.

You just have to imagine the darker-gray bits as pepornie circles, rather than salami quarters, for this to be accurate to the variation. 

The extra notes were a Very Good surprise in this book, making me even gladder I picked it up.

Preparing for the First of May

It's almost May! Finally my Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) has more than advice on what to plant in the future accompanied by two or three recipes for whatever random things may be available in a mostly-barren landscape. The chapter starts with asparagus recipes. Blanchard is enchanted by how quickly the vegetable can grow, noting, "One day we see an inch of purple top showing. Two days later we pick enough to fill an omelet. And soon there is enough for the first real meal, with the name 'Spring' on it...." The book makes various recommendations that don't merit a full recipe (such as "The stalks are handsome on pieces of anchovy-buttered toast sprinkled with lemon butter and a bit of sieved egg yolk"), but I wanted to include a full recipe, so here is Asparagus Pudding. (I kind of doubt this is "handsome.")

Luckily, it's not a sweet pudding (though I do have a recipe for asparagus cake if that's your thing). Instead, it's a savory custard filled with asparagus and butter-browned breadcrumbs, topped with a few chives.

Rhubarb is also sneaking up into the world by May, so the book offers a fairly standard rhubarb and strawberry pie. I thought I would go with this more unusual offering, though.

Blanchard claims to have made up this recipe in a year when she was "especially flooded with rhubarb"-- I guess with more than she could fit into a multitude of desserts. If you're the type who likes fruit-and-meat combos, maybe this sounds good-- like a riff on orange chicken?

And of course, herbs start popping up in the spring too! One of the best ways to use them up might be in Tabbouli.

I'd sub in another fresh herb (maybe cilantro) for the onion and use canned tomato in place of the fresh (because I am contrary, if nothing else!), but I love that this is a more herb-heavy variation than the bulgur-heavy kind Americans often make. It definitely says spring is here! And it's a more family-friendly way of greeting spring than singing "First of May." (But hey, if you see the lady who sells ice cream or the man with the tan Shar Pei, tell them I'm over here if they're interested.)