I do declare! More recipes from the dubious south

After the recent "trip" to Arizona, I decided to stay in the south and/or west with The Southern and Southwestern Cookbook (Culinary Arts Institute home economists directed by Melanie de Proft, 1956).

The cover looks more like a nod to the southwest than to the south with its avocado-and-grapefruit salad and big bowl of chili, but the book covers more ground than it lets on. (The fried chicken recipe has a variation for Maryland fried chicken-- not the most southern and/or western variation!)

Today I'm going the "weird menu" route, so prepare yourself for a series of recipes that only sort of go together.

For the main course, something "spicy":

Of course, I'm not sure how Spicy Beef Stew got labeled spicy. It looks like... well... plain old beef stew. Are the MSG and "few grains cloves" enough to make it spicy? Are we supposed to think that a can of sieved tomatoes or a bit of bell pepper will liven things up? Is the recipe's proximity to other recipes claiming to be from the southwest enough to give it an edge? I have looked this recipe up and down a dozen times, and I still have no idea what makes it anything other than the staid beef stew that't the staple of heartland family dinners.

Speaking of things that don't exactly scream southern or western, let's serve our stew over slices of this:

Yes, scrapple, that hallmark of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, is somehow southern and/or western if it's made with a mixture of vegetables and peanuts instead of hog offal. I can see where they're coming from on this one since it's full of those southern staples cornmeal and peanuts, but I kind of wonder why they went with the name scrapple. Why not Vegetable Fried Grits or Veggie Grit Cakes?

In any case, I'd be more willing to try this version of scrapple than the traditional one, but I digress.

Now on to dessert:

Sopa Capirotada finally presents something that seems like it belongs in this book! I did a little research, and apparently this is a bread pudding traditionally served during Lent in Latin American households. (Don't tell anyone that I pulled it out for mid-summer!)

It's loaded with piñon nuts, which are apparently special pine nuts most popular in New Mexico. It's also full of the brown sugar and cinnamon common to bread puddings, and layered with novel to me, but apparently not to Capirotada fans, Cheddar cheese.

I'm guessing this sounds exciting to those of you who love a slice of cheese in their apple pie, and scary to those who have never figured out why anyone would do that to an innocent slice of pie that was minding its own business.

I couldn't make up my mind, so you have your choice of beverages.

If you want the worst variant of breakfast in a glass, have some of this:

Grapefruit Cooler handily combines the most vomit-y tasting of breakfast beverages with the potentially salmonella-laced glory of raw eggs! The whites are even whipped, so it's likely to be thick and sludgy as well!

If you'd rather go the the sweet-sweet-sweet route, I'll take you to Texas:

Texas Sparkler mixes a can of frozen juice with extra sugar, then dilutes it with nothing but ginger ale. Even if it's "dry" ginger ale, I imagine a glass or two could send imbibers into a diabetic coma. (I am totally in love with those grape tumblers, though.)

So there you have it-- a weird thrown-together meal with varying degrees of south/western credibility. Not sure how I want to end this, so I'll just throw in a line drawing of a proper southern family waiting on the butler to serve them dinner.

I was going to say that I hoped their cook had better taste than I in choosing their meals, but they all look like they're probably racist anyway. I hope the cook made them exactly what they deserve.

Road Trip!

How about a road trip? Let's pack into the car with some snacks, get onto the road, and stop at any thrift store or antique mall we happen across. You can pick up whatever you like... VHS tapes? Vintage Star Wars? Generation 1 My Little Ponies? Playboys with models who are now older than your mom? I won't judge. And I'm going to pick up exactly what you think I'm going to pick up: enough old cookbooks to ruin your car's suspension. (You know we're taking your car, right?) Well, those and maybe a few of the Playboys you didn't pick up.

What should we bring for snacks? I am super-boring and usually just bring a peanut butter cookie Larabar, but today let's look at some vintage snacks to go with our antique-mall theme. 

New Age Vegetarian Cookbook (The Rosicrucian Fellowship, fifth edition, 1975) suggests something that sounds a little dirty:

Nut Balls! Your inner teenage boy can giggle about nuts with balls. (How would that even work?) Loaded with unsulphured molasses, soy milk powder, and the eternal disappointment that is carob powder, these should easily last the whole trip... and well into the next decade.

Would you rather have candy? The Lunch Box Cookbook (Home economists of the Culinary Arts Institute directed by Melanie de Proft, 1955) offers Fruit-Nut Candy Squares:

These are a precursor to the '70s health-food "candies," sweetened mainly with figs and dates... and nothing that I would ever call candy, even if they're probably not bad for coconut lovers.

If you're really the gung-ho energy bar type, Arizona Cook Book (Al and Mildred Fischer, sixth printing, 1979) offers a cereal bar:

What would a block of oatmeal and powdered milk held together with sugar, honey, and citrus gelatin taste like? I'm not sure, but it can apparently pack 400 calories into a 2 x 2 x 1.5-inch space. That will power you through some serious VHS browsing.

If you have a sick sense of humor like me and want to pretend you're a cannibal, the More-With-Less Cookbook (Doris Janzen Longacre, copyright 1976, but I have Bantam's 1981 edition) offers this recipe:

What? What do wheat, oat, date, nut, and seed sticks have to do with cannibalism? Look at the name! They're Hinkelsteins.

I hate coconut, but I might be able to power through one or two just so I could say, "I'm eating the Hinkelsteins." Sounds like I'm taking out a whole German family... but it would really just be a bunch of grain, nut, and seed families.

So what do you say about the trip? You ready? Not quite? Give you a minute? Okay, I'll just wait here with my credit card and my Hinkelsteins.

Waiting patiently.... 

Waiting patiently....

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

Censorship, cacti, and beans in unexpected places...

It's not the heat! It's the humidity! As much as I hate hearing people say this in a self-congratulatory way, as if proclaiming the humidity the real enemy makes a hot day any better, I am taking their idea. Today we are going somewhere hot and (usually) dry: Arizona!

Yes, it's the Arizona Cook Book (compiled by Al and Mildred Fischer, sixth printing, 1979).

This book has a diverse cast of recipes: Indian, Mexican, and Western food, with plenty of recipes for Arizona crops and outdoor cooking.

What's with the little green bar off to the side? It's the first instance of censorship in Grannie Pantries history! Whoever owned this before me was a racist, and they penned epithets for Indians and Mexicans right on the cover. Very thoughtful, asshole.

I decided "cowpatty" didn't rise to the same level of offense, so I left it there so you could get a taste of this person's rapier wit.

The book itself boasts "more than 350 authentic Arizona recipes," but I'm never quite sure what that means. Authentic to what? Some seem to be authentic to 1970s-style cooking, which is not a boast many cookbooks make.

I kind of doubt an authentic Mexican recipe calls for a pound-sized can of roast beef and another of Rosarita refried beans, or wrapping the whole shebang in a package of Rosarita tortillas. Granted, I have zero expertise in authentic Mexican food, but I feel pretty confident making this call anyway.

Same thing for the Chicken Enchiladas:

A recipe calling for a can of cream of chicken soup and a jar of boned chicken (and more Rosarita tortillas-- and yes, the acknowledgements page does thank Rosarita Mexican Foods, in case you were wondering...) seems to have more in common with an authentic midwestern church cookbook recipe than anything else.

Some recipes do seem specific to the region, though. I love a good marmalade, and this one would seem authentically southwestern:

I'm not sure what prickly pears taste like, but I'd be willing to try them this way! And if you can't get enough Arizona-specific sweets, here's another with a lovely little drawing to illustrate it:

Again, I'm not sure what it would taste like, but any candy recipe that begins with a warning about the legality of making it and instructions to remove spines is pretty exciting.

The book is definitely committed to providing recipes for other Arizona staples, like sourdough (not just for California, apparently!) and pinto beans.

The book lists plenty of expected recipes for sourdough bread and pancakes, but I was a little surprised to find this among them:

Sourdough drop cookies!

The biggest surprise had to be in the pinto bean recipes, though. Nestled in among the variations of baked beans and soups was this little gem:

Pinto bean fudge does not use the pinto beans as a thickener, as I thought it might. Beans are add-ins, just like the chopped nuts!

Now I'm starting to imagine a mashup of the old Velveeta Fudge recipe with this one... It could be dessert, or heat it up for a very weird bean queso dip! At least the thought has gotten my mind off the damn heat and humidity.

Rice and ham that didn't quite stack up

I have a nice little Tofurky "ham" roast to eat, so I started looking for appropriate vintage recipes to make with it. I haven't been feeling all that inspired since I got back from vacation, though, so nothing was looking exciting. (I'll blame my lack of inspiration on my trip to Evolve. Nothing I make will rival their cashew mac n "cheese" or southern fried "chicken.")

The Better Homes and Gardens Casserole Cook Book (fifth printing, 1970) had a recipe I kind of thought might be okay with a few adjustments:

It has three things I love: rice, ham, and cheese! But the rice layer looked kind of skimpy-- mostly just plain old rice. And I don't particularly like olives or sliced fresh onions and tomatoes. And I didn't see any point in leaving the ham in a slice if I'd just have to cut it up anyway.

Maybe you've guessed it by now, but I ended up making something so tenuously inspired by this recipe that I wondered whether I should write about it at all.

What the hell, though. I'll post it so you can see just how cavalier I am with recipes.

Poppy's Rice and Ham Casserole

1/2 c. instant brown rice
1/2 c. water
1/4 tsp. salt
pepper, thyme, and rosemary to taste
1/2 c. diced Tofurky ham
veggies as desired (I used a handful of sliced mushrooms, some diced bell pepper, and about a quarter bag of Kroger frozen Fiesta vegetables)
1 Tbs. milk
1 egg white
1 slice cheese (I used Muenster.)

Combine rice through ham in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cook for about five minutes and then add vegetables. Continue cooking until rice is tender and vegetables are partially cooked.

Meanwhile, mix milk and egg white. Pour milk mixture into rice mixture and stir to combine. Pour into greased individual casserole dish. Bake 10 minutes at 350. Then add cheese slice to top and bake 10 minutes more.

Here's what it looked like in the cookbook:

Very neat little piles with a topper that looks like it belongs on a sea creature or something. I didn't have any gelatin salads just lying around (as people in the '70s did), so I didn't bother with their serving suggestion either.

And here's my version:

Yeah, looks almost nothing like the original because I skipped the whole "layers" thing. How did it taste?

Meh. It was surprisingly dry. I figured the egg-and-milk mixture would make it kind of custard-y, but it somehow seemed to lock all the moisture up so the whole thing seemed kind of sawdust-y. The parts on the top that were covered with cheese were pretty great, but the rest was just okay.

Would it have been any better if I had come even close to following the directions? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. So much for that experiment, and now I'm feeling even less inspired.

Gelatincraft!

Happy Summer Weekend! (Well, we haven't hit the solstice quite yet, but we're well into meteorological summer and it is freaking HOT here, so I think it counts.) What better way to celebrate a sultry summer weekend than with a chilled craft project/ recipe? (Okay, there are plenty of ways: eat a peanut butter sundae with chocolate ice cream, go for a walk to watch the sun set (or rise, if you're one of those types), crank up the a.c. and watch Friday the 13th or Jaws or Taxi Driver.... But quit undermining my premise! Just go with it, okay?)

Good Housekeeping's Soups/ Salads/ Sandwiches booklet (1971) has the perfect project:

Make Muffin Salad Cuplets! They can be as nice or as scary as you like. I'm sure the red-Jell-O-and-melon-ball variety is fine if you're a melon-head. The orange is probably okay if you don't mind a big old mouthful of pith. The cucumber and lemon version looks like a perfect little stained glass window and will taste... meh.

My favorites, though, are the two in the back. The pea pods in the yellowish glob look like a row of fish, rushing to the surface to try to eat a red flower. If I were 6, I'd take it to my room and try to keep it as a pet, only to be disappointed as it melted and my "fish" ended up floating listlessly on a pile of goo as the flower sunk into the muck.

As an adult, I have more appreciation for the perfect absurdist art of cauliflower cutlets framed by a wall of beef consommé, resting under the shade of an (egg white?) daisy. I want to frame it and put it in a gallery next to a picture of a woman with a wind-up kitchen timer for a head and spatulas for arms. (My evaluation of the last two items is even more favorable knowing that they are likely to be inedible. I would not eat a work by Salvador Dalí, so why would I eat a beef/ cauliflower/ egg or pea pod and pimento salad cuplet?)

Should you want to create your own masterpieces, the recipe is pretty easy:

Perhaps I will make some green bean eels in berry blue Jell-O, lounging under a banana-slice moon... Too bad the '70s missed out on berry blue.

I think I see why "ECONOMY" is in all caps on the cover... rather than "delicious"

My seasonal farmers' market is finally open, carrying things like... uh... lettuce... and lettuce... and tons of homemade scones/ bread/ cookies/ etc., since not a lot is really in season yet. More veggies are coming soon, though, so let's explore Ann Seranne's Good Food Without Meat (1973).

The cover certainly looks like it will be an exploration of vegetables, what with the suggestions of carrots, onions, cabbages, lettuce, and a big fat tomato.

Some recipes are actually veggie-centric, like this soup I could actually make with current farmers' market ingredients:

You'd have to be pretty committed to eating lettuce in all its forms to eat Potage Santé: a big bowl of boiled lettuce. I hope the butter, scallions, and lemons would help, but they would be better off topping a fat stack of juicy roasted asparagus anyway.

A lot of recipes kind of forget the vegetables. Of course Soufflé Roll by itself is supposed to be pretty eggy:

But you'll notice that it calls for filling. Surely this is a great opportunity to add some peppers, tomatoes, and/or broccoli!

Or you could just fill the eggs with... more eggs. This is the first time I've ever seen a souffle with a hard-cooked egg filling.

Unlike many of the old gelatin-based salads, the salads in this book do have actual vegetables in them. This one is an ode to all my least-beloved vegetables:

Diced beets (sweet dirt!) with celery (dental floss!) and (stinky, watery!) cabbage. Whee!

I'd say it was a waste of perfectly good cottage cheese, but I know a lot of you hate cottage cheese. If so, you can say it's a waste of mayonnaise, and we can gaze across the trench of the cottage cheese- mayo divide and realize that at least we can both agree the salad is a waste of something.

Venus Dessert Trap? Moon Jellyfish Jelly?

Sorry! I was on vacation and thought I had this scheduled to post automatically on Saturday. Obviously, it didn't.

On a busy summer weekend, I thought you might need a cool and creamy treat from Good Housekeeping's Dreamy Desserts (1971).

Or maybe it's a pet jellyfish? Or a carnivorous plant that got baked in the sun, and now has a quintet of green stink bugs throwing an orgy in its once-imposing trap?

No, it's an Apricot Cream, Tiffany. (Don't ask me who Tiffany is, but she's part of the title. I am also unable to say the title without sounding sarcastic.)

If you want a chance to get salmonella from a brandied apricot gelatin mold, this recipe was made for you!

I kept staring at the picture, though, sure that I had seen something like this before. Then it hit me: this is the dessert version of those "crown roasts" made out of hot dogs that used to be so popular.

If you want a faux-elegant weekend, make yourself a Frankfurter Crown followed by an Apricot Cream! I think I'd rather take my chances with a carnivorous plant.

Amapola's Arroz

Update for Patties Parmigiana: I decided to try making a new one without cooking it in sauce. I browned it, topped it with a little pizza sauce, broiled it with some cheese, and ate it as a sandwich. Here it is getting nice and golden brown in the skillet:

And here is as a delicious sandwich:

Even though either version is good, I highly recommend this version, as it retains the yummy crunchy layer on the bottom.

I also decided to try a second recipe from from Betty Crocker's 4 in 1 Cookbook Collection's Hamburger Cookbook (1977) section:

Here's my serves-one, veggie adaptation:

1 tsp. canola oil
1/4 roll of Gimme Lean veggie sausage
a little dried minced onion
1/2 c. instant brown rice
1/3 cup chopped green and red pepper
1/2 c. canned petite diced tomatoes
1 slice veggie bacon (I love Sweet Earth brand, and I've got maybe 14 readers, so nobody paid me to say so.)
1/2 c. water
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. oregano
scant 1/4 tsp. salt
a few grinds of pepper

Heat oil over medium in small skillet or pan. Crumble Gimme Lean into hot oil and cook, stirring occasionally, until brown. Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until liquids are absorbed (about 10 minutes).

You'll notice I quartered most ingredients, but halved the rice, peppers, and most spices. Instant rice isn't as compact as regular rice, so I had to use more of it to approximate the amount of regular rice. I love bell peppers, and old recipes are usually a bit bland, so that's my rationale for over-peppering/ spicing if you need one. I was low on the added salt because the veggie burger already has more salt than ground beef would.

Here's how my version came out:

Was it good? Hells, yes! I was planning on trying one other recipe from the cookbook, but I knew it would be nowhere near as good as this, so I ended up making this twice. (Pro tip: It's even better if you grate a little bit of cheese on top.)

Even if I do make fun of old Betty sometimes, she had some good ideas.

Raisin invasion, with a cocktail chaser

Since June is supposedly the month to get married and Alcoa didn't have any stunning foil-based wedding suggestions (kinda surprised they didn't take the opportunity to suggest brides might look awesome in a really shiny but fragile dress!), let's go for "The Newlywed Game" Cook Book (Jody Cameron Malis, 1971).

The cover suggests the recipes might offer up a way to grill and/or steam Bob Eubanks's head with some seriously over-sized eggplant. (Read into that what you will.) I never found the recipe for Eubanks à l'Aubergine, though.

The book does have some "helpful" hints, such as suggesting that new brides set up a special meeting with the mother-in-law to find out what hubby likes. (It's useless to actually ask him, as apparently men would say they liked everything and leave wives to endless rounds of trial and error. It's amazing how monolithic and annoying men's behavior was in the 1970s!)

The top of the page has the real clue to the book's contents. See all that fruit? Jody Cameron Malis apparently believed it belonged in pretty much everything (I guess because marriage was supposed to be sweet?).

Her special favorite seems to be raisins. As if the pervasive chop suey recipes from the '50s and '60s weren't bad enough, this recipe adds raisins to the onion, celery, canned mushrooms, and bean sprout concoction:

I wasn't thrilled with traditional chop suey, but compared to the sweet raisins and honey version, the classic sounds much better.

And speaking of weird raisin-and-veggie combos, how about Tangy Sting Beans?

Boil string beans for a half-hour(!), then serve in a raisin-and-vinegar sauce. Oh boy!

You'd think at least a classic combo like ham and cheese would be safe from the raisin treatment...

...but you would be wrong. At least Cheese and Ham Whiz doesn't call for pureeing the ham (as the "whiz" in the name made me fear it might), but it ruins a ham, cheese, and rice casserole (one that sounds as if I would like it more than I really should) by dumping in the raisins.

Not everything gets the raisin treatment. Remember how popular it was to throw cans of fruit cocktail into everything in the 1950s?

Jody Cameron Malis did! So if you've ever wanted a cream of chicken and fruit cocktail casserole, Fruit Chicken Dish has you covered.

I just look at the weird coupling and wonder how it happened in the first place. Did cream of chicken soup and fruit cocktail get really drunk in Vegas and make some very bad decisions? Is this dinner meant to represent all the couples on The Newlywed Game who would never last? So many questions... and so few answers as to why the book insists on marrying fruit to pretty much everything.

Poppy's Patties Parmigiana

I'm on my own for cooking this month. Usually, I'm also cooking for someone else who would not appreciate (to put it mildly) vintage recipes. Since I'm on my own, I'm going to occasionally half-assedly reinterpret vintage recipes that don't sound terrible. (Reinterpret means I want them to be veg-friendly and serve one. I don't want to deal with leftovers if I accidentally pick something that is terrible, plus I can do more experimenting this way.)

So here is my first experiment, from Betty Crocker's 4 in 1 Cookbook Collection's Hamburger Cookbook (1977) chapter:

Patties Parmigiana sound pretty tasty: seasoned burger with a cornflake-and-Parm coating, smothered in tomato sauce. I was going to try it.

With my modifications to serve one and be veg:

1 tsp. oil
1/4 roll of Gimme Lean veggie sausage
Poppy's sausage seasoning mix (oregano, basil, fennel seeds, nutritional yeast, black pepper, sage, red pepper flakes-- I just eyeball the amounts.)
1 egg, beaten
some crushed cornflakes
some finely shredded Parmesan
1/3 c. petite diced tomatoes (I meant to use tomato sauce like the recipe specified, but I was out!)
1/4 tsp. Italian seasoning
1 slice pepperjack (I didn't have sliced mozzarella, and I like a little heat.)

Heat oil in small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Meanwhile, mix cornflakes and Parmesan in a small flat container, and separately mix Gimme Lean with seasonings. Form into a patty. Dip into egg, then coat with crumb mixture. Brown patty in oil, turning once.

Mix tomatoes and Italian seasoning. Pour over patty in skillet. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Top patty with cheese slice' cover and heat until cheese is melted.

This is how it turned out:

I served it over pasta with some steamed vegetables, and it was delicious!

It seemed weird to me to cook the patty in the tomatoes, though, as the yummy golden crust got soggy and seemed to melt away from being cooked with sauce. I'm thinking of trying this again, but taking it out of the pan after browning the patty on its own. It would probably be damn tasty on its own, or maybe in a sandwich with a little pizza sauce on top, so there would still be a contrast with the crispy bottom.

If I try it that way, I'll let you know, but there are still a few other recipes I want to try in Betty Crocker's Hamburger Cookbook. I still have 3/4 of a roll of Gimme Lean!

Foil up father!

What's the best way to make dad feel like a king on Father's Day? I'll bet you can guess what 401 Party and Holiday Ideas from Alcoa (Conny von Hagen, 1971) has to say about that.

Yep. Foil crown. No surprise there.

Alcoa does have a couple of less expected things to make dad, though. What if dad might not know the gift from your little sister is from your little sister? You could just let her hand her own gift to him and say "Here, dad," but it is way more fun to wrap it in a bizarre way to indicate its "from little sister" status:

Help sis wrap the gift in a foil sheet, and then tape a balloon head with curly ribbon hair to the top so it will look like a doll. Surely dad wants a shiny, deflating doll for Father's Day. Or maybe this wrapping scheme is supposed to be some kind of a ruse to make your gift look great in comparison? Your guess is as good as mine on this one.

I love the super-awkward photo, too. It looks like dad got a little drunk and decided to pee on the wood paneling and little sis just swooped right in to give him a hug with her low-rent Raggedy Ann gift.

What foil delight should you give dad? I'm glad you asked. You're making dad a "people broom."

Apparently having a crown means nothing, as people broom gets a crown too. (I notice his is gold, too, and dad just gets silver. Read into that what you will.)

People broom also gets to smoke dad's pipe as he presents "the poem you wrote for him." (Well, aren't you sweet?)

I'm not sure if the slippers that match the background are supposed to be a gift, or if they're just there to indicate how relaxed the broom feels. They would seem to contradict the tie-- which again, is maybe a gift, or maybe a sign that the people broom got all dressed up for dad? People broom seems to love mixed signals just about as much as he loves having accessories that blend into the background.

This is Alcoa's full spread for Father's Day, so if you were expecting more of an explanation of why dear old dad would get excited about these gifts, you're out of luck.... just like dad. Although maybe if he's had enough to drink that he's pissing on the wall, the people broom will give him someone to talk to while mom takes the rest of the family out to visit grandma.