Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Dinner for a Special Man and Sugar for a Room Full of Teens

Okay, obviously this close to Valentine's day, so of course I'm tempted to post my favorite clip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I promise that I'll try to be a little sweeter than usual this year, though. Instead of heart-ripping-out-action, we have two alternate Valentine's plans from The Nice 'n Easy Cook Book (Pillsbury ca. 1967). For the grownups, the booklet offers a gourmet-as-you're-gonna-get-in-a-cookbook-dedicated-to-selling-refrigerated-dough-products menu.


Dinner for a Special Man starts out with a quick-n-easy take on Beef Wellington:


You might notice that the "Dinner for a Special Man" is more like "Dinner for a Special Man, Plus Family" (or maybe, "Dinner for a Special Man, Plus Two Other Members of Our Polyamorous Community"?), as there is enough minute steak wrapped in crescent rolls for four.

Of course, one Pillsbury dough is not enough, so dessert is taken out of the fridge and baked as well.


Dessert is bigger, so the less-popular members of the extended poly group can be invited too.

If the other invitees to the Dinner for a Special Man are just your teen aged children, though, then you'll have to work up a separate party for them and their friends.

Surprisingly, this one is less dough-based, as it starts out with Strawberry-Vanilla Ice Cream Parfaits (which are, just as the name suggests, layers of strawberries and vanilla ice cream).

So the kids will have something to giggle about, the menu also includes sugared nuts:


*Insert your favorite nut joke here.*

For the required refrigerated dough component, there are Orange Danish Hearts:


The kids will really appreciate the way the dough was slightly reshaped into a heart-ish shape.

And finally, something to wash it all down.


I love how the entire "menu" is sugar upon sugar upon sugar, and then the drink is made out of diet cranberry juice cocktail and Sweet*10--the cyclamate-based artificial sweetener that was soon to be banned by the FDA. It's certainly not that Pillsbury just wanted to figure out another way to work another of their products in since only one other menu item used a Pillsbury product. The nice home economists who put all this together just suddenly realized they went a little heavy on the sugar and decided to dial it back a bit.

Hey, at least it's safer eating this stuff than, say, being at the center of a certain religious ritual.

Sorry! Couldn't resist. Happy Valentine's Day!

4 comments:

  1. I didn't even know brownies ever came in a refrigerated roll! Are they still available? No, don't answer that - I don't need to know.

    I do think the portions are probably correct for the steak rolls, because everyone knows a real man eats three portions, not just one, for a real man meal, right? And a super-considerate '60s spouse would want her man to know she considers her hubby a "real man"! Of course another name for such a meal would be "heart attack on a plate", but I think this concept did not appear until a bit later. I was surprised to not see butter- and sour cream-laden baked potatoes, but I suppose that would be too much starch even for a real man, since he would be eating three-quarters of a can of crescent rolls.

    As for the artificial sweetener in the teen beverage, I suppose that is the equivalent of adults having a super sugary dessert and a cup of coffee sweetened with an artificial sweetener, which used to be very common and for all I know still is (I don't drink coffee so I can't say firsthand).

    And here is a not-too-gross nut joke:

    A woman walks into a grocery store and asks the stock boy if he has any nuts.
    The guy says, "No,ma'am."
    She says, "Well, do you have any dates?"
    He replies, "Ma'am, if I don't have nuts, do you really expect me to have dates?"

    Happy day before Valentine's Day!

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    1. Good call on the man being expected to eat for three! Men were MEN back then. There's probably just no baked potato because the good people at Pillsbury couldn't figure out how to wrap one in dough without giving the game away. (Actually, there may have been a boxed potato component-- I didn't post the whole menu-- but I can't figure out where I put the booklet after I scanned it to check for sure!)

      Good nut joke! The squirrels in my yard give it two acorns up. Happy Valentine's day early!

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  2. The sugared nuts pair nicely with the phallic parfaits. Is this teen party going to have any adult supervision?

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    1. It depends on the parents' political/ religious disposition. If they're 1960s Pillsbury-reading parents, my guess is yes, there will be supervision.

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