Funny Name: Even Crabbier

We're all crabby sometimes, like on the weekend after a holiday that forced you to spend time with the family OR on the weekend after a pandemic forced you to spend the holiday alone and away from your family OR on the weekend when everyone is still fighting because someone insisted on having a gathering even though it wasn't safe/ refused to have the gathering even though it is tradition. The point is, there are a lot of irritated people right about now.... When life is even more irritating than normal, crabby by itself might not be quite enough. That's when you've got a case of the Crab Crabbies.

I'm not sure if this mixture of crab, Worchestershire, "CheezeWhiz," and zwieback from Tri Kappas Kitchen Kapers (Alpha Rho Chapter of Kappa Kappa Kappa, Inc., 1976) is likely to mitigate or aggravate a case of the crab crabbies, but at least the name might make you smile. Try to enjoy what's left of the weekend!

Wick and Lick, with Some Unfortunate Chafing

This little book is just about the size of index cards-- so small I almost missed it in the thrift shop's book section.

Maybe the tiny size is because the title Wick and Lick (Ruth Chier Rosen, 1954) couldn't bear too much scrutiny? Were the people of 1950s America really so pure of mind that they could only think of Sterno wicks and finger-licking good sauces? Or maybe the 1950s people who thought of something else knew better than to share their ideas with the purity brigade? In any case, the cover of Wick and Lick tries to keep things classy with its fancy chafing dish and candelabra.

A lot of the recipes seem pretty straightforward, like orange French toast...

...or creamed mushrooms.

If you read the last line of the creamed mushrooms recipe, though, you know what the kicker is.

Yep. The creamed mushrooms are supposed to be the topper for the orange French toast. I guess I can understand the fear of making French toast overly sweet, but I can't say I've ever had anything orange-flavored and thought, "You know what this needs? Mushrooms and anchovy paste!"

The book's real specialty is trying to make things fancy by setting them aflame. Of course, that's long been a staple of sweets like Bananas Foster or Cherries Jubilee, so this brunch dish is not as big a shock as it might be.

I have to say, though, that if I'm going to go to the trouble of covering towers of pancakes in meringue, broiling them, and then igniting them with brandy, I'd probably make the pancakes from scratch instead of a mix.

Sometimes the flames are meant to elevate a more pedestrian food. If your family is tired of liver and onions, maybe a fire will make the meal seem more exciting.

Especially if you class it up with scallions in place of onions.

While there were not a lot of really head-scratching recipes in this tiny book, the ingredients in Career Eggs are almost as puzzling as the recipe name.

What makes scallions, hard cooked eggs, canned lima beans, cream of celery soup, and light cream glopped together in a chafing dish and garnished with "popcorn croutons" into Career Eggs? A Google search yielded nothing except hints for getting into egg-based careers or alarmist articles about "career women" freezing their eggs so they can put motherhood off until later, so your guess is as good as mine. (Mine is that the resulting glop was so weird that women would make it in the hope that their families would be convinced that maybe it was time to let mom try to get a job, as she was clearly going crazy when she had to stay home all day. In her case, the chafing dish was a cry for help-- home is chafing!)

Of course this post is for a microwaved Thanksgiving!

In my ongoing attempts to provide readers with smaller, more affordable Thanksgiving meals this year, I've assembled a Thanksgiving meal for four to six from The Amana Radarange Cook Book (1975), and yes, it's prepared entirely in the microwave!

First, you will need an appetizer to get the party started.

How about some Party Tuna Balls? Nothing puts people in a celebratory mood faster than the smell of microwaved fish.

You'll need a main course, but a turkey might be bigger than what you need this year. How about microwaving a chicken?

I hope you have an Amana Browning Skillet, because otherwise that chicken cooked in cranberry sauce and vinegar might end up looking pretty flabby. (Hopefully the bright red of the sauce will make diners think about blood and distract them from the lack of browning.)

Of course, sweet potatoes are always popular. Make them festive (and extra labor-intensive) by cooking them in the carefully-hollowed-out peels of large oranges.

The shot of acid from the orange might even help balance out the sweetness of the marshmallow topping (since it won't get any bitter notes from oven browning).

Green beans are a must, so you can go with a microwave version of the famous casserole...

...or try something slightly new with Creamy Green Beans and Mushrooms.

It uses canned mushrooms, sour cream, and brown sugar instead of canned cream soup and onion bits. Whee!

Now, you could easily just buy an assortment of dinner rolls from the grocery and warm them for just a few seconds in the microwave, but why do that when the microwave can bake?

I'm sure the microwaved roll of refrigerator biscuits will be waaay better than fancy-shmancy bakery rolls.

And finally, you need dessert. Since this is a different kind of year, how about expanding your horizons beyond the expected pumpkin pie? Doesn't spice cake seem seasonally appropriate?

Yes, Tomato Spice Cake was popular enough to get its own microwaved version!

The microwave certainly has the potential to make this year's Thanksgiving festivities memorable! And luckily, the recipes are small enough that the leftovers this meal generates won't linger too long. I don't think there will be too many fights over them. Extra family peace at Thanksgiving! Another win for microwave cooking.

The only-somewhat-out-of-touch-with-reality microwave cookbook

Yes, it's once again time for that (un)popular party game: What did old cookbooks claim you could make in the microwave? Our source this week is The Amana Radarane Cook Book (1975).

This cookbook, like most of them, seems to have a questionable idea of which recipes are best to microwave and which should be prepared conventionally. For example, if I am going to go to all the trouble of mixing, proofing, and shaping a yeast-based cinnamon roll recipe...

...maybe I would prefer to actually bake it in the oven so it will brown, rather than risking the pale blond hockey pucks that a microwave is likely to turn out.

Even if the bread is already baked, if I'm going to go to the trouble of stuffing it....

...maybe it would be better to bake it so the loaf would have a nice, crisp crust to contrast with the softer filling, rather than hacking it up into microwave-sized chunks to be nuked into rubbery tubes of sadness.

At least sometimes the book does have a reasonable grasp on a few fundamentals of microwave cooking. The moist heat of microwaved corn on the cob should be sufficient to make the onion soup mix stick to each ear of Onion Lovers' Corn without washing it away as conventional boiling would...

...should I actually want fresh sweetcorn to taste like a packet of dry onion soup mix rather than just enough delectable salty butter to highlight the sweet, fresh kernels.

Amana also seems to realize that the possibility of crisping up tater tots in the microwave is pretty slim...

... so their version Beef 'n Tater casserole doesn't even bother pretending that the tots will crisp up. Rather than crowning the casserole with crispy, golden-brown deliciousness, the tots just get buried under the canned soup to be mushy like everything else.

In total, I guess my point is that Amana's 1975 cookbook seems only mildly delusional, which is about the best one can hope for from a 1970s microwave cookbook. (Or in the humans of 2020, tbh.)

Win Thanksgiving with Holiday Ground Meats!

After the economic downturn, maybe the thought of the costs of Thanksgiving is getting you down-- even if the size of the feast is likely to be smaller this year to match the pared-down guest list. There's still turkey, various starches (potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing or dressing, dinner rolls), cranberries, pumpkin pie (plus some other desserts, if your family is anything like mine).

Well, maybe this is the year to try a small and thrifty recipe from Kroger's The New Ground Beef Cookbook (Mettja C. Roate, 1965, though mine is from the 1966 sixth printing) for your holiday table.

If you love sweet potatoes but not the formality of a big holiday dinner, consider Yamburgers your new holiday go-to!

Replace the turkey with burger patties floating in pineapple life preserver rings on a festive sea of mashed sweet potatoes studded with dried fruit. There's an affordable holiday party.

If you are looking forward to Christmas already and love ginger, then Onions and Hamburger, Milan Style, might be more for you.

Just imagine the family's surprise when dinner consists of onion shells stuffed with hamburger mixed with ginger snaps and Parmesan cheese! While you might think about how much money you saved, the family is far more likely to remember the food than if it was another year with a boring-ass turkey, so this is a win-win!

If the ginger snaps don't seem like they're quite enough of a Christmas preview, you can go full-bore fruitcake with the main dish.

A meatloaf with a swirl of raisins and apricots may or may not be more popular than a fruitcake, but again, it will make for a memorable holiday.

Added bonus: These recipes are so sweet that you might be able to get away with saving additional money by skipping one or more of the usual desserts! And you can throw any leftover fruit and/or ginger snaps on the dessert table! It's a win-win-win! (To make it a quadruple-win, hope that your festive ground meat centerpiece of choice is enough to get you out of cooking duties next year.)

The Ground Beef Permutations

I think it's about time to subject you to a ground meat cookbook once again!

This time, it's Kroger's The New Ground Beef Cookbook (Mettja C. Roate, 1965, but mine is from a Feb. 1966 printing). The book offers a range of ground meat recipes, but it doesn't go too crazy the way some single-ingredient cookbooks do. There is no ground-meat-based desserts chapter, for example, and no attempt to fool readers into thinking that ground meat is a party-worthy addition to eggnog or cocktails. My favorite recipes might just be the various permutations of common recipes, though. If you're into sloppy joes (and I definitely am NOT), the book offers multiple variations. One set is written as a series, beginning with the plain Sloppy Joe.

I love that the recipe heading promises that making the teens a big pot of sloppy joes will mark mom as the type of "mother who knows what to serve while the Beatles are bleating," which will mean she'll be seen as "'cool' forever." (Never mind that anyone who used/ bought into phrases like "the Beatles are bleating" was hopelessly square, no matter their sloppy joe making ability.)

Also of note: This is the only sloppy joe recipe I've ever seen that called for a can of minestrone soup.

If the basic version is insufficiently sloppy, the next iteration is Sloppier Joes.

I'm not sure how a version that doesn't incorporate a can of minestrone is sloppier than one that does. I'd think the cheese melted on top might even serve as a binder, but maybe American cheese is so melty that it adds to the mess?

Of course, if you really want a mess, you have to go  with the Sloppiest Joes.

This is the first sloppy joe recipe I've seen that's based on cream of mushroom soup instead of ketchup or tomatoes and some kind of sweetener. Leave off the onion rings, and you might even have been able to talk my childhood self into trying this. I'm still not sure how this is supposed to be sloppier than the version with minestrone, though. It seems like the order might be backwards!

Similarly, the spaghetti recipe had many variations, most of which were based on canned soup.

The first spaghetti is almost a garden-vegetable spaghetti rather than the marinara-based version we typically imagine. This one is loaded with celery, carrots, and a can of gumbo soup(!?) in addition to the more traditional tomato paste, onions, and Parmesan.

I'm not sure what they're going for here, with cream of mushroom soup suggesting a typical midwestern casserole, olives suggesting pasta puttanesca, and catsup suggesting desperation. I guess the breadcrumbs on the top should be able to cover up any abomination. They're crunchy!

Even the more traditional American spaghetti and meatball recipe (which gets third rather than first billing) is soup-based.

At least the meatballs have some Italian sausage and the tomato soup is seasoned up with a pinch of basil along with the extra salt and sugar!

I had enough fun looking through the series of related recipes that I don't really mind the absence of a chapter telling how to make hamburger spice ice cream or a bloody Mary made with chunks of frozen burger as the ice cubes.

Starting Thanksgiving Ideas with Semi-Outside Sides

The holidays usually mean the whole family crowding into the kitchen and/or dining room, trying to lay claim to a favorite cut of turkey or grab some mashed potatoes before cousin Brian empties the rest of the bowl onto his plate and proceeds to eat exactly three bites of them, ensuring that the rest of the family misses out on the creamy spuds and resentfully whispers the story behind his back for years afterwards. (Not that this happened in any family I know...)

If you're still going for a family gathering this year (because hey, why would you want to miss out on a chance to argue about politics?), it might be wiser to have it at least partially outside, even if that means freezing your gizzards off. Well, the El Patio Outdoor Cookbook (editors of Southern Living, 1973) is here to help with some holiday-appropriate outdoor recipes. (Bonus: Making the sides outdoors will save you space in the oven or on the stove top!) If your family loves the old classic green bean casserole, here's El Patio's special outdoor version.

Wait. This looks like plain old green bean casserole with a few extra onions on top... and it is designed to cook indoors. I kind of forgot that the book was not all that committed to the outdoor cooking premise.

Maybe the recipe for pumpkin pudding will be a better bet.

Oh, wait. While this sounds yummy-- especially for those of us who get sick of eating pumpkin pies with soggy-ass crusts-- this is not an outdoor recipe either.

Don't worry! I really do have an outdoor recipe for you. If your family is the type that serves desserts as side dishes, Polynesian Sweets might be a great go-to this year.

 

You can have sweet potatoes, bananas, pineapples, miniature marshmallows, and brown sugar, and still claim it's a side because vegetables! And almonds! Plus, it gives somebody an excuse to tend to the grill once the desire to tell Uncle Bill exactly where he can stick his thoughts about the election is nearly irresistible. (Or maybe it will give Uncle Bill something to do outside on his own!)

Here's hoping we can all find good excuses to slip outside when we need to this year...

Martha Meade stuffs November full of work. And wheat hearts.

It's November. You know what that means: Time for stuffing things into other things!

No-- get your mind out of the gutter. That's not what I meant, but I do have to appreciate how your mind immediately went there.

I'm talking Martha Meade's 1935 Modern Meal Maker. She is just thinking about stuffing recipes to prepare cooks for the big day: Thanksgiving. (Fun fact: I initially thought Meade had forgotten about Thanksgiving, as the menu for the fourth Thursday of November was just a regular Thursday menu. Then I saw that November had five Thursdays in the cookbook, and prior to 1941 some states celebrated on the last Thursday of the month. Then I went down a wormhole once I realized that the calendar in the book wasn't for its year of publication (1935) or the year after, but lined up with 1939, I guess because Meade wanted to start the book on a Sunday recipe and made January 1 a Sunday? So... I guess there is no reason for you to care about any of this. I just thought it was interesting.)

Ahem. Anyway, Meade seems intent on getting readers ready to stuff the turkey, as a lot of recipes for November require stuffing.

Stuffing a hollow cabbage sounds like less work to me than stuffing individual cabbage leaves, so I'll bet some cooks appreciated that. Plus, this entry is another in the long line of semi-random uses for Wheat Hearts because Sperry apparently really wanted to push cereal sales.

For those who prefer a sweeter dinner, Meade offered this:

I thought Sausage Dumplings would be sausage-and-biscuit-dough blobs to cook on the top of stew, but they're apple dumplings with sausage (rather than cinnamon, sugar, and nuts) stuffed into the apple cavity.

Of course, all this stuffing is leading up to the big day: Thanksgiving, with its big stuffed turkey. I decided to give you the menu for the entire day. (Every single day has a full day's menu, but I don't usually show them.)

There is no skimping on meals outside the big dinner-- no skipping breakfast to save room or expecting people to graze on leftovers later in the day if they get hungry again. Here's the full breakfast menu:

It's pretty typical for this book: fruit, cereal plus an extra carb of some type (coffee cake in this case!), a protein component (so handy to be expected to make ham, eggs, and a cream sauce on Thanksgiving morning! There's nothing else to do...), and beverages.

Dinner is pretty traditional, and probably exactly what you're expecting.

Fruit cup, roast turkey with cracker stuffing, cranberry apples, California sweet potatoes, creamed onions, cider sherbet, hot rolls, lettuce with French dressing, pumpkin pie, and coffee, tea, or milk.

I'll even include the recipes that I didn't have to track down on other pages. Of course, there's stuffing!

I've never had cracker stuffing. I imagine it varies depending on the crackers used-- soda crackers? Buttery Ritz? I can half-imagine my teenage self trying to be healthy and trying out Triscuits. That would probably be weird....

And of course, you have to have pumpkin pie!

It seems pretty standard except for the molasses. I'll bet that's a good addition.

And then, because the day hasn't been enough work already, there's a party buffet-style supper.

At least there's not a lot to fix, assuming the bread and cookies are on hand and the pineapple was sliced ahead of time....

I'll bet cooks were really glad to be done with Martha Meade's marathon of cooking-- well, right up until they realized they were supposed to tackle abalone steaks and a torte, among other things, the very next day. Why cobble Friday's meals out of Thursday's leftovers? I'm sure at least a few cooks might have felt like telling Meade to stuff it....