University Women: Provoking critical thought since 1976

It's back to school time, so today we're celebrating with Celebration Cook Book (American Association of University Women, West Chester, PA, 1976). My copy might have been celebrating just a little too hard, as it doesn't have a cover. At least, I assume the cover is missing since the first page is regular paper and the back cover is actual card stock. Luckily, the first page still has all the info I needed to identify the book.

I'm not sure just how celebratory the book actually is, as the recipes are mostly what I'd expect in a regular community cookbook from, say, a Lutheran church. Still, there are a few special special touches. Not only do the university women like alcoholic punches for parties...

...but they also recommend throwing a water balloon in the freezer ahead of time so it can be used as a non-diluting ice cube in the punch bowl. A small part of me thinks this is genius, but most of me is pretty grossed out by the idea of a balloon in the punch bowl. How was it tied off? Will the punch taste like a balloon? Will the party end up sending someone with a latex allergy to the emergency room? And will the college types be able to resist the urge to use a condom since it's a close relative of balloons and they already have some on hand?

Maybe I should just move on to a celebratory cake. I'm used to seeing Wacky Cake recipes in community cookbooks. They were popular in the Depression because they didn't require eggs, milk, or oil, and I guess wacky because the instructions usually specify making separate holes for the vinegar, vanilla, and oil before adding the other ingredients. They're almost always cocoa cakes (like the video linked above). The University Women were extra wacky because their cake has peanut butter in addition to the cocoa.

Well, it's also extra wacky because it's actually wackey. Maybe they just like the extra work of adding an extra "e"? I know they have an affinity for extra work since this cake is often mixed right in the baking pan to save on dish washing, but the instructions to pour the batter into the pan show that this version is supposed to be mixed in a bowl first. 

I know, I know. It's probably just a typo. The University Women were no bigger fans of proofreading than the non-college types. The instructions for the Corned Beef Salad make this pretty clear.

"Dissolve jello in hot water"? There's no Jell-O in the recipe! I'm assuming the "1 pkg. regular lemon juice" is supposed to be a package of lemon Jell-O, because who measures lemon juice by package? Plus, the instructions never say what to do with the lemon juice, so I think supposing they mean Jell-O is a reasonable inference.

Maybe forcing readers to make inferences is intentional, and the University Women are just trying to test readers' abilities to parse ambiguous instructions. Perhaps the recipes are supposed to double as critical thinking exercises? For instance, the Rainbow Slices seem to rely pretty heavily on readers to figure out a step.

I assume that somewhere between halving and hollowing the hard rolls and wrapping the halves back together again, the cooks are actually supposed to add the filling. Otherwise, the end product is a bowl of sweet pickle relish, cream cheese, hard-cooked eggs, and carrots next to a series of hollow dinner rolls. (Come to think of it, I'd prefer that anyway, as I could ignore the bowl of sludge, grab a dinner roll, and ask whether there was any butter... I am not a pickle relish person!)

The most logic-testing recipe just might be Mushroom Casserole. My adolescent habit of following the recipe as I read it (rather than reading and thinking it through first, before I started anything!) would have doomed this one for sure.

"Mix ingredients into stuffing." 

"Done!"

"In casserole, put layer of mushrooms, (sliced)..."

"But... the mushrooms are mixed into the stuffing."

"...thinly sliced cheese..."

"But... the cheese is in the stuffing!"

"...and filling mix."

"All I have is filling mix (which I assume is the stuffing) with everything in it! You told me to mix ingredients into stuffing! Are mushrooms not ingredients? Is cheese not an ingredient?"

"Repeat with dots of butter."

"THE BUTTER WASN'T AN INGREDIENT EITHER???"

"Pour 1 cup of Half and Half over the entire casserole."

"Wait. Is that in addition to the cup I already mixed in during the first step, or are you telling me that half and half wasn't considered an ingredient either and I shouldn't have mixed it in already? Did you just mean to combine the stuffing mix and water in the first step? WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY THAT?"

So... yeah. This recipe would have totally caused a meltdown if I tried to make it when I was young. Even if the University Women weren't always great at planning out or explaining their recipes, they definitely challenged their audience's capacity for critical thought and problem solving. I have to give them props for that. It's a good back to school lesson.

Funny Name: La La La! I Can't Hear You! Edition

You know how moms are always supposed to be telling their kids to eat, so the youngsters will grow up to be big and strong? Maybe they mom claims the carrots will give kids X-ray vision, or promises that milk will give them strong and shiny teeth? Fine. I get the importance of good nutrition. Still, I don't want to hear the pep talk Pat LaFrance gave her sons when she served this recipe from Salads Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1969). 

Granted, I was never a teenage boy, but I'm pretty sure they don't want mom telling them what will happen with their pickles.

A math-and-soy-heavy diet for an overworked planet

Today, we're going back to the classics. I've featured plenty of 1970s vegetarian cookbooks, but not yet one of the most iconic: Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet (mine is the revised fourth printing from 1976, so it's not quite the original from 1970).

It was the first major book to call for cutting meat consumption to help save the environment-- thus, the "small planet" of the title. I suspect that its goals were hampered by a couple of factors, though.

One is that the book so often makes eating a vegetarian diet sound like an exacting science-- so difficult that you might just need to make it a full-time preoccupation. I mean, one might think, "How hard could it be? Just pack a peanut butter sandwich instead of bologna, and you're set." Not so fast!

You've got to pack the peanut butter so full of instant nonfat dried milk that it becomes un-spreadably hard, and then thin it out with honey or banana if you insist on trying to use it as a spread. Why? It's way too complicated to get into, but basically, most protein-rich plant foods do not have all nine essential amino acids to make a complete protein, and Lappé thought all the essential amino acids had to be present and balanced in individual meals. The book makes being vegetarian sound like a never-ending math problem, and I'm not sure how many people would be willing to sign up for that. (Now we know that vegetarians will generally be fine if they eat a variety of types of food throughout the day. There's no point in carefully calculating out and balancing the types of proteins in every meal unless you have a very specific math fetish.)

The other factor is, of course, that the meals do not always sound great. I mean, any recipe title that starts with "Crusty Soybean" is not very likely to be a crowd-pleaser-- not even if you put "Crowd-Pleaser" right in the name. 

This doesn't necessarily sound objectively terrible, but it's just one of the many grain-topped-with-soybeans-and-random-veggies recipes in the book that all seem very same-y and likely underseasoned.

Granted, the recipes don't all follow that formula. Some present diners with unexpected combinations.

Can't say as I've seen too many recipes for spaghetti in a buttermilk/ onion/ olive/ cheese/ peanut sauce.

There's no chicken and waffles recipe, obviously, but the book offers pancakes in a mushroom sauce.

I can only imagine hearing "Pancakes for dinner!" as a kid and then being faced with a stack of soy-flour pancakes with chopped veggies mixed right in, topped with a white sauce full of mushrooms. That would have led to a full-on rebellion.

Protein was considered so important that the book even offers protein-heavy desserts, like Peanut Dessert Fondue with Fresh Fruit.

That would have sounded fine to me (I love fruit and peanut butter!) if I hadn't already seen the recipe for Peanut Sauce with Great Possibilities.

I'm sure this peanut sauce with onion, garlic, and soy sauce might be fine in a savory dish, but on apples and bananas as dessert? Maybe Lappé should have made a separate dessert-y peanut sauce recipe instead.

The book did help spark an important conversation, though, so I'll try to end this on a nicer note. The pages are illustrated sporadically with pictures of various fruits, vegetables, nuts, and beans hanging out together. Allow me to present a couple of those, along with brief interpretations.

Here, the pepper, scallions, mushrooms, and garlic commiserate about how often they're consigned to play a role in the background of a tomato-based sauce. They want their own chances to shine, damn it! Tomatoes are such attention hogs.

And finally, the corn, apples, and raisins bitch about how the soy moving into the neighborhood is driving down the property values. (Sweet foods are often quite prejudiced against their earthier compatriots, even if the hippies love them all and just want everybody to get along.)

Quit being so judgy about sloppy women

I know the name is just a play on Sloppy Joes, but I can't help but feel the Lower Deer Creek Mennonite Cookbook (Kalona, Iowa, 1977) is being just a little bit judgy about women who don't like to spend their days on cleanliness so they can be closer to godliness.

If this oatmeal, shredded cabbage, and mushroom soup-filled variation of sloppy joes isn't enough to convince you that the Mennonites are casting aspersions on those of us with stacks of dusty books everywhere, there's also a Sloppy Polly Cake.

I have no idea what makes this "sloppy." I initially supposed that this might have a simplified mixing strategy, maybe even mixed in the pan (rather than a separate bowl) to avoid extra dishes, but that doesn't seem to be the case (though it's hard to tell, as this doesn't say exactly what the cake is supposed to be baked in). 

In any case, if the Kalona Mennonites knew me, I imagine something would be named Sloppy Poppy before too long, as I clearly have zero interest in keeping things neat. I'm thinking (based on my Pieathalon entries) that it might be a Sloppy Poppy Pie Crust that is prone to falling apart and has to keep getting patched back together, but you can speculate in the comments if you want.

A bedraggled Bake-Off castoff

I don't usually look too closely at Pillsbury Bake-Off-related cookbooks when I see them because I always assume that they're full of mostly-appealing desserts that might still be familiar to cooks now. There's not necessarily a lot of fun to be had with those. When I came across this Pillsbury's Bake Off Cook Book (1971), though, I made an exception.

I picked it up because it was super-cheap. Why so cheap? It's hard to tell from the cover, but this booklet has sustained some major cooking-related damage that makes it nearly impossible to lay flat on a scanner. Also, the pages are stained, and some were stuck together. These things are somehow pluses in my eyes, I guess because I'm usually the weird damaged castoff at the periphery in any group of people, so I have empathy for other weird damaged castoffs too, even if they are just old books with no feelings.

While this book has plenty of fine-sounding desserts, you know I'm more interested in the odder recipes. One trend I liked was the compulsion to add nonstandard ingredients to yeast bread, as in this Saucy Taco Bread.

I like that a can of tomato soup with a little taco sauce added translates to "taco," perhaps because to someone who looks like a retired home ec teacher from the Midwest, going all-in and using enchilada sauce or salsa would have been a bit too much (especially considering this also has some green chilis).

Another contestant (who also looks like a retired home ec teacher from the Midwest) prefers a can of beans in the dough to make Barbecue Bean Bread.

I was kind of surprised by how popular home-baked yeast breads seemed to be, but there were plenty of quick breads too. Perhaps the most early-'70s sounding recipe of all is the Souper Pancake Muffins.

Dump some canned cream-of-something soup and bacon bits into your pancake mix, and ta-da! Muffins!

Women who looked like retired home ec teachers from the Midwest weren't the only entrants.  David Weirich (who looks more like a dollar-store version of Bob Hope) submitted Beef 'n Bean Roll-Ups.

It turns a quick bread dough into something that looks like cinnamon rolls that went very, very wrong.

So brown and lumpy!

My favorite recipes might just be those that turn refrigerated dough into things that it was really not meant to be, though. I mean, I guess if you're a teenager from Missouri, flattened-out Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits rolled in cornmeal count as tortillas...

...but I sincerely doubt too many people from the southwest would accept them as tortillas in an Easy Enchilada Bake (and do not even get them started on using watered-down packaged barbecue sauce with a bit of chili powder as enchilada sauce).

Still, the most unlikely use of refrigerated dough might just be Saucy Crescent Ravioli.

Yep. Crescent roll dough folded over a meat mixture is supposed to be ravioli, somehow, I guess because it's baked in spaghetti sauce? 

I'm glad I finally picked up one of these booklets so I could appreciate the parade of brownish, very-'70s recipes and also because I can end with an extremely deep cut joke that only my sister is likely to get: I showed my raviolis. Well, actually, Mrs. Edna Buckley's "raviolis." Still, raviolis were shown.

Trapping the green goddess in a jiggly mess

I've already covered the love that Salads Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1969) shows for pineapple and bananas randomly added to recipes that probably don't need them. Here's another surprise: the book is convinced that "Green Goddess" is a type of molded salad. I always thought it was a salad dressing so loaded with herbs that it was green, and Wikipedia seems to back me up on this one. (However, it also suggests that "green goddess salad" is an alternate name for Watergate salad, so...) Salads Cookbook insists that Green Goddess is not just any molded salad made with green gelatin, but a really gross one.

Well, the simplest form is probably the most palatable. The sweet gelatin, crushed pineapple, and dairy fat combo is usually an alluring one...

...but the salad dressing and cucumbers seem like unnecessary additions (ones that are unlikely to improve it!) to try to justify calling this thing a salad.

Other versions are probably trying to be a little more true to classic green goddess, as they add more vegetables and include the anchovies common in the dressing.

I'm not sure all that many people really long for lime-gelatin-mayo-and-anchovy cubes over a salad of artichoke hearts, grapefruit, olives, and onions, all drenched in French (not green goddess!) dressing.

But if you really want to put some effort into an impressively misguided salad, there's always the Green Goddess Seafood Mold. It's got TWO layers!

The lemon layer wastes crab and lobster by embedding them in lemon Jell-O. Then it's topped off by the anchovy-flavored lime Jell-O! And serving this will be extra nerve-wracking because it involves unmolding two layers--so twice the chance for a large mold to fall apart, implode, or split! 

Making the classic dressing seems like way less work (and probably for a better payoff if you're not a condiment-hating freak like me), but one of the Favorite Recipes Press's versions could definitely make a memorable contribution to a terrible retro-themed potluck!

Fruits everywhere, lettuce in the chili, and salad penguins!

Since it's still salad season, let's go for another salad book. Well, Salads Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1969) to be precise.

The cover suggests there will be canned pineapple. Lots and lots of canned pineapple. The book does come through on that promise.

There's canned pineapple in dessert-y salads that sound pretty good, like Cheesecake Salad.

Of course this mound of dairy fat and sugar counts as salad! It has crushed pineapple, after all.

There's also canned pineapple in places where you might not expect it, like tuna salad.

Sorry, I meant Banana-Tuna Pineapple Salad. I'm not a good gauge because I hate tuna salad to begin with, but I'm guessing people who are more reasonable than I am might also blanch at the mayo-pineapple-banana-canned-tuna combo.

Not everything has canned pineapple though, not even all the "tropical" dishes. Tropical Lamb Salad is shockingly devoid of pineapple.

How does this not incorporate canned pineapple? I'd imagine it would be part of that classic combo of bananas, celery, lamb, mustard, mayo, olives, and almonds. 

The book also has some weird little riffs on actual classics. I'm used to taco salads that plop some kind of warm taco meat mixture atop a mostly-cold salad of lettuce, tomatoes, etc. I wasn't quite prepared for Chili Salad, though.

Mix a can's worth of hot chili into lettuce? That just sounds like a way to get sodden lettuce and lukewarm chili... I'm not sure the corn chips would be enough to save it.

How about I really cool things off and end with Antarctic Salad?

You might be wondering what makes this pork and veggie aspic Antarctic. Well, it's the last step, the step that turns a slightly snooty aspic (I mean, it starts with unflavored gelatin instead of sugary lemon or lime and it's flavored with curry powder and juniper berries!) into a fun afternoon craft project. This little mountain of pork and veggies is inhabited by penguins!

I'm really not sure how the red cabbage fits in with the penguins on an iceberg vibe, but I'm always excited by a recipe that ends with the instructions to "Arrange Penguins around mountain, serving 1 Penguin per person." 

Well, I'm also glad Mrs. Jessie L. Hawks kept the tropical fruits and chili away from the penguins. I'm sure they're more comfortable around their gelatinous little mountain, though now I'm thinking about how cute they might have been with pineapple ring inner tubes. Of course, if they were tubing down a river of chili, that would have taken it to a terrifying new level...

A Menu for August with High and Low Notes

Happy August! To distract us from being baked alive, let's check out what the fancy people in 1970s Cincinnati were doing during the summer. That's right: it's time for another installment from Cincinnati Celebrates: Cooking and Entertaining for All Seasons (Junior League of Cincinnati, first printing August, 1974, though mine is from the 1980 fifth printing).

I decided to pick the Summer Opera Encore menu because it sounded like it should be fancy. Plus, who the hell has summer opera parties? I wanted to see what that was all about. Then I decided to see if August was the right month for this party, but Cincinnati's summer opera series actually ends in July, so this menu is a little late. Oh, well! I don't think any readers are seriously planning to have a summer opera encore party based on an ancient Cincinnati menu anyway, so it's here for August.

I guess since this party is so fancy, the invitations should be more restrained than the handcrafted extravaganzas we're accustomed to seeing from the Junior League. This time there are two options, and the first doesn't even require crafting!

Just write the invitation right on the opera program! (Of course, I'm wondering how the Junior Leaguers are getting programs before the opera. I thought programs were given out at the event. Maybe the Junior Leaguers had special sources? Maybe the summer opera just had one program for the entire series that got handed out at every show? Maybe this was just a way to use old programs from earlier shows?)

The other option is still relatively restrained, as the construction paper opera glasses don't even require a special envelope or hand-cancellation at the post office.

The relatively easy invitations mean the preparations for the party have to be a pain in the ass. Each guest has to get a handmade paper maché tray.

And of course, that paper maché needs to be painted and sealed with enamel because we all know that single-use trays need to be sturdy (and take up a lot of time and resources).

The party will also need an inexplicable popcorn topiary centerpiece laden with lemons and ribbons.

I had no idea "lemons and ribbons" could even be a theme, but I guess it is!

For an after-opera party, you might expect some extra-fancy foods, like blini with caviar, but this menu starts out with a Jell-O salad!

The Molded Asparagus Salad doesn't even try to get too fancy, starting with a package of lime gelatin instead of the unflavored variety. Mmm! Sugary lime with asparagus, mayo, green pepper, celery, and green onions!

That's followed with Layered Eggs. What are the eggs layered with?

Creamed chipped beef. That's right! Follow up a night at the opera with shit on a shingle casserole. (Okay, there are no shingles, and I guess the bacon and canned mushrooms are supposed to fancy it up a bit, but this is still not what I expected.)

The English muffins and strawberry tarts are supposed to come from a bakery, I think, as the book offers no recipes, but the Wine Sorbet is supposed to be homemade, and it finally gives us something that seems after-opera fancy.

If you can afford to use champagne in a recipe AND serve it to guests on its own, then maybe guests will kindly look past the asparagus Jell-O and the massive pan of shit-covered scrambled eggs. Or maybe they'll just spread rumors about your déclassé cooking and somebody else will be hosting the after-opera party next summer.

The military wives love olives in EVERYTHING

I knew I was in for some excitement from Recipes on Parade: Salads Including Appetizers (Military Officers' Wives Clubs, 1966) because it has two full chapters of gelatin-based salads, plus most of the other chapters have additional sections reserved for molded salads.

You'd never know it from the cover, though, which suggests the book is mostly about half-lobsters trying to eat orange segments next to a pile of confetti rice, as the citrus punch looks on, impassively.

This book suggests putting just about everything into gelatin salads-- even things that I don't think I've seen in Jell-O salads before, like Grape Nuts.

I wonder if being soaked in gelatin would take away that "Guess what! You're trying to eat kitty litter!" texture of Grape Nuts that I find soooo delightful.

If you want the additions to stay crunchy, the book recommends throwing water chestnuts into your fruity gelatin salad.

Sure, the book includes some old favorites, like the usually fine-sounding (and desserty) Under the Sea Salad, but the cooks often put their own spin on things.

I mean, everybody wants chunks of chicken in their pear-and-lime cheesecake-like confection, right?

And while other cookbooks offered inexpensive substitutes for crown roast, this book was the only one I've seen so far that constructed one out of gelatin.

And yes, celery-flavored Jell-O was a thing in the '60s. It's up to you to decide whether that fact is more horrifying than the idea of trying to pass off a load of condiments, a can of diced luncheon meat, and a can of peas suspended in a ring of said gelatin as a "Party Pork Crown."

And while this book did occasionally admit the "salads" were sweet enough to serve as desserts, the ones designated as desserts weren't always even that sweet. Yes, this one does have pineapple and a bit of sugar, but...

...it's also made with unflavored gelatin, rather than the lemon or lime we might expect with pineapple. Plus, it's loaded up with celery, green pepper, and mayonnaise and served on lettuce! None of those features are particularly desserty (and of course, this flies in the face of the served on lettuce = salad rule).

The one constant is that the recipe contributors seem to think olives belong in pretty much every type of gelatin salad.

They belong with black cherries.

They belong with mandarin oranges.

They belong with grapefruit and lime.

They go with lime, crushed pineapple, and cottage and cream cheeses, too.

Hell, you don't necessarily even need Jell-O. Just throw the olives in with pineapple, cream cheese, mayonnaise, Maraschino cherries, walnuts, and whipped cream to make frozen dessert-adjacent Frozen Salad Slices.

I'm sure a mouthful of frozen olives and Maraschino cherries will be among the more memorable bites in one's life...

The book isn't entirely Jell-O salads, though. There's a no-gelatin version of a pineapple-and-cheese salad.

Velveeta is so soft that I have trouble imagining grating it, unless maybe it's frozen first. I guess if your best idea for Velveeta is to put cold lumps of it on mayonnaise-topped pineapple slices, though, well, you don't really understand that it's best used for melting...

There's Tuna-Fruit Salad. Adding olives might not seem like such a terrible idea for a tuna salad, if you're into tuna salad...

...until you remember that this is tuna fruit salad, so those olives are trying to blend with pineapple and grapes along with the tuna. I kind of want Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli to show up and insist that the contributors to this cookbook learn to edit.

The fact that some of the recipes double as craft projects is sometimes enough to save them. The Bird of Paradise sounds like it might be pretty terrible, mixing chicken, hard-cooked eggs, and pickles with pineapple, Maraschino cherries, and apple.

The components aren't all mixed up, though. The pineapple halves are essentially turned into bird bodies that are stuffed with a pretty normal-sounding chicken salad. The apple and cherries just get turned into the pineapple bird's head, so the stuff that doesn't go together can easily be eaten separately.

And some recipes are just weird, like the String Bean Supreme.

It's the only salad I can remember seeing that builds a salad on top of Worcestershire-dipped bread slices. That sounds damp and unpleasantly strongly flavored, perhaps to offset the canned flavor of the string beans? Who knows? At least the olive topper isn't joined by a Maraschino cherry.

Sooo.... yeah. That's my overlong way of saying that this book is definitely worthwhile if you love all varieties of odd, inexplicable, and clashing salad mixtures! It's the perfect chilly companion for early-ish August when the weather is still hot but a vague sense of nausea sets in over the prospect of starting a new, probably chaotic school year.