Grab the vermiculite and the wheat berries! It's Easter!

As Easter hops closer, I thought I'd post an Easter idea from the demented Cook and Learn (Beverly Veitch and Thelma Harms, illustrations and calligraphy by Gerry and Tia Wallace, 1981), a book intended to teach classes full of children about cooking. If you're expecting the book to show kids how to dye eggs using natural colors or make Easter "candy" out of some bullshit like dried milk powder, carob, and dates, I can see why you'd think that. It's consistent with this book's natural-foods ethos. However, the plan is even more disappointing than either of those ideas. 

It's a Living Easter Basket! This "recipe" is not actually for something the kids are supposed to eat. It's just a plan to use vermiculite (a hydrous phyllosilicate mineral that can be used as a soilless growing medium and was known for frequently being contaminated with asbestos up until the 1990s, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed) to sprout wheat berries into "grass" to fill a berry basket. So... non-edible treat sprouted in a possible carcinogen, inside an Easter basket that is waaay too small to hold much of anything fun anyway? (The book suggests "hiding" plain old eggs in the kids' baskets. So much fun to "find" eggs in a different container than the usual egg carton!) The more I look at this book, the more I see it as a primer for just how disappointing life tends to be. Grit your teeth, kids! Better get used to hoping for a big basket with candy and/or toys peeking out through colorful Easter grass and actually receiving a few boring-ass eggs in a berry basket full of damp sprouted wheat berries with a possible side of asbestos. You get to put up with this kind of bullshit for 70-or-so more years if you're lucky! Happy Easter, indeed.

Grains in many guises-- gourmet, health-foody, and redundant

As has been well documented, I love me some '70s "health" food. That, of course, was the draw of Cooking with Gourmet Grains (Stone-Buhr Milling Company, copyright 1971, though mine is from a 1978 printing). I mean, just look at the natural wood, squashes, and jars of whole grains on the cover!

I was not disappointed, either. If this seems like the kind of book that would have a recipe for Soy Beans and Millet Casserole, well...

Good call! It's totally got Soy Beans and Millet Casserole! It's the kind of casserole that starts out by assuming you have soy beans and millet on hand, and it does not include canned soup, so you know it's healthy.

This is also the kind of book that imagines sunflower seeds floating around in hot broth is somehow a proper soup.

Sunflower Soup is not the worst recipe I've ever seen (Obviously!), but it's still pretty hard to imagine getting excited about sitting down to a big bowl of soggy sunflower seeds.

While a lot of '70s health food sounds pretty bland, some recipes in Cooking with Gourmet Grains are right upfront about it!

The Farina soup "is a very mild soup that is a favorite with people who prefer foods that are not highly seasoned." In short, bland.

Occasionally, though, the book seems almost forward-thinking in its health foodiness. Wheat-free recipes like the Rice Flour Cake nearly seem meant for our modern gluten-avoiders.

And then you notice the package of Dream Whip, which puts this squarely back in the '70s.

Aside from the health food theme, I enjoyed seeing how the book managed to fit grains into recipes that don't traditionally call for them. Tuna Salad is often served on bread, but that's usually its only connection to grains. 

Not in Cooking with Gourmet Grains, though! Tuna salad needs a base of brown rice in this version.

And while Carrot Raisin Salad doesn't usually have much more to it than the titular ingredients and some salad dressing...

This version is bulked up with cracked wheat. 

Even traditionally grain-centric recipes get bulked up with extra grain. Is the bread in French Toast not quite enough grain for the grain company? Well...

The Puffy French Toast doesn't just get a soak in an egg-and-milk custard. It gets dipped in an actual floury batter before frying! It's kind of like bread dipped in bread.

That's enough carbo-loading for today! Better stop before we get as puffy as the French toast....

Kraft wants you to make everything just a little bit French

My previous post on Kraft's Main Dish Cook Book (1970) was pretty heavy on macaroni-and-cheese-based dishes. I was a bit more surprised to find French dressing was so heavily featured, too.

Maybe it's my prejudice against salad dressings that makes me imagine that a stew based on a bottle of dressing will end up unpleasantly oily and gloppy.

Kraft thought salad dressing goes with veggies, so why not simmer them in French dressing along with a bunch of meatballs?

And why confine French dressing to an ingredient in standard American recipes like beef stew? Go a little Italian with Parma Beef Burgers.

Yep-- French dressing teams up with breadcrumbs to get these meatloaf-ish patties ready for a topping of Parmesan cheese, ready to be served on Parmesan toast.

Or maybe French dressing could be the ticket to sunny Spain?

Yep-- a typical pot roast with potatoes and onions becomes Beef Barcelona with the simple addition of French dressing and olives! (It looks like it's still a pretty popular recipe, based on a Google search, so I guess Kraft convinced diners of this one.)

Or the French dressing might take things in a more German direction with Saucy Schnitzel.

I always thought schnitzel was meat pounded thin, breaded, and pan fried, but apparently cooking meat in a salad dressing, onion, caraway, and sour cream sauce (from a mix) counts too....

I'm not saying that this entire book is a cynical attempt to sell salad dressing when home cooks didn't have access to a lot of recipes that got their flavor from something other than salad dressing or condensed soup (or grocery stores that sold ingredients with more flavor, for that matter). I'm just suggesting that a lot of this book is a cynical attempt to sell salad dressing.

Overwhelmed by Maple

I know that maple is often considered a fall flavor, though I don't really know why. Late winter/ early spring is much more appropriate, as that's when maple syrup is actually made. So that's why I'm posting Favorite Maple Recipes (The Log Cabin Products Co., 1928) in March.

If you're skeptical about mentioning "Log Cabin" and "maple syrup" together, well, you have a right to be skeptical, as the brand doesn't actually include any maple today. (The company's own website doesn't even list the ingredients in an easily accessible way, suggesting that they don't want buyers to realize this, but quick checks of other websites that sell the syrup proved that it's mostly corn syrup, water, and sugar today.) However, when this pamphlet was made, the brand did contain at least some actual maple syrup. The introduction claims the blend is made of "the early springtime sugar of New England's far-famed maples" plus "The fresh, woodsy fragrance of northern maples from the giant groves of Canada" and "to mellow the heavy richness of these two maples there's just the right amount of pure cane sugar." I'm guessing the cheapest ingredient was probably the most abundant, even if it was listed last, but at least the blend had a little of the real stuff.

The booklet mostly consists of dessert recipes that sound pretty good, assuming you have a sweet tooth. It's not as if Vermont Maple Pecan Cake or a Maple Nut Sundae is likely to go very wrong... So I guess I'll just list an entire menu using the few savory-yet-maple-centric recipes and hope that sensory specific satiety sets in and you get tired of imagining an entire meal of sweet and sticky stuff. (It also doesn't hurt if you hate sweet-and-meat-type combos as much as I do.) We'll start off with Savory Baked Ham.

Made less savory after being stuck with whole cloves and basted with Log Cabin.

Now we need a side. How about some sweet potatoes?

Candied in Log Cabin syrup, of course!

And if you need a salad, well, try a fruit salad topped off with Maple Mayonnaise!

Yep. Maple Mayonnaise. 

And since dinner is insufficiently sweet, let's finish with a nice Maple Puff!

I rarely see recipes that call for Jell-O to be dissolved in a milk-and-egg-yolk mixture, so I was impressed. And since strawberry Jell-O is likely to be insufficiently sweet, make sure to add a cup of Log Cabin Syrup!

I also love the dramatic presentation of the gelatin mold rising from a mass of whipped cream like the face of an angry monster rising out of a whitecap-covered ocean. (I hope you can see the frowny eyebrows, puffy cheeks, and threatening tusks too!) Or maybe it's just the angry face your stomach will make after being inundated with all this sugar for dinner....

Either way, happy maple season!

Funny Name: Tiny Hats Edition

I've already expressed amusement at The Any Oven Cookbook's (Saran Wrap, 1981) insistence that it's a great idea to cook seafood in the microwave. While that's still relevant for today's recipe, I'm more amused by the recipe title.

I'm caught between asking whether anybody else imagines hats for undersized fish when they hear this name and proclaiming that "Shrimpy Flounder Turbans" would be a good band name.

Veggie-Heavy Oddities from the Hilltop

I wasn't sure what to expect from Hilltop YWCA Cook Book (January 1970). All I knew was that "Gourmet Classes and 'Tuesday at the 'Y'" were somehow involved. (The cover is as much explanation as the book offers.)

I did like the chicken tiptoeing past the salt shaker and pepper grinder. She's hoping she can escape before anybody realizes that dinner is sneaking away. I couldn't let her get away, though, so I picked this book up. 

A lot of the collection consists of baked goods that sound perfectly fine-- so the pictures of cakes and pie on the cover are pretty representative of the recipes in this collection. You know I'm here for the weirder stuff, though!

The Minnesota Casserole may not strike you as weird because it is a pretty standard midwestern casserole.

Ground beef, onion, celery, various canned soups and veggies, rice, and soy sauce. The thing that shocked me was that Irene Agin labeled this as Minnesota. In any other regional cookbook I have, this would be called "Oriental Casserole" (or something similarly appalling) because of the soy sauce, rice, and Chinese noodles. The fact that this was accurately identified as something belonging more to the midwestern U.S. than to the far east impressed me far more than it probably should have.... The Hilltoppers shocked me without even trying!

If you want to get weirder, though, the Party Sweet Potatoes straddle the line of sweet and savory...

Whether canned onions and apricot halves in a brown sugar sauce sounds better or worse than marshmallows and/or canned pineapple as a sweet potato topper is your call.

Another oddity, the Baked Tomato does not involve an actual baked tomato.

Instead, it's a bread-pudding-ish concoction with tomato juice as the liquid.

And for the dieters, there's a weird little salad.

Ever yearned for kidney beans and shredded cabbage suspended in a jiggly mass of cottage cheese and French dressing? No? Well, that will make portion control a snap.

And now I wonder if the chicken on the cover of the cookbook is actually planning to cross the road because she lives near Mickey Shaw. Maybe she's just trying to escape the smell of Cottage Cheese and Kidney Bean Salad, and somebody up the road is baking a layer cake and just might have leftover crumbs to throw in the yard. A chicken can dream...

Funny Name: Put the Dentist on Speed Dial Edition

The Bake-Off recipes should at least sound appealing, right? I'm not so sure Bake-Off Cook Book (Pillsbury, 1968) worried overly much about what the contestants named their recipes.

I imagine the fork means that the dough can be mixed with a fork and the finger means that it can then be patted in the pan with one's fingers, but I can't help but think that Fork 'N Finger Onion Pie sounds like something that would break your teeth. If biting down on a metal fork doesn't get you, biting down on a finger bone surely will! (And for those of you keeping score, this is another recipe with gratuitous potato flakes.)

Going places with Kraft

Of course, I knew that Kraft's Main Dish Cook Book (1970) would feature a lot of salad dressing, cheese, and/or macaroni. It is here to sell Kraft products, after all. 

I just wasn't anticipating that Kraft would act like the recipes created some kind of time portal or mini-vacation.

You know, like back to the old West, when colonizers staked their claims on freshly-uninhabited land.

I'm sure the homesteaders had plenty of Velveeta cheese spread to go around! 

If we want to be more glamorous, Kraft suggests we could just retire to our estate to dine with the country set after a day of riding to hounds.

You know how those fancy people love sitting down to a nice plate of macaroni and cheese topped with boiled frankfurters after a long day of hunting. It's even classier if the treat is assembled to roughly resemble a campfire before it gets devoured.

Or maybe Kraft could take diners on a nice tropical vacation.

One that involved hamburger buns full of ham, pineapple, green pepper, and sweet 'n sour sauce/ dressing.

Or maybe some weird shortcakes if you're not too hung up on the idea that shortcakes should be dessert-y.

Nobody will be the least bit disappointed when you say you're serving shortcake at dinner and it ends up being hot tuna salad full of pineapple tidbits on top of a biscuit.

Maybe it's best to forget about Hawaii and try a nice Hacienda Dinner.

I'm not sure what makes mac and cheese with added sausage, veggies, and barbecue sauce "hacienda" exactly. Maybe the veggies? Tomato with green peppers and onions usually makes dishes Italian in old cookbooks, but you need a little oregano for that to work. It must be that these veggies are coupled with barbecue sauce.

At least I can guess that the Mariachi Supper of mac and cheese with added vegetables and sausage was so named because it started with a package of "Mexican Style Macaroni Dinner."

Apparently, that used to be a thing. (I kind of doubt the wickedness of the advertised "wicked little touch of chili," but I am a skeptic.) 

There's even a picture of this one!

Something about the color balance makes me see the sausages as pickles, which does not help....

Maybe we should just go for a nice trip to England instead. People make fun of their cuisine anyway, so how much could Kraft mess it up?

Granted, it's not usually too risky to count on Americans to be a bit unclear on the details of other cultures, but I'm pretty sure most of us realize that "Fish 'n Chips" does not refer to corn chips! (Especially not to fish under a layer of green-beany cheese sauce topped with corn chips!)

You know what? Let's just go for a good old American-style pizza. 

You know, the kind topped with frankfurters, dill pickles, fried onion rings, and pasteurized process cheese spread. Pizza! 

I can't help but wonder whether the recipes inspired some stay-cations when families wondered why they should travel if the food everywhere is just this bad. (Why pay more to get questionably gussied-up mac and cheese in an exotic location?) Or maybe they inspired more actual vacations when families felt like the cook was losing her grip on reality and needed to find out food elsewhere didn't just consist of questionably gussied-up mac and cheese. (More likely, the booklet inspired the cook to file it away in the less-used corner of the bookshelf and forget about it entirely.... It was better to just go back to adding a can of tuna and some frozen peas to the mac and cheese and calling it good.)

Marching in Place

As time marches on (Get it? March! Okay, fine... It's a lame intro.), The Political Palate (The Bloodroot Collective (Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea), 1980) mirrors the feeling of late winter and obstinately stays in place. Late winter started February 2 and won't end until the equinox-- near the end of the month-- so I've got a couple more recipes from the same section. 

This time, we're going to try to warm up with some southwestern classics. First up: Tamale Pie.

As I read through this, I realized the filling is remarkably similar to the recipe for cashew chili (and by "remarkably similar," I mean nearly identical!). (I'd make some kind of Groundhog Day joke about things getting repeated, but it's March now, not February, so I guess that wouldn't fit.) I'm not sure why the book presented this as a separate recipe when it might have been easier to add the recipe for the topping (referred to at times as "cornbread" and other times as "cornmeal mush") after the chili recipe as a variation. Maybe the authors just needed to reach a certain page count and listing this twice in the same section got them just that much closer? 

The tamale pie is supposed to be served with "guacamole salad," which follows on the next page, and is labeled only "guacamole."

Older recipes often add things like mayonnaise or cream cheese, but this one does not. It even includes jalapeno peppers! I'm most amused by the need to explain that fresh cilantro is an herb available in Chinese and Puerto Rican markets since it's so ubiquitous today. The biggest difference from current guacamole recipes might be that this one doesn't include any citrus juice-- usually lime now, though older recipes often call for lemon. I'm not convinced the citrus actually does much to prevent browning, but diners might miss the zing.

Here's hoping that the cold, slushy days stop repeating themselves, and the recipes for early spring will be here soon!