Vintage Pork for "Two"

I live in small household, so most of my cooking is for just one or two people. The old cookbooks featuring recipes for families with half-a-dozen kids always leave me glad I'm not hauling gallons of soup on and off the stove (I'd almost certainly burn somebody!) or trying to get a massive Jell-O mold to set up. But once in a while, I'll come across some recipes intended to serve one or two people-- a little peek into what the lives of the freer people might have been like. Such is the case for Pork for Two (National Pork Producers Council, undated, but looks very 1970s).

I mean, it has a harvest gold fondue pot on the cover. I rest my case.

Aside from the recommendation to cut two blade steaks into thin strips, skewer them, and then cook them in a fondue pot full of hot oil, the pamphlet also offers another popular vintage recipe option: going Hawaiian.

I hope the smoke on the pork chops is enough to cut through all the sweetness of pineapple chunks, sweet potatoes, and pineapple preserves. (At least if it's not, you're not stuck with a lot of leftovers to throw away or try to choke down.)

The booklet's titles really try to sell the recipes. For instance, calling anything a "platter" makes it sound bountiful and maybe just a little bit fancy. 

And these ham and potato platters feature a glaze on the ham (which sounds wretched to me, but I know my hatred of sweet-and-sour-type sauces is unnaturally strong) plus a fancy piped border of sour-creamy mashed potatoes. Whatever picture you have in your head, though, I kind of doubt it looks like this picture.

Is it just me, or do those look like flowers some six-year-old drew right before they were referred to the student counselor? Then the counselor kept asking why the "flowers" looked so bloody... and whether the centers were ringed by petals or teeth. (That right there is a good reason to keep cooking ONLY for two. If the couple has the wisdom not to reproduce, there's no chance of getting dragged down to the school to find out what Junior has done this time.)

The book's biggest secret, though, is that it is only half-heartedly committed to the assertion in the title that these recipes are for two. If the ingredients in the Fruit Glazed Butterfly Chops sound like a LOT for only two people, well, look near the end.

Yeah-- this makes six servings. But you can freeze and reheat this! Just like you could with a lot of the recipes that serve six in pretty much any other cookbook. So what is the point of Pork for Two if it's "for two" in the sense that any larger recipe can serve two now... and again tomorrow... and maybe again the next day? It's less "pork for two" and more of an early version of what we'd now call "meal prep."

No worries, though! The picture for the caption promises "You'll never get tired of this pork-dried fruit combo accented with ginger and mustard." If you were hoping for recipes you wouldn't get tired of because they wouldn't leave you with leftovers, well, tough. The book implies you should have had Junior and Susan and Richard and Patty so you could just make and fully consume regular-size recipes. Not having excessive leftovers is a fair trade-off for all the afternoons spent in the student counselor's office.